

1 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 4, 1993

NORTH SEA NIGHT OF HORROR 40 YEARS AGO LIVES ON IN MEMORY OF FLOOD SURVIVORS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 639 words

 
 FORTY years ago this month, the North Sea swept across the sea defences of eastern England killing 307 people and flooding dozens of town and villages in the worst peace-time disaster in living memory.
 In Holland, more than 1,400 people lost their lives and large areas of the country were devastated.
 At sea, 128 people were lost when a ferry, the Princess Victoria, sank. Two trawlers and their crews disappeared, the frigate Berkley Castle capsized in Sheerness docks, and hundreds of fishing and pleasure boats were damaged or destroyed in harbour. 
 The horrors of the night of January 31, 1953, are etched in the memory of those who lived through it. Mike Child, now a National Rivers Authority flood defence engineer, was seven when a tidal wave ran through King's Lynn in Norfolk.
 "We heard a lot of banging and shouting down the street, it was the only warning. My parents moved us all upstairs, then the lights went out. My father went out to get some sand bags, and he did not come back.
 "The water was rushing in. We sat at the top of the stairs watching by candlelight as it rose up the stairs step by step."
 Mr Child cannot remember how many hours he sat there huddled with his family before he was rescued, and reunited with his father. He can recall that troops came to mend the breaches in the sea wall, his bike was badly rusted by the salt water, and the garden was full of dead fish. Fifteen elderly people were drowned in King's Lynn, and 1,000 had to be evacuated. That night of disaster was caused by the combination of a 113 mph wind in the North Sea, the highest then recorded, and a spring tide that piled up the water and overwhelmed the sea defences.
 Nowhere on the East Coast escaped. Apart from King's Lynn, 55 people were drowned in the Norfolk villages of Hunstanton, Snettisham and Heacham when the sea came over the wall and swept away bungalows on the sea front. Among the dead were 15 American servicemen from a nearby airbase. At Great Yarmouth, only six died but the sea poured through breaches in the wall leaving 1,000 homes under water.
 In Essex Canvey Island was submerged and 58 people drowned, most of them bungalow dwellers. Many people managed to climb onto the roofs of their homes, and were rescued by a fleet of boats assembled by servicemen and civilian volunteers. In all, 13,000 people were evacuated.
 In places where the surge did not carry the sea over the defences, huge waves driven by howling winds hammered the concrete walls to pieces. At Jaywick Sands near Clacton, the promenade and holiday bungalows sheltering behind it were demolished, leaving 21 dead.
 In Suffolk, 28 drowned, including nine children, when the Orwell burst its banks at Felixstowe. Lincolnshire had 50 miles of sea defences damaged or swept away. Mablethorpe and Sutton-on-Sea were completely flooded, with water 20 feet deep in places, and 30 were drowned. The floods penetrated four miles inland, drowning many farm animals.
 In the first desperate days after the disaster 14,000 troops were mobilised to repair the sea defences. Thousands more joined Red Cross, St John Ambulance, Womens Royal Voluntary Service and civilian volunteers in rescue work, evacuation and feeding and sheltering the homeless. With rationing then in force, evacuees were given emergency cards to replace those lost in the flood, and adults got a lodging allowance of 10s 6d a week, with 5s 6d for children.
 In total 1,200 breaches of the sea wall were recorded. Five million sandbags were airlifted from Europe to repair defences. A disaster fund distributed clothing, linoleum and furniture.
 The RSPCA rescued 10,390 animals including "527 dogs, 372 cats, 229 tame rabbits, 5,000 tame mice, three ferrets, five tortoises still in their winter sleep and a monkey".

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



2 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 5, 1993

MAN, 80, FOUND BEATEN TO DEATH

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 100 words

 
 POLICE conducted house-to-house interviews in a North Yorkshire fishing village yesterday, after a man aged 80 was found bludgeoned to death in his bungalow. Percy Noble, a retired cattle market foreman who had lived alone for 20 years in Sleights, near Whitby, was "beaten with a blunt instrument in a vicious and cowardly attack," said Det Supt George Chadwick. "This may have been a burglary which went wrong."
 Mr Noble was last seen on Saturday by a neighbour. A warden for the group of elderly people's bungalows called police on Sunday after finding his spectacles on his back path.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



3 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 5, 1993

LEADING ARTICLE: THE GRIM LESSON OF THE LION'S CAGE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 536 words

 
 DOES it really need a lion to make us take mental illness seriously? It is now five days since Ben Silcock, a schizophrenic, was seriously mauled after climbing into the lion cage at London Zoo. That case still dominates the news.  Understandably. Yet, with the exception of the most recent chapter, his story will be all too familiar to families caring for mentally ill members: a despairing saga of revolving hospital doors, inadequate community support, homelessness, a cycle of doctors delivering different diagnoses -plus, in the case of schizophrenia, the further burden of dealing with a disease with no known cause or cure. 
 No one can accuse Virginia Bottomley of inaction. By Saturday the minister had told the Press Association of her "urgent wish" to see "a shake-up of the Mental Health Act" - with a readiness to examine a new compulsory treatment order for patients in the community refusing to continue with medication.  Compulsory treatment at present can only take place in hospitals. Since Saturday, Mrs Bottomley has been media omnipresent. A succession of mental health pressure groups was called to Whitehall yesterday as officials proceeded with the Health Secretary's urgent review of the 1983 Act.
 Time for a pause. There is nothing more dangerous than policy-making on the hoof. All ministers are prone to it, particularly in a parliamentary recess.  Individual incidents achieve a momentum of their own. Before she does anything else, Mrs Bottomley should follow her own New Year's Day advice. In a Daily Telegraph interview, she specifically declared that she did not "shoot from the hip". She liked to think "hard and long before taking decisions". Precisely what's not happening in the Silcock case.
 Ben Silcock was not refusing his medication. Quite the opposite. He had turned to hospitals for treatment, but been refused. There is a small group of patients in the community failing to take prescribed medication, but this is a small problem compared to the large numbers denied help and support. Moreover, new HMG guidelines on community care are warning local councils not to tell disabled or elderly people of the care they need if it cannot be provided by available funds.
 Community treatment orders (CTOs) have been discussed for almost a decade. The British Medical Association has been trying to meet ministers to talk about them; but has been rebuffed for over a year. Yet many of the early advocates are now opposed. There are obvious dangers: breaches to civil rights, a substitute for community care, and an opportunity to include cases where hospital detention could not be justified. Mrs Bottomley, thankfully, has been rowing back. By yesterday she was talking about CSOs (community supervision orders), rather than CTOs. But before we introduce further measures, we need to give existing procedures a chance. There is already a programme for providing people discharged from mental hospital with a key worker, but many managers are unaware of this duty. New, specific grants have been stalled for lack of local authority contributions. And, despite ministerial denials, under-funding is chronic. We have the tools: but we are not doing the job.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



4 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 6, 1993

EYEWITNESS: ELDERLY PERISH IN SARAJEVO'S BLEAK WINTER

BYLINE: ALFONSO ROJO IN SARAJEVO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 483 words

 
 THEY had wrapped the old people's bodies in blankets and tied them round with strips torn from sheets. Then they laid them out like packages on the freezing flagstones.
 Yesterday, there were 10 corpses - three men and seven women. In all, 137 people have died at the Nedarici old people's home since the United Nations, international aid organisations and the local authorities were warned of their impending plight almost five months ago. 
 "They don't make a sound," Lidia Grozniz said. "They curl up, go to sleep, and are found dead in the morning."
 The Nedarici old people's home stands on the road which leads to the airport, in Serbian territory, close to the front. Less than 100 yards away, an armoured personnel carrier of the French "blue helmets" is on permanent duty.
 "We can do nothing," Dr Grozniz said. "We can't even give them a change of clothing. There's no heating in the rooms, and at night the temperature goes down to minus 15 C."
 Before the war began on April 6, there were 302 people living in the home.  Yesterday, 108 remained. By today, it is likely there will be only 106 left.
 In 1984, Miroslav Jancic's powerful voice rang out across the stage of Sarajevo's opera house. Yesterday, the singer lay shivering in his bed, incapable of uttering a word.
 In the next room, a woman was in her death throes. In her delirium, she had fallen several times to the floor. She was smothered with excrement.
 There is neither water nor electricity in the home. Those residents who can no longer move lie around all day, soaked in their own urine.
 The more robust sometimes venture out into the courtyard, but it is dangerous.  On December 29, a sniper killed a resident, aged 72, with a shot to the head as he was chopping firewood.
 "They have wounded more than 30 and killed 16," Dr Grozniz said. "There used to be 106 people working here. Now there are just six of us left. Some left because they had children, some because they were Muslims and were afraid of being killed by the 'chetniks'. Others went because they just couldn't put up with the horror."
 Dr Grozniz is a psychologist and a Croat. A Serbian nurse and four cleaning women are all the staff she has left. Two of the cleaners' husbands take care of the corpses.
 "On August 14, I wrote to the UN, the humanitarian organisations, and to the Muslim, Croat and Serb authorities, asking them to evacuate the old people, but it didn't do any good," she said, pulling out a copy of the letter she sent to Unprofor. "Already 57 people have perished, and when winter comes, many more will die of the cold," it warned.
 "Until then, the 'blue helmets' hadn't given us a thing. After the letter they began to send us medicine and food. Today, they brought us the first eight stoves," Dr Grozniz said. Their commanding officer also authorised them to remove the 10 corpses.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



5 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 6, 1993

LEADER OF THE PACK

BYLINE: MARY BLACK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 536 words

 
 A PITHY little phrase haunts all social workers: "If anything happens . . ." It comes to them in the middle of the night and the middle of the day. It comes when you remember a call you should have made, when you know your case file isn't up to date, when a visit is overdue. It comes when you've done all you can, and you know it isn't enough. 
 The phrase is used with abandon. Letters to the department reporting a family for being noisy, dirty or unsociable, or just being there, contain it. Demands to remove a drunkard, squatters, the mentally ill, the woman who sits all day in the park feeding pigeons, contain it. Sometimes the phrase is made explicit, sometimes not, but it always means "If anything happens . . . it will be your fault." We received a call from Mrs Jones to let us know her next-door neighbour Mrs Smith hadn't been seen for some days. Mrs Smith was an elderly woman, who lived alone. She attended a luncheon club five days a week and visited her daughter in Bognor every weekend.
 Brigid, the duty worker, began the investigation. The neighbour confessed she hadn't seen Mrs Smith for weeks. The daughter said her mother last visited two weeks ago. The Luncheon Club said that Mrs Smith hadn't been in all week.  Brigid informed the police and checked local hospitals. We obtained a key from the daughter to enter the flat. The flat was like a new pin. But no sign of Mrs Smith. We opened the fridge, the cupboards, all were bare. There were clean sheets on the bed, clean towels in the bathroom.
 We reported back to Mrs Smith's daughter. She said we should have been keeping our eye on her mother and if anything happens . . . We told the neighbour, who said it was disgraceful that the welfare could just let someone disappear like that, and if anything happens . . . We told the Luncheon Club, who said the Mrs Smith owed them pounds 2.35.
 We contacted her GP. He told us that Mrs Smith had been depressed and worried about her memory. She kept forgetting things, and couldn't find where anything was. She had lost her Poll Tax forms and her Rent Book. He had referred her to a psycho-geriatrician and she hadn't kept the appointment. There didn't seem anything else we could do. So we held a meeting.
 Mrs Smith's daughter came, dressed head to toe in black. I thought it rather premature, but in grief we do as we must. We invited the GP. His presence deflected some of the acrimony but he had to rush off to surgery and we were in the front line again. We heard how much she loved her mother. And although her mother could be vindictive, and did not always appreciate all that her daughter from Bognor did for her, she had never in her life said a wrong word to her beloved mother. And in view of the present circumstances, this knowledge gave her some comfort. But to think it was all cut short because of our ineptitude.  She advised us to seek the services of a good solicitor because she intended to go straight to the top. But not just the top; the top-top.
 The daughter asked if Brigid could accompany her to her mother's flat. She said she knew she would break down the minute she set foot in the flat, what with all the memories and everything.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



6 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 8, 1993

MOTOR RACING: GRAND OLD MAN ROARS PAST 25;
Alan Henry profiles Ken Tyrrell, for whom winning is no longer everything

BYLINE: ALAN HENRY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN SPORTS PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 609 words

 
 WHEN Britain's newest grand prix star Damon Hill opens the Auto Sports Show this morning at Birmingham's National Exhibition Centre, a central attraction will be the tribute to Ken Tyrrell, who last year celebrated 25 years as a Formula One team owner.
 Amid all the back-slapping it is easy to forget that Tyrrell has been a loser for 10 years - Michele Alboreto provided his last victory at Detroit in 1982.  Yet, at 66, one of GP racing's senior citizens has no plans for retirement.
 He is the great survivor in a sport that has claimed many casualties. While other teams juggled budgets in excess of 20 million pounds, he made do with 5-6 million pounds and paid for his own engines. 
 All that changes this year when his Surrey-based team will have free and exclusive use of Yamaha V10 engines developed in conjunction with the British specialist John Judd. This represents an important milestone in a career steeped in conservatism - perhaps his greatest strength, and weakness.
 Although Tyrrell's scrupulous financial husbandry has ensured his survival on what has often appeared to be thin air, there is also the matter of the lean years which have followed his wonderfully successful partnership with Jackie Stewart.
 Blame is too strong a word, but Tyrrell is not a gambler and boldness can pay rich dividends in the high-risk business of F1. Who dares wins; Tyrrell no longer does either.
 It was not always so. After a moderately successful career as a driver in the 500cc F3, Tyrrell was among the first to identify Stewart's outstanding talent, and the young Scot drove for him before going into F1 as team-mate to the late Graham Hill - Damon's father - in 1965.
 In 1967 Tyrrell decided to take the plunge into GP racing after watching Jim Clark win at Zandvoort in a Ford-powered Lotus 49. "Knowing that Jackie was unhappy at BRM, I came straight home and fired off a telegram ordering three of those Ford engines at 7,500 pounds apiece - which, of course, I hadn't got.
 "We were impressed with the performance of the French Matra chassis we had been using in F2 so we approached them to build us a car. Jackie wanted pounds 20,000 to drive for us, which was underwritten by Ford but eventually paid out of the pounds 80,000 sponsorship from Dunlop."
 Stewart won the 1969 world championship at the wheel of the Matra, and two further titles in 1971 and 1973 at the wheel of Tyrrell's own Tyrrell-Ford challenger. After the Scot's retirement the Tyrrell baton would have been passed to Stewart's dazzlingly talented team-mate Francois Cevert but the charismatic Frenchman had been killed practising for the 1973 US Grand Prix.
 Thereafter the Tyrrell team would never again scale such peaks. The facts speak for themselves: with Stewart and Cevert, Tyrrell won 26 grands prix between 1968 and 1973; only seven victories have followed.
 After Stewart, Tyrrell recalls the young German driver Stefan Bellof, killed in a sportscar race at Spa in 1985, as his most outstanding young F1 driver. "I'm sure he would have won the world championship. I blame myself for giving in to him and releasing him to drive in that race against my better judgment. It was tragic."
 Away from the instant pressure of the moment, Tyrrell has always retained a broad perspective on life, as is expected of a man whose main passion is cricket. Old hands recall the time Stewart brought his Tyrrell into the pit and began complaining about the car's handling. Before he had finished talking, Tyrrell thrust his head into the cockpit and bellowed: "Problems? You think you've got problems? England are 120 for nine!"

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



7 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 9, 1993

ARMY HELICOPTER FIRES ON IRA SUSPECTS IN REPUBLIC

BYLINE: DAVID SHARROCK IN BELFAST

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 249 words

 
 AN ARMY helicopter last night fired across the border at suspected terrorists in the Irish Republic after an IRA gun and mortar bomb attack on the security forces in Northern Ireland.
 The Lynx helicopter was one of two shot at from south of the border soon after two mortar shells were fired at the permanent border checkpoint at Kinawley, Co Fermanagh, the army said. The IRA in Co Fermanagh claimed responsibility for both attacks. No one was reported injured, the army said.
 Two youths tarred and feathered by the IRA have been ordered to leave Northern Ireland with five others for "anti-community activities".
 An IRA statement issued to the Derry Journal accused six named youths of car theft, joyriding and breaking and entering the homes of elderly people in the city. "The IRA has been very reluctant to take action because of the ages of some of those involved. However, due to the increasingly organised activities of the named individuals against the community here, their activities could no longer be tolerated. These six youths have been ordered to leave this city within 48 hours or face the consequences."
 On Wednesday evening two of the youths, aged between 15 and 17, were tied to fencing and submitted to a tar and feathers-type punishment which the IRA described as "military action".
 The seventh man ordered out was named yesterday as 22-year-old Christopher Donnelly from Dungannon, Co Tyrone, who was shot in both legs by the IRA a week ago.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



8 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 11, 1993

FRIGHTENED OLD MAN WHO SLIPPED THE WELFARE NET;
Sarah Boseley on the elderly estate tenant whose solitude, independence and frailties took him outside a diminishing care service

BYLINE: SARAH BOSELEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 708 words

 
 CHRISTOPHER Spong died a lonely death. He was found two weeks later, lying on the living room floor of his flat in Hackney, east London. His cupboard was bare - no food or even takeaway packaging was found.
 He was 78, but there was nobody to give an account of what he had done with his years. No relatives or friends have been found. The only clue was that his flat was full of books. 
 His death last September ended a troubled, uncomfortable and frightening year.  He lived in a first floor flat in the Holly Street estate that even Hackney council describes as crime-ridden and desolate; it is scheduled for demolition. Mr Spong's flat was broken into seven times. On one occasion he was taken to hospital with head injuries. He told an emergency social worker he was afraid to go home.
 There are many elderly people like Mr Spong, and as the population ages there will be many more. In April the Community Care Act will come into force, providing funds for local authorities to help keep old people in their own homes. Social workers fear the money will be insufficient, however, to provide the services that will be needed. The British Association of Social Workers notes that care in the community is being promoted for the elderly just as its drawbacks for the mentally ill are coming to prominence.
 Mr Spong was cantankerously independent and refused assistance from the social services. For about eight months of 1991 he had a home help, until his abuse to staff led to the service being withdrawn. If neighbours, relatives and friends do not keep an eye on them, there is a serious danger that such old people will slip through every welfare net.
 "Elderly persons are entirely at liberty to refuse services and many of them do," said Gail Tucker, assistant general secretary of the BASW. "There are not these days the levels of staffing and resources in local authority social services that allow them to routinely visit. We need some sort of community care neighbourhood watch system."
 Mr Spong, whose case is featured tonight in a Channel 4 film for the Cutting Edge series, shared his block with many old and mentally infirm people, according to the home beat police officer, Dave Underhill.
 "There was a spate of crimes last spring around that particular block. There were a lot of very similar old people there and they seemed to be targeted.
 "They were vulnerable because of the state of the estate. The security of the doors and windows was very poor. Sometimes they would open the door and a man would push his way in past them."
 The tenants' association tried to help. "He was a very intelligent man and very well educated," said Peter Danciger. "He used to come and have a cup of tea and a fag. He was quite happy but he thought people were taking liberties with him. I walked him home many a time. I was shocked when I found his electricity meter was ripped off the wall. He told me it had been like it for a number of months."
 Mr Danciger and the association chairman, Dick Martin, called the police when Mr Spong arrived last April saying he had been forced at knifepoint to hand over his pension book and pounds 45 to a man who broke in through the balcony.
 "We phoned the social services about his pension but they wanted us to bring him round. We had no way of doing it. The police were fantastic. They drove him to the Department of Social Services."
 On April 24, Mr Spong received a crisis loan of pounds 31 and an interim payment of one week to tide him over until his new pension book came. It did not arrive. In May he was sent another interim payment and a declaration form, which he did not fill in. On July 2, Mr Spong collapsed in the street and was taken to Homerton Hospital where he told a social worker that he had not eaten for some time and had no money.
 Mr Spong was then helped to complete and return the form. A pension book and Giros for pounds 249.99 and pounds 241 arrived. But on July 15, the DSS asked for the book back, to make deductions for the loan. On July 21, since Mr Spong had not complied, the DSS stopped his pension.
 On September 9, Mr Spong was found dead. The DSS sent his arrears to Hackney council to pay for his funeral.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



9 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 12, 1993

ADVANCE IN STUDY OF ALZHEIMER'S

BYLINE: TIM RADFORD, SCIENCE EDITOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 306 words

 
 BRITISH scientists yesterday claimed to have linked Alzheimer's disease - which afflicts more than 350,000 sufferers in Britain - to a particular protein produced in the brain, ironically in part to compensate for memory loss.
 As humans grow older, between 55 and 60, the neurons in the brain begin to die. The surviving neurons try to compensate for this by resprouting to fill the gaps.
 In the course of doing this, each brain cell produces a substance called beta amyloid precursor protein (APP). But if it produces too much, the cell is in effect poisoned by its own chemistry. This sets up a "domino effect" because the surviving cells have to continue the process, with tragic results.
 APP had earlier been found in those sufferers with an inherited genetic abnormality, and in those cases where a head or brain injury produced chemical results similar to those found in Alzheimer's patients.
 According to Dr Gareth Roberts, of the serious mental afflictions research team at St Mary's Hospital, London, the damage occurs in an area of the brain associated with memory called the medial temporal lobe. With colleagues, he studied post-mortem brain material from both healthy individuals and Alzheimer's victims, and found a link between the disease and overproduction of APP.
 The finding was greeted by the Mental Health Foundation, which with the Medical Research Council supported the study, as "another piece in the jigsaw".
 It is the latest in a series of sometimes stumbling advances into the fourth biggest killer in the Western world. It helps to explain why older people are more at risk, but it does not explain why some suffer and others don't.
 "We don't know enough about the fine tuning of this mechanism," said Dr Roberts. "But we'll know a damn sight more in two years' time."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



10 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 13, 1993

SHADES OF GREY: WANDERERS SET THE ALARM BELLS RINGING;
Electronic tagging of elderly in care

BYLINE: TIM LINEHAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 828 words

 
 LAST April a resident left a home for elderly people with dementia and wandered out of the grounds. By the time staff realised he was missing it was too late.
 Police found him dead in a ditch. The man was the second person in 12 months to die after wandering from the home. Both were old and frail and in each case the coroner returned a verdict of death by natural causes. For Elaine Anderson (not her real name), owner of the home, her sense of loss was tinged with anger and frustration. 
 After the first death Ms Anderson asked her social services department for permission to install a tagging system in her home. Electronic tagging - or personal safety device - consists of a bracelet worn by the resident which sets off an alarm when he or she leaves home. Anderson believes the device could have saved the lives of her two residents.
 Next month Counsel and Care, an advisory group for elderly people, will draw up a consultation document on tagging. It is an issue that sets many people on edge in an industry which has a hard time shaking off its shady image.
 Ms Anderson's request was turned down, even though she said the tagging system would only be used with the permission of relatives and social workers. The social services department issued a statement saying: "Electronic tagging is not regarded as a dignified way of dealing with the situation. We would prefer to deal with practice issues such as staffing levels and qualifications, managing the environment, keeping residents occupied and making sure they are assessed first."
 But pressure groups are coming round to the idea. Age Concern is not opposed to tagging, as long as it is not used as a substitute for good care. The Centre for Policy on Ageing is withholding its original opposition to tagging while it reconsiders the issue.
 Maureen Solly is sales support manager of Co-tag, a company which makes tagging devices. She argues that the electronic tags preserve residents' rights. "It extends their freedom because they don't have to be locked in anywhere, they don't have to be sedated, they don't have to be tied into chairs or beds; and health care experts admit this goes on in some homes," she says.
 Ms Solly's argument is not simply a hard sell. Her father lived in a home and used to wander from it. Once he was found walking along a railway line. Another time he was discovered wandering through heavy traffic. When she says tagging would greatly relieve worried relatives, she is speaking from experience.
 But others disagree. Dorothy White, founder of the Relatives Association - a support group for people with elderly relatives in care - is uneasy. To her tagging is "an infringement of the liberty of somebody, even if they have lost their ability to know who they are or where they are. It is treating them as if they were no longer human . . . it should only be used in exceptional circumstances."
 Tagging has already been installed at four acute geriatric wards at Addenbrooke's hospital in Cambridgeshire. Jenny Egbe, manager of the department for the elderly, describes the system as "brilliant". She says it is impossible to watch over all the residents, many of whom are in unfamiliar surroundings and more likely to wander. Tags are only put on patients most likely to wander and, again, relatives are always consulted. Currently no one on any of the wards is tagged.
 To Eileen Salem, manager of Compton Lodge, a home in London run by Hampstead Old People's Housing Trust, tagging is anathema. "The word alone horrifies me.  I don't find it acceptable at all. I wouldn't want to be treated like that. I wouldn't want my family treated like that."
 She says tagging is only used on elderly people because they are less likely to resist it than any other group of people in care. She says residents usually wander if they are bored, unhappy or unsettled. Staff need to get to know residents well to understand their interests and habits and make them feel at home. If residents wander, it is up to staff to either accompany them or to distract them by chatting or by finding an activity to interest them.
 The home has an open door policy, allowing residents to come and go as they wish. "People say you can't watch them all the time, but then you only have as many people who wander as you can cope with. You mustn't take on extra residents who wander until the others are settled and happy there," says Ms Salem. In nine years no resident at Compton Lodge has come to any harm from wandering.
 Caring for elderly confused people can be a draining job. Tagging would remove the anxiety and guilt staff feel when a resident disappears, particularly in winter, when an elderly person can fall prey to hypothermia in 20 minutes. But while some practitioners are cautiously coming round to the idea, others retain an instinctive aversion to tagging. Counsel and Care's consultation document
 will be eagerly awaited.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



11 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 13, 1993

SHADES OF GREY: OLD SEEK A FUTURE WITH A CARING FACE;
Pensioners' need to organise a strong political voice

BYLINE: JULIAN MACQUEEN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1009 words

 
 PETE TOWNSHEND'S paean to youth, My Generation, has been turned on its head.  Far from dying before they get old, Townshend's contemporaries can expect to live well into their seventies. The number of people aged between 65 and 74 stands at just over 5 million and is expected to increase by 21 per cent over the next 30 years, causing journalists Charles Leadbeater and John Lloyd to comment in their book, In Search Of Work, that footing the caring bill in industrial societies will present a knotty problem for governments: who will pay for the "grey hordes"?
 The free market solution is simple: cap the total amount of resources available and let the market do the rest. But Professor Grimley Evans, head of geriatric medicine at the Radcliffe Infirmary, Oxford, has found that privatised medicine regards older patients as too expensive. His co-authored report on Britain's 
 14 million "third ages", the 50-74 age group, says evidence exists to show that older people are being denied access to medical services through age-related admission policies. Won't such blantant ageism spur the elderly into action?
 With 10 million of pensionable age, the pensioners' lobby's potential is immense. But divisions abound. Robert Stansfield, editor of Pensioners' Voice, says the Government has created divisions by making many newly retired better-of through private occupational pensions. There are other divisions: pensioners reliant on the state are a million miles away from the "upper crust" of the Retired Peoples Association; those on small occupational pensions don't qualify for income support and fall into a poverty trap; and there are more women than men on basic pensions, yet women's interests have often been ignored by traditional political organisations.
 Max Druck, who chairs the TUC's pensioners organisation in Manchester, believes pensioners must find common ground: "We need to find a common denominator. In my opinion, this is health, the ability to travel, a decent home, and the wherewithal to be part of the community."
 In America, the grey lobby is strong. The Gray Panther Movement, modelled on the radical direct action movements of the 1960s, has turned society's eyes towards the problems of the elderly. The Panthers, however, are a tiny organisation with 80,000 members. The American Association of Retired Persons represents a different approach, mixing commerce with politics by providing its 3 million members with financial services and generic medicines as well as a lobbying voice. Both organisations have been effective in getting grey issues on to the political agenda.
 Lou Kushnick, a lecturer in American politics at Manchester University, believes the decline of the political party in American politics has pushed single issue pressure groups to the forefront. "There's less party discipline and this provides an environment for the Gray Panthers to operate in," he says. By making the connection between being old and having served society, the grey lobby has elicited a favourable response.
 The two strands of American grey politics are making an appearance in Europe.  Earlier this year, the Danish direct action group, the C-Team, organised sit-ins to keep old people's homes open in the face of government pressure for closure. In the UK, the growing awareness of greyness as an issue is linked to the trade union movement.
 In 1980, some retired trade unionists in Manchester started a magazine called Grey Power. The magazine's editor, Wilf Charles, who was active in the Amalgamated Engineering Union, has seen circulation climb from a hand-delivered 2,000 to 13,000 copies, distributed equally between pensioners' organisations and the unions. Does the magazine's success represent a turning-the-corner for grey politics in this country? Mr Charles believes so: "The leadership of the (traditional) pensioners' movement feel that old people don't want politics," he says. "We are saying there's no future for pensioners because it's Westminster that decides where the money goes."
 Britain's tradition of public health and welfare provision will make influencing government policy the focus of grey politics. Jack Jones, president of the recently reconvened National Pensioners' Convention, which had its first conference in Birmingham last year, defines its politics as such: "We try to influence individual members of parliament but if you're going to change things substantially, you have got to win over the Government or the alternative government - both if possible."
 But if the movement is union-inspired there's a growing awareness of its wider constituency. "The National Pensioners' Convention was formed in 1979 by the TUC, which financed it. But by not covering Age Concern and Pensioners' Voice, it was obvious that it needed to speak out for a much wider constituency and bring together more disparate organisations," says Mr Druck.
 The Government's community care policy will be a test case for the impact of the pensioners' lobby. Mr Jones says that every local authority he has spoken to has told him that the money put aside for community care isn't enough. "By the end of the century we'll have 4.5 million over the age of 75, the best part of a million over 85, and I'll be amongst them," he says. "It's a matter of human understanding. Either we look after our old people, who are increasingly becoming dependent at an older age, or you might as well bloody well shoot them."
 The National Pensioners' Convention, with about one million members, is the biggest pensioners' umbrella group. In March, it organised a successful European senior citizens' parliament in Luxembourg, and 1993 is the European Year of the Older Person. To reproduce the Swedish experience, which has 75 per cent of pensioners organised nationally, would go some way to realising Gray Panther founder Maggie Kuhn's words: "We are a new breed of old people and we are looking to the future." Without a strong political voice, the future for older people is bleak.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



12 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 13, 1993

SHADES OF GREY: A BIG JOB FOR ROSIE'S GRANNY;
grandparents as childminders

BYLINE: LYNN HANNA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 1160 words

 
 THE video recorder has been tested to breaking point, but not Noreen Tingle. At 62, she confesses that caring for a toddler is tiring, although she denies it has anything to do with her age. "I defy anybody to have our Rosie for a coupleof hours and not say 'Oh my goodness, let's have a cup of tea'," she says, recalling her granddaughter's dogged inquiry into every household appliance.
 But no domestic mishap would make Mrs Tingle miss mornings with her grandchild.She even rearranges the hours of her job as national organising secretary of Grandparents Federation to ensure she can care for Rosie while Rosie's mother - Mrs Tingle's daughter - works. "It's important for all of us that I have her," she explains. 
 Grandparents who look after their grandchildren are important to many of Britain's working mothers. A survey by the Policy Studies Institute found that 36 per cent of women returning to work left their children with grandmothers, more than relied on childminders, nurseries and nannies put together. "They have been called the largest unpaid childcare agency in the country," says Francis McGlone, community care researcher at the Family Policy Studies Centre, whose own children are cared for by his mother-in-law while he and his wife work.
 Grandparents' support for working mothers shames the state, and most companies. Yet they are the hidden sector of childcare. "They offer an amazing amount of support, but it is totally unrecognised," Mr McGlone says. Their contribution also challenges some of society's cherished myths about age and the family.  Grandparents who care for children are reversing the conventional caring equation, and confounding the forecasts about the burden of an ageing population. "We're talking about the role of older people as an immense resource," says Sally Greengross, director of the charity Age Concern. "As women assume they are going to work, then grandparents may take on more and more."
 Longer life, better health and early retirement, now taken by almost two-thirds of men and nearly half of women, may be redefining roles within the family: the grandad taking a toddler on a slow trail through the park can give more time to childcare than when his own children were small; and grandmothers are promoting an economic role for their daughters that they themselves may have been denied.
 Grandparents' increasing responsibility for children also prompts a new view of the past, demolishing the popular belief that the extended family has died out. Recent historical research suggests that the tranquil rural idylls captured in Victorian novels were untrue, and that villages had shifting populations where extended families were often cut down by early death. It may even have been the hard life of the early towns that made families more mutually dependent.
 Peter Wilmott, of the Policy Studies Institute, describes new family networks that are no longer so close geographically but are now linked by cars and telephones. "We can dismiss the myths about the family having done a lot more in the past than it does in the present," he says. "It's still where people turn for help."
 Many working mothers choose to leave their children with grandparents because itis convenient and offers continuity of care. According to the last British Social Attitudes survey, 44 per cent of women thought care from a relative was very suitable for children under three.
 Equally, many grandparents see their grandchildren as a great gift: "In some ways it is richer than having your own children, because you're too worried about it then," says Mr Wilmott, who speaks from experience.
 The mutual value of the relationship is also stressed by Mrs Tingle, whose organisation helps the growing number of grandparents denied access to their grandchildren by divorce or because they are in care. "We can give children an idea of their past. And of course they are our hopes for the future," she says.
 But these are hard times for many young families who face an uncertain economic future. With cheap private childcare scarce, the financial incentive to keep it in the family is strong. The great majority of grandparents care for their grandchildren for love, not money. Mrs Tingle is shocked at the question of any financial arrangement between herself and her daughter: "There's absolutely none. Often grandparents are in a position to help their children, not the otherway round."
 Grandparents may be anxious to assist when sons and daughters are struggling to stay solvent. Families may have provided much informal care in the past, but looking after children while parents work is a big commitment. "Grandparents want to help out, but they don't want to become the main support. And they don'texpect to become the main source of childcare in the country," Mr McGlone says.
 If a grandparent is sick or frail, the child could feel responsible in a way that could damage its development, says Sebastian Kraemer, consultant psychiatrist at the Tavistock Clinic. He also stresses that a good relationship between mother and grandmother is essential for shared childcare.
 When disputes do arise over treatment of the children, there is no paying professional relationship within which to resolve differences. The National Childminding Association had calls on its helpline for parents whose arrangements with grandparents have broken down. The organisation would like the Children Act, which requires childminders to register with a local authority, to be extended to all day-carers for children. As blood relatives, grandparents are exempt from the safety inspections carried out on childminders' premises, and from the regular health checks some local authorities run on any childminder they consider elderly.
 There are other dangers in relying on grandparents to provide so much childcare unaided. It is women in their early sixties who provide most care for others, and some may be responsible for very elderly relatives, as well as children. " Because there's an army of grandparents out there doing an excellent job, the risk is that the Government will say things are fine," says Mr McGlone. "We have to recognise the job that they do, and we've got to talk about the immense pressure it puts on people."
 Mr Wilmott too feels that recognition of grandparents as childcarers is timely, particularly in the context of the Government's planned community care for the elderly. "There is another phase in life when support from relatives is particularly important, and that's when people have young children. You need a system that will give support to those carers," he says.
 Nearly half of Britain's workforce is now female, and working mothers are reshaping the family. But although they are causing a social revolution, some things have stayed the same. For childcare, as in other parts of government policy, the family must still fend for itself.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



13 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 15, 1993

FINGER OF PHONEY PEACE POINTS THE WAY TO HEART OF WAR;
At the narrowest point of the Serbian corridor, there is an unofficial truce, writes Yigal Chazan in Brcko, north Bosnia

BYLINE: YIGAL CHAZAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 530 words

 
 THE war-hardened Serb inhabitants of Brcko do not scare easily. As the deafening booms of artillery duels reverberate around the town, they stroll through their battered neighbourhoods and chat idly on street corners, seemingly oblivious to the almighty cacophony.
 "We're used to it," said an elderly woman, filling up plastic containers at a fresh water pump, while a gang of boys joked and teased outside a nearby block of flats, whose windows shook with each detonation. 
 Sandwiched between Croatia in the north and Bosnian forces who control much of its southern suburbs, Brcko is the narrowest and most vulnerable point of the so-called Serbian corridor linking Serb-held regions of western Bosnia with Belgrade.
 The town, perched on the bank of the Sava river, the frontier between Bosnia and Croatia, lies just south of a ferocious trench war between Serb and Croat troops, who relentlessly bombard each other's positions. But only the occasional shell crashes into Brcko, accounting to some extent for the nonchalance of its residents.
 In exchange for Croatian restraint, Brcko's Serb authorities refrain from lobbing shells at villages on the opposite side of the Sava.
 "We've got a kind of unofficial ceasefire agreement - we don't fire at them and they don't fire at us," said the town's police chief, adding that similar deals had also been struck with the predominantly Muslim forces to the south.
 Here, the fighters in both sides are local men, still on speaking terms in the midst of battles. "We talk every day on the radio about things we have in common, asking after friends and relatives, even though there's fighting," continued the police chief.
 But these local truces are the exception rather than the rule along the corridor. Both the Croatians and the Bosnians repeatedly attempted to sever the Serbs' all-important highway.
 A devastated hamlet east of Brcko is testimony to the most recent attempt. All that remains of the battle is a lone Croatian tank, brought to grief no more than a hundred yards from the main road.
 Buses and trucks speed along this stretch, hoping not to fall victim to periodic Croatian shelling. As the corridor snakes its way westwards, rarely more than six miles in width, so the Croatian artillery threat diminishes, while that from the Bosnians increases. An air raid siren wails in the town of Doboj as gunners south of the town fire off mortars into its suburbs.
 Just as in Brcko, Serb residents pay little attention to the warning, remaining out of doors as the bombardment intensifies. "People are hard to discipline," said an army captain, Slavko Zmaric.
 In the neighbouring frontline village of Teslic, a Muslim mortar attack earlier this week killed five. For one young mother the assault was the last straw.  With her two children, she set out for Belgrade on what turned out to be a nightmare corridor journey. Their bus was delayed in Doboj at the height of a bombardment, and broke down near Brcko close to the Croatian front line.
 "The shelling's been accompanying us all day," she sighed as a motorist stopped to whisk the unfortunate family off to safety.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



14 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 16, 1993

HOME INCOME PLAN VICTIMS LEFT TO PONDER THEIR PLIGHT

BYLINE: DIANE BOLIVER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 783 words

 
 HUNDREDS of elderly victims who have been sold inappropriate home income plans have been left pondering their plight despite a three-day High Court battle for more compensation from the Investors Compensation Scheme.
 The court decided it needed more time to consider the case after London-based solicitor Barnett Sampson challenged as "unreasonable and unlawful" the methods ICS used in assessing how much compensation it should pay victims whose brokers and advisers are now insolvent.
 Home income plans are designed to boost the income of the elderly by allowing them to unlock equity in their homes.
 But thousands were thrown into debt as investment bond-linked schemes turned sour, mortgage rates soared, property prices fell and the stock market slumped. 
 "The ICS formula differs markedly from that adopted by the Insurance Ombudsman Bureau and Lautro in handling similar cases where the salesman was a tied agent for an insurance company," says solicitor Richard Barnett.
 He is also challenging an ICS ruling that the claim of a person with no spouse is extinguished when they die. At least 17 of his clients have died over the past year.
 Although he and three other firms are representing 2,000 victims, they believe up to 10,000 people could have a good claim for compensation.
 Neil Stevens of Salisbury-based solicitors Trethowans says: "Most cases don't come to light unless the firm of advisers goes bankrupt, fraud is uncovered or victims hear of legal action being taken. Most people probably go back to their adviser, who will say 'you had the warnings that the stock market could go down, we will help you all we can, but there's not a lot you can do'."
 Another fear is that victims may be taking bad advice from solicitors who know little about the schemes or are not taking legal advice at all because they think they won't be able to afford it. "We make no charge, and recover our costs from the firms," says Mr Stevens, who is investigating 750 home income plan cases - 250 of them involving Royal Life.
 Money Guardian this week added two more Royal Life victims to his caseload.  Unaware that good legal help was available to them, John and Shirley Flower have been fighting their own battle for redress for the past 18 months.
 They owned their flat outright and were budgeting well on Mr Flower's pension and occasional income from Mrs Flower's part-time work until the introduction of the poll tax more than tripled their rates of pounds 400 to pounds 1,300.
 Voicing their financial worries to the owner of their local taxi service seemed to provide the answer to their prayers. "He told us he had sold his business and was now a salesman for Royal Life, which had just the product to solve our cash-flow problems," says Mrs Flower.
 It seemed nothing could go wrong. With no mortgage, they had plenty of equity in their pounds 55,000 property. So in October 1990, they borrowed pounds 14,000 through the Cheltenham & Gloucester's 60-plus mortgage, paid off pounds 5,000 of loans on a car and central heating and invested the rest in Royal Life's Selector Bond.
 "We were always assured the bond would grow sufficiently to pay the mortgage interest and provide a pounds 75 monthly income to pay our poll tax bill," says Mrs Flower. This week their mortgage debt is nearly pounds 18,000 and the Selector Bond is worth pounds 10,168 - thanks only to the stock market's recent surge.
 Despite numerous letters to Royal Life, Lautro and the Insurance Ombudsman, the Flowers have heard nothing since last June. When Money Guardian spoke to Royal Life a spokesman said: "We accept that perhaps this should have been settled sooner and that we should have kept the Flowers notified of our progress. But these problems are very complex." He confirmed a compensation offer would be made soon. "We are coming to the conclusion that the Flowers should not have been sold this product in the first place."
 Mr Stevens described the Flowers' case as "unique".
 "It is the first loan I have come across below pounds 15,000 which means it falls under the Consumer Credit Act. It looks as though Royal Life and possibly even Cheltenham & Gloucester don't have a leg to stand on here."
 - For further information: Barnett Sampson, tel 071-580-7757; Trethowans, tel 0722-412299); J. Keith Park of St Helen's, tel 0744-30933; and Harrison Clarke of Worcestor, tel 0905-612001 are providing free advice to 2,000 home income plan victims.
 Using Your Home As Capital, written by Cecil Hinton, price pounds 3.50, is available from Age Concern, 1268 London Road, London SW16 4ER.
 Money Guardian is edited by Margaret Hughes

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



15 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 16, 1993

REFLECTIONS: A DROP OF GUINNESS AND RYDE;
Philip Norman recalls the elderly coterie who were his childhood companions

BYLINE: PHILIP NORMAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1137 words

 
 THE WORLD of squalor, ignorance, prejudice and heavenly comfort created by my grandmother was not magical to small children only. I can remember no adult from my boyhood's cast of thousands who did not likewise succumb to her raffish gypsy charm. She headed our family like a Mafia chieftain, controlling the purse-strings with the benign despotism of Don Corleone and defining much the same moral or, rather, amoral universe. For those Grandma Norman loved could do no wrong.
 In 1954, when my father deserted my eight-months-pregnant mother and me, he knew there was one person with whom he could play the injured party. Poor lamb, she told me afterwards. When he arrived, he had such a bad cold. So that night I made him come and sleep in my bed. None of us at the time saw anything remotely odd about this. 
 But, under her Sicilian hugs, smacking kisses and extravagant endearments, the real Grandma Norman, I now see, was strange, solitary and unknowable. Her sea captain husband, a man twice her age, had gone down with his ship in 1918. She never remarried, although tall and darkly good-looking and a denizen of Chelsea throughout the bohemian Twenties. There had evidently been numerous suitors, chief among them a half-Maori painter who filled her house in Clapham Old Town with vaguely erotic stippled watercolours. But I didn't want to marry him, she would say, still defiant 20 years afterwards. I was afraid he'd start telling my two lovely sons what to do.
 Since the late Thirties she had lived with a man named Walter Hall in a fond but totally sexless arrangement that evidently suited them both. Uncle Wally was part of our family, a gentle, irascible government clerk with a grizzled moustache and half-moon spectacles. Each morning he put on a grey Homburg hat and left for the City; at seven each night he returned, bringing the Star newspaper and a faint breath of pale ale on his moustache. Later he would sit collarless at the green baize-covered kitchen table, shaking the tobacco from his day's cigarette-ends to be rolled into fresh cigarettes tomorrow.
 Apart from Uncle Wally and her two ghastly sons, the only company my grandmother truly enjoyed was that of the very young or very old. Every holiday I spent with her featured a round of pilgrimages to the numerous much older ladies implicitly under her protection. So similar were they, in penury, immobility and decrepitude, that I thought of them as a guild or society, obeying common rules and conventions, with Grandma Norman as their peripatetic, pep-talking president.
 All seemed to inhabit tiny brocaded bedsitting rooms in Wimbledon a name which, to my childish ear, even had the faltering silhouette of an old lady. All had lost their husbands many years before. All smelt either of violets or cake-mixture. All wore faint mauve knee bandages and smoked Churchmans Number 3 cigarettes, from the dark green packet. All would eventually be wooed to have a drop of Guinness from the pint bottle we had brought with us. To every one at Guinness time my grandmother told the same little joke: Shall I say Pass your glass or Pass your glass, you silly arse?
 At 10 I was more used to being with old ladies than with children my own age. I knew everything they talked about together smog, Mr Churchill, chiropodists, the mild winter, the Food Office. I knew about all their ailments, their rheumatism, their arthritis, their phlebitis (or, as I thought, flea-bitis) their bunions, their wicklows, their chilblains. I knew all the remedies they swore by: Bile Beans, Fynnon Salts, Iron Jelloids, Friar's Balsam, belladonna poultice. I was accustomed to spending the night with up to two at once in Grandma Norman's great brass bedstead; watching the tying of waist-length plaits, the bestowal of false teeth into tumblers, the covert use of rose-bordered chamberpots; breathing that familiar aroma of flannelette, cornplasters, Mintoes, unwashed hair and Vick.
 AGAINST my own fractured, apprehensive life, being old seemed an existence of wonderful comfort and non-upheaval. No school on February mornings, no cross-country runs through spattering mud, no boxing tournament, no brutal foreign prefects, no slippering. No wondering if my father was ever coming back again, and whether we really were going bankrupt. Just sitting still beside fires, warming teapots and complaining about cosy-sounding things like rheumatism.
 Grandma Normans Isle of Wight years were still richer in hangers-on, not all of them elderly but all uniformly bizarre and down-at-heel. The back room of her sweets and rock kiosk at Ryde pier gates often seemed a refuge for every shyster and misfit to be found on the Esplanade. Invariably they would be said to possess hidden qualities which only she could detect. Miss Wade, the grime-covered fruiterer and junk dealer, for instance, had started life as a lady's maid. Johnny, the octogenarian newspaper seller, with his cloth cap and old-fashioned celluloid collar, had hands as smooth as a woman's. The black-bearded, newspaper-girdled tramp she regularly supplied with tea and Mars bars, was an educated man, who slept rough purely from aristocratic whim.
 On a slightly higher level was Mrs Dunwoody, who came down from South Shields to help her in the kiosk every summer. Auntie Geordie, as I called her, was stout, flatulent, greedy, quick-tempered and good hearted. Under one arm she carried a marmalade coloured Pekinese named Sue-Sue. She was not an employee but a friend, which she underlined by ostentatiously leaving the kiosk for two hours each afternoon. As she went, she would lean across the serving window and take a handful of paper bags, loudly explaining that they were to wipe Sue-Sue's bottom.
 Auntie Geordie made spasmodic efforts to ameliorate the sordidness of Grandma Norman's flat above the disused pub in Castle Street. But it was beyond redemption. Every crevice not stacked with sweet cartons was clotted with hideous antiques foisted on us by Miss Wade. My top floor bedroom was shared with my cousin Roger, a waiter on the Queen Mary, who would sometimes bring three or four fellow stewards back to doss down for the night. We had also adopted an ancient, incontinent black cat named Judy whose messes in the bath or kitchen sink were hailed as a sign of discriminating intelligence. For those Grandma Norman loved could do no wrong.
 The only other visitor we ever had was a mad London niece of hers who goggled in fear even when persuaded to sit in the filthy back kitchenette and have a drop of Guinness. Just as she raised her glass, a terrible squelching sound came from Judy in the sink.
 Oh! the mad niece quavered. Whatever's that.
 It's nothing, Grandma Norman replied calmly. Just the cat leaving her visiting card.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



16 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 19, 1993

SOUNDBITES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 150 words

 
 - HELEN FISHER takes 300 pages to tell us what we already know. We meet, we fall in love, we reproduce, we get drunk and drag a workmate into the stationery cupboard at the Christmas party. 
 Tony Parsons reviewing Anatomy Of Love, Daily Mail
 - WHAT is really sleazy is the number of Tories sticking their snouts in a trough of their own creation.
 Richard Littlejohn on leading Conservatives on the payrolls of former nationalised industries, the Sun
 - IT WOULD be further economic madness to force the elderly to stay resentfully at work while keeping enthusiastic younger people on the dole.
 Leader on government plans to deny pensions to women until they reach 65, Daily Mirror
 - GOING to bed with a gigantic plaster stuck on one or another part of your anatomy isn't exactly erotic. But neither is smoking.
 Susannah Frankel on the nicotine patch, the Independent

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



17 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 19, 1993

THE LOOK OF HATRED;
The barriers may be down but, says Julia Pascal, look different and you still have to jump

BYLINE: JULIA PASCAL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 AT AN old people's afternoon tea dance where I go to learn about grassroots French politics an old man throws a paper pellet at me. "Why?" I ask my companion. "Because he thinks you're an Arab."
 In a cafe a partly-drunk unemployed man starts to make disparaging remarks about Arabs. He looks at me provocatively to see how I'll respond. The people I'm with giggle nervously, their embarrassment making me furious. The man may be drunk and unemployed but is that any excuse for racism? I often travel between Britain, France and Germany and suspicion of foreigners is intensifying all the time. 
 "Judge a person by the colour of their skin and you end up with the gas chambers," I say to the unemployed man.
 He goes pale.
 "I'm not an Arab, I'm a Jew, but if I were an Arab I'd be proud of my identity." As I say this I wonder what it means, to be proud of one's identity. After all, identity is merely an accident of birth. I talk to defend the Arabs and the irony of it strikes me. Which Arabs are we talking about? In this small northern French town of Maubeuge there are Moroccans, Algerians, Tunisians.
 Sous Le Bois is the pretty name of the immigrant and poor white district under renovation, courtesy of state and town hall funding. I go to the Arab social centre, a meeting place for the mainly unemployed young. I watch young men smoke and drink Coke while arguing with the chief of police and the socialist mayor about the delinquent minority who cause trouble for the rest.
 This generation are the sons and grandsons of those brought here to work in the once-flourishing steel industry. Few have ever found employment. Job advertisements in the press do not state that applications are welcomed from all members of the community. The children of Algerian immigrants are resented more than the Moroccans or the Africans.
 The Socialists may be working to alleviate the tensions but they have started to make racist remarks themselves. Their efforts are not always well received.  One 30-year-old Arab tells me he's going to vote for the Right next time. "The socialists put us all in the same bag but at least the Right recognises the Harkis [second generation Arab immigrant]."
 In another meeting an exquisitely beautiful young woman says how pleased she is that the town has become so well-cared for. But there is one problem: "Maubeuge is such a pretty place, it's such a pity there are so many Arabs walking around to mess it up."
 Last summer in Germany I was asking a rail clerk about trains when an elderly woman behind began to talk over me. The clerk explained quite politely that he was serving me. The woman continued to ignore me, after all I was only a foreigner. To elderly Germans I look like a Turkish gastarbeiter - a "guest worker".
 I am like Woody Allen's Zelig in reverse: instead of becoming like the people I interact with, I am always the stranger, the undesirable gypsy.
 I fly back to Heathrow from Munich three days before neo Nazis murdered Turkish women they mistook for Jews. I hear the familiar voice of the Special Branch by my side: where have I come from? Why was I there? How long did I stay? When someone gives Special Branch an Identikit picture of a female Arab terrorist, they must hand them my photograph.
 Little by little the plain-clothes interrogator distances himself as he hears my voice. Little by little he decides I'm not a Middle-Eastern terrorist or a drug pusher. He disappears: sorry, madam.
 Perhaps I am forgetting my childhood. The anti-Semitism was there but being British, it was often indirectly expressed. In primary school I remember early history lessons. The teacher pointed to each child to illustrate the various invasions of Britain. Mysteriously she passed me over. I wanted to be the daughter of a Roman soldier and didn't understand why I wasn't. At playtime a five-year old blonde with a ponytail yelled: "You killed Jesus, you killed Jesus."
 "No I didn't," I shouted, "I wasn't born yet."
 This month the barriers have come down, but will I be able to cross frontiers without problems? Somehow I doubt it. In the meantime I'll just go on standing up for whichever minority I'm taken for. At least that way I'll be able to measure the temperature of neo Nazism.
 - Julia Pascal's version of The Dybbuk is at The Lilian Baylis Theatre from February 1-6.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



18 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 19, 1993

A LITTLE ASPIRIN A DAY MAY KEEP DEATH AT BAY

BYLINE: JOHN ILLMAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 401 words

 
 ASPIRIN is good for headaches. Its anti-inflammatory properties reduce inflammation, providing relief against arthritis. Its clot-busting power prevents heart attacks and strokes. Now it seems it could protect against public enemy number one: the British weather. 
 The winter cold claims 50,000 lives a year in Britain, with heart attacks and strokes accounting for more than half the total, according to Professor William Keatinge of Queen Mary and Westfield College, London.
 With each cold snap, deaths from heart attacks and strokes stand out as a pinnacle on the graphs used to plot medical statistics. The reason lies in the response of our blood to the cold. "Blood becomes more concentrated in the winter, but this is not true of all blood factors," says Professor Keatinge.  "There are factors which both promote and prevent clotting. We need to find out which factors are most affected, and which are the most important in causing thrombosis in winter. Very low dose aspirin (a quarter of a tablet a day) is protective against heart attacks, but there haven't been any clinical drug trials into excess winter deaths."
 Without such trials, no specialist would recommend mass medication. "Once you talk about mass medication for 5 million people or more, you're talking about an awful lot of deaths if you get it wrong," says Prof Keatinge.
 Low dose aspirin can cause stomach ulcers. One in every 20 suffers severe stomach upsets. One in every 500 people are allergic to it. Keatinge believes there is a case for elderly people taking low dose aspirin in winter if they have to go out into the cold. But he stresses: "I would not advise anyone to start low dose aspirin without first taking medical advice."
 Short excursions into the cold can be enough to trigger heart attacks or strokes. Deaths may occur one or two days later - with no mention of cold on the death certificate. Small wonder then that many elderly people under-estimate the potential danger. The over-50s are most at risk because many have arteries which are in poor shape and which provide rough surfaces on which blood can clot. Heart attacks occur because blockage in blood vessels starve heart muscle of oxygen and nutrients. Do not be lulled into a false sense of security by the recent warm days. The seasonal toll starts in September, with deaths increasing in proportion to the fall in temperature.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



19 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 20, 1993

COUPLE WINS CASE OVER CARE HOME

BYLINE: CLARE DYER, LEGAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 398 words

 
 A JUDGE has broken new legal ground by allowing a family home to be turned into a private community care home for psychiatric patients discharged from hospital, despite a covenant in the property's deeds banning trade or business use.
 The ruling by Judge Bernard Marder, sitting as a member of the Lands Tribunal, is the first to vary a restrictive covenant "in the public interest" to permit a care home to be opened. The mental health charity Mind said the decision was "of great significance for future developments of this kind". 
 Richard and Penelope Lloyd, of Worthing, West Sussex, want to use their detached house in Charmandean Road, Broadwater, Worthing, as a home for up to 10 former patients. The house is in a middle-class residential suburb where neighbouring properties sell for around pounds 140,000.
 Eight objectors, including a builder and a general practitioner, were ordered to pay half the LLoyds' estimated pounds 25,000- pounds 30,000 costs. Their own costs could total pounds 30,000.
 The judge rejected as groundless their arguments that the home would reduce the value of their properties. There was no evidence that the patients' behaviour "would be more or less objectionable or anti-social than . . . 10 residents chosen from the community at large."
 The home would cause less disturbance to local residents than a school, which was allowed in the covenant, the judge said. Another property in the street was a home for the elderly, and the proposed home would not affect values further.
 The Lands Tribunal has discharged a covenant in the public interest only twice before, in both cases to prevent the demolition of a building.
 The judge said his decision was in the light of government policy to discharge patients into the community. The need for community care homes in Worthing was "desperate", the house was suitable and the owners well qualified. Mrs Lloyd, a psychiatric nurse, is a ward manager at a psychiatric rehabilitation unit, and Mr Lloyd manages a care home owned by the couple for 31 elderly residents.
 The Lloyds' solicitor, Brian Knowles, said if they had lost, they could have faced costs of up to pounds 60,000. Ian Bynoe, legal director of Mind, said: "It is ignorance and groundless prejudice which so often leads people to object to such schemes. This ruling should discourage future protests."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



20 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 20, 1993

ROW GROWS OVER DECISION TO HONOUR ISRAEL'S LONELY PROPHET OF THE LEFT;
Ian Black in Jerusalem reports on the furore surrounding a nonagenarian peacenik

BYLINE: IAN BLACK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 596 words

 
 BITTER controversy is raging over a decision to award Israel's most prestigious prize to the philosopher Yeshayahu Leibowitz, a trenchant critic of nationalist values who says soldiers should refuse to serve in occupied Arab territories.
 Professor Leibowitz, aged 90, has been the scourge of established thinking for decades and is the guru of the country's humanistic and doveish left. The proposal to grant him the Israel Prize has sharply highlighted some of the deepest fissures in a complex society. 
 Yitzhak Rabin, the Labour prime minister, is said to be extremely upset by the decision and asked on Sunday whether it was irreversible. "It fills me with disgust," his Likud predecessor, Yitzhak Shamir, said.
 Even the prize committee, composed of three officially chosen intellectuals, has reservations about some of Prof Leibowitz's more outrageous statements. But supporters say it is a mark of a mature and confident society to honour a lonely prophet who has spent his life admonishing his own people.
 Prof Leibowitz has often been called the "conscience of Israel". However, most of his countrymen reject that description of a man who has spoken of a "Judaeo-Nazi mentality" and gone far beyond the consensus by urging soldiers to listen to their consciences by disobeying orders in Lebanon, the West Bank and Gaza.
 Born in Riga in 1903, he studied chemistry, philosophy and medicine in Berlin and Basle and has taught all of these at Jerusalem's Hebrew University since 1935. He was chief editor of the Hebrew Encyclopaedia and has published many works on science, religion and politics.
 Deeply pious, he has tried to adapt Jewish orthodoxy to the needs of modern man. But he is a hero to secular Israelis for calling for the separation of state and religion and is loathed by the clerical and nationalist establishments.
 His most controversial pronouncements have been about relations with the Arabs. He has described Israel's military victory in 1967 as a disaster and the idea of "Greater Israel" as a "catastrophic monster".
 On Israeli identity, he has written: "The great problem of the Jewish people results from the fact that for the majority there is no other content to their Judaism than a coloured rag attached to a pole, military uniforms and acts carried out in the name of these symbols."
 The Jerusalem Post said yesterday: "That this hostile, embarrassing man with a repulsive record of ugly, Cassandra-like prognostications can be recommended for the Israel Prize is an offence to national sensibilities."
 One man has appealed to the High Court against the decision and a group of soldiers have said they will refuse to serve in the West Bank and Gaza if the prize is awarded.
 Prof Leibowitz countered on a chat show on Monday by referring to the news of the fatal shooting by the army of "an 11-year-old female terrorist" in Gaza.
 Clearly enjoying the attention, he insists he will accept the award because to refrain from doing so would be arrogant.
 But he adds: "There are people who will be very impressed by the fact that the State of Israel wishes to grant me this prize, out of a liberalism so generous that it will present an award to a man who is one of its bitterest critics. I am not impressed."
 He says that young people who come to him with problems tell him: "We cannot talk to our teachers or advisers because they are uncertain when we ask them important questions."
 He says: "Many come to me, and that is more important than a prize from the government of Israel."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



21 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 26, 1993

BRITAIN LOW IN EC PENSIONS SURVEY

BYLINE: JULIE WOLF IN BRUSSELS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 302 words

 
 BRITAIN'S elderly are among the least satisfied in Europe with their state pensions, according to an EC survey.
 The Eurobarometer poll, carried out for the European Commission to launch 1993 as the "European Year of older people and solidarity between generations" comes against the backdrop of an ageing European population. Over the next 30 years the percentage of over-60s is expected to rise from 20 to nearly 30 per cent.
 Fifty-seven per cent of Britons and 43 per cent of all Europeans would accept higher taxes to pay for their old age. Seven in 10 older people in the EC and 58 per cent of elderly Britons blamed low state benefits and pensions for their feelings of financial insecurity.
 Only the elderly of Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands considered their pensions adequate.
 In Britain 51 per cent of older people said their pensions were somewhat or very inadequate, compared with 39 per cent "just about enough," and 9 per cent "completely adequate."
 Spain and Italy ranked about level with the UK and Greeks and Portuguese were the only elderly less satisfied with their pensions than the British.
 When the elderly were asked to list sources of financial security, the state pension system in the UK was ranked lower than in any other EC member state, and well below pension systems in other northern European countries. A small majority of elderly Britons listed property as their main financial security.
 Padraig Flynn, the EC's social affairs commissioner, wants pension and care schemes improved but the commission said it was encouraged by the number of younger people expressing concern for the older generation. The survey showed that most Britons and Europeans preferred the state rather than the private sector to care for the elderly.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



22 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 27, 1993

'WHISTLEBLOWER' PINK ELECTED TO NURSING REGULATORY BODY

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 212 words

 
 NURSES have elected Graham Pink, the "whistleblower" contesting his sacking by Stockport health authority, to the profession's regulatory body, it was announced yesterday.
 Mr Pink will serve on the UK Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting, which has power to strike off the register people it finds guilty of misconduct. 
 He is one of 12 successful candidates backed by Unison, the trade union being formed by the merger from July of the Confederation of Health Service Employees, the National Union of Public Employees, and the National and Local Government Officers' Association. Unison ran a slate of 32 candidates in the first direct elections to the council, where 40 vacancies were being contested.
 A Unison statement said: "The UKCC has been dominated for too long by those who are remote from the front line of direct practice, typically managers and academics who have failed to defend clinical nurses, midwives and health visitors against unacceptable pressures as they strive to maintain professional standards of care."
 Mr Pink lost his job as a charge nurse after campaigning for more staff on his wards for elderly patients at Stepping Hill hospital, Stockport. His case comes before an industrial tribunal in March.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



23 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

January 27, 1993

SAVINGS, NOT HEALTH, DRIVE HILLARY CLINTON TASK FORCE;
Cost-cutting reforms planned for medical care system within 94 days

BYLINE: MARTIN WALKER IN WASHINGTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 1021 words

 
 HILLARY CLINTON may be the first First Lady to be assigned an office in the power corridor of the White House west wing, but she will spend most of her working hours in a new "war room" in a next-door office building, planning the legislation for a reformed national health system within 94 days.
 President Clinton's urgency on health reform was emphasised yesterday when the congressional budget office warned that the federal budget deficit would more than double to $ 650 billion ( 417 billion pounds) within a decade unless taxes are raised, or the swelling Medicare and Medicaid budgets are cut. Their costs are rising by 15 per cent a year.
 The United States already has a national health system, even for the 37 million Americans without private health insurance. But it is woefully inefficient.  When the poor or uninsured are sick or wounded, they go to hospital emergency rooms, which reluctantly treat emergencies and recover the costs by increasing the charges for insured patients. 
 "If we do this [reform] right over the next eight years you are going to see huge savings in tax dollars and even bigger savings - more than twice the savings - that will free up literally hundreds of billions of dollars," President Clinton said, announcing his wife's appointment to chair a presidential task force on health reform.
 The US spends 14 per cent of gross domestic product - more than $ 800 billion a year - on health care. This is more than double the share of British GDP, and more than the 9.2 per cent of GDP spent in Canada, or the 8.4 per cent in Germany.
 What this means for the average American family is steeply rising insurance premiums. In Florida, the annual premium for a family insured through the state employee system rose from $ 840 in 1980 to $ 3,756 in 1990. Florida has a large population of retired people, but even so, this year it will become the first state to spend more on its Medicaid programme (which subsidises health care for the poor) than on its schools.
 There are three main reasons for rising health costs: The success of medicine in keeping more elderly people alive for longer; the high pay of the medical profession and the high costs of its insurance against being sued for malpractice and the need of the private insurance system to make a profit and run its large bureaucracy.
 The three powerful health lobbies - insurance companies, doctors and the public - are too formidable for any president to confront at once. So Mr Clinton has compromised by proposing to retain private insurance, while forcing it to compete to drive down costs.
 To do this, he will concentrate purchasing power in the hands of a few large health-care providers, in what is called managed competition. Big employers, like the federal government and large corporations and state employee networks, already haggle with insurers. Now, small companies and individuals will be merged into large purchasing groups, which will force insurance companies to bid for their business.
 The role of the government is to define a set of minimum health care standards that all insurance plans must meet. Anybody who wants a higher level of service pays extra.
 Mr Clinton is pushing further down a road already explored by the private sector, through an increasingly popular system of Health Maintenance Organisations (HMOs).
 In Washington DC, a family of four wanting full medical and dental coverage from the vast Blue Cross-Blue Shield insurance group will pay almost $ 10,000 a year. The same family can apply to the Kaiser Permanente HMO for full coverage for just above $ 4,000 a year.
 The difference is that if the customer signs up with the HMO, Kaiser must provide all medical care in its own clinics and hospitals. The customer cannot choose his or her own doctor, nor opt for a world-class hospital or surgeon for a particular operation.
 The HMOs are also often accused of screening out high-risk families and patients in the application process. This shifts the costs of caring for the chronically sick on to insurers such as Blue Cross, which take all comers, or on to the Medicaid system for the poor.
 The other way Mr Clinton hopes to save money is by copying Kentucky's new system. There, a health care authority chivvies doctors into doing more preventive medicine, customers into bringing fewer malpractice lawsuits, and pharmacies into providing generic drugs rather than the more expensive brands.  The Kentucky medical profession is fighting the changes.
 But Mr Clinton is already receiving promises of support from insurers, who believe his reforms at least preserve their basic structure. If costs continue to soar, their very existence could be at risk from an even more fervent reformer.
 Insurance companies also recognise Mr Clinton as a clever politician who is looking for ways of increasing public pressure on them and on doctors, and deflecting it from the White House. He has asked members of the public to write in with ideas. After her husband's successful two-day economic conference in Little Rock last December, Mrs Clinton also plans a similar national teach-in on health reform.
 But the real decisions will be made in the "war room", where Mrs Clinton will assemble people, including her friend Donna Shalala, the newly appointed secretary for health and human services, and her husband's old Oxford friend, Ira Magaziner, presidential adviser on policy reform.
 The task force also includes the defence secretary, Les Aspin, and the veterans administration secretary, the treasury secretary, Lloyd Bentsen, the budget director, Leon Panetta, and the chair of the council on economic advisers, Laura Tyson.
 The membership is instructive. Mrs Clinton will chair a committee more concerned with national finances than health care. Savings, rather than health, are the driving force behind the biggest reform on Mr Clinton's domestic agenda.
 - Mr Clinton yesterday nominated Thomas Pickering, George Bush's UN envoy during the Gulf war, as his ambassador to Russia.
 Leader comment, page 16

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



24 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 6, 1993

ANNE'S PASSPORT TO PIMLICO;
The sprawling block of flats chosen by the Princess Royal as her London base once housed de Gaulle and Vassall. It is not Balmoral, but SEBASTIAN FAULKS discovered a certain faded charm

BYLINE: SEBASTIAN FAULKS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 1558 words

 
 LAST THURSDAY morning tenants at Dophin Square received a memo from the general manager, A K Crawford, CBE, FBIM. "Dear Tenant, You will have just received a circular from Thames Water Customer Services. Please ignore this as our water is provided from our own artesian wells and not by Thames Water. Yours sincerely."
 The slightly desperate attempt at exclusiveness is characteristic of the fading glamour of this 10-floor, red brick rectangle of flats in which the Princess Royal and her husband Commander Tim Laurence have chosen to make their home.
 Built in two years on either side of the Abdication, Dolphin Square was a triumph of design by Gordon Jeeves and Oscar Faber for the adolescent Costain company. With soundless corridors, art deco trimmings and Cunardish streamlining, it had cachet, fizz and security. It was an urban miracle: a river view, vast private gardens and still only a stroll from the House or Sloane Square. 
 In the intervening 50 years, Dolphin Square has moved via the raffish to the edge of seediness. The radios installed in each sitting room no longer work: the Bakelite control on the wall, that once switched to Home, Light or Third, is reminiscent of an NHS hospital in need of a refit; the silent speaker above the door has a look of Orwellian intrusion. The long corridors of Hood House in powder blue paint with a dolphin-swirl patterned carpet have a whiff of the institutional.
 From the swing doors of the houses, all named after English admirals, there now most frequently emerge not debutantes or rising businessmen but elderly women with heavy face powder, small dogs and the tottering walk made famous by the late Dick Emery.
 All four sides of the rectangle open inward on to the garden and backward on to the street. It should be simple enough to secure the two entrances to the house in which the Princess rents her flat. If, as is rumoured, this is in a house at the front, with a view of the river, then it will be free from the dangers of being overlooked from the backs of houses in the parallel streets.
 There would be no joy for mad marksmen; though what the couple will do about the shattering noise of the Embankment traffic is another matter.
 In her book about London neighbourhoods, Metropolitan Myths, Glenys Roberts wrote: "Nobody ever reports anyone in Pimlico because they neither know whom to report nor whom to report them to . . . Old men with baby brides, youngsters with ageing floosies . . . marriage partners living with other people's marriage partners, marriage partners living with their own unsuitable marriage partners . . . get off scot-free without so much as a raised eyebrow in Pimlico . . . It is vicarious and anoymous, lonesome yet playing at being part of the Establishment."
 With its endless corridors and air of anonymity, Dolphin Square would be the perfect place for a Greene-ish affair. Its inhabitants are of the kind who need never be told to "forget" having seen something. It is a place for which the term "off the record" might have been invented.
 It is also very handy for Cdr Laurence's work at the Admiralty. He is not the first Dolphin Square resident to take the 20-minute stroll to the office. As he came down from his eighth floor flat one morning in December 1962, the Admiralty clerk John Vassall saw a burly man sitting in the hall, watching him intently.
 All day long he saw worrying portents - faces at the window, strange cars waiting. In the evening, as he left work, he was arrested in the Mall on suspicion of spying for the Russians. He was subsequently tried and sentenced to 18 years' imprisonment.
 Vassall had got wind of something a few weeks earlier when there was a kock on the door of his flat. "I opened the door to find three men dressed in white overalls and with a ladder," he wrote in his autobiography. "They wanted to check the kitchen on the excuse that someone had spilt acid down the sink above mine." Ah, the subtlety of MI5 . . . He checked with the Dolphin Square maintenance staff, who knew nothing of it.
 And they are an efficent team: a young woman who lives in Frobisher House said this week she had had her (genuinely) leaking sink fixed within 10 minutes on a bank holiday. When she moved into Frobisher last year an elderly man on the stairs said: "Ah, young people, marvellous, just what we need round here. Make as much noise as you like. We're all stone deaf, you know." Another veteran resident refused to evacuate his flat during a bomb scare last Christmas on the grounds that Hitler's Blitzkrieg had not moved him and he was damned if the IRA would.
 Between seven and 9.30 the 60-foot pool is reserved for residents. "In the early morning," said the young woman in Frobisher, "you see a lot of old flesh wobbling across the grass in dressing gowns to do their regulation lengths before it opens to the local schools."
 Above the pool is a mural of the Thames's course, winding down to a sunny pre-fire Windsor Castle. At the deep end the pool is 8 feet 3 inches, or about 25 hands to Her Royal Highness.
 Overlooking the water is the main restaurant. In his novel The Sweets of Pimlico, A. N. Wilson "improved" the Jeeves-Faber design so that diners would be on a level with the swimmers, but in fact it's easy enough to see the aged flesh moving uncertainly through the chlorine. "I was drawn to the secrecy of the place," said Wilson. "It seemed the ideal home for such a morally ambivalent character as the hero of the novel".
 The restaurant has a bar with ragged stools; the carpets are worn and the banquettes are shiny with wear. Music pipes forlornly from a speaker and a large piano with the ubiquitous dolphin motif offers the silent threat of evening cabaret. The food has been through strange processes of preservation and reheating: the boiled potato last Thursday lunchtime was at once like flour and glue.
 The Princess will be able to use the in-house launderette if the royal washing machine lets her down, and there are a grocer and greengrocer on hand. "Most of us prefer Tesco because it's cheaper," said a Hood resident, "but they're good in a crisis." The butcher has closed, but the hairdresser and paper shop flourish. If the princesss is visited by any family member who enjoys a nip, the Dolphin Square off-licence can provide.
 Right opposite, on the other side of the Embankment, is the White Elephant restaurant, a favourite with the Princess of Wales in her bun-throwing days and therefore equally unlikely to receive the Princess Royal's regular and wholehearted endorsement.
 "We had a pleasant carol concert at Christmas," said a Howard resident. "The Salvation Army band played in the garden and there was free Bovril for residents." On the day itself a turkey dinner is delivered on request to those too old or indisposed to cook for themselves.
 While this is unimpeachably kind, it suggests a different kind of place from the one that received the exiled General de Gaulle in 1940 when he came to rally the Free French, or that was home to the radical lesbian novelist Radclyffe Hall, the Mitford sisters, C. P. Snow, Susan Hampshire, whose mother gave dancing classes in the square in the 1960s, or even Christine Keeler.
 Nowadays the residents are mainly retired. The nameplates of the houses HAWKINS, GRENVILLE, NELSON, and so on, are smaller than the accompanying signs that say QUIET PLEASE. The knee-high walls about the well-stocked shrubberies have their edges painted in bright white paint to prevent the barking of elderly shins. The centrally provided heating is set at a level suitable for the thinnest blood.
 There are said to be more than 50 MPs with flats in the square, though Dr Jack Cunningham is one of the few listed on the internal telephone directory. The others apparently live under oher people's names because they fear their flats being used by colleagues for overnight stays, or worse.
 A young female resident in Raleigh House was greeted in her first week by the words: "Ah, you must be an MP's daughter." The square is a popular base for politicians' children when their parents are having to put in an appearance in the constituency.
 The cheapest flat, one room with kitchen and bathroom, is pounds 4,600 a year, including heating, hot water and sewerage. There is no service charge. The most expensive, with four rooms kitchen and bathroom, is pounds 13,600 a year. The square is owned by a trust which initially charges market rates, but limits rises so that longer-stay tenants benefit.
 While the grand days of Dolphin Square are certainly past, its position still makes it attractive for people who work in the centre of London and don't mind an institutional feeling. Although it is not obviously or heavily policed, women on their own say they feel safe there. Suspicious-looking men are challenged at night.
 One native of the Elephant and Castle was unimpressed when shown the Princess's future home this week: "It's like Peabody buildings without the washing", she said. This is a bit unfair. It is certainly not Balmoral, but it has a kind of colourless charm. As Glenys Roberts put it: "Pimlico is anonymous. You need no passport to get into it. Pimlico is No Man's Land. And from No Man's Land you can move in any direction".

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



25 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 6, 1993

ONE IN THREE LESBIANS 'RISKS DEATH FROM BREAST CANCER'

BYLINE: BARBARA SELVIN IN NEW YORK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 300 words

 
 NEWSDAY: ONE in three lesbians may develop breast cancer by the age of 85, three times the risk faced by heterosexual women, according to a doctor at the National Cancer Institute.
 Lesbians are less likely to bear children, more likely to drink alcohol and to smoke, and to be overweight than heterosexual women, all of which raise the risk of breast cancer, according to Dr Suzanne Haynes, chief of health education in the division of cancer prevention and control.
 Lesbians are also less likely than heterosexual women to be screened for breast cancer, she said. One in nine American women is likely to develop breast cancer by the time she is aged 85, and "lesbians may be at three times the risk of the average woman," Dr Haynes said. "When I added up the extra risks . . . you could actually expect that one in three lesbians might be at risk of dying from breast cancer." 
 At the request of the National Lesbian and Gay Health Foundation, Dr Haynes reviewed the literature on risk factors for breast cancer and reports on lesbian health.
 Lack of childbearing greatly increased the risk of breast cancer, Dr Haynes said, and 70 per cent of lesbians were childless. These women had an 80 per cent greater risk of breast cancer than mothers.
 The link between childlessness and breast cancer "has been known since the 1700s from studies of nuns".
 Lesbians were less likely to see a gynaecologist regularly, in part because they did not need birth-control prescriptions. They were less likely to have their breasts examined and get referrals for mammograms. Nearly two-thirds of lesbians aged over 55 did not check their breasts for lumps, compared to a third of all older women.
 Heavy drinking increased the risk of breast cancer by 40 per cent, Dr Haynes said.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



26 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 6, 1993

SHORT CUTS

BYLINE: ROBERT LEEDHAM

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 52

LENGTH: 451 words

 
 COMING OF AGE
 There is a touch of foolhardiness about Age Concern's new advertising campaign. In an attempt to counter "ageism" it is putting up lots of posters with the faces of grinning elderly people on them. Printed next to each is a phrase like "Old codger" or "Silly old moo". Clever. The photos were taken by David Bailey, now 55, who makes his opinion of the campaign relevant: "Ageism is a big problem and will affect you and me. When you are old, people expect you to be serene and wise, but at the same you are dismissed, patronised and called names." Ignoring the uncharitable theory that Bailey was in fact talking about the reviews earned by his latest collection of photos, it was unfortunate that the Times newspaper - which has a high number of crinkly readers - should run this quote opposite a story actually about the clearance of a backlog of legal cases, had the headline: "Old Bailey oils wheels of justice". 
 A STATE OF BLISS
 "What we call happiness," wrote Freud, "in the strictest sense of the word comes from the (preferably sudden) satisfaction of needs which have been dammed up to a high degree." A resort in Jamaica, called Hedonism II, has identified Britain's dammed up needs. Its advertising entices: "Give up counting calories, Stay up late, Sleep in, Have a drink before noon, Dine in shorts, Talk to strangers, Don't call your mother, Don't pay for anything." This column prefers the definition offered by Gareth Roberts, leader of the British team that uncovered the causes of Alzheimer's disease: "It was like looking for a needle in the haystack and finding the farmer's daughter."
 PARADISE POSTPONED
 Thinking of where else to go on holiday this year? Or looking for places to avoid? Helpfully, a recent rash of articles on "green tourism" has been fingering guilty hotspots, which are then dubbed as "paradises lost". Among them so far are Goa, the Fijian islands, Hawaii, Loch Leven, St Gervais, East Germany - for women, apparently, America, California specifically, the Cote d'Azur, Alverstoke, Dubrovnik and Todi - an Italian town described by researchers from the University of Kentucky as "the most beautiful, most life-affirming and life-supporting city which mankind has ever created" and subsequently overrun by tourists. But not only places receive the dubious accolade. Also labelled as "paradises lost" are: pre-packed lasagne, ITV, a missed opportunity for sex with two bank employees, the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, Jacques Delors' plan for pan-European social justice and Seve Ballesteros's waning genius with a golf club. It's enough to cause an outbreak of "Demoniac frenzy, moping melancholy/and moonstruck madness".

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



27 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 12, 1993

THE DAY IN BRIEF

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 571 words

 
 - THE junior health minister, Tim Yeo, defended funding for care in the community, which comes into effect in April. He said claims that it would be short of pounds 250 million were "bogus" and claims by the Association of Metropolitan Authorities that a cash shortfall would put 12,000 elderly and disabled people at risk were "scaremongering". "Next year directors of social services will have at their disposal pounds 565 million for the reforms. That money has been ring-fenced to ensure it reaches its target. If councils want to spend more of their resources on community care, they are free to do so." The success of community care now rested "on the shoulders of the directors of social services." MPs were debating funding of community care. David Hinchliffe, for Labour, accused the Government of introducing a "back door method of closing council homes" by discriminating in favour of independent providers. The Government was shunting its funding problems on to local government. Nigel Jones, for the Liberal Democrats, welcomed care in the community as a progressive proposal, but said there was not enough money to implement it. 
 - THE Prime Minister welcomed President Clinton's initiative over Bosnia. He said during question time: "The best way forward, the only credible way forward that had yet been found, is the Vance/Owen plan which we strongly support. I welcome the policy statement from the US government."
 - JOHN Major rejected criticism over the appointment of the chairman of Carlton Communications, Michael Green, as chairman of ITN. John Heppell (Lab.  Nottingham E) questioned the impartiality of "a known Conservative supporter and donor."
 NEXT WEEK IN PARLIAMENT
 House of Commons - Monday: Questions to Social Security ministers and Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster; backbench debate on "the housing crisis"; Bankruptcy (Scotland) Bill, Lords amendments; Judicial Pensions and Retirement Bill, remaining stages. Tuesday: Employment questions; questions to the Prime Minister; Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill, report; Hill Livestock (Compensatory Allowances) (Amendment) Regulations. Wednesday: Trade and Industry questions; Trade Union Reform and Employment Rights Bill, remaining stages; Revenue Support Grant (Scotland) Order; Local Government Finance (Scotland) Order; Housing Support Grant (Scotland) Order. Thursday: Northern Ireland questions; questions to the Prime Minister; Foreign Compensation (Amendment) Bill, second reading; Appropriation (Northern Ireland) Order.  Friday: Backbench business - Right to Know Bill, second reading.
 House of Lords - Monday: Video Recordings Bill, committee; Criminal Justice Act (Contracted Out Prisons) Order; Social Security sick pay, contributions, benefits and pensions orders; debate on Kenya's elections. Tuesday: Appointment of Medical Ethics Select Committee; Housing (Fitness Standard) (Amendment) Bill, committee; Asylum and Immigration Appeals Bill, committee. Wednesday: Debates on the Maastricht treaty, students' cash difficulties and calls to establish a Humanities Research Council. Thursday: Welsh Language Bill, report; European Communities (Definition of Treaties) (International Railways Tariffs Agreements) Order. Friday: Not sitting.
 TODAY
 House of Commons: Backbench business - Representation of the People (Amendment) Bill, second reading.
 House of Lords: Not sitting.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



28 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 12, 1993

DOLE PUSHES DSS BILL TO POUNDS 78.3BN;
Spending set to hit pounds 92.7bn by 1996 - Cuts search looks at invalidity benefits

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 505 words

 
 STATE spending on social security is running pounds 3.7 billion ahead of government forecasts made a year ago and rising unemployment is chiefly to blame, the Department of Social Security said yesterday.
 Social security spending is projected to rise to pounds 92.7 billion by 1995-96, an increase of 18 per cent on the pounds 78.3 billion in 1992-93 and 89 per cent up on the pounds 49.1 billion in 1987-88.
 The estimated pounds 78.3 billion spending for 1992-93 is said to be 67 per cent higher in real terms, after allowing for inflation, than the total in 1978-79 when the Government first took office. The figures underline why ministers this week made social security a main target in their scrutiny of state expenditure. Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, said at the weekend that "at the very least we must curb the long-term growth in spending". 
 The latest figures for social security spending came in the annual DSS report.  The pounds 92.7 billion projection for 1995-96 is made up of pounds 64.5 billion for the department itself and pounds 28.2 billion for local authorities, which administer housing and council tax benefits.
 A breakdown of the pounds 3.7 billion overrun on last year's projection shows that pounds 1.5 billion in 1992-93, and pounds 2.1 billion in 1993-94, is attributed to extra spending on income support benefit. But pounds 405 million and pounds 339 million respectively is put down to additional claims for invalidity benefit.
 This benefit, already claimed by 1.5 million people and projected to cost pounds 7 billion by 1995, is considered a prime target of the spending scrutiny. Ministers believe it is being wrongly awarded to many long-term unemployed men in their fifties and early sixties. A comparison of spending by claimant group, expressed in constant prices, shows how benefits intended for long-term sick and disabled people are the main growth area. By 1995-96, it is projected, they will account for 22 per cent of total benefits expenditure, compared to 14.2 per cent in 1987-88.
 By contrast, benefits for elderly people - commonly assumed to be the main cause of concern for ministers because of the ageing population - will by 1995-96 represent 44 per cent of total expenditure, compared to 49 per cent in 1987-88. By 1994-95, spending on retirement pensions is forecast to cost pounds 750 million less than anticipated because of a downward revision in pensioner numbers following the 1991 census.
 The report's projections are based on assumed inflation of 2 per cent for 1992-93, and 3.5 per cent for 1993-94, and assumed unemployment of an average 2.8 million for the whole period 1993-96.
 In a statement launching the report, Mr Lilley said the Government's commitment was "to maintain support for those who need it most and to keep its pledge to the elderly, families and people with disabilities".
 The Social Security Departmental Report: the Government's Expenditure Plans 1993-94 to 1995-96; HMSO; pounds 9.90

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



29 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 15, 1993

WINTER AND BLOCKADE RAVAGE ARMENIA;
Only the wealthy few escape the misery of the home front, writes David Hearst in Yerevan

BYLINE: DAVID HEARST

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 801 words

 
 THE babies in the orphanage were unlike others who lie awake in their cots.  They did not wriggle or cry. Each had a tiny woollen hat and a blanket. A small kerosene stove burned inadequately in the centre of the room. Their hands were freezing.
 Their nappies were drying in the unheated stairwell outside, in what seemed an unequal fight against the damp and the cold. The day before, the gas pipeline though Georgia, Armenia's sole energy supply, was blown up for the second time in three weeks. The whole of Armenia was blacked out as thick snow fell outside. 
 Downstairs at this orphanage, 10 children were huddled around a primitive diesel-powered contraption, upon which was placed an open boiling pan of water. It was the nursery's pride and joy, but we looked on horrified. A Snoopy doll, still in its plastic wrapper, was pinned to the wall out of arm's reach, a glimpse of what it would be like to have the toys that other children had.
 Two of the children started screaming. Before we went, the director pleaded with Joe Kennedy, the US congressman. "We have no transport. The children you see here never leave this house all the year round. They have no way of knowing what nature looks like because they have no contact with it. If only we had a minibus . . ."
 It was the first of many pleas for help to the congressman who had arrived with $ 25,000 worth of medical supplies, and a group of fourth generation Armenian-Americans, determined to keep the cause burning brightly on Capitol Hill.
 Mr Kennedy kept trying to smile that broad, confident Kennedy smile: "Hey, you there," he said reaching out to a two-year-old orphan from Spitak, a town which still lies in ruins from the earthquake which levelled it five years ago. The little boy recoiled, clutching the chewed wooden bars of his cot even tighter.
 In the old people's home the scene was much the same: cold and hungry bodies wasting away in their blankets. As Armenia struggles through its third winter without fuel, the average elderly Armenian has lost 11 pounds in weight in the last three months. They know that from the autopsy reports.
 Most of these people were Armenian refugees from the Azerbaijan capital, Baku.  As each republic lay siege to the other, there was a brutal exchange of each other's minorities.
 In the midst of the mayhem of pleas surrounding the congressman's party, a man burst forth: "I am a professional person." He was wearing a battered pin-stripe suit. "A group of 30 came one day and tore my house apart. Then the police arrived and put me on a ship. And that was three years ago. Why does nobody put pressure on Azerbaijan to stop this war? Here we are in our third winter and life in Yerevan is like the siege of Leningrad, during the war. The fascists!"
 Come dusk, Yerevan is a city of unheated concrete husks. Its population is swollen by 360,000 refugees. Yesterday all electricity except to the city's main hospital and the office of the president, Levon Ter-Petrossian, was cut off.
 By day city dwellers scavenge for wood and food in the thick snow. By night they huddle around stoves, kerosene burners and candles. They live mainly off bread and potatoes. It costs 40 roubles for a candle and 8,000 roubles for 20 litres of petrol. That is four times the monthly average salary.
 But some buildings are lit with private generators and have kerosene heaters in abundance. "They belong to these people we call businessmen," said Igor Karapitian, the head surgeon at the main hospital.
 "We have not got any electric bulbs for the lights in our operating theatre. We have no respirators. There are no ambulances running. The telephones don't work. We are going to have an epidemic of intestinal infections and salmonella when spring comes, because raw sewage is going into the water supply, and yet there are people in this city who are rich, have light, warmth, anything they want."
 According to US aid workers, Armenia has until next week before it runs out of wheat. There will then be a gap of 10 days before the next shipment arrives.  And yet no one in Armenia is prepared to even think of suing for peace with Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh.
 A senior Armenian diplomat explained the official line: "There are reasons to think we will get a ceasefire in Karabakh this year. There is a parity of weakness. We inflict heavy losses on the Azeris in Karabakh which they can ill afford. They inflict the economic blockade which we can ill afford."
 But this is a high-risk strategy, with which the oil-rich Azeris may not comply.
 Mr Karapitian shakes his head in sorrow: "It is not possible to give Karabakh away. I know this. But we have to stop the fighting. It is crucifying our country, and the best have already left it."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



30 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 15, 1993

AMERICAN NOTEBOOK: CLINTON'S BATTLE PLAN INVOLVES SHARED SACRIFICE

BYLINE: MARK TRAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1071 words

 
 PRESIDENT Clinton formally unveils his counter-revolution against Reaganomics when he addresses Congress on Wednesday, almost 12 years to the day afterRonald Reagan ushered in an era of supply-side economics.
 Mr Reagan strode into the House of Representatives on February 18, 1981, and declared that the US was approaching a "day of reckoning". In a bold challenge to economic orthodoxy, he slashed taxes, boosted the military budget and curtailed social programmes while promising to balance the budget. Twelve years and $ 300 billion later, it is Mr Clinton's turn to lay out a political philosophy and economic agenda designed to take the country in a new direction. 
 Returning to the format that served him so well in the election campaign, Mr Clinton told a meeting in Detroit that the middle class should brace itself for a tax increase. To show that government was doing its part, he announced a 14 per cent cut in administrative costs over the next four years, coupled with the elimination of 100,000 federal jobs.
 He rounded off the week by denouncing the pharmaceuticals industry for making inflated profits "at the expense of our children". And in a break with precedent Mr Clinton will give a TV address to talk about his economic package even before his message to Congress.
 After a rocky start over the issue of homosexuals in the military and the selection of an attorney general, Mr Clinton has recovered his footing just in time for the decisive battle over the economy.
 The markets, through a fall in long-term interest rates, have anticipated Mr Clinton's seriousness in getting to grips with the budget deficit.
 THE elements of a deficit reduction package are already clear. They include raising the top income tax rate from 33 per cent to 36 per cent, a major reform in collections from foreign companies operating in the US and new energy taxes, which will hit the middle class hardest. For the elderly, an increase in the taxation of social security benefits for couples with incomes above $ 32,000 is in the offing. It will be "shared sacrifice", as Mr Clinton said in his inauguration speech. In all, the increase in taxes should net about $ 60 billion.
 On the spending side, Mr Clinton will cut defence more sharply than President Bush, curtail the space station and the supercollider programmes, limit deductions for mortgage interest payments and trim domestic programmes that will save a total of about $ 35 billion.
 Despite much flak from economists, Mr Clinton will press ahead with an investment and stimulus package of about $ 20 billion. Though reduced from the $ 60 billion mooted during the campaign, critics cavil at the need for such fine-tuning at all given the pace of the US economic recovery.
 This part of Mr Clinton's economic package bears the hallmarks of Robert Reich, the Labour Secretary, who argues that the administration should aim for less deficit reduction and more spending to ensure growth. Mr Reich has had to cede much ground to more mainstream thinkers such as the chairman of the National Economic Council, Robert Rubin, who is emerging as the President's most influential economic adviser.
 But stimulus there will be. The philosophical heart of the administration's economic programme reflects an activist, neo-Keynesian economic approach, more common in Europe, that leaves free-marketeers uneasy. The stimulus package makes political sense as it will sugar the pill of higher taxes, especially at a time when unemployment remains stubbornly high despite the economic recovery.
 The economic payoff of the stimulus package depends on the extent to which Mr Reich has been able to win the battle of ideas on the training of America's workforce for the 21st century.
 AMERICAN industry has found it difficult to recruit workers to fill jobs not requiring a university education. The chairman of Xerox recently declared that the skill levels of American society have the "makings of a natural disaster", while New York Telephone had to test 57,000 applicants to find 2,100 people qualified to fill entry-level jobs.
 Demographic trends portend worse to come. Of the new entrants into the workforce, white males - the best educated sector of the population, especially in science, technology and engineering - will comprise only 15 per cent. The rest will be women, minorities and immigrants, the latter making up the two fastest growing segments of the workforce.
 Since minorities and immigrants have generally gone into low-paid, unskilled jobs, there exists an enormous potential mismatch between educational levels and the forecast demand for jobs requiring technical or higher education.  Unlike Germany, Sweden, or Japan, however, the US has a haphazard approach to job training.
 During the campaign, Mr Clinton considered making companies set aside 1.5 per cent of their spending on training. Those that did not meet this requirement would pay an equivalent amount into a fund used to set up regional training centres. Mr Clinton backed off after companies objected strenuously. But that 1.5 per cent target still remains and Mr Reich may offer employers tax incentives to reach that goal.
 US companies now spend about $ 30 billion a year on training which comes from less than 10 per cent of all companies. In the long run, most economists agree with Mr Reich that training can be an investment that more than pays for itself. Studies during the late 1980s concluded that company-sponsored training programmes boost workers' wages by 4 per cent to 11 per cent over the long run.
 A 1.5 PER CENT training budget would cost companies an extra $ 21 billion a year and could cause them to restrain wages and hiring in the short run. But it would also generate $ 63 billion in economic activity and 2.5 million new jobs over three to five years according to the American Society for Training & Development. Even opponents of the mandate agree that the goal is worthwhile for Americans to compete globally.
 Mr Reich's emphasis on training and infrastructure stems from his belief that a well-trained work force backed up by good communications will entice global investment its way, as he argues in his book, The Work Of Nations. It is a work that Mr Clinton has taken to heart, hence his determination to press ahead with a stimulus programme that would have been anathema under Reaganomics.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



31 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 16, 1993

HIDDEN GUNMEN SEND DEATH FROM THE HILLS

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR IN SARAJEVO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 701 words

 
 WHEN the anonymous, unseen sniper turned his high-velocity rifle on a busy Sarajevo intersection last week, he set his telescopic sight on Dejan Stanisic.
 Dejan, aged 13, now lies on his side in the children's ward of the city's Kosevo hospital. It is too early to say, explains his doctor, but Dejan may be paralysed from the waist down after falling prey to the scourge of Sarajevo, the Serbian sniper.
 "I was just walking around when I was hit," Dejan explains listlessly. The single shot struck him in the upper left thigh, making him one of almost 400 people wounded in Sarajevo last week, according to Bosnian government figures. 
 Many of those injuries - and many of the more than 8,000 people whom the government says have died in Sarajevo since Serbian forces laid siege last April - are victims of the ruthless marksmen in the hills to the south of the city and in Serb-held tower blocks.
 The snipers are arguably the most pernicious aspect of the siege. They distinguish Sarajevo from other cities at war, and are also the most damning indictment of the Serb offensive, since civilians are more often than not the intended targets. Their victims include a three-month-old baby and numerous elderly women. Their bullets have hit schools, flats, hospitals and clinics, and have turned large parts of the city into no-go areas.
 The Sarajevo siege effectively started when Serb snipers picked off a handful of demonstrators marching last April to demand that their multi-cultural city be left intact. Ever since, and every day, the killers use the streets of Sarajevo as a shooting gallery and the zing and ricochet of high-velocity bullets echo through the valley in which the city lies.
 They are devilishly accomplished marksmen, allegedly trained early in the war by Yugoslav army experts at a base outside Sarajevo. The city grapevine has it that there are snipers who go for the head, others who are neck specialists or heart experts, and those who choose to maim by hitting the lower part of the body.
 And there are even more skilled gunmen who excel at hitting rapidly moving targets, cars that race down the deserted, debris-strewn main dual carriageway at 70 mph or faster. In the last few days, at least two people driving on this route were shot in the head. One was killed, the other survived. In the past week, at least four foreign journalists' cars were hit; one photographer survived after a bullet passed through his neck.
 Three days ago, at a busy but treacherous intersection exposed to the hillside assassins, a single shot rang out and a middle-aged civilian fell, clutching his leg. Cars screeched to a halt and reversed rapidly into the cover of a building. Pedestrians scattered. Another car drew up, the victim was bundled in and taken to hospital.
 Every night, the marksmen come into their own when hundreds of desperate people try to flee across the airport runway. The airport is controlled by the United Nations and offers a chink of light in the encircling darkness. Anxious not to offend the Serbs who handed them control of the airport, UN troops turn back the would-be escapers. They use bright lights to spot the fugitives who, like rabbits frozen in a car headlights, are then picked off by the gunmen.
 Two nights ago, two men and a woman at the airport were wounded by Serbian snipers.
 The aim of this callous target practice is to bully, demoralise and terrorise the city, but the weary population refuses to be cowed. It has become masterful at darting through dangerous areas, and has developed relatively safe routes across the city which offer cover from the gunmen in the south.
 Open areas and intersections exposed to the southern hills are banked up with buses, articulated lorries and huge metal containers that are now twisted with thousands of perforations from the snipers' bullets.
 Every morning, Sarajevo is a city on the move. Thousands of people walk or cycle to visit relatives, fetch water or wood, or simply to take the air in an attempt to keep their spirits up. But it was while out walking that Dejan Stanisic was shot in the thigh. Now he will probably never walk properly again.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



32 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 16, 1993

NEW IDEA BUT OLD WOES ON THE FARM;
A pragmatist is now leader of Lithuania, where voters view change wryly, reports Jonathan Steele

BYLINE: JONATHAN STEELE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 693 words

 
 LIKE many other former collective farm peasants, Birute Monkiewicz always intended to vote for Algirdas Brazauskas, the new president who won a sweeping victory in Sunday's poll.
 "There's no one in charge in this country. Everyone just looks after their own pockets. At least Brazauskas may do something," she said resignedly as we sat in the kitchen of her wooden farmhouse. 
 Her words come as something of a shock. In Russia, the radicals want to break up the collective farms and allow private land ownership. In Lithuania, where it has already happened, the reaction has started much earlier than expected.
 "They sent a man from the regional centre to take charge of the farm and replace our director. He got rid of everyone. He sold the cows, the pigs, and a lot of the equipment, and kept the money for himself," complained Maria Stefanowicz, as she plaited dry straw in a side room of her house across the street. She now makes bunches of dry flowers to sell to tourists.
 Under a law passed by the now defeated parliamentary majority of Sajudis, the Lithuanian Popular Front, the farms were abolished at a stroke of the pen last year. Outside liquidators were sent in because it was thought they would share the assets more objectively than the old farm chairmen.
 Instead, to judge by peasants' accounts, many turned out to be crooks.
 "This is my share of the farm," Birute Monkiewicz's elderly mother-in-law told me, as she hunted for a scrap of paper. It was denominated 12,500 talons, equivalent to about two months' salary for 40 years of work on the farm.
 Like everybody on what was the Akmene farm, she is a Pole. They know that Poland, even under communism, had a long history of successful private farms, but that is no consolation.
 The old woman remembers how Lithuania's Stalinists collectivised the place when she was a girl. "They took all our animals. My brother initially refused to join the farm. But then we got used to it," she said. Her parents had eight children, and they were always short of land.
 Now they have had a new shock. There was no violence during de- collectivisation, but they are still stunned.
 What made the abrupt de-collectivisation worse was a law passed by parliament giving previous owners the right to have their land back. Offices in every town are flooded with claims which will no doubt pass to the courts.
 "It's a disaster," said Julius Veselka, Lithuania's new economics minister.  Farm output has gone down by two-thirds. "In 1940 [when Lithuania was annexed by the USSR] 70 per cent of the population lived on the land. Now it's only 30 per cent, so thousands of city-dwellers who will never return to farming have a right to the land," Mr Veselka said.
 The new government, installed last autumn by Mr Brazauskas before he ran for the presidency on Sunday, is preparing tax reforms to penalise people who leave land idle or use it badly.
 Another key change, already introduced by Mr Brazauskas's team, is a ceiling on the profits of dairies, meat-packers, and other food-processing plants. The ideologues of rapid privatisation let them become uncontrolled monopolies in each district. Farmers were paid little for their produce, while the firms charged consumers high prices, in some cases making profits of 230 per cent, according to Mr Veselka. "We have imposed a 15 per cent ceiling on profit," he said.
 Lithuania's collapse in agriculture has been almost matched by the fall in industrial output. The republic's gross national product has dropped by 47.6 per cent in three years, a bigger drop than in Latvia (42.5 per cent) and Estonia (39.7 per cent) over the same period since independence. Problems in paying for natural gas from Russia have also left the republic with little hot water.
 It is hardly surprising that Lithuanian voters on Sunday turned back to Mr Brazauskas, a pragmatist who knows the system and helped the republic to defeat Moscow's blockade three years ago.
 He took about 60 per cent of the vote. His only rival, Stasys Lozoraitis, a diplomat who has spent all his adult life abroad, took 39 per cent.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



33 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

EVERY GREY HAIR COUNTS;
Spain: grey panthers stalk the streets

BYLINE: ANTONIO CAMPOS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 296 words

 
 IN 1950 there were around 2 million people over 65 in Spain, today there are 4.2 million and by 2001 there will be some 6 million, or 15 per cent of the population.
 Women predominate among the country's elderly - there are 2.7 million of them.  Some 84 per cent of old people live in cities and only 16 per cent live in rural areas. 
 About a third of the Spanish elderly (31 per cent) have trouble making ends meet and 58 per cent live in their own homes, according to statistics supplied by the National Congress of Organisations for the Elderly. Their calculations show that 73 per cent receive less than 50,000 pesetas ( pounds 300) a month, 8,000 pesetas ( pounds 48) more than the minimum professional wage. The principal income for 35 per cent of Spanish families is a retirement pension.
 The increase in the number of elderly people in Spain is reflected in their growing desire to play a more active role in society. Some 35 per cent of the elderly have said they would participate in and vote for a party made up solely of "grey panthers".
 But while there has been a swing in the attitudes of Spain's old people, the elderly Spaniard usually spends his time watching television (52.4 per cent) or strolling through parks (50.7 per cent) and more than half never read a newspaper. They have been hindered by a society which deprived them of an education and obliged them to become part of the national economic effort at the end of the civil war, as is shown by the fact that 44.6 per cent did not complete primary education.
 The greatest aspiration of elderly Spaniards is to improve their economic position (48.9 per cent). Other desires are better health care (24 per cent) and more participation in leisure activities (18.4 per cent).

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



34 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

EVERY GREY HAIR COUNTS;
This is no age to grow old in. In the East, communist care of the elderly has collapsed. In the West, capitalism has little to spare in a recession for its older citizens. Jay Rayner looks at Europe's attempts to highlight the twilight years

BYLINE: JAY RAYNER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1201 words

 
 EUROPE is fast going grey. Just under a fifth of its population is already 60 plus, which will rise to over a third by 2020. The unthinkable is beginning to be seriously asked: will tomorrow's young people earn enough to keep their old folk in the manner they deserve?
 An anxious European Community last month launched the European Year Of Older People And Solidarity Between Generations 1993, an admirable if clumsily titled effort to counter ageism in the workplace and bring attention to both the cultural and educational needs of the aged. 
 A substantial 7.5 million Ecus ( pounds 6.25 millioncorrect) has been allotted to staging conferences, seminars and awards. But the real debate is not so much how to stop older people being discriminated against as how to save them from real financial hardship, shivering in blankets and clutching hot water bottles against the cold to save on heating bills.
 Already the percentage of pensioners experiencing poverty, defined by the EC as an income below half the national average, is alarming. The last major survey, in 1985, put it at 20 per cent of pensioners in the EC, or 8.5 million people.  The situation is undoubtedly worse now.
 For the architects of western Europe's welfare systems, those public administrators who searched the rubble of the last war for a workable compromise between ideals and practicalities, it must be seriously galling.  Their very success at creating a system that could service its citizens' health and welfare has produced a problem that may prove its undoing: a demographic time bomb.
 For any welfare system to be stable, enough money has to be paid in for those who need it to be able to take out. There is now serious doubt in some circles that there will be enough people paying in. Over the next 30 years the number of people contributing to the upkeep of each pensioner in the EC will drop from three to two.
 Not everybody agrees about the seriousness of the problem. According to Alan Walker, Professor of Social Studies at Sheffield University and a leading expert on the care and social welfare of the elderly in Europe, the ageing issue is being used by certain European governments as an pretext for cutting pensions.
 "The strongest rhetoric tends to come from right-wing governments, led by Britain in the 1980s, who broke the link between pensions and earnings. The result was pensioners in the United Kingdom found themselves up to 20 per cent worse off than they had been at the end of the 1970s," he says. "The main response to the ageing issue will be that people will work longer and therefore carry on paying in. As they are going to be healthier there is no reason why they shouldn't."
 His research for the year of the elderly found that two-fifths of European pensioners would like the opportunity to work beyond retirement age. But that in itself suggests that a demographic revolution of sorts is taking place in Europe which will demand changes to the pension system.
 Most welfare states began with some sort of pension provision and it remains the largest element of welfare state spending. As much as 47 per cent of the benefits budget is spent on pensions in Germany, against 34 per cent in the UK.
 Trying to compare systems is difficult, but there are basically two types: the flat rate, as in Denmark, the Netherlands and the UK; and the earnings-related, as in Germany. Various supplementary benefits - like free health care or cheaper food - confuse the issue further.
 A common comparison is to look at pensions as a proportion of the beneficiary's final income. In Italy and Portugal, pensioners can expect more than 75 per cent of their final salary; in Germany, Greece and Belgium the figure is nearer 60 per cent. According to a study by Labour Research magazine released at the beginning of January, a UK pensioner on average earnings can expect to receive between 35 per cent and 43 per cent.
 But this statistic fails to consider the different living standards across the community. When that is added in, Portugal, with one of the highest pension entitlements, actually comes at the bottom of the European league table.  Ireland is next, followed by the UK. The richest pensioners are Danes. One thing is clear: as the population ages, the ratio of pension entitlement to previous earnings is likely to deteriorate.
 Governments have many options. They can raise the retirement age and discourage early retirement (as they did in Germany); increase the amount taken from workers in contributions (Spain); extend the number of years used to calculate average earnings (France); or encourage workers to place their retirement needs in the private sector (UK).
 But change brings problems of its own. When the Spanish raised the level of contributions, the result was industrial unrest. When the Italian government last July approved a mixture of just about all the reforms on the menu, it received a torrent of abuse from older Italians.
 For many years Italian pensioners were the most privileged in Europe. Proposals for reform - three since 1984 - had always foundered because the government of the day feared the effect on its popularity. That the government finally decided to act, and with such force, is one measure of how serious the situation is. The minimum contribution period was raised from 15 to 20 years, incentives were introduced to stimulate the private pension market, and the pensionable age for men and women was raised from 60 to 65.
 That option, favoured by many EC members including Britain, is also fraught.  "If we're going to encourage people to work for longer what is going to happen to people at the other end of the age scale? Lots of young people are already having problems finding a job to start with," says Janet Paraskeva, director of Britain's National Youth Agency, which is concerned with employment for young people.
 For the pensioners of the former Eastern bloc, such debates are luxury.  Pensioners' welfare is well down the list of priorities for the newly emerging market economies. Last summer, charities forecast that hundreds of thousands of elderly eastern Europeans would die this winter, unable to afford heating as well as food.
 Mark Gorman of HelpAge International, a network of non-governmental organisations working with the elderly, says: "What we have seen in places like Poland and the Czech republic is that as the economy starts to develop, inflation takes off. However, the pensions are not index-linked. It's very difficult to monitor what is going on exactly, but you can be sure that with temperatures at minus 20C in places like Bucharest and the water cut off for a month, the situation is very grim indeed."
 Pension provision is symbolic of the principle behind any welfare system: the promise of basic care, by the state, from the cradle to the grave, which, ironically, was first voted for by those very people now experiencing the reforms as pensioners.
 That the pension systems' ability to maintain itself adequately is now in doubt must also raise questions over how the rest of the EC's benefits systems will hold up in years to come.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



35 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

EVERY GREY HAIR COUNTS;
Netherlands: like to try a kangaroo house?

BYLINE: SUZANNE BAART

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 262 words

 
 FOR THE first time in history, the Netherlands is being confronted with a society made up of four generations. Women now live until they are 80, men slightly less long. 
 Furthermore, 70-year-olds today are much healthier than people aged 70 were 20 years ago. They also have more money and energy than previous pensioners, so these days 70-year-olds can be found studying at university among the 18-year-olds. They also now have the time and money to travel more than in the past.
 The third phase of life, from 65 to 75, has many possibilities. That is not true for the fourth phase. People over 80 are very frail: many live in residential or nursing homes for the elderly. Some 80 per cent of people above 65 live independently, but above when they get beyond 75 that percentage declines rapidly. The number of people living in residential or nursing homes for the elderly is higher in the Netherlands than in other European countries, but the government is trying to reduce this by making it possible for the elderly to live independently as long as possible.
 Various experiments are underway. There are so-called "kangaroo houses", in which an ageing parent lives downstairs and the adult child and his or her family upstairs. "Tandem houses", where parent and child live near each other, also being tried. Special flats for the old often provide special services, such as alarm systems, maintenance, a caretaker, meals and sometimes a resident nurse. All that costs money, but those currently retiring often have pensions above the minimum level.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



36 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

EVERY GREY HAIR COUNTS;
Italy: television as a shot in the arm

BYLINE: MARIA CHIARA BONAZZI

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 336 words

 
 THE elderly in Italy suffer from serious drug and television addiction. On average, each of them takes medicine twice a day; 59 per cent keep the television set on from morning to evening, and more than a third of all suicides are committed by people over 75. Pensions are low and 95 per cent regard social assistance as insufficient. In the past two years, the state has tried to reduce the number of elderly in hospital, improve home medical assistance and increase admissions to state-subsidised old people's homes. The state has begun to give families economic support to persuade them to keep the elderly at home. The results are all but invisible. 
 Italy is rapidly greying. Today its population has the 14th highest proportion of elderly people in the world; because of the current zero population growth, it will leap to the top of the list by the year 2000, with nearly 10 million people over 65 years of age.
 Old is still synonymous with poor and lonely in Italy. More than half (58 per cent) of Italy's elderly people stay at home or in a geriatric institute all the time (where 75 per cent of patients have contact with people from outside only once a month). Only 15 per cent ever go to a bar, 14 per cent for a walk in the park, and only 9.7 per cent ever go to a meeting place for the elderly.
 The lack of solidarity afflicts the so-called quarta eta (fourth age): according to research by the Agnelli Foundation, 9 out of 10 elderly people feel abandoned by relatives, don't find anyone disposed to look after them and complain about not being respected by young people; 74 per cent have problems finding useful things to do.
 The changes to the extended family wrought by the urbanisation and economic development of the post-second world war period have deprived the elderly of the presence and care of children. Rare in the cities, the extended family survives mostly in the south, in the communities emptied of young people who emigrated to the North in the 1950s and 1960s.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



37 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

EVERY GREY HAIR COUNTS;
Russia: out in the cold when pensions go West

BYLINE: ISOBEL MONTGOMERY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 392 words

 
 THE Soviet Union was its own kind of granny state, a place where babushkas held sway over the morals of the nation.
 Under communism these indomitable, woolly-hatted guardians of public behaviour reprimanded teenagers for their dress and behaviour, prevented queue-jumping and watched every coming and going of their neighbours. But nobody is listening to them now. 
 They can be seen on the streets selling plastic bags or cheap Bulgarian cigarettes and queueing at the soup kitchens. Pensions were never high but the removal of price controls and subsidies last year and Russia's galloping inflation rate makes it virtually impossible to live on a state pension of 2,500 roubles (about $ 4 or pounds 2.70) a month. One old woman outside a metro station joked that even getting her pension proved difficult: often the authorities give pensioners one 5,000 rouble note to be split between two. They live on a diet of bread, macaroni and potatoes. A loaf of bread now costs 20 roubles. Sugar and dairy products are a luxury and meat, at 700 roubles a kilo, is totally beyond their reach.
 The collapse of communism has made the lives of most old people worse. They belong to the generation which built socialism and thought the dream would come true. Most are confused and bitter as they watch their world disappear in Russia's chaotic rush towards a market economy.
 Those who survived the siege of Leningrad have not forgiven Anatoli Sobchak, the city's current mayor, for renaming it St Petersburg. At a ceremony to mark the 50 years since the end of the siege, they surrounded Sobchak and prevented him from laying a wreath.
 Old people, frightened by stories of the mafia and the breakdown of law and order, are scared to go out alone at night. And where can they go? The organisations they once belonged to were often funded by the Party and either no longer exist or are desperately short of money. The latest threat to them are the government's proposals to abolish free health care.
 So Russia's over-60s sit at home and watch their televisions - shocked by reports of wars in the once peaceful republics of the former Soviet Union and by the capitalist values which are trampling what they held dear. There is one consolation. They can now advertise for friends in the lonely hearts columns of the newly free press.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



38 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 19, 1993

AS THE YEARS GO BY;
Now for the elderly revolution, argues Francisco Umbral

BYLINE: FRANCISCO UMBRAL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 415 words

 
 El Mundo
 IT SEEMS that 1993 is European Year of Older People. Nowadays, every year has to be dedicated to something: the year of the Expo, Holy Year, Olympic Year, the Year of the Child, of the whore, the stupid, the tree. But the years go by just the same and we grow older and neither the tree, nor the woman, nor the stupid, nor the elderly notice anything. They are just ways of passing the time, of getting through the year. 
 We will not rid the elderly of rheumatism just by dedicating a year to them.  Every day of the year has to be dedicated to the elderly and that is just what families don't want, a good-for-nothing grandfather or a bingo hall mother-in-law (today they leave them in the bingo halls, bingo is a car-park for the gambling dead).
 But Santiago Carrillo [former leader of Spain's Communist Party], though 78, is not old. He is Aristotelian and dynamic, thinking, working, getting things done. It is the middle-aged civil servant with no other interest than dominoes who is "elderly".
 What needs to be done for the elderly is not to dope them up with television and pills, nor take them in herds to Benidorm out of season, but to keep them informed and on form, alive, connected to society, responsible, so that they feel needed and are needed. Now that medicine has greatly increased life expectancy, there is an ill-considered and hysterical rush to scrap our old people, retire them. Bureaucracy, they say, tends to cut short the life that science lengthens, chopping from society the patriarchs that pass on their wisdom to new generations. Our official culture doesn't worry about preparing people for old age, about filling life with interests and virtues so that it is still relevant at 75 or 80.
 In 10 years of a new society under the Socialists, we have not done away with the old formulas of retreats for the elderly, the tourism of death, collective charity and a special disdain for the elderly. No one has wanted or has known how to prepare people for old age, involve them in society in such a way that they grow with society and don't become fossils.
 For 10 years we've been talking about the women's revolution and the computer revolution, but nobody has raised the question of the revolution of the elderly. Let's learn, now that the state doesn't teach or do anything apart from hold a few tombolas and set up a few charity stalls, let's learn from our elderly and keep being young.
 Copyright: Guardian/El Mundo

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



39 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 20, 1993

TRAVEL

BYLINE: TRADER HORN

SECTION: WEEK-END; Pg. 37

LENGTH: 597 words

 
 A WEEK is a long time in Benidorm, or I might succumb to its paid sirens luring me to go back and see how goes the rehabilitation. To hear the rhapsodies you'd hardly tell it from its pristine state, except for its new national park - and you could bottle the sea water for the picnic trade. And what a marvel the young men doffing their boaters to elderly ladies, though of course you do get the odd one . . . Let's face it, they add, everybody wants to be good, but not all the time.
 This is not the only little green shoot. I read an item last week on the Galapagos, whose author was chuffed to learn that, while in redefining the status of the islands the government of Ecuador couldn't stop citizens settling there, the tourist volume was absolutely restricted to 45,000. Green bullseye.  Well done, Ecuador! But little more than a lustrum has passed since I was there sidestepping the boobies to reach the Darwin Station, and toast the news that the government was absolutely restricting the number of tourists to 26,000. 
 But it's encouraging that airlines and huge tour operations want to be green, even if not all the time. You can practically guarantee that any new tourist minister will eagerly dustbowl the topic between the shark's fin soup and the oeufs de tortue cocotte. The literature is mostly unsexy, being pre-pubescent.  When taking a tourism degree, major on sewage.
 The awareness has reached Moss Bros. "Dinner dance or function?" asked the young woman, the first Moss Sis to fit me with evening dress. I was going to the Tourism for Tomorrow Awards. "Will the answer change what I get?" I asked.  "No, but I have to ask. Market research." "Tourism function," I answered. "Not white tie, then. Black tie or green tie?" "Green tie, I suppose." She wasn't finished. "Plain or Paisley weave?" "Er . . . Paisley." "You'll be wanting," she decided, "the green Paisley cummerbund and hankie too." I recalled a broadcast on the Boat Race by our commre for the evening ahead, Judith Chalmers, when she confessed she was wearing Dark Blue underwear, but I stuck to externals, helped by a green Montecristo.
 The Awards were founded by the BTA, with the Tour Operators Study Group, and ITV's Wish You Were Here, and David Bellamy to chair the judges. This year they invited King Stork to join, in the shape of British Airways, whose new MD spoke at some length about the many awards won by BA, and its concern for the environments it flew over, so that I began to imagine that one day it will pop its super-jumbos into a green livery, and the top award would go to Heathrow.
 The UK rosette was pinned to the chest of the Central Manchester Development Corporation for regenerating Castlefield Canal Basin. Europe must try harder: nothing but commendations for an electric bus in Austria and a waste recycling project in Malta. The long-haul and overall winner was the 14,000-hectare Londolozi game reserve in Eastern Transvaal. Their achievement is the integration with village social life and the people outside the perimeter.
 Indeed, getting on a wavelength with people is the tricky bit for the green tourist. Going home, I recalled a poignant episode in the Dutch Antilles.  Walking in the scrub with a local man who loved wildlife, brothels and playing guitars to tourists, I saw an iguana taking the sun on a large cactus. "You like iguana?" said my keen friend, "We see him from close." Before I could speak, he'd knocked it off with a direct hit from a stone. It wobbled away to a secluded rocky spot. DOA, or soon after, I fear.  G

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



40 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 20, 1993

HOME FRONT: SEX, HIGHS AND VIDEOTAPE;
Robin Skynner assesses sex education on TV and tape and finds their relaxed approach surprisingly frank yet non-pornographic

BYLINE: ROBIN SKYNNER

SECTION: WEEK-END; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1138 words

 
 CHANNEL 4 recently screened a programme in which a panel had reviewed a range of the new sex education videotapes, and announced their first four choices.  For those who missed this useful guide, these were: Lover's Guide 2, Making Love, Better Sex, and Super Virility.  These were considered not only the most helpful but also the most arousing.
 But should they be arousing? A controversy continues about whether such videos are valuable educational resources which should be freely available at our friendly neighbourhood bookstore, as at present, or pornography in disguise requiring control. 
 The survey had not put these four videos in any particular order, so I chose Lover's Guide 2 because I had already been much impressed by Dr Stanway's writings. I should emphasise that I have only seen the clips of the alternative recommendations that were shown as part of the survey mentioned, and have no reason to suppose that they differ in usefulness.
 Until my recent retirement from practice I had been dealing for 20 years mainly with marital problems, usually requiring some focus on the sexual relationship, and had in the past seen not only pornographic movies but many videos of all kinds of sexual activity as part of attending or providing sex education courses for professionals. But the explicitness of Lover's Guide Two came as a shock, even to me.
 By this I don't mean that I disapproved or found it unpleasant; quite the reverse. It was simply a surprise - and a very pleasurable surprise - to find sex described and demonstrated with such complete openness and naturalness, in a way that captured the sense of pleasure and fun yet also felt absolutely wholesome and healthy.
 The main reason is the choice of couples. They are (or certainly give the impression of being) in caring and committed relationships, relaxed and at ease in this most intimate of relationships, and conveying in their physical contact strong feelings of tenderness and affection. At times they have been helped to forget the camera sufficiently for normal fun and mischief to bubble up. I found myself smiling warmly, because it was just so lovely.
 This relaxed atmosphere is clearly facilitated by Dr Stanway, whose easy, relaxed commentary - matter-of-fact, light yet serious - counteracts any embarrassment due to one's inevitable feeling of voyeurism. He is like a physicist at one of those Christmas scientific lectures for children, enthusiastically demonstrating the fascinating changes of colour obtained by mixing chemicals, a television gardener showing us how to grow more beautiful flowers, a television cook helping us to prepare the most delicious dishes.  Simmer gently for 45 minutes, adding as many spices as you can find; then turn the gas right up, stirring briskly, until it all boils over completely.
 One criticism I have heard is that the couples are mostly young and attractive and older people are under-represented. This is true, but since older people will have grown up in a time of greater sexual prudishness and inhibition, their needs may require somewhat different treatment. I imagine that such videos are being made, if they do not exist already, but I believe any reasonably normal couple of any age (up to 70, at any rate; I can't be certain what it's like after that) is bound to be helped to a happier sexual adjustment by a video of this kind.
 Which brings me to ITV's own Good Sex Guide, presently screening on Monday evenings. This has come in for a bit of a clobbering from the "Some people may need it, but there's nothing wrong with me" school of television criticism, but I think it's just brilliant.
 It is inevitably less explicit and detailed than the videos on sale, though a lot more frank and direct than anything I have seen before on the main TV channels. But it makes up for this in its presentation. To make themselves acceptable as educational, the videos tend to damp down the excitement with their more serious "We doctors believe . . ." commentaries.
 But whatever else sex is, at its best it it is raunchy, animal, wild, abandoned, extreme, and above all playful fun, as well as (whether at the same time, or at other times) tender, gentle, loving, considerate. It is akin to fighting, indeed sometimes develops out of it, and a visiting Martian could be forgiven for assuming it to be a form of combat. I cannot imagine how it could be really good and also restrained, dignified, controlled, though of course a certain self-discipline is necessary as part of it to ensure the maximum pleasure of both.
 The Good Sex Guide solves this problem by carrying the excitement, liveliness and fun in its script, and in the extraordinary performance of its presenter, Margi Clarke. Stunning, enormous fun, yet direct, straightforward, reassuring and natural; the girl next door, or at least, the girl we would all have liked to live next door to, she conveys a complete acceptance and enjoyment of her physical being and invites us to enjoy our own. Her remarks are raunchy, often outrageous, but with perfectly timed humour and a total absence of anything offensive.
 The fragments of interviews where members of the public answer very frank questions about their sexual lives provide wonderful models of sexual confidence and enjoyment. And the humorous sketches - the International Sex Olympics, the penises on parade - are often corny but usually amusing, to me at least, and like the rest of the programme they manage to startle us into a more open-minded acceptance of sex by going just beyond the limits of what we are expecting.
 The inhibited and inarticulate are, admittedly, under-represented in the programmes, but other videos can be made focusing on particular problems; indeed, some are already used for sex therapy. And as John Cleese says at the beginning of Life And How To Survive It: "If you wanted to write a book about how to paint, or play chess, or be a good manager, you'd start by studying the people who were good at those things. And you wouldn't expect heavy sales of a book called Play Championship Golf By Learning The Secrets Of The Worst Twenty Players In The World."
 So, are these programmes pornographic? I can only speak for what I've seen, but I saw not the slightest sign of it in Stanway's video, and ITV's Good Sex Guide is about as far from pornography as you can get. The essence of pornography is the deliberate separation of sex from warm human concern and affection, and the charm of these educational programmes is the way they show these aspects of human nature so completely integrated. It is this model of enjoyment, and combination of warmth and excitement, love and lust which is the most effective teacher and healer.  G
 Dr Skynner regrets he cannot deal with correspondence.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



41 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 20, 1993

RUSSIANS STEER BREAKNECK COURSE FOR FREE MARKET;
Subsidised soup kitchens offer the destitute a safety net, but many more people can no longer get by in an era of runaway inflation. As rival leaders battle it out in Moscow, Jonathan Steele in Ryazan reports on a town whose pro-privatisation mayor is 'getting on without them'

BYLINE: JONATHAN STEELE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1076 words

 
 A RAGGED group of elderly people, the women's heads wrapped in kerchiefs, the men wearing patched black overcoats, sit at tables eating what looks like a surprisingly palatable meal: red cabbage soup, a chicken leg and mashed potatoes, a glass of stewed fruit juice.
 Every day, 1,200 people totter up the stairs of Ryazan's newly opened free canteen. At a table on the second floor they show a card from the social security service, verifying that their income is below the poverty line.
 "In Soviet times," says Svetlana Chufistova, a local councillor who runs the canteen, "many single old people just sat at home. No one knew about them, or cared. The Red Cross visited some, but their lists were never complete." 
 Now that Russia's social problems are no longer hidden, and beggars are not swept off the street as they used to be, life for the most lonely and destitute has improved.
 The free canteen is financed partly by the council and partly by donations from Munster, Ryazan's twin town in Germany. Staff also take meals to 250 people who are bedridden or too weak to leave their flats. A doctor attends the canteen once a week to examine people who ask for help. There is a free pharmacy on the premises.
 Yet, while services for the very poorest have improved, they have worsened for a larger number of people who used to be able to fend for themselves before the era of high inflation. "More people need help these days. Since controls on prices were lifted, pensions don't go as far as they did. People just cannot afford a decent meal," says Ms Chufistova.
 She used to be a factory engineer, but volunteered to give up her job to run the canteen. The fear was that even this modest venture, linked to hard currency from Germany, could become riddled with corruption in Russia's rogue market economy.
 About 140 miles south of Moscow, Ryazan is a typical central Russian town of 500,000 people, with its own Kremlin, crumbling 19th-century buildings in the centre, and huge modern housing estates beyond. I have visited it three times in the last three years, the previous time just after the August 1991 coup when Valery Ryumin, its energetic mayor, had succeeded in preventing the local Communist Party establishment from declaring an emergency in support of the coup.
 Now Mr Ryumin is steering the city towards the market economy at breakneck speed, enjoying a virtually free hand that would be the envy of President Boris Yeltsin in Moscow. The Communist authorities are no more. Under local government laws passed since 1991, the head of the region's administration - a friend of Mr Ryumin's - was nominated by Mr Yeltsin. The regional and town councils have been reduced in size and have had almost all their powers stripped from them, except that of approving the budget.
 Although he is a member of the Russian Congress of People's Deputies, Mr Ryumin takes little interest in the constant battles in Moscow. "Let them fight it out. We are getting on without them," he says.
 Last November, Russian towns were given the right to tax local factories, and charge them for gas, water, and electricity. They can draw up their own budgets, and no longer have to apply for grants from "the centre" for every item of expenditure. The town has also set up its own municipal savings bank, which offers a higher rate of interest than the national savings bank, providing extra funds for local development.
 An advocate of the free market, Mr Ryumin is moving faster than most other Russian mayors. The free canteen's council subsidies may be the last. Ryazan is rapidly switching to a pared-down, safety-net concept of welfare. "We're practically forcing people to take over their council flats," he says.
 In the Soviet period, when almost no one owned their own flat, 40 per cent of property belonged to factories, the rest to the town. "In May, the factories are giving us all their flats. They cannot afford to maintain them any more. We will then hand them to their tenants as well as the flats we own," Mr Ryumin says.
 The move has a clear economic motive. The city is as unwilling as the factories to pay for upkeep. Under the new scheme, management units will be set up for each block, and people will pay a maintenance fee, - expected to be 15 times their present low rent. "No one will have to pay more than 10 per cent of their family budget for housing," Mr Ryumin promises. There will be a means test, and those who cannot afford the new fees will get a housing benefit.
 Mr Ryumin has already privatised the town's shops. They were handed to their staff, who were free to sell them. At least half the shops have already found private owners. One difficulty is that the profit margin on certain items is low, and the town continues to buy milk, grain, and cooking oil from collective farms, and to deliver them to the shops, controlling their prices.
 Despite being a strong Yeltsin defender, Mr Ryumin dismisses as "worthless bits of paper" the vouchers that the Russian government has issued to every citizen to buy shares. In Ryazan, factory shares have been distributed in part to management and workers. The rest were sold for cash.
 Mr Ryumin's privatisation programme has many critics. Dr Lyubov Minashkina, the deputy director of Ryazan's main hospital, thinks supplies have got worse since January. "The public mood is very bad. Who knows what will happen?"
 Galina Zaitseva is the political reporter for Priokskaya Gazeta, the main local paper. "To call Ryumin an optimist is an understatement," she says. "Most people here just live from day to day. No one has any confidence in the future . . . It may seem quiet now, but Russia is unpredictable, a country of extremes."
 One reason for the lack of protest demonstrations is, she says, that people "don't know what to demand if they go out into the street. Two years ago they could blame the party dictatorship. Now they don't know who to blame."
 Mr Ryumin's methods are the same as the old Communist Party secretaries, Ms Zaitseva says. About 50 per cent of the town's old establishment figures are still in key jobs - often their old ones.
 Mr Ryumin concedes that the few private farmers in the district are collective farm chairmen who had siphoned off the best land while still in their old posts. But Mr Ryumin sees no harm in this. It is the basis of a new private farming sector, he says.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



42 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 20, 1993

HIGH COURT REJECTS HOMES GAMBLE PLEA BY PENSIONERS

BYLINE: MARGARET HUGHES AND TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 29

LENGTH: 694 words

 
 THOUSANDS of pensioners have lost up to 10,000 pounds each following a High Court rejection of their plea for bigger compensation after salesmen persuaded them to gamble with their homes.
 In a test case this week, two judges rejected the argument that victims of the failed schemes should be entitled to the same compensation as they would receive through a successful civil action.
 These investors are victims of the Government's decision to establish a one-stop complaints procedure for those who bought plans through financial advisers. They have had to direct their complaints to the Investors Compensation Scheme, operated by the main city watchdog, the Securities and Investment Board. 
 When deciding on this procedure, the Government acknowledged that it could put these investors at a disadvantage to those who bought their plans through salesmen or tied agents of insurance companies.
 Their complaints have been handled by the Insurance Ombudsman and Lautro, the life companies watchdog, which has generally forced the life companies to restore investors to the financial position they were in when they were first sold the plans.
 However, the maximum "fair compensation" which the ICS can award is 48,000 pounds - far short of what people might expect to be awarded in the civil courts.
 Solicitors Barnett Sampson, handling the test case for 450 pensioners, will appeal against the decision.
 Barnett Sampson had challenged the ICS's interpretation of fair compensation together with its refusal to pay damages for illness, stress, anxiety and inconvenience.
 The only positive outcome was the ruling by Lord Justice Mann that the heirs of those eligible for compensation were legally entitled to launch or to continue to pursue claims against the ICS after the claimant's death.
 Investment bond home income plans were widely promoted in the late 1980s as a means of boosting the income of elderly people whose wealth was tied up in their homes. The secure route to releasing capital tied up in a property is through a home income plan, which invests the proceeds from a fixed-rate mortgage raised against part of the value of a pensioner's home in an annuity to provide a fixed income for the rest of their lives.
 However, investment bond schemes use the proceeds raised through variable rate loans to invest in the stock market. They were launched when property prices were soaring, building societies were falling over themselves to lend and the stock market was booming.
 They turned sour when mortgage rates soared, property prices plummeted and the stock marked slumped, throwing thousands of pensioners into debt, many losing their homes.
 In a related move, Barnett Sampson is returning to court next week in an attempt to get the ICS compensation paid to pensioners who bought home income plans before the scheme was set up in 1988. This would help pensioners such as Don and Jeanette Bryan, of Bromley, Kent, who were sold a home income plan by the now defunct Aylesbury Associates in 1987.
 Mr and Mrs Bryan were advised to borrow 30,500 pounds against their home to invest in insurance bonds and unit trusts.
 Aylesbury invested 15,000 pounds in a Scottish Mutual bond, which was supposed to pay the mortgage, although the Bryans were not told then that it met interest payments only.
 The rest was invested in a range of unit trusts, which were continually bought and sold. The unit trust part of the portfolio was churned 18 times.
 All the investments were made in September, 1987, just before the crash. Within a couple of years, Aylesbury had gone bust, the Scottish Mutual investment had disappeared completely, and the unit trusts had still failed to recover.
 Mr Bryan, a former BT employer, decided to retrieve what was left of the investment and reduced the loan to 25,000 pounds, which he still owes to the Cheltenham & Gloucester.
 He says: "This has caused us enormous distress, which has gone on for years. We had never owed anything to anyone all our lives, and now at this time in our lives we are saddled with a huge debt we have no means of repaying."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



43 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 22, 1993

REFUSAL TO SAY A SHORT SENTENCE LANDS ISRAELI HUSBAND A LONG ONE

BYLINE: DEREK BROWN IN JERUSALEM

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 366 words

 
 FOR the past 30 years, Yihya Avraham has been three words away from freedom.  Ever since the 80-year-old Israeli was imprisoned in 1963, he has refused to say "I am willing" - words which would free him, both from prison and from his 52-year marriage.
 In Israel, personal law, including divorces, is the preserve of rabbinical courts. But even if such a court grants a divorce, the husband must still give his consent. If he does not, he can be jailed indefinitely. 
 Although Mr Avraham's case is extreme, intransigent husbands are not unknown.  Last month the Jerusalem Post reported the bizarre ending of a marriage at Ben-Gurion airport, after an erring husband was intercepted by his abandoned wife and taken before a hurriedly convened rabbinical court.
 In that case, the wife - married in the former Soviet Union - had come to Israel in 1989, while the husband had gone to the United States. Since then there had been no contact between the two. But when she heard that he had come to Israel as a tourist, she successfully filed for divorce from the Haifa rabbinical court.
 For two days, the wife kept vigil at the airport. When she finally spotted her husband, the police detained him and he was taken before the ad hoc airport court to face an ultimatum: agree to the divorce, or miss the flight. He took the first option.
 Mr Avraham, though, has never wavered in his refusal to divorce his 64-year-old wife Ora, whom he married in Yemen when she was 12 years old. They separated 40 years ago.
 Last week, seven rabbis and religious judges made the latest attempt to persuade Mr Avraham to do the decent thing. According to one account, they even sang to the old man to put him in a compliant mood. But later the director of rabbinical courts, Rabbi Eliahu Ben-Dahan, said Mr Avraham had flatly turned down all inducements, including a place in an expensive old people's home.
 "I cannot. Leave me alone," was his crisp response, according to Rabbi Ben-Dahan.
 Ora, the unwilling Mrs Avraham, told the Yedioth Ahronoth newspaper: "He's ruined my life. May his name be blotted out. He told my daughter he'll give me a divorce only when I'm in my grave."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



44 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 22, 1993

NURSING HOME OPERATOR PLANS POUNDS 100M FLOTATION

BYLINE: FINANCIAL STAFF

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 153 words

 
 A PRIVATE nursing home operator, Westminster Health Care, announced yesterday that it is to seek a pounds 100 million stock market flotation in the spring.
 WHC, whose chief executive is Patrick Carter, is a subsidiary of one of the largest US healthcare providers, National Medical Enterprises. The company owns 39 nursing homes in the UK, with 2,620 beds, soon to rise to 3,230.
 With nearly three out of four elderly people needing long-stay care, it has become big business. Long-term care cost about pounds 7 billion for the year to the end of March 1992 - of which the private sector claimed pounds 2.2 billion.
 The market will continue growing, according to WHC. On a turnover of pounds 17 million, the company yesterday revealed interim pre-tax profits of pounds 4.3 million for the six months to the end of November, compared with pounds 2.1 million for the corresponding period in 1991.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



45 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 22, 1993

RAIL PRIVATISATION COULD PUT ELDERLY OUT OF HOLIDAY MARKET

BYLINE: REBECCA SMITHERS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 416 words

 
 RAIL privatisation will have a devastating effect on the UK tourism industry, according to Saga Holidays, British Rail's largest commercial customer, which provides holidays for more than 200,000 senior citizens every year.
 By making rail travel unaff-ordable and impractical for older people - "an assault on the quality of their life" - next year's sell-off could threaten the prosperity of numerous resorts which rely on business from older people in the off-season.
 In the Saga magazine published today, the company's chairman, Roger de Haan, says: "There is a real threat that a truncated rail system will mean not only fewer visitors but that it will no longer be practicable for Saga to operate certain holidays. 
 "Today, Saga customers travel with the benefit of discounted fares. Tomorrow is another matter."
 He has made this point in a letter to the Transport Secretary, John MacGregor, and has also written to MPs representing constituencies with resorts most likely to be affected, including Tenby, Scarborough, Torquay and St Ives. Those which were accessible by heavily subsidised, loss-making branch lines would be particularly vulnerable to possible closures, he said.
 Mr de Haan claims the planned break-up of the network will create difficulties for Saga in negotiating discounts on block holiday bookings with up to 40 different private operators, compared with one at the moment.
 Last month the RMT, the biggest union representing rail employees, warned that one-third of tourist travel by rail could disappear in the short term as a result of higher fares.
 Saga is formally launching a campaign to preserve easy rail access for the elderly, and hopes to get support from groups such as Age Concern and Help the Aged.
 It is particularly worried about the future of the Senior Citizens' Railcard, which has 700,000 users. Because it makes a loss, some private operators may not wish to provide it, and it may not be valid on the entire network.
 Last week, amendments tabled by Opposition members of the standing committee, to make it a statutory requirement on private operators to provide Railcards or Travelcards, were narrowly defeated, with the exception of the Disabled Person's Railcard.
 London transport minister, Steven Norris, said the Government's view was that legislation would restrict operators' flexibility to develop products. "The last thing a good marketing initiative needs is the heavy hand of legislation."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



46 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 22, 1993

A PRAYER FOR AN END TO THE PEACE;
And another thing . .

BYLINE: ANDREW MONCUR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 660 words

 
 FOUR actors are to be set loose on the London Tube to play the Invisible Man, faces obliterated by a cocoon of bandages. They will be at large for a couple of months apparently, promoting Philip Hedley's staging of the play as a West End musical.
 There's a Great British Embarrassment shaping up here.
 Spare a thought for the Londoner who, having spent a lifetime perfecting the art of being invisible in transit, glances up to find one of these bandaged figures. Oh, lord. Please, don't let him start talking to me. Let's pretend this isn't happening. 
 There is another Great British Embarrassment of our age already. It's called, oddly, The Peace. It is sponsored by the Church of England.
 This is the moment when members of the congregation, steeped in traditions of reserve and leaving other people alone, are obliged to turn, shake hands and even, for God's sake, speak to perfect strangers. There may be peace processes which have caused more anxiety and cringing desire for floors to open, but I can't for the moment think of any.
 The Order for Holy Communion, Rite B, from the Alternative Service Book (can you conceive of anybody going to the stake for Rite B?) sets it out like this:
 Priest: The peace of the Lord be always with you.
 All: And with thy spirit.
 All may exchange a sign of peace.
 At this point, elderly ladies, rigid with embarrassment, fling prayer books, hankies and handbags into the air. Mutter, mutter, goes the congregation - bobbing, shaking and finally stooping to pick up collection money scattered over the floor.
 Greeting strangers is bad enough; what about the people you already know? Last Christmas I could feel the tension rising as The Peace approached. My wife had realised that she was sitting directly behind the neighbour (the one with the mean, macho car) with whom she had been waging a four-year guerrilla war over parking space. Like it or not, they would have to go through the rite.
 You may say it's what Christianity is all about. But, it's not English. In the event, he cut her dead. Now that isn't very Christian but, by God, it is English.
 The only church I have attended which feels as though it knows how to cope with this business is in Greenwich. The Peace in this church is an excuse to mingle for what seems like 20 minutes as people wander and talk about lunch and things. The Invisible Man would have his hand wrung. They would ask about his operation.
 The Great British Embarrassment is caused by sudden and unsought visibility, as in having a striptease nun-a-gram inflicted upon you in a public place; being identified at an auction as the man in the green sweater who is told, in patronising tones, that he's bidding furiously against himself; being trapped in an endless shampoo cycle in the car-wash; creeping out in nightie and bunny rabbit slippers to collect the milk and finding the front door slam locked behind you.
 The liturgy is ideal for such purposes. As a schoolboy I was drafted as a last-minute substitute to read a lesson at the big Christmas carol service. The original choice, a policeman, had cried off.
 As they waded into the last verse of the hymn, I gulped and started the long plod from the back of that enormous, packed abbey towards the distant lectern.  This was exposure enough. And then another figure rose from his pew and stepped into the central aisle ahead of me.
 The policeman had tottered from his sickbed. There were two of us marching in step up the same aisle to the lectern to read the same lesson. He was oblivious. I could see the entire disaster unfolding before me. You know the feeling when a thousand eyes are regarding, fascinated, your reddening neck.
 I can only claim divine guidance. I simply dived into the seat he had vacated.  My appearance there prompted the startled reaction from his wife that you can now see on any Sunday when it comes to exchanging The Peace.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



47 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 23, 1993

FRUIT AND VEG TIPPED AS GROWTH AREAS FOR BUSINESS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 375 words

 
 BUSINESSMEN looking for 1990s opportunities should move into the soft drinks, fruit and vegetable or household insurance markets, but avoid tobacco products.  The forecasts are contained in the 1993 analysis of British consumer patterns of income and expenditure, published by Mintel. The report shows the trends over the past 10 years and predicts changes in the next decade. 
 "We believe the main growth areas will be educational fees, prepared foods, household insurance, soft drinks, domestic and garden help, and fruit and vegetables," said Mintel's senior analyst, Bill Patterson.
 But markets in long-term decline included tobacco products, cleaning and laundry, coal, shoes, clothes, furniture repair and meat and fish. There could also be a real decline in the 18-30 holiday market as the structure of British society changed, with an ageing population, fewer marriages, smaller families, more people living alone and a declining workforce, said Mintel.
 It predicted growth of nearly 3 per cent in population by 2002. A decline in the numbers aged under 30 would be counterbalanced by "dramatic growth" in the 30-59 age group.
 "These changes will have impacts on many UK markets," said Mr Patterson. "Can the health service cope with the growing needs of older people? How will the state pension system cope with the increasing number of pensioners?"
 Other findings included:
 - The average size of households continued to shrink, from 2.7 people in 1981 to 2.4 in 1991, and is predicted to drop to 2.3 by 2000.
 - There were an estimated 350,000 marriages last year and 174,000 divorces, compared with 398,000 and 156,000 in 1981.
 - Average annual household disposable income stands at pounds 18,251, compared with pounds 9,201 in 1982, a growth in real terms of 16 per cent.
 In a separate report, Mintel estimated that taxpayers last year paid more than 8 billion pounds they could have kept, or 13 per cent of all Treasury revenue.  Among other things, 2.5 billion pounds was wasted by the over-45s not making proper use of personal pensions, and 426 million pounds was collected through Inland Revenue error.
 The British Consumer: Patterns of Income and Expenditure 1993; Mintel; 895 pounds.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



48 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 26, 1993

RIGHTFUL PENSIONS

BYLINE: SANDY SULAIMAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 618 words

 
 THE OLD argument - whether a woman's contribution to marriage is as valuable as a man's - has taken on a new twist as the number of divorcees approaching retirement escalates. A whole generation of women who were responsible for home and children, while their husband was responsible for the income, are finding that divorcing him also means divorcing his pension rights.
 Pension rights are second only to the matrimonial home as the most valuable asset of a marriage. Yet occupational pension rights usually remain with the husband, as the ex-wage earner. Sandy Bishop's marriage ended after 24 years as a fulltime housewife. As she was not in paid employment she will only receive the basic state pension at the age of 60. Meanwhile, her husband is eligible to retire on a handsome company pension. "It incenses me that there is no recognition of the contribution I have made to the marriage and family." Women end up dependent on their ex-husband for maintenance payments, even after reaching retirement age. Or they simply get by on a state pension. 
 One in three marriages currently ends in divorce, and the situation looks set to worsen. The Family Policy Studies Centre predicted in a recent report that there will be a fourfold increase in the proportion of elderly divorced people over the next 35 years.
 The proportion of women over 60 who are divorced is expected to increase from three per cent in 1985 to 13 per cent in 2025. "Among today's 30-to-40 year olds, one in seven women can expect to reach old age as divorcees," pointed out the author of the report, Francis McGlone. "Britain's divorce laws have overlooked pension rights for women, the majority of whom do not contribute to either a personal or occupational pension."
 There is currently no legislation that property acquired during marriage should be shared equally. Claire Meltzer of solicitors Collyer-Bristow advocates that family courts should have powers to allocate pensions fairly between ex-partners. "It is not a difficult thing to put right, yet it affects the majority of couples who have longstanding marriages where the wife has not earned for the most part."
 Younger working women may think this is a problem facing only the older generation who didn't have access to their own occupational pension. But millions have similar prospects ahead. "At the moment only 57.1 per cent of female employees belong to an occupational pension scheme, compared to 73.6 per cent of male employees," points out Dorothy Robson of the Equal Opportunities Commission. Women are frequently in part-time or low-paid jobs that are not eligible for pensions. When women with occupational pensions enter retirement they are still considerably worse off than men. The average occupational pension received by men is pounds 61 per week: for women it is just pounds 30.
 But change is definitely in the air. The Pensions Management Institute (PMI) and the Law Society have just launched a joint working group, and a report will be launched this spring.
 Richard Malone of the PMI said he would like to see a system similar to the one in Scotland, where the net value of the matrimonial property (which includes occupational pension schemes) is shared equally. In the Netherlands, California and Germany, pension schemes are also split equally when couples divorce.  Pensions are an area where women need to take control. Thirty is is the time to start looking at pensions, says Dorothy Robson.
 What faces those who don't or can't afford to make their own arrangements is the prospect of falling into the same poverty trap as the current generation of retirement-age divorcees . . . unless the law gets changed.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



49 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 27, 1993

GOVERNMENT TO END AUTOMATIC FUNDING WHICH ALLOWS ELDERLY TO CHOOSE A HOME

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 28

LENGTH: 847 words

 
 CHANGES to the way help is provided to vulnerable adults who are unable to live on their own without some support will mean an end to automatic funding for elderly people on low incomes who choose to go into a private residential or nursing home.
 The new regulations will be introduced in April.
 At the moment, elderly people on low incomes who satisfy the eligibility rules for Income Support, have a right to claim financial help towards the cost of a place in an independent home.
 The rules are complex, but basically, an elderly person is entitled to help if they have less than 8,000 pounds in capital and savings. When calculating an individual's capital worth, the value of their former home can be ignored in certain circumstances, such as when a partner still lives there. 
 Providing the conditions are met, the amount that can be claimed towards fees starts at 175 pounds a week outside London and goes up to a maximum of 340 pounds a week for a nursing home in London catering specially for physical disablement which began before pension age. Up to 12.20 pounds a week is allowed on top for personal expenses.
 From April, the new legislation shifts resposibility from central government to local authorities.
 Under the new system, local authorities will buy in and pay direct for care services. They will not be legally able to give people cash payments towards their own choice of care. Instead, getting financial help with fees will depend first on undergoing a "need of care assessment" where the local social services will assess whether someone needs care and, if so, what type.
 Concerned groups fear these decisions may be governed too much by budgetary restraints. The local authorities are claiming that the money soon to be transferred to them to meet the costs of providing care in the community from central government is too low.
 "So people will be at the mercy of what their local authority can afford and believes they need," a spokeswoman for the Carer's National Association said.
 Where demand for care services is high and funding is tight, an authority may decide, for example, that an elderly person who wants to go into residential care could survive as well in their own home with the weekly visits from a home help.
 A spokeswoman for Age Concern said: "In theory these things should not happen, because the assessment is supposed to take into account the feelings and wishes of individuals, but in practice they could."
 Social services will be obliged to provide help for those who feel they have been unfairly assessed and to investigate complaints.
 Where a local authority agrees to arrange a place in a a residential care or nursing home, it must try and accommodate the individual's choice of home, provided it does not cost more normally expected to pay for someone with similar needs.
 The criteria for accessing assessment and services will vary from authority to authority. The only standardisation in the new system will be that if a person is assessed as needing residential care, a means test determining how much money they will have to contribute towards the cost will be the same throughout the country.
 The entitlement to financial assistance will be broadly aligned to present rules. Where someone has less than 8,000 pounds in savings, the local authority will assess their ability to pay some or all of the cost of the place in the home. The person will be left with a certain sum of money each week for personal expenses. Any difference between the person's assessed income, including benefits, and the fees of the home will be met.
 There is a difference in these rules which may particularly affect home owners. The present rules entitle an elderly person who is entering residential care and who owns a property to claim income support while the property is on sale.
 The statutory period allowed is 26 weeks after ceasing occupancy, but, given the current state of the property market, this is often extended, sometimes for several years, without the DSS imposing any charge on the capital value. This means that care fees are paid by the state.
 But, from April, the local authority will be entitled to take a legal charge against the value of the property from day one. Nick Tyler, of independent financial advisers Nursing Home Fees Agency, says: "People planning to enter care who own a home which doesn't look likely to sell are therefore advised to do so before April."
 The new arrangements do not apply to those already in a home who will have "preserved rights" to the special higher levels of income support. In most cases, this will be so even if they are currently paying the fees themselves but their own money runs out after April or they move to a different home.
 - For more information, contact your local social services department, home help, social worker, family doctor or district nurse. Specialist IFAs: Nursing Home Fees Agency 0865-750665; Advisory & Brokerage Services 071-405 8535.  Freeline Social Security 0800-666555.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



50 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

February 27, 1993

WHY COUNCIL TAX COULD BE CHARGED BY THE BACK DOOR

BYLINE: ADAM WISHART

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 28

LENGTH: 521 words

 
 CARE home residents and bedsit tenants may face unjust and arbitrary council tax bills in April, according to charities and tenants organisations.
 Simon Hardwick, General Secretary of the Leonard Cheshire Foundation, discovered last year that charitable care homes, whose residents were free from poll tax, will be liable for council tax. Through their fees, residents will pay a proportion of the property element of the tax - averaging 110 pounds per year - estimates Mr Hardwick. But, not being directly liable, they will be ineligible for transitional relief or benefits. 
 Mr Hardwick says the council tax liabilities will discourage charities from moving towards more progressive independent living arrangements.
 The Leonard Cheshire Foundation and 25 other charities have formed the Council Tax Action Group to demand legislative changes to protect charitable homes' tax exemption. The National Care Homes Association, representing private care homes, calls for these to be included too.
 The Action Group has met Robin Squire, the junior Local Government Minister.  But he is unlikely to concede. A spokesman for the DoE said the problem will be minimised by discounts and through social service budgets.
 Elsewhere, the DoE is working fast to plug a loophole which will allow landlords of bedsit tenants with rents set by the Rent Officer or the Rent Assessment Committee to have these increased to include a proportion of council tax.
 Geoff Cutting, chair of the Small Landlords Association, says: "It is a welcome move which will redress what would have been an inequitable law." Without it landlords would have been unable to increase these rents.
 Nick Beacock, of the Campaign for Bedsit Rights, says: "It is disgraceful that the Government has only got around to sorting out these administrative arrangements at the very last minute."
 He is concerned that this rent reregistration could overwhelm the bureaucracy and create uncertain delays for tenants. And rent officers may not have sufficient training or time to make fair decisions.
 The new regulations - being introduced through a statutory instrument - will only affect a small proportion of the 2.5 million bedsit tenants in England and Wales. Most are unlikely to have any written contract and their rents will be effectively up for negotiation in April.
 Assured shorthold tenants will escape rent rises until the end of their contracts. Assured tenants, with written agreements, will only suffer rent increases if the contract allows.
 For Nick Beacock the statutory instrument does not have sufficient safeguards to prevent landlords overcharging for council tax.
 He says: "Many tenants will still be left vulnerable to the free market. We are particularly concerned that the council tax will be used as another excuse to further increase rents and for landlords to profiteer."
 - A briefing leaflet, The Council Tax and Older People, is available free from the Distribution Department, Council Tax, Age Concern England, 1268 London Road, London SW 16 4ER. Send a large stamped addressed envelope.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



51 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 2, 1993

PRIVATE EYE OF PIGALLE;
Obituary: Eddie Constantine

BYLINE: RONALD BERGAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 573 words

 
 EDDIE CONSTANTINE, who has died aged 75, was the true American in Paris of the cinema, not Gene Kelly's tourist version. In the 1950s, Constantine's pock-marked rough-hewn face would loom out from giant coloured posters outside cinemas along the crowded boulevards of Place Pigalle.
 As Lemmy Caution, derived from Peter Cheyney's detective, in films with titles such as Le Grand Bluff, Du Rififi Chez Les Femmes and Lemmy Pour Les Dames, Constantine played the American private eye the way the French like them - tough, cynical, womanising and whisky-drinking. 
 The films also had the advantage of being homegrown. There was no need for dubbing or sub-titling, and the denizens of the unsmart Parisian arrondisements could recognise their own surroundings. Crude, naive and cheaply made as the pictures were, they were the forerunners of French films noirs, such as Jean-Pierre Melville's series of gritty freewheeling crime thrillers.
 Recognising Constantine's Lemmy Caution as a popular icon, Jean-Luc Godard appropriated the actor and character for his eerie comic-book futurist tales, Alphaville (1965). Godard cleverly used the trappings of American pulp fiction and the Caution movies to make telling political points.
 Constantine, who was born to Russian immigrants in Los Angeles, was sent in his late teens to Vienna to study voice by his operatic baritone father. But after returning to the US, he got no further than the chorus of Radio City Music Hall.
 When his wife, the dancer Helene Mussel, joined the Ballets de Monte Carlo in 1948, he followed her to Paris, where he began singing in bars and cabarets.  His gruff voice and American accent soon gained him popularity and the intimate friendship of Edith Piaf.
 After some years touring and recording, he was offered the role of Lemmy Caution in Cet Homme Est Dangereux, the first of a dozen such action films. In an attempt to humanise the thuggish side of the character, the actor would turn on the charm.
 In one of the later Caution films, he grins at a stewardess on a plane, who peevishly asks him if he thinks he is irresistible. He is taken aback for a moment and then asks an elderly woman sitting next to him what she thinks of his smile. She replies enthusiastically, "Irresistible!"
 Constantine did not travel well outside France, though he turned up in a number of minor British films, the best being SOS Pacific (1959), in which his plane crashes on a desert island, the site of a nuclear bomb test. Curiously, he dies in the American version, but survives in the British one.
 In later years, Constantine seemed quite content to caricature his persona, as in Rainer Werner Fassbinder's Beware Of The Holy Whore (1970), in which, wearing shades, wide-brimmed hats and jeans, and swearing and drinking profusely, he played the star of an ill-fated German film being shot in Spain.
 Previously, he had played himself in Sloth, the Godard section of Seven Deadly Sins, as a famous movie idol who is too lazy to respond to the sexual advances of a young starlet.
 Constantine remained fond of his screen alter ego, even naming his son Lemmy.  When French television showed a number of the films a few years ago, he declared, "It's incredible. They still love those old films in spite of all the new stuff that's been around in the cinema since."
 Eddie Constantine, born October 29, 1917; died February 25, 1993.

LOAD-DATE: June 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



52 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 3, 1993

NOT AS YOUNG AS WE WERE;
We're already feeling our age, but new census results reveal an unpredicted explosion in Britain's elderly population

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 591 words

 
 ANY DOUBTS that ministers will raise the state pension age for women have surely been dispelled by new official population projections, showing a steep upward revision in the expected growth of Britain's elderly population.
 The figures, published last week but largely unnoticed, have profound implications for health and social policy. Planners were already working on an assumption of an ageing society, but the new projections suggest this will be
 far more pronounced than they thought.
 On the basis of existing pension ages of 65 for men and 60 for women, the estimates now suggest the number of pensioners will soar by 50 per cent in the first 30 years of the next century. By 2031, there will be 79 dependants for every 100 people of working age, compared with only 63 in 1991. 
 The new projections come as Peter Lilley, Social Security Secretary, is about to announce which option the Government is to choose for equalising the pension age in response to pressure from the European Community. A consultation paper 14 months ago offered alternatives of age 60, 63 or 65 for both sexes, with the first costing an extra pounds 3.5 billion a year and the last saving at least pounds 3 billion; the choice of 63 would be cost-neutral.
 Although the paper appeared to favour 63, ministerial opinion has swung towards 65 and the new population estimates may have clinched the case, increasing by 1.2 million in England and Wales alone the previous prediction of the number of pensioners in 2031.
 The estimates also ratchet up the future bill for community care of elderly people and make NHS funding look even more of an unsquareable circle than at present. Pensioners account for more than 45 per cent of health spending.
 The projections, by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys, are made every two years. The new set is based on mid-1991 population figures, compared with mid-1989 statistics on which the previous estimates were calculated.  Although the forecasts are for England and Wales, the pattern for the UK as a whole will be little different.
 The key change is a sharp increase in the projected numbers of people over 45, which the OPCS attributes to "appreciable" reductions in forecast birth and death rates. The number of those over present pension ages are expected to increase slowly from 9.1 million in 1991 to 9.6 million in 2001, but then to spurt by 50 per cent to 14.4 million by 2031. Within this group, the number of those over 75 - the heaviest consumers of health and social services - is now expected to reach 6.1 million by 2031 (compared with 3.6 million in 1991), a figure 18 per cent higher than that previously forecast.
 By contrast, the number of children is projected to grow 7 per cent, from 10.3 million in 1991 to 11 million in 2001, but then to fall to 10.1 million by 2031. The population of working age is expected to grow 5 per cent over 20 years, from 31.3 million in 1991 to 33 million in 2011, and then to fall 7 per cent to 30.8 million by 2031.
 The especially bad news here is that the initial increase in this working population group is almost entirely attributable to those over 45. The number of adults under 30 is projected to fall by 18 per cent between 1991 and 2031, from 10.8 million to 8.9 million. Not only will there be fewer workers supporting more dependants, but the workers will be no spring chickens.
 OPCS Monitor PP2 93/1, pounds 1.80; Information Branch (Dept M), OPCS, St Catherine's House, 10 Kingsway, London WC2B 6JP.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



53 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 5, 1993

ATTENTION CENTRES ON CULT'S CHILDREN IN TEXAS STAND-OFF;
FBI finds body outside compound as Koresh releases two more minors

BYLINE: SIMON TISDALL IN WACO, TEXAS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 631 words

 
 THE fate of 18 children held inside David Koresh's besieged cult compound here may hold the key to the outcome of an unfolding tragedy which has claimed at least six lives so far.
 A small army of FBI, police and other federal agents, backed by national guardsmen and Huey attack helicopters from nearby Fort Hood, kept the estimated 108 members of the Branch Davidian isolated from the outside world yesterday - the fifth day of the siege.
 After saying on Wednesday that he was awaiting "instructions from God", Mr Koresh was said to have told telephone negotiators that he had now received them. God had told him not to give up, not yet at least. There are believed to be 18 children, 47 women, and 43 men still inside the Mount Carmel compound. 
 The Foreign Office said yesterday that 45 British men, women and children may be inside. "We now have a list of 45 people who have gone to the ranch recently and may still be there," a spokesman said.
 Justice department sources had earlier estimated that 43 foreigners were inside the compound, most of them British.
 Officials were reportedly preparing to cut off electricity to the compound yesterday, even though it has its own generators. It was confirmed, meanwhile, that two children, both Americans, had been released, bringing to 20 the total of children allowed to leave the compound, in addition to two elderly women.
 Painstaking negotiations continued, and portable office buildings and toilets were moved to the area, another sign that the stand-off may be a long one. An FBI spokesman, Jeffrey Jamar, said the authorities were determined to do "whatever it takes to settle this matter without further bloodshed".
 He said that Mr Koresh "seems to have recovered miraculously from wounds he said he received during Sunday's raid." Mr Jamar also revealed that the body of an unidentified white male had been found north of the compound.
 Former cult members, and friends of Mr Koresh, said they feared that the man who claims to be the son of God would die rather than surrender.
 Marc Breault, a former cult member, said Mr Koresh had led discussions on how to commit suicide by taking cyanide. He said most of the children still in the compound were probably related to Mr Koresh, who is a polygamist. None of the released children was his offspring.
 "There is a pattern," Mr Breault told the Waco Tribune-Herald. "He teaches that his children are the only ones that are righteous seed, legitimate in God's eyes. By releasing these children, I believe he's saying that that these children are not worth sacrificing . . . By sacrifice, I mean becoming martyrs."
 Other former associates said that Mr Koresh, aged 33, believed that, like Jesus, he would be crucified only to rise again - thereby proving his claim to be the Lamb of God as in the Book of Revelations. One suggested the crisis might come today, because Jesus died on a Friday. Jesus is believed to have been 33 years old when he died.
 The continuing presence of many children in the compound is one reason why the FBI has eschewed any further use of force so far. President Clinton, who has been kept informed of developments in Waco, has expressed his personal concern for the welfare of the children.
 The governor of Texas Ann Richards, said meanwhile that she was considering tougher gun laws in the state, on weapons like assault rifles which "aren't for anything except killing people".
 - A Californian family was watching television reports about the Texas cult stand-off when a man invaded their living room, screamed he was Jesus Christ and yelled "Take me to Waco!" Jeff Terrell, aged 31, of Los Angeles, is in custody charged with suspected burglary and making death threats to a police officer.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



54 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 6, 1993

FBI SAYS CULT BOSS 'CALLING THE SHOTS'

BYLINE: SIMON TISDALL IN WACO, TEXAS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 513 words

 
 DAVID KORESH, the self-proclaimed son of God who is holed up in a besieged compound here, is lucid and irritable by turns but adamant that he will not surrender, federal officials said yesterday.
 "We believe that Koresh is in total control of the people in the compound," said Bob Ricks, an FBI spokesman. "He continues to indicate that all the adults are free to leave at any time." Only two adults, both elderly women, have so far done so. 
 Another child, Heather Jones, aged nine, was freed from the Mount Carmel ranch yesterday, leaving a total of 17 children, 47 women, and 43 men inside. Up to half the adults are foreigners, the majority believed to be from Britain.
 Mr Ricks said negotiators talking to Mr Koresh by telephone were effectively in the 33-year-old cult leader's hands. "We are not able to negotiate for the release of specific individuals. We are bound by his schedule with regard to the children. We have been focusing on the children."
 More than 20 children have been freed since the siege began last Sunday, when at least six people died in a bungled assault by federal agents. Under criticism for the raid, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) and the FBI have vowed to end the affair without further bloodshed.
 Mr Ricks said Mr Koresh was sometimes lucid, sometimes irritable. "We have long conversations about the scriptures."
 But Mr Ricks admitted that Mr Koresh was calling the shots, often refused to discuss issues raised by his interlocutors, and was sticking by his earlier insistence that he was awaiting "instructions from God".
 "We have no specific bargaining items in place," Mr Ricks said, explaining the way the negotiations were being conducted. "We're not engaged in bargaining. We are still in the same situation. He says he has received a message from God to wait and that has not changed."
 The FBI spokesman said, however, that Mr Koresh had assured negotiators that he had no intention of committing suicide, or ordering cult members to kill themselves.
 He was addressing concerns that the group might resort to a mass suicide such as that in Guyana in 1978, when more than 900 followers of the evangelist Jim Jones took their lives.
 He added that Mr Koresh had objected to comparisons of himself with Jesus. "He seems to see himself more as a prophet or messenger."
 Mr Koresh changed his name from Vernon Howell some years ago. Koresh is a Hebrew word meaning prophet and is also Hebrew for Cyrus. King Cyrus is held to have freed the Jews from their captivity in Babylon in 539 BC.
 Mr Ricks said the negotiators were taking advice from biblical scholars. He gave no indication of any break in the siege.
 Although the FBI said that Mr Koresh told them his followers are free to leave the compound whenever they want, the agency believes the standoff will not end until Mr Koresh himself walks out.
 An ATF spokesman, Dan Conroy, said: "I can't say what his long-term goals are.  His mindset last Sunday was very violent, I'm not sure that has changed at all."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



55 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 8, 1993

PAST NOTES: SPIRIT OF BOSNIAN INSURGENTS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 351 words

 
 March 8, 1877
 From an occasional correspondent
 AT THE CHETA here I noticed certain Croatian elements among the men, showing that we are now on a more northern part of the frontier. Croatia is, in fact, only separated from Bosnia by the Unna, which at this point joins the Unnatz.  The insurgers here, as elsewhere, seemed in good spirits and to want for nothing: and indeed, after visiting five insurgent camps, I am inclined to take a far more favourable view of the prospects of the insurrection than is usual outside Bosnia. Among the Slavs of the border countries there is a certain amount of dejection owing chiefly to the corrupt transactions of many of their own committees and soi-disant patriots; and in Croatia, especially, subscriptions have latterly fallen off. But once on the free soil of liberated Bosnia one breathes a purer air, and I do not doubt that the men I have met would shed the last drop of their blood rather than lay down their arms. No one here dreams of peace. 
 Most of the unarmed inhabitants of Unnatz succeeded in escaping before the Turks came, but five were murdered. I was told by a man that among the slain were two old women; one, Telka Petchianska, aged 85, and the other Simeone Mihailovich, of whose age I could get nothing more definite than that "she was old, very old, about 100". This great age is not improbable as there are instances of extraordinary longevity to be found amongst the Bosnian refugees.  One is 107, and looks it!
 My guide directed me across a bare mountain plateau to a wretched settlement of Rayah fugitives. There were about 30 in all but, from the lamentable state in which they were, many must have died since I saw them. Seven or eight of them were children - such little old faces, pinched and wrinkled and distorted with famine and disease, some scarcely able to stand. They had been living through the winter on what they could beg of the villagers of neighbouring poljes, almost as destitute as themselves. There are hundreds of such groups among these mountains, to whom no one can hope to penetrate with aid.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



56 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 10, 1993

NO HOME GOOD ENOUGH TO GO TO;
Volunteers:New community care legislation arrangements for discharging people from hospital may result in thousands of stranded patients clogging up beds

BYLINE: ANDREW COLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 575 words

 
 THE idea behind the British Red Cross's "home from hospital" service is a simple one, says its Norfolk co-ordinator, Judith Horner. "It's really about preventing elderly people coming back from hospital to a cold home, empty of food. I don't think you can get more fundamental than that." 
 Horner heads one of three similar Red Cross projects that were launched seven years ago - the others are in Derbyshire, Hereford and Worcester. Now the schemes, which cost about pounds 30,000 a year each to run, look set for rapid expansion. A Health Department start-up grant set up two more at the beginning of this year and several others are in the pipeline.
 Staffed by a salaried co-ordinator and an army of volunteers, each scheme shapes itself according to local needs. But the overriding aim is to bridge the gap between hospital and home (and all too often between health and local authorities) by providing short-term help in the home to patients - usually elderly - who would otherwise be compelled to stay in hospital.
 Patrick, 61, who has been in and out of hospital in recent years with heart problems, has good reason to be grateful to the scheme. For the past four years he has lived alone, for much of that time in an upper-storey flat in the centre of Norwich.
 Each time he returns from hospital, Red Cross volunteers have been on hand to meet him, run errands for him, provide transport and even help furnish his home. "Sometimes it was just a matter of making cups of tea, but it's great to know there's somebody there to give you a hand," he says. "They've helped me get back on my feet. I'm not sure what I'd have done without them."
 Not surprisingly, the Norfolk service is much in demand. Last year Horner and her 60 volunteers saw more than 500 clients, half of whom were over 80 and over two-thirds of whom were living alone. Horner expects the workload will increase further when the new community care regime, with its emphasis on stricter discharge procedures, comes into force. She also suspects that the scheme may change to some extent. Already it extends beyond home care to providing such things as a sitting service for the terminally ill. There are growing pressures, Horner says, to cover a wider age range and to move into hitherto unexplored territory such as mental health and child care.
 Not everyone views such a prospect with equanimity. "It's not that volunteers can't do these things," says Bridget Penhale, social workers' team leader at the West Norwich hospital, who has worked closely with the Red Cross scheme.  "But if there's a service that ought to be provided by statutory services, is it right to provide it by volunteers?" Horner insists the Red Cross is sensitive to this delicate balance. "I am very aware that we shouldn't be taking paid employment away. We are looking at and monitoring the sorts of referrals we get to ensure that doesn't happen. Our whole aim is to work with the agencies and to complement their care, rather than to compete with them."
 But she points out volunteers can sometimes go where professionals cannot.  "Often people will trust volunteers where they wouldn't social services, so we can act as a bridge." The Red Cross emblem also helps, Horner says. "That answers a lot of doubts for many elderly people who have very fond memories of what the Red Cross did for them in previous wars. It's quite interesting - and very fortunate for us."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



57 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 10, 1993

HOSPITALS: NO HOME GOOD ENOUGH TO GO TO;
New community care legislation arrangements for discharging people from hospital may result in thousands of stranded patients clogging up beds

BYLINE: ANDREW COLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1057 words

 
 IT IS THE nightmare scenario, but it must have been disturbing the sleep of a growing number of hospital trust and health authority managers in recent weeks.
 The nightmare centres on the new arrangements for discharging hospital patients, laid down in the community care legislation. The fear is that if, as many now suspect, these procedures prove too demanding to be implemented properly, the hospital system could clog up with thousands of beds blocked by stranded patients.
 The consequence of that could be a fatal blow to managers' carefully-laid plans to reduce waiting lists and honour the central pledge of the Patient's Charter. The political fall-out could be immense. The irony is that all those caught up in this looming crisis agree that the new discharge arrangements are a huge improvement on current practice. Hospital discharge procedures have been one of the health service's more invisible scandals. 
 Communication between hospital and community services, and even between the discharging consultant and other hospital staff, has often been non-existent.  The result has been that, all too often, frail and dependent patients return to an empty home or an equally dependent carer, with no back-up support in evidence.
 The new arrangements seek to avoid that by identifying a key professional - usually a social worker - responsible for discharge arrangements, and stipulating that highly-dependent patients should have a full assessment and "care package" organised before they leave hospital. The whole procedure is founded on the paramountcy of the patient's needs - not the service's.
 The Health Department recognised how central this was to the reforms when it stipulated last September that all local and health authorities should set up "robust and mutually acceptable" discharge procedures by the end of the year - or risk losing out on the next stage of the community care transitional grant.  Not surprisingly, all authorities now have their arrangements in place.
 That, however, may be where the real problems begin. In most cases the new arrangements lay down the criteria for discharge and assessment, as well as deadlines for the completion, but cannot guarantee the resources to turn paper promises into reality. As Pauline Ford, the Royal College of Nursing's adviser on nursing and older people, says: "You can assess people's needs till you're blue in the face, and draw up a beautiful plan of care, but if you don't have the resources, then those needs aren't going to be met."
 Another factor in this highly complex situation is nursing home care. A large proportion of the most problematic discharges are of elderly people - 40 per cent of patients in acute surgical wards are over 65. Currently doctors can refer such patients, where appropriate, to a nursing home without going through a formal assessment process, with the bill in many cases being met by income support benefit. However, from April 1, social services will hold the purse strings and nobody can be referred without a full assessment.
 Dr Andrew Vallance-Owen, head of the British Medical Association's central services, says most doctors accept the need for assessment. But what happens, he asks, if local authorities' budgets run out or individual patients referred by doctors are not considered high priority?
 In some parts of the country, this will inevitably lead to further pressure on hospitals to hold on to patients. Elsewhere, he predicts, it could lead conversely to heavier demands on community services, in particular general practitioners, and that unfailing last line of defence, the informal carer.  "There are six million carers at the moment. I would have thought we are likely to see that increase significantly," Dr Vallance-Owen says. The picture is not all bleak, however. In Hampshire, for instance, there is some optimism about the immediate future. Bucking the general trend, the social services department will be receiving nearly pounds 500,000 extra in its budget this year.
 Simon Williams, area manager in Basingstoke, is reasonably happy with the local agreements on hospital discharge and assessment that he has helped to hammer out, as well as with general progress towards implementation.
 Timescales are laid down for each stage of the fairly complex process of assessment, but it must be a little worrying that the whole process could take as long as 10 days. Williams insists that many, if not most, assessments will be much quicker than this. Nevertheless, he acknowledges there could be delays, leading to bed blocking, if the money starts to run out later in the financial year.
 "None of us know whether the budgets are adequate to the demand," Williams says. "We are going into this knowing roughly what the expected flows from hospital are. If our information is right, we ought to have just about the right money, but it's impossible to say."
 For other authorities the crisis may come sooner. One deeply worried trust executive is predicting that his beds could start to be blocked within five weeks. Others believe the crunch will come in the autumn when social services' finances start to dwindle.
 The more far-sighted authorities are already planning for this. Some have put aside joint contingency funds, aiming to pay for services such as night sitting - that is, the provision of somebody to stay with a discharged patient who lives alone - or even a piece of equipment which could make the difference between discharge and continued hospitalisation. Others are examining the idea of short-term referrals to residential care.
 Pauline Ford suggests one way forward would be to develop NHS nursing homes, providing convalescence and continuing care. It could well be a choice between investing in additional low-tech, low-cost beds, she says, or blocking much more expensive high-tech beds.
 Above all, however, she believes the challenge highlights the conflict between quantity and quality in today's health service. "More patients are being treated, but nobody is looking at the quality of that care," Ford says. "Nurses are being made to feel they are failing unless they hit the turnover rates that have been set. The trouble is that no one seems to be looking at the quality of the discharge or the re-admission rates."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



58 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 10, 1993

NOBODY'S BABY;
Finance:When the community care shake-up starts on April 1, government bills should fall, and choices of the elderly and disabled should increase. But will it work out that way?

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 318 words

 
 CALCULATION of the funding for the community care shake-up was so complex that it was undertaken by a committee called the "algebra group". For the record, the resulting formula is T=(X-C)(N-P). In plain English, this represents a phased transfer of money from social security to local authorities as the latter gradually assume responsibility for services to elderly and disabled people. People already in residential care will continue to get social security. 
 The transfer will rise from pounds 399 million in 1993-94 in England ( pounds 472 million in Britain) to pounds 1.6 billion in 1995-96 ( pounds 1.8 billion), with authorities receiving an extra pounds 140 million in the coming financial year to pay for setting up the community care system. The English total of pounds 539 million for 1993-94 is pounds 289 million less than local authority associations said would be needed. The gap is made up of pounds 89 million to cover a claimed underestimate of 12,000 in the numbers of people who will come forward for services; pounds 146 million for the existing shortfall between social security rates and residential home charges; and pounds 54 million for start-up costs.
 In a guidance note to its councillors, the Labour Party says: "The underfunding of community care may mean that budgets . . . could run out in mid-year - with serious political consequences." Ministers dismiss such claims as scaremongering. They say the claim that 12,000 people will be unfunded in 1993-4, and could therefore miss out on services, is based on faulty data: the funding, they maintain, in fact allows for services for more people than population projections indicate will be necessary. The Health Department forecasts there will be 332,000 state-funded residents of care homes by 1995; the community care funding is said to allow for 369,000; the local authority associations predict 425,000.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



59 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 10, 1993

NOBODY'S BABY;
Local government:When the community care shake-up starts on April 1, government bills should fall, and choices of the elderly and disabled should increase. But will it work out that way?

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1122 words

 
 FIVE years ago next Tuesday, Sir Roy Griffiths coined the memorable adage that community care was "everybody's distant relative, but nobody's baby". On April 1, in long-awaited implementation of his proposals, it will become the baby of local government.
 How the infant will thrive, and whether the parent can cope, are issues of enormous uncertainty. They hinge not only on the ability of local authorities to handle their new role, but also on questions including the adequacy of government funding and the willingness of other agencies - the continuing distant relatives - to muck in and help. 
 If the idea works, however, the result should be an appreciable improvement in the quality of life of elderly and disabled people and, as a spin-off, curtailment of the Government's spiralling social security bill for those in residential care.
 Or is it a spin-off? Little has been heard of this aspect of late, as ministers have sought to play down any suggestion that the community care shake-up is designed as a cost-saver, but it was very much an imperative when Sir Roy was commissioned to make his proposals. The Audit Commission reported in December 1986 that the bill for social security board-and-lodging payments for people in residential care had risen to pounds 489 million - from pounds 39 million in December 1982. Rapid as that growth was, compare the 1986 figure of pounds 489 million with Whitehall's estimates for the equivalent payments plus disability benefits (attendance allowance and disability living allowance) for people in residential care if the system were to stay unchanged: pounds 3.2 billion in 1993-94; pounds 4.1 billion in 1995-96.
 There is an imperative to constrain this startling increase, especially in view of the public spending squeeze, the Government's ambition to cut social security spending in the long term - and the new population projections estimating the numbers of elderly people will, by 2031, be markedly higher than once thought. But it would be unfair to suggest that ministers are not genuinely anxious to see community care changes that give elderly and disabled people more choice about where and how they live.
 The aim of the changes taking effect next month is to harness the disparate agencies and efforts going into community care so that help may be better focused and, as a result, more people may be able to stay in their own homes.  To do this harnessing, local government has been given primary responsibility.  This may seem a surprising choice when local authorities are otherwise being stripped of functions and powers, but it is not envisaged that they will themselves provide many of the care services. As in the health service, a purchaser/provider divide is expected to evolve, with local authorities commissioning services from the voluntary and private sectors.
 The key function of local authorities will be assessment of the needs of elderly and disabled people, drawing on expertise and advice from other agencies, such as family doctors, but with final responsibility vested in social workers trained for the task.
 The authorities are being given funds to buy services appropriate to the assessed needs. However, individuals will be means-tested and required to contribute to the care costs according to their income and capital. One fundamental of the system is choice: individuals will be free to decline a service offered them and choose another, provided it meets their needs and costs no more. If it does cost more, it can still be chosen if the individual pays the difference.
 What are the likely pitfalls of the system which, at least in principle, enjoys a broad measure of political and professional support? First there is the sufficiency of the Government's funding: pounds 539 million is being provided to local authorities in England in 1993-94, pounds 399 million of it a transfer from social security for the estimated number of people who would otherwise have gone direct into residential homes and claimed benefit. The money is earmarked for community care use only, but there is contention over whether it will prove enough. Stemming from this, there is anxiety and uncertainty over what will happen if an authority decides through assessment that an individual ought to have a certain service, but lacks the cash to pay for it.
 Local authorities fear they will be dragged into the courts by people demanding their assessments are complied with. Guidance issued by the Department of Health before Christmas appeared to advise authorities not to tell individuals about their assessments if there was a risk of them not being acted upon.  Clarification sent last week to authorities in the London area appears only to have made matters worse, concluding that "there will undoubtedly be a somewhat uncomfortable period of adjustment to these new requirements, in all probability steered by a number of judicial reviews".
 The most likely immediate problems, however, are over co-ordination of services: liaison between local authorities and other agencies has not up to now been good in all parts of the country and there is, quite evidently, some resentment among health professionals at having to play second fiddle in the new structure.
 Liaison will be critical in determining how fast patients can be discharged from hospital when they must first be assessed by social services. According to a recent survey, three in four hospitals expect discharge delays (see Hospitals, right). But liaison will also be vital for the very survival of residential drug and alcohol clinics which, because of a ministerial decision to reverse an earlier guarantee of their funding, will depend on local authorities which may see them as a low priority for limited community care cash. The clinics lost a recent, last-ditch attempt to regain their guaranteed funding by judicial review. Almost three-quarters of them say they face closure by the end of the year.
 In the long run, private residential homes are also likely to suffer. The Audit Commission says that private homes have grown by 90 per cent in the past decade, while the over-75 population grew by just 20 per cent, and that some "will have to be managed down and closed". In the short run, the relative under-development of domiciliary care services will militate against many people being enabled to stay in their own homes rather than in residential care.
 Even when domiciliary services are in greater supply, the burden of care will remain on what are delicately termed "informal" services. As is acknowledged by the Health Department's own leaflet on the new community care system, "family and friends give most of this help".

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



60 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 11, 1993

CODE SOUGHT ON USE OF ELECTRONIC TAGS FOR ELDERLY

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 252 words

 
 GUIDANCE should be issued by the Government on the growing use of electronic tagging as a means to control elderly people and others in care, a report says today.
 Many people feel that tagging devices are undignified and potentially dehumanising, the report says. But others regard them as an acceptable way of allaying worries about a vulnerable person leaving an establishment undetected.
 Although it is not known how extensive tagging is, the report by the charity Counsel and Care for the Elderly claims it is "quite widely available" in health service hospitals and is in use in a number of private and local authority care homes.
 The devices, worn or carried by the resident or patient, activate an alarm when passing a detector fitted to a door or gate. Development work includes the possibility of implanting them.
 The report, prepared in consultation with 16 other organisations representing groups including local authorities, health authorities and trusts, care homes and social workers, says tagging raises fundamental ethical issues.
 The Department of Health should clarify the legality of the devices, if necessary in legislation, and issue a code of practice on their use. In any event, tagging should be used only selectively and exceptionally, with steps taken "to ensure that the procedure is carried out in ways which respect dignity, privacy and autonomy".
 People and Parcels; Counsel and Care, Twyman House, 16 Bonny Street, London NW1 9PG; free with A4 sae.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



61 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 12, 1993

CHELSEA AND WESTMINSTER COST OVERRUN CAUSES CASH CRISIS AT WELLFIELD HOSPITAL

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 324 words

 
 THREE elderly patients from Wellfield hospital - Rennie Reeves, Alice Humbeles and Dorothy Hunn - are among the most pitiful victims of the cash crisis to which the Chelsea and Westminster's cost overrun contributed.
 The hospital used to be in Hatfield, Hertfordshire. Plans to rebuild it were submitted to the Department of Health in 1987. 
 Two years later, the patients were temporarily transferred and the building demolished.
 The plans were then shelved because of a capital spending freeze in the North West Thames health region, blamed officially on the property slump but also linked by critics of the Chelsea and Westminster to that scheme's spiralling bill.
 The elderly women patients have languished ever since in their temporary surroundings 10 miles away in East Herts hospital, Hertford, a former Victorian fever unit.
 Of the 16 patients transferred, 12 have since died. Eleven more have since joined them.
 The 4 million pounds Wellfield rebuilding scheme remains without a start date, although the East Hertfordshire NHS trust, which is responsible for it, insists it still plans to go ahead with it.
 Dr Paul Lambden, the trust's chief executive, said in a letter to campaigners in January: "The trust is fully committed to reproviding Wellfield as soon as the money is received." The money would be allocated in 1994/95 "as far as I know", he added.
 A spokesman for the region said yesterday the rebuilding scheme was not definitely in the 1994/95 programme, as "the methodology for assessing relative priorities is currently under assessment".
 While the region was aware there was a shortage of provision for elderly people in Hertfordshire, no commitment to a starting date could be made.
 Eileen Bannister, whose mother, Kath Dixon, is one of the Wellfield patients, said: "It's literally hopeless. There is no hope of ever getting them back to Hatfield, which they were promised."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



62 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 12, 1993

FBI NAMES 14 BRITONS IN US CULT COMPOUND

BYLINE: SIMON TISDALL IN WACO, TEXAS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 662 words

 
 THE FBI yesterday released the names of 14 Britons, mostly Mancunians, who are holed up inside the besieged Branch Davidian compound in Waco commanded by cult leader David Koresh.
 The FBI spokesman, Dick Swensen, also pointed to a possible breakthrough in the 12-day siege when he said that three men had agreed to leave the compound and surrender to the 500-strong force of federal agents.
 The men, one of whom was named as Oliver Gyarfas from Australia, were expected to come out later in the day, Mr Swensen said.
 The Britons' names appeared on a list of 48 cult members the FBI said it has talked to during the negotiations. Official British sources said 28 British citizens were known to be in the compound, but the total could be 45. 
 Three British children were released last week. In all, 107 people are inside the Mount Carmel complex, according to Mr Koresh.
 Mr Swensen said there had been no contact since Tuesday with Mr Koresh, who was wounded during the February 28 shoot-out which began the siege.
 Another cult member, Steve Schneider, has taken over much of the negotiating.
 But Mr Swensen said Mr Koresh, aged 33, was still "indirectly involved" and did not appear to have lost control of his followers. Mr Koresh had been wounded in the arm and the side but his injuries were not life-threatening, officials said.
 "I think this is an outstanding sign, that three people are going to be coming out today," Mr Swensen said. "It's an excellent sign."
 But he admitted that if something went wrong and the men did not give up, that would be seen as a significant backward step in the negotiations.
 "We're just not sure whether he [Koresh] is holding any others against their will," Mr Swensen said.
 But the negotiators' hope was clearly that they have broken the cult's unified front and that dissent was appearing in the ranks.
 Last week, 23 people left the compound - 21 children and two elderly women. But there has been no movement since last Thursday, and pressure is growing on the FBI to bring the stand-off to an end - by force if necessary.
 Additional armoured vehicles were moved to the perimeter of the compound on Wednesday night, joining at least four Abrams battle tanks. An appeal has been made by the Red Cross in Waco for blood donors amid fears of a violent end to the siege this weekend.
 The weather has deteriorated sharply, with heavy rain and wind adding to the stress on the forces encircling the compound.
 The mayor of Waco, Robert Sheehy, appealed yesterday for all residents to give full support to the law enforcement agencies and to pray for a peaceful outcome.
 He described the recent violence here as not typical of the people of Waco. "We look at it as a sort of aberration - this could happen anywhere," Mr Sheehy said.
 A hard core of heavily-armed cult members, who call themselves the "Mighty Men", are believed to be running the compound, where a majority of the adults are female. In the past two days, banners have been hoisted from windows by some cult members, appealing for help.
 The 14 Britons named yesterday were: Yvette Fagen, aged 32, from Manchester; Zilla Henry, aged 55, from Old Trafford, Manchester, and her five children, Diana, aged 29, Stephen, aged 26, Paulina, aged 24, Phillip, aged 22, and Vanessa, aged 19; David Lloyd Lovelock, aged 37, from Withington, Manchester; Alison Monbelly, aged 31; Rosemary Morrison, aged 29, from Fallowfield, Manchester, and her daughter, Melissa, aged 6; Theresa Noberega, aged 48, from Winchmore Hill, north London; Anita Richards; and Doris Vaega (ages and home towns unknown).
 The relatives of other Britons believed to be in the compound are now in Waco, including Denise Johnson, who believes that her cousin, Sandra Hardial, is inside. The FBI emphasised that the list was incomplete and included several phonetic name spellings.
 Gun-happy Texans still call the shots, page 20

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



63 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 12, 1993

AND WAKING SAY ALAS!;
This month marks the centenary of the birth of Wilfred Owen whose death at the end of the first world war was the greatest loss to English poetry since the death of Keats

BYLINE: JOHN EZARD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1847 words

 
 WHEN peace came on November 11, 1918 Wilfred Owen's younger brother Harold was in Cape Town, where his Royal Navy battleship was on station. He "realised with a surge of happiness that the war had not broken my family . . . Wilfred would go on writing his poetry and I would go on with my painting."
 A little later, he went to his cabin and saw his brother in the full khaki of an Army officer. "Wilfred, dear, how can you be here?" he asked, overjoyed.  "It's just not possible."
 The elder brother smiled. Harold looked away for a moment. When he looked back the figure was gone. He was filled with a certainty of loss. 
 As he found when the mailboat caught up with his ship at Christmas, their parents had received the telegram announcing Wilfred's death on Armistice Day itself, to the sound of church bells and crowds rejoicing in their home town of Shrewsbury. Owen had been killed a week earlier in the final onslaught of the war.
 His death at the age of 25 was the greatest loss English poetry has suffered since the death of Keats. There is still a special "pain in the heart" about it, as former CND chairman Bruce Kent says. Owen died an unknown provincial, from a struggling Shropshire family which lived in fear of the workhouse. In his reverence for the vocation of poet, he was - as W B Yeats said of Keats - as touching as a child with its face pressed to a sweetshop window.
 Above all, though he served as an officer and won the Military Cross, he had made himself recorder, tribune and avenger of the five million ordinary dead whose fate he was to share, a role which at his best he performed with the voice of an excoriating angel. To him the first world war was a monstrous parable in which old men reversed the Old Testament story by sparing the ram of pride and slaying "half the seed of Europe, one by one". The war shaped the work of almost every major writer for the next 30 years. Yet virtually none had fought in it; Owen was the finest of a few who spoke from inside the monster.
 By 1918 only four of his poems had been published. Yet in that last year of his life he wrote 10 or more of the most powerful poems in the language, ranging from Anthem For Doomed Youth to Strange Meeting. His most celebrated words, scribbled in a trench notebook as a draft preface to a volume he never saw, and now partially inscribed on a plaque at Westminster Abbey, are: "Above all I am not concerned with poetry. My subject is War and the Pity of War. The Poetry is in the pity."
 His legacy has so resonated down the years that the centenary of his birth on March 18, followed by the 75th anniversary of his death on November 4, will be more widely marked than were the centenaries of Eliot or Dylan Thomas; honoured by ordinary people, soldiers, the peace movement and children who read him at school as well as by his fellow-poets and the arts establishment.
 The VIP event, led by Stephen Spender, one of the poets he influenced, is at the Imperial War Museum on March 17. A bigger crowd will fill a hall at Oswestry, his birthplace, on the 18th, when the Poet Laureate Ted Hughes will open a weekend of celebrations by reading the work of the boy of Welsh ancestry from the wrong side of the tracks who came to be recognised as "Owen the poet". This event sold out within days of being advertised - "that just doesn't normally happen in Shropshire," says an officer of the Wilfred Owen Association.
 The 700-member association has raised pounds 25,000 with Arts Council help for memorials there and in Shrewsbury, where he spent his adolescence. There are 60 other independent events all over the country. A mini-panic broke out last year when a new book (Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, by Dominic Hibberd) raised inconclusive evidence that he might have been homosexual, which isn't supposed to happen in Shropshire either, but that hasn't affected the response as feared.
 Caroline Thewles, association administrator, says, "I was rung up by a woman from The Lady magazine who said, I'm sorry it's only going to be a small article about your events because we don't approve of war. So I said, funny you should mention that, I don't think Wilfred liked it very much either."
 Owen was killed while trying to cross the Sambre canal at Ors, a town of 600 people near St Quentin. He lies buried with 65 other soldiers in the town cemetery. One of the more remarkable recent pilgrims to his grave was the second Earl Haig, son of the first world war general.
 Still lying on the grave, sealed in a transparent plastic envelope, is a verse which two other visitors, G and P Cotton of London, copied from his poem Asleep and left there on July 4 last year: "Under his helmet, up against his pack, / after so many days of work and waking, / sleep took him by the brow and laid him back."
 In the countryside around Ors and the Somme a week or so ago, less sacred matters were having to be reconnoitred. A four-strong British expeditionary force led by the Wilfred Owen Association's research officer, Helen McPhail, spent a day sidling into cafes and murmuring to patrons, "Est ce qu'il est possible . . .?" What they meant was, can a coach party of 50 use your loo in six weeks' time without necessarily buying anything at your restaurant?
 The barman at La Hauteville indicated that the pissoir would have to suffice.  At Bellicourt there was no flush. It was no topic for Parnassus; but, as Colonel Graham Parker, of Flanders Tours appreciated, an army might march on its stomach but a coach party travels on its bladder.
 The group was clearing the way to add an organised Wilfred Owen Trail to the multitudinous battlefield tours of north-east France. When the Western Front Association unveiled a plaque bearing his name on the canal bridge at Ors in 1991, the mayor Aime Hurson laid on a band, behind which much of the town marched to the ceremony, and afterwards a vin d'honneur in his parlour.
 Partying aside, the first - heavily oversubscribed - tour in early April can expect a journey into a terrain whose past remains malignantly alive. Philip Guest, association treasurer, has found the field near Beaumont Hamel where Owen, soon after arriving in France, had his baptism of horror with 50 hours in a captured German dug-out full of corpses.
 It is searingly cold now as you tread between the field's wheat seedlings. Owen was half-drowned in water in one of the century's bitterest winters, saw a sentry blinded and was then gassed. The experience prompted three of his pre-eminent poems, The Sentry, Dulce et Decorum Est and Insensibility: "Happy are men who yet before they are killed / can let their veins run cold, /whom no compassion fleers / or makes their feet / sore on the alleys cobbled with their brothers."
 Fifteen miles away at Peronne, the museum Historial de La Grande Guerre displays his poem Mental Cases beside Pound's Hugh Selwyn Mauberley and Brecht's Mother Courage. A French cultural historian, Roger Asselineau, has called him the best of all European war poets. The British Dictionary of National Biography mourns him as the lost link in a "native tradition" of English poetry running from Hardy to Philip Larkin. But this tribute appears in the DNB's newly published Missing Persons supplement. He was not widely enough known to be included in its 1921 edition, or for long after.
 And that was very nearly the story of his life. His mother was born into a wealthy family but her brother squandered its capital. His father was a junior railway official. They aspired to middle-class standards but could barely sustain them. Harold Owen, in his superb family memoir Journey From Obscurity, recalled the "rickety look" the four children had. Wilfred, the eldest, opted to be a poet when he was 10 and worked late every night by candlelight.
 He grew up with the increasing despair of a bright, dedicated child whose parents could not afford to help him go beyond the limits of the state schooling of his time. "I need help - and I just can't get it," he told Harold when he was 17. He missed the only university scholarship he was able to try for, spent a year as a parish assistant for pounds 1 a month and two years as a language tutor in Bordeaux, where he was when war broke out in 1914.
 Oddly, the war gave him his chance. He enlisted "for the perpetuation and domination of my mother tongue" and, while training in London, met professional poets for the first time. Four months in France, starting with Beaumont Hamel, gave him shellshock which led to a spell at Craiglockhart psychiatric hospital, Edinburgh - where one of the earliest of the anti-war poets, Siegfried Sassoon, was a patient.
 With Sassoon as a mentor, the stress that poured from him was shaped into work of a quality which fulfilled all his years of lonely experimentation with technique. When he was recalled to France, he wrote to Sassoon in gratitude: "You have fixed my life, however short."
 And to his mother on New Year's Eve, 1917: "I go out of this year a poet, dear mother, as which I did not enter it . . . I am started. The tugs have left me; I feel the great swelling of the open sea taking my galleon." Describing his memory of men waiting to go to the front from a base camp, he said: "Chiefly I thought of the very strange look on all faces in that camp; an incomprehensible look which a man will never see in England.
 "It was not despair or terror, it was more terrible than terror, for it was a blindfold look and without expression, like a dead rabbit's. It will never be painted and no actor will ever seize it. And to describe it, I think I must go back and be with
 them."
 In France, Captain Owen led his men with a new flair and energy, earning his MC and writing a few more poems. He had begun to hope he might survive; but at Ors he was exposed in what Graham Parker believes was a gap in the Allied curtain of covering artillery. He is buried, fittingly, between two privates.
 He leaves, supremely, Strange Meeting, in which the bayoneted German soldier/poet talks to his British counterpart in a moment as eternal as the figures in Keats' Ode On A Grecian Urn. The German speaks with despair of what his unwritten poems might have achieved after the war: "Then, when much blood had clogged their chariot wheels, / I would go up and wash them from sweet wells, / even with truths too deep for taint. / I would have poured out my spirit without stint."
 Owen did so, in the time that he had, and it is not wholly implausible or over-sentimental to claim in his centenary year that his spirit and its influence may not only have washed the chariot wheels of major wars but stopped them as well.
 Wilfred Owen: The Last Year, by Dominic Hibberd (Constable, pounds 14.95). OUP is reissuing Jon Stallworthy's biography ( pounds 9.99, pb). Chatto publishes Owen's Poems ( pounds 3.99, pb). Journey From Obscurity (OUP) is shamefully out of print. Centenary events details from Wilfred Owen Association, 10 College Hill, Shrewsbury SY1 1LZ.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



64 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 15, 1993

WHISTLE-BLOWING IN NHS 'ON TRIAL'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 389 words

 
 THE right of health workers to speak out about their jobs will be the focus of an industrial tribunal starting today on an appeal against dismissal by the "whistle-blower" nurse, Graham Pink.
 Mr Pink was sacked after campaigning publicly for more staff on his wards for acutely ill elderly patients at Stepping Hill hospital, Stockport. He has since topped the poll in elections to nursing's regulatory body. 
 The Manchester tribunal is expected to last up to two weeks. Mr Pink will be represented by Brian Raymond, a solicitor who specialises in civil rights cases, and John Hendy, QC. The same team represented Wendy Savage, Marietta Higgs and Helen Zeitlin, three doctors who also found themselves up against the health establishment.
 Mr Raymond said: "This will be the first time that Britain's best-known whistle-blower will have had a chance to defend his position in public in front of an independent tribunal."
 Stockport health authority, which sacked Mr Pink, will be represented by John Hand, QC.
 Peter Milnes, the authority's general manager, said: "We will defend our decision to dismiss Mr Pink on grounds associated with breach of patient confidentiality, which is one of the golden rules of nursing." Mr Milnes said the budget for the case was in line with the pounds 50,000 which the Friends of Graham Pink group has set as an appeal target to fund the case. They have so far raised pounds 25,000.
 Mr Milnes has also emphasised that the authority will not move for the hearing to be private, although a letter to Mr Raymond from the authority's solictors last month had declared an intent to do so on grounds of patient confidentiality.
 Mr Pink's campaign came to public notice in April 1990, when the Guardian published extracts of his correspondence with health service managers, MPs and government ministers about conditions on his night charge wards.
 He was sacked in 1991 on charges of breach of patient confidentiality, failure to attend a disciplinary hearing and failure to report an accident involving a patient. He had declined an offered transfer to a job in community nursing.
 Mr Pink was elected this year to the United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visiting. He polled more than five times as many votes as the nearest candidate.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



65 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 16, 1993

WHISTLE-BLOWER 'UPSET PATIENT'S FAMILY';
Nurse's 'torrent' of correspondence presented 'lurid and negative picture' of work on hospital's geriatric wards

BYLINE: TOM SHARRATT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 566 words

 
 AN NHS whistle-blower disclosed information about a dying patient in breach of confidentiality as part of a campaign to increase staff at the hospital where he worked, an industrial tribunal in Manchester was told yesterday.
 Graham Pink, a charge nurse at Stepping Hill hospital, Stockport, was sacked in September 1991. He alleges unfair dismissal. 
 The breach of confidentiality was an account given to the press by Mr Pink of an incident concerning a dying patient, John Hand QC, representing Stockport district health authority, said. Although the patient was not named, his family had recognised him and were caused great distress, he said.
 The account followed a "torrent of words" in letters to NHS managers and others, including the Prime Minister, in his campaign over night nursing levels on geriatric wards at the hospital.
 Extracts from the correspondence were published in the Guardian.
 Mr Hand said Mr Pink, aged 63, presented a "lurid and negative picture" of working life on the wards.
 "He has complained that he was dismissed because of this campaign, because he has spoken out telling the truth as he sees it - to adopt not particularly elegant terminology, a whistle-blower who refused to be gagged."
 Four disciplinary charges were brought against Mr Pink - failure to complete documentation, refusal to attend a meeting, failure to complete documentation about an incident involving a patient, and breach of confidentiality in relation to that patient.
 Two of the geriatric wards at Stepping Hill hospital had a night staff of three nurses each, and the third had two nurses. There was also Mr Pink as charge nurse, and, if necessary, nurses from other wards and nursing management.
 Staffing levels were determined by an assessment of those running the ward of the needs of the patients, Mr Hand said. Geriatric wards were very busy at night, with a high level of dependency among patients.
 "In an ideal world, no doubt, it would be ideal to meet that dependency by having as many nurses as possible . . . But Stockport health authority lived - and lives - in a world of finite resources, the result of which is that the staffing levels . . . involve an element of balancing need against resources." In August 1989, Mr Pink started writing letters to the management, professional bodies, MPs, the Secretary for Health, and the Prime Minister.
 Nearly a year later, in July 1990, an article appeared in the Stockport Express Advertiser detailing an incident involving an elderly patient.
 The man's daughter complained about the distress caused by the account of a man found lying in a pool of urine after apparently having fallen.
 Mr Hand said: "Our case is that that incident alone would have provided ample justification for the dismissal of Mr Pink."
 However the authority offered Mr Pink a transfer to community nursing, which he declined. He was then dismissed.
 Mr Pink's action in disclosing information to the press was deliberate, not inadvertent; it was done knowing that it was likely to cause distress to the family; and it was done knowing it was in breach of confidentiality and therefore in breach of contract. Mr Pink had claimed that his moral duty justified his actions, said Mr Hand. But the authority rejected that.
 The hearing, which is expected to last for two weeks, continues today.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



66 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 16, 1993

HEALTH: BEYOND BELIEF

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 229 words

 
 THERE are many myths about the prostate gland, and none more enduring than the idea that "benign" enlargement of the gland is pre-cancerous. In his book, Prostate Problems, Jeremy Hamand explains the differences between benign and cancerous growths. 
 Benign ones occur in the part of the gland around the urethra (the tube carrying urine from the bladder to the penis) and gradually works outwards.  Malignant growth, by contrast, begins in the outer part of the gland.
 The benign variety occurs almost universally in middle aged and elderly men, apparently as part of the ageing process. Enlargement can obstruct the flow of urine from the bladder. What of the gland itself? Located just below the bladder, it fits like a collar around the urethra.
 It is not a single gland, more a bundle of tiny ones arranged in three lobes which discharge secretions into the urethra on ejaculation.
 These secretions make up about 10 per cent of the total volume of semen ejaculated. Prostatic fluid contains enzymes, substances that, among other things, neutralise bacteria and prostaglandins. These are hormones which act on smooth muscle and blood vessel walls and which are used medically to induce labour and abortion.
 Further information is available in Prostate Problems: The Complete Guide To Their Treatment, by Jeremy Hamand (Thorson, pounds 5.99)

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



67 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1993

IN THE CITY: MARKETS HEAR SOMETHING TO LAUGH ABOUT, SOMETHING TO CRY ABOUT

BYLINE: DAN ATKINSON AND SARAH WHITEBLOOM

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 341 words

 
 LAMONT wore grey, the City wore blue, the dealing screens wore red.
 The Chancellor's much touted swansong Budget left financial markets distinctly underwhelmed, with many in the Square Mile seeking solace in hefty side stakes on the length of his address.
 In the event he beat the bookies. Ladbrokes had him odds on for a shorter speech than last year's 71 minutes. The Chancellor romped home with an address that rivalled Sir Geoffrey Howe's marathon of the early 1980s, with one hour 53 minutes at the dispatch box. 
 The City's attention waxed and waned, with much of the focus on a personal hurt to be suffered by the movers and shakers themselves. The Chancellor's reform of company car tax did not go down well on the dealing floor of securities giant S G Warburg. The Chancellor's disembodied voice had been much ignored until the point when he said he would link car tax to the value of the vehicle. This was a blow to the dealers and traders, not known for their love of compact, environment friendly transport.
 His promise to do something for charities brought looks of disbelief, coming as it did after his announcement that government borrowing will top pounds 50 billion next year. It is not that the chaps at Warburg do not care about the disadvantaged; it is just, in the words of one dealer: "Where's he going to get the money from?"
 The soaring Public Sector Borrowing Requirement stunned even the hardened dealers at Britain's biggest security house. One reaction summed it up: "Oh, shit."
 Elsewhere in the City, there were groans as the Chancellor sought to curtail subsidies for wealthy married couples. "How much is this costing me?" asked one dealer.
 As for the Chancellor's concern for the planet's future, it brought nothing but hilarity from the air-conditioned offices of the Square Mile. Pink-cheeked young men in expensive suits scoffed at VAT charges on domestic fuel. "The old-age pensioners, let's get them frozen out," was one particularly caring remark at a small dealing operation.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



68 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1993

VAT: DOMESTIC HEATING INCREASE DRAWS ANGRY RESPONSE

BYLINE: BEN LAURANCE AND PAUL MYERS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 616 words

 
 NEWS that VAT is to be imposed on the cost of domestic heating drew a furious response in the Commons, and from pressure groups fighting for the poor.
 Fuel supplies for domestic, residential and charity use, which are currently zero-rated, will be subject to VAT at 8 per cent in 1994/95 and at the full 17.5 per cent rate from April 1995.
 The Chancellor conceded that people on low incomes will find the increases harder to cope with than the better-off. Government figures show that the poorest 10 per cent in society devote about 13 per cent of their household income to fuel; the figure for the richest is about 3 per cent. 
 Tony McClenaghan, VAT partner at accountants Touche Ross, said: "This is a very regressive change."
 Norman Lamont said the impact on the poor will be taken into account when income-related benefits are next uprated: details are due after the next Budget in November.
 But Fran Bennett, the director of Child Poverty Action Group, said: "Not only is the promise of compensation vague; it will be worthless to those who don't take up their benefits, and to the low-paid. He could have given a much firmer promise: he could have said that the main income-related benefits would go up to compensate."
 John Smith, the leader of the Opposition, said people would be "shocked beyond belief" at the Government's cynicism, and recalled Mr Major's election promises that he had no plans to raise VAT or extend its scope.
 The shadow health secretary, David Blunkett, accused Mr Lamont of "endangering the lives of many elderly people".
 Dr Brenda Boardman of the National Right to Fuel Campaign, a pressure group looking at the problem of fuel poverty, said: "Winter mortality rates are higher in Britain than in any other European country, even those which are much colder than us. A fuel price increase will hit everybody from day one, and homes will become more expensive to heat."
 British Gas was philosophical about the new VAT burden. It pointed out that gas prices went down by 5 per cent in 1992; since 1986, they have risen by 20 per cent less than general inflation; and even with VAT at 17.5 per cent, domestic gas in Britain will be cheaper than elsewhere in Europe.
 In the South-east, a three-bedroom semi-detached house using gas for heating and hot water is reckoned to have an annual bill of about pounds 430. VAT at 17.5 per cent would increase that to pounds 505.
 In colder parts of Britain, the impact of VAT will be greater - and thus the greater the impact on the poor.
 Child Poverty Action Group also maintains that the poor have the least energy-efficient homes.
 The Gas Consumers Council's director, Ian Powe, said: "This is a punitive tax on the warmth and comfort of low income families which must to some extent be returned through subsidised energy efficiency improvements to their houses."
 VAT on electricity will add around pounds 56 to the average pounds 295 household bill.
 Coal prices are set to fall over the next two years which should in turn cut electricity prices. These will offset the impact of the two-stage VAT move.  Until now, the Government has insisted that it wants to have only one rate of VAT, currently set at 17.5 per cent.
 "The 8 per cent rate on fuel is only for one year, it is transitional and it is limited to one sector, so he can argue that the rule still holds good," said Mr McClenaghan.
 Widespread forecasts that Mr Lamont would further widen the VAT net by including books, newspapers and magazines, proved unfounded. Zero-rates, covering 15 per cent of consumer spending, will continue on most food, water and sewerage, and childrens' clothing.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



69 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1993

INCOME TAX: EXTENDED 20PC BAND BENEFITS ONE MILLION

BYLINE: MARGARET HUGHES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 642 words

 
 THE Chancellor has left intact the 25 per cent basic rate and 40 per cent higher rate of income tax. But by extending the 20 per cent lower tax band, which he introduced in last year's Budget, Norman Lamont said he was demonstrating the Government's "ultimate objective" of moving to a 20 per cent basic rate of income tax for everyone.
 The lower band will be increased by pounds 500 to pounds 2,500 in the next tax year. This will take a further 1 million lower income taxpayers out of the basic rate band so that 5 million will be paying 20 pence in the pound rather than 25 pence as they were a year ago before its introduction. 
 It will also benefit all taxpayers paying tax at 25 per cent, giving them an extra pounds 25 a year, although some will be eaten by higher National Insurance Contributions and other indirect tax changes announced in the Budget. So, overall there are no net winners from this Budget.
 The lower rate band will be extended to pounds 3,000 in 1994/95 and Mr Lamont promised that it would continue to be widened annually until it became the basic rate for everyone.
 At the same time the Chancellor has reinforced this commitment to a 20 per cent basic tax rate by announcing that from April next year tax relief in three key areas will be restricted to 20 pence in the pound. This will apply to mortgage tax relief, tax credits on dividends and to the married couples allowance.
 Mr Lamont said the extension of the lower rate band would help those on low incomes, while the restrictions on tax relief would mean that "everyone would benefit to the same extent". He pointed out that at present the married couples allowance of pounds 1,720 extends a benefit of pounds 688 a year to higher rate taxpayers while those paying the 20 per cent band only gain by pounds 344. The Chancellor argued that there was "no good reason why the better off should receive twice as much as the lower paid".
 In future, he said, everyone would get pounds 344, based on the current allowance.
 The restriction to the 20 per cent band will apply to married couples allowance paid to pensioners, but this would be offset by increasing their allowance by pounds 200 a year. Pensioners taking out home income plans would also be exempt from the Miras restriction.
 Sally Greengross, director of Age Concern England, welcomed this concession, though said she had hoped that the Chancellor would raise the Miras limit "to make it easier for elderly homeowners to inccrease their income in retirement when taking out home income plans".
 Despite Mr Lamont' stress on the Government's commitment to a fairer tax regime, Chris Pond, calculates that the Budget measures will mean an extra pounds 5 a week in tax and living costs for a low paid family.
 The Chancellor's decisions to freeze all personal tax allowances, including the married couples allowance and the income limit for age related allowances, is effectively a tax increase in disguise - albeit a small one this time around as increasing them in line with inflation, as is usual, would have meant an increase of only 2.6 per cent.
 Freezing allowances hits the poorer off by bringing more people into the tax net.
 As part of his plans for reforming the tax regime, the Chancellor confirmed the expected change in the basis of taxing the self employed by changing from the previous year basis of assessment to a current year.
 The effect of the change will be that in the year 1995-96 they will be taxed on profits earned in that year rather than on profits earned in the year to April 5, 1995.
 In addition eight million taxpayers, including the four million self-employed, who fill in a tax return each year will be able to opt for self assessment - allowing employees to have income from different sources included in one assessment.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



70 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1993

THE ALMOST FOREIGN LONDONERS;
Britain's Irish have the highest mortality rate of all ethnic groups, the second highest unemployment rate and an identity problem. How are they coping?

BYLINE: CLAIRE MESSUD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1746 words

 
 SITTING in an ordered square beneath bands of fluorescent lights and a disused disco ball, the Irish Pensioners' Group is playing bingo. Almost 40 men and women bend over their cards, scratching in silence, looking up every so often at Tony. He, at the front of the room, calls up numbers on an electronic bingo box, and relays them over a microphone. The group has been meeting weekly for 10 years and its chairperson, Marie Sargent, says it includes members from almost every county in the Republic - but not from Northern Ireland. "It's in our constitution," she explains. "You have to be Irish."
 A quick poll reveals that almost everyone has been in England for at least 30 years, some for as long as 50. They arrived on a wave of post-war immigration in the fabled days of "No Irish Need Apply" signs, and, in the face of what was then open hostility, they have made their lives in their own community.  Although several have taken British citizenship, only one woman in the group married an Englishman, and nobody else married outside their Irish enclave.  "Irish people don't mix with others," says one woman cheerfully, to a chorus of agreement. "You have lots of English friends," says the man beside her, "but once you're Irish you are always Irish." Everyone nods. 
 There are, however, some things about which they do not agree. When asked whether their lives are affected by the IRA's mainland bombing campaign, one woman snaps, "Not at all." "We think it's a terrible thing. It's a truly terrible thing," calls another from the other side of the room. "They're only fighting for their rights," hisses the first.
 An elderly man stands and turns to me, shaking his finger. "You've no right," he rebukes. "No right to come in here and ask questions that make trouble among us. There are things we do not talk about." Political opinion has no place among the bingo numbers, beneath the glinting disco ball.
 In the 1950s, when many of these pensioners came to London, approximately 200,000 young people, most of them unskilled, emigrated from Ireland, primarily from rural areas. Those who came to England filled traditionally low-paid jobs, in the building trade, for example, or in nursing. Their expectations were limited, their accepted place at the bottom of the socio-economic scale.  Wanting to fit in to English society, they confined their Irishness to Catholic groups or groups such as this one, and as a community, they kept largely to themselves.
 The 1980s marked a new, very different phase of large-scale emigration.  According to "Over Here", research on Irish migrants in London commissioned by the Action Group for Irish Youth (AGIY) and published in 1991, "The more highly qualified a younger person, the more likely they are now to emigrate." Between 1981 and 1991, it is estimated that up to 500,000 people left the Republic, most of them from urban backgrounds, most of them under 25, and most of them for London. Although in the depths of the recession the exodus has slowed to a trickle, AGIY advises that "every projection shows the number will go up again". Obviously a proportion of these emigrants fit the "traditional" profile, but most do not: in 1988, a third of those finishing higher education in Ireland who found jobs found them abroad.
 Many educated young people came in the 1980s not just for jobs or careers, but to broaden their horizons, or on trips of self-discovery or simply for a short break. But most will not go back. According to Joan O'Flynn at AGIY: "People come with a very inaccurate notion that it will be for six months a year. They don't see it as 'for life'. But the number who return is such a small proportion of the number who leave: it's very hard to go back, especially from Britain."
 The accidental nature of this wave of emigration is echoed everywhere: Oonagh, 27, who works as a secretary in television, took leave of absence from her job in County Cork and found work in London - five years ago; Maeve, 28, a university secretary, was bored in Dublin and thought she would come for a year - in 1985; her younger sister, Nuala, 26, a physiotherapist, followed three years later; their friend and schoolmate, Mary, 29, who works in a lab, came four years ago. "I thought I'd come for a year," she says. "I'd like to go home, but at the end of the day, I don't think I will. I've changed."
 Over the past few years, almost all of their friends have emigrated - if not to London, then to America or Australia. Nuala was recently offered a job in Dublin and she turned it down: "I was tempted - but there's nothing there for me now. It was a big decision."
 Few, however, are forced to confront the decision as clearly as Nuala. As Oonagh says: "Everyone I know would like to go back, but I don't think they really believe in it. I just wonder what you could do back there - it seems to be at a standstill. I can't conceive of staying here always, though. It's not home."
 Eugene Scanlan, who coordinates an Irish youth project in north London, sees this as a "trap": in his own experience, "I was saying 'I'm not staying here', not letting go. And then going back home and feeling I didn't belong."
 For such young Irish people, questions of identity are clearly not easily resolved. Seeing their residence in Britain as temporary even after seven or eight years, considered permanent emigres back in Ireland, they are viewed by the British as neither foreign nor native: "You're like an extension - not allowed to have a separate identity," says Scanlan.
 Mark Patterson, a 24-year-old graduate student from Northern Ireland currently working with Scanlan, puts it succinctly: "It's like 'foreigner' with a small 'f,' " he says. "You're a wee bit more foreign than a Scotsman." For Patterson, the issues are particularly complex: a Protestant from County Armagh, he has found that in England such distinctions are overlooked: to most, he is first and foremost Irish. In a variation on a common theme, he comments that his experiences have led him to reconsider his future plans. "The longer I stay," he says, "the more I find myself changing. I feel as though I'm growing out of Ireland. I wonder, could Northern Ireland accept me?"
 Neither foreign nor English, truly at home in neither place, the young Irish are still less willing than earlier generations to turn to Irish-only groups for reaffirmation of their identity. "When the older generation came," says Maeve, "there was much more of a community. Now, it's great to have your Irish friends, but you want to meet more, different people." Part of the problem is perhaps that "traditional" identities for Irish people - those purveyed by British culture - not only do not fit the current generation but, in the light of their education and aspirations, provoke in them a justifiable rage and frustration. Surrounded by Irish friends, proud of their nationality, they still do not want to be constrained by anyone else's ideas of what their Irishness might be.
 It is a question, according to O'Flynn and Scanlan, of redefining the community, of redefining Irishness. "When you come here," says O'Flynn, "the codes and contexts aren't familiar. You have to make your own signposts, define what it is that makes you Irish, your own identity." This said, she is adamant that there is an Irish community available to those who want to be part of it.  "It's very diverse now," she says. "There are women's groups, housing groups, gay and lesbian groups, youth groups - its focus is much broader than it was in the 1950s, and reflects much more the diversity of Ireland."
 O'Flynn and Scanlan both believe that formal and cultural recognition of the Irish as an ethnic minority in Britain is the way forward. AGIY has raised the issue with the Commission for Racial Equality, which now acknowledges the Irish as a separate ethnic group and recommends that others do the same. Such recognition is certainly the only way to closer analysis of the inequalities that persist for the Irish migrant community, and of the subtle racism to which the Irish are subject.
 In London for example, where one in 10 women is Irish (the figure is one in six in Brent, which has England's highest concentration of Irish people), ethnically specific analysis would seem particularly necessary - especially because the existing statistics are so alarming: Irish immigrants have the highest standardised mortality rate of all groups in Britain; the highest rates of psychiatric admission; the second-highest unemployment rate; the lowest rate of home ownership; the second-highest suicide rate . . . the list goes on. And according to AGIY's 1991 research, among young immigrants there is an overall "mismatch between the level of educational achievement and the quality of employment obtained". In the face of such obstacles, says Scanlan, "we have to look forward. We have to look in at our own problems, as a community." O'Flynn says: "Lack of recognition perpetuates the invisibility of the Irish community - its needs and experiences. It hinders the extent to which Irish people can contribute to the larger British community."
 Another major difficulty they face is the unwanted and unmerited burden of being associated with the IRA. Almost everyone has an account, if not of actual verbal or physical abuse, then of being made to feel culpable because of their accent - on the Tube, in pubs, in shops. The existence of the IRA is the one thing all British people know about Ireland, even if they cannot tell North from South, and it is - especially in the midst of repeated IRA attacks on London - a persistent preconception, a prejudice given weight by the law. "The Prevention of Terrorism Act gives a legislative context for prejudice," says Joan O'Flynn. "Under the terms of the Act, any Irish person in Britain is a potential terrorist suspect."
 Fear of suspicion may also account for the demise of London's St Patrick's Day festivities: despite its huge Irish population, the city has no parade to rival, for example, New York's. But parades, like bingo games, are rarely arenas for political discussion.
 Besides, the political questions are one area in which the younger generation resembles the older: "Irish people in London don't discuss it," says Bridget, who came here in 1966. "It's too emotive." "We're sick of it," says Maeve. And, Mary adds with resignation, "There's no solution, either."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



71 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 18, 1993

PAY RULE HITS CARE HOMES

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 386 words

 
 PREPARATIONS for the community care shake-up on April 1 have been hit by 11th hour confusion over payments to residential homes for elderly and disabled people.
 Owners of homes have learned belatedly that the new residential allowance, to be paid to residents admitted from next month, will be withdrawn if residents are absent for more than six days at a time.
 At present, residents receiving income support benefit are allowed to continue to claim for six weeks while away from the home, after which the benefit is reduced by 20 per cent. 
 Under the new system, most of the cost of a place will be met by the local authority social services department. However, residents will receive a residential allowance of 45 pounds a week, or 50 pounds in London.
 Under regulations laid last December, but largely unnoticed at the time, this allowance will be withdrawn after six days of absence.
 James Churchill, executive secretary of the Association For Residential Care, said almost every resident of a home would be absent for longer than six days at some stage during the year.
 To avoid being out of pocket, the homes would seek recompense from the relevant local authority.
 "This will mean extra work for the home, extra work for the local authority, and extra work for the Benefits Agency just to maintain the status quo."
 Eunice Paxman, who chairs the National Care Homes' Association, said: "This could have a very serious effect on the security of tenure of the individual resident or patient. No authority or home owner is likely to be prepared to shoulder this additional financial burden for long."
 A spokeswoman for the Department of Social Security said it would be the responsibility of the agency contracting for a home place - in this case the local authority - to make arrangements to keep the place available if the resident was absent for more than six days.
 - The DSS is to go to the Court of Appeal to try to overturn a ruling last October by a social security commissioner that income support should be paid to 12 residents of a nursing home in east Sussex who were formerly in a long-stay hospital.
 The case will test the DSS's contention that the residents are still part of a "hospital or similar institution" and therefore ineligible for benefit.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



72 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 18, 1993

VAT ON POWER BILLS FUELS POVERTY DEBATE;
Benefit rise will not meet increases - Low-income families to bear burden - Charity fears more winter deaths among elderly

BYLINE: DAVID SHARROCK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 633 words

 
 PROTESTS mounted yesterday over fears that the imposition of VAT on domestic fuel and power bills would hit the poor and elderly.
 From April next year they will be subject to 8 per cent VAT, rising to the full 17.5 per cent rate the following year.
 The Chancellor said in his Budget speech that social security benefits would increase to reflect the rising bills, but scepticism within the ranks of the Conservative Party was heightened last night when it became apparent that whatever the benefit rise, it will not equal the increase in fuel costs.
 The Children's Society claimed that the Treasury admitted it was unable to guarantee that the poorest people would not be worse off. The society's director, Ian Sparks, said: "Any increase in fuel bills will have a disproportionate effect on poor families' outgoings. 
 "Families scraping a living on low incomes and benefits are already living below the breadline. Even a few pence off the weekly budget can mean a mother does not eat. This hits at the fabric of family life. It is just as important for an unemployed family to keep warm and cook as it is for the rich."
 Age Concern estimates that a third of elderly people do not claim their income support entitlements.
 It says thousands more in low-income groups, including pensioners receiving basic pensions slightly above the income support level, and disabled people on invalidity benefit, will bear the burden of increased fuel and power bills alone.
 Help the Aged said that increased fuel bills would result in more winter deaths. Janet Johnstone, its director of public relations, said that more people die during the winter months in Britain than in colder countries such as Sweden and Canada. A 1991 survey of family expenditure found that a single elderly person living alone spent an average pounds 8.54 a week on fuel - 12.2 per cent of income. VAT at 17.5 per cent will increase that to pounds 10.03 a week. The average family spent 4.7 per cent of its total income on fuel.
 Ms Johnstone said that the death rate increases during the winter for a variety of reasons, such as influenza epidemics. In 1991 there were 41,000 more deaths than in the summer.
 "We know from older people that they are the most fearful group for incurring bills and debt. The risk is that when people start receiving bigger fuel bills they will not turn the heat up. We will be approaching Peter Lilley to ask that this is taken into account when income support figures are uprated."
 Janet Allbeson, social policy officer of the National Association of Citizen's Advice Bureaux, said that fuel and power were basic necessities.
 "We will be writing to the Chancellor to ask him to make sure that all low-income groups are protected - not just people on income-related benefits but also pensioners, the disabled, and all the low-income people in work.
 "Our fear is that we will see people trying to survive with candles for lighting. Fires will happen. Children die because of candles being used."
 Debt has become the main query at bureaux across the country, according to a report published in December. "We envisage this announcement will increase the Citizen's Advice Bureaux service in debt-counselling in quite a major way," added Ms Allbeson.
 A Friends of the Earth spokesman said that cutting energy use was vital to reduce production of carbon dioxide and other pollutants, but called on the Government to ensure householders had access to information about insulation and energy efficiency.
 He called for a pounds 1.25 billion-a-year programme to upgrade insulation in 500,000 low-income households; tough energy efficiency standards for domestic appliances and buildings; and links between mortgage relief and home energy efficiency.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



73 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 19, 1993

DISCOUNTS AND STATE AID

BYLINE: JOE JOYCE IN DUBLIN, ANNA TOMFORDE IN BONN, AND ANDREW BELL IN PARIS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 431 words

 
 ELECTRICITY and gas bills in Ireland have included a VAT element since 1988, with the rate now standing at 12.5 per cent.
 However, households pay just over half of the cost, with a "special discount" from the state-owned Electricity Supply Board accounting for the difference.
 Although Irish electricity prices have not been increased since 1986, welfare agencies say that fuel bills remain a big problem for people on lower incomes and benefits. 
 Pensioners get 300 units of free electricity every winter and 200 units in the summer. They and people on long term welfare payments also get a weekly fuel allowance of IR pounds 7 from October to April.
 Other assistance can be granted by community welfare officers to people threatened with disconnection because of non-payment.
 - Germany: domestic fuel and power bills have attracted VAT since it was introduced in 1967. This aspect of the tax - now standing at 15 per cent - has therefore never been an issue.
 No social groups are exempt from VAT - which is levied at a lower rate of 7 per cent on food, public transport and print products - and all consumers pay an additional heating oil tax of eight pfennigs (3 1/2 pence) a litre.
 Government statistics show that a pensioner couple in western Germany has an average DM2,300 ( pounds 978) a month for household spending. The figure for eastern Germany is pounds 765. Often the income is increased by savings, interest payments, and other sources.
 As an example, Gerhard Zielinski and his wife, who have a monthly income of pounds 1,021, spend pounds 297 on rent, electricity and domestic fuels, with electricity and heating accounting for pounds 64.
 However, further down the economic scale, the elderly account for between 30 and 40 per cent of the 4.2 million Germans who claim social security benefit, granted when monthly income is less than pounds 225.
 Benefits are designed to cover heating and fuel costs.
 - France: VAT is charged on all electricty and gas bills at a rate of 18.6 per cent for use, and 5 1/2 per cent for standing charges. The government has calculated that 120,000 households are cut off every year because of financial difficulties partly arising from this extra cost.
 In response, a law designed to protect the poor was passed last year. It states that any person or family in a "precarious" situation has the right to state help to ensure water and energy supplies.
 In practice, this means that anyone with an income at or below the minimum wage will have his or her power bill paid by the state.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



74 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 19, 1993

TAKING THE BRUNT ON THE COLD FRONT;
Points of Order

BYLINE: MICHAEL WHITE AND JOHN CARVEL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 544 words

 
 VOTERS must have wept at the sound of junior social security minister Ann Widdecombe floundering on Radio 4's Today programme about the extent of her department's willingess to "take into account" the extra VAT costs of Norman Lamont's Budget to hypothermic old people.
 But old lags recall another occasion when that high-flying office (Mrs T once held it too) was hung out to dry by heartless senior ranks. Back in 1987, the newly-promoted minister of state, one J. Major, was obliged to defend the government line on "cold weather payments" in a severe winter. A Times leader said he sounded like Mr Gradgrind arguing with Mr Pickwick. 
 It's part of the Major legend that he took on Treasury meanies to extract more cold weather money on the sensible grounds - advanced again by Tory MPs yesterday - that you do not want old people to freeze to death with an election looming. Dead ones can't vote Tory.
 THE first known ancestor of that twice-weekly bear garden known as Prime Minister's question time was a question asked in the Lords on February 9 1721, when Earl Cowper quizzed the Earl of Sunderland about a Mr Knight, who was helping police in pre-Delors Brussels with their inquiries about the South Sea Bubble scam, the City fraud of that century.
 So say scholars Mark Franklin and Philip Norton in their new volume, Parliamentary Questions (Clarendon Press pounds 27.50), which tells the whole grisly story right up to planted, syndicated and other pseudo-parliamentary techniques of the televised 90s.
 One reform endorsed by Norton is that Opposition frontbenchers show restraint in not "squeezing out backbench participation" so that ordinary MPs can get at ministers. Another would be for the Opposition to appoint fewer frontbenchers in the first place.
 THE armour-plated Bill Cash, terror of the Euro-mafia, and his engaging wife, Biddy, held a party for fellow-sceptics at their Westminster military HQ this week. Lady Thatcher graced the assembly to raise morale of the troops, whose numbers included such formidable media riflemen as Lord Rees-Mogg and Paul Johnson, the most versatile columnar mercenary of his generation.
 The buzz was that, notwithstanding the assurances of Attorney-General Lyell that Labour's amendment 27 will not foul up the Maastricht bill, ministers remain petrified that it will be passed, opening the social chapter up to that can of worms known as judicial review.
 LADY Thatcher's friends say that the multi-millionairess has been saintly in her self-restraint as John Major ruins her legacy (sic). Thus, when she visited Denmark to stir things up, she did so with the minimum of UK publicity.
 What is less well appreciated is the extent to which that formidable trio of Cashite legal sceptics, Martin Howe (nephew of Sir G.), Leolin Price and Michael Shrimpton, have been getting up the noses of Danish politicians.
 According to Mikael Bramsen who runs the European Parliament's office in Copenhagen, the trio are presenting themselves to packed houses as independent British experts on the Maastricht treaty.
 Europhiles like Bramsen are naturally cross that Brits, of all people, are lecturing others about the Maastricht muddle, let alone as "objective" experts.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



75 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 19, 1993

MINISTERS TOLD TO WITHDRAW ADVICE ON CARE NEEDS

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 292 words

 
 MINISTERS must end the confusion over how local authorities should deal with people whose needs they cannot meet under the community care shake-up on April 1, MPs said yesterday.
 The Conservative-dominated Commons health committee said current guidance on the issue was "unhelpful". 
 Whitehall guidance has appeared to advise authorities not to tell people their assessed needs if there is a risk of the service not being provided.
 Fresh guidelines should be issued urgently and, if necessary, legislation introduced to ensure authorities would be able to make full assessments of unmet needs, said a report from the committee.
 It also called on the Government to reinstate protection of funding for residential drug and alcohol clinics which fear run-down and closure under the new community care system. They lost a ministerial guarantee of their pounds 20 million funding even though private residential and nursing homes enjoy protection.
 Local authorities, which must arrange appropriate care for elderly and disabled people coming forward for care from April, think the pounds 539 million they have been given will not be enough. They fear being taken to court if they fail to provide services which they assess as necessary.
 Yesterday's report says it is vital that nothing inhibits collection of data on unmet need to ensure it will be possible to judge whether resources are adequate.
 Civil servants had said there were no plans to collect such information in Whitehall.
 Tim Yeo, junior health minister, promised "extensive monitoring" of the new system, though did not make clear whether this would include central recording of unmet need.
 Community Care: Funding from April 1993; HMSO; pounds 12.15

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



76 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 19, 1993

CITY IN BETWEEN BOOM AND BLIGHT;
David Gow, recently in Leipzig, reports on the contradictions as east Germans reach out for the future

BYLINE: DAVID GOW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 565 words

 
 THE elderly woman returning to her native city from her new home in Bavaria looked around at the scores of building sites in the centre of Leipzig and shook her head in disbelief at the scale of change since she left two years ago.
 "But it has not cheered up all the friends and relatives I've seen here," she said. "Far from it. They're all up in arms and just complain about the fact they have to pay 10 times the amount for the same lousy home." 
 Leipzig, perhaps more than any other east German city, is caught between boom and blight.
 The skyline above the centre is crowded with 140 building cranes, for the biggest bout of construction in 80 years is in full swing.
 New department stores and office blocks arise from empty sites while older, protected buildings are being renovated.
 Meanwhile, entire blocks, apparently imploding behind their dirty, broken windows, testify to the decay inevitable in the slow and painful process of catching up with the west, suffocated by complicated planning laws, red tape and unresolved ownership disputes.
 "You need 48 hours in the day simply to rush from one appointment with an official to another and cope with the sheer amount of procedure," a developer from Magdeburg says.
 About half the shops and offices in the centre, according to Hans-Dieter Manegold, chief executive of the chamber of commerce, are empty because of such problems. He insists that rapid privatisation, bypassing the bureaucratic obstacles, is the only way to stop the blight.
 This glaring contradiction between the opulent new and the decrepit old is heightening the social discontent caused by unemployment. The anger and incomprehension it produces are taking violent forms.
 Last week about 100 youths rampaged late at night through a renovated shopping arcade crammed with unaffordable chic goods.
 Every shop is western-owned, and the last east German tenants are being forced out by the soaring rents demanded by the new owner.
 Shops selling watches at 40,000 marks each, designer fashion and the finest champagnes are seen as a provocation to people desperately trying to pay the rent on an unimproved home. People in work are said to creep out of their apartment blocks to avoid physical attack from jealous neighbours.
 "What really maddens people here is that, even if they're lucky enough to be in work, they are earning far less than a west German and have to pay out a far bigger part of their wages for a home no west German would live in," says Helga Rostel, a reporter with the Leipziger Volkszeitung.
 Elderly people who want to leave homes that are too big for them find themselves trapped because, on the free market, they would have to meet rents of DM1500 - more than triple their current outlay - for a flat hardly half the size.
 Mr Manegold, pointing to 40,000 empty properties, says the way to end the bottleneck is to remove control of housing from the local authority and sell off homes cheaply to sitting tenants. But Ms Rostel insists that the costs of renovation, let alone servicing a mortgage and inherited debts, are prohibitive.
 "People feel doubly punished, for the failings of the communist system and now for those of the new market system. They feel trapped, without a future perspective: all they can see is the collapse of the past and nothing new taking its place."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



77 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 20, 1993

RELIEF TEMPERED AS MIRAS CEILING STAYS PUT

BYLINE: DIANE BOLIVER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 356 words

 
 NEWS that life annuity Home Income Plans will not lose mortgage interest relief at 25 per cent has been received as "a nice gesture" by the Chancellor, but falls far short of the hopes of elderly support groups.
 "We wanted the Chancellor to double the Miras ceiling to pounds 60,000 so that the elderly can raise more cash from the value of their homes," said an Age Concern spokesman.
 Life annuity home income plans are bought by people over 65 who want to boost their income by unlocking some of the value in their homes. 
 They take out a loan secured on their property and buy an annuity with the proceeds which provides an income for life. The Miras helps reduce their interest bill.
 Home Income Plan specialist, Cecil Hinton, of Hinton & Wild, said: "It is good news that special consideration has been given to these plans, and continues the special treatment and separate legislation for them, which was first introduced in the Finance Act in 1974." Mr Hinton estimates between 30,000 to 35,000 people will benefit from the measures but agrees it was a tiny gesture.
 Another Budget measure will mean the elderly who have to go into a nursing home will continue to attract mortgage interest relief on their homes for up to 12 months. Until now relief stopped immediately the home was left.
 However, the Revenue says that to qualify the property must be put on the market and the tax relief is only available for 12 months starting from the date the old property stops being the borrower's only or main residence. The Revenue has discretion to extend this period and this extension is available to borrowers moving into rented accommodation, who are unable to sell their homes.
 Until the Budget, the 12 month extension of relief only applied if a new loan had been taken out on the new property. If it had not, the interest relief stopped on the old loan as soon as the property was vacated.
 "The Chancellor's intention is to give people moving into rented properties, who are unable to sell their homes at once, the benefit available to people who are buying new homes," the Revenue said.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



78 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 20, 1993

LAMONT FUELS FIRE OF DISSENT WITH DECISION TO TAX ENERGY

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 29

LENGTH: 948 words

 
 CONSUMER groups, charities working on behalf of the elderly and other low-income groups - even Tory MPs - this week condemned the Chancellor's decision to levy VAT on domestic fuels.
 Confusion stills reigns over its likely impact on poorer households, after the threat of a backbench revolt forced the Government to promise extra help to 10 million people on low incomes. But details of the relief are not likely until November.
 As predicted in last Saturday's Money Guardian, the Government has used environmental protection - the need to combat global warming by cutting back on carbon emissions - to justify such punitive measures. 
 Domestic fuels are VAT-free or "zero-rated" and, under EC law, once they lose this status they can never regain it.
 By charging VAT at 8 per cent on domestic fuel from April 1994 and at the full rate of 17.5 per cent from April 1995, the Government will be able to raise an extra pounds 3.25 billion by April, 1996 and a further pounds 2.85 billion by April 1997.
 This will help to reduce significantly the Government's debt burden.
 But it will add at least pounds 50 to the average household's energy bills next year and by upwards of pounds 100 the following year. The burden will fall heaviest on the poor. Government figures show that the poorest 10 per cent in society devote 13 per cent of their total household income to fuel. The figure for the richest is 3 per cent.
 Poorer people generally live in the least well-insulated homes with little or no money to rectify the situation. The Hayes family (see below) can testify to that. The plight of pensioners and low-income families with small children or disabled members is particularly serious.
 Research by Age Concern reveals that nothing has improved in the last 20 years. Older people still live in the coldest homes and are still dying from hypothermia at the same rate because they can't afford proper heat.
 When asked what they would do with the money if the Government were to give them an extra pounds 10 a week, more than two thirds of the pensioners surveyed said they would spend nearly all of it on heating.
 "Higher fuel bills will increase the risk of hypothermia-related deaths among the elderly," says Sally Greengross, director of Age Concern. "It is not too late for the Chancellor to change his mind and we urge him to do so."
 In his Budget speech Norman Lamont said that the increased charges will be taken into account when income-related state benefits are uprated in November.  But critics want guarantees that benefits will go up enough to compensate recipients fully for the extra costs. Liberal social security spokesman Archie Kirkwood says it would take around pounds 2 over and above the Government's normal upratings to compensate pensioners properly.
 When pressed for assurances early this week, junior Social Security Minister Ann Widdecomb and chief secretary to the Treasury, Michael Portillo, ruled out any special up-rating of benefits for the poorest.
 Despite Government pledges since that extra help will be available, the Government has refused to guarantee full compensation.
 Thousands in low-income groups, including pensioners receiving small occupational pensions fall just outside the income support threshold They are likely to be hit hardest by the VAT charge.
 To combat the tax increase, Friends of the Earth is urging average householders to "pull off the ultimate green tax dodge" by investing in improving energy efficiency at home.
 "By spending about pounds 500 on energy efficiency measures over the next two years the average household should be able to avoid this burden," says the environmental campaigning group. "It will recoup its investment in fuel bill savings within three years and make cuts in pollution."
 The programme, which assumes that households already have insulated hot water tanks and four inches of loft insulation, includes:
 - Turning your thermostat down by one degree centigrade. Cost: pounds 0. Annual saving: pounds 17.50- pounds 47.
 - Buying three compact fluorescent "low-energy" light bulbs and fitting in your most used lights. Cost: pounds 40. Annual saving: pounds 42.
 - Draught-proofing doors and windows. Cost: pounds 50. Annual saving: pounds 30.
 - Installing cavity wall insulation (if applicable). Cost: pounds 300- pounds 400. Annual saving: pounds 70- pounds 95.
 - If you have gas-fired central heating, when you buy a new boiler fit an energy efficient condensing boiler. Extra cost on top of standard boiler, pounds 250. Annual saving: pounds 120- pounds 175.
 - Always buy the most energy efficient applicances possible. Big energy savings can be made for little or no extra cost if you choose more energy efficient models of fridges, freezers, TVs and washing machines. Extra cost: pounds 10- pounds 20. Annual saving: pounds 20- pounds 40.
 Home owners or buyers can assess their home's energy efficiency and find out how it could be improved through a home energy labelling audit; soon to become mandatory on newly built homes.
 Two schemes are available: the National Home Energy Rating Scheme (NHER), costing pounds 75 for the average home, from the National Energy Foundation in Milton Keynes (0908-672787) and audits carried out by licensed assessors of Bristol-based company MVM Starpoint (0272-250948) which cost an average pounds 60.
 Nationwide is offering first-time buyers, who take its one year fixed-rate home loan - 4.99 per cent for those who buy mortgage payment insurance and 5.75 per cent for others - a free home energy audit.
 Money Guardian is edited by Margaret Hughes

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



79 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 20, 1993

SIGH OF SYMPATHY, SADNESS AND SAKE;
Obituary: Chishu Ryu

BYLINE: RONALD BERGAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 28

LENGTH: 490 words

 
 ONE OF the most extraordinary and long-lasting collaborations between a film director and actor was that of Yasujiro Ozu and Chishu Ryu, who has died aged 88. Ryu, who often played the director's alter ego, appeared in all but two of Ozu's 54 films. The extended Japanese family was Ozu's main theme, with Ryu representing the ideal father, wise and resigned. 
 Ryu's was the face most associated with Ozu's remarkably consistent oeuvre, the perfect actor to express the traditional concept of mono no amare (sympathetic sadness). His eyes reflected benevolence, a gentle smile concealing an existential pain, and his fluctuating sigh ranged from the melancholy to the contented, the latter often brought about by the frequent nocturnal sake drinking sessions that punctuate many of the films.
 Ryu's sensitivity and gentleness are best seen in variations on the widowed father role. In There Was A Father (1942), he is a school-teacher close to his son but circumstances make them lead separate lives. However, he dies happy, having seen his son marry the daughter of his best friend.
 Late Spring (1949) finds him living happily with his daughter but, suspecting that he is keeping her from matrimony, he leads her to believe that he is to remarry in order to free her. In An Autumn Afternoon (1962), Ozu's mellow and nostalgic valedictory film, Ryu plays an ageing company auditor who arranges a marriage for his daughter, then finds himself alone except for his drinking cronies.
 But Ryu's most celebrated performance in the West was in Ozu's poignant, but never sentimental, Tokyo Story (1953), in which he and Chiyeko Higashiyama play an elderly couple who, on a visit to their children and grandchildren in the big city, begin to feel a burden on them and return home, where the wife dies.
 Ryu spread a beatific aura, perhaps derived from his being the son of a Buddhist priest, who wanted him to become an acolyte. Instead, he entered the Shochiku Kamata studios as a bit player in 1925 and was kept busy for a couple of years in various minor roles until Ozu, who was around the same age, "discovered" him.
 "I can't think of my own identity without thinking of him," Ryu said. "I heard that Ozu once said: 'Ryu is not a
 skilful actor - and that is why I use him'. And that is very true."
 Certainly he made little impact when working for other directors, such as Kinoshita (Carmen Comes Home), Kobayashi (The Human Condition) and Kurosawa (The Bad Sleep Well, Red Beard, and Dreams). He also appeared in Juzo Itami's The Funeral (1985), almost unrecognisable as the Rolls-Royce owning, money-grubbing priest.
 In 1985, when Wim Wenders made his documentary Tokyo-Ga, the director interviewed Ryu about Ozu and the old man could hardly contain his tears as he remembered his friend and mentor, who had died more than 20 years previously.
 Chishu Ryu, born May 13, 1906; died March 16, 1993.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



80 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 22, 1993

KING WHO RULES FROM THE HEART;
After 40 years, King Hussein of Jordan is the only Arab leader to command the respect and affection of his people. Now he is in a position to see his beloved Hashemite kingdom expand

BYLINE: DAID HIRST

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 2226 words

 
 WHEN Hussein bin Talal, 40th in the line of descent from the Prophet, was crowned king 40 years ago this May, few thought he would last long. His Hashemite throne was a legacy of the Arab Revolt which, with British aid, had driven the Ottomans from their last Arab provinces in the first world war. But now Britain was losing the will and means to uphold such proteges; worse, it had betrayed promises made to the new king's great grandfather, Sherif Hussein of Mecca, concerning the creation of a free and independent Kingdom embracing all those Ottoman provinces. Beneath the mandatory figleaf, Britain and France had carved them up between them; and, thanks to the Balfour Declaration, the Arabs had lost Palestine altogether to the Zionist settler-state.
 Two years before, the new king's grandfather, Abdullah, founder-ruler of Transjordan, had been murdered before his eyes: it was the 16-year-old's first encounter with the kind of realm he was to inherit. The extrovert Abdullah had been disappointed with a son, Talal, who was not cast in his own "brave, intrepid, Bedouin" mould. He doted on his grandson instead. And for Hussein, his grandfather still remains "the man to whom I owe more than I can say."
 Politically, Abdullah had been the dominant personality of the Arab East. He never hid his thwarted Hashemite ambitions. "Nothing," he used to say, "will prevent my accession to the throne of Damascus." 
 But by the fifties, new revolutionary forces, led by the emergent Arab champion, Colonel Nasser, were convulsing the region; they cast Abdullah, and his fellow-Hashemites in Iraq, as "imperialist lackeys" and "reactionaries" whom the people's wrath would sweep away. Abdullah had indeed enlarged his hitherto tranquil, Transjordanian backwater; but instead of Damascus, he had acquired that part of Palestine, the West Bank, which the Zionists failed to conquer in their 1948 "war of independence". His enemies said he had conspired with the British and the Zionists. In fact, his Arab Legion had done more than any other Arab army to save what could be saved of Palestine. The trouble was that the Legion still had a British commander, Glubb Pasha, and, in the climate of the times, such charges had a mischievous plausibility - especially for Abdullah's new subjects, the seething, destitute, resentful refugees.
 It was a Palestinian assassin who, in July 1951, put a pistol to Abdullah's ear in Jerusalem's Al-Aqsa mosque. As the boy rushed to his already lifeless grandfather's aid, he saw his "so-called friends, those men of dignity of high estate, doubled up, scattering like bent old women". He was so disgusted, he later said, that he never wanted to be king.
 And he wasn't, immediately. His father, Kalal, came straight from his Swiss sanatorium to the Basman Palace, while he himself had to leave Victoria College in Alexandria for Harrow. There, "a man among boys", he felt spurned and lonely; he knew no one save his cousin Faisal, uncrowned king of Iraq; his schoolmates "gabbled their colloquial English" at an incomprehensible pace; they were "rather snobbish"; and instead of soccer, they played the strange game of rugby. But everything gradually sorted itself out - the diminutive Crown Prince even made an ideal scrumhalf. "I remember the glow I felt one day when a boy threw a long, low pass, shouting: 'Get moving, Hussein! It's yours'. " The privileged young Englishmen, with their "rigid codes and shibboleths", had finally accepted this highest-born of Arabs.
 Before long, the gentle, incurably schizophrenic Kalal was declared unfit to rule, and the 18-year-old Hussain took full powers on May 2, 1953. It was to be a long time before his subjects granted him the kind of acceptance he had won from his Harrow schoolmates, but when they did, it was gratifying beyond compare.
 Hussein is not merely one of the world's two or three longest-serving rulers, he is the only Arab leader to command the true respect and affection of his people. It all came to a head last November, on his return from cancer surgery in the US. A third of Jordan, Palestinian camp-dwellers among them, came out to greet him with a rapturous spontaneity unseen in the Middle East since Ayatollah Khomeini's homecoming after the fall of the Shah.
 Arab intellectuals are puzzling over the metamorphosis in the fortunes of one of the region's numerous potentates. Seen in the context of the great ideological conflicts which raged upon his accession, his people's tribute amounts to a victory for the erstwhile "reactionaries" over erstwhile "revolutionaries", for the old over what was once so promisingly, so gloriously new.
 It is as a Hashemite that he has done it. He insists on that. Not that his nobel lineage confers an automatic right to rule. "No, sir" - the honorific he bestows on all with the flattering charm that is a family trait - "No, sir, I would step down if I felt my people no longer wanted me." But, in the absence of any other, truer measure of legitimacy, democracy for example, he does believe that, being of "the oldest house, the oldest tribe" in the area, he has a right and duty to "help our Arab nation", that he can rise above "differences and interests"; and he must fulfil the trust his grandfather bequeathed him.
 He has never been an intellectual, a political theoriser. But just as his common touch never impaired his regal bearing, so his basic simplicity never lacked guile. It is the ordinary, human virtues he exalts; and the old Harrovian in him, the under-stated semi-Englishman, contributes to his exaltation of one above all others - the modest, homespun ambition always to "do one's best."
 That would not have sufficed without luck or without the sense of timing which is born of great patience in the taking of decisions, but great resolution, courage and occasional ruthlessness in carrying them out.
 For all his vicissitudes, and the sudden, spectacular changes of course they have forced upon him, one can trace beneath them all a seam of personal and political consistency. His instincts were always liberal. He early nursed a desire to know what his people really thought of him, and, taking after a Caliph of Baghdad, he once spent two nights as a taxi-driver cruising for fares - until one of his loyalist Bedouins, ultimate bulwark of his throne, nearly beat him up for daring to suggest that "his majesty" left much to be desired.  The impetuous 18-year-old ordered his first prime minister to relax controls on political parties and newspapers. In 1956, he peremptorily sacked the devoted, almost saintly, but irritatingly paternalistic Glubb, to his people's brief delight and the outrage of the rightwing British press.
 Glubb forecast that Jordan would become "just one more unstable, passionate, bloodstained Arab country." It almost did. For such concessions were but hopeless sops to the surging, Nasser-led emotions of the time. Monarchs everywhere trembled on their thrones, but none was exposed like little Hussein, with his small, poor, British-subsidised realm hemmed in on three sides by richer, more powerful Arab states, and an aggressive, expansionist young Israel on the fourth. The refugees hung on Cairo Radio's every word, its bloodcurdling calls to rid the region of British puppets; ugly riots swept Amman; the Israelis staged murderous, wantonly provocative raids on sleeping frontier villages; neighbouring republics plotted coups with their local accessories.  Would-be-assassins tried to poison him, killing off most of the palace cats instead. Once, piloting his grandfather's De Havilland Dove, he came under attack by two Syrian MiG-17s, and he extracted from that ageing aircraft feats of hedge-hopping aerobatics that almost tore it asunder in the most hair-raising of his many escapes.
 In July, 1958, with his cousin Faisal's murder in the Iraqi Revolution, Hussein called the British back; the paratroopers flew in from Cyprus at six hours' notice. He survived again, but the Sunday Times noted that "when he drives out from his Palace, his car is escorted by 12 jeeps, each carrying four soldiers armed with Bren guns". The Washington Post said flatly that "Hussein will probably leave when the British do".
 In the next seven years with the Eisenhower doctrine and superpower rivalry in the Middle East at its height, the King strayed furthest from the liberalism with which he had begun. Opponents were jailed, some were tortured, and a few died under it.
 In June 1967, in his last reconciliation with Nasser, he made a defence pact with Egypt - and promptly lost the Palestinian half of his kingdom in the Six-Day War. That led to the second great crisis of his reign, the rise of Yasser Arafat's fedayeen [guerrillas] who, despairing of Arab regimes, republics as well as monarchies, launched a "popular liberation war" of their own - choosing a kingdom now reduced to its original Transjordanian dimensions as the place from which to do it.
 In 1968, at a famous press conference, the King was obliged to declare: "We are all fedayeen." Two years later, in September, 1970, he unleashed his faithful Bedouins, and, in 10 days of fratricidal strife, broke the back of the guerrillas' state-within-his-state; then he drove them out of their remaining bases in a campaign so fierce that scores of them crossed the Jordan, surrendering to the Israelis rather than fall into the hands of his vengeful troops. To most Palestinians it seemed unforgiveable, and the struggle between them and the Hashemites, that most poisonous leitmotif of his and his grandfather's reign, took new and vicious forms; Jordan became the first target of the Black September terrorist organisation.
 But, in due course, Hussein recognised the PLO as "the sole legitimate representative of the Palestinian people", in effect renouncing his claim to what he had lost in 1967. The conflict gradually diminished; the PLO's standing declined as the King's slowly rose. Others were to do worse to the Palestinians, with less justification. And this became the central feature of a much larger reality. To be sure, the King owes his apotheosis to his own achievements, but nothing, in the measuring of them, has helped like the failings of others.
 "Can one", writes Palestinian political scientist As'ad Abdul Rahman in a study of the King's extraordinary popularity, "compare regimes which kill tens, hundreds, perhaps thousands - publicly or secretly, no matter - with a regime which always did its utmost to kill no one?"
 It was back in 1957 that his friend, Ali Abu Nuwar, newly promoted commander of the Arab Legion, gave Hussein his first taste of personal betrayal. "I could not bring myself to put him to death. I have certainly been criticised for this act of mercy. But there it is - I couldn't do it." Now, all his former adversaries pay tribute to this obdurate gift of reconciliation. Yaakoub Zeidin, the Communist Party leader 12 times imprisoned, met the King recently.  "I told him we were once young and very extreme, and he replied that 'We, too, were young and made mistakes.' " In Jordan, former plotters regularly re-emerge as ministers and even, in one case, as chief of intelligence.
 Glubb once forecast that if Hussein ever reached 45 and, like his grandfather, put behind him the impetuosity of youth, he would, like him, become "a great ruler". Sure it is that, for him, longevity has become an asset rather than the liability it usually is. Time has proved that, though an advocate of Arab-Israeli peace long before others dared to be, he has never "sold out"; others, President Assad, Arafat himself, now seem closer to that than he. And without the reserve of credit which time has conferred, he might not have risked the three great initiatives - his new "democracy", his juridical and administrative "disengagement" from the West Bank, his "independent" line during the Gulf crisis - which have now raised him, morally, far above any other regime in the region.
 Is he cured of his cancer? It is not yet sure. But if he is, the tantalising question arises: does the last of the Hashemites now hanker after the larger, Pan-Arab ambitions of his grandfather? That he has gone over to the moral offensive is not in doubt, with his promotion of Jordan as a "model", his missionary zeal for democracy and human rights.
 If this moral offensive leads to a territorial one, it will start with Iraq.  Would he accept an Iraqi throne? "Sir," he replies with habitual modesty, "I don't believe I could handle it." But few doubt that he wouldn't mind having a go. Of course, his long and dubious association with Saddam, belatedly ended, has left him in moral debt with Kurds and Shi'ites. Kurdish visitors report that, when asked why he did not break the Arabs' shameful silence over the gassing of Halabja, it was with tears that he stammered out his apology.
 But, among the people who know him best, the Jordanians themselves, favourable comments on his Pan-Arab, his renascent Hashemite dreams come from surprising quarters. "If he sticks to his democracy," said a member of the Palestine National Council, "I, for one, would gladly see him take not just Iraq, but Syria, Lebanon, and yes - though Arafat is my friend - what we can get back of Palestine too."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



81 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 23, 1993

SUFFER THE NOT-SO-LITTLE CHILDREN;
The state of the nation's health tomorrow depends on the fitness of today's teenagers. But how much are we really doing to ensure they look after themselves?

BYLINE: AIDAN MACFARLAND AND ANN MCPHERSON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 766 words

 
 WHILE the elderly are assumed to be doomed to illness on account of their age, the young are assumed to be immune on account of theirs. Ageism is endemic.  There are a billion teenagers worldwide, three-quarters in developing countries. About 100 million live in such poverty, deprivation and powerlessness that they are at high risk of premature death from Aids or violence, or from long-term health problems caused by malnutrition, smoking related diseases etc.
 But UK teenagers, you may think, are immune from all this. Not according to suicide and accident statistics. Smoking, diet and early sex also have profound effects. So why are there so few specialist teen services? Why are the few existing ones being cut? Do we think that teenagers are not interested in health? Try counting the number of health articles in teenage magazines! Do we think they are too anarchistic to care? More than 80 per cent of 14-17-year-olds think they are responsible for their own health and accept that their lifestyle affects their health. Do we think they don't have health problems? One study showed that a third had seen their GP in the previous three months. Three-quarters had taken medicine in the previous month, suffered headaches and had teeth filled. 
 So what are the main threats to teenage health beyond unemployment and poverty, factors they cannot control. In The Health Of The Nation, the Government set these targets for the year 2000:
 - Cut the smoking rate of 11-15-years-olds by 33 per cent - from 8 per cent in 1988 to 6 per cent. Nearly two thirds of adult smokers started before the age of 16.
 - Cut calories from fat from 40 per cent to below 35 per cent of total calorie intake. Eating habits are embedded as far back as the womb, resulting in high cholesterol being laid down in the coronary arteries from an early age.
 - Cut accidental deaths in the under 15s by 33 per cent - from 6.7 per 100,000 population in 1989 to no more than 4.5; and for the 15-24 age group, by 25 per cent from 23.2 per 100,000 to no more than 17.4. Accidents are the main cause of death in young people.
 - Cut the pregnancy rate in under-16s by 50 per cent - from 9.5 per 1,000 girls aged 13-15 in 1989 to no more than 4.8. Teen pregnancies have a higher rate of prematurity and are associated with adverse socio-economic consequences.
 - Cut the overall suicide rate by 15 per cent - from 11.1 per 100,000 in 1990 to no more than 9.4 (unemployment and male suicide rates seem to be linked).
 These targets are welcome, but research shows they cannot be met by a cosy alliance of health and education services. For example, a family "no smoking" education project that worked well in Norwegian schools failed in the UK, perhaps because in Norway, the government simultaneously raised tobacco prices and banned cigarette advertising.
 Teenagers are not a "race apart", though it is hard to know how best to improve their lot. On the one hand, they want to remain within their families with all their strengths and problems; on the other they want to strive for independence, and are rightly into experimenting - which inevitably involves risk taking.
 The motivations behind risk taking behaviour is highly complex at any age. The gap between teenagers' knowledge - which is often good - about what endangers their health and how they use this knowledge is largely uncharted territory.  What we do know is that interventions in a single area are unlikely to work in isolation. Peer group pressure, cigarette advertising, imitation of parents, boredom, the need to experiment and self-image all influence children's decision to begin smoking. We also have a good explanation as to why children continue to smoke: cigarettes are highly addictive. It is the proposed solutions that are simplistic. Having a health minister telling teachers to stop smoking is hardly the answer.
 To change behaviour to meet the targets requires tactics to match the complexity of the problems. These should include asking young people themselves how to solve the problem, feeding back their own views to them, enacting effective laws and enforcing them. In a recent survey of 54 Oxford shops selling cigarettes, a 12-year-old was served in 13 of them.
 These and other issues are all being discussed at a meeting of teachers, doctors and teenagers - The Health Of The Teenage Nation - at St Catherine's College, Oxford, tomorrow. Details from Dr A Macfarlane, Community Health Offices, Radcliffe Infirmary, Woodstock Road, Oxford, OX2 6HE. Tel 0865 224858, Fax 0865 240755.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



82 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 25, 1993

OBITUARY: CYRIL CRYER

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 259 words

 
 CYRIL CRYER, the last of the 1,000 Leeds "Pals" who joined the colours in the initial, enthusiastic months of the first world war, has died at the age of 96. He was one of a handful of grand old men who lived to see a revival of interest in the poignant history of the volunteer units, which also included several "Chums" battalions. 
 Like the other Pals, he volunteered as part of a patriotic grapevine which used the office and factory friendships of men in the northern towns and cities to encourage joining up. The practice spread to Birmingham and the City of London, which both produced their own brigades. Training on the Pennine moors brought out Cyril Cryer's youthful talent for long-distance running and he took the bronze medal in Northern Command's cross country championships in 1915. Once on the Western Front, he became the battalion runner - carrying messages under heavy fire and twice suffering severe wounds.
 Buried by shellfire, he was left permanently deaf in one ear. Another attack saw a fist-sized hole punched in his helmet, which fortunately took the brunt of the damage. Cyril , who retained vivid memories of the fighting to the end, recalled a follow-up attack, when he and his colleagues were ordered to check on the first wave but found nobody left alive.
 After the war, he worked in the design department of the Leeds printers and game-makers, John Waddington's, and then retired to Devon with his wife Phyllis to be near their family.
 Cyril Charles Cryer, born June 26, 1896; died March 21, 1993

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



83 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 26, 1993

VILLAGERS BLAME OUTSIDERS;
Owen Bowcott visits Castlerock, the quiet community shattered by yesterday's killings

BYLINE: OWEN BOWCOTT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 371 words

 
 DESCENDING into Castlerock, a neat row of thatched cottages stands on the left. Ahead, the wide sweep of the North Atlantic lies deep and calm in the sunshine.
 Behind the sand dunes stretches the quiet village, inhabited largely by pensioners and people who work in nearby Coleraine. 
 On the Goretree Park estate yesterday Royal Ulster Constabulary officers were busy washing the last stains of blood into the gutter. It was awkward work. An officer first tried dropping loose chippings, then resorted to a bucket and brush.
 Nearby a squad of police searched in silence, picking their way through a rubbish skip full of builders' rubble. They were looking for forensic evidence from the gun attack which had just claimed the lives of four Catholic workmen.
 Castlerock has never seen such violence in the long history of the Troubles.  Perched on the edge of a remote County Londonderry headland, the village is predominantly Protestant, and locals are proud of their good community relations.
 "The people here had nothing at all to do with it," said William Maguire, a retired resident. "They are disgusted by it. The people here are very peaceful-minded. There are very few Catholics but there's no problem. Everyone knows everyone and they get on extremely well."
 In Goretree Park the neighbours were chatting with police officers. "That's my house they were working on," an elderly woman gestured.
 "They were nice, hard-working chaps. Its so sad what's happened. They say the foreman's wife was expecting her baby today."
 Everyone was reluctant to accept that any locals had been involved. "I think it would be outsiders coming in," one man suggested, "but someone must have been looking and watching. It comes as a shock. You don't expect that sort of thing on your doorstep.
 "Those workmen were just trying to get a living. If there are two sides in this conflict then when they didn't show up on St Patrick's Day it was made clear which side they were on."
 Not everyone expressed charitable thoughts about those who had died. "It will be interesting to see what kind of a funeral they get," one man said out of the side of his mouth. "They may get a paramilitary send-off."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



84 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 27, 1993

GIRLS' HOME MEMORIES MAY HELP SHAPE CARE FOR PROBLEM CHILDREN;
Three young women from establishment set up in Victorian times offer 'badly needed' insight to life in care

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 598 words

 
 THREE graduates of "village homes" founded for barefoot and destitute Victorian girls are making a unique contribution to the child care debate.
 The Tyneside trio, who spent a total of 28 years in care, are organising a reunion and survey of pupils at the former Northumberland Village Homes in the Tyneside resort of Whitley Bay.
 Helped by researchers from Newcastle University, they have organised the pounds 15,000 study in between looking after seven children and studying for careers in nursing, elderly people's welfare and film-making. Social workers see the potential findings - of children's experiences in care, views, and problems in adapting to independent life - as an exceptional addition to data about "problem children". 
 "This sort of thing is very badly needed," said John Heptinstall, a senior social worker on North Tyneside and the last headteacher of the village homes, which closed in 1985. "People in our profession have all sorts of theories as to what happens to children both during care and when they leave. But we don't actually know, because there has been no systematic attempt to find out."
 Wandering round the cul-de-sac of gabled Victorian cottages, now a smart private housing development called The Village, the three budding social scientists overflowed with memories of life in care.
 "It's too big a part of your life to forget," said Gerry Roe, aged 27, mother of four and training as a nurse. "You went in pretty innocent and came out hardened up for the real world. I used to think life can't whip out anything worse for me now. So perhaps I've been able to cope with things better than someone brought up protected, with a happy childhood."
 Jackie Kerr, aged 26 and a film-maker from Wallsend with one daughter, went into care aged five months, and sharply remembers the shock of leaving at 16.
 "It was all you thought of - leaving. It was like a honeymoon to start with," she said. "But then the reality of it followed.
 "The homes tried to prepare you, by giving you a little flat in the cottage to look after - but suddenly you were on your own, only 16, in a real council flat and, in a lot of cases, with a baby on the way."
 Tess Foster, aged 28 and cradling her second child Abbie, regularly went back to the village for a bed for the night.
 Although the survey will cover only pupils since 1970, when the village became a council community home with its own school, the trio have been drawn to the history of their predecessors. "We'd like to clean this up," said Mrs Kerr, inspecting a mossy gravestone in Whitley Bay churchyard, which commemorates more than a dozen girls, like Emily Bell, aged seven, and Frances Little, 11, who died of cholera and typhoid at the homes in the 1880s. Contacts have been made in Canada, where many early pupils were sent as domestic servants.
 "Every four years there was a passing out parade," said Mr Heptinstall. "Girls who failed to find local service were taken down to North Shields and shipped to Canada - with the then headmistress, who checked their employers and went back every four years to see how they were getting on."
 Mrs Roe, of Dudley, near Cramlington in Northumberland, is co-ordinating the reunion at the Park Hotel in Whitley Bay on May 21. Guests will be asked to help establish a lasting network for former pupils.
 "This will help us all to care for our own children," said Mrs Kerr, "while the survey, with luck, will add to authority's understanding of our experiences and benefit future generations of children in care."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



85 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 29, 1993

NEVER MIND THE BIG BREAKFAST, GET THE TEA OR COFFEE ON;
Leszek Mazan wakes up to Poland's new, snappy, early-morning television

BYLINE: LESZEK MAZAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 664 words

 
 CUE throbbing music; cue big shiny kettle; cut to newscaster - wake up, Poland the world starts here, at 6 am on Mondays and Fridays, with Tea Or Coffee, the big, the only, breakfast television show. And with a warm welcome and an invitation to start the day with a cup of their favourite beverage, viewers - sleepy-eyed or not - are turning on in numbers that have astonished the pundits.
 In its new zippy format, which came to the boil last September with the launch of the kettle logo, ratings soar from 4 per cent at 6 am to 6-7 per cent in the first half-hour to an average 19 per cent for the entire three-hour show. At times it claims to attract an astonishing 40 per cent of potential viewers.  Obviously, the curse of the sofa does not apply here. The presenters and guests spread out over a three-piece suite in deep pink dappled with beige and grey streaks. 
 No item lasts longer than 4 1/2 minutes because, according to the programme editor Halszka Wasilewska, "we do not want people to burn their breakfast or be late for work." This short and snappy approach means presenters' chat is kept to a minimum, music videos are trimmed, "and guests never manage to finish their coffee", although speed "shouldn't detract from the pleasant, warm atmosphere".
 THE show is a mix of regular items, interviews and pop videos linked by a theme that changes daily and might be romantic love, dreams, smiling, fairy tales - all recent examples. Regulars are news bulletins - five per show - keep-fit classes with curvaceous presenters, weather forecasts every hour, a press review, and recipes such as the "breakfast treat" and the "dinner dish". The daily theme is presented by celebs - journalists, writers, poets - and other experts who all appear live from the studio.
 It all goes out live, with no rehearsal, and make-up touched up in the coffee bar at the last second. The programme makers boast 15-second precision, arguing that without it the show would lose its rhythm.
 Audiences vary. At 6 o'clock they are mainly factory workers and young people in vocational training. Between 7 and 8 am they are office workers, schoolkids and students. After that it's mainly housewives. But a large section are old-age pensioners, who switch on at the crack of 6 am and keep watching. They are obviously crucial to the show's success but keeping them happy is not easy; they complain about too much rock racket. Conversely, the young ones want more of it.
 Morning television only started on state television three years ago under the not very original title of Good Morning. It went on air at 8 am and ran for only an hour. Last June the task of running breakfast TV was delegated to a section of educational TV dealing with practical advice to viewers. The reason was that the section devoted half its time to trying to offer prescriptions for a contented life. The programmes were seen as "school of life".
 The team now making Tea Or Coffee have been headhunted from national radio and television and have backgrounds in presenting and news journalism. They work under the direction of two very experienced directors, Krzysztof Buchowicz and Andrzej Dzwierczynski.
 From next week Tea Or Coffee should appear Monday to Friday, with a radical change of direction. Halszka Wasilewska wants to get out of the one-subject-a-day trap and has proposed instead that each day will be aimed at a different market. So, Monday will go behind the headlines and the doors of the rich and famous; Tuesday will be mainly for men but with a neat twist - d-i-y and fly-fishing will be taken up by women while men will display culinary talents; Wednesday is for youth - music and problems; Thursday is for culture-vultures; and Friday will give a run-in for the week-end with sport, week-end breaks and leisure.
 The Tea Or Coffee team just hope that it will not become too sugary or cold, and that the quality of service will not slip.
 Copyright: Prze Kroj

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



86 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 30, 1993

LIGHTS, CAMERA, ACTION . . . JUSTICE?;
Ever since James Earl Ray was jailed for the assassination of Martin Luther King 25 years ago, he has campaigned from his cell for the case to be heard by a jury. At last he is to get his wish. But is trial by television more like a circus than a court?

BYLINE: SIMON WINCHESTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1880 words

 
 THERE is a comfortable, unchanging quality about the American South, which gives a town like Memphis its enduring charm. Despite the stiff midwinter wind the Mississippi River grumbles by, imperturbable as ever. The famous Peabody ducks waddle into their hotel lobby at eleven every morning, as they have for decades past. Fat old black ladies dress up for church each evening, as their grandmothers always did. And old men panhandle for spare change outside the old Daisy Theater on Beale Street, as they probably have been doing since W C Handy's day. 
 In recent weeks, however, something strange and very new-fangled has been going on in Memphis. At first blush it looks like a trial, a courtroom battle full of old Dixie courtesies and dignity. It is taking place on the first floor of the great Shelby County Courthouse, a magnificent building of Grecian marble and rosewood panels. Each morning a black-gowned judge enters and a sergeant-at-arms (complete with silver-handled revolver) bellows to everyone to be upstanding. Lawyers, buried behind piles of papers and with briefcases yawning on every side, assemble notes, whisper last-minute instructions.  Reporters settle down in the press benches. A jury - half black, half white, just as it ought to be in Tennessee - sits back and waits expectantly for the day's revelations. In short, Shelby County these mornings has looked ready to act out yet another day of dispensing justice to its people, as it has done for scores of years long gone.
 But on closer examination all is smoke and mirrors. For a start, there are what look like aluminium railway tracks running around the courtroom, and burly men with British accents are heaving a very large camera back and forth along them.
 There seem to be an awful lot of cameras - two more behind the press benches, one suspended from the ceiling and moving on electronic commands from some unseen party, another behind red velvet curtains near the judge and revealed only occasionally when the curtains part, like a flash of thigh. Some of the lawyers have electronic devices clipped to their belts, others sport earpieces and seem to respond mysteriously to unheard orders. There is in addition a man, by the sound of him also a Briton, with headphones and a clipboard and a manner rather more magisterial than the judge beside whom he stands. "Take your positions," he says. "Quiet please, everyone. Okay judge, all yours . . ."
 Finally, where one might suppose there might be a dock with a prisoner or an accused, there is a large Sony Trinitron television set and the crystal-clear image of a middle-aged man who looks uncannily like Samuel Beckett, but who speaks with accents a long, long way from Dublin. From Tennessee, it turns out, for this image, beamed live by satellite from a well-guarded waiting room 100 miles away at the Riverbend Maximum Security Institution near Nashville, is of James Earl Ray Jr, the one-time drifter and petty criminal who has become notorious as the confessed killer of Martin Luther King.
 All this paraphernalia - the judge, the jury, the lawyers, gavels, briefs, wood-panelling, the men with the cameras and the man with the headphones - represents what Mr Ray has campaigned for a quarter of a century to have: his day in court. Twenty-five years ago (after being arrested at Heathrow and extradited to Tennessee) he pleaded guilty to the premeditated murder of Dr King. There was no trial and, with almost indecent haste, he was shuffled off to serve a 99-year sentence, with no question of parole.
 Yet just three days after his sentence started, Ray changed his mind, claiming that he had been forced into confessing - and that, to protect conspirators unknown, he had been hustled off into the silence of the penitentiary. He has pleaded his innocence on countless occasions since: but without exception the judges who have heard the pleas have rejected them as frivolous or irrelevant or otherwise without merit. He has used up every avenue of appeal - until today, when a new opportunity has been afforded to him, or which appears to have been afforded him, by these strangers with their film cameras and aluminium railways and their unfamiliarly British accents.
 All of a sudden, James Earl Ray believes he has a chance to plead his innocence before what looks and sounds and feels just like a court of law. He and his lawyer think they will thereby be able to prove that Dr King was the victim, just as John Kennedy was the victim, of some murderous conspiracy; and moreover one in which James Earl Ray Jr was manifestly not involved.
 But Ray is getting what he wants neither through the judicial courtesies of the State of Tennessee, nor even via the second thoughts of the United States government. His day in court stems from the commercial anticipations of an American cable television company, Home Box Office; from 15 years of obsessive fascination with his case by a Mancunian television producer named Jack Saltman; through the relatively deep pockets of the now disenfranchised, but still cinematically active Thames Television; and through the intellectual commitment of Channel 4.
 The trial is taking 10 days to argue. Most of the central characters - a judge who is actually a law professor in New York City, a Western Tennessee state prosecutor, the London-based American lawyer who has been acting for Ray since 1985, the jury, the bailiff, the stenographers and all the witnesses - are being paid (Ray is not). Jack Saltman - a distinguished and respected TV producer and editor who recently "tried" Kurt Waldheim on television (he was found innocent), has long felt that Ray was set up, that he was a patsy. He feels passionately about the intellectual rigour of a wholly new kind of entertainment format of trial-on-television, and he is aiming to give his production - Guilt or Innocence: The Trial of James Earl Ray - as much verisimilitude, judicial fairness and propriety as possible. "This is not a drama, like Perry Mason. This is a real trial - the jury is sworn, the judge is independent, the lawyers are doing their best to convict and acquit the accused respectively. There is no script. This is the trial Ray always wanted. And it is quite probably his last chance."
 Sitting through the proceedings - and, one morning halfway through the trial, watching as the judge turned away an entire string of defence witnesses because, he declared, their evidence seemed no better than hearsay - one swiftly realises that this "last chance" for Ray may be a slender chance indeed. "It seems more difficult to organise a mock trial than a real one," said the film's director, exasperated by what he considered the judge's academic pedantry. But leaving aside the judge's often questionable decisions, the format itself has proved so limiting as to render the process of very dubious value - and, for the hapless Mr Ray, possibly even a rather cruel joke.
 There is no compelling reason, for instance, why anyone in television's court should ever tell the truth - there is no judicial sanction against perjury.  Neither side can compel any witness to attend - the "court" has no powers of subpoena. Physical evidence that might be available in a proper courtroom - the alleged murder weapon, for example - cannot be produced for this event, Tennessee has ruled, in case there ever is a real trial, and the evidence might thus appear to have been tampered with. No plea for a mistrial - after the judge's odd rulings, for instance - can ever be entertained. And the jurors - no matter the demographic exactitude with which they have been selected - have no moral obligation whatsoever to bring in a verdict other than that which they think might be commercially amusing. The verisimilitude Mr Saltman wants - and which James Earl Ray supposes he is getting - is simply not there, for the very basic reason that this is circus, not court.
 NONETHELESS the dramatic aspects of the production do give it some very real legitimacy and, moreover, some very considerable power. In order to keep up the suspense Jack Saltman has filmed the jury foreman twice, giving the two possible verdicts, and the courtroom audience's respective reactions. Unless a jury member gets drunk and gives the game away between now and Sunday - the 25th anniversary of the shooting, and the day when HBO and Channel 4 will show the three-hour distillation of these 10 days - the actual verdict will only be announced at the very end of the programme, just as in a real trial. For now, only Jack and his jurors know which way things have gone.
 This alone, the programme makers believe, will guarantee huge audiences. The American public in particular will obey a compulsion to watch - since the implications of a verdict in favour of Ray, declaring his innocence, could be truly profound. If his lawyers manage to convince the jury that there is reasonable degree of doubt that their client shot Martin Luther King - not an overwhelmingly difficult task, despite the exasperating pedantry of the judge - then there quite probably will be huge pressure for a full judicial re-examination of the case - a re-examination that could well alter the course of modern American history. And if this does happen, everyone will declare that television has once again demonstrated its remarkable powers of participation in the mechanics of proper democracy.
 But there is risk. The whole event is costing $ 3 million to stage. Senior vice-presidents at HBO in New York are especially nervous that three hours of unremitting courtroom argument could prove tedious for viewers who have grasshopper-like attention spans: they have already insisted on their own anchorwoman for their edition of the show, and may still argue with Jack Saltman that the legal debate be leavened with contemporary film clips, with interviews with the principals, with more telegenic "contextual material".
 Everyone, after all, remembers the commercial success of Oliver Stone's JFK.  Stone and Saltman have similar views about the assassinations; they are hugely sceptical of the notion that solitary lunatics were involved in the killings; conspiracy seems the more likely answer (the military-industrial complex felled Kennedy, says Stone; Hoover's FBI may have been behind King's killing, thinks Saltman). But they have very different ways of trying to persuade their publics that this is so.
 Oliver Stone, using a combination of Kevin Costner, dramatised reconstructions and journalistic licence, quite probably realised his goal. Few Americans can now be found who imagine Oswald to have been the lone assassin: almost everyone who saw JFK has at least a small kernel of doubt about the case, a kernel that was skilfully planted there by Stone. But will Jack Saltman's device - the staging of a new trial-that-is-not-a-trial, the handing down of a verdict-that-is-not-a-verdict - be similarly persuasive? In Memphis it is the format itself that is more properly on trial - while the fate of James Earl Ray, still locked away in Riverbend, may well remain unresolved for many more years to come.
 The Trial of James Earl Ray, a Thames production for HBO and Channel 4, will be shown on Sunday at 8pm.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



87 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

March 30, 1993

SOCIAL SERVICES: CARE ROLE PREPARATION BLIGHTED BY AXE FALLING ON KEY SERVICES

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 1017 words

 
 Local authorities are cutting a swath through education and social services as a result of a budget squeeze hitting Tory shires as much as Labour-controlled inner cities. When the Government announced grants and spending limits to local authorities for 1993/94, Environment Secretary Michael Howard told councils that they "should be able to maintain the full range of services". But a survey by the Guardian of all education and social services authorities in England and Wales has found that the axe is being taken to old people's homes, student grants and voluntary groups. Charges are being levied or raised steeply for home helps, meals-on-wheels and school dinners. Of the 116 authorities surveyed, 71 gave figures showing cuts in real terms in social services spending, and 74 did so for education. Sixteen said they would be spending less on social services in cash terms than last year, and 17 said they would be doing so for education. Other authorities are making cuts, but declined or were unable to give figures. The cuts seem certain to mean more local government workers joining the 35,000 - 2.1 per cent of the total - whose jobs were axed last year.
 AS LOCAL authority social services departments prepare to take over full responsibility for community care on Thursday - widely billed as their finest hour - the Guardian survey reveals that many are making swingeing and unprecedented cuts in their budgets. 
 Old people's homes are being closed or hived off, day centres and day nurseries are being shut, and charges for home helps and meals-on-wheels are being introduced or increased sharply.
 Even services for the most vulnerable are not escaping the axe. Several departments admit they are cutting direct provision for people with learning disabilities or mental handicap, and grants to voluntary groups are being pruned radically.
 Toby Harris, social services chairman of the Labour-led Association of Metropolitan Authorities, said: "The number of authorities having to make cuts is probably greater than ever before."
 Social services directors have been warning that the squeeze on their budgets will take the shine off the community care changes, under which local authorities are assuming lead responsibility for assessing and meeting the care needs of elderly and disabled people.
 The extra funding for the changes, pounds 539 million in England, is being initially "ring-fenced" or protected for community care use alone. But local authority associations say it falls short of what is needed by pounds 135 million, and they fear having to search for more in their mainstream budgets.
 Even if the extra community care money is taken into account, official figures show that 26 of 108 authorities in England will have less to spend in 1993/94 than they budgeted for in 1992/93, given their individual limits set by the Government in the form of Standard Spending Assessments.
 The Guardian survey found that at least 71 social services departments were making quantified cuts, 16 of them planning to spend less in cash terms next year than they did in 1992-93. Some authorities, such as Hammersmith and Fulham, say they have been forced to cut the cushion of extra money they had set aside in anticipation of a shortfall in the community care kitty. Stockport says it has "deleted" it.
 Many authorities are closing old people's homes, or hiving them off to voluntary groups, as the new community care rules stipulate that 85 per cent of the funding being transferred from social security must be spent in the independent sector. Leicestershire, Coventry and Lancashire are among authorities closing homes. Manchester, now with no homes of its own, Cheshire and Cleveland are among those hiving them off.
 Authorities introducing or increasing charges include Avon, which is to charge pounds 4 an hour for domestic services, Calderdale, Gwynedd, Walsall and Humberside. Wolverhampton is introducing a charge for a disabled person's bus pass.
 Grants to, and use of, voluntary sector agencies will be reduced by authorities including Lambeth, Salford, Wiltshire and the Wirral. Lambeth has also made cuts in provision for under-fives, although many authorities have sought to protect children's services.
 Authorities admitting to making cuts in services for people with learning disabilities include Southwark, Nottinghamshire, South Glamorgan and Dyfed.
 Mr Harris said local authority associations had been warning that budgets not protected by ring-fencing would suffer in the tough spending round this year.
 Although some had suffered more in the past, there had probably never been as widespread a crisis.
 "We are promised that future years are going to be even tougher - and that's going to make it even more difficult for local authorities to maintain the kind of services they provided even before the community care changes took effect."
 - Social services directors yesterday called for urgent talks with the Government and the local authority associations on the so-called "unmet needs" issue which has emerged as the main controversy over the community care changes.
 The Association of Directors of Social Services described as "unrealistic" the official guidelines on the issue, which relates to the recording of the care needs of an elderly or disabled person when there is insufficient funding to provide the services to meet those needs.
 There is widespread expectation that there will be High Court challenges to authorities unable to pay for services covered by statute. In its guidance, the Department of Health has appeared to advise authorities to minimise the risk of such challenges by not recording needs if they are likely to be unmet.
 Peter Smallridge, the association's president and Kent's social services director, said: "Directors of social services should seek to persuade authorities that it is unrealistic to expect care managers or social workers to assess need properly if they are constrained by what they are allowed to record."
 Leader comment, letters, page 21

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



88 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 1, 1993

MINISTER FUELS FEAR OF COUNCILS' 'POISONED CHALICE' - ELDERLY FACE MEANS TEST TO CURTAIL SPIRALLING BILL

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 258 words

 
 LOCAL authority social services today take responsibility for assessing the needs of elderly and disabled people seeking state-assisted care and for arranging the most appropriate services.
 The change will affect mainly elderly people who previously would have gone into residential or nursing homes, receiving income support of between pounds 175 and pounds 310 a week subject only to a means test. 
 It was partly to curb the spiralling bill for this benefit - up from pounds 39 million a year in 1982 to about pounds 1.5 billion now - and partly to enable more people to keep living at home, that the Government introduced the new system.
 People already in residential and nursing homes will be unaffected. But those seeking assistance with care for the first time will have to undergo a means test and a needs assessment, and it may be decided that residential care is inappropriate.
 The assessments will be undertaken by social workers, drawing on advice and assistance from family doctors and other health and welfare specialists, with final responsibility resting with social services.
 One doubt about the system concerns the alternatives to residential care.  Services for people living at home remain relatively underdeveloped in many parts of the country.
 Funding raises further doubts: for 1993-94, local authorities in England, receiving a transfer of pounds 399 million from social security plus pounds 140 million to get things under way, claim this falls short of what is needed by pounds 135 million.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



89 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 1, 1993

MINISTER FUELS FEAR OF COUNCILS' 'POISONED CHALICE';
Do town halls have a 'real opportunity' or are they being left to sink or swim? Virginia Bottomley talks to David Brindle in an exclusive interview

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1111 words

 
 THE success or failure of today's long-awaited community care shake-up will depend entirely on the ability of local authorities to make the policy work, Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary, has made clear in an interview with the Guardian.
 In what will be seen as a conspicuously "hands-off" approach, she said she had given the authorities perfectly adequate tools and expected them to get on with the job. If things went wrong, she would be highly reluctant to intervene.
 "Local government has long sought this responsibility. They campaigned strenuously to be allowed to take the lead," Mrs Bottomley said. "It is a real opportunity, not only to improve the service for the frail and vulnerable, but also for local government to demonstrate their ability and skills of leadership." 
 On fears that some care services will be at risk of collapse under the shake-up, the minister insisted: "It is not my remit to provide a safety net round any particular institution or service. It is for the service to demonstrate their value and effectiveness to the local authority and to the health service."
 When the Griffiths report on community care recommended in 1988 that local authority social services departments should take the lead role in assessing the needs of elderly and disabled people, and arranging the most appropriate care for them, sceptics warned the plan represented a poisoned chalice. Mrs Bottomley's comments will do little to ease such anxieties.
 Despite fears in many quarters - including even the Tory-led Commons health committee - that funding for the departments' new role may prove inadequate, the minister would brook no criticism of the Government's preparations.
 The funding, she said, is 35 per cent higher than would have been paid through social security under the former system. The planning, which has gone on for three years because ministers postponed the original start date of April 1991, has been "almost unprecedented" in its scope. "I think we are as well prepared for this change as we could be," the minister said.
 Yet there remains a distinct feeling among observers that local government is being left to sink or swim; that the buck has already been passed by Whitehall; and any evidence of failure will be laid at town hall doors.
 A "community care support force", set up last autumn to help local authorities and other agencies prepare for the new system, is disbanded today and its members returned to the jobs from which they were seconded. Where authorities are now supposed to turn for help with problems is unclear - even though Mrs Bottomley did admit the system will need to bed down.
 "It will take time to use the new funding mechanisms to achieve the profound change in culture and approach to the provision of services and the development of a real partnership with users and carers," she said, underlining the official line of "evolution, not revolution".
 Monitoring from Whitehall would be extensive and all parties should be prepared to "learn from experience", the minister said. Would she therefore intervene to sort out local problems or fine-tune the system? Not exactly. "As we look at lessons from those authorities, we will of course review where further training, further guidance, further direction and adjustment of the funding mechanisms is required."
 The minister's apparent desire to keep a distance from practical implementation of community care is evident in her attitude towards the three key issues that have emerged in recent weeks.
 The principal of these is the question of "unmet need", or what local authorities should do if they assess a person as needing a care service but lack the funds to provide it. Official guidance on the matter has been broadly criticised as inadequate, and local authorities feel they are being left to face inevitable challenges in the High Court on behalf of people denied services which their records say they ought to have.
 Mrs Bottomley said she believed that "we have discharged the responsibility from the centre" in respect of guidance and that social workers assessing people's needs should not draw up "a wish-list without regard to the available resources".
 At the same time, local authorities should not be courting legal action. "I shall be disappointed if the energy, the goodwill and the enthusiasm of the new community care arrangements, which marks such a dramatic improvement on the previous regime, gets dissipated in adversarial, legalistic wrangling."
 The second area of concern is the fear of "bed-blocking", whereby hospitals may be unable to discharge patients who are otherwise ready to go because of delays in undertaking care assessments and arranging any further services they require.
 Mrs Bottomley said "the ideal should not be the enemy of the good", and that assessment should not become a paper-chase. Where there was a problem, it ought to be dealt with at local level under liaison arrangements between health and social services - arrangements which had to be agreed by last December 31.
 "Where there are issues where a resolution has not been achieved locally, by exception it is possible for the regional health authority and the social services inspector in that area to come in to assist. But we do expect, and have made clear the expectation, that such arrangements should be in place."
 The third area of concern is the viability of services on the fringes of the new system, which fear they will be a low priority for local authorities. These include hostels for homeless mentally-ill people and residential drug and alcohol addiction clinics, which lost the protection of funding that ministers had formerly promised.
 Mrs Bottomley said many local authorities had already set aside money for addiction services, citing Hampshire and the London boroughs of Westminster and Kensington and Chelsea - three of the small minority of authorities reporting no social services cuts in a Guardian survey earlier this week.
 "In this area, as across the board in the development of care in the community, we will continue to review the effectiveness of the different mechanisms in place," the minister stated.
 But, again playing down the prospect of intervention, she said: "Essentially, we believe discussion should be in the local community, between the local authority social services departments and the drug and alcohol organisations, rather than top-down if at all possible.
 "If a particular institution faces difficulties, they would be well-advised to discuss it with the local authority and the local authority associations."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



90 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 2, 1993

COMMENTARY: TORIES REBUILD THE WELFARE STATE AS AN EXCLUSION ZONE

BYLINE: MELANIE PHILLIPS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1095 words

 
 ONE OF the great achievements of the post-war welfare state in Britain was to remove fear from people's lives. If people were old or ill they knew they would be cared for. This element of security for the vulnerable was the hallmark of a civilised society, despite the imperfections of the system.
 And there certainly were imperfections: over-regulated old people's homes, geriatric wards which disregarded the dignity of their patients, the brutalities meted out upon mentally ill and handicapped people behind the high walls of closed institutions. But insecurity, the fear of being simply abandoned in one's time of greatest need, was by and large eradicated as a feature of everyday life. 
 It is the achievement of this Conservative administration's 14 years of power that this fear and insecurity have now been restored to everyday experience. If one is old or handicapped or ill, there is growing reason to fear that one will not be properly treated or looked after, that one will indeed be abandoned.  This is because the Government chooses to deny the welfare system the money it requires to provide for increasing levels of need, preferring instead to stuff the pockets of the better-off under the pretence of encouraging enterprise (hardly a tremendous success story there, either) but actually simply buying votes by catering for unashamed self-interest.
 To add insult to injury, it is given to trumpeting this achievement as progress. If you stifle the truth by installing your placemen to run the show, threatening dismissal to everyone else and getting a cowed and supine Whitehall to massage your statistics for long enough, you can get away with saying "black is white", if only because there comes a point where everyone is too exhausted and the mountain of lies simply too high to climb.
 The Health Secretary, Virginia Bottomley, is fond of boasting of new records of achievement in the health service: more money, more patients, more treatments, more of just about everything (but never, of course, more bureaucrats, of whom there are many, many more but whose burgeoning numbers are, mysteriously, kept quiet). Yesterday the Home Secretary, Kenneth Clarke, Mrs Bottomley's predecessor and the prime architect of the triumphant new NHS, was sufficiently moved by the latest announcements (more hospital trusts, more GP fundholders) to marvel at his government's creation. Why wallow in doom and gloom over coal, Maastricht and so on, he asked rhetorically, when there was such enormous progress being made in social policy? "Nobody is noticing how we are dismantling the old welfare state of Clement Attlee and completely rebuilding!" he enthused.
 Well, we're noticing the first bit all right; it's the rebuilding that's a wee bit harder to spot. Particularly, but not exclusively, in the inner cities, care services are collapsing under the strain of under-funding and the imposition of a market philosophy that is inimical to care. Everywhere one turns, services are disappearing. The hospital service is in an appalling state, with patients who need urgent treatment being turned away and even dying because there is no money to treat them. With the new financial year, this situation may now ease somewhat but there is the backlog still to be dealt with; and how long will it be this year before doctors are again sitting idly in their hospitals while their prospective patients deteriorate and suffer?
 The level of despair and anger in the hospital service cannot be overestimated. Yet the protests are muted because the health service has been transformed into a repressive system of management in which health care staff are being threatened, bullied and intimidated into keeping quiet about what is going on.  It is becoming a service run by managers for managers, while nurses are made redundant and wards are shut down. Some rebuilding.
 Now we have the unfolding drama of the community care revolution. One might reasonably ask: what community? and what care? Too many vulnerable people have found to their cost that the so-called community doesn't actually care for them at all and wants them placed as far away as possible from their own back yards.
 On top of this has come the problem of money. Under the new system which started yesterday, local authorities have taken responsibility for assessing people's needs and buying for them the care they require, whether it is domestic support or a place in a nursing home. But, surprise surprise, the Government has not provided enough money to met the level of need. The shortfall that was so unsatisfactory under the old system between the cost of the care and the funds to buy it is set to deepen, despite the fact that more money than last year is being provided. Some fancy financial footwork has meant the local authorities have been short-changed.
 So much is the sad old story. But the new element is the attempt by Mrs Bottomley and her apparatchiks to slough off all responsibility for this state of affairs to local government, while simultaneously advising councils how to get out of the legal obligation the law now confers upon them to provide for the needs they must assess. The Social Services Inspectorate, which one had naively supposed was set up to maintain standards, has shown it is staffed by cynical time-servers whose aim is not to protect the vulnerable but to ditch them in the interests of saving money and political face. Thus it advised councils not to tell people what care they needed if the money wasn't available. A study carried out by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation in two council areas found that staff were doing precisely that anyway. They were solving the problem of reconciling growing need with no money by taking advantage of people's ignorance to diddle them out of the help to which they were entitled.
 It's hardly surprising. Local government, as the Guardian revealed earlier this week, is having to slash its services. Despite the ring-fenced funds available under the new system, community care in these circumstances is a sick joke. Yet Mrs Bottomley has the gall to wash her hands of this sorry state of affairs on the grounds that it is now local government's problem.
 Passing the buck has become this Government's stock in trade. No wonder they're cheery. For sick, old and handicapped people, with hospitals progressively shutting them out and community care no more than a pipe-dream, the destruction of the welfare state of which Mr Clarke so proudly boasts is a tragedy in the making.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



91 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 2, 1993

NOTES & QUERIES: WHAT'S YOUR POISON?

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 3261 words

 
 QUESTION: In the late 1960s, a professor from, I believe, the University of Arizona in Tucson ate a tablespoon of DDT to demonstrate that the pesticide wasn't harmful to humans. How is his health?
 - ON NOVEMBER 16, 1968, eight scientists at the University of Arizona in Tucson, who were part of a project testing people exposed to DDT, decided to ingest it themselves in measured doses. They wanted to try to make some sense of years of uninterpretable research into how DDT is metabolised in the human body. There had been some earlier research on humans - prisoners had been forced to eat DDT - but the tests had been inconclusive, and the project members wanted to test it for themselves.
 Dr Donald Morgan, a Tucson medical practitioner attached to the project, began by eating 20 milligrams of DDT in an emulsion base daily. The other seven took half that amount. One, George Ware, who is now Professor of Entomology at the University of Arizona, recalls spreading the mixture on his cornflakes every morning. 
 For six months they continued to eat the DDT emulsion every day, and their blood, urine and body fat were all tested for abnormalities. According to Dr Morgan, who had been taking the double dose, the only noticeable effect on him was in a liver function test; his alkaline phosphatase levels rose from lower normal to upper normal. When the test finished on May 15, 1969, none of them had recorded any ill-effects, although all of them had very sore buttocks, for it was from there that fat biopsies were taken for testing every month.
 Almost 24 years later, one of the eight has died of old age (he was 79) and the other seven are living without any apparent ill effect.
 And what did Dr Morgan's wife say when he came home and told her that he'd just ingested 20 milligrams of DDT? "She was completely indifferent. Look, it was not that heroic, for heaven's sake. People who regularly handled DDT had much higher levels in their blood and their fat than we ever did. None of them had any symptoms," he says.
 The leader of the project, Dr Clifford Roan, who was then Professor of Entomology at the University of Arizona, is now 72. He is active in the community and describes himself as a "tax counsellor for the elderly". He says: "I never did suffer any ill effects, although I can say it was a big pain in the ass because of having a hunk cut off of your butt every now and then."
 Weren't you just a little bit scared?
 "Hell's bells, no! I was smoking cigarettes in those days all the time. Now if I wanted to be scared, that's what I should have been scared of. There's a lot worse hazards in this world than pesticides, when they are used properly."
 We are working on a proposal for a television documentary about this. - Paolo A Black, producer, Today Television, London W12.
 - DDT IS one of the least-poisonous pesticides, being no more toxic than aspirin. It has only killed people when mistaken for flour. A teaspoonful is quite a lot, but probably wouldn't do too much damage.
 When it was introduced, DDT was highly effective and helped to eradicate malaria from Europe and other parts of the world, including large areas of Africa and India. Many countries stopped using DDT too soon and resistance has set in. Nevertheless, this much-misunderstood chemical has probably saved more lives than all antibiotics put together.
 DDT is still widely used. More modern pesticides are highly toxic, and very dangerous in the hands of those who can't read the instructions or use the necessary protective clothing. DDT is volatile and evaporates rapidly in a warm climate, causing few environmental problems.
 For an objective summary of the effects of DDT, see "Is Science Necessary?" by Max Perutz. - Daniel Barker, London NW5.
 QUESTION: How can I become a ventriloquist?
 - STUDY Hillary Clinton. - David Tebb, Guiseley, Leeds.
 - GRACTICE. - Paul Tickle, Leicester.
 QUESTION: What are the destinations in the song "Route 66" by Them, and what exactly does Van Morrison sing after "Flagstaff, Arizona, don't forget Winona".
 - THE WORDS of the song, written by Bob Troup and published in 1946, tell it all:
 . . . It winds from Chicago to LA,
 More than two thousand miles all
 the way.
 Get your kicks on Route 66!
 Now you go thro' Saint Looey [sic]
 and Joplin, Missouri
 And Oklahoma City is mighty pretty
 You'll see Amarillo; Gallup, New
 Mexico;
 Flagstaff, Arizona;
 Don't forget Winona,
 Kingman, Barstow, San
 Bernardino . . .
 "Have your fun on the A41" somehow does not have the same ring to it:
 It winds from London to Birkenhead,
 Just over two hundred miles like
 I said.
 Have some fun on the A41
 Now you bypass Chester,
 Warwick and Bicester,
 Birmingham City is jolly pretty
 You'll see Hemel Hempsted
 Waddesdon, Berkhamsted too.
 Tring, Banbury,
 don't forget Aylesbury,
 Bicester, Watford and
 Wolverhampton . . .
 Ah well, back to the day job. - Clive Ablett, Berkhamsted, Herts.
 QUESTION: Humpty Dumpty is usually portrayed as an egg, but I can find no evidence in the nursery rhyme to support this. Are there other now-obscure verses, or are we just following the assumptions of illustrators like Tenniel?
 - WHEN Alice first sees Humpty Dumpty in Lewis Carroll's Alice Through The Looking Glass, she says: "How exactly like an egg he is." Humpty Dumpty replies: "It's very provoking to be called an egg!" (Later he says "My name means the shape I am, and a good handsome shape it is too"). Tenniel's illustration simply uses Lewis Carroll's text.
 There is a belief that the verse was originally a riddle, and the answer is "an egg". This pre-dates the publication of Alice Through The Looking Glass, and Lewis Carroll made use of a common tradition. However, eggs are not normally placed on walls (although this may have been to make the riddle more confusing), and the verse has never appeared in a book of riddles.
 The Oxford English Dictionary records that the expression "Humpty Dumpty" was the name of an ale and brandy punch in the late 17th century. The use of the expression "Humpty Dumpty" to describe a short or unattractive person first occurs in Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1785. The rhyme itself is not recorded before the early 19th century, when several variants were published in Britain and the United States, although these may have been of earlier origin.
 All evidence suggests that "Humpty Dumpty" has always been a self-contained four-line verse. Some differences in the final two lines are recorded (for example "Threescore men and threescore more, / Cannot place Humpty Dumpty as he was before"), but all versions follow the same basic pattern.
 Continental versions are also recorded in the early 19th century. For example, "Runtzelken-Puntzelken" and "Humpelken-Pumpelken" in Germany, "Boule Boule" in France and "Thille Lille" in Sweden.
 Efforts to explain Humpty Dumpty as a siege tower (Notes & Queries, March 26) are not wholly satisfactory, as the verse makes it clear that Humpty Dumpty could not be repaired by human agency. An army could repair a damaged siege tower or build a new one, but human science cannot fully repair a broken egg.  Of course, this ignores the possibility that the verse may have been devised for no other purpose than to amuse. - Robert Halliday, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk.
 - THE THEORY that the verses refer to a siege engine used at Gloucester in 1643 is merely a jeu d'esprit contrived in 1956 by Dennis Daube, and popularised subsequently by Richard Rodney Bennett in the opera, All the King's Men. - Roy Palmer, Dymock, Gloucestershire.
 QUESTION: What would be the prospects for a legal action which argued that, in raising taxes, the Government is in breach of a verbal contract (well-recorded), made with the electorate at the time of the last election, to reduce taxation?
 - REGARDING Sir William Goodhart QC's response (Notes & Queries, March 26), the ballot is only secret up to a point. The ballot papers and their counterfoils are numbered and stored by the district council for a year.
 Not long ago it was revealed that Special Branch trawls the ballot papers to identify supporters of "extremist" organisations, so it should be possible to prove that the voter carried out his or her part of the contract by voting Conservative. It would remain to be proven that the Conservatives had failed to deliver on their part. But haste will have to be made. The year will be up on April 8. - Frank Branston, Bedford.
 QUESTION: Chambers English Dictionary (1988) defines 'eclair' as "a cake, long in shape but short in duration". Are there unexpected signs of humour in other such serious publications?
 - IN THE 1953 edition of the otherwise-straightforward Quickway Crossword Dictionary, Eskimos are defined as "God's frozen people". This was changed in 1977 to a normal definition. - Roger F Squires, Iron-Bridge, Shropshire.
 QUESTION: Imagine two refrigerators, one full and one empty. Which will consume more energy?
 - MR FROST (Notes & Queries, March 26) asserts that keeping your fridge full will minimise energy consumption; this is widely believed, but why should it be so? The fridge uses energy to keep its interior cold, and this depends on how much heat leaks in from outside, which in turn depends on the quality of the insulation, the room temperature, and how cold the inside wall of the fridge is. Thus, if all the food is kept at the same temperature it makes no difference if the fridge is full or empty. There would be small differences owing to changes in air circulation inside the fridge, but you can only save energy at the expense of some part of the interior becoming warmer. Stuffing unused shelves with paper would save some mixing of warm room air into the fridge when the door is opened, but other parts of the fridge (especially below those shelves) might then not be cold enough. Of course, if the fridge cools down more food, it will use more energy, not less. - Professor Harvey Rutt, Department of Electronics and Computer Science, Southampton.
 - PERHAPS Mr Frost is not the first freezer salesman to try to convince us that full fridges are more efficient than empty ones. He's right, of course. Where's the efficiency in running an empty fridge? But the question was which consumes more electricity, not which is more efficient. Each time you put something into your fridge or freezer you need energy to pump out its heat. When you take that something out again, you need more energy to bring it back to "normal" temperature.
 It follows then that the more you put in to the contraption, the more energy (electricity) you'll use.
 Despite Mr Frost's assertions, no way can you possibly use less electricity by increasing the contents (assuming they are at "normal" temperature in the first place).
 As for cold-storage buildings, their cold loss (or heat gain, if you prefer), is proportional to their external/internal surface areas. Just as a small fridge needs less energy to keep it cool than a big one, so too does a small cold-storage building.
 Trouble is, you can't get as much in it - hence improved packing facilities in the form of mobile racks. - William Duxbury, Grandvaux, Switzerland.
 - THE ANSWER provided by Mike Amos (March 26) - "an imaginary fridge consumes no energy" - is inexact. An imaginary refrigerator consumes mental energy. - Dr Graham Mole, Manchester.
 QUESTION: I am at a loss as to the origin - etymologically and socio-linguistically speaking - of the word "spiv". I wonder if your readers can go beyond "palindrome of VIPs".
 - BILL NAUGHTON may have given the word "spiv" national currency, as your correspondent says (Notes & Queries, March 26), but he was wide of the mark in suggesting it had anything to do with people of disreputable appearance.  Brewer's guess that it abbreviates "spiffing" is also unlikely, as that was a public school word never used by cockneys.
 My recollection is that it came into being among south Londoners during the war and originally meant someone who dressed in a certain flash style in suits tailor-made by a Mr Spivack. Spivacks, or spivs, came to mean civilians who dressed in that style (at the time of the zoot suit in America) and could afford to throw their money around. Bearing in mind wartime conditions, most were petty black market operators, some small-time criminals, sometimes itinerant, but not vagrants. Some spivs carried shivs (knives) so there was also an element of rhyming slang. - A E Meltzer, London SE13.
 QUESTION: Would it be possible to construct an airship which was propelled and steered by sails?
 - IT COULD be done. Gerald Haig is right when he says that a sailing boat works because it uses the opposing forces imposed upon it by the wind and water (Notes & Queries, March 19). The problem is to generate these opposing forces in mid-air.
 There are two intriguing possibilities. The first is to adapt the principle by which unpowered, sail-less barges were once navigated on the river Hull in east Yorkshire. By dragging an anchor from the bow to reduce their speed to less than that of the tidal flow, such barges were able to steer effectively while travelling astern in the general direction of the current, the speed difference causing a steady flow of water over their rudders. An airship dragging an anchor over land, or a sea-anchor over water, could be steered in a similar fashion.
 An even better possibility might be to exploit the fact that wind speeds and directions are far from constant at different altitudes above a given point on the Earth's surface. Thus, an airship flying at, say, 10,000 feet might be driven by a 15-knot wind, while at 15,000 feet the wind might be 30 knots.  Obviously a "mast" long enough to exploit this difference would be impractical, but "sails" resembling a large kite or a modern steerable parachute could be launched up into the zone of faster winds, and the tension between airship and kite used to navigate in the same manner as a sailing boat.
 There are obviously many technical difficulties with this approach, but theoretically "tacking", ie zigzagging into the wind, should be possible. If Richard Branson is reading this and would like to contact me, I could develop for him the means of crossing the Atlantic by balloon from east to West. Cash up front, of course. - John Ramsey, London E3.
 QUESTION: Why is there a United States naval base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba?
 - YOUR CORRESPONDENT (Notes & Queries, March 19) is correct that the US base at Guantanamo in Cuba traces its origins to the Spanish American War of 1898. This occurred when the US - for reasons which are hotly debated - chose to intervene in the Cuban war of national liberation against Spain. As a condition for subsequent withdrawal, it required "independent" Cuba to accept the Platt Amendment, which justified subsequent US interventions in order to protect "life, property and individual liberty" (sic).
 However, she is wrong to say that the Amendment remained in force until the revolution of 1959, for it was abrogated in 1934 by F D Roosevelt, whose "Good Neighbor Policy" involved a renunciation of direct intervention in Latin American countries - not least because, in Cuba and elsewhere, such interventions had proved costly and counter-productive (see Bryce Wood, The Making of the Good Neighbor Policy). Conversely, the post-1934 Cuban regime was generally congenial to US strategic and economic interests. Castro's revolution changed all that, and his regime has had to suffer some less-than-good neighbourly policies. However, it did not have to abrogate the Platt Amendment, which was long dead, nor did it challenge the US presence at Guantanamo. - Alan Knight, Professor of Latin American History, Oxford University.
 QUESTION: Does anyone use any of the hereditary titles created by Oliver Cromwell?
 - YES. LOOK up Carbery, Baron 1715 in Debrett's Peerage and Baronetage in your local library and, if you read long enough, you will find my family and myself. - John E D'Arcy-Evans, Staines, Middlesex.
 QUESTION: I am off to the pub. It starts to rain. Will I be less wet when I arrive if I run there?
 - IT DEPENDS. A professor from Harvard University, writing in the Mathematical Gazette (October 1976) concluded that, to minimise the rain falling on the person over a set distance, the solution is "to keep pace with the wind if it is from behind; otherwise run for it!".
 Or, on a damp journey to the pub, the questioner might like to remember:
 When caught in the rain without mac,
 Move as fast as the wind at your back.
 But if the wind's in your face
 The optimal pace
 Is as fast as your legs can make track.
 - D R Brown, Grantham, Lincs
 QUESTION: Postmodernists say there is no objective truth. Why should anyone believe them?
 - AS THE question suggests, postmodernism is self-sabotaging, like all sufficiently radical forms of scepticism and reductionism. Unlike some earlier forms, however, it is based on an elementary confusion between truth and certainty: although no person or group can justifiably claim complete objectivity, it does not follow that there is no truth, just that we should not place anything beyond the possibility of revision. Since postmodernism is a fashion statement rather than a philosophical position (I think many postmodernists would accept this), it need not be taken seriously intellectually.
 It is, however, morally pernicious: if there is no objective truth, then it is not objectively true that The Protocols Of The Learned Elders Of Zion is a forgery, or that the Gulf war took place - Baudrillard has in fact denied that it did.
 Postmodernism also demonstrates, under the guise of opposing all-encompassing views of the world, the most extreme self-importance and intellectual imperialism: claiming as it does that the world consists only of texts, it implies that literary criticism encompasses all other disciplines. - Nick Gotts, Leeds.
 QUESTION: Has anyone carried out any serious research into the beneficial or detrimental effects of aligning one's bed parallel to the earth's magnetic field?
 - SLEEP laboratory experiments have confirmed that arterial blood pressure is at the minimum when the sleeper's head faces north. If the bed is rotated and the subject's head is in the west, blood pressure rises, sleep is disturbed and some have nightmares. North-south breathing is more relaxed and there is a feeling of general well-being. Second best position is head in the east.  North-south direction facilitates the body's optimal resistance to the magnetic field, unless there is interference from power lines.
 Incidentally, Charles Dickens always made sure his bed was north-south when staying in hotels. Non-domestic animals are also said to sleep instinctively with head in the north. If the questioner knows French he may wish to read Votre Lit Est-il a La Bonne Place? by Alexandre Remi. - Dr D H Mniszek, Brighton, W Sussex.
 QUESTION: Can anyone suggest a use for a plastic squashed tomato?
 - PLACE on the verge of a country lane as a warning to foolhardy hedgehogs. - David Jepson, Manchester.
 - GIVE it tennis lessons then enter it for Wimbledon as the latest British hopeful: unseeded and out of shape. - Florence Huntley, Barnet, Herts.
 Compiled by Joseph Harker

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



92 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

REFLECTIONS: STILL QUIET ON THE WESTERN FRONT;
Geoffrey Dearmer is a poet. He is 100 years old. His Great War, writes Sebastian Faulks, was not Wilfred Owen's war

BYLINE: SEBASTIAN FAULKS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 1169 words

 
 WILFRED OWEN'S one hundredth birthday passed by a week or so ago with modest celebrations in his native Shropshire. Some people were moved to look again at his poems and to wonder what he might have gone on to write if a German machine gun had not ended his life a week before the armistice.
 Robert Graves believed Owen might have become a Labour MP, and at the time of Attlee's government in 1945 he would have been a very serviceable 52 years old. He could have lived through the Sixties and taken a peerage under Harold Wilson; his natural lifespan would have expired shortly before the arrival of Mrs Thatcher. Yet one thinks of Owen somehow as a historical figure, as remote in his way as Tennyson.  Reading the awful names and dates that feature in his story serves to reinforce the impression of a time and a man that are separate from us and gone from common memory: the Somme sector, the Arctic winter of 1916-1917, the Hindenburg Line - these signs and markers seem to place him within cloth covers on a history shelf that, as the century closes, can barely even claim to be "modern" history any more. 
 This is a delusion. The effects of that war are still being worked out in the politics of the new Europe. The critic Paul Fussell has argued that the entire modern way of thinking - ironic, confrontational - was shaped by the war. On a less abstract level one can understand this better by going to talk to someone of Wilfred Owen's age, preferably a poet.
 And so by train on a spring morning to Birchington on Sea, next on the line after Whitstable and Herne Bay on the north Kent coast. In a sunny flat not far from the beach lives Geoffrey Dearmer, 100 years old; born three days after Wilfred Owen, a veteran of Gallipoli and the Somme, and a much anthologised poet. He is not history. Only his words are between cloth covers. He himself is a tall, engaging, friendly man who has just returned from London where the publisher John Murray has brought out a selection of his poetry called A Pilgrim's Song. Murray's first published his poems in 1923.
 "Why are there so few centenarians?" he asks, a little peevishly. Hard to say, though nine million men of his generation were not given a chance . . . Dearmer himself is not an advertisement for abstinence or herbal remedies: bottles of gin and vermouth stand commandingly in the middle of the dining table.
 As he talks about the work of Thomas Hardy or Ted Hughes, it is occasionally necessary to remind oneself that these hands (he is keen on hands; he has written a poem about them) filled the sandbags, laid the duckboards, held the rifle, helped build the dugouts all along the line east of Albert that was to become the site of the greatest disaster in British military history - arguably in British history, tout court.
 Nor will he conform to any expectations of "horror"; he won't tell any tales of waste or slaughter. "I never went over the top myself. It was fatal. It was fatal even to put your head over the parapet in daylight. It was all right at night. You could even go into no man's land."
 And what about the living conditions, the rats, the lice, the Maconochie's stew, the cold, the mud? "I have no recollection of any particular discomfort.  The dugouts were quite all right, really. I was a very young man, I didn't mind." The food? "No, no, the feeding was admirably managed."
 Collectors of injustices or horror stories will be disappointed. A friend looks in to tidy up and empty the bins. "Geoffrey never complains about anything," she says. "You won't catch him moaning - will you, Geoffrey?" She gives him a peck on the cheek and disappears. She is quite right. Under pressure he concedes that "Most people did go through things," but for himself it was fine, it was quiet, it was tolerable. It is impossible to establish how much this is true (some people did have a quiet or "cushy" time), how much it is a willed response, or how much he has forgotten.
 A LITTLE of each, perhaps. His brother Christopher was killed at Gallipoli and there is a moving poem in his memory. Dearmer was close enough to the action to write a harrowing account of it in a poem called Gommecourt, which recalls the six-day artillery bombardment before the attack on the Somme on July 1, 1916.  Gommecourt was a village at the north of the attack, the focus of a bloody diversionary manoeuvre in which battalions who sent 800 men over the top were getting only 150 replies to the roll-call that night.
 Yet in this and other poems there is always hope and salvation.  Dearmer drew an extraordinary comfort from the persistence of the natural world (birds, plants, trees and so on) in the man-made hell and from his belief in a divine will. "Maybe I have overdone the natural world," he says. "Perhaps there is too much. But there is a great deal to be said for the language of flowers."
 His father, Percy Dearmer, was canon of Westminster and an authority on hymns.  His daughter, Juliet, is married to a bishop, so he is, as he describes it, "very bound up with the clergy".
 So, in a way, was Wilfred Owen, with his strong beliefs inherited from his fiercely Calvinist mother, severely tested both by what he saw and by what he viewed as the un-Christian behaviour of the Church in condoning the slaughter.  Yet you could hardly have two more different responses than Owen's and Geoffrey Dearmer's: Owen's appalled pity and Dearmer's providential optimism.
 While Owen is incomparably the better poet, Geoffrey Dearmer's response is equally valid, equally "historical"; and, as Owen's biographer Tom Stallworthy wrote in a Foreword to A Pilgrim's Song, "He speaks for many less articulate victims of the Western Front." If it is important to a proper view of history to recognise that the events are terribly recent, that we can touch hands, literally, with the men who took part in them, it is equally salutary to be reminded that a general view, even a majority view, based on poetry and memoir, published or unpublished, is not the total picture. The "dissenting" record of men such as Geoffrey Dearmer, and many others, has a place.
 After the war Dearmer read plays for the Lord Chamberlain, excising the occasional swear word, but banning only one show - about Christ's reincarnation as a Communist, which broke the law about representing religious figures. He also worked for Children's Hour until his retirement, filling the airwaves with stories and verses about animals.
 Geoffrey Dearmer suffers from what he calls "the Brothers Itis - bronchitis and arthritis"; and at the age of 100 no one's memory is perfect. Perhaps it is too late to catch the past in him; perhaps in his faith and gentleness there was always a predisposition to forget.  As he wrote in a poem called Envoi - (The Somme 1916):
 But all grows dim - the rolling wagon-streams
 To Amiens between the aspen trees,
 The stables, billets, men and horses seem
 But murmurs of forgotten fantasies.  G

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



93 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

MINISTER AGREES TO DROP SIX-DAY RULE ON RESIDENTIAL CARE CASH

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 363 words

 
 A REVOLT by private residential and nursing homes yesterday won a rapid about-turn by ministers on a key aspect of the new community care system.
 Just 24 hours after the system started, the Government announced it was dropping a rule that would have cut off the social security payment to home residents if they were absent for six days or more.
 Alistair Burt, junior Social Security Minister, said regulations would be laid in Parliament as soon as possible to extend the period before cut-off to an absence of six weeks in the case of a resident entering hospital, or three weeks in other circumstances. 
 Mr Burt said the move was a response to concerns raised in "a number of representations".
 The change applies to the new residential allowance, worth pounds 45 a week or pounds 50 in London, which is the residual amount of social security being paid to private care home residents after the bulk of the former board and lodging payment has been transferred to local authorities under the new system. The six-day cut-off rule had been laid in December, but care home owners and local authorities awoke to the implications only in the past few weeks. Home owners protested that almost every resident would be absent for more than six days at one stage during a year.
 They said they would have to renegotiate contracts with local authorities so the latter would undertake to make good any income shortfall following cut-off.
 The change to three or six weeks, which will cost the Government an estimated pounds 1 million a year, compares with the former position whereby board-and-lodging payments were cut off after six weeks' absence.
 The six-day rule threatened to alienate care home owners in the critical early weeks of the new system for arranging and funding the care of elderly and disabled people. The owners were already fearful that many homes might close as the system shifts the emphasis from residential care to looking after people in their own homes.
 Sheila Scott, chief executive of the National Care Homes Association, said: "We are absolutely delighted that the Government has responded so quickly to our lobbying."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



94 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

CARERS' PLIGHT: LEAVE IT TO INDIVIDUALS TO CHOOSE WHEN THEY WANT TO RETIRE SAYS AGE CONCERN

BYLINE: SALLY GREENGROSS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 32

LENGTH: 329 words

 
 EQUALISING the pension age at 65 could only be supported if a pension at least equal to the present basic pension was made available to those who choose to retire at 60.
 This is the view of the charity Age Concern which believes the answer lies in allowing people to chose the age at which they take a pension.
 Should the Government equalise at 65 without taking this step, then any cost savings from the equalisation should be spent on people disadvantaged by the present system, such as women and older pensioners. 
 Equalising the State pension age at 65 would have a major impact on the employment patterns and lifestyles of women. In the five years before retirement at 60, 54 per cent of women are working but after the age of 60 only 7.5 per cent are. But there are serious qestions which need to be addressed about the prospective employment opportunities of these women given the current high levels of age discrimination in employment.
 Women carers are another group which would be disadvantaged by fixing the pension age at 65. Women are more likely than men to be carers of elderly dependent relatives, and therefore to withdraw from the workforce or to reduce their working hours. Nearly one in three women aged between 45 and 64 are carers and 63 per cent of these work for more than 20 hours per week.
 Women are less likely than men to have access to occupational or personal pensions and when they do so their pensions are likely to be smaller than men's because of broken work records, part-time work and lower earning power. They are, therefore, less likely to be able to afford to retire before they reach the State pension age.
 If the pension age is raised for women then consideration must be given to levels of sickness and invalidity benefit necessary, so that women with long-standing illnesses and those doing physically-demanding jobs do not lose out.
 Sally Greengross is a director of the charity Age Concern.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



95 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

PENSIONS BATTLE REACHES CRUCIAL STAGE

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 32

LENGTH: 550 words

 
 THE battle over the equalisation of the State pension ages has moved into its final and critical stage.
 The Government is on the brink of a decision which could see men retire at 60 with a full, basic State pension. Alternatively, it may opt to withdraw five years' pensions from women - taking away from them up to pounds 14,586 at today's prices. 
 Pensions minister Ann Widdecombe this week gave a strong indication that the Government would prefer, on cost grounds, to equalise pension ages upwards to 65 rather downwards to 60 - but she stressed that the final decision had not yet been taken.
 She also called for more debate on this key pensions issue - even though the Government has already received its largest ever postbag on the subject. A decision was expected imminently but Ms Widdecombe hinted that it may now be delayed until the outcome of the Coloroll case.
 Four main options remain. The Government must decide whether to require men and women to continue working until 65 before they could qualify for a full State pension - which it claims would save more than pounds 4 billion annually. This would be phased in over a number of years and only fully affect women currently aged about 40 and under.
 It would increase the number of women in the workforce by 500,000 by the year 2015. Such an announcement at a time of high unemployment could prove unpopular. But this option does have cost in its favour and would also alleviate concerns about the rapidly-burgeoning elderly population. However, the Government is aware that this option is likely to prove "massively unpopular" and could alienate many women voters. Ms Widdecombe acknowledged: "The people who will be most adversely affected will be women who rely heavily on the State pension because they have no other pension provision, and who are in mundane low-paid jobs."
 The most popular option with a majority of men, who already retire before 65, and with women's groups is to equalise at 60. As part of this, the DSS is considering splitting the age at which the basic and the earnings related pensions (Serps) could be taken - as a way of keeping the cost down. This could lead to a basic pension given at 60 with Serps at 65.
 Another option is to ask women to work three years longer and equalise at 63, which would be largely cost neutral. Though not the clear favourite of any lobby group, it is the least disliked by most with strong views. Finally, a flexible decade of retirement would allow workers to choose their own retirement age between 60 and 70 and receive a larger or smaller pension accordingly. This is the employers' favourite, which actually reflects what is already taking place in the workforce. However, the Government believes everyone would take their pension at 60.
 There is little time left in which to influence the Government's decision. But Money Guardian has tabled its own debate into this crucial issue. All too often women discover the inadequacies of their pension provision too late . There is a danger that this will happen again if they do not enter the debate over equalising pension ages now.
 Men as well as women with strong views on the matter should write to the Prime Minister, Social Security Secretary Peter Lilley, and to their MPs.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



96 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

NEW CHARGING METHOD COULD STRAIN AFFINITY

BYLINE: DIANE BOLIVER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 35

LENGTH: 373 words

 
 CO-OPERATIVE Bank says it is receiving 5,000 calls a day for its "free-for-life" Robert Owen credit card which allows new cardholders to transfer existing debts on very competitive terms. But when cardholders realise the punitive terms they may regret the move.
 Not only do cardholders have to spend more than pounds 300 to attract interest of 1.7 per cent a month (Apr 22.4) - which is typical of other cards on the market - they also have to repay their bills in full within 15 days of the statement date to avoid interest charges, compared with the more typical 25 days elsewhere. 
 David Cooke of Penrith, Cumbria was outraged to discover this on his March Royal Society for the Protection of Birds affinity card statement. The statement gave two different due dates. Only if he made a part payment would he have 25 days to pay.
 Mr Cooke said: "How many customers, especially older people, will be confused and tricked into paying interest because of this?"
 Co-op confirmed that when it launched the Robert Owen card in November, it decided to apply the same terms to its existing affinity cards (Labour, Liberal Democrat, Help the Aged and RSPB.)
 It said that if, as Mr Cooke claims, he had received no warning of the new terms, he must take it up with RSPB, which was responsible for notifying card holders.
 According to Save & Prosper the new charging methods are likely to become commonplace. S&P's Ian Overgage said: "It's an inevitable credit card development and is more acceptable than upping interest rates."
 While the Robert Owen card is not easy to compare with other cards, the Co-op's traditional Visa credit card, which charges a pounds 12 fee and interest of 1.9 per cent a month, is by far the most expensive on the market, according to an S&P credit card survey.
 Assuming an average outstanding balance of pounds 500 each month and a pounds 125 spend on the card each month, cardholders would incur pounds 140 in interest charges - more than pounds 10 more a year than the next most expensive card, Leeds Permanent's Visa card.
 The S&P's own card, which charges an pounds 8 annual fee and interest of 1.5 per cent a month, would be the cheapest at pounds 100 a year in interest.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



97 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

MINISTER AGREES TO DROP SIX-DAY RULE ON RESIDENTIAL CARE CASH

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 363 words

 
 A REVOLT by private residential and nursing homes yesterday won a rapid about-turn by ministers on a key aspect of the new community care system.
 Just 24 hours after the system started, the Government announced it was dropping a rule that would have cut off the social security payment to home residents if they were absent for six days or more.
 Alistair Burt, junior Social Security Minister, said regulations would be laid in Parliament as soon as possible to extend the period before cut-off to an absence of six weeks in the case of a resident entering hospital, or three weeks in other circumstances. 
 Mr Burt said the move was a response to concerns raised in "a number of representations".
 The change applies to the new residential allowance, worth pounds 45 a week or pounds 50 in London, which is the residual amount of social security being paid to private care home residents after the bulk of the former board and lodging payment has been transferred to local authorities under the new system. The six-day cut-off rule had been laid in December, but care home owners and local authorities awoke to the implications only in the past few weeks. Home owners protested that almost every resident would be absent for more than six days at one stage during a year.
 They said they would have to renegotiate contracts with local authorities so the latter would undertake to make good any income shortfall following cut-off.
 The change to three or six weeks, which will cost the Government an estimated pounds 1 million a year, compares with the former position whereby board-and-lodging payments were cut off after six weeks' absence.
 The six-day rule threatened to alienate care home owners in the critical early weeks of the new system for arranging and funding the care of elderly and disabled people. The owners were already fearful that many homes might close as the system shifts the emphasis from residential care to looking after people in their own homes.
 Sheila Scott, chief executive of the National Care Homes Association, said: "We are absolutely delighted that the Government has responded so quickly to our lobbying."

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



98 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

CARERS' PLIGHT: LEAVE IT TO INDIVIDUALS TO CHOOSE WHEN THEY WANT TO RETIRE SAYS AGE CONCERN

BYLINE: SALLY GREENGROSS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 32

LENGTH: 329 words

 
 EQUALISING the pension age at 65 could only be supported if a pension at least equal to the present basic pension was made available to those who choose to retire at 60.
 This is the view of the charity Age Concern which believes the answer lies in allowing people to chose the age at which they take a pension.
 Should the Government equalise at 65 without taking this step, then any cost savings from the equalisation should be spent on people disadvantaged by the present system, such as women and older pensioners. 
 Equalising the State pension age at 65 would have a major impact on the employment patterns and lifestyles of women. In the five years before retirement at 60, 54 per cent of women are working but after the age of 60 only 7.5 per cent are. But there are serious qestions which need to be addressed about the prospective employment opportunities of these women given the current high levels of age discrimination in employment.
 Women carers are another group which would be disadvantaged by fixing the pension age at 65. Women are more likely than men to be carers of elderly dependent relatives, and therefore to withdraw from the workforce or to reduce their working hours. Nearly one in three women aged between 45 and 64 are carers and 63 per cent of these work for more than 20 hours per week.
 Women are less likely than men to have access to occupational or personal pensions and when they do so their pensions are likely to be smaller than men's because of broken work records, part-time work and lower earning power. They are, therefore, less likely to be able to afford to retire before they reach the State pension age.
 If the pension age is raised for women then consideration must be given to levels of sickness and invalidity benefit necessary, so that women with long-standing illnesses and those doing physically-demanding jobs do not lose out.
 Sally Greengross is a director of the charity Age Concern.

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



99 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

PENSIONS BATTLE REACHES CRUCIAL STAGE

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 32

LENGTH: 550 words

 
 THE battle over the equalisation of the State pension ages has moved into its final and critical stage.
 The Government is on the brink of a decision which could see men retire at 60 with a full, basic State pension. Alternatively, it may opt to withdraw five years' pensions from women - taking away from them up to pounds 14,586 at today's prices. 
 Pensions minister Ann Widdecombe this week gave a strong indication that the Government would prefer, on cost grounds, to equalise pension ages upwards to 65 rather downwards to 60 - but she stressed that the final decision had not yet been taken.
 She also called for more debate on this key pensions issue - even though the Government has already received its largest ever postbag on the subject. A decision was expected imminently but Ms Widdecombe hinted that it may now be delayed until the outcome of the Coloroll case.
 Four main options remain. The Government must decide whether to require men and women to continue working until 65 before they could qualify for a full State pension - which it claims would save more than pounds 4 billion annually. This would be phased in over a number of years and only fully affect women currently aged about 40 and under.
 It would increase the number of women in the workforce by 500,000 by the year 2015. Such an announcement at a time of high unemployment could prove unpopular. But this option does have cost in its favour and would also alleviate concerns about the rapidly-burgeoning elderly population. However, the Government is aware that this option is likely to prove "massively unpopular" and could alienate many women voters. Ms Widdecombe acknowledged: "The people who will be most adversely affected will be women who rely heavily on the State pension because they have no other pension provision, and who are in mundane low-paid jobs."
 The most popular option with a majority of men, who already retire before 65, and with women's groups is to equalise at 60. As part of this, the DSS is considering splitting the age at which the basic and the earnings related pensions (Serps) could be taken - as a way of keeping the cost down. This could lead to a basic pension given at 60 with Serps at 65.
 Another option is to ask women to work three years longer and equalise at 63, which would be largely cost neutral. Though not the clear favourite of any lobby group, it is the least disliked by most with strong views. Finally, a flexible decade of retirement would allow workers to choose their own retirement age between 60 and 70 and receive a larger or smaller pension accordingly. This is the employers' favourite, which actually reflects what is already taking place in the workforce. However, the Government believes everyone would take their pension at 60.
 There is little time left in which to influence the Government's decision. But Money Guardian has tabled its own debate into this crucial issue. All too often women discover the inadequacies of their pension provision too late . There is a danger that this will happen again if they do not enter the debate over equalising pension ages now.
 Men as well as women with strong views on the matter should write to the Prime Minister, Social Security Secretary Peter Lilley, and to their MPs.

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



100 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 3, 1993

NEW CHARGING METHOD COULD STRAIN AFFINITY

BYLINE: DIANE BOLIVER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 35

LENGTH: 373 words

 
 CO-OPERATIVE Bank says it is receiving 5,000 calls a day for its "free-for-life" Robert Owen credit card which allows new cardholders to transfer existing debts on very competitive terms. But when cardholders realise the punitive terms they may regret the move.
 Not only do cardholders have to spend more than pounds 300 to attract interest of 1.7 per cent a month (Apr 22.4) - which is typical of other cards on the market - they also have to repay their bills in full within 15 days of the statement date to avoid interest charges, compared with the more typical 25 days elsewhere. 
 David Cooke of Penrith, Cumbria was outraged to discover this on his March Royal Society for the Protection of Birds affinity card statement. The statement gave two different due dates. Only if he made a part payment would he have 25 days to pay.
 Mr Cooke said: "How many customers, especially older people, will be confused and tricked into paying interest because of this?"
 Co-op confirmed that when it launched the Robert Owen card in November, it decided to apply the same terms to its existing affinity cards (Labour, Liberal Democrat, Help the Aged and RSPB.)
 It said that if, as Mr Cooke claims, he had received no warning of the new terms, he must take it up with RSPB, which was responsible for notifying card holders.
 According to Save & Prosper the new charging methods are likely to become commonplace. S&P's Ian Overgage said: "It's an inevitable credit card development and is more acceptable than upping interest rates."
 While the Robert Owen card is not easy to compare with other cards, the Co-op's traditional Visa credit card, which charges a pounds 12 fee and interest of 1.9 per cent a month, is by far the most expensive on the market, according to an S&P credit card survey.
 Assuming an average outstanding balance of pounds 500 each month and a pounds 125 spend on the card each month, cardholders would incur pounds 140 in interest charges - more than pounds 10 more a year than the next most expensive card, Leeds Permanent's Visa card.
 The S&P's own card, which charges an pounds 8 annual fee and interest of 1.5 per cent a month, would be the cheapest at pounds 100 a year in interest.

LOAD-DATE: May 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



101 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 6, 1993

WHY OLD SIR ACHING-BONES JUMPED SHIP;
Hong Kong's G & T set may splutter but their ex-acting governor was right to go to Beijing

BYLINE: SIMON WINCHESTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 882 words

 
 WHEN Sir David Akers-Jones, who is as plummy an English colonial as his name suggests, decided to throw in his lot with the Chinese and abandon any further pretence of supporting Chris Patten, the Hong Kong establishment was thrown into a state of shock and confusion.
 Sir David had retired as Chief Secretary and Commissioner of the New Territories five years ago, but had stayed on in the colony, filled many honorary posts, and was a force to be reckoned with. So his "outing", as the papers put it, caused extreme consternation - perhaps most noticeably down at places likes the bar in the Hong Kong Club, where old men with attitudes tempered by years of gin and tropic heat swore at the damnable impertinence of it all: it was almost beyond comprehension, they grumbled to one another that Old Aching-Bones had gone over to the Chinks.
 Yet had they thought about it all a little longer, these same critics might have come rapidly to realise that Sir David's decision was well thought out, was logical, and was quite probably right. For Old Aching-Bones, as this soft-spoken, rather deceptively gentle colonial administrator has long been widely and affectionately known, is heir to a tradition that tells much of Britain's earlier relationship with China, but which has dramatically little to do with the new-fangled attitudes of today. 
 Sir David - a fluent Cantonese speaker, a man whose decades in Hong Kong have given him a depth of understanding and sympathy noticeably lacking in both Government House and Downing Street today - represents a school of thought perhaps best summed up by the following classic passage:
 "For a Westerner - or for the West - to believe it is possible in any way to influence China is chimerical. When a Westerner comes to China, no matter how high his rank or how great his influence, all that he can achieve - all that he will ever achieve - is to add a grain of salt to sea-water. China, like the sea, is adamantine, and of unchanging substance."
 Those lines appear in one of the best-loved and best-known accounts of colonial life in Hong Kong, a slim book published a quarter of a century ago, titled Myself A Mandarin, written by Austin Coates.
 Mr Coates spent most of his life in Asia, working in Hong Kong for more than 20 years, much of the time as a magistrate and land officer up in the New Territories. He was by all accounts a kindly, compassionate administrator, someone who loved China deeply, who took the time and trouble to learn the ways and the mysteries of the people over whom he invigilated.
 As with Austin Coates, so with Sir David Akers-Jones and a handful of other colonial knights who have given their years and their careers to the study and good running of this extraordinary little colony. Each of these old-school imperial servants viewed their task precisely as did the courtly Mr Coates - to do their level best to administer a manifestly non-subject people in the name of a faraway and benevolent Crown, but without any pretence of making the slightest bit of long-term difference to them.
 China, they all knew, was very clearly no India. Here there were no people begging for the delights of the English language, for military ceremony, for western education, for such conceits as jury trials or parliaments. The Chinese as a people want nothing from us and never have. They have learned nothing of significance from us and never will. And they will erase all memory of us within moments of our having left their shores.
 After all, when we Britons quit Hong Kong in four years' time we will have been there for just 156 years - a mere nothing compared with China's five millennia of organised existence. The Chinese, it must be recalled, enjoyed (or suffered) firm central government, a written language, examination systems, roads, canals and a postal service when we who now rule her southern islands were shambling about in skins and woad. This humbling perspective is what Austin Coates recognised; it is what David Akers-Jones soon came to realise; and yet it is what - in Sir David's view, and the view of his other more thoughtful critics in Hong Kong - Chris Patten and his team seems to be unwilling or unable to accept.
 No doubt Sir David will come in for a good share of criticism in the days and weeks to come. His detractors will say he is a weak and ineffectual old buffer, someone who lacked conviction on those matters that to a Englishman should really count, someone who sold out to the Chinese, who gave in to the vested interests, who aligned himself greedily with the big businessmen (and he is a director of many local firms which might suffer in a prolonged row between Britain and China).
 Such attacks would be as wrong-headed as unfair - people like Akers-Jones and his colleagues in fact have a real and long-term affection for a Chinese people they believe are likely to be squeezed unbearably by the current row. The Old Man, this quintessential Old China Hand, appears to recognise what we Britons in general - and Mr Patten in particular - fail so signally to understand: that the Chinese just want us out, and to be able to forget as quickly as possible that such barbarians ever violated the sacred shores of their Celestial Kingdom.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



102 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 6, 1993

ROOTING FOR FLOWER POWER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 387 words

 
 MILLIONS of Britons will seek refuge in the garden over Easter. Gardening, they say, is the perfect antidote to stress: a return to our roots. As a species, we have spent most of our history communing with plants, and there is scientific evidence to support our instinct that being surrounded by them is good for health. Today we say everything with flowers. 
 The journal Kew reports a US study showing that post operative patients recovered faster if their beds overlooked a garden rather than a building. In another study, natural scenery was found to reduce anxiety; urban scenes made things worse.
 Flower power also helps disabled people. So much so that a new "horticultural therapy" course at Coventry University is bringing together horticulturalists and occupational therapists. Until now "garden therapy" has largely been run either by horticulturalists who did not know about therapy or occupational therapists who did not know about plants.
 The course was the brainchild of the charity Horticultural Therapy which, in its turn, is the perfect antidote to all the hedonist mags which give the idea that anyone can transform their flowerbeds and borders into a mini-surburban paradise.
 Horticultural Therapy actually concedes that gardening is hard work, and provides a wide range of practical, sensible advice for easy gardening.
 Not for nothing do some 250,000 UK gardeners require hospital treatment each year. Gardening is a notorious causes of back trouble. The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy advises gardeners to begin like runners, soccer players, yoga enthusiasts and ballet dancers - with a few warm-up exercises. Just bending and stretching your back a few times to limber up can make a big difference.
 As Rudyard Kipling observed: "Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees that half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees." God must have thought, more than once, that gardening exposes a basic design defect in the body machine.
 Horticultural Therapy is based at Goulds Ground, Vallis Way, Frome, Somerset BA 3DW. Tel: 0373 464782. Membership costs pounds 15 ( pounds 12.50 for senior citizens and registered disabled people. HT also sets out to help disabled gardeners, those who work with them. For further details, please send A4 sized SAE (28P).

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



103 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 8, 1993

"HAMID'S HAIR AND CLOTHES ARE COVERED WITH LICE AND HE MAY HAVE TYPHUS.  SPRING WILL BRING STILL MORE INFECTION"

BYLINE: HARIS NEZIROVIC

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 629 words

 
 FACING starvation, the people of Srebrenica have been reduced to an animal-like struggle for survival. Cut off from virtually all aid for almost a year, Srebrenica's hungry say they have long risked death for food.
 They have walked into enemy fire or fields full of landmines. Now, they scramble for meals dropped by United States planes, fighting and even killing for the precious packages. 
 In a year of war, local authorities say 2,000 people have been killed in fighting and another 500 have died of hunger.
 In the morass of mud and begging refugees that fill Srebrenica's streets today, it is impossible to verify such figures. Every day, new arrivals stream into a town already packed as tight as a new box of matches. Thirty thousand refugees huddle in the town of 9,000, thousands more in outlying areas closer to Serb lines.
 They straggle in, five to 10 at a time, women with babies, elderly with sticks, children caked in mud, from feet to waist, clothes worn and torn, hard shoes on bare feet, faces lined with pain. Nobody knows where to go. Some consider surrendering to the Serbs. Many eat only once every other day.
 People hope vaguely for evacuation on United Nations convoys. At least nine people died in the frenzy to flee last week, and local authorities have stopped evacuations for fear they make the town more vulnerable to Serb capture.
 Begging for food, people seek any kind of shelter. A family of five beds down in a wrecked car. A family of 10 sleeps in a wrecked truck. In the schoolhouse turned refugee centre, more than 50 people sleep in one classroom.
 In one room, a man named Hamid lies motionless on the floor. His hair and clothes are covered with large lice and he is suspected of having typhus.
 Spring will bring still more infection. Doctors fear epidemics of hepatitis, typhus and scabies. Hospitals are horrendous. Patients lie on the floor.
 Before a surgeon and some equipment arrived last August, five doctors who had never operated improvised surgery, hacking off limbs with saws. The only two surgical knives were sharpened after every operation. The doctors operated only in daylight; lacking alcohol, they watered down battery acid for disinfectant.
 Doctors said wounds were easily infected; injured legs and arms had to be amputated rather than treated.
 Patients were tied down as doctors sawed their limbs. The screams reached the street, said one doctor, Ilijas Pilav.
 In November, a United Nations convoy brought anaesthetics. But there was no muscle relaxant. During stomach operations, doctors struggled to keep intestines inside the body.
 The convoy was one of only three to reach Srebrenica before March 8, when trucks arrived after Gen Philippe Morillon, UN commander in Bosnia, talked aid past the Serbs.
 As long ago as last summer, residents say, food was short.
 Civilians would follow Bosnian soldiers attacking Serb villages, to scavenge food. Some died in the attempt.
 In the autumn, when crops ripened, hundreds ventured into dangerous no man's land on the fertile left bank of the Drina river border with Serbia. Easy targets, dozens died.
 Mahmut Becirevic, a refugee who scavenged for grain, said the fields were mined and scores lost limbs. Others recalled people walking like zombies over corpses. By December, cold and hunger combined to kill. An official said that in Grabovicka Rijeka, about 12 miles from Srebrenica, more than 60 died in three nights.
 As a last resort, people milled the flowers of hazelnut trees for bread. Then, even that ran out.
 Haris Nezirovic, a journalist for the independent Bosnian weekly Slobodna Bosna, recently spent several weeks in Srebrenica. He filed this report for the Associated Press.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



104 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 8, 1993

STATE PENSION FOR ALL 'MAY HAVE TO GO';
Inquiry floats idea of limiting help to the over-70s

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 459 words

 
 THE concept of retirement needs to be re-thought, and the principle of a universal state pension may have to be abandoned, an independent inquiry today reports.
 One option is to limit state help for older people to those over 70 or 75 and require others to live on private pensions, savings or part-time earnings, according to the inquiry, set up by the Carnegie Trust.
 The trust is calling for full and open discussion on the options for changing the state pension. It says it is unacceptable for the pension to continue to wither in value, relative to average earnings, without that being a declared policy. 
 John Major is to get a copy of the report, in which there is strong Whitehall interest.
 Terry Banks, director of the inquiry, said: "It is up to the Government to open this issue up so that we can have a proper debate about it."
 The inquiry, which cost almost pounds 1 million, investigated the "third age" - 50-74 - in which more people are stopping full-time work and remain healthy and active. There are 14 million third-agers in Britain.
 After publishing nine constituent studies, the inquiry team today releases a final report with more than 70 recommendations as a basis for further discussion and analysis, including a two-day conference later this month.
 The report calls for urgent action to harness the abilities and energy of third-agers to stop them from being a drag on the economy.
 On latest population projections, by 2031 there will be 46 people over the present state pension ages for every 100 of working age, compared with 30 now.
 Sir Kenneth Stowe, the inquiry chairman, said: "For each of us, in our many different ways, the third age is an opportunity either for investment or for jumping into the dustbin."
 The report identifies age discrimination and financial disadvantage as the main obstacles to unleashing the potential of third-agers. Four in 10 have private income of less than pounds 3 a week, and six in 10 less than pounds 20.
 The Government's policy of uprating the state pension by prices rather than earnings is eroding its value and forcing more and more pensioners to claim additional income support benefit.
 There is a "strong" case for restricting pension eligibility and giving the resulting savings to the poorest.
 One option is to maintain the pension's value only for those over 70 or 75, uprating it by prices or less for the younger retired.
 However, the report acknowledges there might be widespread public objection to a move that would, in the long run, defer the pension age by up to 10 years.
 Life, Work and Livelihood in the Third Age; Bailey Management Services (Dept PH), 127 Sandgate Road, Folkestone CT20 2BL; pounds 19.50.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



105 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 8, 1993

EYEWITNESS: DOWN A FROZEN PATH TO REFUGE

BYLINE: THOMAS GOLTZ AT THE MOUROVDAR PASS, AZERBAIJAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 707 words

 
 NEW YORK TIMES: THEY looked like black dots on the snowfields, descending the north slope of the 9,000ft mountain pass - three figures, trudging toward refuge in their own land.
 Reaching the track, the three turned out to be five - an exhausted man in his early 30s and two women in their 20s carrying infant children.
 All were snow-burned and in shock after a six-day trek through forests and mountains from Bashlibeli in the province of Kelbadzhar.
 Armenian forces conquered the province region over the weekend, creating a refugee crisis of huge proportions. 
 Nagorno-Karabakh, under the rule of Azerbaijan but populated mostly by ethnic Armenians, has been the prize in a five-year undeclared war between Armenian separatists and Azeris that has cost about 3,000 lives.
 When Kelbadzhar fell to Armenian troops, it gave them control of a swath of land stitching Karabakh to neighbouring Armenia from the north to the south.  The first link, at Lachin, was opened last year and used to get troops and supplies into Karabakh.
 During the fighting, Azerbaijan has imposed an economic blockade on Armenia.  Armenia's sole supply of natural gas was interrupted over the winter when a crucial gas pipeline was ruptured by an explosion in neighbouring Georgia.
 Armenians were left with no heat and limited electricity and relied on foreign aid to survive the crisis. Armenia said the explosion was the work of Azeri guerrillas.
 About 39,000 Azeris fleeing the fighting have passed through refugee centres, leaving about 5,000 unaccounted for, according to local officials and 15,000 missing, according to the International Committee of the Red Cross.
 "When we left we were about 30 people, but we got split up during the journey and now we don't know what happened to the others. Maybe they are all dead," said Settar Tagiyev, the man in the group of five.
 This band was probably among the last Azeri refugees to make it over the main, eastern pass to a refugee collection center at Khanlar. More than 30,000 men, women and children driven from their homes over the past week have passed through the centre. Other centres have handled some 9,000 refugees.
 "Our information suggests there may be 2,000 to 3,000 left behind on the far side of the Dashkezan Pass," said a representative of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees.
 "We fear a very high casualty rate if they are not immediately evacuated, because those that remain are the most vulnerable - mainly the old, women and children. Even young men are coming across exhausted and in thermal shock."
 Numerous cases of severe frostbite and more than 40 deaths have been reported among those who managed to cross the pass. The number of those who perished and were left behind is unknown.
 In order to save those stranded, the refugee commission is now trying to secure safe passage for a corridor to the snowbound southern slope of the mountain to evacuate refugees by helicopter.
 But prospects look bleak. Four Azeri army helicopters ferrying refugees or wounded crashed in the past week. The most recent was on Sunday, when an MI-8 helicopter was hit by Armenian fire. The three crew members were killed and nine people were wounded.
 Another helicopter bound to pick up refugees trapped behind the Armenian lines further west had to turn back after coming under fire.
 A greater obstacle to the rescue effort, however, is political: despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary, the Armenian government continues to insist its soldiers were never involved in the conquest of Kelbadzhar in the first place, and that any ceasefire to evacuate refugees should be negotiated with the government of the self-styled "Republic of Nagorno-Karabakh", with which Baku refuses to negotiate.
 Yerevan also said the Karabakh Armenians were only reacting to an Azeri offensive from Kelbadzhar and opened a second corridor to Armenia by coincidence.
 Not only the government of Azerbaijan but eyewitnesses to the fall of Kelbadzhar point out that the assault was mounted from Armenia itself and that the new, northern corridor to Karabakh is more than 60 miles wide and represents a de facto annexation of the entire region.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



106 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 12, 1993

TELEVISION: WESTBEACH, THE NINETIES, EVERYMAN

BYLINE: HUGH HEBERT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 654 words

 
 ANY drama series that has to give you two family trees in the press kit is suspect. It was probably a wannabe soap that never lathered. And any script that places the two families at opposite ends of the social spectrum is several pages short of an idea. Witness the grinding Riff Raff Element on Fridays. Now on Saturday nights you are offered a bucket a week of Westbeach (BBC1), which in its first episode had elements of Eldorado, Hi-di-Hi, Dynasty, and Carry on Camping mixed in the sort of proportions you might use for concrete blocks.
 Westbeach is a seaside resort that is now out of season all the year round. The town's business power is in the hands of Alan Cromer, a lean entrepreneur who did well in the eighties and runs the now deserted nighterie, the neglected pier, the bumless deckchairs, the cheerless chippie, the empty caravan park; and this is August, which will depress Eastbourne where it was all filmed. 
 But in the first episode Sarah Preston, Alan's long-ago flame and now business rival, has just returned from the US to inherit multiple freeholds, hike all Cromer's rents and upgrade the echoing spaces of the Royal Suffolk Hotel. The receivers close the holiday camp, a Cromer brother puts his back out in flagrante with a blonde fisheries inspector and has to be cut out by firemen, leaving the blonde to explain to her husband why his car went out a saloon and came back a convertible. By the end of Day One Tony Marchant's plot is too glutinous even to thicken, and the puns are painful. Westbeach is a hoot-a-minute cult or it is nothing.
 It's nothing like Blackpool in the early thirties, seven million people booked holidays there each year: "Like wine!" one veteran said in The Nineties (BBC2), "you can drink it in, Blackpool, and you're like a new person." You could get a bed for 2s 6d a night, and landladies charged for use of the cruet. When the town was overcrowded, one former landlady said, "the lady across the road used to have them sitting up all night with their elbows on the table for half-a-crown."
 The elderly in this rich series bask in remembrance. They recall the Blackpool ballrooms, the fun-fairs, the big wheel, the experience of captive flight at the end of great steel arms that raised and tilted as the machine spun them faster: and the old man, remembering, made shapes with his magically eloquent hands to describe the movement. At the end he and his sister had a squeezebox each and played Oh We Do Like To Be Beside The Seaside, the way the cinema organists used to do as the lift raised them into the dazzle of the spotlight.
 In war, total objectivity is the privilege of those who are not there. No one who has read Ed Vulliamy's reports for the Guardian from Bosnia can be much surprised by his declaration of sympathies in Everyman (BBC1). "I believed that the bullies of history need not triumph. The war in Bosnia has changed all that. It's a war in which the worst always happens to the innocent, while brutality is rewarded and courage and decency punished." His judgment expressed in this programme is that the Bosnian Muslims want to go on living as a peaceful mixed community - Muslim, Croat and Serb as equal neighbours and friends - as they had done for decades, and that they must fight to restore that integral variety. The war has rent that. "In previous European conflicts the enemy has been easily demonised as Nazis or Reds. In Bosnia the demon lives next door."
 Sometimes it is the detail in the margin that drives a story home. Sabina is 22, had been a nurse for six months and when the war came she became an interpreter. Vulliamy reads from the notebook in which she has written in neat longhand, alphabetically, the new English words she has had to learn, a personal dictionary of present terrors: "bayonet, bellicose, bloodshed . . .  malefactor, manacle, mangle, martyr, massacre, missile, mortar. . ."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



107 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 14, 1993

FRONTIERS OF WORK : WHY THE OLDER DOGS CAN BE TAUGHT NEW TRICKS;
Victoria McKee reports on the value of experience

BYLINE: VICTORIA MCKEE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1070 words

 
 IF YOUR plane had to make a crash landing, would you prefer your commercial airline pilot to be aged 30 or 50? Should a surgeon be allowed to perform a delicate eye operation if he's nearing retirement age? Could a copy-typist of 72 be as fast as - and even more accurate than - one of 20?
 The Carnegie Inquiry Into the Third Age, whose final report was published last week, favourably compared the skills of older and younger workers.
 This may be because the ratio of working age population to pensioners is changing in a way that makes it expedient to encourage older people to stay in a job. According to the inquiry's predictions, a working population of 33.7 per cent will, by 2030, have to support pensioners comprising 14 per cent of the population. 
 Some of Carnegie's conclusions must, of course, be viewed in this context.
 The health section of the report, subtitled Abilities and Wellbeing in the Third Age, conceded that "in a review of 25 empirical studies conducted over the last 30 years . . . there were studies showing improvement, deterioration and no change with age". But it chose to concentrate on those which offered the greatest hope for a future in which older people must play an active role for the economy to prosper.
 Chris Trinder, director of the employment section of the Carnegie study, said: "The stereotypes that employers have aren't based on fact and older people often don't get the chance to show they can fit the bill."
 Mr Trinder said: "Employers worry if they feel someone's only got a few more good years to work - but they may only get a year or two out of younger workers before they move on."
 The real differences between the ages were that younger workers tended to have greater ambition, "trainability," flexibility, better health, information technology skills, qualifications and mobility, whereas older workers' strengths are their stability, reliability, commitment, responsibility, maturity and managerial skills.
 Employers feared, too, that older employees may be "technophobic" and unable to relate to new technologies and changing working environments, a claim denied by Dr David Davies of Aston University. "Our research has shown that although those between 50 and 60 were slightly slower to learn, the rate at which they improved was the same as for younger people."
 Professor Malcolm Hodkinson, who at 61 recently took early retirement from his post as professor of geriatric medicine at University College, London, is one of the senior academic authors of the study. He found that "as we get older, experience and skill can trade off against the deterioration in certain physical abilities".
 Some skills improved with age while others deteriorated. Learning to distinguish between them could be the key to successful planning for the future, he said.
 "Our work shows that you can teach an old dog new tricks. You may have to teach him in different ways and you may have to take longer doing it, but when allowed to work at their own chosen speed the performance of the older learner can equal that of the younger one," the professor said.
 American research quoted in the study found in tests on typists aged 19 to 72 that "although reaction time tests increased significantly with age, speed of copy-typing remained constant across age groups. Furthermore, maintained speed was not at the expense of accuracy, as older typists also made fewer errors."
 Margaret Savory, another of the report's researchers, found there were more differences within individual age groups than between them. "Age is never a good basis for automatic decisions on employment issues as individuals' abilities vary tremendously within each age range."
 There were, however, arguments for compiling a rough guide to the "seven ages of skills," from the teens, through each decade of life, Professor Hodkinson said.
 If the professor was in a plane about to crash land: "I'd prefer my pilot to be between 40 and 55, the mandatory retirement age for commercial pilots, rather than 30, because by that age they would have had a lot more experience of things going wrong and how to deal with them."
 In pure mathematics, however, it is said that no great discovery is ever made by anyone over 35, so the optimum age for a pure mathematician would be between 15 and 25. "But if you are interested in applied mathematics - applying the concepts to complicated problems in real life as a statistician does, then experience begins to come into it and someone of 25 to 40 might be more desirable," he said.
 Doctors might be "dodgy over 70," Professor Hodkinson said. "But if I was having a very finicky, difficult but routine operation - say on my eyes or ears - I'd feel more confident with an experienced 60-year-old surgeon than a 30-year-old although for very complex, uncertain, surgery that might involve rapid decision-making, I would prefer a much younger surgeon."
 When it comes to senior managers, older people had more to offer in some respects than those in their 20s, 30s and 40s who have largely supplanted them from positions of authority in recent years, Professor Hodkinson said.
 "If you're trying to manage change, then you need younger people - but you should have older ones on board to keep a good ship running," he said.
 "I believe you need a mix of ages so that the younger workers can learn from the experience of the older and the organisation can benefit from the impetuosity and drive of the younger."
 Professor Patrick Rabbitt, 58-year-old professor of age and cognitive performance at the University of Manchester, whose work is quoted heavily in the report, believes that 65 is probably a sensible "compromise" retirement age, if one has to be set.
 "While the trajectories of ageing can vary hugely from person to person, there is little doubt that faculties start to decline after the age of 60 and that you're about as good as you're ever going to get by the age of 50," he said.
 "But from our work it's very clear that people who were in their 50s in 1982 are ageing much less rapidly than previous generations due to better diet and health care, personal care and exercise - and, very plausibly, heightened expectation and motivation."
 The Carnegie Inquiry's conclusions may enhance older workers' expectations and make third age power become a self-fulfilling prophecy.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



108 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 15, 1993

ROYAL OPERA DEFIES WARNING ON POUNDS 150M PLAN

BYLINE: DAVID HENCKE, WESTMINSTER CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 656 words

 
 THE Royal Opera House yesterday committed itself to its pounds 150 million redevelopment scheme in spite of Baroness Warnock's warning in a confidential report to the Arts Council that it could go bankrupt by proceeding with the plan.
 Jeremy Isaacs, managing director of the Royal Opera House, and Angus Stirling, its chairman, predicted that the redevelopment would be complete by the beginning of the next century.
 They were confident, after a meeting with John Major, that the Government would be sympathetic to the allocation to the project of some pounds 45 million from the National Lottery.
 Mr Isaacs was also confident that Lord Palumbo, head of the Arts Council, would back the proposal. 
 The announcement of the opera house's determination to go ahead follows Westminster council's decision to defer planning approval for piecemeal development in Covent Garden until it was guaranteed that the scheme could be fully financed.
 The opera house yesterday published Putting Our House in Order, a progress report, accepting some of the criticisms by Lady Warnock and management consultants Price Waterhouse, about the running of Britain's premier opera establishment.
 Mr Stirling said tickets for the opera at Covent Garden will cost more than the old age pension next season.
 Average seat prices will be pounds 62 for opera and pounds 27 for ballet, and financial pressure meant there was little hope of a substantial reduction.
 The opera house rejected Lady Warnock's central complaint, contained in her confidential report urging the scrapping of the development scheme as it stood. It also declined to publish the report - leaked to the Guardian last month - because it would create a precedent for other critical reports to be made public.
 The opera house agreed to implement 20 of the 27 recommendations - including changing appointments to its board, offering more subsidised performances to young people, the unemployed, students and the elderly, and stricter financial controls.
 But it also said seat prices would rise by 4 per cent - on top of a 126 per cent rise over five seasons.
 The opera house is also to close in 1997, following two extended summer closures in 1995 and 1996, re-opening on New Year's Eve, 1999.
 Mr Stirling said he considered the development scheme essential. "It will provide 113 extra seats, improved facilities, a home for the Royal Ballet in Covent Garden and eventually lead to a reduction in seat prices," he said.
 Figures in the opera house report showed that pounds 14.2 million had been spent on the development - and revealed that the overdraft facility at Coutts Bank - of which pounds 8 million had already been used by 1991 - had risen to pounds 11.6 million to finance the scheme.
 The opera house also confirmed that its trust had submitted accounts on its development scheme late to the Charity Commission.
 The progress report concludes: "Alternative schemes have been scrupulously studied, but none offers anything approaching value for money or the benefits required either in terms of the capital project or subsequent revenue gains.  Any major scaling-down of our ambition seriously compromises our ability to increase access. We believe that while compromises may reduce initial outlay, they strike at the very heart of the strategy."
 The opera house said an anonymous foreign donor had pledged pounds 2.5 million to help the scheme.
 - Tickets for the Opera at Covent Garden are the most expensive in the world. A top single seat price of pounds 200 compares with
 - pounds 75 at the Metropolitan in New York
 - pounds 80 at La Bastille in Paris
 - pounds 44 for at the Deutsche Oper in Berlin
 - pounds 50 for the Sydney opera house.
 A spokesman for Keith Prowse International said: "Covent Garden prices are astronomic - far higher than anywhere else in the world I've ever come across."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



109 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 15, 1993

IN RUSSIA AND ROME FORMER RULERS FACE THEIR ACCUSERS;
Moscow trial: Two years ago, Dmitry Yazov led a superpower's armed forces and Giulio Andreotti was in his seventh term as Italy's prime minister, an elder statesman who attended G7 summits. Yesterday, Mr Andreotti faced detailed accusations of mafia links while Mr Yazov was in court over the 1991 QBY:Jonathan Steele in Moscow and Ed Vulliamy in Rome

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 620 words

 
 VOROVSKY Street, where the Russian Supreme Court stands, had never seen anything like it. Barriers, guarded by police, were strung across it, and coming towards them yesterday was a motley crowd waving red banners and shouting "Freedom to the patriots" and "Yeltsin to court". Among the placards and banners were the faces of elderly men who, two years ago, had never attended an unofficial demonstration in their lives.
 More than that, they were men who had spent a lifetime giving the orders which maintained a system that banned any expression of protest or dissent. In August 1991 they tried to restore it, by declaring a state of emergency, closing newspapers, and imprisoning the country's president. Now in Vorovsky Street on a grey April morning they were presenting themselves as democrats. 
 "I accuse Gorbachev of having taken part in the destruction of a great country," Gennady Yanayev told me, as we tramped past the puddles. Mr Yanayev was once the vice-president of the Soviet Union, a man who by his own admission was drunk on the day the coup decisions were taken, and by the evidence of those who later arrested him was drunk when the coup collapsed.
 A woman rushed up, handed him three roses, and kissed him. "They are noble men," she explained when I asked what prompted her emotion. Her mother was illiterate but she had received higher education thanks to the October Revolution. "They took a great risk. They saw others destroying our Soviet Union, but they acted."
 "We will not give in," boomed a deep voice behind me. It was Anatoly Lukyanov, a colleague of Mr Gorbachev's for 40 years, and once speaker of the Soviet parliament.
 Nearby trudged Marshal Dmitry Yazov, former defence minister, his leathery face marked by furrows and trenches of worry. "I regret nothing," he growled. Not even that comment, "I was an old fool," which he made two days after the coup failed? "Now is not the time to discuss that," he parried, furrowing further.
 Inside the court the 12 men first tried to argue that the three-man military tribunal had no jurisdiction. They are charged with high treason, and five of them with exceeding their authority. Mr Yanayev's lawyer said that as the judges were serving officers, they were subordinate to Mr Yeltsin's defence minister, and could not be considered objective.
 Mr Lukyanov's lawyer said that as some of the events they were charged with took place outside Russia, that is at Mr Gorbachev's villa in Ukraine, a Russian court had no jurisdiction. He said they could only be tried by an international court representing the states of the former Soviet Union.
 The court rejected the pleas, whereupon Mr Yanayev and Mr Lukyanov said they would refuse to answer any questions.
 Outside the building the crowd of about 100 supporters kept up a vigil. For most of Moscow the coup plotters are the ultimate yesterday's men. In people's minds they deserve no sympathy but no anger either. Only the fanatics and the clowns care about them.
 A man in a tattered blue cassock carrying an icon, and calling himself as Deacon Viktor Petyukhin, said he regularly went to the jail where the plotters were held for a year and a half before their recent release.
 "With this icon I knew they would come out, and they did," he intoned. "But their cells should not stay empty. Yeltsin and his team should be put in there instead.
 "Gorbachev was an agent, from his young days," he confided. "CIA?" I asked.  "Hard to know," he admitted.
 "You know who runs America. The Zionists, the Jews, and all those saxophone players, headed by that chief saxophonist, Clinton." I shuddered, and said goodbye.
 The trial continues today.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



110 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 18, 1993

THE FINAL SAY: ASTRONOMICAL TARGETS

BYLINE: PETE MAY

SECTION: WEEK-END; Pg. 70

LENGTH: 676 words

 
 THE QUESTIONNAIREVikram Seth
 Rosanna Greenstreet
 SO Arnold Schwarzenegger is to become the first advertiser in space. NASA's next mission, the Commercial Experiment Transporter (COMET), set to be launched in May, will have ads for Arnie's forthcoming movie, The Last Action Hero, on the fuselage, booster rockets and satellite payload, which will orbit the Earth for two years. No kidding.
 Just what will the average space traveller make of a space satellite emblazoned with stills from a Schwarzenegger movie and, no doubt, neon logos for McDonald's and Coca-Cola? The scenario is not difficult to imagine:
 Spock: Captain, ship's sensors indicate the presence of a 20th-century earth satellite. 
 Kirk: Put it on screen Mr Sulu.
 Spock: Fascinating.
 Kirk: The Last Action Hero? Schwarzenegger? Explanation, Mr Spock.
 Spock: Captain, ship's computer states that Arnold Schwarzenegger was a creature of limited intelligence made of pure muscle, popular in your Earth culture's film genre known as "action movies". Most illogical.
 McCoy: How did they ever get out of the 20th century?
 Kirk: Spock, this picture on the satellite Spock, are you trying to tell me that man's human, Spock?
 Spock: It's life Jim, but not as we know it. Schwarzenegger was a primitive model of an automaton life-form known as the Terminator, which later gained world domination through opening a chain of burger bars.
 Kirk: Hasta la vista, baby! Rapid fire all phaser banks. Shoot to kill, Mr Sulu!
 Many ad agencies are now considering advertising in space. Any alien life-form watching us will soon believe that the human race is doomed to extinction, as it consists almost entirely of Gold Blend drinking couples who take seven years to kiss and never actually have it off; and the only other intelligent life is elderly men reading books on fly-fishing by J R Hartley.
 I have long maintained that the only way the Squidgygate and Camillagate phone calls could have been taped was by Thunderbird 5. Therefore John Tracy and his orbiting space station could be jointly sponsored by BT and MI5, with a whole new series of Maureen Lipman ads being transmitted into the cosmos.
 Those who talk Britain down should take note of this new marketing opportunity. Soon we will be able to look beyond EC boundaries and enter the inter-global market. John Major's Citizen's Charter could be applied to Interstellar starways; more Happy Eaters (with burgers supplied by Schwarzenegger's Planet Hollywood chain) and more public lavatories for Venusian space truckers could be the big idea that wins the next election.
 Scientists believe that Mars can eventually be made habitable by introducing plants and building isolated greenhouse communities. Peter Mayle could then write A Year On Mars (followed by A Year In Uranus), introducing us to funny Martian builders with strange accents who spend hours in the delicatessen deciding which tentacle to buy and are always presenting him with freshly zapped Zygons.
 Think of the tourism opportunities. Inter-planetary travel buffs could congregate in youth hostel kitchens on various worlds, cooking pasta and exclaiming: "Yeah, Saturn was just so, like, spiritual . . ."
 Graham Gooch could keep his stubble by claiming to be unable to shave in a low-gravitational flight situation, and on the borders of the galaxy England might even find some primeval planet they could beat at cricket. (If they did lose they could always blame it on the alien diet.) In fact there might even be life-forms somewhere who like Eldorado.
 Mind you, there's a whole legal aspect to be thought of regarding space colonisation. Omni magazine recently posed the question "Who owns the moon?" According to "space attorneys" an international treaty determines celestial bodies to be the heritage of all humankind - which presumably means that the stipulations of Her Majesty's Inspector Of Taxes do not apply on the Moon. John Birt is already said to be looking into setting up an office there.  G

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



111 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 19, 1993

VICTORY AND DEFEAT FROM BEYOND THE GRAVE, 50 YEARS ON

BYLINE: JULIAN BORGER IN WARSAW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 781 words

 
 EWA KUPFERT had spent all afternoon searching for the street corner where she was born 69 years ago. She recognized the names of the streets - Mila and Nalewki - but in post-war Warsaw they no longer joined.
 Ewa was overcome by a wave of exhaustion. "Why did I come?" she asked herself out loud. "What am I doing here?" 
 She had come from Canada with her two daughters, the sole survivor of a Jewish Warsaw family of 10. Most of them were marched out of the ghetto to the Umschlagplatz [Deportation Square] from where they were loaded on to trains to Treblinka. She hid with her mother and sister in a basement, where they remained on April 19, 1943, when the ghetto fought back.
 "We heard all the noises and we heard that the Germans are going house to house looking for Jewish people. And all of a sudden the ghetto was on fire. Jewish people were throwing Molotov cocktails, or whatever they had, they fought with bare hands. But the fact was that all the Germans ran away."
 It was the first popular uprising against the Nazis anywhere - a last stand by about 1,000 young Jews, defending 60,000 old people and children hidden in basements. They were all that was left of Warsaw's pre-war Jewish population of 450,000, the largest Jewish community in Europe at the time.
 German troops had to raze the ghetto to the ground and sift through the bricks in order to crush the resistance.
 "When I was captured and marched out of the ghetto, it was one big ruin," Ewa said.
 She was sent to Majdanek concentration camp, where her mother and sister died.
 The Nazis cornered and killed most of the leaders of the ghetto uprising in May 1943, but isolated groups of fighters carried on fighting throughout the summer.
 The only Jewish military leader to survive was Marek Edelman. He now works as a cardiologist in Lodz and is weary of being asked about the uprising. For him it is pointless to sift through the past if you fail to learn from it. He believes the Allies could have done more to slow down the Holocaust by bombing death camps and the railway lines leading to them.
 And he thinks the West is still putting strategy before human life.
 "What is going on in Yugoslavia now is Hitler's victory from beyond the grave.  And the Western countries, beyond their wordy declarations, are doing the same thing as they did before."
 On the streets of Warsaw it was clear yesterday that other lessons of the ghetto had still not been learnt. Ewa Kupfert stopped to talk to an elderly Polish Roman Catholic to exchange memories about the neighbourhood. Soon a crowd of local residents gathered around her, and the atmosphere quickly soured.
 "We already have too many Jews here. How would you like it if Israel was run by Poles?" an old woman shouted. A young man in a baseball cap behind her said: "I went to London for three weeks and I had enough of Jews for my whole life."
 Ewa shook her head as her daughters pulled her away. "I wanted to find something that would take me back again to my Warsaw, but I can't," she said.
 Nearby, a crowd of 100 skinheads staged a noisy protest against the commemoration of the ghetto uprising, but elsewhere Polish Roman Catholics tried to redress the balance.
 A senior church delegation went to Warsaw's last remaining synagogue yesterday to attend a remembrance ceremony for the 6 million Jewish victims of the Holocaust. Archbishop Henryk Muszynski read out a message from the Pope calling on both faiths to unite against intolerance, to become jointly "a blessing to the world".
 "I came all the way from Nowy Sacz [in the very south of Poland] to see this, an archbishop and a rabbi standing together. It's great," said Maria Darska, who looked on from the women's gallery in the synagogue.
 As evening fell, Ewa Kupfert was beginning to cheer up.
 She had come across an old Catholic, Tadeusz Rozmislowski, who had seen the ghetto burn in April 1943. He told her how proud he and other Poles had been of their Jewish neighbours for being the first to stand up to the Nazis.
 He told her to ignore the anti-Semites. "They don't have the slightest idea about history. They don't know how much Jews and Poles suffered together," Mr Rozmislowski said.
 In the synagogue, Rabbi Joskowicz read out a telegram sent to Hitler on May 16 1943 by Jurgen Stroop, the SS General responsible for the liquidation of the ghetto. "There is not one Jew left in Warsaw," the message said.
 The rabbi lifted his chin with its long grey beard and surveyed the crowd of ghetto survivors and their children packed into the synagogue. "You were wrong, Stroop. Here we are!" he shouted.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



112 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 21, 1993

SUICIDE RUSH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 35 words

 
 Reuter: Dozens of elderly people in Jiangsu province, China, commited suicide last month after officials ordered that anyone dying after April 1 would be cremated, an official newspaper said yesterday.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



113 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 21, 1993

QUEEN'S AWARDS: DOC MARTENS TRIES TO PUT BOOT INTO AGGRO IMAGE;
Old ladies, bovver boys and bankers. Dan Atkinson tracks the rise and rise of the 'comfort shoe'

BYLINE: DAN ATKINSON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 446 words

 
 MYTH after myth about Dr Martens footwear was exploded yesterday as a Queen's Award for Export Achievement propelled the brand's British manufacturers into the spotlight.
 They were designed originally as "comfort shoes" for elderly women. Today, women make up a large part of the market. They are worn by bankers. These and other fascinating facts come from R. Griggs, the UK licence-holder since 1959. 
 Yet there is something about "docs" that will always make them somewhat blokeish. However hard Griggs try to shake off the bovver-boot label - and to be fair troublemakers and yobbos have always been no more than a tiny part of the market - connotations of aggression keep bursting through the corporate profile.
 One learns that Griggs started business at the turn of the century making a shoe called Bulldog. Its biggest competitor was called Tuf. There was the big Korean War contract. Then, at the dawn of pop decade, the deal with the German entrepreneur Dr Maertens that launched the air-soled shoe on an unsuspecting Britain under the Britain-ised name Dr Martens.
 Now the any-trouble image took off in earnest - skinheads in their thousands laced up the eight-hole cherry-reds and one seaside police force took to confiscating laces as offensive weapons.
 Of course, as the company points out, nurses and labourers, shopfloor employees and manual workers out-bought the skins by a big margin. But to the doc-fearing classes the "comfort shoe" designed by the good doctor and friend Herbert Funck during wartime represented anything but comfort.
 Docs were dogged by the bovver-boot tag right through to the 80s, when middle-class office workers - fed up with skyrocketing cobblers' bills and instant-scuff shoes - saw in the no-nonsense doc a cheap escape.
 Now docs are going into clothes. No joke. "Avant garde fashion company" red or dead is to team up with Griggs to put the famous name on yer actual clobber. At first sight you would think the skins would have a fit, namby-pamby fashion houses not being their sort of thing. But inquiries show the clothes may not be that un-docish after all. No suits, but plenty of 1940s raincoats, tweedy jackets and waistcoats.
 Meanwhile, docs have gone worldwide. Twenty two countries buy Dr Martens and 38 per cent of sales are accounted for by North America. Griggs employs two thousand people and its best-known product now has royal recognition. Dr Martens are respectable, putting the boot into the trade gap rather than rival fans' faces.
 Somehow it seems unlikely that the hard image will ever fade completely. It also seems unlikely that owners would be happy if it did.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



114 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 21, 1993

SOCIETY: MUSCLE AND MUDDLE;
Traditional systems of local government are in retreat. What will replace them?

BYLINE: DAVID DONNISON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 901 words

 
 NICHOLAS RIDLEY, the politician who did more than any other to put the boot into traditional forms of local government, said that town councils should in future only meet twice a year - to allocate the contracts. Shortly before his death he added, on an Analysis radio programme, that he was not joking.
 In local government, as in the BBC and the hospitals, major changes are afoot.  They will go much further, whatever government we have, for they are part of a worldwide trend - and it was in the private sector that the trend began. 
 Early in the 20th century, when industry's main task was to mass-produce standard products, the most powerful people in the land were the tycoons who owned the factories and employed the armies of workers. The Labour movement naturally demanded that the community take over these vast properties and employ the workers. Meanwhile, Conservatives fought to keep these things in private hands. That quarrel still leaves its imprint on all our thinking.
 Faced with a far more varied and rapidly changing market, the industrial dinosaurs, public and private, have been losing ground to new kinds of enterprise which wield power through their control of money and electronic communications. The risks of owning things and employing people are subcontracted out. Richard Branson runs his businesses from his living room.  Like other dinosaurs before them, the big, bureaucratic enterprises are losing ground because they are, in general, less efficient.
 In local government, too, traditional bureaucratic systems are in retreat.  Three competing systems are gaining ground.
 There are market-like systems: privatised council housing, for example, and private nursing homes and childrens' homes bidding for contracts from council paymasters, and - within the public services - competing, independently managed schools. There's nothing new about market mechanism in the public services. In medieval times taxes were collected, on commission, by "tax farmers".
 Entrepreneurial, managerial systems of government are also gaining power.  Corporations appointed by the state - the TECs which run our training schemes, the Housing Corporations and the Urban Development Corporations are examples - are given a brief, millions of pounds to spend, and told to get on with it.  Some do pretty well; but they are loose cannon rolling round our cities under no democratic control. Again, the system is not new. The Turnpike Trusts and the Paving and Lighting Commissions, which created the first road system and the first properly serviced towns we had since the Romans, worked in this way.  Then there are community-based systems, usually depending on public funds but accountable to the users of their services. The housing co-operatives are among the best known but there are many other examples - credit unions, women's health groups, old people's clubs, community centres providing creches, youth clubs, advice on welfare rights and much else: often innovative and excellent, but always patchy in coverage and uncertain in staying power. Victorian health and social insurance services were run in much the same ways, through friendly societies and medical clubs.
 The people in charge of the agencies now gaining ground - political appointees, drawn mainly from local business and gentry - have been described as a "new magistracy". They may be new, but their agencies represent much older power structures which have struck back. What we think of as the traditional public services are in fact the youngest of these systems.
 Created by reforming governments and the public service professions, campaigned for by people such as the early Fabians, trained in places such as the London School of Economics, these services pushed aside the gentry of earlier times, but failed to root themselves sufficiently deeply in the hearts of the people to withstand a counter revolution.
 Central government, which is busily breaking down the old system, is better at destroying than creating. They should bear in mind that civic leadership is still vital. We neglect it at our peril. Local politicians have played crucial roles in the cities which have responded best to economic disaster - Hamburg, Pittsburgh, Rennes and Glasgow are examples. Only they have the authority to develop a coherent vision of their city's future, to mobilise their own people in support of sustained and consistent policies, to bring in the private sector and central agencies, and to gain help from higher levels of government.
 Civic leaders should beware imperialists of the public and the private sectors alike - passionate propagandists locked into the rhetoric of an ancient quarrel. All systems have a part to play. Pick and mix them in ways which best suit your own town's resources and traditions. Then monitor what happens and learn from experience. Whether in the public or the private sector, monopolies always tend to go wrong - particularly for the most vulnerable.
 The old love affair with the state and public service professions is over, and we should beware of new temptations. Bureaucrats, entrepreneurs, professions and community activists have parts to play. But civic leaders have responsibilities which they cannot hand over to anyone else. Things will go badly wrong if they relapse into those two meetings a year promised by Nicholas Ridley.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



115 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 21, 1993

SOCIETY: SURVIVAL OF THE LOUDEST;
Intense lobbying saved one innovative community care scheme from the axe.  Though care like this is supposed to be a top priority, other schemes have not been so lucky

BYLINE: LYNN EATON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1007 words

 
 DAWN EGAN learned the hard way that her job as one of a team of social workers in Leicestershire's adult placement team was under threat. "I found out from a local radio reporter," she says, still stunned that the team hadn't been told by the council first. "She'd phoned up to ask if someone could give their reaction if the council decided to axe the service."
 Without the team, one of the county's most innovative examples of community care was in danger of collapse - at a time when such care was supposed to be a top priority. 
 That was in February. Two months of lobbying later, the many families who offer community care in their own front rooms by "fostering" elderly and handicapped people have managed to save the service - at least for this year. But they are numbed that the cuts could have been considered at all.
 "I couldn't believe it," Dawn Egan says. "The director of social services said it was highly unlikely our scheme would be closed as it was way down the list.  But we felt it wouldn't be on the list at all if it was not being considered."
 Leicestershire's adult placement scheme began in 1980 with six families who offered to take in elderly people on a short-term basis. It expanded through the 1980s, eventually including people with learning disabilities, and now 53 host families offer short and long-term placements to up to 88 people at any one time.
 The council pays them pounds 140 a week for each person, up to a maximum of three "guests". The declared emphasis is on a friendly atmosphere without the rules and regulations found in formal residential homes, where costs would be anything from pounds 185 a week upwards.
 Despite the extra pounds 539 million of government money to help offset local authorities' new care responsibilities, Leicestershire is not the only social services department to face dilemmas about cutting services which form a vital part of community care. With new spending assessments and capping, 26 social services departments are still losing out at the end of the day, even with the new money. It was only after an outcry from carers and their "guests", that Leicestershire council hurriedly decided last month to drop the adult placement scheme from the long list of potential cuts.
 LIZ FORSTER, from one of the original families who had for years quietly provided care to elderly and dying people, decided she had to take a public stand to save the service. "I was very angry. Angry that something that had been working so well was going to be axed. And angry that the people who were going to axe it just didn't know what we were doing.
 "It was exactly what the Government said we should have been doing - getting people out of institutional care into better types of care. Here they were, going to axe us."
 She helped to form a local association of adult placement families, lobbied councillors, wrote to the press and invited people to see for themselves the service she was providing.
 "We'd always kept a low profile - but where did it get us? If something like this happens again, we will be more prepared, a stronger force."
 Ironically, Leicestershire's social services director, Brian Waller, agrees it would have been a great loss. "It's such a good scheme," he says.
 But the Tory dominated council needed to find between pounds 15 million and pounds 20 million to avoid capping. All departments were asked to draw up a list of cuts giving a 5 per cent saving. Adult placements ended as the next to last item on the list, Waller explains, just to show members they might have to consider pulling out of something as valuable as that at a time when they should be investing in community care.
 "The way ministers talk about these things is that nationally social services have got an increase, and shouldn't everybody be grateful. It's true that in overall terms social services have increased, but it's spread very unevenly across departments.
 "I'm at standstill. We're having pounds 8 million new money, but having to lose pounds 4 million from the main programme budget. We are taking one step back to go two steps forward."
 It will mean cutting grants to the voluntary sector at a time when the Government wants to encourage its growth, and increasing charges for home help services which will be an essential part of community care. The biggest anomaly of all, Waller says, was having to put a recommendation to the social services committee that five social work posts with elderly and disabled people, target groups for community care, should be scrapped.
 Similar stories are told by other shortchanged councils, among them St Helens, Rotherham, Newcastle, North Tyneside, Coventry, Solihull, City of London, Greenwich, Islington, Lambeth, Westminster, Barnet, Bexley, Enfield, Harrow, Havering, Hillingdon, Hounslow, Kingston, Waltham Forest, Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, and Cumbria.
 Residential homes and day centres, an essential back-up for community care, are being closed and charges introduced for home helps and meals on wheels.  Voluntary organisations are facing grant cuts.
 Social service directors warned from the outset that, despite the new community care cash, government policies towards local government would drive many councils to make cuts in other, crucial, areas of social services. Their predictions are proving true.
 Leicestershire's adult placement scheme may have been saved but other, lower profile services have not been so lucky. While Brian Waller likes to believe adult placement survived because everybody realised its intrinsic merits, he is forced to admit that the heavy lobbying of councillors by carers and service users probably saved the day.
 "Some schemes with a less public profile are much more vulnerable to cuts," he admits. And there, social worker Dawn Egan says, is the rub.
 "You go to a meeting and sit next to someone whose service hasn't been saved.  We've been lucky, but there are services that shouldn't have to take cuts."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



116 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 22, 1993

SPECIAL REPORT: COMPUTERS AT WORK: THE KEYS TO HEALTH AND HAPPINESS;
Keyboards and mice: Is your mouse a rat? Does your keyboard give you the hunch? Then it's time to switch to new, more user-friendly designs

BYLINE: RICHARD DONKIN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 977 words

 
 EVEN if your PC is new, the ergonomic thinking behind it is probably so old you can hear it creaking. The basic design of the keyboard is 120 years old, while the mouse is a survivor from the 1960s - positively ancient in computer terms.
 It may seem churlish to criticise these senior citizens, but it's only fair to warn you that they can seriously damage your health. Using a keyboard or mouse, combined with long hours, stress and lack of breaks, can cause repetitive strain injury (RSI), a complex of disorders causing pain in the hands and arms. 
 RSI is now the most common reported occupational disease in the US and is also the subject of expensive lawsuits in the UK.  Many sufferers end up unemployed and severely disabled, experiencing pain from such everyday tasks as buttoning shirts or chopping vegetables.
 Sandie Maile's career as a secretary almost ended in 1984 when acute pain in her wrists stopped her from typing. Despite medical treatment, the pain returned every few years.
 Only three years ago did she manage to resume working normally, by switching to the innovative Maltron keyboard and taking regular breaks from typing. She now works as a personal assistant, dealing with workloads that would have been painfully impossible with normal keyboards.
 The inventors of the Maltron, Lilian Malt and Stephen Hobday, designed the keyboard to encourage a relaxed posture. The keys for each hand are separated, allowing the wrists to straighten and the shoulders to relax from the "computer hunch" visible in any office.
 The keys are arranged in a dish around each hand, reducing finger stretching and forearm strain. It looks almost as if the keyboard has melted in the sun and the keys have sunk into it.
 While no keyboard can cure RSI, the Maltron has impressive testimonials from a number of RSI sufferers. Typically, their condition is so improved by its use that they can return to productive work, avoiding the too common fate of unemployment and severe disability.
 The list of those using Maltron keyboards includes household names such as Boeing, British Gas and the Inland Revenue, and smaller organisations such as Lincolnshire County Council. Versions for disabled users enable the use of one hand or a mouth stick.
 Even self-taught typists can benefit from switching keyboards, though two-finger typists may improve more by learning to touch type.
 Martyn Wilkinson, a freelance computer consultant, had found that typing and using a mouse were becoming painful. He switched to the new Apple Adjustable Keyboard and found that it significantly reduced the pain in his wrists.
 The Adjustable Keyboard is the first alternative keyboard from a major computer manufacturer. Unlike the Maltron, it is similar to existing keyboards rather than a fundamental re-design. It is essentially a standard flat keyboard split into two halves, one for each hand. Each half can be rotated to match the angle of the forearms, reducing wrist strain. The positioning of the shoulders and forearms is largely unaffected.
 Many other alternative keyboards exist, most of them from small manufacturers.  While they differ in design, their concepts are broadly similar: separate the hands and let them rotate outwards, thereby relaxing shoulder and arm muscles. Good posture remains important, but now the keyboard is a help not a hindrance.
 While looking again at your keyboard design, it may be time to decide that your mouse a rat. The mouse is astonishingly simple in concept and construction, yet it can cause just as much pain as a keyboard - and its ergonomics are even less well understood.
 Martyn Wilkinson took a novel approach to reducing mouse-related hand pain.  Rather than replace his mouse, he upgraded it with a larger casing, called a Mouse Topper. This reduced hand pain from gripping a small casing, by letting his hand rest on the mouse.
 Recently, more ergonomic mice have been unleashed by Apple, Sicos and others.  Such mice are typically larger and rounder, to provide an easier grip. Unlike gloves, however, mice are rarely available in a range of sizes.
 The trackball is the most common rival to the mouse. Indeed, it is essentially an upside-down mouse with a larger ball. The trackball stays stationary, while the user rotates the ball to move the pointer on the screen. Many mouse users have found that trackballs cause less pain, but the reverse may also be is also true for some.
 The "activation force" required to press mouse and trackball buttons does not appear to affect the risk of RSI. However, once someone has RSI, a low activation force mouse is recommended.
 Some RSI sufferers have found that a combined trackball and foot switch, such as one available from Curtis Manufacturing in the US, helps tremendously, especially on "click and drag" operations.
 Ultimately, when we all live in cyberspace, such devices may be superseded by a direct connection to the user's brain. (Does this raise the spectre of Repetitive Brain Injury?) But until then, take as much care in choosing a keyboard or mouse as you would in choosing a parachute.
 Apple Adjustable Keyboard ( pounds 195) and Desktop Bus Mouse II ( pounds 40): Apple Computer, 081-569 1199. Logitech Mouseman ( pounds 49): Logitech, 0344-891313. Maltron keyboard ( pounds 375, discount possible for RSI sufferers) and Sicos mouse ( pounds 55): PCD Maltron, 081-398 3265. Mouse Topper ( pounds 19. 95): Camargue Computing, 0453-890087. Curtis MVP Mouse ($ 89) and Foot Switch ($ 19): Curtis Manufacturing, New Hampshire, USA, (0101-603) 532 4123.
 The Keyboard Company, stocks a wide range of keyboards and mice, including the Maltron and the Twiddler (another alternative keyboard): 0453-873291.
 Richard Donkin is a computer consultant for a large systems integrator.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



117 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 23, 1993

CARRY ON CAMPING;
Marc Almond's retrospective live album is a kitsch classic

BYLINE: CAROLINE SULLIVAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 712 words

 
 THE DAY former Frankie Goes To Hollywood singer, Holly Johnson announced he was HIV-positive, Marc Almond was telephoned by a tabloid reporter chasing a rumour that the pop star had been seen leaving an Aids clinic.
 "Well, I was coming out of a clinic," admitted Almond, worrying the silver skull rings weighing down his hands. "I'd had a test. I've had regular HIV tests, and as of three weeks ago I wasn't [HIV positive]. I said I'd say if I was positive - I feel there's no stigma attached to it. So many friends are HIV that I feel almost guilty when I get the letter saying I'm not. " 
 Almond's excesses during the eighties are well documented. They add up to what he calls "12 years of tears". A live album and video of the same name, chronicling the career he has managed to pilot through all the indulgence, has just been released.
 Southport-born and now in his "very, very late twenties", (ie around 36), Almond is a British institution. He's the operatically camp diva loved by all the family, the gay man even homophobes like. His rhinestoned cris de coeur have been radio staples since Tainted Love in 1981. "Cabbies and builders have nothing but compliments for me. " Some of his strongest supporters, he adds, are elderly women who adore his cover versions of Brel and Aznavour.
 Almond - it's his real name, incidentally - estimates that this is his 12th album, and the newly released What Makes A Man A Man his 30-something single. Recorded at a spectacularly sequinned Albert Hall gig last September, Twelve Years of Tears is, like Almond himself, coy, humorous and overwrought. It follows his musical lineage from the Soft Cell sex-dwarf days, through the five-weeks-at-No-1 Something's Gotten Hold Of My Heart, to recent brow-moppers like Jacky.
 Almond has always cast himself as a misfit, and even if this is belied by his wealthy star status, he's still a symbol to others who feel misunderstood. Many fans who bonded with him during the early days remain loyal: Almond's following is considered the most devoted in the business.
 Some of his most popular tunes are openly homoerotic. Take, at random, Champagne, a downbeat vignette about a male stripper.  Then there was Jacky (A Brel composition) and its references to "authentic queens and phoney virgins". Almond's subject matter makes his across-the-board acceptance all the more surprising. Why isn't, say, Holly Johnson, who also specialises in easy-care gay pop, equally loved?
 It could be because Almond is so much less threatening. His highly coloured moods make it easy for detractors to dismiss him as a drama queen. However, the same neuroses that lead him to "shout and burst into tears" bring out people's protective instincts.
 "I am introverted," he contends. "Before going on stage I'm sick with fear. I almost faint. I often forget words. It's that stress and strain of always wanting to be perfect that makes me temperamental - it's the whole diva syndrome. And I don't have a band to back me up - it's down to me, the focus is on me. "
 Well, that's what makes a man a man. Speaking of which, the single of that name, an Aznavour ballad about a gay cabaret artist, is performing poorly by Almond standards. It has only reached No 60 on the chart, compared to the top five placings attained by his last single, The Days Of Pearly Spencer. Almond's erratic hits are often followed by relative flops, but he's suspicious this time.
 "I think I'm encountering homophobia for the first time. It's had literally no radio play. Even my least commercial records usually get a few. I was booked on Richard And Judy to perform the song and, two days before, someone called and cancelled and was very rude. I asked why and they said, 'We don't have to give out a reason. 'But Mums love that song! It's an old one! I thought it'd be accepted. "
 A Granada Television press officer responded: "A big story had come up the day before, so we had to cancel him. There was no intention of annoying or insulting him, and it was certainly not homophobic. "
 So how does Almond see himself? "Am I one of those endearing British eccentrics, you mean?" He issues a vibrant cackle.  "No - I just see myself as stumbling from one obstacle to the next. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



118 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 24, 1993

OUT TO LUNCH: ULTRA SWEET AND HUNKY DORY;
Tucked away down Devon's mazy lanes, Matthew Fort finds a pub with pukka grub

BYLINE: MATTHEW FORT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 38

LENGTH: 902 words

 
 THERE'S a bit in a poem by Walt Whitman which goes something like this: "They too turned from their path/ And, entering the Bayou of Plaquemene/ Soon were lost in a maze of sluggish and devious waters .  . . "
 I feel that way about the back roads of the West Country. Maze, sluggish, devious: those are the words. It was more by luck than good judgment that I found my way to the Drewe Arms, hard by the church in Broadhembury, at the appointed hour.
 To be honest, I didn't really feel much like lunch. Two days of West Country hospitality had rather put paid to my appetite.  However, when the happy honeymooning couple asked me to join them, what could I say, particularly when one of the parties was Fay Maschler, the premiere mangeuse among British restaurant crits? Her husband, Reg Gadney, is no uninformed nibbler, either. It's the kind of company that puts a chap on his mettle a bit. 
 In the event, of course, all was happiness and light, munching and mirth. For a start, the Drewe Arms is evidently popular with the elderly crowd. Mid-week, and personnel carriers of senior citizens decant outside this handsome, whitewashed and thatched pub at the heart of a handsome, whitewashed and thatched village for a spot of tucker and a bit of a chinwag.  Judging by the joviality among the party of eight at the next table, they had arrived just as the bolts were being drawn back on the front door. But then they're no fools, these One-Foot-In-The- Grave types. The Drewe Arms serves up some notably above average grub. The bar snacks seemed to be pretty niftily priced and embraced such creations as The Gang Plank, an extended open sandwich laden with a supermarket of fish and meats, hot pastrami sandwich, gravlax, and so on, for between about pounds 3. 50 and pounds 6. 50, but we were there for the serious stuff - which, at pounds 16. 75 for three courses, including VAT and service, was quite seriously priced, too.
 So it was on to the pickled herrings with acquavit, onion and anchovy bake, and beef salad by way of Act One; then turbot with herb hollandaise, a whole John Dory with sorrel, and monkfish in a spicy tomato sauce for Act Two; and hazelnut meringue, sticky toffee pudding, and treacle tart to see us out with.
 As you can tell, fish is something of a speciality of the house. And, as the genial presence in the kitchen is Kirstin Burge, and she is Danish, this should not surprise. What does surprise in an English pub is the quality of the raw material. It comes, kerflip, kerflop, straight from Newlyn, apparently, and it shows. The John Dory, slashed and grilled with masterly precision, had the muscular density and sweetness of a fish that was scarcely aware that it wasn't still finning away in the briney. Reg spoke positively of his turbot (and of the herb mayo) and, while Mrs Gadney seemed more interested in her companions' dishes than she did her own monkfish, she didn't leave much for inspection by her fellow crit either.
 Veg and other accompaniments were fine and well cooked, if a bit of the "I've seen this melange before" kind. This is one of the problems in judging pub food. Should one be surprised that they do it well, or should one be delighted that they do it at all? Should one apply the same fierce gaze as one would at a restaurant, or should we relax under the genial hospitality of a well-run public house? On balance, for pounds 16. 75, I think we have to apply the stringent criteria of the pukka restaurant; and, on that basis, I think that we should expect more than a couple of nice boiled potatoes and a bog standard mixture of admittedly good, fresh this and that.
 My mother once said that of all anti-social foods, treacle tarts covered with nuts were the worst, because a properly made tart would lift any set of dentures clean off the gums, and the nuts would then infiltrate the gap, giving rise to intense irritation and much undignified denture clattering. I don't know how the old codgers coped with the Drewe Arms treacle tart, but I had some difficulty in keeping my fillings in place. Thank heavens there were no nuts.
 According to legend, the sticky toffee pudding here is the best in Britain, and if sticky toffee pudding is the kind of thing you like, then this is the ne plus ultra of the kind of thing you like. Only Mr Gadney's hazelnut meringue disappointed, being too dry for easy conversation.
 However, he had struck out boldly with the pickled herring and acquavit; fine, oily fish, clean flavours, crisp alcohol. The onion and anchovy bake, a kind of Jansen's Delight without the potato, was a seductive way to start a lunch - sweet onion, pungent anchovy. Mrs Gadney's beef salad - strips of beef briskly turned in the frying pan and annointed with dressing and set about with green leaves - looked a bit unpreposessing, I thought, but it tasted spritely and entertaining. Much like our time there, on reflection.
 I drank two pints of amiable, nutty Otter Ale. The lovebirds drank wine (from a short but eminently sensible list, with plenty of half bottles) and the bill came to pounds 76. Or at least I think it did. Mrs Gadney walked off with the bill. A woman of rare sweetness, that.  G
 Drewe Arms, Broadhembury, Devon. Tel: 040 484 267. Open: 12-2, 7-10, all week, except Sunday lunch. Cards: Access & Visa.  Vegetarian meals with prior notice. Children's helpings.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



119 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 24, 1993

HELPING THE BAFFLED MILLIONS CLAIM THEIR ENTITLEMENT

BYLINE: ROISIN MCAULEY.

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 671 words

 
 THE Child Poverty Action Group, which has recently published its latest guides to the benefits system, is calling for Government action to improve the take-up of state benefits and the service to claimants. Nearly pounds 1. 5 billion per year in means-tested benefits go unclaimed, says the CPAG, and 2. 5 million households are missing out on benefits to which they're entitled.
 Age Concern, which has just published the 1992-93 edition of the Your Rights guide to state benefits for older people, also reports 21 per cent of pensioners entitled to income support and 19 per cent entitled to housing benefit do not claim.
 "Claiming benefits can seem like an obstacle course with lengthy claim forms relating to labyrinthine regulations and a shameful level of errors in calculations and decisions," says CPAG director Fran Bennett. 
 Growing numbers of newly-unemployed are having to claim benefit for the first time and are often shocked at the low standards of service, she says. "The need has never been greater for accurate and up-to-date information to help with claiming benefits and challenging incorrect decisions. "
 Mike Nicholson found this when he had to retire from his job as head porter at a Cambridge College. "I developed Myalgic Encephalomyelitis (ME) in 1987. Every major muscle system was affected and I can only walk about 50 yards. I am in intense pain and on morphine. "
 He now depends on Income Support, Mobility Allowance and Care Allowance but had no idea he was entitled to all three benefits until he asked the Cambridge Benefits Advice Centre for help. The centre also fought his case when his attendance allowance was reduced.
 "I had to go to law to get the higher rate of attendance allowance reinstated and had to wait from February, 1990 until December, 1992 to get the back payments I was entitled to. They lost my file, missed out three months payments and I haven't had a penny yet.
 "In three years they haven't got it right and it's not a new claim," he said.
 Mr Nicholson points out the renewal of claims forms come in two parts, each 12 pages long. "An awful lot of people, especially the elderly living alone, won't be claiming benefit if they have to fill in forms like that on their own. "
 The latest figures on income support claims reveal six out of 10 decisions are defective in some way. The chief adjudication officer's most recent report said that standards in applying the law correctly had "deteriorated", with quality competing with speed of decision-making.
 The discretionary Social Fund is a "lottery", which is not meeting the urgent needs of claimants effectively, claims the CPAG. Its cash-limited budget has gone up by 37 per cent against a 71 per cent increase in the rate of applications, one result being that the refusal rate for community care grants is almost three in four, according to the latest figures.
 With unemployment still climbing, the strains on the social security system will increase, says the charity, which hopes the publication of its authoritative guides will "at least help claimants and their advisers to get the accurate, prompt and efficient service that the Government and the Benefits Agency claim "they are committed to".
 - The National Welfare Benefits Handbook ( pounds 6. 50 or pounds 2. 50 for benefits claimants, including postage) is a guide to claiming all means-tested benefits such as income support, family credit and the new disability working allowance.
 The Rights Guide to Non-Means-Tested Benefits ( pounds 5. 95 or pounds 2. 25 to claimants) explains eligibility for and how to claim benefits such as maternity pay, widows' benefits, disability payment and pensions.
 Both guides are available direct from CPAG Ltd, 1-5 Bath Street, London EC1V 9PY.
 Your Rights 1992-93 costs pounds 2. 50 and is available from good book shops or direct from ACE Books, Dept Y92, Age Concern England, 1268 London Road, London SW16 4ER. Credit card order on 081-679 8000.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



120 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 26, 1993

YELTSIN SCORES BIG WIN

BYLINE: JONATHAN STEELE IN MOSCOW AND DAVID HEARST IN EKATERINBURG

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 699 words

 
 BORIS YELTSIN won an unexpectedly sweeping victory in the Russian referendum yesterday. He now has to decide whether it gives him the right to dissolve the Congress of People's Deputies, bring in a new presidential constitution, and call early parliamentary elections.
 In the four-question referendum, the Russian leader scored best on the first question, which asked Russia's 105 million voters if they trusted him. A Russian television exit poll of 2,400 people taken in 16 cities across the country gave him 75 per cent on this question, far higher than pre-election forecasts. The same poll said that two in three people backed his radical reform programme in question two. 
 On question four, asking voters if they favoured early parliamentary elections, it was not clear late last night from the preliminary official results if he had achieved half the total electorate, as required by the constitutional court. But in one area of central Moscow, the 39th precinct of the Frunzensky borough, 57 per cent of electors voted Yes on this question.
 Although none of the questions gives him a legal mandate, Mr Yeltsin had earlier said he would take "tough measures" to "neutralise" parliament if he won strongly. The draft constitution he published on Friday in outline would downgrade parliament and eliminate the key posts of speaker and vice-president, the two jobs occupied by his chief opponents, Ruslan Khasbulatov and Alexander Rutskoi.
 But both men have said they will fight, and foreseeing just such a situation Valery Zorkin, the chairman of the constitutional court, said that even a striking victory on all four questions did not give the president the right unilaterally to bring in a new constitution or dissolve parliament.
 Vasily Kazakov, chairman of the central electoral commission, said that in Far Eastern regions where polling had ended, the turnout had topped 50 per cent everywhere, the minimum level for a valid result.
 Russians appear to have been impressed by Mr Yeltsin's television appearances.  Mr Yeltsin made a final appeal for support in a nationwide television address on Saturday evening, saying the first and fourth questions were the most important. He countered his opponents' claims that he wants supreme power by saying that under a new constittuion for Russia "no one would ever be able to concentrate the fullness of power in one pair of hands".
 He reminded the elderly that he had nearly doubled their pensions recently. He promised army officers that they would be entitled to a plot of land on retirement, which they could own or sell. "We have already passed through the most painful period of the reforms," he claimed. "It is now time to get down to the work of quiet reforms, without convulsions or fuss.
 "Don't believe the honey-voiced singers who offer a velvet version of the reforms. You and I understand that there are no simple and painless ways out of the crisis. "
 Mr Khasbulatov told viewers on Saturday that "permanent parliamentary supervision" was needed to stop those who wanted "unlimited power". The best solution was for a government of national concord answerable to parliament. After casting his ballot, Mr Khasbulatov said there was a danger of fraud. "In the Far East false ballots have been manufactured in large quantities," he said.
 In the president's home city of Ekaterinburg, voters appeared to be solidly behind the president, overshadowing doubts they might have about his reforms. Taisia Urvantseva, a pensioner, gave a typical view: "Even though food is expensive, at least it is on the shelves, whereas before they were empty. I can't buy the more expensive things, so I buy cheaper things. That is how it should be. Yes, I trust Yeltsin. I have seen him on television and I think he is an honest man. "
 The voting took place amid an unrelenting stream of government propoganda, telling people to vote "Yes, Yes, No, Yes" which in order are the answers to the four questions about support for the president, his reform programme, early elections for the presidency and early elections for parliament.
 Full preliminary official results are expected tomorrow.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



121 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 26, 1993

GOING PLACES;
For many women, to travel is to embark on a voyage of personal discovery

BYLINE: ANGELA NEUSTATTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 744 words

 
 "I was 38 years old and free. The motorbike was powerful . . . I rode across a grassy, saucer-shaped valley which, millions of years ago, had been the crater of a volcano. The winding road was frightening, with sheer drops into canyons on one side, solid rock walls on the other. How I loved it. I revelled in the wide open spaces of the petrified forest and painted desert, sat alone on the rim of the Grand Canyon at sunset, at peace with myself. "
 WOMEN TRAVEL differently from men. The motivation to go is often not the same, nor are reactions and encounters, but more significant is the psychic difference: that women's experiences are filtered through the fact of being female. 
 The resounding tale of travel is a male one. True, Dervla Murphy told wonderful, bold stories of crossing lands on donkey and bicycle, foot and bus; Robin Davidson's Tracks recounted taming camels and riding through the desert; Christina Dodwell related dazzling, terrifying incidents in trips to the remotest places. But they are drops in the ocean of tales of men's intrepid globetrotting.
 It was this distorted vision that inspired producer Viv Taylor-Gee to make Maiden Voyages, a series of films following women making journeys. The first (Channel 4, Wednesday, 8. 30pm) follows Zenab Ahmed's journey through Pakistan, her father's homeland. Another goes with Frances Wharton, who left her home in Manchester to ride a motorbike across Northern Australia; a third accompanies Margaret Platt and Maureen Holmes, two widows in their 70s, to the rainforests of Belize.
 Taylor-Gee believes that travel for women is often a personal challenge. "Men want to conquer things, women often want to conquer themselves. " She advertised for women who had a special trip they wanted to make and the 3,000 replies revealed how wide and ambitious are women's dreams. Some wanted to go to places like Egypt or China for educational reasons but far more wanted to break loose from domesticity, to learn about themselves and the world.
 Margaret Platt and Maureen Holmes have been travelling together since their husbands died 20 years ago. They save their widows' pensions, hoard the odd gift, make their own clothes and eat frugally in order to go on at least one journey a year.  They have made 47 trips so far, to Europe, Africa, Asia, Russia; Alaska is next on the list. Platt says, "Our lives are so full, so exciting. I listen to old people moaning about boredom and I say, 'Go off and see the Winter Palace or the Galapagos, then'. "
 Miranda Davis is a seasoned traveller and co-editor, with Natania Jansz, of Women Travel (Harrap Columbus, pounds 6. 95). She says: "Most guidebooks neglect to notice that women may need to operate differently from men. I was determined ours should not be a list of do's and don'ts but an understanding of how things may be. "
 To get the most out of travel, women often have to unlearn childhood lessons about not speaking to strangers or going to deserted places alone. But while sexual harassment is, inevitably, a feature of travel, Davis believes we are no more at risk abroad than at home. It is sensible and respectful, however, to learn a little of the culture of places you are visiting. Liz Straker admits she was pushing her luck when, in Africa, she took a lift in a local army truck. Stopping at a village for the night, she realised she could not afford a single room, so she suggested to a soldier that they share one with twin beds. "I suppose I was naive because as soon as the lights went out, I heard him get out of bed. I switched them on again and engaged him in an intense conversation about religion for the rest of the night. I was fortunate. "
 Women have an advantage when travelling in that they will often have an opportunity to make friends with the local women, perhaps even, as happened to Davis in Morocco, be invited to stay. Quid pro quo is important, though: Lesley Reader stayed with a family in Bhutan and tried to repay their kindness by taking their photographs, cooking them egg and chips and helping them write letters.
 Few people remain unchanged by travel. But women who have cracked fears and taboos, who have dared to go for personal development or simply set out boldly in the footsteps of their Victorian forebears, often express the experience as Laura Marshall did: "It made me realise that being a woman doesn't have to limit me in the ways I had felt before. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



122 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 27, 1993

'LIVES IN DANGER' FROM HEART DRUG

BYLINE: JAMES ERLICHMAN, CONSUMER AFFAIRS CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 437 words

 
 THOUSANDS of people being treated for congestive heart failure have been put at risk with a drug that can kill at higher doses, its makers, Boots, admitted yesterday.
 A warning to doctors and patients about its risks was required before United States authorities licensed the drug, Manoplax, last month. But no warning was required by the British authorities, which approved the drug last September. 
 Boots said that preliminary results of a continuing study with Manoplax among 3,500 patients had shown that those receiving the higher daily dose of 100 mg "have a significantly increased risk of death compared to those not receiving the drug".
 The company was sending an urgent warning to doctors, telling them immediately to reduce the dose to no more than 75 mg a day.
 On the stock market, Boots shares fell by 27p to 466p. The company has not had a siginficant drug discovery since the arthritis painkiller, Ibuprofen, nearly 30 years ago, and it had banked on the success of Manoplax.
 A year's treatment costs pounds 650 and City analysts estimated annual sales of up to pounds 30 million, suggesting that more than 40,000 people in the US and in Britain are currently being prescribed the tablets by cardiologists and general practioners.
 A Boots spokesman said yesterday that the company never claimed the drug reduced mortality in people with severe congestive heart failure. "We only said that it helped people do more and feel better. "
 He added: "For registration in the US we were required to have product labelling, which does indicate there may be some risk attached to taking the drug, but this was not required in the UK. "
 The study on 3,500 patients was conducted in Scandinavia, Canada and the US.  Boots said no adverse effects had been seen at the 75 mg a day dose and it had "every confidence in the future prospects of Manoplax".
 Congestive heart failure affects mainly elderly people. Nearly pounds 1 billion a year is spent on drugs which claim either to boost the pumping action of the failing heart or to relax blood vessels to allow improved circulation. Boots' drug claimed to do both.
 In 1990 ICI faced similar problems with its congestive heart failure drug, Corwin. While the drug could help people with the mild form of the disease, it was shown that it could weaken the hearts and hasten the death of people with the severe form.
 Dr Joe Collier, editor of the government-sponsored Drug and Therapeutics Bulletin sent to every GP, said: "All new drugs have risks and the problems with Manoplax illustrate how careful we all must be. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



123 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 29, 1993

CRIMES AND MISDEMEANORS;
The power of the Mafia may be waning, but New York has plenty more rotten apples ready to take its place like the Colombian cartels, Jamaican posses and Dominican gangs

BYLINE: DUNCAN CAMPBELL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 2487 words

 
 HARRY the Horse is singing to packed houses at the Beck Theatre on West 45th Street. Sammy the Bull is singing to packed houses at the Federal District Court on Centre Street. Harry, of course, is one of the characters in the revival of Guys And Dolls, the musical based on the fictionalised gangster tales of Damon Runyon.  Sammy is singing without an orchestra. A former Mafia underboss and the killer of 19 people, he is giving evidence in a murder, racketeering and narcotics case against his former associates, John and Joseph Gambino, Matteo Romano and Lorenzo Mannino.
 The Bull, or Salvatore Gravano, to give him his true name, has been cooperating fully with the federal authorities in exchange for a deal which gives him a maximum 20- year sentence and a minimum of probation. He is heavily protected, staying probably in a military base, and will be given a "new life" when he is finally released under a witness protection programme. 
 Court 318 is full and queues of the curious stretch outside, hoping for a glimpse of the drama. Inside, rows marked "Family Only" are occupied by people who are just that, in both senses of the word: elderly women conversing quietly in Italian, children drawing in crayons on the floor, Italian princesses with mighty hair and lipstick the colour of ketchup, gelled young heavies, too big for their suit jackets, having to content themselves for now with shooting only their cuffs.
 Bruce Cutler, the defence attorney for the Gambinos and the man who last year defended mob leader John Gotti, also against Sammy's evidence, is in full flow. He is bald, bull-necked and histrionic - Mussolini meets Manhattan and splashes Chanel for Men on his jowls to sharpen his cross-examination. He addresses the ceiling with his arms in the air, he chucks one defendant under the chin, tugs the hair of another at the nape of the neck, tries the patience of Judge Peter K. Leisure with his observations and provokes enough calls of "objection, your honour" from the district attorney to fill an entire series of Perry Mason.
 "Mr Gravano, you consider yourself intelligent?"
 "I'm not as educated as you, but I'm not stupid. "
 "You made millions of dollars, you killed 19 people, and you're facing probation - and you say you're not intelligent?"
 Ripples of laughter flutter across the gallery and there are even chuckles from some members of the 18-strong jury: six are reserves in case of illness or some other sudden inability to deliver a verdict. Sammy has been explaining how one victim was left in the trunk of a car, how another was gunned down by a team liaising with "walkie-talkies and back-up shooters," how he once loan-sharked $ 1. 5 million at an interest rate of 52 per cent per year.
 When Harry meets Sammy, it's hard to resist the temptation to see crime in New York as a game still played out mainly by men with lapels as wide as running-boards and names that end in i or o. The current Gambino trial and the preceding Gotti trial have reminded people that the Mafia is alive to the extent that they are still adept at making other people dead. But how much influence do they still wield?
 Mike Cherkasky, one of the district attorneys who prosecuted Gotti, feels that the Runyonesque associations of gangland have allowed the Mob to be treated too tolerantly, that the true nature of their corrosive and destructive effect on the city of New York has not been properly appreciated. But at the same time he sees the Mob's power as on the wane, their impact on the daily life of the average New Yorker as minor compared to the real concerns of street shootings and crack and muggings.
 New York used to be America's greatest port, he says, but now even the banana boats from the Caribbean go up the Hudson River to Albany, driven away by a greedy Mafia stranglehold on the docks. Conventions which could have brought millions of dollars to the city have been scared off by mob control of the exhibition centres, where a hundred bucks would be required to plug in a lamp. But Cherkasky says the days have passed when you could say that the Mafia had a hand in everything from delivering your newspapers to taking your remains to the burial plot. He worries about how safe his daughter will be when she goes to the shops, not whether he pays an extra cent on his milk because of some Mafia cream-off.
 "They are dumb thugs," he says of the men he has prosecuted. "What makes them different is that they are willing to push the degree of violence a little further. " Their appeal to the American public stretches back to the Wild West, he says, to the country's fascination with Billy the Kid and folk-heroes measured by the number of notches on their guns. "But gentrification of certain areas has changed their ability to recruit and the Mob control in a number of institutions is now effectively destroyed. "
 Sammy the Bull's co-operation is significant in that he has a broad overview on the Gambino family, who were the largest of the New York mobs, but the Genovese family remain and are "the least touched and the most sophisticated. " Cherkasky, a laconic man who earns around $ 100,000 as a DA, (much less than the ebullient Cutler) is discreet about his views on the deal that Gravano has been offered. He points to a Christmas card he received from someone he prosecuted, who had killed six people, and whose "deal" was 60-years-to-life, as an indication of what a more appropriate penalty might be.
 But he argues that the use of such "event-specific" informers to nail Mob bosses can be justified by the message it sends out: "We rely on people having faith that law enforcement works. When you have someone who flouts the law, it establishes a bravado, a feeling that you could get away with anything. " And he dismisses the notion that the Mob will hunt informers to the ends of the earth: "They're not omniscient or omnipresent, it's the gang that couldn't shoot straight. "
 In any case, says Cherkasky, the "gang" power is shifting, to the Colombian cartels, to the "unbelievably violent" Jamaican posses, to the street-level Dominicans. What will replace the Mafia is, in true American style, a multi-cultural syndicate of the future, where the importing will be done by Middle Eastern and Israeli criminals, who will use Italian middle-men, who will use African-Americans for distribution and enforcement of deals on the street.
 Which brings us back to the real concerns of American city-dwellers - the safety of their streets and schools and homes and subways, and how well the police enforce it.
 IN POLICING terms, what is happening in New York mirrors London in many ways: there is a new "can-do" commissioner, Raymond Kelly, making public noises about fighting racism; there is a new policy to put hundreds of additional police officers on the streets; there is an emphasis on localised, "community" policing; there is a rumbling corruption inquiry concerning allegations that detectives have been dealing in cocaine; there is anger among the ranks about the judicial system and the media; there is a row about how complaints against police are best investigated; there is a debate about crime statistics.
 At the headquarters of the 28,000-strong New York Police Department, they are bullish about figures which show that the crime figures have started to fall. This drop includes both murders, of which there were 1,995 last year compared with 2,154 in 1991.
 The figure of 2,000 has become the benchmark through which the homicidal temperature of the city is taken (the total for London, with a similar population and police strength is 185). Street crime has fallen, too, the total down 7. 8 per cent in the last year. Crime on the subway, targeted by the NY City Transit Police, is down 30 per cent.
 But while this may be gratifying and is grudgingly recognised, even by some of the police's critics, there is little sign of a comparable decline in the level of the apprehension experienced by citizens or their preoccupation with violence.
 Drugs remain the police number one priority, says Inspector Lawrence Loesch of the NYPD, and are seen as responsible for the debilitating muggings and burglaries, the turf wars and casual shootings by young men for whom a gun is as much a fashion accessory as a weapon. And it is drugs that take the police most frequently into confrontation with the city's black and hispanic populations.
 Race, of course, plays a major part in any real discussion of law enforcement and crime. The percentage of black officers in the force is 11. 6, about half what it should be, but that share has barely changed in 10 years, reflecting a simmering suspicion of the police's attitudes, articulated by a black Brooklyn juror outside the Gambino court: "The old cops used to be all Irish. They were racist, sure, but you knew where you were with them.  Now they're all kids from Long Island. "
 Commissioner Kelly, an ex-marine and Vietnam vet, agrees. "Our department is disproportionately white," he told New York magazine when he took over from the black former chief, Lee P. Browne. He would like all his officers to live in New York city. In fact, about 40 per cent come from outside the city, but the NYPD remains optimistic that it can make the force look more like the people it serves: among would-be recruits who have applied to sit the latest police exam the total is higher, 23 per cent black and 25 per cent hispanic. The wages are not stunning: from $ 29,000 up to $ 110,000, but the job is secure, the half-pay pension comes after 20 years. The police have placed ads in local papers, complaining that they are paid worse than garbage workers.
 Part of the city's recent drop in crime figures is attributed to the Safe Streets, Safe City policy which has poured millions of dollars of additional funding into putting officers on the street to make drug-dealing harder and to encourage the people who each year make nine million emergency calls to feel less beleaguered (here you dial 911 instead of 999). This project is the baby of Mayor Dinkins and he nurtures it carefully, well aware that his re-election may depend heavily on how well he is perceived to have handled crime.
 Other routes are being attempted: two weeks ago Commissioner Kelly inaugurated the first Citizens' Police Academy, a 12-week three-hours-a-week course for community leaders who want to sample the police's own training courses.
 Other initiatives are cited as evidence that crime need not be ever-increasing: being a media city, there are no less than 11 television programmes that appeal, via reconstructions and interviews, for witnesses to major crimes, offering rewards between $ 150 and $ 1,000 and claiming a high success rate.
 A private foundation offers a $ 10,000 reward for information that leads to the conviction of anyone who shoots a policeman and the posters advertising this fact are splashed on the buses and sidewalks of the city.
 It is 20 years since undercover cop Frank Serpico blew the whistle on his corrupt brother-officers, got shot in the head for his troubles, and became a book and a film (Al Pacino directed by Sidney Lumet. )
 He is long out of the service, living on a $ 350 a month pension in a cabin in upstate New York, but he casts a long shadow.  "Why should the police change when nothing else changes?" he asks.
 "People say - why all this violence? When he was our leader, Mr Bush showed us how violent our nation could be with what he did to the Iraqi people, but people don't make the connection.
 "Look at what the government did in Waco. They think the people in Waco were brainwashed but so is most of America and the sad thing is they don't realise it. We create the criminals. "
 ALTHOUGH corruption is seen as isolated rather than endemic, a major corruption inquiry into allegations of police involvement in cocaine dealing and protection is currently under way. Mindful of allegations that officers have used drugs, the department requires them to take random tests and, says Inspector Loesch, the lines are strictly drawn: "To walk into a restaurant and have a free meal is corruption. "
 Serpico, whose sense of humour has remained intact, disagrees: "A free cup of coffee is not what corrupts you. In the law of thermo-dynamics, there are three rules: no use crying over spilled milk; (depending on which part of Brooklyn you come from) you don't get nothin' for nothin'; and you can't beat the system. "
 What impact Clinton will have on all this is debatable. Different messages come from the President and Janet Reno, his attorney general: both have bullishly backed the death penalty and heavy sentences for gun use, but talked in liberal terms of alternatives to imprisonment. Bush shifted federal resources from the rackets to drugs but now the old Bush/Reagan initiatives on "interdiction", attacking drugs in their producer countries, are being run down and the drug tsar's office staff in Washington has been cut from 146 to 25. In other spheres, the last two Republican presidents presided over a 45 per cent increase in violent crime. Clinton has said that he wants more law enforcement officers, to bump up the national total from 500,000 to 600,000 via a form of national service, but he is fearful of being seen to be soft and that may rule out more radical moves, particularly on what seems to foreign eyes to be the most pervasive danger: the gun laws.
 The Daily News columnist Michael Daly, an amiable American-Irishman who comments on the crime scene in the city, says that the newest drug for the moody teenager in New York is the gun itself, and however much everyone - cops, lawmen, politicians, fearful liquor store managers - laud the British form of control, there is no indication that anything will really change in a United States where there is one gun dealer for every three police officers.  New York's gun laws are stiffer than most - but people just drive off to Virginia or Florida or Texas, where buying is easier, and bring them back.
 Clinton has said he will sign the bill that mandates a five-day waiting period before gun purchase and limits access to multiple round clips, but he knows that any major measures will bring him sharply up against the powerful and vocal National Rifle Association and its espousal of man's inalienable right to fire bullets into the base of other people's spines from the window of a moving car.
 But this is all academic stuff for Sammy the Bull. He is busy giving his performance of a lifetime, swatting Bruce Cutler's cross-examination questions - "Mr Gravano, did you have an epiphany of sorts, when you saw the Lord?" "No" - as if they were bluebottles hovering over the salami. As Legs Diamond says in another gangster musical, "I'm in showbiz. Only a critic can kill me. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



124 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

April 30, 1993

FIVE INJURED AS LOYALIST GUNMEN FIRE ON CATHOLICS IN BETTING SHOP

BYLINE: OWEN BOWCOTT IN BELFAST

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 354 words

 
 AN ELDERLY man was seriously injured and four others hurt when two loyalist gunmen opened fire into a crowded betting shop in North Belfast yesterday afternoon.
 It is at least the fourth time in barely more than a year that loyalist paramilitaries have carried out an indiscriminate attack on a bookmaker's in a nationalist area.
 Customers at Brian Graham's premises on North Queen Street, in the New Lodge district, said threats had been made within the last few weeks. 
 A security door had been installed but is thought to have been left open in the sunny weather.
 One of the attackers' guns is believed to have jammed but four men were hit.
 The most seriously injured, a man in his sixties, was shot several times in the stomach and chest. All the victims were Catholics.
 There were around 15 people in the bookmaker's at the time and some of them escaped behind the counter.
 "There was pandemonium," said one of the staff. "There was an old man shot in the stomach on the floor. He seemed very bad. There was another wounded man lying beside the gaming machines. "
 The gunmen ran out into a waiting Metro and drove off.
 A local woman returning from shopping said there were four men in the vehicle.  "Someone in the car was shooting and he hit a fellow in the street. As they drove away they gave two fingers and shouted, 'You are all fenian bastards'. They were jeering and laughing. "
 The man wounded outside the betting shop was not seriously hurt. The premises are only 100 yards from a police station.
 A local Sinn Fein councillor, Joe Austin, said such an attack had been expected: "This is the loyalists' election manifesto unfolding. "
 In a separate incident, a man in his fifties was seriously injured in an explosion in West Belfast yesterday lunchtime.
 - Northern Ireland's Independent Commission for Police Complaints yesterday reported a 1 per cent rise in complaints against the Royal Ulster Constabulary in 1992 but a decline in those relating to detention in police holding centres.
 Formal disciplinary charges were made against 24 officers.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



125 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 1, 1993

NEWBURY BYELECTION: LARGESSE COMES GIFT-WRAPPED

BYLINE: STEPHEN BATES, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 543 words

 
 VOTERS in Thursday's Newbury byelection are being showered with inducements from the Government in the hope that they will save the seat.
 Ministers say the first byelection of this parliament - which happens to be in a Conservative seat - has nothing to do with their sudden concern for local transport and health facilities.
 But the Berkshire town has been promised a bypass and a hospital since the byelection was called and ministers have been unable to resist pointing out the Government's largesse. 
 Yesterday Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary, used the Conservative candidate's press conference to confirm approval for the hospital by 1996, for which the town has been waiting for 20 years. She blamed the Liberal Democrat-controlled council for the delay in planning permission.
 Mrs Bottomley added triumphantly: "Liberals prevaricate. Conservatives get things done," and pointed out that waiting lists for hip, knee and cataract operations were down to 15 months for elderly patients.
 Newbury has two hospitals: 27 beds for geriatrics in a former workhouse and a 53-bed cottage hospital dating back to the beginning of the century. Any urgent cases have to go 20 miles to Reading, Oxford or Swindon.
 Mrs Bottomley's announcement followed last month's approval by John MacGregor, the Transport Secretary, for a pounds 65 million bypass for which Newbury has been waiting 10 years. He too blamed the council for the delay.
 David Rendel, the Liberal Democrat's candidate and chief challenger in the byelection, who happens to be a leading light on the council, indignantly denied any delays. "We gave planning permission for the hospital two years ago. "
 Both sides have some right on their side. The new hospital has been in the regional health authority's plans for some time but has been held up by a complicated land deal.
 The council wants the hospital to be built on a site between Newbury and Thatcham, the two main centres of population, but their plans have been skewed by an elderly woman named Mrs Rookes who bequeathed land several miles away for a hospital in her will.
 A building developer offered to provide a site in the council's preferred location if he could have the bequeathed land for housing, which the council did not want in that part of town.
 The new hospital now awaits a review which is likely to allow the bequest to be released for housing. The Government's contribution to the pounds 12 million cost will be about pounds 4 million.
 The announcements have been noted with some cynicism in Newbury where the general election majority of 12,357 is under threat in the wake of the Government's unpopularity.
 There are more shopping days before the byelection with John Patten, the Education Secretary, scheduled to visit early next week followed by Michael Heseltine, the Trade and Industry Secretary, and Kenneth Clarke, the Home Secretary.
 Steve Billcliffe, Labour's candidate, said: "If the Government had given the health service a higher priority they would have built the hospital years ago. "
 MPs pointed out the promise of a hospital and a bypass did not save the Conservative's skin at the Ribble Valley byelection in the last parliament.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



126 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 3, 1993

WOMEN: BEAUTY IN FORCE AND FRAGILITY

BYLINE: VAL WILLIAMS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 524 words

 
 AT 39, Joyce Tenneson gave up her job as a photography professor in Washington and moved to the run-down garment district of New York. For Tenneson, whose work had been highly regarded in art circles for more than two decades, it was a question of "reclaiming an identity".
 The spoils of the battle fought by seventies' feminists came a little late for women of her generation. Married shortly after college graduation, she feels women of her age were "the ones who got burnt".  When she began work as a creative photographer, women's photography was seen as inconsequential and, like many, she had to combat a deeply rooted chauvinism: "My photographs were dismissed as 'women's work'. " 
 Now 47, she is recognised as one of those rare women in contemporary art who has managed to combine a personal aesthetic with the hard world of commercial photography. At first glance, the fragile beauty of her portraits seems at odds with strong, uncompromising photography. Her images are often of beautiful young men and women, angelic children swathed in gauze and pictured against a tracery of light. But a closer look shows her interested not only in the youthful and lovely, but in older bodies and shapes and sizes which many would dismiss as ugly.
 When she photographed an elderly women gazing into a mirror, naked from the waist up (see below), she saw her not as a grotesque, but "as a goddess". Invited by Esquire magazine to contribute to a series of portraits, she chose the actress Jessica Tandy, then in her eighties: "When I called, she told me she'd lost her hair through cancer treatment. " Though Tandy assumed her changed appearance would result in the invitation being withdrawn, to Tenneson it posed an intriguing challenge. Her portrait, taken in 1991, makes no attempt to conceal Tandy's age or condition but it is as beautiful as any of her photographs of fashion models and graceful children.
 Tenneson has also won recognition for her portraits of men. She chronicled her son Alex from childhood through adolescence, observing the changes in his body and persona with wistfulness and wonder. With the growth of the men's movement in the US, her audience has changed, too. Her workshops now include more male students and agencies which once hired her to document "women's issues" now look to her to make photographs around subjects of male health and sexuality - a campaign about impotency was a recent commission.
 In her photographs, she tries to reflect relationships and tensions. In one revealing photograph made in 1986 she posed a child, dressed as an angel, in seeming supplication to an elderly man whose back is turned. The photographer acknowledges its violence and anger, its comment on the absent father.
 She now lives very much by her intuition in what might seem a hostile environment. "Someone could look at me and say, 'My God, she's a middle-aged woman on her own living in a crack neighbourhood in New York City'. " For Tenneson, who deals in beauty but confronts it wryly and critically, who ponders on notions of belonging, it was an adventure which justified the risk.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



127 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 5, 1993

WORKING CARERS 'IN STRUGGLE TO HOLD JOBS';
Earnings losses average pounds 2,000 a year - Social services departments' role under community care shake-up leaves voluntary groups in quandary

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT, AND SALLY WEALE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 1060 words

 
 ONE in three workers is or has been a carer for an elderly, sick or disabled person or expects to become a carer and to have to take time off to do so, a survey showed yesterday.
 Almost one in five working carers said they were having to take time off to look after a dependent person. Most reported loss of earnings averaging more than pounds 2,000 a year.
 The survey, among 1,078 people, was conducted in February and March for Crossroads, a charity which runs schemes offering respite breaks for carers. Last year it helped 22,000 families. 
 Ian Croft, the charity's director, said many employees had declined to take part in the survey because of fears that disclosure of caring responsibilities would damage their job prospects. "Our impression is that carers are struggling to cope on their own with little support," he said.
 The survey, carried out at a sample of workplaces across the country, found that 16 per cent of employees had current caring roles and a further 6 per cent had been carers.
 Of those without experience as a carer, 16 per cent expected to have to take time off for future caring needs. Overall, therefore, 34 per cent of those surveyed had been, were or anticipated becoming carers.
 Among those acting as carers at the time of the survey, 18 per cent said they had taken time off to do so in the previous month, 14 per cent said they had lost earnings and 10 per cent said they had avoided loss of earnings by using annual leave or working flexitime.
 Asked if they knew about social security allowances for carers or their dependants, no more than 45 per cent of respondents showed awareness of any benefit when told its name.
 Ten per cent of those acting as carers were receiving nursing help, 11 per cent home help, 10 per cent day care for their dependants and 21 per cent social work support. Thirteen per cent said they had received help from a voluntary group or charity.
 Asked which professionals they would turn to for advice about caring, only 38 per cent of respondents said social services - despite the fact that the survey was held when the new community care role taken on by social services on April 1 was receiving publicity.
 Under the shake-up, local authority social services departments are supposed to act as arrangers of care for elderly and disabled people, agreeing contracts with voluntary groups like Crossroads for provision of respite care and other services.
 But a detailed assessment by the charity of the impact of the changes found that the community care shake-up has left many local Crossroads schemes in uncertainty and confusion.
 Only one in 12 of the schemes had agreed formal contracts with local authorities up to two weeks after the changes took effect. Many of the rest said they had no idea what was going on.
 Case history 1
 CHRIS Algar works full-time as a project manager for multinational computer giant IBM. She also cares for her husband Rob Winternitz who suffers from multiple sclerosis, writes Sally Weale.
 Rob was forced to give up his job as a marketing executive four years ago. He is now confined to a wheelchair, is registered blind and his movement is restricted to the use of his left hand.
 They manage by paying a small army of people to come in for the odd hour to provide care when Chris is at work. "He could do with having somebody there all the time but that's financially prohibitive," she says.
 Even so the costs are considerable - about pounds 250 a month - and the emotional strain enormous. The alternative, they feel, is unacceptable.
 Chris, now aged 41, has been caring for her husband since he first developed MS 15 years ago. With his support she is determined to carry on working, for her own sense of fulfilment, and to pay for the mortgage and care he requires.
 "It is extremely stressful. You always feel guilty about something. You never feel you are doing anything quite as well as you could do," she said.
 "You feel guilty when you are at work because you are not caring. You feel guilty when you're caring because you're not at work. There's a constant anxiety, particularly with the current economic climate. "
 Chris considers herself fortunate in having understanding employers. Although there is no formal flexitime arrangement, she is able to organise her own working day.
 She is even able to work from their home in Gosforth, Newcastle upon Tyne, on a laptop computer when her husband, also 41, is too unwell for her to leave. Others do not encounter the same level of employer tolerance and most carers Chris knows in similar situations have sacrificed their jobs because of the pressures.
 She says: "In terms of financial support, I feel very strongly that working carers should get tax allowance. I pay over pounds 9,000 in taxes but get nothing back to pay for Rob's care. A small gesture by the Government would have a major effect. Without the money I earn, I don't know how we would survive. "
 Case history 2
 PAT is one of thousands who find themselves having to give up work to take on a full-time caring role, writes Sally Weale.
 She was a clothing machinist, living at home with her widowed mother who in August 1981 suffered a stroke. Pat, who did not want to be identified, has been caring for her 24 hours a day ever since.
 Her mother is now 90. She is unable to walk or hold a conversation, is incontinent, and suffers from epileptic fits and dementia. She sleeps in a bed in the sitting room of their council maisonette in Hackney, east London, because she is too heavy to manoeuvre upstairs. Pat, who is 65, receives daily support from nurses who help get her mother up and put her to bed. The rest of the time she copes alone.
 "I had to give up work. There was no way I could go on. I feel like I'm only living for her. I used to go out with friends, go away on holiday. After mum had her stroke I just lost touch with everyone. I can't even talk to her. " She survives on a weekly pension of pounds 61 a week, and receives the full 24-hour attendance allowance of pounds 44. 90 a week, but despite the financial hardship, it is the lack of emotional support which is her greatest source of distress.
 "You feel forgotten half the time. Sometimes I go upstairs and I'm so frustrated I just scream out loud. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



128 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 5, 1993

COVENT GARDEN OFFERS CUT-PRICE SEATS TO STUDENTS AND PENSIONERS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 230 words

 
 THE Royal Opera House yesterday announced a series of subsidised opera and ballet performances for people on low incomes. The company is willing to lose around pounds 30,000 a show to line up four Saturday matinees with prices ranging from pounds 5 to pounds 20. 
 Normally a seat at the Covent Garden theatre costs pounds 62 on average, with top prices of more than pounds 200.
 Students, senior citizens and the under-18s are intended to benefit from the first stage of the Subsidised Saturdays scheme, and the company hopes to find ways of reaching others on low incomes.
 Jeremy Isaacs, ROH general director, said the board had taken the decision because of concern about the level of prices it had to charge to balance the books. Initially more than 8,000 people will benefit from the scheme with two operas and two ballets scheduled - Madam Butterfly and The Magic Flute, and Romeo and Juliet and The Nutcracker.
 Two more subsidised matinees will be scheduled later in the season, providing sponsorship can be arranged, and the plan is eventually to have 10 shows each year for people on low incomes.
 Highlights of the new season, which starts on September 11, include Jose Carreras and Placido Domingo returning to the ROH.  Domingo stars in Carmen and in Girl of the Golden West, and Carreras appears in the seldom-performed Fedora by Giordano.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



129 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 6, 1993

CARE POLICY 'CLOSING HOMES'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE.

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 143 words

 
 ALMOST 500 local authority old people's homes are being closed or privatised because of the Government's community care programme, according to a trade union survey published yesterday.
 The homes, about one in six of the total in England and Wales, are being off-loaded by council social services departments which are expected by ministers to concentrate on arranging care for elderly people, rather than providing it. The departments are required to spend 85 per cent of their community care funds in the private or voluntary sectors.
 The survey, by the privatisation research unit run by leading public sector unions, suggests that 54 council homes were closed in the run-up to the April community care shake-up, 45 were earmarked for closure, 91 were transferred to the private or voluntary sectors and 301 were proposed for transfer.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



130 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 7, 1993

HOUSING: HOMING IN ON A DUAL PROBLEM;
A scheme to rehouse the elderly is also reducing homelessness

BYLINE: JOHN VIDAL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 423 words

 
 WHEN the heroes returned to the South-east after the war, they needed homes.  Councils provided them. Dull and utilitarian outside but spacious, well-built and desirable two-storey semi-detacheds sprang up by the score on the edges of towns - none more so
 than in Reigate where the Woodhatch community of four linked council estates was born, grew up and now, it could be said, is growing old. 
 Three years ago Reigate and Banstead council found that 41 per cent of the people on its estates were over 60 - more than double the national average. And research showed that 25 per cent of their council houses were under-occupied, with one or two spare bedrooms after families had grown up and moved on. Meanwhile the homelessness problem was growing. It is not on a London scale but more than 170 families in bed and breakfasts or cramped flats is an expensive recipe for social misery.
 Part of the solution to these two problems has come from an inspired piece of lateral thinking from the council, in partnership with Anchor Housing Association. If the elderly (most of whom were fit and independent) would like to move out of the homes they had known and often loved for so long, went the theory, their houses could be given to homeless families.
 The only way to do it, says Peter Trowbridge, the council's principal development officer, was to offer very high-quality purpose-built homes that didn't smack of sheltered accommodation or dependency and were suitable for people to spend the rest of their lives in.
 The result has been a development of 37 one- and two-bedroom units in the centre that have been snapped up by the elderly.  Their new homes are in the centre of the community where they have always lived, close to the shops, a library and a new civic centre. There are lifts but no warden. "We didn't want people to feel they were going into a home," says Trowbridge.  "They are totally independent but have access to a communal alarm system, so they are not isolated. "
 The houses they have vacated are now being allocated to homeless families, on an ascending order to match needs with the space available. So pleased is the council that they are now about to repeat it with a similar development in nearby Horley.
 If Reigate had just built houses for the homeless, says Martin Burke, Anchor's divisional director, it could have led to stigmatisation of a community, and we still would have had under-occupancy. The benefits this way are enormous. It must be applicable elsewhere.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



131 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 7, 1993

COMMENTARY: WHY OUR EUROPEAN FUTURE IS AN ELDORADO NIGHTMARE

BYLINE: MELANIE PHILLIPS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 1113 words

 
 MEANWHILE in the real world, away from fevered amendment or excitable byelection, certain uncomfortable facts about the relationship between Europe and the British economy somehow keep getting ignored. Some of our brighter and more honest politicians are now beginning to acknowledge the huge gulf that has emerged between leaders and led. They note with unease that the agenda preoccupying themseems to have less and less to do with the issues preoccupying the electorate.
 They wonder aloud why this has happened and what they can do about it. Then they return to their various platforms of extolling the achievements of the Tories in reviving the British economy. Or decrying the failure of the Tories in creating more than three million unemployed. Or heaping scorn on both Tories and Labour for ruining the economy and coming up with no new ideas. All political parties, however, agree on one thing: unless we're "at the centre of Europe" (whatever that means), we can kiss goodbye to economic strength and social prosperity. 
 Alas, would it were that simple. Some people think that the facts indicate a rough time for our friend, Rosy Future, as a result of Europe. Two researchers from Warwick University have come up with an analysis which would give poor old Martyn Lewis migraine. Writing in Bristol University's quarterly, Policy and Politics, John Benington and Matthew Taylor argue that the European single market spells very bad news indeed for the British welfare state. Their argument makes the terms of the current debate on both right and left about how we might restructure the welfare state to cope with demographic and social change look singularly myopic.
 Their main point is that the current crisis in welfare, caused by increasing levels of need (more old people) calling upon an already diminished resource base (fewer people in work), will be exacerbated by the workings of the European single market.
 The aim of closer European integration, they write, is not merely to create a larger, more open market but to eliminate the massive overcapacity which is seen as an impediment to competitiveness with America or Japan. As a result vulnerable industries - not just the old smokestack industries but hi-tech ones such as computers or telephone exchange equipment - are going to be cut back. Sir John Harvey-Jones has estimated that by the year 2000, more than half the EC's factories will have been closed. Other forecasts are even more drastic.
 The effects will be disproportionately heavy on regions where these industries are concentrated. Several commentators have concluded that there will emerge a prosperous "golden triangle", based on Frankfurt, Paris and Milan, and a "brown banana" of more disadvantaged regions on the periphery, including Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Southern Italy, Greece and - you guessed it - the dear old UK. With Italy, we stand to suffer the sharpest initial loss in jobs and then have the lowest long-term gain in employment of all European member states.
 So far from the EC providing the motor for better job prospects for women, its emphasis on flexible working will push women further to the periphery of the workforce. As for ethnic minorities, they will be squashed even further into the shadowy sub-culture of an underground economy.
 Poverty, which now affects huge numbers throughout Europe across a dramatically widening range of ages and classes, will further deepen and widen as industrial restructuring and increased unemployment coincide with an ageing population and burgeoning numbers of single-parent households. The fear is, the authors argue, that "social dumping" will occur. More skilled and qualified workers will move into the golden triangle with the better-off and active elderly moving into Mediterranean retirement homes, while an ever-more disadvantaged and dependent population will be left behind in the UK.
 Even if this nightmare Eldorado is just too apocalyptic, the integrated market of nearly 350 million people will be badly undermined, they write, if nearly 50 million are just too poor to consume the goods and services it offers. At the same time, Benington and Taylor point to changes in policy-making which might have a further impact on the British welfare state.  Welfare issues increasingly have to be dealt with not just at national level but also through supra-national and trans-national European networks; and the EC itself is taking more social policy initiatives. As a result, the prospect of greater welfare harmonisation looms ever larger.
 This raises the possibility that the UK will increasingly move away from its own concept of welfare based on citizenship towards the European system of welfare related to employment. If that happens (and there are signs that it is already shifting in that direction), our society will become even more polarised and fragmented into haves and have-nots than it is now. And if social benefits were harmonised, would they be levelled up or down? For despite government opposition to harmonising benefit rates, since the European safety nets are set even lower than they are here, the trend to level down would surely, over time, be irresistible.
 In fairness, Benington and Taylor also suggest possible advantages from integration, such as opening up debate and maybe promoting the spread of welfare pluralism. But the overriding point is surely this. Whatever welfare system is devised, by Peter Lilley on the one hand or the Labour Party's think-tank on the other, it must founder under the impact of the remorseless arithmetic of massive unemployment. Unemployment has to be brought down if any welfare system is to function. But the single market is pointing us pitilessly in the opposite direction.
 And yet no political party is remarking on this. There is no influential political voice warning us that the recession wasn't just a blip but a harbinger of our Euro-future. If Benington and Taylor are correct - and they speak for a number of commentators - the Tories' recovery is a sick illusion, Labour's denunciations of the unemployment totals are a glib and meaningless travesty, and the Lib-Dems' europhilia is as misplaced as belief in any of history's misbegotten utopias.
 Talk of electoral pacts thus becomes similarly irrelevant. What's the point of getting rid of a Conservative government if it is to be replaced by a Lib-Lab administration equally - if not more - committed to a political and economic scenario that is inimical to social justice? Is it any wonder that people increasingly feel that political debate parted company from reality some time ago?

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



132 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 8, 1993

BEWARE THE CLOUDS THAT CAN BLIGHT YOUR PLACE IN THE SUN

BYLINE: ROISIN MCAULEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 863 words

 
 Who to contact
 DVICE on health provision abroad is available in leaflet E121 from the Overseas Branch of the DSS, Newcastle NE98 1YX. Write with your full name, date of birth and NI or pension number.
 Citizens Europe Advisory Service answers queries between 2pm and 5pm on 071-973-1992.
 Help the Aged has prepared a code of practice for elderly people abroad who need to be repatriated to a residential or nursing home in the UK. Send a SAE to Help the Aged, St James Walk, London EC1R 0BE. 
 Retirement Education Services has produced four audio tapes and a 60-page booklet on retirement, including advice on moving abroad. Available from Tony Wheeler Associates, 15a Station Road Industrial Estate, Wallingford, Oxon, OX10 OHX.
 The Federation of Overseas Property Developers Agents and Consultants, FOPDAC, provides legal notes on buying property abroad. Tel 081-744-2362.
 For Arminshaws Removals advice leaflet on moving abroad tel 0963-34065.
 THE prospect of sun all-year round is appealing - but careful research is advisable before retiring abroad.
 In particular, those taking early retirement should check if the health system in an EC country is available to all residents or is based on contributions.
 "If it's a contributions-based scheme you can fall into an early retirement trap," says Emma Fallon, of the Citizens Europe Advisory Service. "In France and Spain, health cover provided under the E111 form runs out after a couple of years.
 "Thereafter you're not automatically covered for health insurance unless you're in receipt of a state benefit like a pension so you have to buy into a system of health cover. That can be expensive. If you can't afford it, you shouldn't go. "
 Since 1955, UK state pensions can be paid anywhere in the world. In countries where there is no reciprocal tax agreement like Australia, New Zealand, Canada and South Africa, the pension is frozen at the level paid when the pensioner left Britain.  However, pensioners living in EC countries and those with which there are reciprocal agreements receive the yearly increases and the pension is paid gross.
 This made Spain very popular for retirement when the comparative cost of living was low in the 1960s and 1970s and there are perks for senior citizens - cheap local bus travel, 50 per cent reductions on inter-urban trains and buses and cheap holidays in other parts of the country.
 For many elderly expatriates, the dream is turning to a nightmare because they are in poor health and have difficulty obtaining geriatric care.
 "Medical treatment in Spain for British pensioners is free," says the British consul in Alicante, John Dove. "The problem is nursing care in old age. As Spain becomes more prosperous families move around more. Parents who used to be cared for get left behind. "
 Spanish social services have not caught up with the gap and the number of elderly British needing intensive support is growing. Hundreds are moving back to Britain, sick, disillusioned and, in some cases, broke.
 The 125,000 British residents registered with the British Consulate in Spain is an underestimate. People tend to register in danger spots, not in safe resorts. Mr Dove reckons 95 per cent of the 25,000 registered British citizens on the Costa Blanca are pensioners, with 40 per cent over 75 and 10 per cent over 80. Figures could be underestimated by up to 50 per cent.
 The value of the pound has dropped, cutting the incomes of the retired living on savings. Removal companies are moving people back to the UK or to France where property prices are now cheaper.
 "There are stories about people going back from here in tears too," says 58-year-old John O'Callaghan, who sold a house in London and retired to St Leonard de Noblat, near Limoges, France. "I looked around a lot. One of the things that made here attractive was the hospital. The pretty hamlets are splendid in terms of intimacy and getting to know the community but you really need to be near a town. I worked out that, with a population of 5,000 in St Leonard, it has a safety net of services. "
 For those prepared to abandon the dream of fair weather, Ireland has advantages for the senior citizen. Kathleen Regan, 79, moved from Camberwell, south London to Boyle, Co. Roscommon in north-west Ireland in 1976. Her UK pension of pounds 56. 10 a week is paid monthly into her bank account in Boyle.
 It's topped up by a means tested non-contributory Irish pension of pounds 7. 30 a week and a weekly living alone allowance of pounds 4. 40. Like all state pensioners she gets free travel, pounds 130 a year fuel allowance, pounds 143 a year electricity allowance and a free black and white TV licence. Living alone entitles her to free telephone rental.
 "I was very happy in Camberwell when my husband was alive. Then it got lonely.  Now I'm very content," she says. Mrs Regan qualifies for means-tested free health care. Those who don't qualify contribute to the residence based health insurance scheme. Long-term geriatric care is costly - unless you qualify for free health care.
 Money Guardian is edited by Margaret Hughes

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



133 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 8, 1993

AGE CONCERN FORMS LINK WITH NATWEST TO OFFER FREE ADVICE

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 504 words

 
 AGE Concern, the largest voluntary sector provider of direct services for the UK's 10 million older people, has formed a joint venture to market the services of National Westminster Bank's independent financial advisory arm, NatWest Insurance Services (NWIS).
 The charity, which has developed and sold a successful range of general insurance products to more than 300,000 older people in recent years, is now launching Asset Financial Planning, a service providing free, independent advice on life Insurance, pension and investment products.
 "Many people find it difficult to assess their future financial needs and it can be just as unclear where they can go for straightforward, impartial advice," says the director of Age Concern, Sally Greengross. 
 Conscious that any service recommended by Age Concern will be seen as reliable by older people, Ms Greengross said that NWIS, one of the largest independent financial advisers in the UK, had been chosen to provide the advice for Asset only after extensive market research.
 At the beginning of this year NatWest abandoned its role as the main high street provider of independent advice through its branch network but has retained NWIS as an independent arm. This was of vital importance to older people, she said, and its nationwide network was considered well-suited to the needs of Age Concern's 1,400 local groups.
 No charge is made for Asset advice, even if individuals decide not to act upon it. Any profit earned in commission on products sold to clients will be split 50-50 between NWIS and Age Concern.
 Steve Wells, the managing director of NWIS, said advice would only be given to individuals after a thorough assessment of their financial circumstances, their attitude to capital risk and their future needs.
 "The typical investment advice we give to people with limited resources is to put their money into bank and building society accounts or National Savings products, none of which pay us a commission," he said.
 However, Jean Eaglesham, head of money policy at the Consumers' Association warned anyone using Age Concern's new advisory service to be cautious. "The scheme may work well but users should bear in mind that independence is not a guarantee of good quality advice.
 "Even where individual consultants are not paid on a commission basis, they will be aware that some products will be more profitable for their employer than others. " The CA suggests the best course for those seeking financial advice is to go to a number of advisers including at least one IFA.
 - For further information write to Asset Financial Planning, Freepost (BS2614), PO Box 106, 37 Broad Street, Bristol BS99 7YJ (no stamp required) or call the Asset Helpline on 0272-263822.
 The department of Environment and the Welsh Office have published a new, free booklet Your Home in Retirement, which provides housing advice for older people. Copies are available from the Department of Environment, PO Box 15, London E15 2HF.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



134 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 8, 1993

NAPF WARNS OF PENSIONS CRISIS

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 36

LENGTH: 308 words

 
 BRITAIN needs an urgent review of its pension policy as it lurches towards social disaster next century, delegates at a conference on pensions were told yesterday.
 Serious social consequences would result as the country's elderly became increasingly poverty-stricken unless the Government addressed the pending crisis in pensions, warned Roy Amy, incoming chairman of the National Association of Pension Funds (NAPF), which represents Britain's richest pension funds. 
 Mr Amy warned at the NAPF's 70th annual conference in Harrogate: "The adequate provision of pensions will be one of the most pressing socio-economic issues in the next century. The Government should set up a formal national debate to examine the future of UK pensions policy and, in particular, the future inter-relationship between private and state pensions. " He called on the Government to support freedom of choice for retirement planning, by providing for flexibility concerning equalisation of state pension ages.
 But junior social security minister Ann Widdecombe told the conference that, although flexibility had not been ruled out, she believed it could push up costs if everyone took a pension at the earliest opportunity.
 However, in the clearest indication yet that the timetable for the equalisation of state pension ages has slipped, she warned that the Government would not be rushed into a decision on whether to pay state pensions to men and women at 60, 65, or some other arrangement. After the crushing defeat for the Tories in Thursday's elections, resolving this issue will be even more problematic.
 Ms Widdecombe said: "No proposal we could make would be popular with everyone, and our primary responsibility must be to future generations. We must plan now for a fair and sustainable pension system in the next century. "

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



135 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 10, 1993

OLDER LEARNERS: THE LATE LATE LEARNING SHOW;
Tony Craig looks at the popularity of education for active retirement

BYLINE: TONY CRAIG

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 765 words

 
 A YOGA session is taking place in a college gym in north London. The students, lithe and supple, are full of life. Claudie Chesters, one of the younger students here, is showing the poise and flexibility of a ballet dancer.
 Yet Chesters, a former teacher from Paris, is 68 years old; many of the others are in their 70s and 80s. The yoga class is just one of their wide-ranging and intellectually stimulating courses within a vibrant and fast-growing University of the Third Age, or U3A. 
 These active retired people are part of a learning experiment that began in Britain just 11 years ago. Since then it has become a raison d'etre for many of its participants.
 There are about 1,200 members in the U3A's London home. The activities range from psychology, philosophy and genealogy to poetry reading. For pounds 25 a year, members can enrol for an unlimited number of other activities.
 U3A London is one of 212 distinct and autonomous Universities of the Third Age in Britain. Last year alone 40 new U3As began.  A further 20 have been launched this year.
 It is unlike any other university. The U3A confers no degrees or qualifications, and the distinction between tutors and "members" (students) is deliberately blurred. It is a self-help community: adults in the later stages of their lives combining to stimulate one another, to teach and to learn from each other.
 The first Universite du Troisieme Age was founded in Toulouse in 1972 as part of the local university. In February 1981 Peter Laslett, the distinguished historian and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, convened a meeting of social scientists who wanted to establish a distinct, self-organising U3A in the UK. The first British U3As were launched in 1982 in Cambridge, Sutton Coldfield, Yeovil, Stevenage and Harpenden.
 Now Laslett, 77, promotes the cause of U3As within academia and worldwide. But it is only this year that the Third Age Trust has been admitted to the International Association of U3As (AIUTA) - as an associate member, joining 236 international member universities from 26 other countries.
 "Continental U3As are recognised by their own universities, even in a sense as part of them," Laslett says. "Continental universities feel the standards of our U3As are too low. But the notion of people at this age being taught to a university-standard level is absurd. "
 Unlike U3As elsewhere in Europe, the UK model is based entirely on self-help.  Peter Laslett says: "It gives old people some idea of their responsibilities to each other and gives them a voice of their own. It is tapping an entirely unused resource - the teaching capacity of people who have retired. "
 He explains: "The most important divisive issue has been the use of the word 'university', which implies additions to knowledge and also research. The present administration of the U3A in Cambridge believes research is not something its members want. But in 1984 research was carried out by the Cambridge U3A on the elderly observing themselves on television.  This has become an important academic source.
 "The number of unexplored intellectual issues is large and there could eventually be a research academy within the U3As. "
 Unlike on the Continent, this has from the outset been university on a shoestring. The "conveners" (lecturers/tutors) may or may not have academic backgrounds; the "members" may be postgraduates or they may have left school at 13. No one gets paid.
 The range of subjects within the different U3As is vast. More than 200 distinct courses are currently available.
 Laslett says: "We are self-supporting and quite independent, with between 1,200 and 1,500 members - and the Cambridge U3A has started being left money by members in their wills.
 "The U3A movement is insistently independent and auton-omous. A U3A in France can exist only when it has a host university.  But I believe there is no point in the Second Age teaching the Third.
 "The Carnegie Inquiry into the Third Age (which defines Third-Agers by age - 50 to 74 - rather than by the social, physical and mental stage of their life) savours of Second-Agers commenting on the Third. We opposed the concept of Second-Age do-gooders teaching dependent Third-Agers. The Third Age can - and must - teach themselves. The key is to find your own purpose. "
 For further information: Third Age Trust, U3A, 1 Stockwell Green, London SW9 9JF (tel. 071 737 2541); U3A in London, 44 Crowndale Road, London NW1 1TR (tel. 071 383 0323). Please include a stamped, self-addressed envelope.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



136 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 11, 1993

PEAKS AND TROUGHS;
Television

BYLINE: HUGH HEBERT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 493 words

 
 ONE of the delusions in the dream of moving to a remote, beautiful, unspoilt, village in deep country is that you can escape from television. Don't believe it. Sooner or later the location scouts will sniff your hideout and you will wake to find film crews camped in your backyard with an armoured column of trailers, leaving lethal cables like spilt entrails all over the paths. The pub where you expected a quiet game of shove ha'penny with a peasant will be filled with the raucous banter of media folk. Derbyshire is the latest target. 
 Lucy Gannon's Peak Practice (Central) is about Dr Kerruish, who leaves his clinic in the African bush and joins a traditional English country practice. This is run by Dr Beth Glover who inherited it from her father and is a fine doctor but a hopeless businesswoman. She is about to be ambushed by unscrupulous rivals who have set up a new health centre.
 Kevin Whately as Kerruish brings his lumbering integrity over from the Inspector Morse series, fancies Dr Beth (Amanda Burton) and pokes his nose into everyone's family problems. In any village this would make any newcomer as popular as a plague of rats. All Creatures Great And Small, minus cows.
 In Mary Wesley's Harnessing Peacocks (Meridian, Sunday) Hebe is a lone parent in a distant village who supports her 12-year-old son by working as a peripatetic cordon bleu cook to a circle of well-off elderly women. She's a much better businesswoman than Dr Beth, and to pay the fees of the posh boarding school the son hates, she hires her body out to a select syndicate of local men. Only Nicholas Le Prevost as Mungo, the most manic member of Hebe's sex circus, tips the character over into the farce that is implicit.
 This appealingly simple idea of the prostitute as innocent earner and sex as the gourmet's dessert gets devilishly complicated in the Wesleyan web of blood and bed relationships, and Andrew Davies's adaptation does nothing to help. You can ignore all that and just gawp at Serena Scott Thomas as Hebe the calm smiling beauty handing out favours and getting up the nose of the snobs. But the drama fad for English Heritage families is now tiresome and makes Peak Practice, for all its clumsy social luggage, seem welcome.
 Tom Mangold's report Pack of Lies (Panorama, BBC1) maintained that the PR strategy forged by the tobacco giants in 1953, when the link between smoking and lung cancer was discovered, is the same today, and just as successful: to cast doubt on the scientific findings. The industry's own research organisation is ostensibly dedicated to making sure there is no health risk in its products. But the power here belongs to the corporate lawyers who are concerned primarily with avoiding law suits. So according to Mangold's analysis, the industry has been able to publicise research findings that can be presented as favourable, and to keep quiet findings that confirm the dangers. Surprised?

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



137 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 12, 1993

CROATS PRESS ON FOR PARTITION OF MOSTAR

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR, EAST EUROPE EDITOR, AND REUTER IN MOSTAR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 691 words

 
 AS Bosnian Croat forces continued to expel Muslims yesterday from the key south-west city of Mostar, UN officials described their strategy as a mirror-image, if on a smaller scale, of the Serbian operations elsewhere in the war-ravaged republic.
 About 60 rounds of heavy artillery rocked the city in one hour during the afternoon as the fighting raged for the third day, with the Croats ignoring Security Council condemnation of their offensive and demands for UN officials to be granted access to the sealed city.
 "We're all Muslims. We're prisoners. This is a crime, a shame, and this is Europe," a Muslim woman prisoner whispered as up to 300 men, women, children and elderly people were hustled along at gunpoint to a factory outside the city. 
 At one point, Croat troops driving a car up the hill past the column slowed down and flung open a door to knock down several Muslim men. Soldiers then flashed Nazi-style salutes out the window.
 Muslim prisoners said they were being marched to captivity in an aluminum factory 21 2 miles away. It was not clear whether this is the factory where several hundred men, women and children are being held after being taken captive on Sunday and Monday.
 The deputy Croat military commander in Mostar refused to allow observers into the city centre. "The message is quite clear," a UN official said. "The Croats want us out of the way. "
 An official of the UN High Commissioner for Refugees said: "The Croats have been telling us that they want total implementation of the Vance-Owen plan. They say they support freedom of movement, by which they mean population exchanges. "
 The initial aim of this politically driven campaign is to partition Mostar, the capital of Herzegovina, into Croat and Muslim areas, with the Muslims confined to the eastern side of the River Neretva, which bisects the town, and then to exchange populations between the provinces that the Vance-Owen plan gives to the Muslims and the Croats.
 The Vance-Owen plan envisages the return of refugees to their homes, but its application by the parties on the ground entails an orgy of ethnic cleansing aimed at creating ethnically homogeneous areas.
 For the past month, the main theatre of the current Croat drive to live without Muslims has been in central Bosnia around Vitez, entailing grisly atrocities, the torching of villages, and murders of women and children.
 Since the weekend, the same campaign has moved into gear around Mostar in the south-west, an ancient city where the Muslims slightly outnumbered the Croats before the war but which the Croats insist is to be their regional capital.
 Yesterday in Medjugorje, the Catholic shrine and place of pilgrimage just outside Mostar, rumours were rife that anyone found sheltering Muslims would have their homes blown up. Medjugorje used to be one of the biggest money-spinners in former Yugoslavia, but its hotels have lain empty for the past year of war. The spare beds notwithstanding, local officials have been telling relief workers for months that any homeless Muslims will be met with AK-47 assault rifles.
 Three days ago, the Bosnian Croat leader, Mate Boban, a figure directly appointed to his post by President Franjo Tudjman last year, threatened to order an assault on the town of Jablanica north of Mostar. Jablanica falls within the "Croatian canton", but is at least 80 per cent Muslim.
 In a meeting last week with senior UN officials, Mr Boban half in jest suggested that his Croat army was stronger than the army in Croatia itself.
 International relief workers say that the Croatian authorities in Mostar have been making threatening noises for weeks about an imminent drive to homogenise the territory they claim as theirs under the Vance-Owen plan.
 The Croat authorities made it plain to relief officials a couple of weeks ago that the region they claim had no room for any further Muslim refugees, that they were expecting an influx of 30,000 Croat fugitives from the Muslim-held region of Zenica in central Bosnia, and that Muslims would have to make way to accommodate the new arrivals.

LOAD-DATE: May 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



138 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 14, 1993

LICENSE DRUG SELLERS, URGES POLICE CHIEF

BYLINE: DUNCAN CAMPBELL CRIME CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 550 words

 
 THE licensing of drug possession, use and supply should be seriously considered, according to experienced drug squad officers. The time had come to "think the unthinkable", a police conference was told in what is a significant shift in police thinking on drugs.
 Commander John Grieve, head of the criminal intelligence branch at the Metropolitan Police, told the Association of Chief Police Officers in Preston, Lancashire, yesterday that a new, radical approach to drugs was essential. Too many vulnerable and elderly people were victims of drug-related crime. 
 "We are at the crossroads," said Mr Grieve. "Either we go to war on dealers across the globe, or we have to come up with new options. We need to think the unthinkable."
 Licensing for all illegal drugs, including heroin, ecstasy and cannabis, should be explored, he said. Research should look at informal licensing systems around the world. One possible system would be that in force in Amsterdam, where a number of cafes are licensed to sell cannabis for consumption on the premises.  Mr Grieve would not be drawn on how such a system might work in Britain. .
 Licensing was the recommendation of about half of a 31-strong workshop at the association's annual conference, consisting of experienced drugs squad officers of all ranks.
 "We need to undermine the acquisitive base of drugs crime," Mr Grieve told the conference, "and the economic base of organised crime.
 "The Government and the Home Office ignore this message at their peril," he said. He acknowledged that it was a philosophy "born of despair".
 All other methods of counteracting drugs had failed, he suggested. Licensing did not mean legalisation or decriminalisation although some would see it as that, he said. Decriminalisation was discussed by the group but was not promoted as a solution. Licensing might control the instability of the drug-dealing environment.
 Mr Grieve said that he had seen thousands of dealers being sentenced to thousands of years in prison and believed it had made not a "jot of difference".
 His suggestions were criticised by a number of the more than 100 officers attending the conference. He was questioned about the reasons behind sending messages to people that might suggest that drugs could be condoned. Mr Grieve responded that radical alternatives had to be thought about and it was the task of officers with experience in the field to come up with suggestions.
 He agreed that education for young people on the dangers of drugs was essential in a prevention strategy. More research on the effects of drugs and the amount of drug usage in Britain was also needed if the problems were not just to continue getting worse.
 The suggestion of licensing comes as senior police officers seek an overall strategy on the cautioning of people arrested for possession of cannabis. Next month, the association's crime committee is likely to discuss the recommendation of a policy for cautioning in general.
 Keith Helawell, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire and chairman of this year's conference, said that a report on the conference would go to the crime committee for consideration. He stressed that the licensing idea was "contentious" and did not enjoy majority support at the conference.

LOAD-DATE: June 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



139 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 19, 1993

WHY GRANNY IS DOWN IN THE DUMPS

BYLINE: SALLY WEALE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 581 words

 
 THE IMAGE of an elderly woman abandoned in a hospital car park with a hastily scribbled "Please help me" notice pinned to her clothes as relatives disappear in a cloud of dust is more familiar in the US than Britain. But here too, where almost 1.5 million people care for relatives over 85, it seems to be a growing phenomenon.
 Preliminary results from a study of elder abandonment (doctors and carers' organisations reject the emotive tag "granny dumping") revealed that at least once a year one hospital in three in England and Wales sees a case of "complete abandonment", when an elderly person is found in the hospital confines and relatives are difficult or impossible to trace.  One hospital claimed more than 20 cases in a year. 
 Such statistics might sound alarming but the survey, carried out by the Royal Holloway and Bedford New College, University of London, revealed that such cases are the tip of the iceberg. Hidden below the surface is a large number of more subtle cases of abandonment when families, often driven to breaking point by the pressures of caring, turn to their local hospital to take an elderly relative off their hands for a while, and then decide they cannot cope any longer and will not take the relative back. The study, based on responses by 107 hospitals, showed more than half received an explicit request every month to take in an elderly relative. One hospital had two requests a week. Three-quarters saw a case a month of relatives refusing to take an elderly person home after being admitted for in-patient treatment - one-third experienced problems on discharge every week and 10 per cent on a daily basis.
 But the most difficult form of abandonment to identify is when an elderly person is brought to hospital for a minor problem - perhaps a sprained ankle - and the family uses it as a pretext for getting the relative admitted. Almost two-thirds of hospitals saw such a case every month, about a third did so every week.
 Dr Sarah Harper, lecturer in gerontology and author of the study, said there was "very little evidence" of complete abandonment or granny dumping. "What we were looking at was: given the new Community Care Act with its emphasis on closing long-term care beds, would it put more pressure on families? We were looking to see if families were using hospitals as a way of gaining respite." The conclusion? "Families are clearly under strain. There are not enough resources given to community care. It's a good idea but we need resources."
 One of the key concerns surrounding the Community Care Act is the responsiblity it gives to local authorities to assess the needs of the elderly seeking state-assisted care. The fear expressed from the beginning is that the individual's needs come second to local authority budgetary restraints. Local authorities in England have claimed that funding for 1993-4 falls short by pounds 135 million.
 Dr Kevin Somerville, clinical director of medicine for the elderly at St Bartholomew's in London, sees a case of abandonment - usually of the less dramatic kind - about once every three months. "What we usually see is people presenting late, with exhausted carers who have limited help because they've not known how to go about getting it," he said. "Even if they have, it's often not the help they need.
 "The thing that impresses me most is the large number of relatives that I encounter who box on against all the odds. I take my hat off to them."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



140 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 19, 1993

NEW LAW URGED TO SAVE ELDERLY FROM ABUSE

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 213 words

 
 OLD people should be protected by law against physical and sexual abuse, in the same way as children, psychiatrists and charities caring for the elderly urged yesterday.
 Researchers said figures on "elder abuse" were hard to obtain, but there was evidence of some people suffering physical, emotional, financial and occasionally sexual abuse by relatives or other carers. 
 The Law Commission last week called for local authorities to be given a statutory duty to investigate suspicions of elder abuse, with officers having powers to enter premises and take away suspected victims under place of safety orders.
 The Royal College of Psychiatrists yesterday backed the commission's proposals, which are now out for consultation and are supported by the charity Age Concern.
 Dr Jonathan Fisk, of Airedale general hospital, said some British studies have suggested 2 per cent of over-65s are victims of abuse, but in one study of very frail old people in London this rose to 45 per cent if verbal abuse was included, with 14 per cent suffering physical abuse.
 - Tim Yeo, junior health minister, says in a Channel 4 Dispatches programme on elder abuse tonight that new Department of Health guidelines for local authorities will be issued this summer.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



141 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 20, 1993

TELEVISION

BYLINE: PAUL BAILEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 547 words

 
 "THEY found that when Mum wouldn't do anything - when shouting and talking and cajoling wouldn't get her out of the chair - they found that kicking her would," said a doctor in Elders 2, an updated edition of a report on the abuse of the elderly that was first transmitted in Dispatches (Channel 4) last autumn. The doctor went on to reveal that kicking the old woman had become a family habit. Would she have fared better in an institution? Yes, probably. 
 Richard Belfield's documentary cast doubt on the policy of care in the community with some pretty appalling evidence of familial mistreatment. The notion that the children and relatives of old people are most suitable to look after them sounds well enough, but scarcely takes into account such personal matters as resentment, loathing and greed.
 One learned of wills being altered, and of a niece who contrived to extract pounds 30,000 from her infirm relation with promises she didn't intend to keep. A schizophrenic strangled his mother almost to death, and after her unlikely survival she removed herself from his caring presence.
 Another woman, recently admitted to a residential home, explained the bruising on the inside of her thighs. "Oh, that's what happens when my son rapes me. " The voices of the victims were altered, to protect them from further degradation. Despite the fact that they sounded like a record being played at the wrong speed, what they had to say ought to give Tim Yeo, who appeared in the programme, and Virginia Bottomley, who was seen telling Peter Snow in 1991o problem of abuse of the elderly in Britain, considerable pause for thought.
 Elders 2 raised, mainly by implication, serious questions about caring for the old and mentally unstable. The myth persists that residential homes, run by the National Health Service, would be grim places, lacking the warmth that a loving family can provide. Let the community care for its own, runs the government's argument, ignoring the terrible truth that many members of that community don't want to be bothered. The need for disinterested kindness seems ever more urgent now, in the face of Belfield's revelations. We talk too glibly of those "family values" Mrs Thatcher once espoused.
 If it does anything, Richard Belfield's carefully researched and compassionate film will cause Yeo and Bottomley to consider those values. I suggest that they take a crash-course in Aeschylus and Euripides, who knew a little about life in the homestead.
 This week's luminary in TV Heroes (BBC1) was Noele Gordon, whose talent as actress and singer was so fine as to be invisible.  Danny Baker's tribute was as much concerned with Crossroads as it was with Gordon herself.
 How on earth did it survive for 24 years? The answer came in a snippet in which one of Meg's Scottish chefs referred to "certain behaviours of pattern". Fans watched the wretched soap for those moments - and there were plenty of them - when the actors forgot their lines and the scenery moved. Sometimes both things happened simultaneously.
 Eldorado has never scaled such heights of badness, and is now paying the penalty. Noele Gordon might have rescued it with a
 guest appearance, were she not otherwise occupied at the motel in the sky.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



142 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 20, 1993

TREASURY EYES WIDER PRESCRIPTION CHARGES;
Portillo pledges to 'court unpopularity' if necessary

BYLINE: STEPHEN BATES AND CHRIS MIHILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 639 words

 
 THE National Health Service drugs bill - including prescription charges - could be one of the targets in what Michael Portillo, Treasury Chief Secretary, yesterday said would be the toughest spending round yet.
 In a speech in London, Mr Portillo, in charge of the Treasury's negotiations over departmental spending, highlighted the recession with the "sobering thought" that a third of the projected increase in public spending in the next three years would go in social security payments and a third in debt interest, leaving the rest for all other spending programmes combined.
 Early yesterday Treasury sources indicated that prescription charges could be extended to pensioners and young children not on benefits.
 Later, on ITN's News at Ten, Mr Portillo denied he had any immediate plan to impose prescription charges on the old or on children, but did not rule it out. 
 "My job is to look at all sorts of options. We are going to face some tough decisions. I don't think that is one of the leading options," he said, adding that he had a "chosen list" of cuts to offer for the autumn statement.
 Gordon Brown, the shadow Chancellor, last night said he would be demanding a statement from the Chancellor, Norman Lamont, today asking him to "come clean" about Mr Portillo's chosen list and "his failure to rule out a massive change in prescription charges".
 David Blunkett, the shadow health secretary, said: "This confirms our worst fears. I believe the Government are preparing the ground for a major extension of NHS charges. "
 Mr Portillo said the Government was committed to halving the national deficit from 8 to 4 per cent of gross domestic product in five years and would "court unpopularity" as a duty in this year's public expenditure round.
 Reducing the pounds 50 billion borrowing requirement could not be done solely by raising taxes but also by controlling the expansion of public expenditure, he said. Mr Portillo is known to believe the NHS drugs bill, now pounds 3 billion a year, is too high and could well be a target for cuts.
 The cost of prescriptions rose in April to pounds 4. 25, but at present all old people and children are exempt, together with people with chronic sickness, pregnant women and women in the first year after childbirth.
 Four out of five patients get their prescriptions free - and the Treasury view is that it is unreasonable for better-off pensioners and children of wealthy parents to get the benefit when it could be restricted to those on social security benefits. Ministers have previously indicated that the drugs bill - which is rising by 14 per cent a year - has to be checked. However, the extension of prescription charges was being described in Whitehall last night as conjectural.
 The view being floated by the Treasury that prescription charges could be a target is unlikely to be popular with Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary, and clashes between Mr Portillo and Mrs Bottomley seem likely to be the opening battles of this year's spending round.
 A spokeswoman for Age Concern said last night: "We would be very worried indeed if this rumour turned out to be true. It would cause particular difficulty for the millions of older people who are entirely dependent on state benefits and may well need regular medical treatment for long-term conditions. "
 A British Medical Association spokesman said: "Ill people should not be asked to bolster a seriously underfunded National Health Service.
 "Many people who are on low incomes do not qualify for exemptions from prescription charges. We wrote to the Secretary of State in March asking for a review of the prescription charges system because we want to see a fairer system which avoids deterring patients from obtaining their necessary medical treatment. "

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



143 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 21, 1993

SPIRALLING DRUGS BILL COULD PROVE PRESCRIPTION FOR CHANGE;
Medicines charge has risen from 20p to pounds 4.25 since 1979 - Yield to NHS expected to be pounds 278 million this year

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE AND CHRIS MIHILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 569 words

 
 AS MINISTERS often recall, it was Labour that introduced the principle of prescription charges. As now, the spur was Treasury pressure for savings in the National Health Service budget - though the service was then just one year old.
 In a measure announced in 1949, though not enacted until 1952 under the Conservatives, a charge of one shilling was set for each prescription form. Today, the charge is pounds 4.25 for each item on each form, compared with 20p when the Tories came to power in 1979. 
 Current exemptions from prescription charges cover women over 60, men over 65, children under 16 and those under 19 in full-time education. Other exemptions are for people on income support or family credit, or their partners.
 Women who are pregnant or have had a baby in the past 12 months are also exempt, as are those who receive a war disablement pension. A number of long-term medical conditions, but not all, attract exemptions, including epilepsy and diabetes.
 Goverment figures say just one in six items dispensed is paid for by the patient, but 40 per cent of the population pays charges.
 The pounds 4.25 charge is expected to yield pounds 278 million for the NHS in 1993-94. However, pressure to change the exemptions arises both from the general public spending squeeze and from projections of a sharp growth in the drugs bill.
 A study issued last month by the Parliamentary Office of Science and Technology said the pounds 3 billion bill would rise by 12 per cent this year.
 While ministers are suspicious of drug company profiteering, the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry blames the growth in the number of elderly people, which it says has caused more than half the rise in the drugs bill over the last 10 years.
 The number of prescriptions in England rose from 326,000 in 1978-79 to 415,000 in 1991-92 and was increasing by 4.7 per cent a year at the end of that period.
 A Department of Health report says: "The reasons for this continuing increase, which exceeds what might be expected as a result of demographic changes, are imperfectly understood."
 As well as using the charge to control costs, the Government introduced in 1991 an "indicative prescribing scheme," whereby general practitioners are told what they are expected to spend on prescriptions and are called to account if their costs much exceed this.
 Additionally, the growing number of fund-holding GPs have to meet their prescribing costs from their own fixed budgets. In 1991-92, the first year of the fund-holding scheme, it seemed that these GPs had tightened up on prescribing more than the average.
 In a further move to economise, the Health Department is examining whether to extend the so-called limited list - introduced in 1985 - by banning GPs from prescribing expensive drugs in 10 therapeutic categories, instead allowing them to use only the cheapest brands.
 The potential blacklist will cover contraceptives, skin disease ointments, anti-rheumatic creams, medicines for allergic conditions, sleeping tablets, ear, nose and throat remedies, and anaemia and anti-diarrhoea medicines.
 Finally, the department is seeking to renegotiate the pharmaceutical price regulation scheme, which limits the profits drug companies can make from the NHS. In the last five years, pounds 62 million has been recovered from companies under the scheme.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



144 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 22, 1993

THE LAST POST FOR LOCAL OFFICES?

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 33

LENGTH: 292 words

 
 THE Government has been accused of attempting to close local post offices by encouraging the elderly to have pensions paid into bank accounts.
 One in four pensions are paid directly through banks or building societies. So are 41 per cent of new pensions.
 But cashing pensions through post offices has a number of advantages. Post offices are geared up to deal with small amounts of cash and pension problems. Also, the postmaster usually gets to know regular pensioners and gives them a more personal service than would be on offer at a large bank or building society.
 Convenience is another major factor, particularly for the less mobile.  Pensioners are likely to live closer to a post office than a bank branch, and the post office may be opened longer hours - although many now shut one mid-week and Saturday afternoons.
 The major disadvantage of post office collection is security. A frail elderly person collecting a married couple's pension will be carrying pounds 89.80 in a wallet or purse - which can make them an easy target for muggers. Furthermore, those who live frugally can end up with wads of notes on mantlepieces or in tea caddies.
 Banks and building societies allow smaller amounts to be withdrawn, and can further eliminate the need to carry cash if pensioners use standing orders and direct debits to pay their bills. Pensioners may also earn interest on unspent sums.
 But charges are hefty when customers overdraw. Many pensioners have a horror of debt, and would not wish to risk painful charges for getting their sums wrong. Banks can also appear hostile to elderly customers, and surveys have proved that pension ers avoid cash machines, which would give them 24-hour access to their money.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



145 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 24, 1993

PENSIONERS WARN OF VOTE SWITCH IF PARTY FAILS TO CHANGE TRACK

BYLINE: ANGELLA JOHNSON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 288 words

 
 RAIL privatisation has stirred passions long dormant among the staunchly blue senior citizens of Christchurch and the surrounding east Dorset area.
 Most are so fed up with "this current attack on the elderly" they are threatening to give the Government more than a bloody nose in the forthcoming byelection. "They'll also get two black eyes if they're not careful," warned Sidney Burtonshaw, aged 80.
 Mr Burtonshaw has voted Tory most of his life, but is angry about what he described as the party's "blunderbuss" approach to governing. "It's not just British Rail, but the fuel tax, prescription charges and sub-post offices," he said.
 The railcard issue is seen as yet another move against some of the more vulnerable people in society. At present anyone over 60 can buy one for pounds 16 a year and get a 30 per cent discount on all travel. John MacGregor, the Transport Secretary, believes operators should be left to decide whether or not to continue the concession. Pensioners in Christchurch, which has proportionately the highest elderly population in the country - 34 per cent are aged over 60 - want it to be statutory.
 Edward Bently, aged 82, another of the Tory die-hards who helped to give the late Robert Adley his 23,000 majority, plans to switch his vote to the Liberal Democrats come the byelection. "Enough is enough. It's time they stopped messing about with us old folks. We are getting clobbered from all sides at the moment."
 Patricia Judge, a 58-year-old charity worker who voted for Mr Adley, wants to be able to claim a railcard in two years' time.  "At my age it's not pleasant to cope with the roads for long journeys, so I don't want it left to the whims of operators."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



146 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 24, 1993

PENSIONERS RESCUED

SECTION: HOME; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 33 words

 
 Arson was blamed for a fire in flats in Brighouse, West Yorkshire, from which firemen rescued nine elderly people yesterday.  Five were taken to hospital suffering from the effects of smoke.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



147 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 24, 1993

HEALTH PLAN DIVIDES DEMOCRATS

BYLINE: MARTIN WALKER IN WASHINGTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 704 words

 
 THE tension at the heart of the Clinton administration came to a head at an evening meeting in the White House last Thursday, as Hillary Rodham Clinton's outline plan for an American national health service came under intense fire from the president's economic advisers as too expensive and politically dangerous.
 According to White House sources, all three members of the Council of Economic Advisers, led by the Berkeley economist Laura D'Andrea Tyson, told Mrs Clinton that the $ 60-90 billion ( pounds 40-58 billion) in new taxes her plans required would enfeeble the US economy and lead to "serious and damaging job losses" among small businesses.
 This was more than the usual policy debate. The health reform plan, which President Clinton sees as the keystone of his presidency, has brought into the open the conflict between the "New Democrat" agenda on which he ran for office and the principles of traditional liberalism which appear to dominate his administration. 
 Mrs Clinton's leadership of the health reform task force makes this tension both acute and personal. But the revolt against Mr Clinton's budget and energy tax by conservative Democrats in the House and Senate reflects a similar clash between New and Old Democrats.
 In his weekly radio address on Saturday, President Clinton denounced the rebels in his own party in classic Old Democrat terms. In attacking his energy tax, he said, they had become prisoners of the oil lobby.
 "It is simply wrong for a powerful interest to try and opt out of this programme by asking the elderly and the working poor to contribute more so they can contribute less. I regret that otherwise good and responsible legislators would even consider this proposal. But I will fight it," Mr Clinton vowed.
 "Some of my opponents want to cut social security and tax credits to working families with incomes of under $ 30,000 just to get a tax cut for the rich. The big oil lobby is trying to wiggle out of its contribution to deficit reduction and force senior citizens barely above the poverty line to get lower social security benefits."
 There were signs yesterday that this tussle could be resolved by a traditional political compromise, laid out by Senator Pat Moynihan, chairman of the Senate finance committee.
 Speaking on NBC's Meet The Press, Mr Moynihan said that the president's proposed BTU tax, named after the British Thermal Unit and designed to tax energy in all its forms, will be scrapped in favour of a more acceptable and tightly targeted petrol tax. The rebels agreed to swallow that, Mr Moynihan said, and he forecast the president's budget would be enacted by late July, and the health reform bill would wait until next year.
 However, the underlying argument between New and Old Democrats will rage on while the health reform package is being defined.  And it will do so while Mr Clinton's opinion poll ratings are steadily eroded.
 Mr Clinton, bruised by allegations of cronyism in replacing the White House travel office with a new team led by a distant cousin from Arkansas, and by the fuss over his $ 200 haircut in Los Angeles, faces more battles with the senate over his nomination of veteran liberals to key positions in his administration.
 Professor Lani Guinier, nominated to run the civil rights division of the justice department, has called not just for more black judges, but for them to be "not just physically black, but to hold a cultural and psychological view of group solidarity". She will face trouble in her Senate confirmation hearings, as will Dr Alicia Munnell, whose confirmation as assistant secretary for economic policy at the treasury labours under her advocacy of taxing pension contributions.
 Mr Clinton, seeing his centrist allies criticise him for abandoning the New Democrat agenda, sought over the weekend to re-establish that he was not a traditional tax-and-spend Democrat.
 "What I think your government owes you is to move beyond the two dichotomies .  . . One says 'You're out there on your own.' The other says, 'We'll take care of you. We can do things for you.' Neither one of these approaches is right," he told a college commencement in New Hampshire.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



148 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 25, 1993

ELDERLY COUPLE TORTURED BY MASKED RAIDERS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 203 words

 
 AN ELDERLY couple were subjected to 90 minutes of torture by two masked raiders who are thought to have broken the woman's fingers and stabbed her husband in the head with a screwdriver, police disclosed yesterday.
 The man, a businessman with a number of interests, was doused in spirits and told he would be set alight unless he told the attackers where his money was hidden. 
 The raiders burst into the couple's four-bedroom house in Highgate, north London, on Sunday night after the woman opened the back door because their dog was barking.
 During the ordeal, the raiders found pounds 6,000 but then subjected the couple to more beatings and demands for other money.
 The men refused to take pounds 220 in 50p pieces and also threatened to return and kill the couple if they called the police.
 The ordeal ended when the raiders locked them in the living room and left.
 Police are not naming the victims, both aged 65, who were treated at the nearby Whittington hospital. They are staying with relatives.
 One raider was described as white, about 5ft 10in, with a Scottish or Liverpudlian accent. The other was white or of mixed race, 5ft 9in, with short dark hair and thin lips.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



149 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 25, 1993

RISING COST OF YOUNG MOTHERS

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 456 words

 
 TEENAGE lone mothers are costing pounds 400,000 a day in income support benefit, according to figures yesterday which suggest that one-parent families now account for almost a quarter of the income support budget.
 Department of Social Security figures for last May show that nearly a million lone parents were claiming income support, totalling pounds 65 million a week or pounds 3.4 billion a year. Of this, pounds 2.8 million a week, or pounds 145 million a year, went to those under 20. 
 A second fast-growing group of claimants, elderly people in residential and nursing homes, accounted for almost pounds 2 billion a year in income support last year, compared with pounds 39 million in 1982.
 The income support bill is projected to top pounds 16 billion in 1993-94 and the benefit is expected to be claimed by an average 5.7 million people.
 Yesterday's figures are based on 5.1 million claimants, of whom 1.7 million were unemployed, 1.6 million were over 60 years of age, 989,000 were lone parents, and 425,000 were disabled.
 The number of lone-parent claimants was up 27 per cent on 1989 and 41,300 of them were under 20: 1,900 were aged 16, 6,100 were 17, 12,300 were 18, and 21,000 were 19.
 On average, a lone parent received pounds 67.55 a week in income support, compared with an overall average of pounds 51.89 for all claimants.
 Peter Lilley, Social Security Secretary, said that the latter figure had risen by more than a third since 1990. This proved the Government's commitment to those in greatest need, he added.
 The principal reason for this increase, however, is that the rise in claimants since 1990 has been concentrated among those with family responsibilities, entitled to higher payments, who have raised the average.
 The figures show that 235,000 elderly people in residential and nursing homes were last May receiving an average pounds 159 a week in board-and-lodging payments. This represents more than pounds 1.9 billion a year.
 It was the spiralling of this bill that spurred ministers to introduce the community care shake-up in April, giving local authorities the job of assessing the suitability of people for residential care and paying for it.
 According to yesterday's figures, more than one in nine income support claimants were having a deduction made from their weekly payment to repay a social fund loan.
 The average such repayment was pounds 5.76 a week, bringing the residual average income support down to pounds 46.13 for the 586,000 people affected.
 In addition, 245,000 claimants were having a deduction made in respect of poll tax arrears, 194,000 for gas charges, 96,000 for electricity charges, and 134,000 for water charges.

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



150 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 25, 1993

DISCOUNT TRIPS THREAT ROUSED REBEL MPS;
Railcards are used by millions. But they may have no future.

BYLINE: REBECCA SMITHERS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 566 words

 
 THE demand for cast-iron guarantees on the future of railcards and travelcards is the driving force behind the backbench Tory rebellion over rail privatisation.
 Railcard holders have been able to travel at reduced rates since the 1970s, when British Rail launched a campaign to attract new business and to fight off competition from cars and coaches.
 The first railcard was for students (which has since become the Young Person's Railcard), launched in 1974, followed by the senior and family railcards. 
 These cards, run by InterCity on behalf of the British Railways Board, together have 1.5 million users, with the Senior Railcard by far the most popular.
 The loss-making Disabled Person's Railcard, run directly by the British Railways Board, is the only truly concessionary card, and the only one so far whose future has been assured by the Government.
 Until now, the Government has said compelling private operators to offer railcards or travelcards would restrict their marketing flexibility - BR has never been legally obliged to offer cards.
 A Department of Transport policy document, produced in January and obtained by the Guardian, says: "Railcards are a commercial venture which improve BR's overall revenue position by creating an up-front revenue stream from the sale of cards and by generating additional journeys. But they are not significant money spinners."
 The cards generated a profit in 1991/92 of about pounds 20 million, of which around pounds 10 million came from the Young Person's Railcard, and pounds 7 million from the Family Railcard. Four in 10 off-peak leisure journeys are by railcard users.
 But organisations such as Saga Holidays claim that many elderly people would be unable to take holidays without their cards, and the fall-off in business might even lead to the closure of rural lines linking tourist resorts.
 The leisure travel market is highly dependent on the extra business from railcard users during off-peak hours, with 40 per cent of leisure journeys purchased in this way.
 Labour MPs on the transport select committee said yesterday that the future of regional travelcards had been wrongly left out of the rail debate by Tory MPs, with the London transport minister, Steve Norris, sending out "confusing signals" about the future of London's travelcard, they said.
 Local travelcards, such as those in operation in London and Greater Manchester, allow users to travel on all forms of public transport, with a built-in discount.
 In London the use of the Tube and buses has ballooned since London Transport persuaded the now-defunct Greater London Council to introduce the first travelcard scheme in May 1983.
 Within five years, annual journeys had risen from 1.65 billion to 2.02 billion in 1988-89, before the recession struck and pushed numbers back to 1.9 billion in 1991/92.
 But the problems of apportioning revenue from the card to a plethora of private operators means that if the London travelcard survives it will be more expensive.
 Andrew Mackinlay, Labour MP for Thurrock, said yesterday: "Tory MPs cannot duck the fact that unless they vote with the Opposition against rail privatisation on third reading [of the bill] this week they will have acquiesced in the end of the travelcard for millions of their constitutents who use it for both business and recreation."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



151 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 25, 1993

HOME KEEPS TAGS ON ELDERLY

BYLINE: DAVID SHARROCK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 303 words

 
 PENSIONERS in residential care may have to wear electronic tags to prevent them from wandering off under a proposed pilot scheme.
 The Halifax-based Calderdale council's social services committee will tomorrow be asked to approve the scheme for a home in Sowerby Bridge, West Yorkshire. 
 It was suggested by Marel Denton, social services director, following a recent incident when a confused woman wandered away from a residential home and was found drowned in a river days later.
 Under the pilot scheme the pounds 50 electronic tags would be placed on the pensioners' wrists or ankles and would emit a homing signal capable of being picked up a quarter of a mile away from the home.
 "I accept that the scheme is ethically dubious and would associate people with objects, animals or criminals," Mrs Denton said in a report to the committee.
 "But it might be appropriate for a pilot scheme to be introduced."
 If the scheme is approved it will be tested for a trial period at the Willowfield home in Sowerby Bridge.
 Mrs Denton said: "Councillors have expressed concern for both residents and staff in seeking to manage the problems at Willowfield, and so it may be appropriate to test the merits of tagging there."
 The leader of Calderdale's Labour group has condemned the scheme as barbaric.
 "I'm horrified. As far as I'm aware tagging was originally conceived for offenders on bail. People aren't sentenced to elderly people's homes and should not be treated as prisoners who may escape.  It's treating them like dogs or criminals."
 Pat Askwith, a Tory councillor, has declared her support for the scheme.
 "I believe that tagging is the way forward. If you're tagged you've got more freedom to walk about, depending on where you put the machine that monitors the tags."

LOAD-DATE: May 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



152 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 26, 1993

FAMILY RAILCARD CONCESSION 'MAY NOT HOLD WATER';
Other transport operators will have to honour joint schemes - New powers for franchising chief

BYLINE: REBECCA SMITHERS TRANSPORT CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 468 words

 
 THE new concessions announced yesterday by the Government are good news for the 1.5 million holders of British Rail's Senior and Young Person's Railcards. But the absence of any guarantee for its Family Railcard will disappoint 3 million people of all ages.
 Assurances that private operators will also be forced to "participate" in provision of travelcards covering different modes of transport were criticised by the Opposition as "inadequate." The Government claimed compulsion was legislatively complex. 
 The U-turn follows an earlier pledge given only for continuation of the loss-making Disabled Person's Railcard. Although only 250,000 people hold the family card, up to 3 million benefit from its travel concessions for up to eight people.
 On a day which London Transport minister Steve Norris, described as "the most important legislative day for the railways in 50 years," the Transport Secretary, John MacGregor, agreed to amend the Railways Bill to give the Government-appointed franchising director powers to force new private operators to provide the Senior, Young Person's and Disabled Person's cards.
 The Tory rebel Sir Keith Speed, MP for Ashford, had led the drive to enshrine the future of railcards in the legislation, saying they were "cherished by many hundreds of thousands" of elderly, disabled and young people, and must not be lost after privatisation.
 Although in yesterday's Commons debate, guarantees were eventually given for "multi-modal" regional cards, as offered by many regional Passenger Transport Authorities, Mr MacGregor said this area was more complicated because of the involvement of other transport modes, and that it would not be possible for the Railways Bill to impose any requirements on providers of non-rail public transport to accept such cards.
 Even after Mr MacGregor's assurances, Dr John Marek, Labour MP for Wrexham, warned that there was nothing to prevent franchisees putting up the price of travelcards beyond the reach of many pensioners, or reducing the discounts available. The salvaged concessions are:
 Disabled Person's Railcard - has 40,000 holders, costs pounds 14, gives one-third off most fares, with discounts on some ferry services.
 Senior Railcard - has 750,000 holders, costs pounds 16, gives one-third off most standard and most first-class fares.
 Young Person's Railcard - has 750,000 holders, costs pounds 16, gives one-third off most fares, excluding first-class.
 Future uncertain for: Family Railcard - has 250,000 holders, costs pounds 20, gives one-third off most fares, one-quarter off saver and super-saver tickets, and pounds 1 flat fare tickets for up to four children under 16.
 Travelcards such as the London Travelcard, the Network card, and the Greater Manchester Travelcard.

LOAD-DATE: May 31, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



153 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 27, 1993

ELDERLY TO BE 'TAGGED'

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 28 words

 
 The social services committee of Calderdale council, West Yorkshire, last night approved a pilot scheme to tag electronically residents of a home for the elderly.

LOAD-DATE: May 31, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



154 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 28, 1993

TORY FAITHFUL LOSING FAITH

BYLINE: DAVID HENCKE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 404 words

 
 THE British instinct to side with the underdog came out yesterday when the Tory faithful at Christchurch, Dorset, expressed their regret at the sudden departure of Norman Lamont.
 "It's not his fault. He's just the man taking all the blame," said pensioner and Tory voter Fred Garrett. 
 Another Conservative pensioner, Kenneth Curran, said: "I feel sorry for Lamont. He's having to carry the can for John Major.  It's John Major who should be resigning."
 The reaction from Christchurch - Conservative majority of over 23,000 and a byelection pending - to the cabinet reshuffle does not augur well for the Government. None of those questioned was impressed by the changes, most wanted a change in policy rather than people.
 Ten out of a dozen people approached in the town's pedestrian precinct were confirmed Tory voters, but only two expressed any intention of supporting the Conservatives in the byelection. Indeed the vehemence of the pensioners, who make up 34 per cent of the constituency's electorate - the highest proportion in Britain - was surprising. Two, Ivy Corley and Frank Beal, were particularly vehement about Kenneth Clarke, Norman Lamont's replacement.
 "That Clarke fellow, he's completely arrogant. He's worse than Lamont," said Ms Corley, while Mr Beal said: "Fancy promoting a man who has ruined the health service, the education service and was on the way to ruining the police force, the best in the world, in charge of the economy."
 Nor was there any support from voters for recent Conservative policy. Leonard Durrant said: "I voted Conservative last time but I won't in the byelection. Since they've been in they've put up taxes, and if they want to get anywhere they'll have to stop this VAT on fuel. There are thousands of elderly people here and they just can't afford it.
 "This cabinet change will make no difference. I used to be a member of the Conservative Club but I can't afford to go there for a drink now."
 Melanie Allen said: "It will take a lot to stop me voting Conservative but I must say the plan to charge motorists pounds 75 a year to use the motorway is going to hit me hard when I visit my mother."
 The Conservative Club was reticent about allowing interviews with their members. A spokesman said: "We don't really want our pensioners distracted by press harassment. They come in here for a quiet drink and they don't like being disturbed."

LOAD-DATE: May 31, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



155 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 31, 1993

MOSCOW DIARY

BYLINE: JONATHAN STEELE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 1050 words

 
 MUMBLING curses and rubbing his bruised shoulder, a homeless man in his fifties staggered up the ill-lit stairs inside Moscow's Kursk railway station. "What's this?", shouted Alexei Golikov, a social worker from the Belgian voluntary organisation, Medecins Sans Frontieres, as he quickened his pace round the corner. We were just in time to see two uniformed policemen, and three assistants, scuffing and kicking a ragged group of tramps waiting outside the MSF room.
 The police showed no embarrassment as we arrived. "Typical", said Alyosha, when they had gone. "We have verbal permission from the station-master to run this clinic, but the police still treat these people as animals." 
 When MSF started its medical programme for Moscow's swelling population of homeless a year ago, its volunteer doctors would see their patients anywhere in the station they found them. By common consent the Kursk station is the worst of the three Moscow terminals where MSF works. Even before President Yeltsin's market reforms, hundreds of people were slumped in the crowded waiting room, sprawling on top of their suitcases and bundles, or on the floor, at any hour of the day or night. The vast majority were not permanently homeless. They were waiting for trains.  Trains were delayed or cancelled, or passengers had long periods in transit in Moscow, having arrived from other places and needing to change stations.
 When permission for kiosks and small private shops was given at the beginning of last year, the already busy station became clogged with booths selling beer and cigarettes. Trellis tables offering pornographic papers appeared, and with the slump in the standard of living for most working-class Russians, lines of people now fill the concourse, holding out a pair of shoes or a bottle of vodka in the hope of a sale. Glass from broken bottles litters the pavement, and petty racketeers move up and down demanding their cut from the vendors.
 A parliamentary reform two years ago stopped vagabonding from being an imprisonable offence. Though liberal in intent, it has added to the chaos. Now the homeless are free from forcible incarceration, but their life on the stations is grim. "Even they have to pay the racketeers. They get told they're begging on a good pitch, so they must share their takings," Golikov discloses. "No one cares if they die. They have no family. So they have to be careful."
 He estimates there are at least 30,000 long-term homeless in Moscow, though if you add the people overnighting on the stations, the figure jumps to 100,000. The newest scandal concerns people forcibly made homeless. Now that people can buy their flats, gangs of thugs have started evicting elderly people who live in central Moscow, forcing them to sign away their rights in return for rooms on the outskirts. The gangs then sell the flats for dollars.
 OUT OF this number of old and new homeless, Medecins sans Frontieres has only treated 2,000 so far. Its clinic at Kursk station is a small windowless L-shaped room, no more than 10 feet long. The organisation has two ambulances, which drive the seriously ill to two hospitals with which MSF has been able to establish contact. Although all the group's 13 regular doctors and six nurses are Russian, being part of an international organisation helps.  "People are less willing to have arguments with foreigners," Golikov says. If the homeless go for treatment to a normal Moscow polyclinic, they are often not even allowed in.
 So far this year 57 people whom MSF has found to have tuberculosis have been sent to a hospital some 20 miles from Moscow. In the winter they find constant bronchial problems. In the summer, skin diseases and problems with lice are intense. MSF sends people off to Moscow's de-lousing centre with a chit to the authorities. It pays the centre at the end of the month. "Only 40 per cent of the people actually go along," says Golikov.
 Upstairs in the station beside a row of kiosks we find Anna and her 16-year-old son, Andrei. Andrei has been homeless since the age of two. His mother is an epileptic. He was born in a home for epileptics but was taken to an orphanage when he was two. His mother escaped from the home and found him again, and since then they have been living rough, either near monasteries in the summer or on railway stations.
 Andrei is a serious kid, surprisingly well-turned out, considering where he lives. He has become an MSF assistant, and proudly dons a white coat and gloves to help homeless patients take off their filthy shirts and sweaters for the doctor to examine them. He has never been to school, but learnt to read from his mother.  Neither he nor his mother has the internal passport which every Russian is supposed to have. MSF is planning to pay for him to have English lessons so that he can study computer manuals. He wants a career in electronics.
 Two miles away, at Paveletsky station, MSF works in only slightly better conditions, in a brightly lit passage near the left luggage office. Behind three incomplete screens the tramps half-strip while curious passengers look on. The organisation has a room where patients go who need to lie down or undress completely.  Officially, every station has a medical point, but they only treat passengers who fall ill unexpectedly. In any case their supplies of medicines are miserable, thanks to steep inflation. "At least we can provide most basic medicines, thanks to donations", says Dr Igor Svyatov, MSF's programme director, as we stand in the passage at Paveletsky station. "It's not just imported drugs which are expensive. Even Russian ones have shot up."
 All of Dr Svyatov's volunteers belong to Moscow's new Association of Independent Doctors. They spend two evenings a week, five hours a time, helping the homeless on an unpaid basis. "We know these people have no other access to medicine," he says. But in Russia's tough new capitalism, such charity work is often kept hidden. Dr Svyatov is one of the few willing to give his name. "Many Russian doctors prefer to remain anonymous. It can lower their prestige if normal patients know they work here," says Golikov. "Even medical students who say they want to help us often back off when their professors find out."

LOAD-DATE: June 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



156 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

May 31, 1993

EVERY POSTER TELLS A STORY

BYLINE: ANGEL DEL RIO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 366 words

 
 THE FACES of the country's political leaders are hanging from every lamppost in Madrid. They look like they have been hung by someone proudly exhibiting his prize catches of game. The city is full to bursting with friendly smiling faces, meticulously made-up, with perfectly lacquered hair and kindly eyes. 
 They are everywhere. They are there when we get up in the morning and peer through the window, and when we go to bed at night, suddenly sleepy in the middle of the candidates' big TV debate. I step into the street and bump right into a huge poster of the PP, the Partido Popular, headed - quite literally - by Jose Maria Aznar. I scrape away that famous moustache to see what is underneath - a smile perhaps - but I only find a poster for the New Year's Eve ball, on top of which Aznar's visage has been pasted.
 I turn a corner and there is Julio Anguita, looking guarded and serious. The leader of the United Left is the most serious of all the candidates, as if he were constantly reminding us of all the dirty tricks they seem to be pulling on him. I give him an encouraging pat on the shoulder and the wet ink starts to run.
 I look up to see whether the clouds are still there, auguries of the squalls to come and I find myself in a veritable shower of "future" posters - the posters of the PSOE, the socialists. Veteran socialist, Felipe's former deputy Alfonso Guerra, says this is a great poster, much better than the one of Aznar, and in a way he is right. This is a real "beautiful people" type shot of Felipe - with the face of an aggressive entrepreneur, the yuppie on the board of directors. It's the updated image from 1982's photo which showed Felipe, then so unknown, so intense, so serene in manner. It's the image of trust, of confidence, designed to try to eradicate the traces of all the mistrust sown over the last 11 years.
 We are meeting our politicians everywhere at the moment. In the market, at the football match, on the bus, at school and in the old people's homes. Let's make the most of this opportunity to shake them by the hand, get their autographs. After June 6, it's going to be practically impossible to get this close again.

LOAD-DATE: June 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



157 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 1, 1993

ELDERLY COUPLE HIT BY STOLEN CAR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 41 words

 
 Police last night questioned a boy aged 15 after two elderly people were knocked down on a crossing in Sheffield by a stolen car. Colin Charlesworth, 71, was in a critical condition and Ann Marsden, 70, had serious internal injuries.

LOAD-DATE: June 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



158 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 3, 1993

CARE HOMES 'NEAR TO BANKRUPTCY'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 405 words

 
 PRIVATE residential and nursing homes are heading for bankruptcy after only two months of the new community care system, the National Care Homes Association, representing 3,000 proprietors, said yesterday.
 It claims many social services departments are failing to refer elderly and disabled people to private homes and vacancy levels are climbing at an "alarming" rate.
 Sheila Scott, the association's chief executive, said: "Too many of our members are already facing financial ruin. This will, of course, be a tragedy for the home owner, but it will be even worse for the residents or patients . . . who are facing the threat of homelessness." 
 Since April 1, social services have had responsibility for assessing the needs of people seeking state help with care.
 The association says its worst fears about the new system are being realised.  Most of its members have had no referrals in the past two months.
 Some proprietors are being warned by their banks that their vacancy levels cannot continue, the association said.
 Ms Scott blamed the caution and unpreparedness of social services for the lack of referrals. She said one northern city authority had still not finalised its assessment procedures.
 There were also reports of social services departments making all referrals to their own homes or homes recently transferred out of local authority ownership, she said.
 John Gilliland, proprietor of a 23-bed, high-dependency care home in Selby, North Yorkshire, said he had had no referrals. He had three vacancies and would have four if a resident currently in hospital did not return. "If we reduce by another two, we will come under severe financial pressures," said Mr Gilliland, whose fees start at pounds 220 a week.
 It has been widely assumed many homes, both private and council-run, will go to the wall in areas of over-provision.
 Social services directors admitted referrals had been far lower than anticipated. John Ransford, secretary of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said many people entered homes in the last few weeks of the old system. The level of activity in April and May was consequently artificially low.
 "It is far too early to draw conclusions," he said.
 A Department of Health spokesman said the NCHA was making premature judgments.  "Care homes which offer good quality services at the right price have nothing to fear."

LOAD-DATE: June 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



159 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 3, 1993

LOOKING OUT FOR XERXES;
As European Community countries struggle with economic problems, rising unemployment, and 50 million living below the poverty threshold, more and more people are facing social exclusion. In its campaign to increase awareness of the problem, the European Commission organised a competition for trainee journalists, who had to write on the fight against social exclusion. Forty journalism schools entered. This is the winning entry

BYLINE: SOPHIA KANAOUTI

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 1032 words

 
 Xerxes was the Persian king who followed the naval battle of Salamis, fought in 480 BC between his own fleet and that of the Greeks, from the mountain which is now Ano Perama
 ON FOOT we climb an endless slope, steep and dangerous for cars. The same slope is scaled day by day by elderly people who have got used to an exhausting life. We are five students from the University of Athens, accompanied by two of the people in charge of the EC programme for the least privileged groups in the Community and we are in Perama, in a slum.
 The view of the island of Salamis opposite, separating the sea from Piraeus is the only thing which does not hurt our eyes.  All around us are wooden huts, where entire families live in two rooms. The most remote one, with rotting wooden walls and broken window panes, houses a family of five. The father closed his door to the help offered by the programme. Perhaps he felt he could keep his dignity by denying that he needed help. But the door he closed was simply a dirty rag. 
 What a contrast with the church, the House of God, with its immaculately white walls and blue dome, like an unreal picture.  If God ever thinks of passing through here, He better not hope to be invited into one of these houses.
 "What are you looking at? There is nothing to visit here." An old man hails us, laughing furtively like a small child pleased to be given some attention. "Are you all right?" "If we were all right, would we be here looking out for Xerxes?" Self irony and the glorious past as consolation for the miserable present of the mountain. But Xerxes, the enemy, has already come into their houses in the guise of Poverty. The old man has been on the run since 1952 when he left Drama because his crops did not yield enough to pay the rent for the field. What weapons has he left to continue the fight?
 For those with very little training or skills, whatever work there is casual, mainly in the shipyards. However, these men are capable of spending their entire hard-earned pay on a night out or a luxury good. Extravagance? An attempt to deny a situation which bars them from even the smallest pleasures in life? Another popular escape is alcohol which, together with wife abuse and the banning of women from work, makes up the darker, more pernicious side of tradition.
 The Community Programme, the third in a row designed to combat social exclusion, is based on the realisation that we cannot isolate certain manifestations of poverty or claim that it is merely an economic or social problem. With the help of social workers, the programme provides these people with counselling and shows them their rights and how to claim them. It has enabled some to find work, and has provided others with training in order to help them to return to employment.
 It takes care of children who have dropped out of compulsory education and provides them with a realistic idea of job opportunities. The many disabled and bedridden people of the slum are being cared for by women to whom the programme has taught first aid and other such services, while day nurseries are made available for the children of women who work outside the home.
 In no circumstances, however, does the Community project give charity, in the knowledge that the causes of poverty are not merely economic but are deeper and more complex. It tries to make people take up those activities which they had abandoned, as well as to increase their interest in and committment to the future.
 The beneficiaries are always actively involved in these schemes. For instance, they take part in the repairs carried out to their broken-down old shacks, which often do not even have sanitary facilities.
 The roof of the house we first headed towards is made of zinc. We are received by one of the sons, a young lad who does not know where to turn from shyness, in particuar before three girls. Looking down, he murmurs a greeting. "Come through to the lounge."
 His mother shows us a room not much bigger than a table. It was built with the aid of the project, as were the toilets. We walk through the rest of the house; the rooms are partitioned off with brown cloth. The unmade beds were constructed with rotten boards which fall apart as we walk past; one grazes me as if to draw my attention.
 "Shall I make you a cup of coffee?" "No, thank you, it's already midday." "Why not, girls?" Her question ironically hints at our real reason, which we dare not express. Our host seems to be noticing and condemning the fact that we do not want to have a cup of coffee in this house, in the blue, filthy kitchen, with its innumerable cages of canaries. She asks one of the project officials to take one, since she has rats in the house.
 There is no doctor, chemist or shop in the area, Until recently there was even no water.
 What can they expect from the authorities and their more fortunate fellow citizens? Sometimes the poor meet with pity, at best they counter indifference and a stock reply: "What can I do about it?" Being poor is a stigma, and people do not want to be confronted with your poverty.
 In a television report, a little girl was asked how she felt about her poverty. The next morning her classmates snubbed her for being poor; they had suspected her for some time already.
 Naturally it has not been established that poverty is contagious. However medical science has been known to make mistakes, and in any event being seen in the company of a poor person can damage one's standing.
 The Community action programme to combat poverty is fighting this public and private tradition. Will it succeed?
 As bitterness grows, you become resigned to your fate and ashamed of your own life. Exasperation grows. But none of this will put food on your plate.
 And the hope that you will find something to eat dwindles all the time. When all is said and done, all kinds of people go hungry in Greece, whether they be from Albania, northern Epirus, Laurium or even Iraq.
 But only to Xerxes, the Barbarian, does it matter that you are Greek.
 Sophia Kanaouti is a student at the National and Capodistrian University of Athens

LOAD-DATE: June 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



160 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 5, 1993

PAPERBACK DIGEST

BYLINE: CLAIRE MESSUD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 582 words

 
 Brotherly Love, by Pete Dexter (Flamingo, 294pp, pounds 5.99)
 Dexter's novel about two generations of gangsters in Philadelphia from 1961 to the mid-1980s follows the life of Peter Flood from the day when as an eight-year-old he sees his younger sister killed by a runaway car, through the mob murders that ensue from that accident to his own initiation into the underworld and, eventually, to the day when something happens and blood ties are broken. The prose is suitably, almost parodically, clipped and tough ("The boy holding the compact is as grim as this street" or "She washes down the stairs like a flooded bathroom"), but Dexter's hand is sure and the story is both compellingly told and breathtakingly paced. What Dexter evokes so well is the overwhelming inevitability of the events, from the first tragedy to the last. 
 Serenity House, by Christopher Hope (Picador, 227pp, pounds 5.99)
 Serenity House is an old people's home in north London, but inside things are far from serene. The sinister staff seem strangely eager to hasten their inmates to death; worse, one of those inmates, Max Montfalcon, may be a Nazi war criminal hiding under a more-English-than-the-English carapace. This novel uncovers dark truths both about Montfalcon and about the place he lives. Hope's satirical talents, honed in four previous novels, do not always seem to match the sombre themes of this book; and some readers may find his narrative too-controlling, highlighting as it does parallels between euthanasia in Serenity House and the mass killing of the Holocaust. But the novel pursues its quarry with intelligence and a quirky, vicious sense of irony.
 Free, by Marsha Hunt (Penguin, 219pp, pounds 5.99)
 This second novel from actress-turned-author Hunt is a readable account of the friendship between a young black stableboy, Theodore "Teenotchy" Simms, and an English aristocrat, Alexander Black. Set in Germantown, Pennsylvania, in the summer of 1913, the tale is interspersed with the recollections of Aunt Em, who is in fact the grandmother of Teenotchy and his sister Atlanta. Aunt Em carries the secret of life in the South many years before, when a white plantation owner raped both Em and then their daughter, making him both father and grandfather to the novel's protagonist. Hunt successfully conjures a time and place, but something about the narrative seems too familiar, as though Free should have been a made-for-TV movie rather than a book.
 Outerbridge Reach, by Robert Stone (Penguin, 409pp, pounds 6.99)
 Robert Stone's fine fifth novel is loosely based on the true story of Donald Crowhurst, an Englishman who, in the 1960s, decided to fake a winning solo sailboat trip around the world, and went mad in the process. Stone's protagonist, Owen Browne, is an American ex-Navy man who embarks on a similar scheme. But along the way, as his wife Anne says to their daughter afterwards, "He risked his life. He risked his sanity. He experienced everything. Very few men have ever done what he did.  Very few men test themselves in that way."
 The novel, complained one of the authors of a factual account of Crowhurst's exploits, has changed "enough to avoid copyright infringement but not enough to avoid some raised eyebrows" - an accusation Stone hotly refutes. It is, in any event, a moot point: Stone is an exceptionally good novelist and Outerbridge Reach is worth reading as much for the telling as for the remarkable story that is told.

LOAD-DATE: June 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



161 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 7, 1993

FEELINGS OF BELEAGUERMENT IN A CONSERVATIVE FORTRESS;
John Ezard finds that in the Prime Minister's constituency, voters' worries go a good deal further than the closing of the public toilets

BYLINE: JOHN EZARD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 461 words

 
 REFUSING to give their names and striving to look as inconspicuous as possible in Huntingdon high street yesterday, the thirty-something couple confessed: "All our neighbours think we are pinkoes. We are the only people we know who aren't Tory.  We're a beleaguered minority: the Huntingdon Two." 
 Up the hill towers the main Conservative Club, a mansion with a huge car park and separate entrances for members and for staff.
 But even in this quarter there were signs of volatile opinion among Tory voters yesterday, the day a Sunday newspaper reported that in a straw poll, one-third of Tory party chairmen all over the country want John Major, MP for Huntingdon with a 36,230 majority, to go as party leader.
 Leaning on a walking stick outside Conservative headquarters, Adrienne Verclytte, aged 82, said: "Mr Major is a very honest, decent man, but he is not as strong as Mrs Thatcher.
 "He should not have joined in shouting down that MP Winston Churchill, who was quite right. This country is liable to be overrun by immigrants. Since Mr Major got in, elderly people who depend on income from savings are being hit very badly."
 Peggy Beaton, aged 75, weeding her garden at the almshouses opposite the Tory club, said: "I never liked Mrs Thatcher but I voted for Mr Major last year. He is a nice man but he needs a firework under him. I'll give him another six months, and supportsomebody else if he doesn't improve."
 Steve Johnston, aged 35, sitting in Market Hill Square with his children, said: "The Government is just drifting along.  Major doesn't give the impression of a strong leader. In most respects I would rather have Mrs Thatcher back; she was more capable. Clarke would tend to be the most obvious choice, but there are no really strong candidates."
 The most eminent Tory in central Huntingdon yesterday, Kamil Hassan, had different reservations. Mr Hassan, owner of the Starburgers cafe in the High Street, canvasses for Mr Major at elections, gives money to the party and has been to celebrations at 10 Downing Street.
 But he is not a happy man. In the last 15 years, he says, life has been sucked out of the town centre and replaced by banks, estate agents and 42 restaurants - Mr Hassan has counted them.
 He has got 2,500 signatures for a petition that demands: "We want good toilets which are not locked on Sundays, no Sunday mar kets, and no more out-of-town superstores".
 He has been promised an appointment to see Mr Major, at which he will ask for powers to decide such local matters to be given back to the old town council. That would reverse the whole trend of Conservative local government policy. But Mr Hassan warned that if he did not get some action, he would "reconsider" his support.

LOAD-DATE: June 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



162 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 7, 1993

ELDERLY 'MUST GET MORE HOUSING AID'

BYLINE: MICHAEL SIMMONS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 206 words

 
 INCREASING numbers of old people are battling to live independently and more will need support as the aged population increases, with 1 million over-85s by 2000, according to a report published today, the start of National Housing Week.
 The report by the umbrella group, Housing Forum, calls for fewer financial restraints for community care policies and substantial increases for home improvement funding. 
 The forum says that the aim, in theory, of the care in the community policy is to support people who have care needs.
 "In practice, resources are woefully inadequate, such support has to be rationed, leaving many older people in intolerable situations," it
 says.
 The report says that as the Government cuts the money available for new building and improvement schemes for older people's housing, so their pensions - which are already among the lowest in Europe - are being devalued by being linked to earnings rather than prices.
 UK state pensions are less than a third of average earnings, compared to half in France and more than two-thirds in Germany.
 All Our Tomorrows, by Christine Davies and Brenda Molnar, pounds 12 from the National Housing Forum, 26 Chapter Street, London SW1.

LOAD-DATE: June 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



163 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 12, 1993

RADIO: GETTING NOVELTY TO WORK ON AIR;
A playwriting competition drew over a thousand entries for the World Service

BYLINE: ANNE KARPF

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 28

LENGTH: 875 words

 
 MAKE it new scream the critics and commentators, exhorting broadcasters to find novel forms and contributors. But how?  Leviathan-sized institutions don't have their tentacles into street life or emerging sub-cultures; they waddle mainly in the official world. BBC World Service has tried to swim in wider waters by resuming its playwriting competition, which attracted over 1,200 scripts from 80 countries.
 South African artist Andrew Verster's winning entry, You May Leave, The Show Is Over, showed that innovation isn't easily achieved. This was a redemptive play about Gwendolyn, a crabbed white woman in an old people's home, who finds her humanity through a relationship with a black maid called Mavis. 
 There were several problems with the piece. One was that it sounded like rather too many other redemptive plays about crabbed people finding their humanity (generally through a relationship with someone of inferior social status: a child, an old person, or an animal).
 This is what tends to happen: people listen to the radio, hear what's on offer and then, when invited to try their hand, aspire to imitate the pros - hence more of the same.
 Another problem with Verster's play is that the essential-goodness-of-the-human-spirit theme emerged rather too easily. A long-standing rift is healed off-air, for instance, without any sense of past bitterness or enduring hurt. (Why, anyway, are dramatists always trying to improve people, why can't they let them stay crabbed?)
 And I couldn't help feeling uneasy about the terms in which the supposedly enriching friendship between Gwendolyn and Mavis was cast - G supplying M with a decanter and music by Mozart, M bringing G one of her colourfully decorated tablecloths - though Verster strove to avoid a Lady Bountiful meets Uncle Tom tone.
 He also turned in a very fluent play (the first he'd ever written), with confidently constructed scenes moving between past and present, and a light humourous touch. And despite everything, he did draw you in.
 On The Other Side, one of the five runners-up and also broadcast last week, couldn't have been more different. The first play for radio written by a prolific Bulgarian writer, Stanislav Stratiev, it was an astringent satire in the absurdist tradition (shades of Stoppard and Giles Cooper) on the state, the aged (again), and personal freedom.
 Mainly a succession of monologues, it had perfect-for-radio stamped all over it, being set in a place where old people are thrown out of windows by their relatives or the State. But Stratiev took the concept of defenestration and played with it: an old man on the ledge affirms his sense of personal choice - after all he can hold on or jump; the crowd complain about the cuts in municipal throwing-out services; an old woman is angry that younger friends were thrown out before her. And there was an extraordinary peroration about windows as holes through which the world impinges. In all, an assured and impressive work.
 A first-time presenter, an independent production company - singer Eddy Grant's new six-part series on West Indian popular music, Walking On Sunshine, by Rewind Productions for Radio 2, promised a fresh sound. The first programme failed to deliver.  Grant's presentation style was irksome: spieling about the different Caribbean countries which the next song came from, he sounded like a facile tourist guide, rarely contextualising the music or its origins, though mercifully succinct. Radio 2 isn't Radio 3, but it has a good recent record on ethnic music (series on Jewish music, and Asian music) and it should be able to do better.
 Radio 3 germinated a new form: a daily five-part, five-minute diary, Sleepless Nights. The first incumbent, David Owen Norris, broadcaster and pianist, filled his slot with the kind of arch aperus about life abroad (on an American concert tour) that makes one despair of the British.
 Above all, the thing was too damn written: here was a chance for a bit of aural roughness - life with hiccups - to sneak on to Radio 3, but instead we got the usual shaped and polished anecdotes with their whimsical last lines, though Norris did manage to convey the ghastliness of life on the road for classical musicians - all early morning alarm calls, and if it's Monday, it must be Chicago.
 The final programme in the present series of The New Recruit (Radio 4) sought to contrast newsreaders by pitting David Dunhill, reader of the last bulletin on the Home Service before it turned into Radio 4 in 1967, against Radio l's Tina Richie. This highlighted differences in gender and network style as much as changes between then and now, though it was amusing to hear Dunhill read Richie's speedy bulletin at the languid, seigneurial pace of a country which still thought it had an empire.
 But the programme was most revealing in what it showed of radio's changed form of address: Dunhill noted how trails for forthcoming programmes mutated from "listeners may like to make a note of" to "I'm going to tell you about", and enthused about the general incursion of chumminess on to the airwaves - which folks, I personally loathe. Perhaps the old style had something to commend it after all.

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



164 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 12, 1993

PENSIONERS HIT BY COUNCIL TAX URGED TO SEEK DISCOUNTS

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 33

LENGTH: 761 words

 
 THE charity Help the Aged has launched a campaign to help older people claim help with their council tax bills.
 At least 700,000 low-income pensioners are missing out because they do not claim the income support they are entitled to, according to Government figures. People on income support do not normally have to pay any council tax.
 "We also suspect that many elderly people do not realise that they can get a 25 per cent rebate if they have another adult, other than their spouse, living with them who is unemployed or earning very little," said a spokeswoman for the charity.  "Others are unaware that to get the 25 per cent discount available to people living alone they have to apply to their local council first." 
 Help the Aged is offering free advice on the new tax to the elderly and their carers, relatives or friends on its SeniorLine information service.
 "Council tax will hit many older people harder than poll tax since a great proportion of them live alone in large properties which once housed their family and which will have been valued quite highly," says SeniorLine manager John Aston.
 "These people are 'house rich, cash poor'. They may have large houses but very low incomes. They can barely afford to maintain or heat them properly, let alone pay high rates of council tax."
 Council tax is due on any dwelling used as a home. If a house has been split so that an older relative has their own self-contained accommodation with its own facilities and lockable front door, it will count as a separate dwelling.
 No council tax is due on an empty dwelling if the owner is in hospital or a residential care or nursing home. A person who leaves their home empty because they go to live elsewhere to care for someone who is old, ill or disabled also pays no council tax.
 Similarly, no tax is payable on a home left empty because its owner is old, ill or disabled and goes to live somewhere else, such as with a relative, in order to receive personal care. The rules about who counts as old, ill or disabled do not require the person concerned to get any particular state benefit to qualify.
 After someone dies their property is exempt from the tax from the date of death until six months after their estate has been formally wound up. Anyone who thinks their property should be exempt from the tax should contact their local council.
 When properties are valued for council tax purposes, a special provision applies where there is a disabled person in a dwelling. If there is a second bathroom or kitchen for use by a disabled person or an extra room which is predominately used for their needs, such as a room for kidney dialysis or extra space inside to allow them to move round in a wheelchair, then the property will be moved down one valuation band. If it is already in the lowest valuation band - band A - this does not apply.
 People with low income and savings below pounds 16,000 may be able to get help with their council tax through a rebate scheme called council tax benefit. The maximum benefit is 100 per cent compared with the previous maximum poll tax rebate of 80 per cent.
 Anyone who was receiving community charge benefit does not need to apply for council tax benefit because their council should automatically check their entitlement. But there are many people who did not get community charge benefit who are entitled to council tax benefit, says Help the Aged, and they will have to apply for it.
 The 'second adult rebate' is a special benefit paid by local councils to those whose income and savings are too high to qualify for the standard council tax benefit. It is payable if you are single and have another adult aged 18 or more living in your home who is not paying you rent, not living with you as if you were married, not paying council tax themselves and is on a low income.
 If the person living with you is on income support, you get a 25 per cent rebate. If their gross income is pounds 105 a week or less, you get 15 per cent and if their gross income is pounds 135 or less, you get 7.5 per cent.
 - A council tax information sheet and a booklet on council tax benefit, Can You Claim It?' are both available free through Help the Aged's SeniorLine on 0800-289-404, open between 10am and 4pm Monday to Friday. Age Concern's fact sheet The Council Tax and Older People is available free if you send a large SAE to ACE England, PO Box 9, London SW16 4EX. Leaflet CTB1, Help With The Council Tax, is available free from DSS offices and Post Offices.

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



165 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 14, 1993

OLD EMOTIONS EXPOSED IN A NATURAL BREAK;
Endpiece

BYLINE: ROY HATTERSLEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 927 words

 
 FOR ALL I know, Frank Windsor may well be the movie mogul's next choice to play James Bond. Perhaps, to that dubious distinction, he is about to add the real glory of Lear at Stratford and Tessman on the South Bank. But to me, he will always be John Watt, the long-suffering and intolerably reasonable detective sergeant in Z-Cars. Towards the end of that admirable series he was promoted to inspector. Yet he remained indomitably non-commissioned - a character fit to eat in the NCOs' mess with Poins, Bardolph and, had they won the stripes to which their long service (if not their conduct) entitled them, Kipling's Soldiers Three.
 Apart from Sergeant Troy (who was hardly typical of the rank on which all regiments depend), literature has been notably short of memorable warrant officers. So John Watt was part of an elite unit.  Playing him no doubt prepared Frank Windsor for the role in which I saw him star the other afternoon. He appeared as the acceptable face of mortality. 
 As far as I now recall, the Broadcasting Act insists that advertisements for toys, bubble gum and video games are not screened during children's programmes. The prohibition is intended to safeguard young, and impressionable, viewers from exploitation. It seems that the same protection is not provided for vulnerable geriatrics. Last week, senior citizens who sat down in front of their television sets to enjoy an afternoon with Joan Crawford and Henry Fonda, had their innocent entertainment interrupted with the reminder that their number was almost up.
 Mr Windsor - who has won his way into many elderly hearts with his genial promotion of a fertiliser which makes plants grow at the speed of a pantomime beanstalk - popped up on the twilight home screens during the second natural break. Just as pensioners, all over the country, prepared to fill their kettles or empty their bladders, the smiling but still grim reaper invited them to remember that the end is almost nigh and suggested that they equipped themselves for what lay ahead. His concern was not the destiny of their immortal souls but the finance of their funerals. The message was "Prepare to meet thy undertaker's bills" and the promise was not eternal life but the certainty of a respectable send off if pounds 6 a month was invested in a well known insurance company.
 The commercial lacked details about the guaranteed size of the brass coffin plate and the quality of the mixed pickles which could accompany the ham sandwiches and pork pies, but the implied assurance that there would be no need to skimp on the sherry was reinforced by the offer of an old English-type carriage clock with every new policy that was taken out during the period of the special promotion. Youngsters like you and I might think that watching the time tick by is not the way in which men and women with death on their minds want to spend their declining years.  But Mr Windsor seemed reassuringly confident that the fine example of craftsmanship would prove a great consolation.  Reassurance was the hallmark of his performance.
 There was, he promised, no obligation to fill in complicated forms and no medical examination was needed. Having failed my optician's challenge to complete the documents by which pensioners apply for free eye tests, I understood the attraction of the first undertaking. And I know that after a certain age, pride rather than modesty induces a profound reluctance to undress in front of a doctor or anyone else. So I could easily understand the attraction of an insurance policy which does not oblige the holders to take off their clothes. But the third of Mr Windsor's assurances seemed more open to doubt.  Potential participants were promised that membership of the scheme would not result in unwelcome visitors knocking on their doors. I do not believe it for a moment. One day a gaunt old cove, dressed in a shroud and carrying a scythe over one shoulder will come to call. He will be followed by a mournful looking chap with black crepe round his top hat. That is what Mr Windsor's scheme is all about.
 It was also about an instinct which I understand very well. I was brought up amongst men and women who were determined to go respectable into that good night. The small silver put in the cracked teapot on the kitchen mantelpiece, the subscription to the Welfare or Institute funeral club - perhaps even the modest payment made to the Co-op Insurance man who called round every Friday afternoon - were all intended to finance the journey into eternity. Their preparations had very little in common with the plans of those ancient Pharoahs who built their own pyramid tombs or the dreams of those Chinese emperors who thought that they could march into resurrection as long as they were surrounded by terra cotta armies. Hubris had nothing to do with it. Knowing that they would leave their sons and daughters very little, they were determined to bequeathe them neither the cost of a funeral nor the shame of a cut price coffin.
 It was, in its humble way, a noble aspiration. I suppose that somebody - funeral directors as they used to be called, managers of savings clubs and stonemasons - made a profit out of it, but it was the product of an essentially private emotion and the continuous thrift of the reticent classes. Few of them would have talked about it in public, and I hated seeing the old emotions exposed in a television commercial. Long may the insurance companies' warehouses be filled with unclaimed old English-style carriage clocks.

LOAD-DATE: June 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



166 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 15, 1993

SACKED HOSPITAL WHISTLEBLOWER GETS POUNDS 11,000 SETTLEMENT

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 329 words

 
 THE "whistleblower" nurse, Graham Pink, yesterday won his case for wrongful dismissal after he had spoken out over conditions on his wards for acutely ill elderly people.
 Stockport health authority acknowledged there had been a technical flaw in the procedures used to sack Mr Pink. It announced he would be paid pounds 11,188 compensation, the maximum he could have been awarded by an industrial tribunal. 
 The authority's move is designed to cut short a hearing which ran for 10 days in March and could have lasted another two months.
 The authority's projected costs were pounds 340,000. Tony Russell, authority chairman, said: "By choosing to defend, we willingly opened ourselves to public scrutiny. To continue now merely to achieve a Pyrrhic victory, diverting funds from our primary duty of caring for patients, is completely untenable."
 Mr Pink's campaign for more staff on his wards came to public notice in 1990 when the Guardian published extracts from his accounts of hospital life, given in the scores of letters to his managers, MPs and government ministers.
 He was a night charge nurse at Stepping Hill hospital, Stockport, responsible for up to 72 elderly patients with, he claimed, two other qualified staff and five auxiliaries. In 12 months, he counted 520 patient deaths.
 He maintained he went to the press after exhausting all official channels, but he was sacked by Stockport in 1991 on charges including breach of patient confidentiality.
 He has since been elected to the ruling council of nursing's regulatory body, which he had criticised for failing to support his campaign.
 Mr Pink, whose tribunal costs have been met by supporters, said he would still like the resumed hearing on Monday to order his reinstatement. He estimated he had lost pounds 50,000 in salary and pension rights.
 "The most important thing above all, though, is that there are still no more nurses on those wards," Mr Pink said.

LOAD-DATE: June 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



167 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 16, 1993

CROSSBORDER: MICHAEL EMERSON

BYLINE: TESSA THOMAS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 653 words

 
 How European are you?
 After 26 years, I don't even ask myself the question. I have now spent as long on this side of the English Channel as the other. I see Europe as my state and France, Belgium and Russia as my counties.
 Are the Russians European?
 Culturally, Russia is very much part of the European family. But its people are split. There are the young, educated Russians, who are only too willing to switch culture and participate in a new, more western system. They are a remarkable resource not seen in any of the other CIS states. Then there are those older people and institutions who are truly stuck in the mud. Getting out of it will mean destroying many organisations, and the big question now is how many. 
 What are their virtues?
 Character, resilience, patience and solidness. They are also hospitable, generous and very well-read. The average Russian knows far more Tolstoy and Chekov than the British do Shakespeare and Dickens.
 They have very intense personal relationships. Over 70 years of the communist state, when the rest of life was such a misery, this was the flower they cultivated in the desert and, as a result, their relationships are rich and rewarding. In England, it is the other way around. The public culture is strong, and relationships with family and friends seem very offhand in comparison.
 How does everyday life compare?
 I am shocked whenever I return to Britain by the relaxed normality of everyday life. It seems like something out of The Archers - a relatively banal experience with few ups and downs. Life in Russia is a soul-wrenching drama. Every month brings burning issues of the sort that in England would be considered an event of the century. And they are often a question of physical survival.
 How is leisure time spent?
 My main pastime is collecting pictures. The dramas of Russia are built into all their paintings, and many are extraordinarily attractive. I particularly like the works of Social Realism, which most Russians think are horrible.
 How has life in Russia changed?
 The biggest change since 1991 is that you do not have to queue like you used to. And there are things in the shop windows.  Eighteen months ago, the shop opposite my flat was a smelly, desolate, horrible place selling rotten potatoes and ancient jars of pickled cucumbers. Now it is not Sainsbury's but it has moved halfway.
 What irritates you most?
 The Russians have no concept of service. Even people working in shops do not know the meaning of public relations. Being insulting and small-minded comes naturally to them. Fortunately, it does not affect my own life much.
 What are life's sensual pleasures?
 In the winter, skiing down the Muskwa River. And in the summer, sitting in the shade of trees in my dacha, which is one of a group that Stalin presented to the Academy of Sciences. Those pleasures almost compensate for the food, which is comparable to the most deplorable English transport cafe fare. For the first year I was here, I had no lunch. It is extraordinarily difficult to eat out in the middle of the day and there was no bread for sandwiches.
 How does Russia fit into Europe?
 Europe's smaller countries, such as Denmark and Belgium, are very able to adapt and compete in a European market. They have refined their skills, found a niche and are now modestly confident about their roles. Russia is off the scale at the other end. It is huge and just decides to do things in a big way, without thinking about fitting into the international scheme.  England is somewhere in the middle, without the modesty of the Danes or the power of the Germans.
 Which phrases sum up the Russian approach to life?
 "Normalna" which means "fine" and "nichevo" which means "OK" or "nothing". The first is good news, and the second neutral, but both point to a culture of oppression and resignation.

LOAD-DATE: June 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



168 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 17, 1993

ASSASSINS AT THE GOAL LINE;
Best of the 20th century: strikers

BYLINE: CENTIPEDE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 960 words

 
 IN OUR hour of national humiliation, it may be consoling to fall back on the virtues of the domestic game and look back at times when we had players who could score goals rather than let them in.
 Players like John Campbell, of Sunderland, the most prolific goal scorer in British football in the 1891/92 season (32 goals), 1892/93 (31) and 1894/95 (22) or Dixie Dean, who dominated the late 1920s and early 30s, with his peak years of 1927/28 (60 goals, the league record) and 32/33 (44). Then there was Bongo Wearing, of Aston Villa, who banged in 49 goals and Ted Drake, of Arsenal, who was on target with 42 in 1935 - including seven in one game in 1935 - and Tommy Lawton, top scorer in 1937/8 (38 goals) and 1938/39 (35).
 In terms of strike rate, Dixie again features high in the agenda, ballooning the net with 379 goals in 437 games. Arthur Rowley put away 434 between 1946 and 1965, and our very own Brian Clough hammered in 251 goals in 274 games, until his premature retirement at the age of 29. 
 (To put this in some kind of perspective, Artur Freidrich, of Brazil, scored 1329 goals in a career that ran for 20 years.  Pele is the only other footballer who came close, with 1281 goals in 1263 games. But we are dealing with the home grown product in this Centipede dispatch).
 There are other statistics to measure the effectiveness of a striker. For example, goals per game puts Jimmy MacCory in pole position with 1.004. Brian Clough crashes his way into second place with 0.916 with Dixie Dean in third place with 0.867. The contemporary snappers-up of the half chance, Ian Rush and Gary Lineker, can only come up with 0.564 and 0.539 respectively.
 But being a striker isn't really about statistics, about putting it away, crashing it in, nodding it home. It's about style, panache, adrenalin, memory. It is difficult for anyone who came to football in the last 20 years to really appreciate the giants of the pre-television era, whose skills and style caught on old black and white film, seem curiously clodhopping, more muscular than artistic. We have to rely on the memories and tales of old men to fill out the flickering and blurred images and the memories of old men are notoriously given to poetry and embellishment.
 It is also true that the game has changed, speeded up and closed down. Defence has become a sterile art form, hard graft the most prized attribute. But hard graft is the very antithesis of the great striker, a player like an assassin, who remains anonymous, unremarked and unmarked until his moment comes, and he cracks a fulminating shot past the helpless custodian of the net.
 Some did this with a style marked by courage and flamboyance, like Denis Law, a man who apparently could suspend the laws of gravity to hang in the air for several seconds, high above the gawping head of some earthbound full-back before flicking the ball into the corner of the net with a whiplash move of the head.
 There was Bobby Charlton of the majestic thunderbolt, with the screamers of Peter Lorimer and Charlie George not far behind.  Then there are the predatory skills of Alan "Sniffer" Clarke, Alan Gilzean, or indeed Ian Rush and Gary Lineker, men who steal in to sneak goals from under the noses of defences. David Platt is a more spectacular version of this.
 And then there are the artists, Jimmy "Wee Jinky" Johnstone, Charlie Cook and Rodney Marsh, perhaps not strikers in the true sense of the word, but players who scored their fair share of goals through flair and ball control and an ability to humiliate defences, to destroy their self confidence. The greatest of these was George Best, who was known to beat a full-back, go back and beat him again, and reduce him to a threshing buffoonery for third time just for the hell of it.
 I remember one goal that he scored against Southampton when he received the ball in a crowded penalty area. He was standing on the right hand corner of the five yard box. The Southampton goalkeeper, Martin, came out to narrow the angle. Best drew back his right foot. Martin dived to cover the shot - which never came. As Martin lay helpless on the ground, Best popped the ball over his prostrate body and into the back of the net. It's all there - wit, imagination, courage, skill, impudence - and the notorious memories of an old man.
 However even Best must take second place as a striker in terms of efficiency and consistency to Jimmy Greaves, the striker par excellence. Look at his record: top scorer in six seasons between 1958/59 and 1968/69 (curiously the only time George Best topped the tables was in the 1967/68 season). His record in each of those seasons was 32 goals, 41, 35, 29, 29 and 27.  In all he scored six hat tricks in the 60/61 season, six hat tricks for England, 44 goals in 57 matches for England (still a record) and 357 goals in 514 games in all. His dropping from the England team by Alf Ramsey is still one of the most heinous decisions of modern football management.
 For the most part, Greaves operated in the assassin mould, nicking goals past the helpless custodian of the net, stealing in through unwary defences, popping up to pop it in. But he could also turn on the style when the occasion demanded.
 There is the picture of the famous goal that he scored for Spurs against Burnley in the 1962 Cup Final. Frozen in time and in flight the ball, hit from outside the penalty area, hurtles towards the the net in one direction while the hapless goalkeeper and all the Burnley defence are going in the other.
 Is Centipede right? Letters contesting (or, indeed, agreeing with) this week's
 verdict should be sent to: C20, The Guardian, 119 Farringdon Road, London EC1R 3ER. Fax: 071-239 9935.

LOAD-DATE: June 17, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



169 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 22, 1993

BOOKS: FIRST NOVEL

BYLINE: REBECCA ABRAMS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1017 words

 
 Nude Men
 by AMANDA FILIPACCHI
 342pp pounds 9.99
 Heinemann
 IN 1959 Umberto Eco published an amusing seven-page pastiche of Nabokov's Lolita entitled "Granita." (recently issued by Cape in Misreadings), in which the young narrator, Umberto Umberto, reveals his insatiable desire for elderly women: the merest glimpse of a wrinkled face or skeletal arm reduces him to lustful jelly and in desperation he eventually kidnaps a friend's grandmother and makes off with her round Northern Italy, etc. etc.  etc. Amanda Filipacchi's first novel, Nude Men, also plays with the Lolita theme, but here the twist is that the girl, not the man, is the relentlessly cunning seducer. Her mother, the inscrutable Lady Henrietta, far from being an unknowing bystander like the hapless Mrs Haze, actively collaborates with her daughter. Eleven year old Sara, to use the infamously misused phrase, is not entirely an angel. Her methods of seduction are subtle, ingenious and effective. 
 In the current ethical climate, this is clearly sensitive territory, particularly for a first novel, but whatever one thinks of her choice of subject matter, Filipacchi, having taken the risk, treads her way through the moral minefield with considerable skill. She is a competent and confident writer, strong on invention, humour and timing, wonderful on dialogue.  The tone of the writing is light, but edged with a darkness that gradually envelops the novel, and the pace of this creeping malevolence is controlled with great assurance.
 Jeremy Acidophilus, the 29 year old narrator, works as a fact checker for a New York magazine, but somehow never gets beyond filing cuttings. Even the secretary despises him. Jeremy the Maggot, he calls himself. "I have a pale, weak, flabby, thin but at the same time chubby body. . . My eyes are the colour of shit. My hair is the colour of shit. My face is the most average face in the world. You forget it the moment you see it." Jeremy's private life is as flabbily uninspiring as his physical appearance. Out of this unpromising material, Filipacchi succeeds in creating an extremely engaging character with sufficient modesty and self-awareness to keep our sympathy, and just enough arrogance and stupidity to keep our interest.
 His trials begin when he encounters a portrait painter, Lady Henrietta, who specialises in male nudes and asks him to pose for her. His grateful, eager acceptance launches him on a highly unconventional voyage of moral, emotional and sexual discovery, which will transform him from Maggot to Murderer, from self-destructive passivity to self-destructive responsibility. The keystone around which all this revolves is his inability to resist the determined advances of 11-year-old Sara. Jeremy is not a paedophile or a pervert; he repeatedly insists that he's too old and she's too young, he is never in any doubt that what she wants to do is wrong, nor, when she has done it, that it was wrong. As in Mario Vargas Llosa's In Praise of the Step-Mother, in which a happily married woman is seduced with disastrous consequences by her young step-son, it is the child who is the predator, the adult, the victim. Where both novels become interesting is the point at which you realise that the child is also a victim, not of one individual's behaviour, but of a wider malaise, a victim of a society in which the only effective currency is sexuality, regardless of age or gender. In the process, the reader's perception of moral and sexual norms is also violently disrupted.
 Nude men in this novel, wreak havoc. Flabbily uninspiring Jeremy is forced to trade on his sexuality, lured repeatedly into impossibly compromising situations, and has decisions about his body made on his behalf - by the daughter, her mother, his girlfriend. The naked male body, however passive, however exploited, is an instrument of destruction: it turns an 11 year old into a sexual predator, it blinds a mother to the impact of her work on her child, it distracts a woman motorist at a critical moment. The male body is both commodified and dangerous. Filipacchi is a conscientiously absent author, but by reversing the cultural norms of sexual behaviour, both in terms of age and gender, she illuminates how profoundly unacceptable normality is.
 It would be wrong to give the impression that the book is only about the use and abuse of sexual power; it also has some entertaining sub-plots, in particular, the rise to fame of Laura, the dancing magician, and the evolving relationship between Jeremy and his spirited mother, who at 71 has taken to throwing lewd comments at men in the street to "see how pleasant men find [it]." There are also some interesting observations about art, portraiture and identity. Ultimately, this is a novel about concealment and revelation, about how the bizarre lurks in the commonplace, the tyrant lurks behind liberality, the predator dwells within the victim, and the sexual adult within the child. Face value is irrelevant, discounted, it has no value: the magician whose magic tricks contain no magic is hailed as a genius.  Nothing is as it seems: the book starts with a Jell-O spoon and ends with a kitchen knife. Both are murder weapons in their way.
 Without doubt this is an accomplished, well-crafted and often extremely funny novel. Where I do have doubts is in the moral sleight of hand that Filipacchi performs: she persistently dodges the implications of her plot: the monstrously liberal mother, the sexually precocious daughter, the weak-willed man, the fatally generous girlfriend - all are punished in one way or another for their mistakes, but their punishment is unconvincing, inconclusive: are they suffering for their misdemeanours, or are their misdemeanours part of their suffering? Filipacchi remains resolutely on the fence and the result is frustrating. Perhaps like Laura's magic tricks, there is nothing to it. But then, like Laura's audience, you are never quite sure.
 Rebecca Abrams is a writer and critic. Her book, Woman In A Man's World, will be published in September

LOAD-DATE: June 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



170 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 25, 1993

EYEWITNESS: REFUGEES CROSS FRONT LINES OF BOSNIA'S GRIM CHESSBOARD

BYLINE: CHRIS STEPHEN IN TURBE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 674 words

 
 THE HUMAN face of the latest grand plan for Bosnia - to decant the three ethnic populations into separate cantons - was evident in the town of Turbe yesterday.
 On the western outskirts, more than 750 Muslim civilians kept as prisoners and slave labourers for the past 12 months were shunted across the Muslim front lines by Serbs firing machineguns over their heads to speed them on their way.
 On the eastern side of town, Muslims were brought across the Croat front line, while Croats were in turn allowed to cross from Travnik into Croat-held territory. All this took place in the pouring rain. 
 The Serbs have sent Muslims across their front line from the Banja Luka region, charging them 100 deutschmarks ( pounds 40) a head, with a discount rate of DM75 for children aged under six.
 Usually, United Nations' trucks are allowed to cross the front line to pick up the displaced. But yesterday, the Serbs refused, demanding not only that the civilians walk across the front line with whatever possessions they could carry, but that they continue unaided for a further mile or two with no UN assistance.
 Perhaps the Serbs no longer care about appearances, as the world has ceased to protest at their ethnic cleansing, which continues - albeit in a more systematic way - across much of their territory.
 "We can't get any nearer or the Serbs will shoot," said a British liaison officer, standing by a tank as the Serbs watched from a forested mountain.
 The troops watched helplessly as old men and women, mothers and fathers with children, and even a paraplegic stumbled along the road to safety, carrying their belongings in sacks and boxes and suitcases.
 Long bursts of machinegun fire blasted over their heads from Serb frontline positions. "They were not shooting at us, they were firing to scare us," said a middle-aged woman clutching a bag under one arm and a blond baby boy under the other.
 "We had to walk a long time, they would not take us to the front line. We were all very scared. We were told last night we had to go, and we went through the forests. We were scared all the time because the Serb military police were there, and we thought that somebody would shoot us."
 The refugees said that as they passed through the front line, Serbian troops in nearby foxholes bellowed at them "faster, go faster", and fired their guns.
 Some of the refugees had tears in their eyes as they described how many Muslims from the villages of Cevcije and Bukovieke, near the town of Doboj, were forced to work long hours without pay in local factories. "It was slave labour," one old man said.
 "It's very difficult to explain what we have been through this last year," said an exhausted, tearful woman in a white blouse, who dropped a heavy bag full of clothes as she reached the British line. "There was not a single night that I slept through. Every night they would take someone and beat them."
 The refugees were helped on to British army trucks under UN supervision. They were taken to Travnik, a town already bursting with refugees and at best a conditional sanctuary, after it was shelled earlier in the day - presumably by Serb guns.
 On the other side of town, more transfers were under way. Some 80 Muslims taken prisoner earlier this year when the Croats held Travnik were allowed to return to their villages, some of which were no more than charred ruins.
 In exchange, 270 Croats were sent to Croat-held territory. They had been overrun in their mountain village by this month's Muslim offensive, and were then offered protection in a school building by the mainly Muslim Bosnian army after death threats by the extremist mojahedin.
 The two groups of civilians exchanged weary glances as they hobbled through the heavy rain and changed buses at the main roadblock in Travnik. "I don't know if they are relieved or sad," said the British soldier who was supervising the exchange. "Some are smiling and some are crying."
 Why did they do this to us? G2 cover story

LOAD-DATE: June 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



171 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 26, 1993

URBAN MYTHS: 41: THE SPANISH DOG

BYLINE: HEALEY AND GLANVILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 59

LENGTH: 213 words

 
 A friend of a friend was on holiday with a group of other senior citizens in Benidorm.
 She loved animals, and every morning she'd save a few scraps at breakfast and feed the scrawny stray pooches on the beach. Being a soft-hearted old girl, she fell for the skinniest little wretch of the bunch, and cosseted it most of all.
 When the holiday drew to a close she couldn't bear to leave her little chum to the hard life of the streets, so she resolved to smuggle the dog back to Blighty, ignoring the stringent quarantine regulations.
 With the diversionary tactics of a few of her fellow holidaymakers, she breezed through customs and carried her little pal home with her. Once indoors, the lady introduced this new Spanish friend to her old cat. The tom immediately bristled and attacked. A terrible fight ensued. Plants went flying, curtains were ruined and an umbrella stand spilled over.
 The elderly lady finally broke them up, but there was blood everywhere. She rushed the poor little dog straight to the vets.  Apparently, the animal quack took one look and asked her what she thought it was.
 "What can you mean?" said the elderly dame. "It's a dog."
 "I've got news for you," said the vet sternly. "This, madam, is a giant gutter rat."

LOAD-DATE: June 28, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



172 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 28, 1993

SICILIAN QUAKE

BYLINE: ED VULLIAMY IN ROME

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 36 words

 
 Pallina, a Sicilian town of 3,500 people, was living under canvas last night - with two elderly people in hospital - after an earthquake hit southern Italy at the weekend. Fifty-five houses were destroyed.

LOAD-DATE: June 28, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



173 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 29, 1993

HEALTH: BARELY 30 AND MENOPAUSAL

BYLINE: ANNIE SKINNER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 27

LENGTH: 596 words

 
 EVERYONE worries about ageing - none more so than women who have a premature menopause because of disease, surgery or a spontaneous natural menopause.
 Jo, 31, was confused and angry when her periods stopped suddenly. At first she thought it was anxiety related and that eventually her periods would restart. Eighteen months later, she sought medical help. Jo believed that she just needed "a kick start" to get her periods going again but, after a blood test, her GP diagnosed a premature menopause. 
 It came as a shock. In retrospect, she recalled how before her periods stopped, they had become erratic. She had also suffered hot flushes and sweats, which at the time she attributed to anxiety.  At 31, you do not consider menopausal symptoms.  Jo turned to books, but none mentioned a premature menopause: all were written for older women. In desperation, Jo visited a homeopath, but the menopause cannot be reversed. Women are born with a fixed number of eggs and the supply diminishes throughout life, culminating with the menopause.
 One of the major risks for post-menopausal women is osteoporosis and/or arterial disease. A premature menopause increases risk of their early development. Experts recommended hormone replacement therapy for Jo to counteract osteoporosis and arterial disease.
 There are other problems with an early menopause. You cannot have children naturally. Jo, who is single, felt unattractive and defeminised. She eventually accepted hormone replacement therapy which not only helped her physical symptoms (dry vagina, brittle nails, dry skin and hair) but gave her her periods back. This was of symbolic importance to her, but it did not lessen her grief.
 An early menopause is hard to admit to - especially when your contemporaries in their 20s and 30s start having babies. Jo found some comfort in the idea that if she wanted a baby, she might be able to opt for a donor egg. This helped her come to terms with her condition, and made it easier for her to explain to friends what had happened. Initially she had been unable to do so.
 Literature on premature menopause is limited, and focuses more on physical problems than emotional ones. Perhaps this is further evidence of our reluctance to come to terms with the problems of ageing - even a kind of premature ageing which can affect women as young as 18. Small wonder then that treatment is not as sensitive as it might be. Jo's menopause clinic was in the same building and on the same day as the ante-natal clinic. She found herself sitting between middle-aged menopausal women and pregnant teenage mothers. What could hurt more at a time when both your youth and fertility are taken away?
 Moreover, she was told that her emotional state was due to her hormone imbalance - which she found crushing at a time when she was in most need of sensitive support. Redressing the hormonal imbalance was clearly essential, but to Jo only addressed half the problem.
 In fairness, the menopause is no longer the taboo topic it once was. Women are being encouraged to voice their concerns and fears and more effective treatments are available. Unfortunately, there are not many NHS menopause clinics and local support groups are targeted at older women. This leaves women like Jo feeling isolated and helpless. Self-help can have an emotional healing power which is often elusive in even the best clinics. Today she feels back in control of her life, but it has taken a long time.
 The National Osteoporosis Society is at PO Box 10, Radstock, Bath BA3 3YB.

LOAD-DATE: June 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



174 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 29, 1993

LAW: WRIT LARGE

BYLINE: MARCEL BERLINS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 497 words

 
 LEONARD WOODLEY QC is a Bencher of the Inner Temple, which means he is part of the ruling elite of that Inn. The other day, he drove into the Inn and was was about to park in the space reserved for Benchers when an elderly man emerged and courteously asked Woodley to park elsewhere, that space being reserved for Benchers alone. Woodley had other, tragic, things on his mind - he was on his way to his son's funeral, and was leaving the car at the Inn for convenience - and chose not to make a fuss. 
 To the surprise of the parking attendant he moved his car elsewhere; the attendant explained to the elderly gent that Woodley was indeed a Bencher. He expressed some surprise. After all, why should Lord Bridge, the eminent recently retired law lord, recognise the only black Bencher of his own Inn?
 IF BARRISTERS' chambers were people, I have often thought, many of them would be locked up in an emporium for the sanity-challenged, on the grounds of being several wigs short of a judges' convention. Take for instance, Gray's Inn Chambers, which produces very good work, I'm sure, but appears to need several years of treatment by bearded gentlemen with Viennese accents.
 GIC's condition is that it does not, it seems, appear to realise that one of its members is - how shall I put it - no longer alive. Indeed, he has been dead for around two and a half years. Yet his name still appears as a member of chambers, both on the board at street level and on the fifth floor, where the rooms are. I knew the chap in question, K.S. Nathan QC. He was an excellent lawyer, but so far as I know there is no custom allowing late and great luminaries to remain members of chambers in posthumous perpetuity. Perhaps, you're thinking, the chambers just hasn't had a chance to change the list. Not so. It has had at least two changes of membership or pecking order since Nathan died. Those alterations have been made; but Nathan has stayed. Weird.
 COMPARE and contrast. About two years ago, two important legal committees were set up. One of them, the Royal Commission on Criminal Justice, had the brief of looking into virtually every aspect of our entire criminal justice system, receiving often elaborate written and oral evidence from hundreds of organisations and individuals representing a wide range of interests and expertise, and preparing a full report likely to recommend significant changes to our laws and procedure. The other committee, under Lord Griffiths, was given the narrow and limited task of working out the rules which would apply to solicitors wishing to gain the right to appear in the higher courts. Just about the only evidence it had to study came from two sources, the Law Society and the Bar. The two committees are publishing their reports within a few days of each other.
 I DON'T usually do this, but I will tell you that on the same day a couple of weeks ago, two stipendiary magistrates were appointed. Mr Wallis and Mr Simpson.

LOAD-DATE: June 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



175 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 29, 1993

HOMOSEXUALITY: LOOSENING A LEGAL STRAITJACKET;
Attitudes towards homosexuality have ranged from tolerance to savage punishment, according to the era.

BYLINE: PETER KINGSTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGE; Pg. E10

LENGTH: 882 words

 
 THE news that police are hunting the killer of a number of homosexual men has focused attention on homosexuality. People who are homosexual, or gay, are sexually attracted only or mainly to people of the same sex. In a society which has traditionally been based mainly on marriage between the sexes, homosexuals have often met strong barriers to an open expression of their sexuality.
 These attitudes have often shown themselves as hostility, violence and persecution. Many gay people describe instances of verbal abuse or physical violence. The law also discriminates against homosexuals in a number of significant areas. 
 For instance, consensual sexual contact between two males can be a criminal activity. It is punishable by imprisonment if either is under 21. By contrast, heterosexuals - people attracted to those of the opposite sex - may legally have sex at age 16. There is also a reluctance to accept homosexuality in many official spheres. The army, for instance, can expel homosexual men and women.
 Such officially approved discrimination against homosexuals has a long history in Britain. The Church, government and the courts have long had a negative attitude towards people who have performed sexual acts considered "unnatural" and "morally offensive".
 Some of the modern-day British hostility towards homosexuality is thought to be rooted in Christian teaching. This was in line with older rulings within the Jewish religion. Many Christians interpret a number of Biblical passages as outlawing sexual activity apart from intercourse between men and women in order to produce children.
 In the New Testament, passages from St Paul's letters to branches of the early Christian Church are interpreted as outlawing homosexual sex, whether between men or women.
 In pre-Christian civilisations, attitudes towards "non-procreative" sex - that which does not aim at producing children - ranged from tolerance to savage punishment.
 Ancient Greece is frequently cited as an example of more tolerant attitudes.  Documents and archaeological evidence suggest that, in general, Greek men appreciated both male and female beauty, and apparently combined marriage with physical love for younger men. A passage by the philosopher Plato (429-347BC) implies that there was no disapproval in Athens towards older men who pursued younger men for their looks.
 There was some disapproval, however, for younger men who succumbed to these sexual advances. Sexual conduct in Greece does not seem to have been subject to prohibitions but to codes of good taste.  Acceptance depended on how well sexual passion was controlled, whatever people's age.
 According to some scholars, the Greeks did not approve of sexual acts between mature men because these implied that one partner had to play the woman's role. This association of homosexuality with "feminine" behaviour is still present today.
 Christian attitudes to homosexuality has not been uniform across the world throughout the 2,000 years since Christ. The Lesbian and Gay Christian Movement, which seeks to persuade Christians to re-think their attitudes towards gay people, says that the Church's teaching, that sex was "good" only when used for conceiving child-ren, emerged 500 years after Christ.
 There are accounts of homosexuality between monks and nuns in medieval monasteries and convents. Church courts dealt with offenders but gradually the civil courts took over. Increasingly from the 14th to the 19th centuries, homosexuality was regarded across Europe as a sin and crime contrary to nature. The penalty in many different areas and times was death.
 The first law in Britain aimed at punishing homosexuality was passed by Henry VIII in 1533, directed against certain sexual acts rather than specific people. Execution was one punishment.
 It is only in the last century that people have been identified specifically as homosexuals. The term itself - from the Greek homos, meaning "same", and not from the Latin word homo, meaning "man" - was first recorded in 1892. For centuries beforehand, homosexual acts were legislated against together with other non-procreative sexual acts. This implies that homosexuality was not, until the 19th century, seen as a completely distinct tendency.
 Nevertheless, a distinct homosexual subculture did develop in Britain in the 18th century. Just as many groups today have their own slang words, 18th-century homosexual groups developed slang that outsiders failed to understand. The language reinforced a sense of community and helped protect them from outsiders' interference. People would refer to one another as "mollies" and socialise in "molly houses".
 The death penalty for sodomy was finally abolished in England and Wales in 1861 (28 years later in Scotland). It was replaced by prison with hard labour for between 10 years and life. In 1885 all male homosexual acts, in public and in private, were made illegal. For no clear reason, the law overlooked lesbian sex.
 The total ban on sex between men remained in force until 1967 when the law was relaxed. It now permitted homosexual activity in private between consenting men over the age of 21. Obscenity laws, however, have continued to be used against gay men.

LOAD-DATE: June 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



176 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

June 30, 1993

SQUARING THE CIRCLE OF COMMUNITY CARE;
Most of Europe is opting for care at home on the cheap. How do we measure up?

BYLINE: MIKE GEORGE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 1366 words

 
 THIS might seem the worst of times to press for extra money, as the Government tries to hack back public expenditure, but representatives of nearly 40 charities lobbied Parliament last week to try to get a better deal for Britain's 6 million-plus unpaid carers.
 Only a small minority receive the carer's payment, Invalid Care Allowance, set currently at pounds 33.70 a week, though surveys show nearly a quarter spend upwards of pounds 36 a week on the extra costs of caring for a long-term sick or disabled relative.
 "start optThey have to foot additional bills for all basic necessities but often without the income to do so," Chris Algar of the Carers' National Association explains.
 "end optIf they manage to remain in employment, they are not eligible for any tax relief on the costs of employing someone to provide substitute care, or any other costs associated with their caring situation. This often leads them to give up paid work, yet the benefits system fails to compensate them for doing so." 
 Carers point out that their efforts save the public purse an estimated pounds 16 to pounds 24 billion a year - which would be the equivalent cost of employing staff to care for some three and half million disabled or frail elderly people.
 Meanwhile, like that of many other countries, Britain's population is ageing - the number over retirement age will increase from around 9 million to more than 12 million in the next 30 years. The biggest increase is likely to be among the over-75s.end opt
 Getting older does not automatically mean we become disabled or otherwise dependent, but the vast majority of unpaid carers are supporting people over retirement age. start optOne of the motives for the introduction this year of care in the community was that care at home is usually cheaper than nursing or residential care; but only as long as there are plenty of unpaid carers to do the work. end optAnd there are fears that as the proportion of elderly dependants increases, it may be difficult to persuade enough relatives and friends to take on the taskd opt.
 This has prompted the Government's advisory body, the Social Security Advisory Committee (SSAC), to sponsor research into how other countries compare. The first results have just been published.*
 Seven countries were studied - the UK, Ireland, Finland and Sweden offer payments to carers, Italy France and Germany do not.  But the payments available in the UK are the lowest of the four.
 On the other side of the equation are payments made to disabled people themselves; this is important as the money received by dependants and carers is often pooled. Here, too, the comparison is not favourable - only Ireland offers less than Britain to the disabled. start opt
 But straightforward comparisons like this only tell part of the story. Each country has its own peculiarities and history.end opt
 Ireland has a similar state scheme for carers to Britain, although unlike the British version it is means-tested. There are shortages of carers, and the use of residential care for elderly or disabled people is quite high, so endoptthe Irish government is now considering more targeted payments to encourage people to provide informal care.
 Elsewhere in Europe carers may receive financial assistance from a variety of sources which reflect both social attitudes towards care, and patterns of employment among women, who still make up the vast majority of carers.
 In Germany, there is a constitutional obligation on relatives to undertake care within the family without payment. Only if this is not possible can carers claim through the employment-based health insurance scheme, or means-tested social assistance. Both have strict and complex eligibility criteria, and payments generally go to the disabled person rather than the carer. On the other hand, payments have improved recentlyI'm not sure what this means! which more expensive public services? Am I being stupid?. As in Ireland and the UK, there is a shortage of professional what does he mean by this, properly funded? well-qualifieddomiciliary services.
 In France, extra payments are made to disabled people to help pay for care.  They are worth up to pounds 90 to pounds 110 a week, depending on the age at which a person starts needing help (Austria is about to use a similar system). Unlike many other countries, which are trying to substitute care at home for residential care, the focus of these payments is on delaying entry to residential homes rather than providing an alternative. start optMost publicly provided services are modest, though there is a widespread home help service.end opt In a few areas there are direct payments to relatives who are carers, at a rate of about pounds 23 a week.
 Local or regional arrangements are also important in Italy, where nearly 50 per cent of some local populations will be over 60 within the next 40 years. Those who need assistance can get up to pounds 75 a week through a "companion payment", used to buy in professional care or to pay a relative - but start optthere are big regional variations in both the level of payment and the numbers receiving it.end opt
 Sweden and Finland have growing populations of older people, but both have quite extensive public care services and systems of financial support for families. These are under pressure, however. Some carers are directly employed by municipalities on the same wage rate as home helps ( pounds 82 to pounds 130 a week), although again regional variations are wide.pt
 Governments in all these countries are looking hard at social services spending and, with the possible exception of France, hope to make savings by emphasising domiciliary care. So-called informal carers are a crucial part of this policy, and there are worries that payments may not be generous enough to attract or keep them.
 In practice, however, most carers have taken on the task as a matter of personal responsibility what does this mean?????(this is said to be true of four out of five carers in Britain).
 So the real political issue hinges more on social and economic justice. Should "informal" carers be expected to suffer loss of earned income, promotion prospects and pension entitlements to carry out otherwise expensive social welfare tasks? If so, what is a "fair" financial settlement?
 These are deep and troubled waters, not smoothed by the beginnings of "volunteer" schemes (in Britain and elsewhere) with non-relatives paid a notional amount to carry out personal care and household jobs. Once again, recruitment is largely among women who have part-time jobs or no other earned income. For the foreseeable future, few Western governments are likely to match the growing needs of elderly or disabled people with extra professional or fully-paid social services staff.
 The latest research suggests that governments may try to square the circle by fudging the distinction between waged and unwaged carers - creating a "grey" labour market of carers - mainly women on low pay.
 start optIn this and other countries, care services are frequently provided by a mixture of professionals, relatively low-paid care assistants, paid volunteers, and relatives or neighbours who provide assistance, often without payment.
 end optOne important and new factor in charting the future of the "caring business" is the strong possibility that migrants from the old Eastern Bloc countries could end up working in European countries as care assistants.
 Caroline Glendinning, joint author of the new SSAC report, says this is already evident in Germany, where inadequate insurance payments for domestic assistants are encouraging the growth of jobs which are paid at way below normal market rates. Are we seeing the emergence of one underclass to look after another?doesn't this need something to back it up - a very bald statement as it stands
 * Dr Eithne McLaughlin & Caroline Glendinning, Paying for Care: Lessons from Europe, SSAC (HMSO, 1993). Additional material from Payment For Care: cross-national perspectives and feminist dilemmas, Dr C Ungerson, University of Kent; forthcoming.

LOAD-DATE: June 30, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



177 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 1, 1993

NIGHTMARE ON ELM STREET;
Some say it's too powerful others that it's too feeble. But the real problems facing the Serious Fraud Office lie in the criminal justice system and in the City's regulatory culture

BYLINE: ALEX BRUMMER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 1599 words

 
 THREE decades ago, on August 8, 1963, an audacious group of British gangsters etched their names into folklore when they stole pounds 2.5 million - the equivalent of pounds 25 million at today's prices - from the Glasgow-London mail train and received 30-year jail sentences for their trouble. But by the standards of the late 20th century, when the most daring crimes are of a more cerebral kind and the proceeds start in the tens-of millions and can reach the billions, the Great Train Robbery looks modest.
 Clearly, men in grey suits with grand jobs in public companies - from whose ranks Britain's biggest criminals are often drawn today - do not conjure up the Wild West images which endowed the train robbers. Yet the sums looted from company coffers, pension funds and bank accounts in recent years, by executives with all the trappings of power, have been enormous by the standards of regular criminality. Robert Maxwell, arguably the biggest crook ever to sit at the top of a group of public companies, robbed his workers of some pounds 500 millions of their life savings and could still look them in the eye. 
 Asil Nadir, who's case has become a political cause celebre, took investors on an astonishing roller-coaster ride. In a decade at the head of Polly Peck, where the riches were founded in the unglamorous trade of fruit packaging, Nadir took the company's shares from 8p each to pounds 35 pounds at their peak in 1983. In the process he made millionaires of investors who had put just pounds 1,000 into his company. But the growth in the business and the huge profits were a chimera.
 At the last count the administrators, charged with making as much recovery as possible for shareholders and creditors, found that pounds 450 million had gone walkabout through a series of complex offshore banking arrangements with a complexity that made Hampton Court Maze look linear.
 At the Bank of Commerce & Credit International, described by the Governor of the Bank of England, Robin Leigh-Pemberton, as the most fraudulent bank in the history of finance, directors siphoned off an estimated billions of pounds. They left a hole which has been estimated by some experts as being in the region of $ 10 billion. Such a sum would be all but impossible to stash away in a farm house.
 But contemporary fraud is not just about men such as Peter Clowes, now serving a jail term, who made away with almost pounds 100 million of elderly people's money, or the more complex financial shenanigans which earned the Guinness defendants Ernest Saunders, Gerald Ronson and Anthony Parnes a stretch at Ford Open Prison. It is a burgeoning business, which is growing so fast that it is almost impossible for the lumbering criminal justice system to keep up with it.
 New figures produced this week by the management consultants KPMG show that in the first four months of this year alone some pounds 571 million of new financial fraud was reported. This compares with pounds 671 million in the whole of 1992. The new wave of financial fraudsters are not the modest or grubby clerks of the kind portrayed in Arthur Hailey's novels which sold so well in the 1970s. Most of them are right at the very top of their professions - company directors or chief executives - and drawn from the high achievement age group of 41-50 years old. They are the glitzy figures of Oliver Stone's film Wall Street. None of these fraudsters is content with fiddling his expenses.
 Indeed, it was because white-collar crime had become so pervasive and so complex that the 1987 Criminal Justice Act brought into being, for the first time in British law, a unitary body, the Serious Fraud Office, which brings together under one roof powerful investigators who would also act as prosecutors. But the cases, when brought, would continue to be presented to juries in the traditional way. In the collection of evidence the SFO, based in Elm Street, London WC1, was granted extraordinary powers not availiable to any other prosecutors in Britain.  However the SFO has a particularly onerous task: bringing to court fraud cases of once unimaginable complexity.
 Three major criticisms have been levelled against the SFO. The first is the Michael Mates case that the SFO is some sinisiter quasi-judicial body, involved in a series of overlapping conspiracies with other regulators from the Inland Revenue to the Metropolitan Police and the media, which has overturned the innocent-until-proven-guilty traditions of British justice.
 The second criticism, which until Michael Mates's corrective intervention was very popular in the press, is that the SFO, with its huge annual budget of pounds 21 million, is a gold-plated prosecutor which has failed to deliver what was promised.  The critics will cite the acquittal of defendants in later Guinness trials and the failure to arrive at safe verdicts in the Blue Arrow trial (where legal costs rose to pounds 40 million) as evidence that the SFO are a bunch of duffers.
 The third group of critics (which would almost certainly include the Guardian) says that although the concept of the SFO is fine, there is a mismatch between what it is doing, the system of criminal justice in Britain and the whole framework for financial regulation.
 What, then, of Michael Mates's charges? In the main they would appear to be off the wall. Asil Nadir has proved himself a magnificent manipulator of opinion. In the 1980s he manipulated many of the best minds in the City and some in the financial press into belieiving that he had created the most exciting conglomerate of all time when all he had were a few fruit plantations and packing operations. In the 1990s he has had the whole country believing that he has the goods on Tory Party financing: all he appears to have is a cheque stub for pounds 440,000 (not denied by Central Office), an entirely innocent meeting with Kenneth Baker, a chip on his shoulder about how he has been abandoned by the Establishment which once fawned on him, and a knack of spinning the few facts he has to maximum advantage. As Michael Heseltine remarked, if he has the facts he should publish them. Nadir has, by all accounts, taken Mates for the same kind of ride, by putting the most sinister interpretation on routine investigatory events.
 Take his central allegation that somehow the media and the SFO are engaged in duplicity designed to bring down Polly Peck. It does not hold up to even the most minimal scrutiny. The police and press have always worked in tandem. Press silence about vital clues in murder cases such as the Yorkshire Ripper is in effect bought by a trade-off: when the accused is arrested they will be tipped off in time to make the morning editions. Defence lawyers may not like it, but it is the way things are done.
 Similarly, Mates complained of the SFO's practice of seizing every document in sight at Polly Peck's Mayfair HQ, making it impossible to carry on his business. Maybe. But the shares had already collapsed, the administrators had moved in, and the most important of all steps to be taken in fraud cases is to make sure that evidence is not shredded.
 IF MATES is then wrong, are the critics who say the SFO is underpowered correct? Certainly the SFO does have legal rights which are not availaible to other prosecuting authorities. Its accountants and non-police investigators have the right to question suspects without going through the normal process of caution required by the Police & Criminal Evidence Act. This together with its wide-ranging powers to seize documents and evidence without having to make a court appearance, ought (it is argued) to have ensured that when it does go to trial it has all the evidence needed. But even these powers prove useless if the case is badly handled, by making it over complex, and if (as is the case at present) the prosecution is denied access to the defence case.
 These are believed to have been the SFO's main problems at the later Guinness and the Blue Arrow trials. But this is not the totality of the SFO's record. It may have lost the battle for headlines, but the reality is that, under its last director, Barbara Mills, and the incumbent George Staple, it has had a 70 per cent success rate in prosecuting serious fraud. This compares with 50 per cent before its existence.
 The kernel of the debate about fraud and the role of the SFO is one of context and culture. The fundamental mistake made when the SFO was created was that this structured, all-encompassing fraud prosecution agency was grafted on to a half-hearted system of City self-regulation. If that system, operated by the Securities and Investment Board and its offshoots, had been more durable, then Robert Maxwell could have been cut off at the pass when the first pounds 50 was wrongly removed from pension funds. Similarly, if the Bank of England had not relied so heavily on the Governor's eyebrows to be raised as a means of regulation, then BCCI could have been stopped before it became a national bank taking deposits from the public and local authorities.
 In the US, regulatory culture has been part of the national scene since the 1930s when Franklin D Roosevelt created the Securities & Exchange Commission and put a Wall Street fox, the late Ambassador Joseph Kennedy, in charge of policing his fellow speculators.
 The SFO is learning fast. It is the foundations below and reform of the criminal justice system above which could help to make it a more effective policeman of the fastest growing crime in Britain.

LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



178 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 1, 1993

POVERTY TRAP FEAR FOR AGED

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL, MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 516 words

 
 A GROWING number of middle-class people face impoverishment in their old age because of charges for care in the community, doctors warned yesterday.
 Fees for nursing homes, residential homes and respite care were causing distress and anxiety to hundreds of thousands of people who were not entitled to free care, the British Medical Association said.
 People with income or assets above pounds 3,000 get reduced financial support for care home fees and those with income or assets above pounds 8,000 get no help. 
 The BMA's annual conference in Torquay called for increased funding to ensure that community care would work properly. It cond emned local authorities which were demanding that old people sell their houses or property before being admitted to care homes.
 Dr Mac Armstrong, secretary-designate of the BMA, said: "A ghastly middle class poverty trap is now yawning in front of people with relatives who need community care. The worst aspect of this is that this burden is falling on the very people who funded the welfare state throughout their entire working lives.
 "These were the people who backed the welfare state, who believed the welfare state would look after them from the cradle to the grave. Now, when they are least able to support it, they are having their houses and assets and their husbands' pensions sequestered from under them."
 Dr Armstrong, a GP from near Oban, Argyll, added: "It's all very well to tell people when they are 28 or 30 that they must prepare themselves for their needs in old age. But when you tell people throughout their entire working lives that the state will look after them and then throw them on the scrapheap at the end, many of us feel this is beyond the pale."
 Dr Alistair Riddell, chairman of the BMA's community care committee, said although the policy had been in operation for only three months, there were already ominous signs that many people were failing to receive the care they needed.
 Dr Riddell, a GP in Glasgow, said that in his area people who had previously been able to admit relatives for respite care for just pounds 37.50 a week, were now being charged pounds 300 a week.
 The conference also criticised the Government's commitment to achieving the targets in the Health of the Nation white paper, published a year ago, because of a failure to consider the impact of poverty, unemployment and poor housing on health.
 Dr Evan Lloyd, an anaesthetist from Edinburgh, said an insulation scheme for damp, cold houses in the Easterhouse area of Glasgow had dramatically cut hospital admissions and visits to GPs.
 "There is a huge potential to reduce morbidity and mortality. Poor housing, poverty and unemployment must be tackled with vigour and honesty. Everyone knows unemployment, poverty and poor housing have an effect on health except the Government and the moneymen."
 The meeting criticised the Government's Patients' Charter, saying that although doctors supported the rights of patients, it was pointless setting standards if money was not provided to fulfil them.

LOAD-DATE: July 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



179 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 3, 1993

A COUNTRY DIARY

BYLINE: WILLIAM CONDRY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 306 words

 
 MACHYNLLETH: I like to think of the long duration of some of our natural history and antiquarian societies and I enjoy reading the accounts of the field excursions they went on in the days when they had to go either on foot or in horse-drawn wagonettes. And just as we do today they had to fix their meetings months in advance and take a chance with the British weather. I am moved to these thoughts because last Saturday Shropshire came to Wales in the form of that old and honourable society, the Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club which was founded a century ago by an amalgamation of two earlier societies. If our Shropshire visitors had stayed at home on Saturday they would have had a dry day. But they came to Cader Idris and got rained on. They also found themselves wrapped in mountain mist.  All the same everyone kept cheerful and we managed to reach the high rocks where the purple saxifrage grows in abundance along with greenspleenwort, brittle bladder fern, parsley fern, lesser meadow-rue and other mountain plants rare or unknown in Shropshire. One particularly beautiful ledge was yellow with Welsh poppy which, though well known as a garden escape, is not regarded as a native anywhere in Shropshire. It could be said of our group that some members were not in the first flush of youth and it was heartening to see how well these senior citizens coped with the steep and rough mountain trail and then tackled a final scree of boulders to get up to the cliffs. I am glad to think of the many children of today who are being trained in outdoor pursuits and I trust that some of them, when they are in their 80s, will still have the enthusiasm to go botanising on the mountains. I hope too that the Caradoc and Severn Valley Field Club and all the other old naturalist societies will still be going strong.

LOAD-DATE: July 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



180 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 5, 1993

NATIONAL CURRICULUM: FAMILY LITERACY PLAN TO KICK OFF DESPITE LOW FUNDING;
Jim Sweetman reviews a scheme which helps people tackle literacy problems by targeting their families as a whole.

BYLINE: JIM SWEETMAN

SECTION: EDUCATION; Pg. E9

LENGTH: 802 words

 
 THE problem of adult illiteracy resurfaced on the educational agenda this month. The Secretary of State has decided to give pounds 250,000 to support a new family literacy project.
 Announced at the annual conference of the Adult Literacy and Basic Skills Unit (ALBSU), the grant was a disappointment. ALBSU had asked for pounds 730,000 this year and pounds 9 million over the next four years. It means that ALBSU will now be able to run only one or two literacy programmes, rather than the six or seven it had pencilled in. 
 Yet the approach is interesting. Recent ALBSU-sponsored research has confirmed something that most teachers already know from their reading of absence notes and other correspondence with parents. That is, that most children with literacy difficulties who leave school without educational qualifications have a parent or parents with similar problems.
 In fact, around 60 per cent of the survey group revealed this pattern - a high proportion, given the real difficulties faced by adults in owning up to literacy problems and the common, and quite understandable, tendency to avoid confronting them.
 Family literacy projects are new because they target the family rather than individual members. They are reputed to have had considerable success in the United States and their possible advantages are clear. If a family can admit to problems together and tackle them as a group, individual members are more likely to cope with their literacy difficulties successfully.
 There can also be some collaborative learning, with limited teaching resources economically deployed. And, so the theory goes, such learning is likely to be retained and consolidated in the longer term by changed family attitudes.
 The grant, announced by John Patten, should allow ALBSU to set up at least one inner-city programme based on these principles.
 But this is only one facet of ALBSU's work. Funded by the DfE and the Welsh Office Education Department, ALBSU also works closely with the Department of Employment. Drop-out rates on courses remain persistently high, but ALBSU reckons that around 130,000 adults are receiving some help with basic literacy and numeracy at any one time. It estimates that up to 300,000 adults attend some kind of course in a typical year.
 While these numbers are rising, the extent of the underlying problem is hard to gauge. Press claims that six million adults have significant problems, that 42 per cent of 21-year-olds have a literacy level below GCSE and that one third are operating at the literacy and numeracy levels of an average seven-year-old are extrapolated statistics. They are based on some questionable correlations between examination grades and national-curriculum levels.
 The introduction of workplace technology makes new demands on the literacy of employees and is more likely to expose problems than was so in the past. Yet the highest rates of illiteracy in society are still to be found among elderly people and not among the young.
 Many ALBSU courses are organised through adult colleges with shared funding. In general terms, additional ALBSU funding is sufficient to allow most colleges to appoint a dedicated member of staff and to offer some kind of basic skills support for students.
 Other courses are run jointly with employers. They are being urged by trade unions to put literacy and basic skills training on a par with vocational courses, which are - usually - more closely focused on the workplace.
 One such option now under development will give two hours of training a week - one hour allowed by the employer in the working day and the other treated as overtime. There is a range of certification available. ALBSU has worked with City and Guilds on standard assessments of literacy and numeracy - "Word Power" and "Number Power" - which are mapped onto national curriculum and NVQ levels.
 For the DfE, supporting ALBSU family and adult-literacy programmes is part of a policy which embraces reading recovery schemes and national-curriculum testing as other aspects of an attempt to raise national standards in literacy and numeracy.
 Reading Recovery programmes in primary schools are moving up another gear in 1993-94, with almost pounds 1 million to be added to a budget already over pounds 3 million. Eventually, schools with control over their own budgets and some independence over resource allocation might be able to offer family literacy programmes of their own. Or they might introduce a basic skills programme similar to those now being run successfully by colleges.
 Jim Sweetman's new guide to GCSE Examinations in English at Key Stage 4 is available from Courseware Publications, 127 Shrubland Street, Leamington Spa, CV31 2AR, price pounds 12.95 including p&p.

LOAD-DATE: July 6, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



181 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 7, 1993

ITALIAN BUS DEATHS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 36 words

 
 Reuter: At least 15 people were killed, 21 were injured and two were missing after a tour bus carrying Italian old age pensioners careered off a road in the Dolomite mountains yesterday, rescue workers said.

LOAD-DATE: July 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



182 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 8, 1993

PAKISTAN FOOD OFFER TO STOCKPORT NEEDY

BYLINE: TOM SHARRATT

SECTION: HOME; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 325 words

 
 PAKISTANI farmers are offering to airlift free food to pensioners and other needy people in Stockport, Manchester.
 The offer, which is to be considered by councillors tonight, involves flying monthly shipments of fresh fruit and vegetables into Manchester airport for Stockport, which includes some of the wealthiest suburbs to the south of Manchester.
 It is part of a friendship agreement proposed by the district council at Okara, south of Lahore and there will be reciprocal gifts of medical and technological aid. 
 Okra district extends across more than a million acres of mainly agricultural land with a population of 1.4 million in 921 villages.
 The plan is modelled on a twinning scheme set up by Rochdale council five years ago to provide skills and support to the Sahiwal district of Pakistan, next to the Okara district.
 The airlift is being coordinated by Mohammed Arif, who lives in Stockport. He says the idea comes from the chief officer and two leading members of Okara council.
 He said: "They have advised me that, Okara being an agricultural district, the people of Okara would like to ship their local farm produce, such as seasonal vegetables and fresh fruit, free of charge to the council of Stockport for onward free distribution to senior citizens, pensioners, and other hard-up people on a regular monthly basis."
 Mr Arif says a former council chairman has offered a jumbo load of fresh vegetables from his own farm as a gift to the people of Stockport next Christmas.
 Mr Arif is to make arrangements for the airlift direct from Islamabad to Manchester. Both British Airways and Pakistan International Airlines are to be invited to take part.
 The mayor of Stockport, Philip Harrison, said the offer was very kind.  "However, I think there are parts of the world far more in need of food aid than this area and the suggestion, although very generous, will probably not be taken up."

LOAD-DATE: July 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



183 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 8, 1993

CARD GIVES PATIENT A SAY IN TREATMENT

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 428 words

 
 GAY, a 45-year-old London woman who suffers manic depression, carries a crisis card. Should she suddenly fall ill, she knows it should guarantee her treatment of the kind she wants in conditions of her choice.
 Crisis cards, like organ donor cards, are designed to be carried voluntarily by people with mental illness so that they both get treatment when they need it - even though they may not then be in a state to recognise the need - and exercise a say in what kind of treatment it is. 
 Distribution of the cards has so far been patchy and based on local initiatives. But yesterday's enthusiastic endorsement from the Commons health committee, and the committee's suggestion that the cards be given legal standing, looks likely to change that.
 The cards vary in content, but Gay's gives her name and address and states: "If I appear to anybody to be experiencing 'mental health' difficulties that require decisions to be taken either against my wishes or in the absence of my agreement, then I require the following actions to be taken . . . "
 Her card names a friend to be contacted. It also stipulates that her mother, with whom there have been previous problems, should not be told. It specifies that any medication should be in the form of Largactil, a tranquiliser which Gay is used to, rather than haloperidol, which gives her adverse side-effects.
 "When I get really down, what I want most is for someone to play rock music and put their arms around me and say I'm a nice person - and my nominee knows that," said Gay, who works for a charity.
 Survivors Speak Out, a group representing people who have had psychiatric care, has recently decided to launch crisis cards nationally. David Keay, its chairman, said it would be infinitely preferable to a supervision order if patients leaving hospital were required to carry a card.
 "The [card] acknowledges on the part of the professionals that the user has a right to be respected as an individual and is very much part of the solution, not only the problem," Mr Keay said.
 - A mental health review tribunal's release of a disturbed woman into the community, which led to the death of an elderly woman neighbour in a fire, was "irresponsibility that I find breathtaking", a High Court judge said yesterday.
 Paula Bailey, aged 60, left Rampton special hospital in July 1990. In May 1992 she set fire to her semi-sheltered housing in Mansfield, Nottinghamshire. She was convicted in May of manslaughter and arson and yesterday jailed for life by Mr Justice Rougier.

LOAD-DATE: July 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



184 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 8, 1993

FUGITIVEW PENSIONERS ELUDE FRAUD INQUIRY DETECTIVES

BYLINE: JOHN MULLIN

SECTION: HOME; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 385 words

 
 Innocent dupes or Thelma and Louise with wrinkles?  A latter day tale of outlaws. To add spice, the fugitives are pensioners.  Winnie Bristow, aged 75, and her sister, Joan Payne, 73, left the home they had lived in since 1936 in East Grinstead, Sussex, 15 months ago. 
 According to neighbours, the sisters believed they were only going for three days to Milford on Sea in Dorset. They believe they were effectively kidnapped by their nephew, John Horrod, 50, and his girlfriend, Angela Dodge, 51. Both are suspected fraudsters. Accompanying the group was Ms Dodge's 11-year-old daughter, Katie.
 The sisters had worked for charity, and were popular with the people sharing their street. But they started acting strangely after the nephew moved in three years ago. There are even allegations of them being drugged. The sisters had always been careful with money. They begtan borrowing large sums.
 Soon after they left, the home they had lived in 57 years was repossessed. And then there followed a trail of unpaid hotel bills and other fraud across England, Scotland and Wales. About pounds 10,000 was involved, say police.
 There was something of a spat between the Irish police and their counterparts in Hampshire yesterday. It transpired this week the old women, accompanied by Ms Dodge and her daughter, had stayed the last seven months in a bungalow near Swinford, County Mayo. Mr Horrod was nowhere to be found.
 There had been reports of them in Majorca, on the Italian Riviera, and even in Canda. Irish police interviewed them, and then let them go. Pleased the two women had been sighted safe and well, Hampshire police were less enamoured with their Irish counterparts decision to release them.
 Detective Constable Barry Woodley of New Milton Police in Hampshire, said: "We thought we had them but the Irish police said they couldn't hold them. They just loaded up the old girls and they were off again into the wide blue yonder. They're living the life of Riley. If you didn't laugh, you'd have to cry." But he was pleased the old women appeared to be in good health.
 Now the Daily Mail has stepped into the breach. It is offering pounds 2,000 for any sighting of the women. The only stipulation: the cash has to be spent taking an elderly relative on holiday.

LOAD-DATE: July 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



185 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 9, 1993

SWORDS INTO SOCIAL WORKS;
The Red Army is marching home, to capitalism, reports Philip Cohen

BYLINE: PHILIP COHEN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 902 words

 
 SERGEI Stepanovich Konin is described on his business card as the president of an "inter-regional, scientific industrial company", but his powerful outdoor looks suggest a previous, more open-air existence.
 Konin, aged 35, used to be a major in the Red Army. Now, he is Russia's equivalent of a yuppie capitalist - one of thousands of former soldiers blazing a new trail since the free market became legitimate.
 Konin served 15 years in Siberia before retiring in 1989 to his home in Kovrov, east of Moscow. Facing unemployment, he and two fellow officers set up a private company, PIC - Production, Information and Commerce. "At the time, business was the most interesting thing going and we wanted to be the first entrepreneurs in Russia," he says. 
 They raised loans from banks to start a business making overalls and uniforms.  As this took off, they set up other firms in construction, transport and banking. They employ mostly other ex-army officers. Of 60 managers, 49 are from the military and Konin intends to take on 150 more.
 These are the lucky ones. The Russian ministry of defence estimates that 270,000 officers are being made redundant this year and next. A further 200,000 have been discharged in the past two years. The plan to cut the armed forces to 1.5 million by 1995 creates the potential for huge social problems.
 Unemployment appears to be rising as fast as inflation. At the beginning of the year, a million people in Russia alone were registered as available for work. But the soldiers who return to civilian life find that although the price of consumer goods has risen more than a 100 times since January 1991, average wages have only increased by about half. As a result, 80 per cent of people are thought to be living below the poverty line.
 "These men are a high risk category for depression, alcoholism and suicide problems, which, unfortunately, are increasing for all Russians during these chaotic times," says Dr Antonina Dashkina, senior lecturer at the Moscow State Pedagogical University.
 A shortage of housing is one of the main problems. Many former soldiers are thought to be homeless and living in hostels, small hotels or with friends.
 President Yeltsin and his officials seem to be aware of the dangers presented by a surplus pool of unhappy ex-officers, even if the army has stayed out of the current political turmoil in Russia. They have provided financial help to new businesses and established retraining centres, where officers can learn practical skills to make them employable. The ministry of social protection provides start-up support for managers like Konin. In return, the businesses agree to give some of the profits to those in need.
 "We understand that a lot of people need social protection. These are lonely old people, disabled people and children without parents. At first, we chose some families and helped by giving money to them and their children, and their schools.  Now, we have set up an investment fund for social welfare and half our profits go into the fund for charity and welfare," says Konin.
 The All-Russian Retraining Centre for Discharged Military Officers, with offices in Moscow and several other cities, is helping some 36,000 officers adjust to civilian life. It passes on skills like marketing, accountancy and farming. Dr Dashkina is training 1,800 of the former soldiers in social work. Many Russians see this as providing jobs and establishing a system to provide social services, which do not exist at present.
 Dr Dashkina's project has received a pounds 40,000 facilities grant from the European Commission, pounds 5,400 from the British Council and pounds 16,000 from the charitable Westminster Foundation for Democracy, set up last year by Royal Prerogative.
 Strange as it may seem to be transforming soldiers into social workers, many Russians believe the officers are equipped for the job since they all have a background in psychology, as well as relevant skills like discipline, punctuality and maturity.
 ALEXANDER Vasilishin, aged 33, taught himself accountancy during his 12 years in the army. After he was discharged, he joined forces with Konin and tried to drum up loans from state banks, but he found that private enterprise was not popular then. So, he did the next best thing and set up his own bank.
 "Our bank in Kovrov attracted resources mainly from other private businesses.  When we started last July, we had only 5 million roubles (about pounds 4,000). In three months, we had 150 million roubles, and now we have 500 million. We have taken over some smaller banks," says Vasilishin. "The bank provides loans for their own corporation, the PIC, a plant producing excavators, textile factories and light industry. Now, we are setting up other branches in Vladimir, Ivanovo and in Moscow."
 As Yeltsin hesitates over how far to go down the free market road, these new capitalists are forging their own version of the mixed economy. They want to make money, but they also have a social conscience. It is a unique experiment in a post-Soviet system riven by economic turmoil and political strife.
 Konin says he left the army against the wishes of his parents, but he knows he is doing the right thing. Asked if his two sons might join up, he does not hesitate: "No, they will be in business and help people who cannot help themselves."

LOAD-DATE: July 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



186 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 10, 1993

DIARY: GRASS ROOTS ARE GREENER

BYLINE: DAVID BELLAMY

SECTION: WEEK-END; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 970 words

 
 Monday
 Here goes: 7am train from Darlington. Now I've got my senior citizen's rail pass it makes it easier to travel the environmentally-friendly way. The only problem is that I can no longer travel Silver Standard, so I have to buy my own cup of coffee. And I need it. Twenty six weekend faxes still to deal with en route, and I manage, despite the fact that the train gets in 12 minutes early.
 Tube crowded, but I make it to the Greenhouse Awards in time for the pre-lunch photocalls. Chris Smith, Peter Ainsworth, Cynog Dafias, Lord Norrie, Ken Collins, all good green MPs there to get their certificates and oak trees from Green Magazine.  The only no-show was the Minister of Transport. Well, he did get the booby prize. 
 A dash to the Conservation Foundation to do the day's London post, then a minicab ride to remember. Trevor from St Lucia turned out to be a fan, so he said he'd take me to Sutton by the green route - and he did, complete with running commentary about the trees, parks and commons - ready for the launch of the Ecology Unit's latest publication about Green London.
 Amazing, my old stamping ground still overflowing with wild flowers and informal greenpeace. The only trouble is that all my favourite courting spots are now nature reserves.
 Tuesday
 Overnight in Chiswick before an early start for Belfast on the shuttle to open a new laboratory at the Questor Centre in Queens University. Exciting new automatic gear from Fisons at the nerve centre of environmental monitoring in Ulster, with satellite links to the US and Russia. Real space age stuff.
 Back to London to make an appearance at the birthday party of my elder son Rufus. Warm evening; Chinatown suffused with the aroma of my favourite fruit, the durian. Great party; well worth being landed with the bill. And he did pay for the taxi back to Chiswick.
 Wednesday
 Car booked for 9am; good news, a lie-in. But, no, the phone went, demanding an early trip back into Soho for a down-the-line recording to Adelaide about their fantastic zoo. Digital recording by satellite is pretty fantastic, too.
 On to Maidenhead to take a party of schoolchildren around the Braywick Nature Reserve. Meeting with the mayor, Seiko (sponsors of the reserve) and old school buddy Jammy (now Councillor Jamieson). Jammy and I used to collect aeroplane numbers together at Heathrow when it only had one terminal.
 Long cross-country drive to Lincoln. I hoped to get some sleep, but the driver originated from Kashmir, so we reminisced all the way. Dinner with the Lincoln & Lindum Rotarians to meet the winners of - and propose the toast for - their Environmental Awards. What better place, for of all our cathedral cities they have really got their act of conservation and heritage together; a role-model for protection, presentation and promotion. What an evening, complete with the Lord Lieutenant - and they made me an honorary member, too.
 Neil Smith, who does his best to organise my life, picked me up at 11.15pm for the long drive home to the north-east. Sausage sandwiches at 2am on the A1M/M62 interchange is now almost a ritual. Came up to their usual standard.
 Thursday
 At home all day, so I indulged myself by taking Theo, my grandson, to nursery school. Then a long day on the phone and fax, plus interviews and photocalls to help launch my new BBC book and television series about herbal medicine, Blooming Bellamy.  The sun shone and the garden looked great, but the pile of letters that remained looked daunting.
 Friday
 London-bound again. Good old BR: the train was seven minutes early so I got to the Youth Clubs UK headquarters in good time to judge the Craghoppers, Youth Action for the Earth Awards. Fine crop of projects, each one a window on the world of grassroots action for the environment. I reckon that each year at least 10 million work days are given by people - free, gratis and for the love of it - to help look after their own patch.
 To the Foundation to work on the London Initiative, which plans to bring Academician Yablakov (who also won an award on Monday) and other key Russians to London for an environmental summit later this year. Farewell party for Clare, one of our willing workers, who's off to help manage a game reserve in Kenya. Then back to Sutton to open a wildlife garden at Manor High, my old school (why weren't headmasters like that when I was at school?), en route for Heathrow and the late plane to Belfast.
 Saturday
 Party in full swing at the hotel near the airport, which meant a short night's sleep, for the BBC car arrived at 6.30 am to whisk me off to the Cuilcagh Mountains in County Fermanagh. Although the film I was making was about how to conserve the dwindling peatland resource, part of it was made underground in the very important Marble Arch Caves. Stripping one asset (the peat) from off the mountains affects the chemistry of the whole landscape, and that includes the show caves underneath.
 Northern Ireland is a very wonderful place, still as green as can be. Long may its peat bogs, lakes, mountains and tourist potential prosper.
 Back to Heathrow, then home at last, with a welcome from Rosemary, Dogby, all seven cats and nine ducks, all the other pets, and 67 assorted faxes and letters. Oh well, it's Sunday tomorrow.
 "David. Phone. It's Nicholas Partridge from Perth. Something about the Men of the Trees and Rocky Wrigglers."
 The diary was there, so I took a quick look. Paignton, House of Commons (I had better avoid the Minister), filming in the Peak District National Park, gliding and caving sequences, climbing with Ken Fawcett. I'd better get some sleep.  G
 David Bellamy is a botanist. His new television series, Blooming Bellamy, begins on BBC1 on Friday, July 16.

LOAD-DATE: July 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



187 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 10, 1993

WOMAN WHO KILLED AUNT JAILED FOR LIFE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 322 words

 
 A WIDOW was jailed for life yesterday after being convicted of murdering her husband's elderly aunt so she could inherit her money.
 Hove crown court had been told that Sheila Bowler, aged 62, a music teacher, pushed Florence Jackson, aged 89, into the river Brede in East Sussex because her nursing home fees of more than pounds 1,000 a month were eating into her inheritance.
 Detectives who investigated the case said Mrs Bowler, a mother of two, from Rye, East Sussex, had carefully planned the murder. 
 Mrs Bowler gasped as she heard the jury foreman announce its 11-1 majority verdict.
 The court was told that on the evening of the murder Mrs Bowler collected Mrs Jackson from the nursing home at Winchelsea, East Sussex, for a home visit, but instead drove around until it was dark.
 She then took Mrs Jackson, who could not walk unaided and was afraid of the dark, to the river and pushed her in.
 She claimed later that her car had a puncture and Mrs Jackson was abducted after she had left her alone to go for help.
 Det Supt Brian Foster, who led the murder investigation, said: "Elderly people are entitled to end their days in some dignity, not to be thrown into a river for a small amount of money."
 The prosecution claimed Mrs Bowler had been spurred on to commit the murder by the "age-old motives of greed and money".
 When her husband Robert died in January 1992 she found herself with full responsibility for the care of his aunt. A few months later she was admitted to Greyfriars nursing home in Winchelsea, Sussex, where the fees were pounds 252 a week.
 Mrs Bowler decided on murder when she saw that the fees would quickly erode her inheritance, a small flat in Rye, Sussex, worth pounds 35,000.
 The court heard that Mrs Bowler made pounds 6,000 a year from her private tuition, supplemented by her late husband's pounds 8,000 a year pension from the Post Office.

LOAD-DATE: July 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



188 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 12, 1993

THEATRE: THE TERRIBLE VOICE OF SATAN;
Royal Court Upstairs

BYLINE: LYN GARDNER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 243 words

 
 "I STRAP myself to the mast of my pen while the waves of my unconscious rise above me," declares Tom Doheny. So it is with the author Gregory Motton, whose language sings with the poetry of unfulfilled love, abandoned souls and lost dreams. This is a far cry from the lumpen dialogue of Motton's most recent play A Message For The Broken-Hearted, but then this is a more fantastical creation altogether, part folk tale, part parable, part web of magic, washed over by the constant roar of the sea.
 "If you want to know a people's god, look at their devil," advises the man in the urinal to introduce the tale of Tom Doheny. Tom is an Irish Everyman or Peer Gynt figure, first seen trundling his elderly parents across the distant dunes, last glimpsed applauding his lost wife's conjuring tricks, a woman who has brought both pain and magic into his life. In between, he attends his drowned parents' funeral, gets involved with the IRA, travels beneath the ocean, drinks all the sea and spends a considerable amount of time discoursing with the "dry man" who may, or may not, be his elder or dead self.
 As with several of Motton's previous plays I have to confess myself baffled as to what it is he is trying to say, but here at least he says it beautifully with vibrant language and vivid theatrical pictures. James MacDonald's witty production and Bunny Christie's brilliantly simple design gives the play's vivid imagination full rein.

LOAD-DATE: July 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



189 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 12, 1993

MAJOR FACING TWO WEEKS OF AWKWARD VOTES;
PM may spend recess under threat of autumn leadership challenge, writes Patrick Wintour

BYLINE: PATRICK WINTOUR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 739 words

 
 JOHN MAJOR faces a compression of awkward votes in the next two weeks which could see him enter the political asylum of the parliamentary summer recess with talk still rife of an autumn challenge to his leadership.
 The timetable for the rest of July, traditionally the month for fractious rows between governments and their backbenchers, suggests there will be little room for the whips to relax. The opinion polls put the Tories in third place for the first time since 1986, and his own satisfaction rating at 19 per cent, the lowest for a prime minister since polling began.
 July 13 Labour will seek, but probably fail, to stoke a government backbench rebellion over plans to impose VAT on fuel when the Finance Bill returns to the Commons for its report stage. The shadow chief secretary, Harriet Harman, yesterday released a survey showing Conservative councillors have, in town hall votes, been protesting against the impact on the elderly and the poor of the VAT charges. A total of 70,000 anti-VAT signatures will be presented to No 10. 
 Ms Harman claimed Tory councillors had been voting with opposition parties in Sandwell, Bath, Glasgow, Powys, Bedfordshire, Devon, Dover, Darlington, Solihull and Haringey, north London. At least two Tory backbenchers are expected to rebel.
 July 14 Lord Tebbit and Lady Thatcher will return to the Lords to try to persuade peers to vote for a referendum on Maastricht at the third and final day of the bill's report stage.
 The pro-referendum peers, headed by Lord Pearson, Lord Tonypandy and Lord Stoddart, have long seen the referendum vote as the best chance of swelling the sceptic ranks with senior constitutional figures who believe the issue is too important to be left to Parliament.
 Lord Pearson said yesterday: "Victory is not out of shot. It's entirely a question of whether people come to vote with their minds open. We have got within 75 votes of the Government in committee stage, and 15 of those will support us on the referendum.
 "All we need is about 10 per cent of the backwoodsmen to turn up. It is not beyond question."
 Lady Thatcher said she would speak in the debate, insisting her vote would not be an attack on the Prime Minister. "It will be a furtherance of what I have believed in for a very long time."
 July 15 The Lords is to debate a motion from Lord Tordoff, the Liberal peer, stating the rail privatisation bill is procedurally faulty and must be recast. His motion follows a Lords select committee report criticising the Government for not allowing a proper debate on BR pensions, post-privatisation.
 Peers will also vote on whether the bill is a hybrid, that it includes matters of public policy - privatisation - alongside issues of private interest - the future of BR employees' pensions.
 Labour's transport spokesman, Brian Wilson, said the issue would also have to be examined by the Speaker, Betty Boothroyd, when the bill returns to the Commons. "Given the mistakes the Government has made over this bill, it is quite possible they have made the biggest of all and it is a hybrid", he said.
 July 22 John Major will give a difficult end-of-term address to the backbench 1922 Committee, calling for party unity.
 July 26 Peers and MPs will simultaneously debate a motion on Britain's Social Chapter opt- out from the Maastricht Treaty.  The Government cannot transfer powers granted under the Maastricht Bill to Brussels until after the debate.
 The days before the vote will see a game of brinkmanship between the Tory sceptics and the Government when Mr Major, for tactical reasons, may suggest he will have to accept the Social Chapter as the price for the passage of the bill.
 He knows the Tory sceptics will only vote for the Social Chapter if they believe that by doing so Mr Major will not accept it, and will instead abandon Maastricht altogether.
 The precise terms of the Government motion, and Labour amendment, have not been tabled, and many of the influential elder statesmen within the Euro-sceptic group will not make up their minds until they have seen them. The Tory sceptic group, containing a hard core of 30 MPs, is known to be divided, but in theory has the ability to defeat the Government, particularly if the nine Ulster Unionist MPs vote against.
 July 30 The result of the Christchurch byelection is expected, with Tory whips already braced for defeat.

LOAD-DATE: July 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



190 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 12, 1993

A COUNTRY DIARY

BYLINE: A. HARRY GRIFFIN.

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 395 words

 
 THE HIGHLANDS: Roadside banks of flaming gorse lighted much of our way up into the Highlands and, with the blue hills rising ahead, assured us we were really back in Scotland again - my annual retreat for nearly 60 years. One reason for this visit was to introduce a companion to Ben Nevis, the highest mountain in the British Isles but little more than a long and tiresome slog by the tourist route. We were an unlikely pair - an octogenarian geriatric and a great grandmother with limited mountain experience - but we made it on a bad day of thick cloud and driving rain with about five feet of visibility on the summit. In younger days I rarely used the tourist route which is now even more stony and unpleasant than I remembered so this will be my last ascent of the Ben. Other days were rather more scenically rewarding although less meritorious - an ascent of Aonach Mor, but half of it by gondola, and ascents of Cairngorm and Cairn Lochan, with considerable assistance from chair lifts. From these summits, all around 4,000 feet, views over much of Scotland were enjoyed but we had no time to collect Benn Macdui, the second highest mountain in Britain, having wasted most of the day waiting for the clouds to lift. Merely motoring holidaymakers probably found the weather, day after day, delightful but, with the highest tops covered in cloud for much of the time, we felt ourselves restricted and were even reduced to looking at ospreys from the Loch Garten hide or trying out the whisky at Tomintoul, the highest village in the Highlands. It was delightful crunching through summer snow again and identifying favourite hills of 50 years ago but next time we will avoid the popular places. We must have encountered, dimly seen in the mist, at least a hundred people on Ben Nevis, despite the poor conditions and the chair-lifts were busily rattling away all day in the Cairngorms. One elderly retired gentleman, met during our descent of the Ben, told me he believed, and hoped, he had been the oldest person on the summit that day. He had been deceived by the woolly "Compo" tea-cosy covering my balding pate and I felt a little naughty telling him I had beaten him by 17 years. Aviemore, where I had spent my first honeymoon 56 years ago, has certainly changed in the intervening years but, even here, the recession seemed to be still biting.

LOAD-DATE: July 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



191 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 14, 1993

CHARITIES: DISABLING THE HELPERS;
The clampdown on invalidity benefit is threatening the vital work being done by disabled volunteers

BYLINE: LINDA SHEERAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 1064 words

 
 SANDRA and Ian Evans grasped the chance to help others. She was disabled; he was a diabetic and unemployed. They used to sit around the house feeling bored and useless. Then, about a year ago, they discovered voluntary work.
 Suddenly they had a new purpose in their lives and for 12 months they did everything from changing a light-bulb to organising the rescue of snow-bound pensioners in the remote corner of north-west Scotland where they live. Once, the husband-and-wife team arranged a housing transfer for an elderly woman and her daughter harassed by drug addicts. More often, they would drop by for a chat with the housebound. 
 Last month, however, the Evanses, who have a 13-year-old son, gave up their community work for the charity Arthritis Care because of fears that Sandra would lose her pounds 56-a-week invalidity benefit. They felt they had no alternative after hearing about an unofficial crackdown on disabled volunteers. Sandra, a polio victim and herself an arthritis sufferer, says bleakly: "If invalidity benefit was taken away, it would break us up as a family. We would never be able to manage. Now we are back in the house, mentally stagnating, getting under one another's feet and of no use to anybody."
 Sandra (whose name, and her husband's, have been changed here) is only one of a growing number of people on IVB who have felt obliged to give up unpaid work, some after many years of service, after learning that claimants are being told that if they are fit enough to volunteer, they are fit enough to take up paid jobs. The development has thrown charities and disability and voluntary groups into turmoil. Long-established members are resigning and branches face extinction.
 Organisers are angry and bewildered that benefit offices should want to penalise charitable workers at the very time the Government has been emphasising the importance of the voluntary sector. Many believe the timing also threatens to undermind the policy of care in the community. Volunteers who offer irreplaceable counselling and support are now said to be working in a climate of fear.
 The problem is particularly acute because of the growing reliance of charities on the unpaid work and leading roles being taken by the very people they were set up to help. It has also created a paradox: at the same time as the Government is pushing for a greater say for disabled people and for self-advocacy, action is being taken which deters them from speaking out and helping themselves and others. Ruth Horton, of the Volunteer Centre UK, which represents voluntary workers, says: "The situation is crazy. Excluding people from the opportunity is contrary to the message from the Prime Minister's own office."
 Over the past few months, growing numbers of volunteers on IVB have been recalled for tough new medical assessments and warned they risk losing their payments, according to campaign groups. In Kent, Peggy Pryer, a 55-year-old wheelchair user, received a letter from social security staff saying she was fit for work.  Officials told her that if she was capable of going to meetings of the local community health council and the charity Self Help In Pain, then she was able to work.
 Publicity surrounding this case has sent alarm bells ringing across the country. In Colwyn Bay, North Wales, an entire branch of Arthritis Care resigned. Members feared they would be called in by social security staff following media coverage of the branch, newly set up.
 Dial UK, a national network of advice shops run by disabled people for disabled people, faces mass resignations that jeopardise its future. Dot McGahan, the network's director, says losing just a few volunteers would be disastrous.
 Calls have also been flooding into the head offices of the National Association of Citizen's Advice Bureaux and the National Association of Volunteer Bureaux from local managers in areas including York, Surrey, Manchester and the West Midlands. They have all had stories of volunteers who have lost their benefit or are resigning because they feel under threat. Peter Adeane, policy officer of Nacab, which boasts 14,000 volunteers nationwide, found a stack of letters on his desk on Monday. "One was from a volunteer whose benefit was suspended by social security staff after they received an anonymous tip-off that she was working. They didn't even question her first. This caused a lot of grief and it was two weeks before the benefit was reinstated."
 Eileen Wimbery, vice-chairwoman of the NAVB, says she has seen a "tremendous" increase in letters from voluntary organisations complaining of members' resignations. She fears the very future of some groups is at risk. "I feel very pessimistic. Something will have to be done, otherwise the whole structure of user and self-help groups will collapse - particularly with the added pressure of cuts in the health service."
 The Department of Social Security claims there has been no clampdown on volunteers, but admits there has been a tightening of administrative and medical procedures. People who fail to turn up to IVB medical examinations now risk losing their entitlement to the benefit. However, requests for explanations from voluntary groups have so far been ignored by social security ministers who have targeted IVB in their plans to curb the spiralling, pounds 80 billion social security budget.
 Groups most affected are this week laying plans for a mass lobby of MPs and copies of typical members' resignation letters are being sent to Peter Lilley, Social Security Secretary, with demands for assurances that volunteers will not lose their benefit entitlement. However, few believe he will provide such reassurance before the December budget and while the whole future of IVB is under review.
 Richard Gutch, chief executive of Arthritis Care, which has 70,000 members and 5,000 active volunteers, says: "It is an appalling situation. These people each contribute something to the community and it builds up to a huge amount. We would like to see Arthritis Care controlled by people with arthritis - but that kind of movement is going to be severely limited if they are scared to come forward."
 For Sandra Evans, the issue is more straightforward. She says: "All I wanted to do was help others: giving up has left a void in my life - it all seems so unfair."

LOAD-DATE: July 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



192 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 15, 1993

MUSLIMS REEL BEFORE SERB-CROAT PURGES;
New epidemic of 'ethnic cleansing' sweeps Bosnia

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR EAST EUROPE EDITOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 606 words

 
 THOUSANDS of terrified Muslims were fleeing from Serb forces or were being driven from their homes by Croats in a fresh epidemic of "ethnic cleansing" in Bosnia yesterday, United Nations sources said.
 And in Croatia, rebel Serbs and Croats stepped up fighting yesterday. A senior UN official warned full-scale war in Croatia could resume. Serbs shelled the Croatian town of Karlovac and Croatian forces bombarded the Serb-held Krajina region on the Dalmatian coast. 
 As the Bosnian leadership in Sarajevo agonised over the Serb-Croat partition plan for their country, fierce Croat-Muslim battles raged around the vital south-western city of Mostar. The Croats were rounding up thousands of Muslims at gunpoint and penning them into a ghetto on the east bank of the River Neretva that dissects the town, the sources said.
 "They will allow no relief workers or UN troops in the city so they can carry out their ethnic cleansing with impunity," a UN source said.
 Barry Frewer, the UN spokesman in Sarajevo, said the Bosnian Croats fighting around Mostar were being reinforced by troops from Split in Croatia proper. He said it was "very likely" that these included Croatian army units.
 The Foreign Secretary, Douglas Hurd, said in parliament it was time for the European Community to consider extending the sanctions on Serbia to Croatia. On Tuesday, the German foreign minister, Klaus Kinkel, rejected calls for sanctions against Croatia.
 UN sources said Croatian forces were evicting Muslim women, children and elderly people from their homes on the west bank of the Neretva and forcing them across the river.
 "Local Croats are telling us that gunmen go door-to-door at night, looting and robbing, terrorising the Muslims from their homes and forcing them over the bridge by shooting over their heads," said a UN official.
 At least 30,000 Muslims, half of them refugees, are penned into the ghetto, which the Croats are denying food aid. There is no electricity and the two water taps are both under Croat sniper fire.
 Under the Serb-Croat scheme to carve Bosnia into three ethnic mini-states, Mostar is to be the capital of the Croatian statelet. Before the war, Muslims slightly outnumbered Croats in its population of 120,000.
 Elsewhere in the region, at Tomislavgrad and Capljina, most Muslim shops have been blown up and hundreds of Muslim men have been arrested, British army sources said. The Croats are holding up to 6,000 men and some women at a helidrome outside Mostar, the UN said. Other prisoners are crammed into a nearby school.
 Last night a Bosnian Croat spokesman confirmed that 3,000 Muslim men had been detained in Mostar. He made it plain they would be held until the war was over, but denied that women and children were being evicted from their homes.
 Last week, the local Bosnian Croat authorities told the UN and international relief organisations that they would be shot if they tried to enter the city. Since then, the "ethnic cleansing" has moved into top gear, while the political leadership has claimed an "all-out offensive" by the Muslims in the area, the UN sources say.
 The Croats have allowed no food aid into Mostar for almost a month. They have told the International Red Cross there is no need for its officials to visit the detainees because they are not prisoners of war.
 Commander Frewer said 2,000 Muslims were en route to the central town of Travnik after being purged by the Serbs in northern Bosnia. There were unconfirmed reports of 2,000 Muslim fighters being held by the Serbs around the central town of Maglaj, he added.

LOAD-DATE: July 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



193 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 16, 1993

CHRISTCHURCH VOTERS BITE BACK AGAINST ZIMMER FRAME IMAGE;
While not yet on the scale of Mrs Thatcher, John Major is becoming a negative factor

BYLINE: PATRICK WINTOUR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 658 words

 
 THE voters of Christchurch - two-thirds of whom are not pensioners - are becoming upset at the TV portrayal of their home patch as a giant old folks' home in which the clink of the zimmer frame, the whirr of the electric wheelchair and the occasional feedback from hearing aids are the only sounds to disturb the south coast peace.
 "They first showed us swans then the bowling green and then the next picture is an old lady pushing a trolley going on about pensions," said Gloria Rees, a distinctly under-60 Conservative supporter.  "That's all you see. What do you have to do to prove that we don't all have grey hair down here?" 
 Local council officials, rapidly realising that the constituency's gathering geriatric image is doing little to attract inward investment, point out the presence in the area of strong defence related industries, which have produced, among other things, the black box flight recorder.
 In the case of the Conservative Party, it seems only a question of whether it will be design fault or pilot error that brings it crashing to the ground in Christchurch in two weeks time.
 So far it seems both. Rob Hayward, the personable Tory candidate, perhaps unwisely opens his doorstep repartee with the words "any issues you want to raise?". Back comes the reply: "Have you got three days to spare? I have never seen such a shower as you lot. It's not even muddling through. Your leader goes from pillar to post with no idea what he's doing."
 Mr Major is rapidly becoming a negative factor, not yet, by any means, on the scale of Mrs Thatcher in 1990 but still worrying.
 But time after time the voters, especially the 28,000 pensioners on fixed incomes, raise the issue of VAT on fuel. Sheila Hartington, standing on the doorstep of her well-kept bungalow complains: "We've been wondering whether we've done the right thing. Perhaps we should have gone into a flat and saved the money. If you're on a fixed income like us, and the fuel bill goes up pounds 100 a quarter, it hits you horribly".
 Louis Williams, a few doors down agrees. "Can you begin to trust them any more? Mr Major says one thing and does another. .  Rather than put it on the fuel it would have been better if they had said that we've got to put income taxes up - at least it's honest".
 Not for nothing is there a handwritten sign in Labour's cramped campaign headquarters in Christchurch reading "It's VAT on Fuel . . . Stupid!" - an echo of the Clinton campaign assertion "It's the Economy . . . Stupid!".
 Chris Rennard, the Liberal Democrats' byelection maestro, says: "VAT is not the only issue - crime is important - but VAT brings everything together - people's sense of betrayal, the Government's economic mismanagement and the feeling that the Government is not fair."
 John Denham, a minder for the Labour candidate, Nigel Lickley, agrees. "VAT is an issue that hurts many people here personally. But it has also come to symbolise to many people what's wrong with this government - that it's out of touch and penalises the wrong people."
 Yet pensioners' political allegiances are traditionally difficult to break.  Some of them, Mr Hayward believes, are still wavering over whether to kick the Government. A personal supporter of capital punishment, he is trying to lure them back to the fold with a strong campaign against crime.
 He also has a huge bedrock of support. In 1979, Christchurch returned the largest Conservative percentage majority - 66 per cent; in 1983 and 1987 it was the second largest. It will take 20 per cent swing for the 23,000 majority to be destroyed.
 The outcome, Mr Rennard believes, lies in the 12 per cent of the vote that went to the Labour last time. If Labour voters, grouped mainly in two estates of Somerford and Burton, feel it is safe to stick with their first choice, on the basis that the Liberal Democrats will win anyway, the Tories might squeak home.

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



194 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 16, 1993

COMMENTARY: HOW MEMORIES OF OLD WARS DISTORT OUR MORAL CERTAINTIES

BYLINE: MADELEINE BUNTING

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 1083 words

 
 I WAS in Central Russia and the Eastern Ukraine inter viewing the last survivors of the slave labour force the Nazis brought to the Channel Islands in the second world war. The men I met were in their late sixties, yet they were all still working; their pensions don't keep pace with inflation. But they put the anxieties of their lives aside to offer me the most astonishing welcome. I became the embarrassed recipient of repeated effusive thanks. What for? "For opening the Second Front. For helping us win the war. For saving my life." Cripes, the nearest I get to the second world war is a father whose national service conveniently started in 1945. But I was the first Briton many of these men had met since the liberation of Paris and they had not forgotten the Tommies and Yankees arriving in that heady August of 1944 and handing out mugs of whisky. One former slave worker dismissed himself from hospital to be at home for my visit; he covered my hand with kisses, put his entire month's ration of butter on the table and ordered his wife to wait on me. 
 It was very moving, but I was also taken aback. I had thought there would be some distrust to overcome after 40 years of cold war propaganda. To discover this reservoir of gratitude and affection was completely unexpected. It's hard to imagine old men in a small town in Middle England thanking the Russians for the body blows they dealt Nazi Germany on the Eastern Front. Last year was the 50th anniversary of two battles which marked the turning point in the war; John Major flew to North Africa to commemorate the Battle of Alamein, but little was heard about Stalingrad.
 As these Russians and Ukrainians reminisced about their experiences of the war, I felt ignorant. In all my history syllabuses, the battles of the Russian Front had got squeezed out between the treachery of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the Soviet stranglehold over Eastern Europe. As the stories wound on I glimpsed a war vastly different from our second world war.
 What struck me most forcibly was the honesty. People would tell of German atrocities but many could also recollect occasions when individual Germans had shown them kindness. Nor did they flinch from recounting how Russians committed equally fearful atrocities as they moved through Poland and eastern Germany.
 Almost every corner of Europe is familiar with this second world war. They know first hand how occupation brings a myriad of choices about collaboration and resistance which shatter the nation state.  European countries which were occupied learned painfully that in war, good and evil are not ranged against one another as absolutes, but shade into one another with infinite puzzling gradations.
 Britain and America experienced none of this. For them the second world war was a titanic clash of moral absolutes. There was much to illustrate the evil nature of Nazism, so the goodness of the Allies could be safely assumed. The experience left Britain and America with an unshakeable sense of superiority and a simplistic moral perception of how nations deal with one another. This moral perception that good and evil could be appropriated by nations formulated our understanding of the cold war - we were godly, free, democratic countries fighting the barbaric, evil empire.
 This second world war's legacy was a mainstay of eighties conservatism; Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher were its greatest modern proponents. Mrs Thatcher was particularly astute at conjuring up that sense of British national identity forged between 1939 and 1945, of a plucky little country standing up for its principles to the last. Twice in the last 11 years this simplistic moral framework has been imposed on conflicts to make wars moral - against Argentina and against Iraq. Frequent analogies were made with the second world war, serving as a sort of moral shorthand with great resonance for the British and Americans. General Galtieri and Saddam Hussein were both likened to Hitler.
 The second world war was the prism through which our own identity and our perception of the world has been refracted for nearly 50 years. The prism is now too flawed to be useful. Britian's pluckiness has cost us an inflated defence budget and delusions of self importance. All it is now getting us, in Europe, is an isolated back burner. We can't seem to put aside our suspicion that we alone stood up to Nazism in Europe and that if the nightmare was repeated the rest would come to some sleazy accommodation again.
 Anything that didn't quite fit the second world war model - Northern Ireland is the most enduring - was marginalised as, well, just too hopelessly complicated and messy.
 But we haven't been able to marginalise Bosnia and it is providing the most sustained challenge to the second world war legacy. It's the kind of war that Russians, Ukrainians, Poles and French - to name only a few - have bitter memories of. But for the British and Americans it cannot be explained in the terms we understand war. There have been confused attempts to squeeze Bosnia into a second world war model, with Serbia likened to the Nazis and the Muslims helpless victims like the Jews. For a moment we thought we finally understood this war.
 The influence of that generation of political leaders and historians whose mindset was formed in the second world war is waning. As President Clinton clumsily fumbles after a new moral framework and John Major looks panic-stricken, there is nostalgia for the moral certainties we're losing but they are losing their dominance.
 As the second world war's legacy loosens its hold, the myths of 1940 and 1945 are coming under scrutiny. They stir up a hornet's nest but also find a curious audience, evidenced by the outcry over J. Charmeley's biography of Churchill last winter and the revelations about the Channel Islands' occupation. The latter is a curious case of how effectively experience that did not fit into the British understanding of the war was marginalised.  The occupation provided embarrassing evidence that the British are not made of sterner stuff, but resisted or sought compromise and collaboration in equal measure to any other country in Europe.
 We're groping after a new self-perception and a more complex understanding of evil and how that can - or should - inform foreign policy. And there's a real danger that we don't bother, and fall back on expediency and narrowly defined self-interest.

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



195 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 16, 1993

100 CLUB EXCEEDS 8,000 AS WELL-FED BRITONS LIVE LONGER

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 354 words

 
 REACHING 100 not out is not what it once was. So many people are sprightly prancing into their second century that the achievement rarely merits a mention in the local newspaper.
 According to census figures published this week, there were no fewer than 7,159 centenarians in Britain in 1991 - 85 per cent of them women - and the rate of increase means there are likely now to be more than 8,000. 
 Buckingham Palace says it sent 2,738 congratulatory messages last year from the Queen to people attaining 100 in the United Kingdom, eight times the number 30 years ago. Of the 1991 centenarians, 6,619 were in England and Wales. Ten years earlier, there were only 2,410. There were 1,240 in 1971, 479 in 1961 and only 271 in 1951.
 It is well known we are an ageing society: life expectancy is 74 for a man and almost 80 for a woman, compared with 68 and 74 respectively in 1961, and one in four people is expected to be over present pension ages by 2029.
 The census figures show how old many people are becoming. More than 2 million people were over 80 in 1991, an increase of 40 per cent in 10 years, and there were 232,840 over 90, a rise of 46 per cent.
 Projections by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys suggest there will be 5.9 million over-75s in England and Wales by 2029, against 3.6 million in 1991.
 Of the 7,159 centenarians, only 1,055 were men.
 Relative to over-60 populations by region, the fewest were in South Yorkshire and the most in the home counties, with 2,463 in the South-east.
 Dr James Malone-Lee, consultant geriatrician at University College hospital, London, said the increase in very elderly people would continue until about 2020, then level off. The main cause was the sharp improvements made this century in nutrition and hygiene, the effects of which would still be seen in the "baby boom" generation which grew up in the 1950s.
 "The mistake people make is assuming it's thanks to us doctors - you should never believe that for a minute," Dr Malone-Lee said.
 1991 Census - Persons Aged 60 and Over, Great Britain (HMSO, pounds 16.90)

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



196 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 16, 1993

MADRID ON THE MOSKVA;
Long ago, a group of Spanish children were exiled to Russia, but still they dream of home, writes Madeleine Bunting

BYLINE: MADELEINE BUNTING

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1334 words

 
 IN A hall three floors above one of Moscow's busiest shopping streets, a card game is in full swing. The group of elderly men talk rapidly, gesticulate wildly, and laugh openly. These are no ordinary Russians. Nicholas Gregorio, Fermin Vega, Ismael Hernandez and Alfredo Fernandez are Spanish. The walls are covered with posters of Velazquez paintings, and bullfighting; the only indication that these old men are in Moscow, not Bilbao or Madrid, is that the coffee machine is silent and there is no beer.
 Some 750 Spaniards frequent the Spanish Centre in Kuznetskii Most, in Moscow.  Most of them are the last remaining refugees of Spain's civil war. Vega was 10 years old and Gregorio was eight, when they were evacuated, together with 3,500 other Spanish children, to the Soviet Union in 1937. Gregorio was one of six children. His father was fighting at the front and his mother sent him to Russia for a few months to spare him from the bombing raids. She did not see him again for 31 years.
 At the centre, the former refugees exchange the latest gossip and news; they all want to return to Spain but most now believe it is an impossible dream. Their Russian pensions are small. Most are married to Russians and have children and grandchildren. For them, Spain is little more than a picture postcard. 
 Some, however, have taken the plunge. A steady trickle of families has been returning to the homeland. The Spanish government is considering providing housing and pensions so that the last refugees can go home - 56 years after they were first crammed into ships bound for Leningrad.
 Nieves Lago Rodriguez was only eight when she left Spain, but she still speaks Russian with a slight accent. Rodriguez was born in Asturias. Her father was killed in 1936 and her mother, finding it hard to feed her family, put two of her sons in an orphanage. She left the eight-year-old Rodriguez with her brothers for a couple of days. When she returned she found that they had all been evacuated to the Soviet Union. Rodriguez did not see her mother again until she was 38 years old, with a 13-year-old daughter of her own.
 She still remembers her confusion on arriving in Leningrad. "We were distributed to different children's homes. I was separated from my brothers. We were disinfected and all our Spanish clothes were taken away and we were dressed in Pioneer uniforms. [Pioneers were a Communist children's league]. They even took away the gold earrings and chains that some of the children had. All the children's hair was cut in the same way, regardless of whether they were boys or girls."
 Vega also remembers those first few months in Russia. He was 10 years old. He had been living with his aunt in Asturias and was taken to an orphanage after a bombing raid destroyed her house. Before his parents could retrieve him, he had been evacuated to Russia. "I remember that the children were all right during the day, but at night, they cried and cried. Even now when I think of that time, I cry," he says.
 Once in the Soviet Union, the children were moved from town to town and from orphanage to orphanage. Rodriguez lists the cities: Leningrad, Moscow, Odessa, Kaluga and Tarasovka. Then the war broke out and she was moved to Bashkiria in the Volga basin. She managed to meet up with her brothers just once. The Spanish children were taken to an exhibition in Moscow and she got lost. A passerby took her, by chance, to the orphanage where her brothers were. They were separated again the next morning. She did not even know the Russian word for brother.
 Most of the journeys around the Soviet Union were made by boat and after war broke out; the children were transported in cargo ships. Only Spanish was spoken in the orphanages and Rodriguez was nearly 20 when she learnt to speak Russian properly.
 "None of us children thought we were in Russia for ever; all of us wanted to go back to Spain and we spent our whole time thinking about how to get home. I was the first in the orphanage to get a letter from my mother. It was at the end of 1937.  There was a photo attached but - to my shame - I didn't recognise my mother. I think it was some kind of psychological shock that made me forget what she looked like."
 The worst time for many of the children was the war: "Everything was done to save us but the conditions were terrible. There was never enough to eat; we had to dig in rubbish heaps for vegetable peelings," she recalls.
 In the 1980s, the Spanish community in Moscow discovered that Franco had asked Stalin for the children in 1939 and again after the war, in 1945. The documents containing Stalin's decision are still buried in the archives; the first to return to Spain left in 1956, three years after Stalin's death. Between 1956 and 1957, about 500 of the child refugees returned to Spain.
 For most of the refugees, including Rodriguez and Gregorio, by 1956, it was too late. They had both married Russians and Soviet citizens were not allowed to emigrate to Spain. It was not until 1967 that Rodriguez visited her mother for a month's holiday.
 "It was an unforgettable feeling when I saw my mother. It was very hard to talk to her. She was so distant and yet so close.  My mother kept asking why don't you come more often to Spain and she couldn't understand that I didn't have the money. My mother even reproached me for not helping her and I couldn't explain that the salary I received as a laboratory assistant was barely enough for myself and my daughter."
 Rodriguez visited her mother once more in 1970 before she died. With the collapse of the rouble, a visit to Spain is now impossible. Moving back to Spain for good is even more remote, even though her husband has long since died.
 "I've always felt an outsider here and I don't want the same to happen to my daughter in Spain, and I would never leave my daughter," she says.
 It was difficult to be a foreigner in the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War in the 1950s and 1960s, says Rodriguez.  Her mother-in-law had opposed the marriage and refused to allow anything Spanish in the flat they shared. Even Rodriguez's daughter, Marina, would pretend not to hear if her mother spoke in Spanish.  Rodriguez lost contact with her Spanish friends and began to forget her own language. But despite the problems, Rodriguez never changed her surname.
 "It was the only thing Spanish about me, so I kept it - Nieves Lago Rodriguez and I will never change it," she says.
 Today, she is a mainstay of Moscow's Spanish community. Anyone with a query about emigration regulations calls her for advice. All her friends are Spanish and her life revolves around the parties and meetings organised by the Spanish Centre.
 The Spanish government gave each refugee 18,000 roubles (then worth about pounds 25) last year and another lump sum this year; last summer, humanitarian food parcels arrived. Rodriguez gets parcels of new and second-hand clothes from her relatives. The gifts are gratefully received; all the refugees are now pensioners and it is pensioners who are worst hit in Russia's current economic chaos.
 Even though her life is now just as hard as ever, Rodriguez says, "My daughter says that I am the most cheerful person in our apartment block. I never feel envy when I see someone living better than me. I'm not hungry and if I have a new skirt, I am happy."
 Despite the cheerful camaraderie of the card game at the Spanish Centre, there is no attempt to hide their homesickness.  Gregorio says he has a map of Spain on the wall by his bed. For Vega, the loss of his parents is still fresh 64 years on. A big, burly man, Vega says he still dreams of his parents every night.
 Rodriguez wears a medal of the Virgin Mary around her neck. She doesn't believe in God. The refugee children were brought up as communists. But, she says: "The medal is close to my nature and by hanging it around my neck, it is close to my heart."

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



197 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 16, 1993

WEATHER WATCH: HERE IS THE SLUG FORECAST

BYLINE: PAUL SIMONS

SECTION: FEATURES; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 307 words

 
 OF ALL the garden pests, it's no wonder that slugs are one of the most sensitive to weather. Unless their wet, slimey coats are kept moist they risk death from dehydration. So when it turns dry, hot, or even cold the slugs burrow deep down into the soil and hide there until conditions improve again. 
 This moist lifestyle is reflected in slug pellet sales. In a typically wet year we spend about E7-8 million on pellets, but during the dry summer of 1990 sales plummeted to El million. Yet farmers tend to use pellets come what may, which is unnecessary, costly and contaminates the environment.
 This is where the scientists are now stepping in. Gordon Port at Newcastle University has found that slugs are very predictable creatures, and knowing their little foibles he is working on a slug forecasting service. By taking the weather for ecast and the amount of water in the soil, he has found that slug activity can be safely predicted and pellets laid accordingly. So far the slug forecast is only in its pilot stages, but it's hoped eventually to launch it nationally.
 Meanwhile, wild slugs have been suffering far more than their garden cousins, and one species was almost wiped out by the dry summers of 1900 and 1991. It feeds at night on lichens on stone walls, and perhaps to compensate for this somewhat dodgy lifestyle the slug lives to the ripe old age of three years. For most of the year the population is dominated by young slugs, but the dry summers decimated the youngsters and the population struggled on with middle aged and elderly adults. Now, thanks to the recent wet summers, the population is bouncing back again with a fine new crop of youngsters.
 Incidentally, if you ever wondered what happens to snails during dry weather they simply crawl up into their shells and seal themselves in.

LOAD-DATE: July 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



198 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 19, 1993

ZAGREB BACKS REMOVAL OF THOUSANDS OF MUSLIMS

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 647 words

 
 THE Croatian government plans to help Bosnian Croat forces to deport tens of thousands of Muslims from Bosnia-Herzegovina to third countries, according to United Nations sources in Bosnia who describe the scheme as absolutely abhorrent.
 Bosnian Croat and Zagreb government officials have asked the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees to assist in the campaign of "ethnic cleansing" against Muslims in the Mostar area of Herzegovina and are proposing to establish a large transit camp where the Muslims will be collected before being expelled to third countries.
 The request was made to the UNHCR last Friday morning. It was summarily rejected. Later that evening Bosnian Croat television and radio announced that Zagreb was willing to provide 10,000 transit visas for the deportees. 
 "The Croatian government has clearly offered its good offices to the HVO [Bosnian Croat government] to facilitate this campaign," said a UN source. "The plan is absolutely abhorrent, but Zagreb does not seem to realise the impact this idea will have on the sanctions debate."
 For the past several weeks, Bosnian Croat forces have been rounding up thousands of Muslim males in the Mostar area and herding them into detention camps, while driving Muslim women, children and elderly people out of their homes at gunpoint in Mostar and surrounding towns.
 Some 10,000 males are being held, according to the UNHCR, the bulk of them at a helidrome near Mostar. Croatian government officials on Friday professed to the UNHCR that they thought the detainees had visas for third countries despite the fact that they are being held incommunicado, with UNHCR and International Red Cross access to them barred.
 The detentions, the confirmation of Croatian atrocities against civilians during the fierce Muslim-Croat fighting in central Bosnia, and the plan Zagreb backs jointly with Belgrade to partition Bosnia have raised mounting calls for UN sanctions against Serbia to be extended to Croatia. European Community foreign ministers are to meet today to discuss whether Croatia should be penalised.
 Zagreb has consistently denied that it is helping its brethren in Bosnia to prosecute their war aims. UN military observers say that in the past week Croatian military reinforcements have been moved up from the Adriatic coast to help the Bosnian Croats in the battles in and around Mostar which raged on yesterday.
 The UN sources say the Bosnian Croat plan, aided and abetted by Zagreb, is to strip Mostar of its entire Muslim population.  There are an estimated 50,000 Muslims in Mostar penned into a ghetto on the east side of the river Neretva that dissects the city. Muslims slightly outnumbered Croats in the city before the war, but the Croats have proclaimed Mostar the capital of the ethnically pure mini-state they are carving out of Bosnia.
 The Bosnian Croats told the UNHCR that they plan to establish a large transit camp at Ljubuski on the border with Croatia, where tens of thousands of Muslims would be penned until they were offered shelter in third countries and could leave via Croatia.
 The camp would be amply equipped with telephones, faxes, and telex machines to help the Muslims contact friends and relatives abroad to arrange visas.
 Having detained the 10,000 males, the Croats appear in a quandary over what to do with them and desperate to get rid of them.  They cannot be released for fear they will immediately take up arms against the Croats or be killed by Croat extremists. A Croatian government official yesterday said some 500 of the males were transported from Mostar to Croatia over the weekend, that further deportations from Herzegovina were expected in the next few days, and that Zagreb was appealing to third countries to take them off its hands.
 Vuk Draskovic interview, page 8; Eyewitness, page 20

LOAD-DATE: July 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



199 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 19, 1993

PAKISTAN'S TWO WARRING LEADERS QUIT

BYLINE: GERALD BOURKE IN ISLAMABAD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 538 words

 
 PAKISTAN'S president, Ghulam Ishaq Khan, and his arch-enemy the prime minister, Nawaz Sharif, resigned last night following strong pressure from the army chief, General Abdul Waheed.
 The twin resignations will end a bitter power struggle between the elderly bureaucrat and his one-time protege that has paralysed the government for six months, sapped business confidence and forced the army to step in as honest broker.
 Wasim Sajjad, chairman of the senate, immediately assumed the presidency in accordance with the constitution. 
 Mr Khan's final act as head of state was to swear in Moeen Qureshi, an economist and former World Bank vice-president aged 67, as caretaker prime minister.
 Mr Qureshi will head a cabinet of supposedly neutral ministers approved by the outgoing president and prime minister, as well as by the main opposition leader, Benazir Bhutto.
 Elections to the national assembly, which was dissolved, are due to be held on October 6. Polling for the country's four provincial parliaments will take place three days later.
 Both Mr Khan and Mr Sharif insisted they were stepping down voluntarily, and had not been pressurised to do so.
 Mr Sharif, a Punjabi industrialist aged 44, made his announcement on television and radio yesterday. "I have decided to leave the chair," he said, accusing "some people of creating hurdles" that had prevented him from governing.
 During an hour-long fighting speech, Mr Sharif accused Mr Khan and Ms Bhutto, without naming them directly, of hatching conspiracies against his government and of creating an "artificial crisis".
 "I have discharged my national duties," he said. "It is now up to you to decide the future of the country."
 The five-year term of Mr Sharif's Islamic Democratic Alliance was not due to end until late 1995.
 Mr Sajjad applauded the military for helping to resolve the crisis. "The armed forces have played a responsible role," he told members of the senate.
 Mr Khan sacked Mr Sharif in April only to see him reinstated 40 days later, and thereafter worked behind the scenes to destabilise his former protege.
 Mr Sharif contributed much to the political deadlock by underhandedly manoeuvring to regain control of his native Punjab, the country's biggest province, from partisans of the president appointed to run it after his dismissal.
 Mr Khan, aged 79, a dour former bureaucrat from North-west Frontier province, retires in ignominy six months ahead of schedule.
 Having resolved to scupper the IDA after the prime minister vowed to curtail his powers, the president is seen by many as the cause of political paralysis that has rendered the country increasingly ungovernable.
 Ms Bhutto scented blood late last week when she too gave in to pressure from Gen Waheed, by calling off a protest that could have had hundreds of thousands of activists besieging the capital, Islamabad.
 The protest was to have continued until Mr Sharif agreed to early polls. Gen Waheed apparently promised she would have her way.
 * Five bombs went off in Karachi yesterday and seven bombs exploded elsewhere in Sindh province. At least two people were killed and several injured, police said.

LOAD-DATE: July 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



200 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 20, 1993

WOMEN IN 50S BANNED FROM FERTILITY TREATMENT TO PROTECT CHILDREN

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL, MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 319 words

 
 WOMEN in their late 50s who want to have children cannot be given test tube baby procedures because of the difficulties children would face being reared by elderly parents, Britain's fertility watchdog body said yesterday.
 Controversy arose over the weekend because of newspaper reports that a 58-year-old British woman was expecting twins after treatment in Italy, using donated eggs.
 The woman, from London, who has not been named, received treatment from Professor Severino Antinori at his private clinic in Rome, after British specialists had refused to treat her. 
 It was also revealed that Prof Antinori turned down treatment for a second British woman, 56-year-old Jane Ward, because of criticism by UK experts, who said such pregnancies posed risks to women and raised concerns for the welfare of the children.
 Yesterday Hugh Whittall, of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA), which has a statutory duty to vet the work of clinics carrying out in vitro fertilisation, said that although there was no upper limit for treatment in law, concerns for the children ruled out treating elderly women.
 There were rules saying that egg donors should not be over 35, and sperm donors over 55, he said.
 "We don't set an age limit for recipients of treatment as such, but rely on considerations for the welfare of the child. The law says that fertility specialists must take account of the welfare of the child.
 "Broadly, we don't expect clinics to treat women well into their 50s. Most NHS clinics draw the line at 38, and for private clinics 48 or 49 is usually as high as it goes," Mr Whittall said.
 Peter Brinsden, medical director of Bourn Hall, Britain's largest fertility centre, said the clinic had for some time operated a rule that it would only help women if they had an early menopause, using their own eggs up to 45 and donated eggs up to 50.

LOAD-DATE: July 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



201 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 21, 1993

ITALIAN DOCTOR 'CONSULTED BY 50 WOMEN'

BYLINE: MARIA CHIARA BONAZZI

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 596 words

 
 THE Italian gynaecologist providing infertility treatment for a 58-year-old London woman said yesterday that he had been consulted by 50 British women unable to obtain treatment in this country.
 Professor Severino Antinori accepted 20 of them for treatment and eight were receiving fertility procedures. In the case of the London woman, Prof Antinori implanted two eggs in her and she is now expecting twins. 
 Defending himself against a wave of criticism for treating women regarded as past child bearing age, he said a number of British fertility specialists were enagaged in a professional conspiracy against him.
 He had been due to arrive in London yesterday but declined to come after saying he received a threatening phone call on Monday night that he would be killed.
 "I am outraged when a small part of England, which is such an advanced country, attacks me and doesn't want to understand the work carried out by us Italians. It is horrible to say I am putting these women at risk," he told the Guardian.
 In Britain specialists generally decline to treat women beyond the menopause, unless there are exceptional circumstances, because fertility laws say all treatments must take account of the welfare of the child. In Rome, where Prof Antinori, aged 47, is based, the Vatican has criticised him for creating potential orphans.
 Fertility experts in this country, including Professor Robert Winston of the Hammersmith Hospital, London, have attacked Prof Antinori as exploiting vulnerable women, exposing them to the dangers of late pregnancies, and failing to consider the welfare of children who would be brought up by people old enough to be their grandparents.
 Prof Antinori, director of the Raprui day hospital in Rome, rejects these arguments, saying many children were successfully reared by grandparents.
 "I am certain that pregnancy risks do not increase with age. The risks for women in their 50s are no more than the risks for women in their 30s.
 "It is not unnatural to have an elderly mother. The important thing is to think of the child's welfare. An older woman is able to give more affection than a younger one who may neglect them and is liable to expose them to the trauma of a divorce.  We must not forget that many children are raised by grandparents.
 "Why give this opportunity [for fertility treatment] to a woman in her 30s who may be suffering from heart disease but not to a healthy woman in her 50s?"
 He claimed he would only treat patients who were likely to live for another 30 years, so they would be able to rear the children, but did not explain how he judged this life expectancy.
 Prof Antinori, who charges about pounds 3,500 for his services initially, and pounds 1,000 for subsequent attempts, said he could have treated all the British women, but he refused to do so on ethical grounds, taking only those who were healthy and stood the most chance of benefiting. He claimed his success rate in producing babies was about 25 per cent.
 "I do not understand the limit where being under 50 is acceptable, but being 50 and a day is not. One must understand what being old means. Chronological age is not the same as biological age. It is an inalienable civil right to have a child."
 Prof Antinori said many of his patients, including the 58-year-old expecting twins, had been referred to him by Professor Ian Craft, of the London Fertility Centre, in Harley Street.
 Yesterday Prof Craft issued a statement saying he had no professional association with Prof Antinori.

LOAD-DATE: July 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



202 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 21, 1993

FERTILITY BODY CALLS FOR DEBATE ON USE OF DEAD WOMEN'S EGGS

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 356 words

 
 A PUBLIC debate should be started about the ethics and social acceptability of taking eggs from dead women and aborted foetuses to provide treatment for infertile couples, the statutory body charged with policing the work of test tube baby clinics said yesterday.
 The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) also said that choosing the sex of babies for social reasons is morally and ethically unacceptable, although it can be carried out for medical reasons.
 The authority repeated its opposition to enabling older women to have babies through infertility treatment. It emerged yesterday that one 52-year-old has been treated in this country, and a dozen women over 50. 
 Professor Colin Campbell, the authority's chairman, said it wanted a public debate about taking eggs from corpses and aborted foetuses. It will issue a consultation paper this year.
 Prof Campbell told a press conference called in London to launch the authority's second annual report that eggs from dead women could be used for research into infertility, and might help answer questions about premature menopause or diseases such as ovarian cancer.
 It was also possible to implant them into infertile women to provide children.  There is a great shortage of donor eggs.
 Prof Campbell said scientists were just beginning to consider the possibility of using eggs from corpses, and it was right that the morality and social acceptability of this was debated.
 People might take the view that the procedure was no different from hearts or kidneys being used for transplant, but others would fear ethical or moral norms were being transgressed.
 Prof Campbell said it was not yet known whether eggs from aborted foetuses would be too immature to be grown in culture for research or to produce children.
 "This could be a new area of reproductive biology. It is in the early stages but it does raise issues of fundamental concern. We believe these developments will raise profound moral, philosophical and legal concerns. This authority would be wise to consult widely and have a public discussion about this."

LOAD-DATE: July 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



203 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 21, 1993

MENOPAUSE FOR THOUGHT;
The limits of fertility are being stretched too far in allowing middle-aged women to become mothers

BYLINE: ROBERT WINSTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 974 words

 
 THE report this week that a 58-year-old British woman is expecting a twin pregnancy as the result of IVF treatment in Italy following egg donation has caused widespread concern. On the face of it, what Dr Severino Antinori in Rome is doing may seem laudable. After all, he has said he is simply helping desperate women to get pregnant and is quoted as saying "they want babies; I give them babies". This reported attitude, which seems to me to be debasing In Vitro Fertilisation (IVF) treatments to the status of trading in a commodity, appears to many to trivialise very serious issues.
 First, any pregnancy in a woman in her late fifties or early sixties carries considerable risks to her health. A twin pregnancy, after transfer of several embryos, seems even more fraught. Whilst pregnancy in the forties is now commonplace and easily managed, once a woman gets much beyond the age of 50, virtually all the serious complications of pregnancy are much more likely. High blood pressure, toxaemia of pregnancy, heart disease, diabetes, and thrombosis are all relatively probable and she is less likely to have the strength to care for her newborn in the event of its safe delivery. 
 Second, there is clearly a very significant chance that she may lose the baby at any time during pregnancy. Pregnancy loss is a shattering event at any stage of a couple's life but this group of older women are particularly vulnerable to suffer extraordinary psychological trauma. The few women who actually seek such treatment in their later years are often desperate people, sometimes quite disturbed emotionally. Clinical experience often shows that they have found themselves unable to come to terms with the cessation of their ability to reproduce. They are, in effect, undergoing a process of bereavement which becomes protracted if they are inappropriately treated. For such a person, getting pregnant and then losing the pregnancy will be a catastrophic blow and the risk of serious depression and greater emotional disturbance very high.
 Yet another issue is the question of any child which is born as a result of such misplaced technology. A woman conceiving at 58 will be 70 when her child has not yet reached its teenage years. This seems to start any young person with a serious disadvantage in life, even if his or her parents actually survive until then.  Children should reasonably expect that their parents should be young enough to play football in the park with them, or to have energy enough to indulge in the pursuits which are all part of growing up with their family.
 While a woman at the age of 58 may well believe that she could cope with a toddler, as she advances in age her physical state is likely to be increasingly less resilient. It is no accident that the British regulatory body, the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority, has stated that practitioners of IVF should always bear in mind the welfare of any children who may be brought into existence as a result of conducting fertility treatments.
 Moreover, these treatments seem to neglect the rights of those women who most altruistically decide to be donors of eggs.  Because a woman of 58 cannot produce her own eggs, she can only become pregnant as the result of donated eggs being fertilised by her partner's sperm and then inserted to her uterus. Egg donors are very remarkable and courageous people. They give eggs, theirown unique genetic material, anonymously, because they sympathise with the plight of infertile women. In order to give eggs they need a surgical procedure. Before this they have to undergo long and quite hefty treatments with drugs to induce ovulation. Administration of these somewhat risky drugs to infertile women who might themselves benefit from treatment is clearly justified, but it is quite another dimension to undergo complex and demanding treatment from which one can derive no personal benefit.
 I have spoken to hundreds of potential egg donors and all of them say they are horrified at the mere thought that their eggs, their own genetic children, might be given away to women 20 years older than themselves.
 People ask if there should be a cut-off age point, beyond which fertility treatments should not be given. While I believe in a flexible and liberal approach, I think that it is one consideration to offer treatment to women who have suffered a premature menopause as a result of a pathological event, but it is quite another to use high technology to subvert a natural, biological event. To do so seems to me to debase the value of menopause, when our energies and experience may be better spent in more mature activities.
 But what chiefly worries me about the activities of Dr Antinori and the publicity which surrounds them, are that they risk bringing a highly valuable and vulnerable technology into public disrepute.  Many people have considerable anxieties about the new reproductive treatments which they view with suspicion because they consider that doctors and scientists are tampering with the very elements of human life. We practitioners of IVF must always be aware of these concerns. IVF is already a relatively privileged treatment, heavily rationed by ailing health services throughout the Western world. If we fail to be sensitive to the worries of ordinary people and our political representatives, we seriously risk jeopardising the whole funding and future of proper reproductive medicine. It would be a grave outcome indeed if the accessibility of our complex and expensive technology was limited to even fewer women and men. We have an important responsibility to ensure that many infertile couples continue to have a realistic chance of a healthy baby of their own.
 Robert Winston is professor of fertility studies at Hammersmith Hospital, London.

LOAD-DATE: July 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



204 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 22, 1993

INVESTORS WIN A RIGHT TO REFUNDS

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 503 words

 
 A HIGH Court ruling yesterday opened the floodgates for compensation claims worth millions of pounds for victims of incompetent or corrupt financial advisers.
 Two judges found in favour of pensioners who were sold high risk investment bonds secured on their homes, who were previously denied compensation from the financial services industry's Investors Compensation Scheme because their claims arose from advice which pre-dated the scheme's inauguration in August 1988.
 They decided that some compensation should be made available to such victims.  Legal experts at the ICS are still studying the judgment but they believe that it will apply to all victims of advisers in default - not just home income plan investors. 
 The judges ruled that investors who were advised before August 1988 but completed transactions after that date should get full compensation.
 They added that those who completed before August 1988 should receive compensation which reflected the loss sustained after that date, provided that there had been some further communication from the adviser - such as a statement.
 Lord Justice Glidewell and Mr Justice Cresswell also ruled that the ICS had been wrong to halve compensation if a spouse died prior to an award.
 Hundreds of elderly homeowners faced losing their homes after buying home income plans which comprised an investment bond bought with a mortgage raised on their homes. Many investors saw their investment wiped out by commissions and by stock market gyrations. As mortgage rates soared, many debts escalated well beyond the maximum permitted mortgage.
 Margaret Weyell, 69, a widow, and John Veniard, 78, were both told by the ICS that they were not eligible for compensation because their adviser, Aylesbury Associates, had not conducted investment business for them after August 28, 1988. After the collapse of her plan, Mrs Weyell was forced to sell her pounds 160,000 home in High Mead Lane, West Wickham, Kent, and move to a less expensive property in Langdon Hills, Basildon, Essex. Mr Veniard and his wife had to sell their home in Croydon Road, Westerham, Kent, and move into nearby rented accommodation.
 The judges said the ICS had wrongly argued that no compensation was due because the only business conducted by Aylesbury was the initial bad advice to enter into home income plans, and this was given before August 28.
 But, although Mrs Weyell had been advised prior to that date, she did not take out the plan until September 1988. She is now entitled to be compensated by up to pounds 48,000, the limit the compensation rules provide for single people.
 The judges said that the Veniards' case was different as they invested in a plan in October 1987. Their claim was restricted to the losses they had suffered because, in the regular six-monthly reports the brokers were obliged to make on the progress of their fund, Aylesbury failed to warn them of the increasing risks to their investment fund after August 1988.

LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



205 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 22, 1993

SERBS PAY A HIGH PRICE FOR DAILY SURVIVAL;
Aleksandar Vasovic reports on how people are coping with runaway inflation in a deepening economic crisis

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 976 words

 
 DRAINED by sanctions and awash with worthless money, Serbians thought their economic situation could not get worse. Each day is proving them wrong.
 With people having to exist on an average salary of 5 German marks ( pounds 2) a month, while the average monthly cost of living is 30 marks, everyone becomes an economy expert in the daily struggle for survival.
 Because of the enormous inflation rate all prices are converted into German marks, but the dinar still remains the official currency. The Yugoslav national bank is about to issue a 50 million dinar note, worth less than 5 marks on the street. The largest note in circulation now is 5 million, worth 0.45 marks on Tuesday. When it was issued in May it was worth about 15 marks. 
 People know the next day's exchange rate, the best place to sell their foreign currency, and what kind of transaction they have to do. If they are not prepared for fast reaction and immediate buying or selling, they risk poverty.
 Going shopping almost means carrying an extra bag for your money. A loaf of bread is relatively cheap - about 0.3 marks. A kilo of meat (5 marks), vegetables and eggs cost 7 marks - or about 73 million dinar, a two-inch wad of notes. A packet of cigarettes costs about 0.5 marks, which means that you can buy 10 packets for an average monthly salary.
 Shops in central Serbia are almost always closed and only sell bread and milk when they open. Old people suffer most - the average pension is about 3 marks - queuing for cheap bread or even digging in rubbish bins.
 Shoes and clothes are enormous luxuries. A pair of good Italian shoes costs about 100 marks, and American blue jeans 120 marks. Yugoslav shoes are about 60 marks and the quality is poor.
 Credit cards are no longer used - only cash and cheques. Shops are also often closed to prevent an avalanche of buyers.  People try to spend their money while it is still worth something.
 Those who are rich enough to drive a car pay 3.5 marks for a litre of petrol - if they're lucky - otherwise it is 4 marks.
 State pharmacies are almost empty so there are no antibiotics, pain killers, vital drugs or bandages. Almost everything can be found in the privately owned pharmacies, but prices are three times higher.
 The worst thing is to fall ill and be hospitalised. There is no disinfectant, surgical instruments, or medicine, and the food is scarcely enough for survival. Doctors do their best, but their efforts are useless. Cases of tuberculosis are becoming more common and people are dying of infections after surgery because there are no antibiotics.
 Those who want to be cured have to find and buy the necessary medicines, bandages, surgical thread, bed sheets and food.
 Almost everything can be found, but for a high price, in German marks.
 People are becoming increasingly angry and vicious - best illustrated on the overcrowded buses and trams. Buses keep breaking down, with spare parts in short supply, and ticket prices are 300 per cent higher than last week, which is an increase of 500 per cent from the beginning of June. Hardly anyone bothers to buy a ticket and the public transport authority does not dare to enforce the rules.
 The key to survival is the black market or some other illegal business. People are spending their last financial resources to provide some food and other goods for the winter.
 Almost everybody is trying to renew links with relatives in the country and secure flour, eggs, cheese, meat, vegetables and fruit. Money and other exchangeable resources like pianos, gold, family silver, paintings, are limited.
 However, things are not idyllic in the country. The peasants are desperate. The official price of wheat - as promised by the state - is about 0.3 marks, but the real market price is about 1.5 marks. No one is eager to hand over his crop to the state, because all production costs (fuel, pesticides, fertilisers) were paid in foreign currency.
 There is the prospect of the state confiscating the wheat by force - as in 1948 during Stalin's blockade of Yugoslavia. The peasants are expected to resist.
 In the daily struggle for a few marks, or some meat for a reasonable price, work is almost forgotten. No one would waste eight hours for 5 marks a month. All efforts are focused on finding something which is better paid, even if it is not exactly according to the law. And the law is almost a joke. Now, nearly 50 per cent of workers in Serbia are out of work, or as the authorities like to put it, "they are on forced leave".
 However, the number of enormously rich is increasing. They owe their wealth to the black market, smuggling and good relations with the war parties in Croatia and Bosnia. They are ruthless criminals who are ready for any kind of undercover business which can provide enormous profits. And - understandably enough - they are the most devoted supporters of the regime.
 Crime is rising - murders, robberies and all sorts of embezzlement. Police brutality is always present, especially after the opposition demonstrations at the beginning of June.
 A variety of weapons, from hand grenades to submachine guns, have found their way to the hands of the criminals. Shooting (for fun or on purpose) is normal. People are used to ducking for cover in case of sudden armed conflict.
 No one can predict what will happen when the monetary system finally collapses. Food riots are very likely.
 Some analysts claim that these riots will be the end of Slobodan Milosevic's regime - unless he finds an acceptable explanation for his desperate people.
 But it is hard to feed a population with explanations, however acceptable.
 Aleksandar Vasovic is a journalist with the independent Belgrade radio station B92
 Bosnian leaders to attend Geneva talks, page 11

LOAD-DATE: July 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



206 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 23, 1993

TELEVISION

BYLINE: PAUL BAILEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 577 words

 
 AGNES McLEAN started dancing in the 1930s. It was a "form of escapism" from the harshness of life in Glasgow. At that time, there were "hundreds of wee dance halls" in every part of the city. She saw Carmen Miranda and George Raft doing the rhumba in a film and was instantly entranced. Now, at the age of 69, she dances twice a week at the Pollok Community Centre, with fellow pensioners who share her passion for the rhythms of Latin America. 
 The producer, Barbara Orton, and director Richard Downes watched Agnes in action and decided to send her to Cuba to experience the real thing. The result is a beguiling short film called In Cuba They're Still Dancing, which went out at the ridiculous time of 7.15 on BBC2 last evening. Agnes is a natural for television, since she treats the camera like a confidant. At the National School of Music and Drama in Havana, she learned that the rhumba is a world away from the camp malarkey one associates with such skilled performers as Donnie Burns and Gaynor Fairweather.
 Agnes was at her happiest attending a back street rhumba party in the poorest quarter of the Cuban capital. She used to be an active communist in the days when she was working on the shopfloor of Rolls Royce, and is full of sympathy for the oppressed -even those living in a revolutionary regime. It was wonderful, she said, to see "people communicating with each other in dance" - as indeed they were doing, spontaneously. She shook her hips, and earned the admiration of the locals.
 The dance historian Rogelio Martinez told her that in the genuine rhumba the woman flirts with the man and provokes him, and the specialist Olavo Alen revealed that the Carmen Miranda version she had loved in her youth was a Hollywood variation on the original. At the Tropicana show - once a tourist attraction "before Fee-dell kicked the Mafia oot" - she detected the influence of the cinema, and wasn't totally impressed. It was in Matanzas that she felt she was experiencing the authentic rhumba she had never witnessed before. She tried a few steps, and shook her hips again.
 She addressed a group of elderly women, after joining them in their morning exercises. "We women must never give up," she announced to applause. "I came here looking for the rhumba," she remarked at the close of the programme, "and I found a lot more besides. It's a dance that brings people together." This marvellous woman was a delight to be with, and this out-of-the-ordinary feature merits an early repeat.
 The Truth Lies In Rostock (Channel 4), a painstaking documentary by Siobhan Cleary and Mark Saunders, investigated the events leading up to the petrol-bombing of a refugee centre for Vietnamese on the Lichtenhagen Estate in Germany last August. It raised any number of worrying questions that might never be answered concerning the behaviour of the police, the Rostock City Council and the ministry of the interior. A fascist group, the Hamburg Liste, had been distributing leaflets on the estate with the message "Keep Rostock German" six months before the demonstrations and the ultimate arson took place. The blandness of certain officials was shocking to behold, as was the presence in the former East German city of David Irving, accompanied by Dr Gerhard Fray. In the meantime the Vietnamese are waiting to hear what will happen to them, and the Romanians, Serbs and Croats who have escaped to Rostock live in fear of their lives.

LOAD-DATE: July 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



207 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 24, 1993

CHRISTCHURCH BYELECTION: BUTTERFLY BULLDOZED BY EVENTS

BYLINE: LAWRENCE DONEGAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 440 words

 
 "AS EACH day dawns so does a new promise. So far the Liberal candidate has committed her party to an enormous pounds 8 billion in extra spending - that is six pence on the basic rate of income tax, or pounds 662 in extra . . ."
 Rob Hayward, the Conservative candidate, tried his best to wade through the debris of Thursday night's events at Westminster but in truth he was like a butterfly confronted by a bulldozer.
 The theme of the party's press conference may have been "Dorset is leading the way to modern health care", but it was not a subject dominating conversation elsewhere in the constituency. 
 Events in the Commons have provoked fresh difficulties for a Conservative campaign which is now virtually under seige.
 "John Major? At first I thought he was going to do good," said 69-year-old Jane Pledge as she wound her way through Ferndown town centre. "I thought young blood in the Cabinet would have been good but we know now that John Major is not strong enough. What we need now is a Winston Churchill, someone to fight for the country."
 Retired soldier Dennis Bell took up the theme. "I don't think John Major is the man to vote for. You know, Maggie Thatcher would never have let all this happen - she knew what she wanted and got it."
 Lady Thatcher parading through Christchurch in battle fatigues would undoubtedly tempt some defectors back to Mr Hayward, but the Liberal Democrat camp, overjoyed by events at Westminster, finally shed the caution which has tempered their campaign.
 "We have seen a frightened rabbit of a Prime Minister, running a way from the will of the House of Commons, the will of a significant secton of the Conservative and the British people . . . His future as Prime Minister is now very limited," began Alex Carlile MP, before expounding on the prospects for a September general election.
 If events were getting him down, Mr Hayward did his best not to show it at his 37th "At Home" - an informal chat with electors - of the campaign at an old folks' housing complex at Ferndown. It was a sedate affair, punctuated by an intervention by Jacqui Myers, the complex's sales manager.
 "I am against a United States of Europe. I strongly feel that the history of Europe shows that the various countries can not get along," she said.
 Mr Hayward paused before replying. "If we can learn to live together then there is very little likelihood of war . . . I hope we progressively learn to live together," he said.
 The candidate could have been forgiven if he allowed his thoughts to drift momentarily away to Westminster and his Conservative colleagues.

LOAD-DATE: July 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



208 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 26, 1993

LAW REPORT: HOME LOAN RULE BACKDATED

BYLINE: SHIRANIKHA HERBERT, BARRISTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 636 words

 
 Queen's Bench Divisional Court; Regina v Investors' Compensation Scheme Ltd, ex parte Weyell and others; Before Lord Justice Glidewell and Mr Justice Cresswell; July 21 1993
 ELDERLY investors who suffered irrecoverable losses, including that of their homes, by borrowing on advice which did not satisfy the rules of FIMBRA (the Financial Intermediaries, Managers and Brokers Regulatory Association Ltd), were entitled to compensation from the Investor's Compensation Scheme Ltd (ICS) even if the investor borrowed before the ICS came into effect.
 The continuing obligation on the brokers to manage the fund implied a continuing duty to correct inadequate advice.
 The facts
 The ICS was set up to compensate investors if their civil claims could not be satisfied by a person authorised under the Financial Services Act 1986 to carry on investment business.
 Margaret Weyell, John Veniard, Ivor Last, and Joyce Rowden were sold home income plans on the advice of Aylesbury Associates and Fisher Prew Smith Ltd, members of FIMBRA and authorised under the act. 
 Home income plans were sold by insurance brokers and other agents, and the purpose was to release part of the capital in an investor's home when the home was not mortgaged. The plan was to raise a loan secured by a mortgage on the home without reference to the borrower's income.
 A large proportion of the money raised was invested in an equity-linked single premium investment bond. If the bond performed sufficiently well to meet the interest payments on the mortgage, without depreciating the capital invested, all would be well. But there was an inevitable risk the income would not service the mortgage if the return from the investment or the property value fell, or if mortgage rates increased. The capital would then diminish at an increasing rate. That was the fate which befell many home income plans from 1989.
 Such plans proved attractive to elderly people who had paid off mortgages, but in many cases they either lost their homes or are living on much reduced incomes. There have been more than 1,100 claims on the ICS arising out of the default of the two brokers who acted for these four investors.
 They complained the brokers breached FIMBRA rules by failing to give proper advice so they understood the risks, in particular that the mortgagees might claim possession of their homes, and by failing to take reasonable care to ensure that the transaction was the most suitable for each investor.
 The ICS refused the claims of Mr Veniard and Mrs Weyell because Aylesbury Associates gave its bad advice before August 28, 1988, when the ICS took effect. It halved the claims of Mr Last and Mrs Rowden because they had entered into the plans with their respective spouses, who had died before the brokers were declared in default. All four sought judicial review.
 The decision
 Mr Justice Cresswell said that the brokers' liability arose not only for the initial unsound advice but also when they failed at any time to seek to correct it or to warn of the inherent risks. Thus they breached FIMBRA rules. It was the brokers' continuing contractual obligation to manage the fund, to value the holding every six months, and to report the result. That imposed an obligation to give competent advice when making the report.
 Their Lordships also ruled against halving Mr Last's and Mrs Rowden's eligible loss. FIMBRA rule 2.02 did not preclude an application by the personal representatives of a deceased when the death occurred before the broker was declared in default.
 Appearances: Nicholas Strauss QC and Neil Kitchener, instructed by Barnett Sampson, for the applicants; Michael Beloff QC and Richard McManus, instructed by Wilde Sapte, for the ICS.
 Shiranikha Herbert, barrister

LOAD-DATE: July 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



209 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 26, 1993

POUNDS 60 'MEDICARD' COULD REPLACE PRESCRIPTIONS

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 559 words

 
 THE Government could save more than pounds 1.2 billion a year by limiting free prescriptions to the very poorest and introducing a system by which families would pay about pounds 120 annually for their prescribed drugs, a rightwing think tank says today.
 Ending the flat-rate prescription charge and instead requiring payment of a drug's market price is a natural development, according to a report by the Institute of Economic Affairs. "Just as doctors are expected to explain the risks and benefits of treatment, so the consumer of the future will also expect to be made aware of the price." 
 At present 48 per cent of patients and 82 per cent of prescription items are exempt from charge. Only 8 per cent of the total cost of drugs is met by the patient, yet the flat-rate charge of pounds 4.25 exceeds the cost of about half all items.
 The report proposes that those with income below basic Income Support level continue to receive free prescriptions. Others now exempt, such as better-off pensioners, children in working families, and pregnant women, would pay.
 Although prescriptions paid for one at a time would be full market price, people could buy a 12-month ticket, as is currently available at pounds 60.60. A family could cover all its members by buying two.  Both exemptions and those with tickets would have the same plastic "medicard".
 The authors estimate that 70 per cent of pensioners and 20 per cent of other people would buy season tickets, thus raising almost pounds 1.5 billion a year, six times the pounds 250 million raised by prescription charges.
 - The modern welfare state has created a dependancy culture in which "false excuses and malingering" have dimmed its social democratic ideals and rendered its upkeep prohibitively expensive, a leading theoretician of the new right argues today, writes Michael White.
 Professor Michael Novak suggests that throughout the advanced world the welfare state "has been so designed that it has become a substitute for responsibility, liberty, self-control and law. Its administrative system has been deliberately constructed to be amoral.
 "It neither demands nor rewards responsible behaviour. It corrupts the virtuous and pays equal benefits to those who spurn virtue," he writes in a pamphlet for the Thatcherite Centre for Policy Studies.
 Prof Novak, a prominent Catholic theologian and Thatcher-Reagan advocate, extols a return to "independence, hard work, and se lf-reliance".
 Making what looks like a direct swipe at the Labour-led Commission on Social Justice examining rights and duties of the state and citizens, he urges replacement of state bureaucracies with private alternatives.
 Prof Novak acknowledges that the welfare state has benefits for the elderly, but its impact on the young and on family life has been destructive to the point where illegitimacy is rife. Not only does the state cost too much and spawn "a new soft despotism", he argues that it puts democracy itself in doubt. "For the project of self-government depends on the capacity of citizens to govern their own passions, urges, habits and expectations."
 Medicard: A Better Way To Pay for Medicines?; IEA, 2 Lord North Street, London SW1P 3LB; pounds 5.45 inc p&p. Crisis in the welfare state; CPS, 52 Rochester Row, London SW1P 1JU; pounds 4.95.

LOAD-DATE: July 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



210 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 30, 1993

POLICE CONDEMN 'MADNESS' OF JAIL LEAVE FOR MURDERER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 526 words

 
 A PRISONER was jailed for life yesterday for the murder of a barmaid while he was on home leave from jail.
 Malcolm Smith, aged 41, was convicted of murdering 26-year-old Jayne Harvell in her flat in Bournemouth, Dorset.
 After the case the head of Dorset CID, Detective Chief Superintendent Des Donohoe described the murder as "brutal, callous and despicable". 
 "I really wonder if a man such as this has got a place in our society," he said. The decision to allow him out of jail, bearing in mind his previous convictions was "madness".
 The criminal justice system was just as responsible as the killer for the death of Miss Harvell, he added. Mr Smith had 123 convictions yet on two separate occasions the prison service had allowed him home leave. On those occasions he tied up an old man and robbed him and had battered and killed a young girl.
 Mr Justice McKillon said at Winchester crown court that it had been a "horrible and unpleasant tale". After hearing the accused had appeared in court on 21 occasions since the age of 11 - 15 times for dishonesty and violence - the judge told him: "You have become an extremely dangerous man."
 Mr Smith, of no fixed address, pleaded not guilty to murdering Miss Harvell at her bedsit in Bournemouth's Westbourne area on June 1, last year.
 The prosecution claimed he should have returned to the Verne Prison, Portland, Dorset, from four days home leave.
 Miss Harvell, who worked at the Pelican wine bar, in Bournemouth, was found semi-naked on her bed with a pillow case over her head, and an electric cord around her throat. She had a broken nose, a sock had been used to gag her and she died from asphyxiation after inhaling her own blood, said the prosecuting counsel, David Lane QC.
 Mr Smith had seen her photograph in the cell of a fellow inmate at the jail, where he was serving an 18-month term for robbery and false imprisonment - which involved tying up an elderly man who had befriended him while on parole.
 He had served three months of that sentence when he was granted home leave to a Swindon hostel. But instead of going there he went to Bournemouth where he met Miss Harvell.
 Over the ensuing days he was seen several times with the barmaid who was described to the court by witnesses as "friendly, innocent and trusting".
 The accused told the jury he and Miss Harvell had become lovers four days before she died. The night before her murder she stayed with her boyfriend, allowing Mr Smith to sleep at her flat.
 The judge said the precise sequence of events at the flat when Miss Harvell returned to get ready for work on the Monday morning and found Mr Smith still there could not be certain.
 "At some stage in that terrible treatment of her the only sensible conclusion on the evidence is he raped her, probably as she lay trussed up and helpless on her bed," said the judge.
 A Home Office spokesman said last night that the decision to grant Mr Smith home leave had been looked into and correct procedures had been followed.
 "There was nothing to indicate Smith was likely to commit any crime," said the spokesman.

LOAD-DATE: July 30, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



211 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

July 30, 1993

GHOST TOWN WHERE TERROR IS IN THE AIR

BYLINE: DEREK BROWN IN AL-QULAYLAH, SOUTH LEBANON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 736 words

 
 THE house is large and modern, sturdily built in concrete. Not sturdy enough, though, to resist an Israeli Defence Force TOW anti-armour missile.
 It smashed in on Wednesday morning, punching through the thick, steel-reinforced floor, and exploding in the basement where the Daweish family was sheltering.
 Mustafa Daweish, the head of the family, is now in the Jamal Amel hospital in Tyre. 
 He told his story through an interpreter: "He started to evacuate his family and bring them to hospital. He saw that people were wounded. It was dark inside the basement, with too much dust. He started to pull the stones away and saw his son cut into pieces and dead."
 Hassan, Mr Daweish's son, was 13. As his father helped the rest of the family get clear, an Israeli helicopter returned and fired one more missile. Mr Daweish was wounded in his left leg.
 The house in al-Qulaylah is empty now, with hideous blood smears at the entrance and in the basement. Poking through the debris yesterday, an officer of the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (Unifil), said laconically: "There is a human piece here, I think. Yes, it is a finger tip."
 Outside, the village is all but deserted. There used to be about 3,500 people here, but when Unifil searched it they found just 15 elderly residents.
 "They said they didn't want to go anywhere else, but they were frightened," said Yrjo Hoysniemi, a Finnish major.
 It's the same all around the Unifil area. Villages are silent, crops are untended. In one otherwise deserted street, an old, bent man hobbled with a stick past a couple of bewildered bullocks.
 Israel's latest "anti-terrorist" tactic is working terribly well. Best estimates suggest that 200,000 Lebanese have fled the five-day onslaught. Most have headed for Beirut, just as the Israeli prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, says he intended. He wants the refugees to bring pressure on the Lebanese government and on its patron, Syria, and force them to suppress the Hizbollah force of Iranian-backed Shi'a guerrillas.
 Israeli officials insist that the aim is not to kill civilians or drive them out by sheer terror. But that is what has happened. Unifil puts the death toll at 111, with another 500 or so wounded.
 Terror is in the very air, which shakes and trembles with the constant boom of heavy artillery. Helicopters prowl high above the ghostly villages, occasionally throwing out heat flares to divert possible missiles.
 Offshore, small gunboats dash up and down the coast, occasionally pausing to shell suspected guerrilla bases, such as the Palestinian refugee camp outside Sidon.
 The Israelis blandly admit that the bombardment, particularly with artillery, cannot be precise. According to Unifil sources, the Israeli land, sea and air forces have so far fired 20,000 rounds from heavy weapons, including missiles. That is 4,000 more than Unifil logged in the whole of last year.
 Sometimes, the tactic works without a single shot. On Wednesday, the people of Tyre were told by the Voice of the South radio station, operated by Israel's puppet South Lebanese Army, that they would soon be shelled. It has not happened, but 80 per cent of the population fled.
 Now the city seems peopled by small groups of nervous men, anxious to bolster their courage by vowing never to leave.
 "We are not going," said Sherif, a property dealer aged 40. "This is our country, and we prefer to die here."
 Tyre was, until Sunday, a boom town, with new buildings sprouting around its edges, evidence of the life that returned to Lebanon a couple of years ago after 15 years of savage civil war.
 Now the confidence has suddenly drained away. There are 10,000 new refugees in the town, mostly miserably packed into school buildings. A few shops are open, and a couple of restaurants. They appear to be doing no trade.
 The Jamal Amel hospital, however, has all the business it can handle.
 Dr Ahmed Mrouweh reels off the statistics. On Sunday, he admitted 13 patients of whom two died; on Monday, 27, of whom four died; on Tuesday, 78, of whom six died; on Wednesday, 58, of whom five died; and yesterday up to noon, 15, of whom two died.
 They are eagerly displayed for the visiting press: a seven-year-old girl with shrapnel in her stomach; another girl, a teenager, with a damaged eye; and Mr Daweish with his ghastly story of the basement.

LOAD-DATE: July 30, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



212 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 4, 1993

RIGHTWINGERS' BENEFIT SHAKE-UP IDEAS 'NOT A BLUEPRINT FOR REVIEW'

BYLINE: PATRICK WINTOUR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 260 words

 
 PROPOSALS for changing the welfare state, made yesterday by the No Turning Back Group of Tory MPs, have been welcomed by the Department of Social Security but it does not see them as a blueprint for the Government's review of state spending.
 Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, is a member of the group but is said to have played no role in preparing the proposals. They included a new means-tested and graduated benefit that would combine all non-contributory benefits, such as child benefit, disability and invalid care allowance, sickness, and maternity payment.
 The proposals are seen as the maximum demands of the Tory rightwingers.  However, some Tory social security specialists doubt it is possible to construct and administer such a complex scheme.
 A claim by the group, that much child benefit was wasted on the wealthy, was denied by the Child Poverty Action Group. A recent parliamentary answer showed that only 8 per cent of child benefit went to families earning more than pounds 300 a week after housing costs.
 Another argument propounded by the Tory group, that economic growth will be insufficient to fund increasing demands on the welfare state due to the rising elderly population, was challenged by Donald Dewar, the shadow social security spokesman. He pointed out that a recent paper by Mr Lilley showed that by 2000, social security as a percentage of gross domestic product would be only 12.4 per cent, a rise of 0.1 per cent, if growth reaches 2.5 per cent and unemployment fell to 2.75 million.

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



213 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 4, 1993

PENSIONERS CHALK UP RECORD BURDEN

BYLINE: OUR CORRESPONDENT IN ROME

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 296 words

 
 AS ITALY braces for a season of political and economic modernisation, the scale of the task has been illuminated by a report showing the country has more people on state pensions than in employment.
 It enjoys this unique distinction despite having no fixed unemployment benefit, only a token payment of pounds 2.30 a day, not included in yesterday's figures. 
 It has increasing numbers of elderly people, who contributed to the 1992 surge in state pensions analysed by the Prime statistical agency. But in Italy, pensions can mean rather more than in other countries - and it is the plethora of state favours to its political servants that is blamed for raising the number of pensioners to 21 million last year, against 20.4 million in work.
 The vast and infamously inept army of civil servants - invariably recruited through political patronage and family ties - could until last year retire at the age of 35. Most could take a second job even during the 15 years required to qualify for a pension, which is usually drawn in tandem with a second career. Reforms to this system provoked outrage last year.
 Then there are prizes like the benemerito, or well deserved, pension given to anyone thought to be worthy of a special recognition by the political authorities.
 The statistics show remarkable concentrations of invalidity pensions in areas where the Christian Democrat Party operates its most unapologetic patronage systems: notably Naples, Calabria, Abruzzi and Sicily.
 Italy spends pounds 115 billion a year on pensions. The number of newly registered pensioners in 1992 was 850,205, compared with 772,478 in 1991: a new record noted by the director of the national pension authority, Mario Colombo, who himself retired a month later.

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



214 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 4, 1993

TRIAL STRIPS HOSPITALS OF CARE ROLES

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 546 words

 
 HOSPITALS will be stripped of responsibility for midwifery, psychiatric care and many services for elderly people and children under radical plans for east London which may foreshadow a shake-up of health care nationally.
 The plans, drawn up by the North East Thames health region, involve a huge shift of power from hospitals to community health services. At least one hospital could be rendered unviable by the changes. An indication that the plans are setting the direction for the health service as a whole will come as soon as tomorrow, when a government report is expected to call for maternity services to be drawn away from hospitals. 
 The plans are set out in a confidential report sent to health service groups and local authorities in east London. The report identifies the health services to be placed in the hands of the East London Primary Care Development Agency, a body being set up for 18 months only to re-organise and boost family doctor and community services in the area.
 The move is part of the Tomlinson review of health care in London and follows the recommendation by the review, accepted by ministers, that provision of acute and community health services should be separated and that integrated hospital trusts providing both should be unpicked.
 The report says this provides an opportunity for a fresh look at where the divide should be between acute and community services. This should reflect local priorities and not merely the way institutions have developed.
 The agency should take responsibility for all existing community services; family planning, cervical screening and midwifery; all mental health services, including child psychiatry; all services for people with learning disabilities or mental handicap; all rehabilitation services; all services for people with physical disabilities; and all therapy services.
 It should also take over all child health services in Newham and all community paediatrics in City and Hackney and Tower Hamlets; and all care of the elderly in Tower Hamlets and continuing care and day-centre activities in Newham and City and Hackney.
 The proposals would still leave the main east London hospitals with substantial incomes, the report says. But it acknowledges that "the viability of the Homerton [in Hackney] will depend on its level of income and its cost base".
 Groups circulated have been given two weeks to comment on the recommendations, with decisions due next month, and there is widespread concern in the hospitals affected.
 Critics of the plans say they risk causing further chaos in a health care system in the capital that is already in turmoil.  They could open fault-lines between hospitals and community health services, down which patients could disappear.
 Mike Fairey, chief executive of the Royal London hospital trust, which runs both acute and community services, said: "We believe that, overall, what the regional health authority is trying to do can be done in a substantially less radical way than it is proposing."
 Hilary Scott, chief executive designate of the development agency, said that the report was striking a deliberately radical note and that its main aim was to reflect the needs of the patient, not the institution.

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



215 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 4, 1993

PEOPLE: KEEPING MUM;
Sarah Boseley on the family life of Iliescu, a job offer for Castro, sado-masochism and the policemens' union, and what to wear in jail

BYLINE: SARAH BOSELEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 915 words

 
 WHEN it comes to their mum, even the coolest politician gets hot under the collar. President Ion Iliescu of Romania is sueing Expres magazine for suggesting that he neglected and disowned his elderly mother. Out pours a torrent of emotional self-justification from the 63 year-old former communist aide to Nicolae Ceausescu. "At the age of one, I was abandoned by my mother, who never interested herself in me any more," he wrote in a letter for publication, claiming he sends her money for housing and food expenses each month. "I did not miss affection in the first years of my life. I received it from my grandparents and my father's family, and at seven from my adoptive mother, a daughter of peasants from the (north Romanian) Maramures area." Just to make his feelings quite clear, Iliescu signed the letter to the Romanian magazine's general manager "with all lack of respect".
 - OFF to prison and don't know what to wear? Family weeping as you leave and you don't know how to placate them? Fear no longer: there is a survival guide which will answer all your needs and more.  Mario Zamorani, a 45-year-old manager arrested during the ongoing Italian corruption scandal and sentenced to 117 days in prison, has written a manual to guide corrupt businessmen who have fallen foul of the clean-up campaign through the ordeal of prison and even retain a touch of class . . . 
 The most important question is, of course, what to wear. I mean, you don't want to look like just anybody, do you? The first item on the list is a pair of clogs: "They have high soles and when you take a shower it will prevent you from getting any nasty fungal infections on your feet". Then you need a tracksuit, socks, handkerchiefs - all the usual things. "Pyjamas, maybe stripey ones, like mine, make a good first impact on your cell mates: they laugh immediately, but it serves its purpose." The final item: "Two shirts, perhaps monogrammed: they add a certain tone."
 Other useful items: glue (good for sticking up posters, pictures of your loved ones), a bottle of perfume to take away the nasty odours which permeate your prison cell; mosquito repellent and, of course, spaghetti.
 Finally, remember when you leave your home not to spend too long hugging and kissing your family. "Stick to saying 'Don't worry, I'll be back - soon', and maybe give a little wry smile like Gary Cooper when he used to set off on his horse to face some terrible danger. It gives everyone a sense of security: there'll be plenty of time for tears later on."
 Pfeffer at stake
 THREE years ago, Helmut Pfeffer, or Helmut Pepper as he would be known in English, and a dominatrix friend opened a sex-shop in Cologne that offered a nice line in sado-masochistic equipment. Pfeffer, aged 57, also posed in magazines of that ilk in arresting positions. All harmless fun, he and his friends might say. But, 'Ello, 'Elllo, 'Ello, Herr Pfeffer is national chairman of the German Police Union. Was, wuld be more accurate. He has decided to resign the post. Unfortunately for his bank balance, he hasn't even a shop to go back to: the local bailiff has just seized it. And the dominatrix cannot be found for love nor money. Ouch.
 - The Transylvanian town of Sibiu must be visible from some considerable distance even on a moonless night. It is home to two rival Gypsy kings who are trying to outdo each other in the glitter of their crown jewels. Emperor Iulian Of All The Gipsies, whose coronation is planned for Sunday , has a monster headpiece encrusted with 100 large diamonds and rubies which he now says he is insuring for $ 87,000. This announcement is seen as a bid to outshine his neighbour, King Cioaba of All The Gypsies, who has the advantage of being registered with the United Nations as the representative of world gypsydom. Cioba's crown, made in Italy for his own coronation last September, was said to contain almost two kilogrammes of 24 carat gold.
 They claim as subjects some two to three million Gypsies within Romania. And if they can just stop bickering, there's a chance they can keep both sets of crown jewels in the family. Cioaba's daughter Lucia is married to Iulian's eldest son, who presumably is hoping to become Iulian II.
 Empire in the sun
 DIONYs Jobst, from Germany's Christian Democratic party, has come up with a novel proposal, according to the mass-circulation newspaper Bild. Given that "Mallorca has become practically German," he says, "the German federal government should approach Spain with the object of buying the island." His more moderate colleague Peter Ramsauer, is in favour of "a 99 year lease". Mallorca, this hypothetical "land" (federal state) number 17 of the Federal Republic, has more Germans living there than Spanish, Bild explained. And how much more convenient it would be for them to be able to pay for their shopping in marks and use German coins in public telephones.
 THERE can be little more romantic end than to die of too much love. It's a consoling thought for the Italians as they mourn the gradual expiry of the country's most famous pine tree in Agrigento, Sicily. Pirandello's ashes were buried under the tree and for years fans and lovers have flocked to its bough to carve their names, romantic messages and endless hearts.  Well-meaning they might have been, but the many deep incisions have let in so much pollution and so many insects that scientists have now had to give up hope of saving the dying pine.

LOAD-DATE: August 4, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



216 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 5, 1993

LONG-STAY BEDS FOR ELDERLY 'CUT BY 40PC'

BYLINE: FRANCES RICKFORD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 616 words

 
 THE number of National Health Service beds for elderly people with long-term illnesses has been cut by nearly 40 per cent in the last five years, a Guardian survey suggests.
 The survey of a sample of health districts demonstrates how the NHS is shedding responsibility for this area of care, forcing people into means-tested private nursing homes. It suggests that in total more than 10,000 beds for elderly people in England and Wales are likely to have closed since 1988.
 There has been no explicit government policy of long-stay closures, but the Department of Health has emphasised increased throughput of patients. 
 Bed closures have coincided with the growth of private nursing home places, funded on a means-tested basis through social service departments under the community care legislation. For many elderly people the result has been means-tested care in place of a free service.
 The means-testing regulations for private nursing home fees mean that people with assets of more than pounds 8,000, including their homes, receive no financial help. As a result, nursing care is being financed by house sales.
 The department does not collect figures on NHS long-stay care for elderly people. The survey was conducted by asking individual consultant geriatricians in two health regions, Northern and South Western, to provide figures on the number of these beds available in their districts now, five years ago and 10 years ago.  Results were received from 16 of the 22 districts in the two regions.
 In these, there were 2,536 beds in 1983, 2,288 in 1988 and 1,374 in 1993 - a loss of 1,162 beds, or 45.8 per cent, over 10 years and of 914 beds, or 39.9 per cent, over the last five.
 During this period there has been a rapid growth in the number of very old people. Between 1981 and 1991 the number of over-75s in Britain increased by 27 per cent and of over-85s by 50 per cent, according to census data.
 Carers' organisations point out that long-stay geriatric and psychogeriatric beds have traditionally been used as temporary accommodation for people being looked after at home to give carers a break.
 Harry Cayton, director of the Alzheimer's Disease Society, said: "This survey confirms the fears that we have had from anecdotal evidence. There has been a huge withdrawal of the health service from the elderly with chronic illness."
 Jill Pitkeathley, director of the Carers' National Association, said: "It may be the case that the correct direction to take is that if you own a house, that money should be used to fund your health care when you need it. But these changes are happening by stealth with no public debate.
 "Every day carers contact us for whom it comes as a total surprise that owner occupation is being used in this way. People's expectation is still that if they have cared for someone as long as they possibly can, there will be good care available free when they can no longer cope."
 Elaine Murphy, professor of psychogeriatrics at Guy's hospital in London, said: "The current situation is a fudge which is preventing us from developing a strategy to meet the real needs of real people. The Government needs to come out and say whether it is going to provide care free at the point of use for chronically ill elderly people or not, but it is afraid to do that for political reasons."
 A Health Department spokesman said: "The white paper Caring for People states clearly that where people require continuous care for reasons of ill health it will remain the responsibility of health authorities to provide for this. This message has been reinforced both by ministers and in guidance to health authorities."

LOAD-DATE: August 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



217 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 6, 1993

LEADING ARTICLE: PRIVATISING THE HEALTH SERVICE BY STEALTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 494 words

 
 IF THE radical new health policy exposed in yesterday's Guardian had been put before Parliament, it would have been vetoed: th e NHS is disengaging from continuous care. No one has announced this. There has been no debate. It runs quite contrary to government policy. And, if the voters of Christchurch had been told, the Conservatives might have even lost their deposit. A survey by the Guardian shows that the number of long-stay beds for elderly people has been cut by 40 per cent in the last five years. This is equivalent to 10,000 beds being shut. All this in a decade in which the numbers aged over 75 have increased by 25 per cent, and the numbers over 85 by 50 per cent. Before any further beds are shut - particularly with the numbers over 85 due to rise by one third to one million by 2001 - there must be a full debate. Do we want these beds closed?  Should health authorities be stopped? 
 Tackled by our reporter, the Health Department declared that government policy still required health authorities to provide continuous care. It is set out in unambiguous terms in the white paper, Caring for People: "Health authorities will need to ensure that their plans allow for continuous residential health care for highly dependent people who need it". Yet our survey of 16 health authorities in two separate regions showed a 40 per cent reduction in longstay beds. Certainly there has been a big unplanned increase in private residential and nursing home beds because of the social security subsidies that were available until April of this year. These beds increased by over 40,000 between 1986 and 1990. But reports last year showed most health authorities are not replacing their own provision with contractual beds in private nursing homes. Only one third have contractual beds, and of these, half have 30 or fewer beds. So, thousands of patients are being transferred from free NHS beds into means-tested nursing homes.
 If only more patients were aware of the law, they could halt this process.  Official government circulars - and the Health Ombudsman - have upheld the obligation on the NHS to provide continuous nursing care. These obligations remain in place even with the introduction in April of the new community care scheme, under which the needs of dependent patients discharged by NHS hospitals are assessed. Just where the boundary between medical care (free, and on the NHS) and social care (means-tested social services) is drawn, has always been difficult to define. The dilemma of those who are too well for hospital, but too frail for residential care is not new. But genuine medical cases, both chronic and acute, are now being discharged into private nursing homes. A cash-strapped NHS is now using these homes to save cash. Ministers clearly want to fudge the issue, but patients have a right to know their rights. And Parliament has a right to insist that any radical switch in health policy has its approval.

LOAD-DATE: August 6, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



218 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 7, 1993

WEEK IN NHS HOSPITAL COSTS OVER POUNDS 1,000

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 389 words

 
 THE average cost of a hospital patient has topped pounds 1,000 a week after rising more than 8 per cent in the first year of the National Health Service market, Department of Health figures show.
 The cost of caring for an in-patient for a week was an estimated pounds 1,072 in 1992, compared with pounds 991 in 1991 when the market-style NHS changes were introduced. The 1982 figure was pounds 489. 
 The figures, prepared by the Health Department, were used yesterday by the drugs industry to hit back at government plans to extend the "limited list" of medicines banned from being prescribed by doctors. The plans have been justified on grounds of the NHS's rising drugs bill.
 According to the Association of the British Pharmaceutical Industry, the 14 per cent growth in the bill in 1991-92 was attributable largely to rising numbers of elderly people, for whom more medicines are prescribed, and none of the growth was caused by price rises.
 As a proportion of total NHS costs, those of pharmaceutical services fell from 10.5 per cent in 1991 to 10.3 per cent in 1992, when they were pounds 3.8 billion. The increase of 8.2 per cent in in-patient costs reflects what the association describes as "waste" in other aspects of patient care - particularly, it says, growing numbers of bureaucrats.
 Dr John Griffin, the association's director, asked: "How can the Government justify further cutbacks in medicines when other costs in the NHS are so much greater?"
 The plans to extend the limited list to an additional 10 clinical categories, from the seven introduced in 1984, were announced last autumn. The extra categories include treatments for diarrhoea, allergies and anaemia, as well as sleeping tablets and oral contraceptives. No drugs have yet been named.
 The association says the Government risks driving manufacturers overseas. It estimates there is 60 per cent over-capacity in the industry in Europe, and says one leading company, which it will not name, is planning to cut its European plants from 12 to three.
 At present, the association says, medicines are Britain's second-biggest earner of foreign exchange, with a trade surplus of pounds 1.3 billion.
 Twenty-six Conservative MPs have signed Commons motions asking ministers to think again about extending the limited list.

LOAD-DATE: August 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



219 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 9, 1993

THIRTY YEARS ON, IT'S PARTY TIME FOR RONNIE BIGGS

BYLINE: JAN ROCHA IN RIO DE JANEIRO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 311 words

 
 NO grey-haired train robbers or former Scotland Yard policemen turned up in Rio at the weekend to celebrate the 30th anniversary of one of Britain's most celebrated crimes with the man who got away, Ronnie Biggs.
 Instead, a group of bemused Austrian tourists brought by their guide to see one of Rio's most enduring attractions - white-haired Mr Biggs - watched him celebrate his 64th birthday with more than 100 friends.
 A punk band shattered the silence of the cobbled street on a Rio hillside where Biggs lives. "It was a good party, it went on until 5 o'clock in the morning," he said yesterday, chipper after four hours' sleep. "Fortunately nobody called the police." 
 Away from England, Ronnie has always got on well with policemen - an off-duty Brazilian policeman friend poured the drinks at the weekend party. And only last month he was entertaining ex-superintendent Jack Slipper of Scotland Yard.
 It was the first time Mr Slipper had been back to Rio since 1974, when he made an unorthodox attempt to arrest Biggs which was thwarted by his Brazilian colleagues' insistence on the letter of the law.
 "We were just two elderly citizens having a drink and remembering old times," said Biggs yesterday.
 There were 14 other men with Biggs on the night of August 8, 1963, when they held up a mail train in Buckinghamshire. The only one to contact him yesterday was Bruce Reynolds, who phoned to say happy birthday.
 As a petty thief whose previous crimes included robbing a railway booking office on a bike, Biggs's share of the spoils was small. But he has turned the train robbery into a meal ticket for life, earning enough from interviews and shows for tourists to live comfortably.
 To Biggs, Brazil is home. He says: "I'd like to visit England, but I don't want to live there any more."
 Past Notes, G2, Page 3

LOAD-DATE: August 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



220 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 10, 1993

DIY JUSTICE RAISES COMMUNITY'S SPIRIT;
LAWLESS BRITAIN: In the second of a series looking at the effect of crime on society, Sally Weale finds support for vigilantes in a Swansea suburb

BYLINE: SALLY WEALE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 811 words

 
 LAST month, at the far end of the Danygraig Road in the Port Tennant area of Swansea overlooking the docks, a teenager was found in the early hours of the morning lying on the ground, both legs broken in several places.
 He told police it was a hit-and-run accident. An anonymous caller to the local newspaper, however, claimed it was a deliberate attack.
 The youth's legs had been broken on purpose, the caller said, and his friend's hands had been smashed with a hammer. "People around here are fed up," the caller said. "It will not stop at that - it will happen again if things don't improve." 
 Anger and frustration is evident among people living in the small terraced cottages lining the streets of this working class area of Swansea. Almost everyone has a complaint.
 They are fed up with their cars being broken into by joyriders, who career around the roads at 80-90mph, smashing into parked vehicles, then take them on to Kilvey Hill at the back of the estate, where they dump them and set fire to them.
 The press locally and nationally reported the incident as vigilante revenge by residents. A councillor said the victims "got what they deserved".
 The police, however, say they have found nothing to substantiate the vigilante theory. The youth with the smashed hands has not been traced and the family of the teenager with broken legs is said to be devastated by his injuries - he has metal pins in his legs - and the implication he had been involved in car crime, which they fiercely deny.
 Whatever the truth, there is widespread support for DIY law and order in the area. The way people in Port Tennant see it, neither the police nor the judiciary seem able to do anything, they cannot afford to pay a private security firm to watch their property, so it is up to the community to act.
 "You've got a problem, sort it out yourself - that's the way things have always happened around here," said one man, who keeps a stick at hand ready to chase anyone he sees breaking into cars.
 "The boys I drink with, 20 or 30 of us, we've all got the same opinion. Fight fire with fire. We are fed up with it. Either they stop or the local people are going to stop them."
 A man walking his Jack Russell terrier agrees - "I think it's a good idea. The police aren't doing anything." So does Grace Davies, aged 86, one of the many elderly people living in the part-private, part-council estate. "We should have vigilantes.  We've got a terrible lot over here. They hit our car not so long ago. And the man next door had to pay pounds 2,000 for repairs when they hit his."
 The shops on the small parade on Port Tennant Road have had metal grills fitted after being ram-raided. The general store half way up Danygraig Road has had video cameras and an outside security light installed.
 According to Richard Lewis, a Swansea city councillor for 20 years representing the Gower ward, the men who carried out the alleged vigilante attack in Port Tennant had done "a great service to the community".
 Councillor Lewis, a father of three, set up a group of vigilantes last September after a friend came to him for help when squatters took over her pounds 250,000 house. She had spent six months trying to get results through official channels. Mr Lewis "threatened to break a few arms and legs" and got them out in three days.
 Since then he has dealt with about 200 incidents and gathered up to 30 vigilante volunteers, available at the end of a telephone line, including firemen, former soldiers, Welsh Guards and men from the Territorial Army. He has had cries for help from as far afield as Stoke-on-Trent and Yorkshire.
 Earlier this year residents living in the Morriston area of Swansea called him in after a spate of vandalism resulted in pounds 30,000 of damage to their cars. "They knew who it was but they couldn't prove it," said Mr Lewis. "A few lads in balaclavas went up the street and sat on [the suspect's] garden wall and it ceased overnight."
 It is dangerous work. He has been stabbed a dozen times and bitten to the bone when he went to help a neighbour involved in a fight outside his house. Now he would never get involved without being armed, he says.
 Superintendent John Williams, of Swansea central police station, admits there is a problem with car crime in Swansea, like almost everywhere else. He admits he could do with more officers, and that there is frustration at the inadequacies of the legal system. But there is no excuse for people taking the law into their own hands.
 "The correct and proper way is to come to the police," he said. His officers had made inquiries into the Port Tennant incident but found no evidence of vigilantes at work.
 Should any fresh information come to light, it would be pursued. "I am not prepared to tolerate that sort of conduct."

LOAD-DATE: August 10, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



221 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 14, 1993

CUT IS ALMOST PAINLESS

BYLINE: BEN LAURANCE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 32

LENGTH: 523 words

 
 LET US be clear about one element of the debate over health-care costs: making drugs is dirt cheap. Discovering them is expensive, yes: there are all those scientists to be paid, rats to be killed, tests to be done, authorities to be satisfied and doctors to be won over.
 So by the time Megadrug Inc has jumped through all the regulatory hoops and actually got its whizzo acne cure licensed for sale in the main markets of the world, its accumulated research and development costs (including interest) will total perhaps pounds 150 million or more. Big money. 
 But once that has been done, the actual cost of producing most drugs is tiny.  Once a company has perfected its potion and produced tablet number one, making tablet number two or tablet number 2 million costs a piffling amount.
 Now, think what effect this has in practice. If Megadrug increases the annual sales of one of its products from, say, pounds 50 million to pounds 55 million, virtually all of that extra pounds 5 million flows through to the bottom line: it is extra profit. The economies of scale are enormous - as indeed they are in the production of countless things from compact discs to detective novels.
 And this makes the modesty of this week's proposals to cut the price of NHS drugs by only 2.5 per cent particularly baffling.
 The volume of prescription drugs being bought by the NHS is rising fast.  Broadly speaking, the volume of drugs prescribed in the world's main markets has been increasing by 1 per cent a year or less. But in Britain the growth has been much greater: in round terms, volumes prescribed in the early months of this year were 4 per cent higher than 12 months earlier.
 One could debate for ever why this has come about. Perhaps it is a consequence of NHS reforms in the last few years encouraging general practitioners to screen patients more thoroughly, which in turn has made it more likely that lurking ailments have been discovered and treated.
 But the exact reason doesn't matter: what is important, for the drug companies, is the simple fact that it has happened and that they can therefore reap economies of scale by generating extra output at a tiny marginal cost.
 And simply because of this alone, it stands to reason that drugs companies will make larger amounts of money from the UK market. Hence the 2.5 per cent cut looks a little timid. Even with that cut, the NHS's total bill for drugs - little more than one-tenth of the overall cost of running the health service, remember - is expected to rise by 14 per cent in the coming year, largely due to the increasing number of elderly people in the population and the use of newer, more effective, pricier drugs.
 The message seems clear: everything else being equal, companies are going to make larger profits per pill, capsule, injection or whatever, as the volume of drugs prescribed increases.
 Cutting the price paid for each of those pills and capsules may go some way to contain the Government's drugs bill. But don't shed a tear for the companies. As we demand increasing amounts of their products, they're laughing.

LOAD-DATE: August 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



222 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 15, 1993

THE LAST WORD;
BAD HOUSEKEEPING: With bats in the belfrey

BYLINE: DULCIE DOMUM

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 43

LENGTH: 725 words

 
 MRS BODY returns from Marbella, disgusted with Abroad. Closer interrogation reveals that her disgust was provoked mainly by the behaviour of the British. Another reason for Euro-scepticism: it brings out the worst in us. Comfort her with brick-red tea and slices of Battenberg cake. Is Battenberg named after some obscure European dynasty? If it was called Bradford-on-Avon cake it would have been outlawed by EC edict by now.
 Spouse enters, beams, admires Mrs Body's body (brick-red like the tea), panders to her xenophobia, then enquires if we may dump the kids on her on Sunday so we can go to the cricket - a foolish expedition, he admits later, as English cricket has gone to the dogs. 
 Children readily acquiesce as they will be able to ransack the Bodys' vile videos and perhaps devour oven chips shaped like dinosaur turds for tea. Weather is but so-so, but prospect of afternoon deux beguiling: the crack of leather on willow, the flap of white flannel, etc. However, minutes before we are due to leave Elaine rings to ask me over because she is a bit low.  Invite her to cricket instead, at which she chirrups at the novelty of it all and runs off to dive into her sporty togs.
 Sporty togs turn out to be glistening cream dress with pearls at throat and ears. Old men on the gate flirt with her, but I am apparently too old to ogle. Alice and Saskia would no doubt require me to be delighted thereat. Cannot help feeling a bit jealous instead, as own dress, and indeed own body, dowdy old tat. Cricketers however even worse dressed. No white flannel - instead horrid blue tracksuits.
 "Supporting Gloucestershire," announces Spouse, "which used to be a pleasure, has now become social work." Elaine breaks into a peal of merry laughter. I know Spouse is amusing occasionally, but he's not that funny. Still, he goes on, they're doing better now, and in the middle of the field she will see the best wicketkeeper in the world: Jack Russell.
 "What!" cries Elaine, "that little chap in the funny hat? He looks like one of the Flowerpot Men!" She giggles anew at the idea of his being a Jack Russell and says she is definitely a dog person.  Evidently she is no longer a bit low.
 At 3.30 a flickering halo of unearthly light hovers around Jack Russell's head. Is this a Sign from Heaven which the England selectors ignore at their peril? No, it is the first symptom of a migraine.
 Retire to tea-tent and take pills in vain. Am driven home by Spouse with martyred air. Elaine sympathetic, though: soothes my throbbing brow with her wonderfully cool hand, and once home, puts me to bed, feeds the children, etc, despite my feeble insistence that Spouse can do it.
 "Oh no, Dulcie, it's fine, I love it!" she whispers, her eyes alight with fun.  "It's horrible living alone, you've no idea!" More evidence perhaps of her being a dog person. Suspect I am a cat person, though rapidly inclining to the dodo.  Left to my own thoughts in darkened room. Laughter below.
 Brain as usual refuses to go and lie in its basket. Instead it gnaws away at the the idea of dogs and cricket. Allan Border's Collies would top the Canine League. Can almost hear John Arlott growling, "Their play has a mordant quality, a dogged perseverance . . ." Even their names sound like a pack of dogs barking. "Mark!  Mark! Waugh! Waugh! Warne! Warne! Warne!  Boooooooooon!" Though Warne looks more like an engaging young pig who has had his snout in a bowl of cream. Drift off to sleep eventually and dream of Edward de Bono and Ronnie Barker.
 Awoken by Spouse coming to bed at half past midnight. "Not tonight dear I've got a headache," he quips, and falls instantly asleep. Next day worst pain has gone, but feel as if I am an old stone pillar that crashed down into undergrowth aeons ago.
 "How are you, old thing?" enquires Spouse. Object to his endearments and lament aloud that I am no longer as young as Elaine.
 "She's a silly tart," he snorts, and even though it is a transparent lie, am grateful. Such are the threadbare courtesies of middle-aged marriage.
 Manoeuvre myself painfully into the kitchen to find - astonishing - a letter addressed to me in the handwriting of that frisky young dog, Tom the Plumber. Ah. Had forgotten that old stone pillars can be of passing interest to frisky young dogs.

LOAD-DATE: August 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



223 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 16, 1993

COMMENTARY: A PARTY OF MASS MEMBERSHIP? DON'T FOOL YOURSELVES

BYLINE: JULIA LANGDON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 1134 words

 
 AWEARY member of Labour's shadow Cabinet who had just spent a day campaigning on the party's behalf recently confessed to the private suspicion that the days of a mass membership party were over.
 This is heresy. Comrades are not allowed to think such things, let alone articulate them. Labour has always been a party of mass membership. In principle that is. Last year's Conference resolutions included over 30 on the topic of membership, which all asserted the central importance of mass membership to give the working people of Britain their voice, to win the next election and to advance the cause of socialism . . . etc, etc. This year's will certainly reflect the same view. It is, of course, the view of the activists, the people who already do belong to the Labour Party and are anxious that others should see the light or, anyway, that a greater number should put their money where their vote goes. 
 But is it not possible that the candid view of the shadow minister is correct?  Is this not already the case - the statistics certainly suggest it might be.
 The figures are slightly muddled for individual party membership, but they do not hide the trend. Last year's annual report from Labour's National Executive recorded that the total number of members at the end of 1991 was 261,000. This was 50,000 less than the membership for 1990 and the report drew attention to the steady decline in membership in recent years and that the fall would have been steeper but for the efforts of its Membership Services Unit.
 During 1991 the efforts of this unit were rewarded by the recruitment of 30,000 new members. This is not an achievement likely to have been matched last year. Even though there was a general election, which usually enhances membership, the party had by then agreed to raise its full annual subscription to pounds 18. The impact has been disastrous for local parties. No official figures have yet emerged, but at least 40,000 had gone by this April.
 "You can't ask people to fork out 18 quid in my constituency", said one Tyneside MP. "You'd be asking to get your block knocked off." The elderly and the unemployed can still join up for a fiver, but building a mass membership party out of pensioners and those out of work does not exactly concur with the vital new image of a Labour Party for tomorrow.
 No cloud comes unaccompanied and the hefty subscription has seen Labour in the black for the first time anyone can remember.  Even so, the size of the fees will be cut when the party meets at Brighton.
 There will then be a great many speeches about mass membership. Yet a glance at the records suggests that this year's figure could be the lowest ever. In 1928, the first year that records of individual membership were kept, it stood at 214,970. The total rose steadily and, apart from dipping during the second world war, reached over a million in the early 1950s. It has been downhill ever since.
 But why? And why, in particular, when an increasingly unpopular Conservative government which has been in office for 14 years has failed to manage the economy, devastated industry, achieved record levels of unemployment, why now are people not flocking to join the official opposition?
 I suspect that the answer is that they don't see the point. The Labour Party was formed for a purpose and drew its intellectual, inspirational strength from that political purpose. Its members went to meetings, they campaigned, they canvassed, they proselytized and stood for elections because of an almost sentimental passion for their purpose. Today's members still do all of those things, but the people whose interests they are seeking to represent do not exactly share the party's beliefs, and therefore see no need to join up - especially not if it involves a large sum of money.
 This is to some extent the Labour Party's own fault for neglecting political education and partly a factor of the improved standard of living through this century since that first meeting in Farringdon Road - just down the street from the Guardian - when the party was born in February 1900.
 Labour's initial message was: "Vote for us and we'll make things better for you." But by the time the children had shoes on their feet, the reason for voting Labour was less obvious.
 Margaret Thatcher got into office in 1979 on the votes of the children and grandchildren of men and women who had never voted anything but Labour. These new Tory voters would rather spend their spare time building car ports or re-decorating the spare room than attending lengthy, boring meetings about constitutional changes in the rules for electing Labour Party leaders. And who can blame them?
 Joining the Labour Party has not been a very attractive prospect in the last couple of decades. There is still a delightfully sentimental side to its political appeal, but it has been swamped by the internal wrangling of its own members. Even before the constitutional rows of the late 1970s and early 1980s, spending an evening in one of the gloomy upper rooms in which the Labour Party normally does its business was not an entirely congenial affair.
 C. Northcote Parkinson observed that "It is now known . . . that men enter local politics solely as a result of being unhappily married", and most people would recognise some truth in this. My personal experience when I inadvertently got elected to a council in the 1970s (I had offered to fight a seat - for fun, I suppose - and they had told me I hadn't a hope of winning) was that none of my colleagues had anything resembling a normal happy private life. I sat next to one man, in his late 50s, who seemed quite socially conventional - and then discovered he still lived at home with his mum and dad. The truth was that Labour Party politics was a social prop for most of them. Spending the evening in the town hall was better than anything else they had on offer.
 And while the Labour Party set about the business of tearing itself apart, those people who would, in other circumstances, perhaps have been members learnt to use their leisure in other ways. That is why organisations like the Worldwide Fund For Nature and the Royal Society For The Protection of Birds and The National Trust have membership totals in the millions these days.
 After the Christchurch byelection, Margaret Beckett tried to dispel the talk of electoral pacts by calling for one last heave behind the Labour Party. It may be too late for that. It could be that the years of this century will exactly mark the history of the existence of the Labour Party as an organisation with a mass membership. Perhaps they should have started already to look at how they can move forward in these fundamentally altered circumstances.

LOAD-DATE: August 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



224 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 19, 1993

COUPLE EVICTED FOR RACE TAUNTS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 108 words

 
 AN elderly couple accused of racially harassing neighbours have been evicted by Leicester city council. 
 The pensioners lived in Highfields, which has a large Asian population. Racism is forbidden under the council's tenancy agreements, and in March the county court granted a possession order ordering the couple out of their flat by mid-June.  Bailiffs arrived yesterday after an appeal by the couple was dismissed, and they left.
 A council spokesman said it was the first such action, but should serve as a warning to others. Residents welcomed the eviction. One, Andy Bradford, said: "It is just a shame that it took so long."

LOAD-DATE: August 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



225 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 19, 1993

PAST NOTES: WHERE ARE THE BATH-CHAIRS?

BYLINE: BY H.K.C

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 331 words

 
 August 19, 1939
 WHEN I was young the most prominent thing to be seen on the "front" of any seaside resort was the bath-chair. All along the promenade there would be bath-chairs being pulled or pushed, with an old gentleman or an old lady riding and a daughter or a companion in attendance. Resorts all along the coast owed their existence to the bath-chair brigade. Invalids, real or imaginary, and elderly people formed a large factor in the seaside half a century ago. People talked little of holiday resorts. They talked of seaside resorts and the publicity, such as it was, generally emphasised the curative or preservative effects of the climate. Some of these places were a little depressing to young people. We wanted far less than people demand of a resort nowadays, but perhaps we did wish sometimes that there were fewer old, infirm, and frequently disagreeable-looking people staying there. 
 Nowadays a bath-chair is becoming almost as rare at a seaside place as the old growler or the old bathing machine which was towed out to sea by a horse. Watching the crowds promenading on a fine morning not long ago, I wondered idly what had become of all the people who used to be wheeled up and down there in bath-chairs. One is apt to do this as the years increase on one's head, only to be pulled up short with a horrified calculation as to the age of such people had they survived till now.  But we are told that we are becoming a nation of elderly folk. Have they no need of bath-chairs? And with that I tried to pick out from the promenaders, types who ought, by older notions, to have been in bath-chairs. Are the breezes of our seaside places more revivifying than 50 years ago? Decidedly not. Is life easier now, so that people age more slowly? Decidedly not.  Were the people one used to see in bath-chairs merely paying tribute to fashion? Who can tell? Perhaps it is the "uppishness" of modern youth which develops a "die-hard" spirit in the elderly.

LOAD-DATE: August 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



226 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 20, 1993

NHS DRUGS BILL SHOWS 13PC RISE

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 372 words

 
 THE National Health Service drugs bill increased by more than 13 per cent last year, the Health Minister, Dr Brian Mawhinney, announced yesterday.
 A statistical bulletin on prescriptions shows that the basic cost of medicines dispensed in 1992 was pounds 2,858 million, up 13.4 per cent on 1991.
 Dr Mawhinney said: "An increase in the drugs bill of 9.6 per cent in real terms cannot be sustained. While it is of primary importance to ensure that patients receive the medicines they need, more has to be done to eliminate uneconomic prescribing." 
 He said lessons from GP fundholders, whose drugs spending was 4 per cent less than non-fundholders, would be studied. Doctors would be encouraged to prescribe non-patent "generic" medicines instead of the dearer brand-name drugs and to control repeat prescriptions.
 Last week the Department of Health negotiated a 2.5 per cent cut in drugs prices with pharmaceutical firms over three years.  It is reviewing 10 categories of drugs, aiming to ban the more expensive brands in each.
 Dr Mawhinney said the increasing range of treatments, the development of health promotion strategies and the rise in the number of elderly people were "bound to exert an upward pressure on the drugs bill", making it even more essential to reduce waste.
 "If we spend more than we have to on meeting patients' real needs, we rob other parts of the health service of much needed growth money. . .
 "As a society we have come to expect a pill for every ill. We should be ready to accept a doctor's advice and reassurance on minor ailments, rather than expecting a prescription at the end of every consultation."
 A total of 425 million prescription items were dispensed in 1992, up 4.6 per cent on 1991.
 On average each person had 8.8 items dispensed, up from 8.5. Four out of five prescription items were free to the patient; two out of five were for generic medicines; and the cost of drugs per person continued to be higher in the North.
 Statistical bulletin: prescriptions dispensed in the family health services authorities: England 1982/92; Dept of Health Publication Unit, Heywood Stores, No 2 Site, Manchester Road, Heywood, Lancs, OL10 2PZ; pounds 2.

LOAD-DATE: August 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



227 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 20, 1993

WEATHER WATCH: ACHES AND RAINS

BYLINE: PAUL SIMONS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WETHER PAGE; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 341 words

 
 IT SOUNDS like a very whacky idea - using the human body as a weather forecaster. Imagine telling atmospheric pressure, humidity, temperature, atmospheric electricity, changeable conditions just from the way you feel. Yet ever since ancient times human ailments have been used to predict weather, and now there is some scientific evidence that it really works. 
 Sufferers of rheumatism and arthritis are painfully aware of changes in atmospheric pressure, when their swollen joints turn more painful. Arthritis sufferers are particularly good at predicting rain from their aches and pains thanks to changes in air pressure, as if their joints behaved like barometers. It may be, doctors now believe, because very sensitive pain receptors in the joints are triggered by the slight change in pressure.
 Humidity can bring on asthma attacks, although the most dramatic cases occur at the approach of thunderstorms, when attacks can sometimes reach epidemic proportions. But whether this is because of the change in humidity or the intense atmospheric electricity is not clear. Yet thunderstorms are known to trigger at least one other very common complaint - migraine attacks, and maybe there is a link between this and the asthma attacks.
 Weather complaints can reach life-threatening proportions. A recent study of elderly people living all day in well heated homes showed that just a brief trip outdoors in freezing cold weather could be fatal. The cold weather thickens blood, narrows blood vessels and can lead to blood clots, triggering coronaries and strokes. Added to that are the deaths caused by hypothermia in the cold brought on by poor circulation problems.
 As if that wasn't bad enough, cold temperatures can also exacerbate pain, such as angina pain, by narrowing blood vessels.  Probably the best known complaint of the weather is the common cold, although being soaked in the rain and cold doesn't necessarily cause colds. Cold conditions could depress the immune system and let viruses in more easily.

LOAD-DATE: August 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



228 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 21, 1993

SARAJEVANS WANT PEACE AT ANY COST

BYLINE: MAGGIE O'KANE IN SARAJEVO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 673 words

 
 THOSE Sarajevans who, a few months ago, spoke of fighting to the end argued yesterday that President Alija Izetbegovic had no choice but to accept the settlement terms put forward in Geneva yesterday.
 "It's over now," said Nenad Kavlovic, a doctor aged 44.
 Even the hardliners who have taken up arms and lost at the front are changing their opinions.
 "The Serbs can eat us alive here if they want to," said a soldier, aged 24. "We are in no position to hold them back anymore." 
 A 20-year-old law student just back from the front where his best friend was killed two weeks ago nodded. "He [Izetbegovic] has got to sign," he said.
 For most of the 18 months of war, Sarajevans had insisted it was only a matter of time before the West would intervene. Now, they no longer believe the cavalry will come.
 "Izetbegovic has not betrayed us, it is the West," said Zid Radio, another doctor, aged 43.
 As the water truck circulates around the city, bringing its inadequate supplies to the housing complexes, Ismeta Kurtovic, aged 59, her orange lipstick carelessly applied, impatiently fills her water container.
 "I don't care. He has got to sign any contract to finish this." Four women chatting on Marshal Tito Street were also unanimous.
 Zadnavika Gvozden, aged 34, said there had been enough suffering. Her nine-year-old son was killed a year ago.
 "We have to do it to save the children," she said. Her companions nodded in agreement. "We know the men think differently from us - but they are changing too."
 In the past 10 days, the city has had its longest period of calm since the war began 18 months ago. The Serbian forces have withdrawn from the hills above the city and a ceasefire is holding.
 Outside the Holiday Inn hotel, where last winter a sniper victim lay screaming in the grass, elderly women were yesterday combing the brambles for berries. On "sniper alley", a road where only armoured vehicles dared to travel, the traffic had turned into bicycles or women pushing prams laden with water.
 Most soldiers believe that, although many lives have been sacrificed in the war, the army would not resist if President Izetbegovic opts to sign in Geneva.
 "There will be a lot of angry men. But they know in their hearts that it is finished. I don't know how he will explain all those deaths," said Samir Kadribasic, aged 20, an economics student and soldier.
 The mood of the city has changed dramatically in the past two months. The tough talk of dying with honour with a gun in their hands has faded and the people are worn out.
 The demands and expectations have diminished.
 In the Cafe Lisac, which has just reopened, Igor Vinit, a soldier sits with a wounded friend drinking coffee and asks: "In Geneva, did they leave us a way to get to the seaside?"
 Reuter adds: The United Nations accused Bosnian Croat forces yesterday of forcing thousands of Muslims to flee from the Mostar region in a new campaign of "ethnic cleansing".
 "Credible reports from people fleeing the region point to a new campaign of so-called 'ethnic cleansing' that is as brutal as any so far witnessed in the Bosnian conflict," the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said. "There are numerous reports of brutal 'ethnic cleansing', murder, looting, rape and other abuses by Bosnian Croat forces throughout the region."
 It said 15,000, mostly draft-age, Muslim men were thought to be held in Bosnian Croat detention centres in the Mostar region, in south-western Bosnia-Herzegovina.
 Although the agency has had trouble getting into the area, it cited sources as saying there were detention centres in Rodoc (near Mostar), Gabela and Dretelj. "Detainees are reportedly being held in extremely poor conditions," it said.
 Croat forces agreed yesterday to allow the first UNHCR convoy since June into the western, Muslim part of Mostar today, where 35,000 Muslims have been cut off by fighting, with token medical supplies, but refused to allow further aid convoys in.

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



229 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 21, 1993

SMALLWEED

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 966 words

 
 NOT every MP heads for the eremetical peace of coast or countryside as soon as the House goes down. Some stand tirelessly by their telephones awaiting the gladdening tinkle which tells them that the Press Association knows they are still alive. Once it was Michael Brotherton, the Mouth from Louth, who topped the fecundity tables. Later, titanic struggles took place between Anthony Beaumont-Dark, a thunderous graduate of Birmingham municipal politics, and the sprite-like, hyper-active Peter Bruinvels of Leicester. This summer's contest, though, looks like being a walkover. Since the House broke up for the summer, the Tory MP for Brent North, Sir Rhodes Boyson, has behaved as if auditioning for the role of Mr Inescapable. The sheer range of the issues on which the knight has delivered to various newspapers must be the wonder of Wembley. July 29: the rights of privy counsellors (Sir Rhodes is one) to get called ahead of the Commons small fry. August 2: Sir R on the ERM: "I think it is completely dead and we should rejoice at the funeral." August 4: Grave reservations about abandoning league tables for seven-year-olds. August 8: Failing to compensate pensioners for the cost of VAT on fuel will be "politically suicidal".  August 11: Student loans are inflating the student drop-out rate. August 13: If transitional relief on the council tax is ended it could cost the Tories seats in the borough elections. August 15: Pushing ahead with bus deregulation could mean disaster for the Tories in London. August 16: Why is the civil service expanding while business is reining back? August 17: Taxes on papers and books will hit the poorest hardest. August 19: Muslims should have the same rights to voluntary-aided schools as the Christians and Jews.
 Today? goodness knows. Has the wombat a future, perhaps. Or, does kedgeree rot the brain? This sort of activity is thought by MPs to guarantee their survival against any threat from voters or boundary commissioners. But if that is so, how come Brotherton, Bruinvels and Beaumont-Dark are all of them gone to that bourn where even Chris Moncrieff never rings?
 WE all now know what drittsekk means in Norwegian, thank you, but one obvious question has yet to be answered: what is the meaning of Gummer? Sadly, no such word exists in Norwegian: the nearest Smallweed can find is gumler, an edentate mammal. In Swedish, gumma means an old woman, though it's also an endearment, roughly equal to "my pet". (A similar term occurs in west Somerset, where gummer means an old woman, or more specifically a grandmother: elsewhere in England the preferred version is gommer.) There is also an American term, gummers, which means braces holding up trousers, but these are not much help in this case.
 Gummer himself might claim that the name is derived from an Anglo-Saxon word meaning man, or even a compound word meaning great-man, person of towering importance, Environment Secretary etc. The most practical derivation, though, in line with the names of such other practical politicians as Baker, Fowler and Thatcher, comes from the Oxford dictionary, which says a gummer is a workman who enlarges the spaces between the teeth of a saw: an undoubtedly useful function, but hardly one for great men. Additionally, since one meaning of "gum" is "impertinent talk or chatter", a Gummer could very well mean an impertinent talker or chatterer. I commend these interpretations to Thorbjorn Berntsen.
 JOHN MAJOR (whose name derives from mauger, "a council spear", and not from a post of importance in the army) has despatched two Deans to the Lords, Brenda, a former trade union general secretary, and Sir Paul, once a Deputy Speaker. There they will join Lord Dean of Beswick, a former Labour MP. All this may be pure coincidence. Alternatively, Major may plan to establish a Bench of Deans, to rival the Bench of Bishops. Also in the latest list of new peers is Doreen Miller, a long standing friend of the Majors, a familiar figure at Conservative party conferences, and one of those women who undoubtedly would have been in the Commons had they been men. (The Labour side in the Lords is also full of such people). In Miller's case, her chief disqualification (being female) was compounded by her failure to give preferred answers at selection conferences. At one the hurdle which brought her down was her opposition to hanging. At another, in Hendon South, she was asked: "Does your husband know you are here tonight?" Indeed he did, she replied, "and so do my mum and dad". Failed again. They picked a business consultant; male, and a member of MCC.
 EVERY morning the Times lights up the new-born day by publishing an anniversary list of births and deaths. Yesterday, for example, the list began with Benjamin Harrison, 23rd president of the USA, and proceeded via Poincare to Saul Tchernichowsky, Crimean poet. Unusually on Tuesday the list was topped by a name unfamiliar to Smallweed: an 18th century painter and book illustrator. Thomas Stothard was not much regarded as a painter in his day, though as an illustrator he was second to none.  His life, too, was "pure and blameless": at its end, Leigh Hunt called him an angel. One would like to know, even so, on precisely what test he was elevated over such famous names as Davy Crockett, Oliver St John Gogarty, Wilfred Scawen Blunt and Mae West. Perhaps someone should ask the editor. He's a chap by the name of Stothard.
 AN oddity to ponder at the Oval today. Who would have forecast that on the eve of the final test six Australian batsmen would be averaging over 50 for the tour, none of whom is Border or Taylor? And that the top bowler so far, with 12 wickets for 250 runs in 87.2 overs, 21 of them maidens, is a leg spinner who isn't Shane Warne?

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



230 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 21, 1993

GETTING RID OF THE VICAR COULD REVIVE YOUR CHURCH;
Face to Faith

BYLINE: ROBERT VAN DE WEYER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 26

LENGTH: 907 words

 
 IMAGINE living in a small English village. The pride of the village is a beautiful medieval church. And when new lead is needed on the roof, or crumbling stonework must be replaced, the whole village whirrs into a flurry of fetes, barn dances and gymkanas, in which large sums are raised.
 But you rarely attend worship and only occasionally see the vicar, since he has eight or nine other villages on his patch.  You feel a little sorry for the handful of elderly people who turn up to his services once or twice a month, enduring icy temperatures and dreary sermons in order to receive Communion. 
 And you wonder what will happen when this stalwart band dies off. But while the vicar makes no demands on your own time or wallet, you see no point in worrying.
 Then one day a crudely printed leaflet comes through the door, from the churchwardens. It informs you that the quota which your parish must pay to the central authorities, in order to pay clergy salaries, is rising rapidly, and will soon reach pounds 3,000 per year. The reason is that the subsidies from the Church Commissioners to rural areas are being cut sharply, due partly to bad financial management. Thus parishes must in effect pay the salaries themselves.
 A public meeting is held to focus on the sum to be raised. It is clearly impossible for the worshippers alone, yet equally the village as a whole won't meet it. Someone suggests a compromise: that some extra quota is paid, some fabric repairs are delayed to meet this sum, and a letter is sent to the church authorities explaining that even this small additional quota cannot be sustained year after year.
 This series of events, or something very similar, is unfolding in small villages the length and breadth of England. The brute fact is that the figures don't add up, and many of our rural churches cannot survive in their present form. The combination of elderly and dwindling congregations, and relentlessly rising costs, is fatal.
 So return to your cottage to contemplate your church's future. It may occur to you that the church building is worth quite a lot of money, if converted into a luxury residence - with the chancel making an excellent triple garage, and the lady chapel housing a jacuzzi. This has already happened to a number of rural churches, and the authorities have pocketed the money. Why not try to strike a deal with the authorities?
 The church building would be vested in a local charitable trust, responsible for its maintenance. The chancel at the east end would be separated by glazing across the arch; the rotting choir stalls would be replaced by soft chairs, a carpet put on the floor and decent electric heaters installed - at a total cost of, say, pounds 5,000.
 The congregation could continue to worship there in comfort. The parish would pay no quota, and no longer require the services of a vicar, so the churchwardens would have to lead prayers.
 The local trust would naturally want to encourage new uses for the church. A meditation group might start in the chancel, using Hindu and Buddhist, as well as Christian, techniques; and this might draw people from nearby towns. Yoga and Tai Chi classes might also take place. A local choir or music group might form. Amateur painters and sculptors might exhibit their work.
 Once the community's religious building was released from the tight grip of the ecclesiastical authorities and belonged to the people themselves, a quite astonishing spiritual renewal could occur.
 People would want to maintain the great festivals, such as Christmas and Harvest. And since these would no longer be the responsibility of a beleaguered clergyman, struggling to stage special services in umpteen other places as well, local people would take over.
 It wouldn't be long before someone realised that the nave would be suitable for badminton, soft tennis and even dances and discos. And since the chancel - the sacred part of the building - had been closed off, people would no longer feel inhibited about enjoying themselves in church. So the pews would be taken out and sold off, and the money used to put down a good new floor.
 All this might seem very new but it would be re-creating, in modern form, the medieval church. Prior to the Reformation the nave and the chancel were divided by an ornate screen: the chancel was used for religious ritual, while the nave was open for harvest suppers, social gatherings and the great festivals.
 If you emerge from your cottage and propose such a plan, you will probably find most of your neighbours supporting you. But don't underestimate the resistance you may meet from the authorities. Not only do they have a potential financial interest in selling off redundant churches; but by not paying the quota, and dispensing with the vicar, you are posing a direct threat to clerical job security.
 Worse still, if religion blossoms in your village without a vicar, it might put the idea in people's heads that the clergy actually inhibit spiritual growth. And as for allowing other non-Christian religions to be practised in a church building . .  .
 But it's a fight well worth having, because the stakes are so high. The kind of spiritual renewal that could occur in our scattered country churches offers hope for society as a whole.
 Robert Van de Weyer is pastor of the Society of Christ the Sower at Little Gidding in Cambridgeshire

LOAD-DATE: August 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



231 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 24, 1993

HOPE OUT OF THE FLAMES;
On Kristallnacht the Nazis burned down 300 synagogues. One of them is being rebuilt. Anna Tomforde reports on the synagogue of the second chance

BYLINE: ANNA TOMFORDE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 695 words

 
 AACHEN, Charlemagne's capital and one of Germany's oldest and most European cities, is about to add another jewel to its rich historic heritage by building a new synagogue.
 Where other German towns and cities have put up plaques and memorials to mark the Nazi onslaught on Jewish places of worship, Aachen recently laid the foundation stone of a new Jewish Centre - complete with a school and flats for old people.
 Cranes have taken over Synagogenplatz not far from Aachen's famous romanesque cathedral. The new centre will be built on the exact spot where Nazi thugs burnt down the old synagogue in the notorious Kristallnacht of 9 November 1938. 
 Rabbi Abraham Hochweit, underlining the deep symbolism and rarity of building a new synagogue in post-war Germany, said it was an act of moral reconciliation. "We say that a sin is expiated only if it is made good on the same spot where it was committed."
 Jewish leaders see the construction as a sign of hope for a Jewish future in Germany, despite a recent rash of racist and anti-Semitic violence. "If you build, you want to stay," said Ignatz Bubis, head of Germany's Jewish community.
 But, citing opinion polls that show a majority of Germans still consider even German Jews to be "foreigners", he said: "It will be largely up to the German people whether at all, and how soon, there will be Jewish life again in Germany."
 Aachen's Jewish community, numbering 1,800 before war, has, like that of many other cities, grown rapidly in recent years as a result of immigration from the former Soviet Union. The city now has a Jewish community of almost 600 after Jewish life was all but obliterated under the Nazis.
 In Germany as a whole, the influx has pushed up to 40,000 the number of Jews living here - compared with 600,000 in 1933.  Almost half the present Jewish population is from eastern Europe and more than 50,000 are still waiting to come. In some towns and cities in eastern Germany, for instance in Potsdam, Rostock and Magdeburg, completely new Jewish communities have sprung up, consisting entirely of Russian and Ukrainian Jews. The Rostock community has brought its own rabbi from Odessa.
 Most of the immigrants have experienced anti-Semitism at home, which makes them take a sober view of the present racial tension in Germany. "Materially we are better off here, morally it is more difficult," said Daniel Reznik, a 24-year-old physicist.
 Most Jewish immigrants are highly skilled professionals or have an academic, cultural and artistic background. Because of their relative youth - between 20 and 50 - they fill an important generation gap in Germany's Jewish communities, which were threatened with extinction because of an aging membership.
 There are, however, problems with social, religious and cultural integration as established Jewish communities are confronted with newcomers from an Orthodox tradition. Only a few of the older immigrants still speak and understand Yiddish.
 "Friction is inevitable if suddenly Russian cultural groups are set up within the old-established communities," a study by the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute for German-Jewish History in Duisburg said.
 Professor Julius H. Schoeps, the institute's director, said the influx reminded him of the flight of eastern European Jews from Tsarist persecution at the end of the last century to Germany, Austria and the United States. Jewish life in Germany was bound to change as a result of today's migration, he said. The renewal could, however, not simply mean the continuation of "pre-war traditions"; it would bear "distinctly east-European features."
 According to Willi Jasper, the political scientist in charge of the Steinheim Institute's study, the sheer number of immigrants would produce both cultural revival and friction. But the east-west conflict within the Jewish community could release creative currents. The newcomers would, however, try to establish their own identity.
 But, he added, the new dynamism arising from contradictions should not be regarded as an impediment. "It is a chance for both this country and for Jewish community life."

LOAD-DATE: August 24, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



232 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 25, 1993

ELDERLY COUPLE KILLED IN HOME

BYLINE: ANGELLA JOHNSON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 463 words

 
 POLICE launched a double murder hunt yesterday after the bodies of an elderly brother and sister were discovered in their flat following a burglary.
 William Bryan, aged 71, was bound hand and foot while Annie Castle, aged 74, was found sitting upright in a living room armchair.
 The flat in Bethnal Green, east London, had been ransacked when fire officers and police broke in shortly after 11pm on Monday night. There were no signs of a forced entry, and detectives say there were no visible signs of injury. 
 A Scotland Yard spokesman said last night that Mr Bryan died of asphyxiation, believed to be caused by a hand over his mouth, and heart disease also contributed to his death. Mrs Castle died of heart failure. Both were being treated as murder victims.
 Mrs Castle, a widow since 1987, and Mr Bryan were believed to have lived together since the war. Mr Bryan had been given a medical discharge from the armed forces.
 The alarm was raised by a a neighbour who saw a hall light on early on Monday.  She knocked on the front door but received no reply. Later after seeing a balcony entrance open she called the police.
 Scotland Yard said the couple had been victims of "a form of burglary", which went wrong.
 Detective Superintendent Keith Fletcher said it appeared the couple had either left their door open or let someone in.
 Neighbours in the low-rise block of council flats on the Minerva estate were shocked yesterday. Leonard Derrick, aged 32, who knew the couple for about 25 years, said: "I was gutted, I just couldn't believe it. It takes your breath away."
 Asked if they had many valuables he replied: "Who has much to steal here?"
 According to Helen Lewis, whose 78-year-old mother lives one floor above, it was not the first time the couple had faced an intruder. "Mrs Castle found a young man in her bedroom a while ago and locked him in, but he escaped by jumping over the balcony."
 Mrs Lewis said the two families were very close and had moved into the block at about the same time more than 40 years ago.  "Then we were always in and out of each other's houses. You could leave your doors open then without being attacked."
 Sisters Elaine and Debbie Low, who live in the block, said there had been several break-ins recently. Elaine said: "They were lovely people. They loved the children and always gave them sweets."
 Mrs Castle's son-in-law, publican Dennis Leonard, said: "The people who did this must have known her, because Annie had become very wary of opening her doors to strangers."
 - Police launched a murder inquiry yesterday after the body of an 84-year-old man, James Alexander, was found with serious head injuries in his flat in sheltered accommodation in Hampstead, north London.

LOAD-DATE: August 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



233 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 26, 1993

WEALTH GIVES THE SEYCHELLOIS A UNIQUE PATHWAY TO POLITICAL HARMONY;
Victoria Brittain reports on a process of reconciliation unequalled in the region

BYLINE: VICTORIA BRITTAIN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 614 words

 
 CAMPAIGN posters for Albert Rene and James Mancham are still on palm trees and telegraph poles a month after presidential and legislative elections in the Seychelles which broke the trend of unsuccessful transition from one-party state to democracy in Africa.
 Old political enemies bitterly estranged by a decade and a half of coups and counter-coups appear to have managed a reconcilia tion which has happened nowhere else in the region.
 President Rene won nearly two-thirds of the presidential vote, and his Seychelles People's Progressive Front all but one of the seats in the national assembly, in a turnout estimated by the Commonwealth as over 90 per cent. 
 With a population of 70,000, everyone knows everyone in the minuscule political circle, and political allegiances are no secret.
 It is symbolic of the mood of reconciliation that none of the posters - red for President Rene's SPPF, deep blue for Sir James Mancham's Democratic Party, yellow and white for the small United Opposition - has been torn down or defaced.
 The DP's secretary-general, Paul Chow, who claims that from his exile in London he was the political brains behind the notorious failed South African mercenary coup against President Rene, now sits in a small neat office, planning new tax policies to contest the next election in five years time.
 At the root of the successful transition and its contrast with failures in Africa, or Indian Ocean neighbours like Madagascar, lies the economic success of the 17 years since independence from Britain.
 Sir James, the first president, had campaigned against independence and sought a dependent status like the Channel Islands, or Reunion, still a department of France.
 Reunion, with 32 per cent unemployment, explosive political scandals and a 50 per cent abstention rate at the last elections, stands as a grim reminder of what might have been.
 The businessmen who took the lead in voting against Sir James this year remember his year in power as a kaleidoscope of Arab princes, pop stars, film stars, and land deals at sky rocketing prices which excluded the Seychellois.
 Mr Rene, prime minister in a coalition government with Sir James, ousted him in a near-bloodless coup within a year. In 16 years his SPPF regime has raised per capita income from $ 1,000 a year to $ 5,500.
 The reputation of Mr Rene's as a Marxist regime was based on the SPPF's commitment to an equal chance for every child to escape from the fatalism of under-development, and for the elderly to live in dignity. Ten years free schooling was compulsory for every child, and health care was free.
 But the reputation owed more to the propaganda of Sir James's friends than to any realities on the ground, where the middle-class found themselves with unprecedented prosperity.
 The economic boom which has taken Seychelles into the higher-middle income bracket has been based on tourism, much of it small-scale and Seychellois-run. The international capital which the DP would bring in is a threat of competition.  Middle-class Seychellois who now shop in Dubai or Singapore, and talk of taking Filipino maids, voted for the status quo without hesitation.
 There is no unemployment; in fact the tiny population cannot fill all the jobs that exist.
 The election showed how the style of the Seychelles has changed towards that of a developed country, while its links have swung towards the prosperous and well-ordered societies of south-east Asia, such as Singapore and Malaysia.
 Older friends, such as Tanzania and Algeria, marked increasingly by economic crisis and political conflict, have little in common today.

LOAD-DATE: August 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



234 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 26, 1993

GERMANS FACE HUGE RISE IN PENSION CONTRIBUTIONS

BYLINE: DAVID GOW IN BONN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 596 words

 
 GERMANS, accused by their chancellor yesterday of having lived way beyond their means for years, are reeling from the news that personal contributions to their generous pensions may have to rise to 30 per cent of gross earnings early in the next century.
 Gunter Rexrodt, the federal economics minister charged by Helmut Kohl with producing a package of measures to ensure future German competitiveness, has publicly played with the notion of a huge contributions increase after the year 2010.
 Already faced with cuts in social security benefits and tax allowances, and tax increases to pay for unification, ordinary Germans are enraged by Mr Rexrodt's remarks.
 Meinhard Miegel, head of the independent Institute for Economy and Society, has fuelled their dismay by warning that cuts in pensions are inevitable after 2003. "Anybody younger than 55 today should be worried about his future old-age provision," he said this week. 
 Germany's problem of fewer children and a growing number of old people is the worst in western Europe, because its people enter employment later and leave it earlier than in any other country. Already the number of people over 60 is equal to 35 per cent of those actively employed between the ages of 20 and 59.
 With a fertility rate of only 1.4 children per family, it is a rapidly ageing country. By the year 2040, elderly people will make up 27.6 per cent of the population, according to estimates by the Institute for the German Economy (IW).
 IW experts have shown that between 1977 and 1992 the proportion of national insurance contributors under the age of 20 fell from 8.1 per cent to 4.7 per cent, while the proportion aged between 50 and 60 rose from 15.9 to 18.8 per cent. Young people now make up only 4 per cent of the employed labour force, compared with 12 per cent 30 years ago.
 Currently 2.2 contributors pay for the pension of one retired person, but from 2035, the Association of Pension Insurers suggests, the ratio will become one to one.
 The demographic trend worries Chancellor Kohl, who is determined to make this a key election issue.
 He has already told his 80 million fellow-Germans they will have to work longer hours and retire later in order to remain competitive. But earlier this week he insisted that there could be no question of cuts in their pensions.
 He has not said how this can be achieved after the impact of last year's pension reform - raising the early retirement age and setting the state pension at 68 per cent of net, rather than gross, income - has run out early next century.
 Mr Rexrodt's "solution" of higher contributions, either designed to frighten voters or pave the way for a greater emphasis on private insurance, is dismissed by IW experts as premature and unfounded.
 But Achim Seffen, a social policy analyst, said yesterday that contribution rates of more than 20 per cent could be possible.  Already the rate is set to rise next year to 19.3 per cent of gross income from the current 17.5 per cent.
 Mr Seffen added that growth in output and productivity were as important as demographic trends, and remained uncertain factors. But he admitted that pensions were unlikely to rise after the year 2010.
 Germany's neighbours face similar problems. Britain's elderly, according to IW projections, may be only a fifth of the population in 2040 but the state will face a greater increase in spending on pensions than Germany. And the French will have to spend 72 per cent more then than in 1980.
 Pressure for rate cut, page 10

LOAD-DATE: August 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



235 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 27, 1993

ETHNIC ZEALOTS WHO ONCE WERE ALLIES WRESTLE OVER GATEWAY TO SARAJEVO;
Ian Traynor reports on the battle for Mostar, a once-splendid city now the key regional prize between Catholic and Muslim areas

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 901 words

 
 SEVERAL months after Bosnia's Muslims and Croats, erstwhile allies against the Serbian enemy, turned on one another in central and south-western Bosnia, their vicious fight for territory is now focused on the key regional prize, the ancient city of Mostar, capital of Herzegovina.
 A once splendid town straddling the turquoise waters of the River Neretva, Mostar is gateway to Sarajevo and the Bosnian interior from the Adriatic coast. It links the Catholic heartland to the west with the inland Muslim centres to the north and east. That bridging function is encapsulated in the name of the city - Most is Slavonic for bridge - and symbolised by the high-arched 16th century bridge connecting east and west banks of the Neretva. 
 The bridge is now virtually impassable, signifying Mostar's transformation from an ethnically-mixed, cosmopolitan mini-Sarajevo to a partitioned city in the grip of ethnic zealots. The river now divides an increasingly desperate Muslim ghetto on the east bank from besieging Croatian forces concentrated on the west side.
 For almost three months, some 50,000 Muslim elderly, women and children have been penned into the ghetto without much water, food or medicines. The first substantial aid to breach the Croatian blockade arrived on the east bank early yesterday.
 Although the Muslim civilian population of Mostar is in desperate straits, militarily the Muslims have been routing the Croats across the region for months, and are sanguine about their chances of retaining control of much of the city.
 Croatian nationalists running the campaign of ethnic cleansing claim the city as the capital of the ethnically pure statelet they are taking from the partition of Bosnia negotiated in Geneva. If they cannot have all of Mostar, they want it partitioned to their advantage. That means drawing a line not along the river, but further to the east, since the city's main airport lies a few miles south on the east, Muslim-held side.
 The airport is critical to the Croats as the biggest in their putative statelet and point of arrival for hundreds of thousands of pilgrims who flock in peacetime to the nearby Catholic shrine of Medjugorje, the Bosnian Croats' biggest economic asset. The airport is now out of use, in no man's land.
 For several months the Bosnian Croat command has run a brutal, yet inept and panicky, campaign across the region. It has lost territory by the day and forfeited international sympathy through ethnic cleansing, detention camps, slave labour, and massacres of women and children.
 The Muslim-Croat war first surfaced late last year when the Croats burned hundreds of Muslims out of their homes in Prozor, north of Mostar. They then tried to cleanse nearby Gornji Vakuf but found the Muslims a match, producing a local stalemate.
 At that time the Bosnian Croat militia, the HVO, was better armed, organised and run. Indeed in many areas, Muslim men comprised up to a third of the HVO forces.
 But in January, the Croats moved to take control of Muslim majority areas ceded to the Croats under the now defunct Vance-Owen plan for Bosnia. The move backfired badly. They over-estimated their own prowess while neglecting to realise the strength of the Muslim backlash just when it became finally clear to the Muslims that the only moral of the Bosnian war is tha t might is right and that territory acquired by force need not be surrendered.
 The Muslim hardmen of central Bosnia, Zenica and Travnik led an army of the displaced and the dispossessed, vengeful victims of Serbian ethnic cleansing elsewhere. Their strength lies in their numbers and commitment. Their weakness remains the relative lack of military materiel.
 That is a mirror image of the Croat forces, who are well-supplied by Croatia proper, infinitely better-armed, but who have manpower problems and less stomach for the fight.
 Croatian tactics at Mostar are the same as the notorious Serbian tactics in Croatia and Bosnia: long-range, indiscriminate shelling, deliberate targeting of civilians, siege, the use of food as a weapon and reluctance to commit infantry to take territory.
 Since January when the Croats launched their political and military campaign to take control of central and south-west Bosnia-Herzegovina, the tables have turned. Town after town, village after village has fallen to the Muslims.
 Despite their propaganda claims to the contrary, the Croats essentially abandoned the Lasva valley linking Sarajevo to Zenica and Travnik to the Muslims, organising the evacuation of their civilians in advance and asking international agencies to facilitate their scheme. They lost all this without putting up much of a fight, while claiming Muslim atrocities and massacres.
 But there is a quid pro quo. In return they are determined to have Mostar. When the fighting around the city erupted seriously in May, the Muslims captured a Croat barracks north of Mostar in a daring night raid. Muslim agents at the barracks, still notionally serving with the Croats, allowed their co-nationals in as the Croat troops slept. Dozens of Croats were summarily killed, according to UN sources.
 It was an illuminating display of the Muslims' new guerrilla prowess around Mostar, suggesting that the Bosnian Croats will be unable to take the city without substantial help from the army of Croatia proper.

LOAD-DATE: August 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



236 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 27, 1993

POSTMARK SHANGHAI: SUFFERING THE JABS OF CHINA'S HEALTH CARE

BYLINE: STEPHEN VINES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 536 words

 
 FIRST impressions of Shanghai's Hua Dong Hospital seem to confirm the worst things you have ever been told about China's health care system. Old men in pyjamas wander aimlessly in the grounds, bits of rubbish are strewn around, and the staff seem to skulk about in what look like grubby uniforms but on closer inspection are cheap cotton overalls washed so frequently that the white cloth has turned grey.
 An attack of acute tonsillitis and a disturbingly high fever finally persuaded me to seek treatment at the foreigners' clinic. 
 Barely through the door, I was already keen to edge out. I was persuaded to stay by a youngish man in shorts who tore himself away from a group stuffing their pockets with sticking-plasters.
 "I'm the doctor," he announced, sitting me down for what he clearly intended to be a long discussion. As we had linguistic problems, and the sight of my swollen tonsils would have spoken for itself had he felt inclined to look in my mouth, I felt we were wasting time.
 Eventually, he took a peek, and nodded enthusiastically. Yes indeed, this was tonsillitis. "Very serious", he said with satisfaction.
 Chinese doctors love sticking needles into their patients. It seems a sign that value for money has been obtained. But needles are tricky these days. While I was keen for some penicillin, my anxiety led me to inquire if the needles were new.  This stupid question had evidently been asked by troublesome foreigners before and was treated with a mixture of amusement and assurance. I was only partly reassured.
 That confidence threatened to evaporate entirely when one of the nurses adopted the dartboard technique of injection, with what I suspect was undue relish.
 Fully injected, I was sent away with a bag containing what looked like the proceeds of a lucky dip in a pharmacy. There were tubes of white pills, orange pills, boxes of Chinese medicine and lozenges.
 As soon as the bag was spied by the many staff at my hotel, my stock rose immediately. The Chinese take illness seriously and like to be in the presence of someone arming for combat against a lethal ailment. Even more delight was registered when it became clear that battle was to commence with the help of both Western and Chinese medicine. (I must admit that the Chinese medicine was infinitely worse than my complaint, and was quickly retired from service.)
 Treated like a conquering hero at the hotel, I made regular trips for more jabs. The more often I returned, the more I came to realise that this was actually quite a good hospital. The staff who had seemed indifferent were genuinely friendly once I was other than a complete stranger.
 One of the nurses was embarrassed at having to charge 65 yuan (about pounds 8) for the consultation, the sack of pills and all the jabs. "We all have to make money now," she confided. Hospitals are not spared the new Chinese edict of self-sufficiency.
 The grim hospital, with its wide corridors and lingering antiseptic smells, became strangely evocative. It dawned on me that it was just like a National Health hospital in the days before chronic overcrowding, when the staff seemed to have more time for their patients.

LOAD-DATE: August 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



237 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 27, 1993

BACK TO LIFE BUT ONLY BY DEGREES;
To save their lives refugees abandon their all, but asylum in the West is not the end of their tale. Alma Sarajlic and Sherif Zukic talk to Sarah Boseley about their own struggles for survival. Right: the emergence of a European under-class

BYLINE: SARAH BOSELEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 865 words

 
 IT IS a hard road for a refugee who arrives in the West with no money, no English and in a state of cultural confusion - not to mention anxiety over relatives left behind. He or she has lost everything but life - including sometimes a very good job and the income and social standing that it brought.
 Those with professional qualifications find that formidable obstacles - not least the language - stand in the way of rebuilding their lives. It is hardly surprising that many are still, years later, unemployed or working in fast-food restaurants, utterly demoralised. 
 Alma Sarajlic, a 34-year-old GP from Sarajevo, has been in Britain for 13 months. "I'm desperate, believe me," she said at the studio flat in Ilford where she exists on housing benefit and pounds 38 a week from the state. "My family is in Sarajevo and I brought out to Croatia my sister-in-law and my niece, who expect me to support them."
 Her sister-in-law has been in tears on the phone to her, wondering how to keep her five-year-old daughter warm without a winter coat. Alma's brother remains in the beseiged city, looking after four elderly people - his own parents, his wife's mother and her aunt - in Alma's two-bedroom flat. The family home was destroyed in the fighting.
 Alma left in a United Nations convoy because her family begged her to save herself, her sister-in-law and the child. Serbian soldiers over-ran her surgery on the outskirts of the city. Alma was determined to stay. "If there were casualties, I should be there," she said, but she and the remaining nurse made emergency plans. They would try to escape in the ambulance. As a last resort, they would jump from the roof. "I would prefer that to being tortured or raped," she said.
 "I came back home and my mother was desperate," she went on. "She said if something happens to you, I will die. She said, I can't kiss you every day you go to work and think I will never see you again. My brother added to the pressure because he wanted his wife and daughter to go." Eventually she gave in, adding an elderly lady and a neighbour's little daughter to the party.
 She came to Britain because she had friends here who assured her she would be able to work. In spite of having practised as a GP for seven years in Sarajevo, she soon discovered that it would not be so easy. Home Office rules do not allow asylum-seekers to work at all for six months after arrival, and now she must pass what is known as the PLAB test, the Professional and Linguistic Assessments Board, before she can apply for a job in medicine. It demands medical knowledge and a command of English to at least the standard of a senior house officer in a British hospital. In 1992, only 672 candidates out of 2,144 passed.
 Unlike many of her compatriots, her English is excellent. But worries about the situation at home made it very difficult to study for the written medical paper and in spite of all her experience, she failed when she sat it in July. She must wait six months and somehow find the pounds 425 charged by the General Medical Council to resit.
 Now, she says, she will take any job she can get - cleaning, anything - to make some money. She is determined to pass the PLAB test in January. "It is a question of how I will survive until then."
 SHERIF Zukic, aged 23, whose family is of Albanian origin, left Kosovo in September 1991 rather than be drafted into the Serbian army and has applied for asylum in Britain. He holds the equivalent of a Higher National Diploma in accountancy, but has not yet been able to get any exemption from the exams of the Institute of Management Accountants.
 "There are two types of refugees to my mind: those who try to get freed from the ties back home and those who do not and work just to send money back home," he said.
 "Many people who come here have fled leaving behind a great mess. If you are Bosnian and educated you feel a moral compulsion to go back and fight. People from Bosnia and Croatia are trapped through this. In the back of their minds they know they ought to go back and fight. There is also pressure from their community."
 Sherif, however, is on his own and feels the duty he owes to his family in Kosovo is to succeed in life. The past year he has spent learning English. "In the beginning I tried mundane jobs, but I got discouraged very fast. I could find two days work per week at pounds 2 an hour, but I thought it would be better, instead of washing dishes, to spend my time studying the English language. Otherwise I would be just feeding my stomach."
 Now the job hunt has begun in earnest. He has sent off up to 100 applications for work as a trainee management accountant, which will also allow him to study for the institute's exams, but so far had only a couple of interviews.
 If nothing in accountancy comes his way, he will look for any sort of job and try to study on his own in the evenings. But for membership of the institute he will need to have worked as a management accountant for three years, besides passing the exams. "I'm not going to give up," he said. "I just need to have a chance to prove to these people what I can do."

LOAD-DATE: August 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



238 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

August 28, 1993

LOW-RISK WAYS FOR THE ELDERLY TO PUT A WINDFALL TO WORK

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 1095 words

 
 JAMES and Claire Mortroyd are typical of many elderly Money Guardian readers who, with little in the way of savings, now need to make serious investment decisions after inheriting a substantial sum of money.
 According to a report published last week by Lloyds Bank, each year this decade almost one household in 50 will inherit property worth an average of pounds 26,000.
 The Mortroyds, from Swindon, Wiltshire, have no mortgage left on their pounds 65,000 home, just under pounds 4,700 a year in state pension - based on Mr Mortroyd's entitlement - and interest on pounds 10,000 in a building society.
 The couple want advice on the best way to invest pounds 100,000, inherited from Mrs Mortroyd's sister, to maximise income while using low-risk schemes to preserve as much of the capital as possible for their three children and seven grandchildren. 
 Money Guardian asked a selection of independent financial advisers to recommend a portfolio for them. Maximising their allowances, the couple can earn a further pounds 6,165 a year on top of their pension without paying income tax. They should not cross the age allowance threshold - pounds 17,200 at their ages of 74 and 70 - above which they would suffer an effective tax rate of 50 per cent on their income.
 The advisers also agree that inheritance tax is unlikely to present the Mortroyds with any tax-planning worries.
 Mark Bolland, technical director of Chamberlain de Broe, favours a plan where 30 per cent of the inheritance and existing pounds 10,000 savings is invested in a capital-reducing vehicle to generate monthly income of pounds 500 or pounds 600 with the balance invested in a capital-growth portfolio designed to replace the capital in the "income" fund at the end of five years.
 He advises the Mortroyds to invest pounds 30,000 in a notice account such as Northern Rock's postal 30-day account - currently paying 7.8 per cent gross - and withdraw pounds 500 or pounds 600 a month. "This would be preferable to using a five-year annuity, for example, because when interest rates improve in a year or two, it leaves them the option of removing remaining capital and investing it at better rates elsewhere." The capital growth portfolio would combine National Savings Certificates, zero-dividend preference shares, Tessas and low-risk equity investments such as utilities - "all secure growth vehicles which only offer their full benefits if held for a specific period of time," Mr Bolland adds.
 Another possible vehicle would be a guaranteed equity fund, such as that offered by Hypo Foreign & Colonial, which offers low-risk exposure to the FTSE 100 index by guaranteeing that capital will not fall even if the market does.
 John Lang, of Chantrey Financial Services, recommends the couple use part of their existing pounds 10,000 savings as their first year's income, withdrawing up to pounds 500 a month, and also put pounds 33,000 into Britannia Building Society's instant-access postal account, paying 7 per cent gross.
 Both husband and wife should add some inflation protection to their portfolio by putting the maximum of pounds 5,000 each into the National Savings index-linked sixth issue, guaranteeing 3.25 per cent above the rate of inflation over five years paid out in a tax-free lump sum at the term end.
 Mr Lang suggests they put the maximum pounds 6,000 annual allowance each into a tax-free personal equity plan, one going into Cazenove's utility and bond unit trust PEP, yielding around 7 per cent, and the other into the Guinness Flight Income PEP, yielding just under 10 per cent at present.
 A further pounds 24,000 should go into gilt unit trusts from Whittingdale and Kleinwort Benson, both with a current gross yield of between 7 and 7.5 per cent.
 Finally, pounds 21,000 should be invested between two international bond unit trusts, Baring Global and Mercury Global, which offer scope for capital growth if European interest rates fall. All the investments would be split between husband and wife to utilise their respective tax allowances.
 If Mr Lang's recommendations were implemented, the Mortroyds will raise their current pounds 4,700 annual income to over pounds 11,000 net - the equivalent of earning 8 per cent gross on the inherited monies - and the portfolio would offer some capital growth over the medium term.
 Asset Financial Planning, set up jointly by Age Concern and National Westminster's independent arm NatWest Insurance Services, suggests a simpler route to achieving the same income level, but offering less prospect of capital growth.
 To maximise income without risk, it recommends the Mortroyds put pounds 90,000 into National Savings Income Bonds, split pounds 55,000 for the husband and pounds 35,000 for the wife, currently paying 7.25 per cent gross and providing an income of pounds 6,525 a year, payable monthly.
 Asset suggests dedicating the remaining pounds 10,000 of the inheritance to capital growth as a hedge against inflation. It recommends a with-profit investment bond, ideally retained for five years, as suitable for this risk-averse couple. Their pounds 10,000 building society savings should be maintained for instant or short-term access to emergency funds.
 Finally, Joanna Stone, of Murray Noble, came up with probably the most diverse and complex portfolio which, at current yields, would provide the Mortroyds with pounds 5,300 extra income per year while making sure their capital was secure and kept pace with inflation.
 She recommends putting pounds 5,000 on short-term deposit as emergency cash; a further pounds 10,000 on short-term deposit with a view to investing it in French francs over the long-term as soon as the French currency and economy stabilises; pounds 6,000 in Tessas - one each with Leeds and Holbeck Building Society; pounds 10,000 into UK gilts; pounds 10,000 into the National Savings sixth issue; pounds 10,000 into European bonds, such as the Hambro Emma continental bond; and pounds 15,000 split between Newton International fixed-interest bond, Commercial Union PPT global bond and Perpetual global bond.
 Then pounds 20,000 should go into zero-coupon, fixed-interest preference shares and pounds 14,000 into defensive blue-chip UK equities such as GEC and utility stocks including British Gas and British Telecom via PEPs, as recommended by stockbrokers Charles Stanley.
 - Asset Financial Planning 0272-263822; Chamberlain de Broe 071-235 5999; Chantrey Financial 071-436 3666; Murray Noble 071-936 3010.

LOAD-DATE: August 31, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



239 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 1, 1993

OLD GERMANS NEED YOUNG MIGRANTS' PAY

BYLINE: DAVID GOW IN BONN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 545 words

 
 GERMANY will soon need an annual influx of about 300,000 immigrants, simply to be able to pay the pensions of its rapidly ageing population, Hans-Ulrich Klose,leader of the opposition Social Democrats, said yesterday.
 His remarks gave a new twist to an increasingly acrimonious debate about how Germany's generous pension system will be financed when there are fewer and fewer people in work and paying social security contributions.
 He joined the liberal Free Democrats (FDP) - members of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's coalition - in demanding new laws on immigration for a country where nationality is based on blood and the prevailing belief is that migrants are unnecessary and undesirable. 
 On Monday the FDP executive approved a significantly changed policy, based on immigration quotas and a reform of nationality laws dating back to 1913, that sets it at loggerheads with its conservative coalition partners.
 Pointing out that about 2 million non-German employees contributed some 10 per cent of national output and paid DM90 billion a year in taxes and contributions, it said that Germany needed foreigners prepared to settle and work there permanently.
 The FDP/SPD initiatives come when the country's 81 million citizens are being warned that by about 2010 pension contributions will have to rise to between 22 and 30 per cent of gross earnings to keep the system afloat.
 Research by the DIW economics institute in Berlin, one of six leading forecasting units, suggests that, given moderate immigration, the population over 60 will by then have soared from the 1991 figure of 16.4 million to 21.3 million, in a total population of 83.7 million.
 Assuming higher immigration, it projects 21.6 million aged 60 and over in a population of 85.9 million.
 On both migration scenarios, the 60-plus will form a third of the population by 2040, while the under-20s will be only 18 per cent of total.
 The FDP and SPD reluctantly abandoned their demands for new immigration and nationality laws late last year, and adopted the compromise on asylum-seekers that led to the July 1 legislation, which is designed to staunch an influx that had reached 1 million in three years.
 Now, under demographic and economic pressures, they are determined to relaunch those demands before next year's spate of elections. The Free Democrats want annual quotas for immigrants based on official estimates of the labour and housing markets, and the scope for social integration.
 The FDP, pointing out that 60 per cent of "foreigners" have lived more than 10 years in Germany, want automatic citizenship for second and third generations. It also wants it made easier for people to have dual nationality.
 Meanwhile the increase in pensioners is threatening to overload German roads, traffic experts say. More elderly people are buying, retaining and driving cars, so the number of cars is likely to rise, given favourable economic growth, from 20 million now to 50 million by 2020.
 - Police said yesterday that a Turk who claimed last week to have been the target of a racial assault in the north-west town of Lotte appeared to have faked the attack.
 Witnesses contradicted his account of being clubbed unconscious by three men.

LOAD-DATE: September 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



240 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 2, 1993

P.S.

BYLINE: GEOFFREY WHEATCROFT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 492 words

 
 YESTERDAY'S Guardian reported a proposal that the conductor Kurt Masur should become President of Germany. I'm not sure whether this is good news for Germany and bad news for music, or bad news for both.
 In countries like Germany, the president is a figurehead rather than an executive, as in the US. He or she plays the part of the sovereign in a constitutional monarchy. At best (or is it worst?) this means ceremonial duties; a president of the pre-war French Third Republic defined himself as "a man who has to wear evening dress during the day". At worst it means the same tricky decisions over, say, whether or not to dissolve a parliament, which our own queen may be obliged to take and which she can't possibly enjoy. The decisions are much the same whether the head of state is hereditary or not. 
 Australians who want to do away with the monarchy cite the Kerr affair, when the Crown (or its representative) supposedly exerted a malign influence over Australia's fair polity. They forget similar episodes in the Irish Republic, or Federal Germany, when the president was dragged into the arena of sordid political calculation and advantage.
 On the face of it, Masur is an ideal candidate, for the dignified part of the job at least. As an East German, he played a distinguished part in the course of peaceful reunification. During the great demonstration against the old regime in Leipzig three years ago, his intervention prevented heavy bloodshed. On the other hand, he's said not to like the pettiness of party politics and, anyway, he has renewed his contract with the New York Phil.
 My objection to his candidature is different. Politicians are a drug on the market. In any country, there are any number of elderly ladies and gentlemen whose lives of public mischief are near their end, who have small useful contributions to make, and who could do little further harm once installed in the presidential residence. But to fill a political position with an artist - a mediocre one, let alone a good one - simply isn't fair, or rational. As anyone knows who heard the two Proms on Monday and Tuesday, when he conducted the Leipzig Gewandhaus, Masur is a great musician - which is to say one of the last.
 It becomes fogeyishly tedious to say they aren't making conductors like that any more. But nor are they. At least, if there are young conductors around to take over where Tennstedt, Sawallisch and Masur leave off, I don't know them, with the odd rule-proving exception. And who would want Simon Rattle to waste his time as British President?
 Plenty of people could carry out the formal and undemanding role of president in Germany. Very few people indeed who can do what Masur can. Perhaps he knows Clemenceau's reaction when someone explained to him the background of the Polish leader, Paderewski. "C'etait pianiste, c'est premier ministre? Quelle chute!" I hope Masur doesn't take another fall.

LOAD-DATE: September 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



241 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 3, 1993

SIR NORMAN LENDS AN EAR TO HARD-UP TORIES' WOES;
Martin Wainwright takes the temperature among the Tory faithful - and not so faithful - as the party chairman starts his nationwide tour

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 582 words

 
 CONSERVATIVES in the North, where Sir Norman Fowler started his low-key tour yesterday, are making the down-to-earth point: we need money - and that means policies designed to encourage our supporters to part with it.
 Central Office economies have hit the party's famous election-winning network of paid agents, whose training and systematic approach to electoral registers, postal votes and other details are the envy of rival parties.
 "We know we're not particularly popular at the moment," said Councillor Les Carter, chairman of Keith Hampson's constituency association in Leeds, where the Fowler roadshow takes soundings this morning. 
 "We can live with that. We're used to sticks and stones and grinning and bearing it. But we mustn't lose the advantage of our professional agents. He'll be hearing that we're not out in the wealthy shires here. It's a struggle to raise the money and we need help."
 The point was echoed across the Pennines, where Sir Norman started his travels with private meetings in Manchester and Merseys ide. Agents have gone in both Blackpool and Rossendale and money threatens to dry up from one particular section of the faithful.
 "VAT on fuel bills is what we want sorted out," said Michael Sheppard, agent in Preston, without a moment's hesitation.  "That's the chief cause of unrest up here. It's something that's hitting our own supporters hard - older people living on fixed interest investments. We've got to get it changed. That's the backbone of our message to Sir Norman."
 The wealthy farming constituency of Richmond, close to Teesside, where William Hague stepped into the boots of Sir Leon Brittan, is also suffering disaffection among its older supporters. The district has attracted so many retired people that the boundary commissioners are planning to lop 18,000 people off its electoral roll.
 "They'd be extremely pleased if interest rates rose immediately, most of them," said Jim Lumb, the constituency's highly-experienced agent, who previously worked for Patrick Wall on Humberside and in traditionally-marginal York. "It's a quandary, because we also have a lot of small businesses which desperately want low interest rates. But I hope we'll also persuade Sir Norman to sing a bit louder about our achievements. We deserve some accolades. The trouble is, when a party has been in government so long, its business tends to be a rather unexciting mixture of details and fine-tuning, rather than grand, sweeping initiatives."
 Bill Jones, taking a break from holiday gardening at Stockton South, where Tim Devlin survived handsomely at the last election, agrees on the need for better central office PR. "We do the right things, but we don't perhaps have the right way of telling people that we've done them," he said.
 Michael Sheppard, 60 miles away in Preston, underlined the argument. "The message isn't getting through, not just to the voters, but from our activists. We want to tell Sir Norman 'please listen to what we are saying'."
 Officials and activists are unlikely to give the chairman much punishment on the economy. Most are convinced that it is slowly coming right by itself. The emotional key to loosening supporters' purse-strings is seen elsewhere - in a traditional Tory sphere.
 "The big issue is law and order," said Mr Carter in Leeds. "We have got to sort out the liberal approach to young offenders, in particular. We need draconian measures, just to protect people."

LOAD-DATE: September 3, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



242 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 4, 1993

COMMENTARY: AN APPROVED CASE FOR BRINGING BACK BORSTAL

BYLINE: EDWARD PEARCE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 23

LENGTH: 1083 words

 
 A CARTOONIST'S view of vigilantism, shown on Wednesday, is of Americanesque suburban heavies beating up a prone victim/thief to the applause of a passing policeman. There might have been a cartoon, depicting a house, its goods and furniture scattered, its drawers tumbled, its electronics ripped out and its floor pissed on. This isn't to advocate vigilantism which one fears is more likely to end with the vigilante prone if not dead under the baseball bats of criminals. Vigilantism is a cry for help. It comes because the citizen doesn't meet a response from government. And as sure as Hell, he doesn't get one from intellectuals of elevated sentiments.
 That cartoon speaks for a middle class sect, often academics, the tribe of professional activists who batten onto prison and police matters; it speaks for a busy elite. There was a Guardian leader close to the spirit of this elect group recently, suggesting that the Home Secretary could only possibly have cheap, contemptible motives connected with party conference in contemplating work and austerity in prisons. It is true that the Tories are free with facile, penal rhetoric. But what if Howard means it? And isn't it about time that we evacuated these comforting trench war assumptions? 
 There were once harsh, cruel, old judges of the Goddard, Avory and Hilberry stamp, delighted to inflict pain and death. That they should pass as redundantly awful old men, that the execution of Derek Bentley should be seen by a gentler posterity as a sick thing inflicted in blindness and indifference to his family, is not contested.
 But does that view preclude one from also thinking the roaring growth of crime - housebreaking, street robbery, motor theft and criminal violence, intolerable? Does it stop one from observing that the chief victims of the sharp end of the simple lift-off since the early sixties, are the poor, the elderly poor and old, poor women alone?
 I adhere without reserve to the doctrine of that useful Beelzebub, Kenneth Livingstone, who makes no secret that on crime, he is a hardliner because the main victims of crime are poor working people. Of course they are. Cartoonist and leaderwriter should spend an evening around the Scotswood Road or in any of the high-rise blocks in east London where the expectationof tenants is to be "done over", where elderly women barricade themselves in because other elderly women once did not barricade themselves in, and suffered.
 The preachers of a weak, zero response system of juvenile law with punishment as thin as American beer, are morally incapable of understanding the harm they have done. But done it they have, to the most vulnerable, weak and defenceless. Take away reasonable fear of the consequences of crime and you create a reasonable fear of the consequences of poverty and frailty. The achievements of Home Office officials and the new politiques among judges, truckling to zero response, can be counted in facial bruises on old women, and in people like the elderly black lady in Hackney who wondered aloud after her latest break-in what there was to be alive for.
 IHAVE praised before the astute efforts of Bernard Crofton of Hackney housing department to yoke civil with criminal law by taking out injunctions against youths charged with offences and regarded by the police as ringleaders of a local gang. It worked like a charm, bringing the breaking rate massively down. But it worked because the civil law steps clean round the enfeebling fetter put upon criminal law prohibiting punishment of the young. It says flatly, "you cross that threshold and you go to jail".
 Nothing could be simpler, nothing further from the jungle-prose of criminological text books. It is a long way from the present fatuous Criminal Justice Act and from courts as clogged and harassed as they are disarmed.
 Accordingly, unlike our leaderwriter, I am not troubled by Howard's motives. I would only observe that if to remarks about more austere and less idle prisons, he added specific criminal law reform, opening the youth equivalent of jail to a 14-year-old on his second conviction for breaking and entering, he would win the next election single handed.
 The Tories talk retribution and law and order, but they never do anything.  Treasury frugality and the zero-response lobby inside the Home Office combine with a justifiable distaste for those people at party conferences who uniformly ruin a serious case by their obvious pleasure in physical punishment.
 Michael Howard is a practical politician, not an emotional one nor much given to high flown abstraction. He must, however, be depressed at the cumulative inheritance of innocent people hurt and offended against, and must want to reduce it. And as a practical politician in an unpopular government, he must know that there never was a better market on which to sell hard, concise action.
 What then should he do? Firstly, he must amend the Criminal Justice Act out of recognition and empower magistrates now widely resigning their impotent office. Let those magistrates punish any second offender with detention of anything from six months down to 30 days. Second, he should provide for holding the young brutes by restoring the
 borstal/approved school system. The mere names would be magic, sending a message out which would be cheered round the country. Third, make prison indeed a clean, decent place of hard, physical work and to this end, institute farm camps where eight hours a day pulling carrots, digging ditches and living the organic life, will do quiet wonders.
 We are told by responsible prison officers that they are losing the upper hand. But then there never was an argument against the old maxim about idleness breeding evil. But if there is now no recourse against the criminal who smashes up his cell, the availability of an ineligible life planting potatoes at six a.m. would provide it, a therapeutic option hanging over behaviour in a conventional prison. The prison staff would acquire retribution. And retribution, clearly perceived, works.
 There would be no additional long sentences, no physical punishment, only quick and readily perceived short consequences, a balancing of today's one sided see-saw. Such a package would have modest financial costs, would sharply cut juvenile crime and strengthen prison order. But isn't it an affront to the conscience of the elite? Much wiser to leave old women to their facial bruising.

LOAD-DATE: September 6, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



243 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 6, 1993

EYEWITNESS;
Hungary riven by rehabilitation of 'anti-Semitic' chief

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR IN KENDERES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 624 words

 
 THIS sleepy little town on the edge of the great Hungarian plain turned back the clock this weekend to glorify the memory of Miklos Horthy, Hungary's controversial leader between the wars. His remains were finally returned to the family estate from the British military cemetery outside Lisbon where he died in 1957.
 The past was more than honoured. It was recreated. Magyar magnates strutted through the muddy fields, and thousands of elderly peasants flocked to the cemetery. They heard Horthy was a "kind and gentle man" who never uttered a word of prejudice, and forfeited his lands without complaint. 
 Budapest Jews shuddered at the prospect of the rehabilitation of a man who presided over an officially anti-Semitic state, as senior government ministers took their seats among the VIP ranks at Horthy's reburial.
 The elderly Horthy loyalists of Kenderes never imagined they would see their hero returned after half a century of what they saw as communist "distortion" branding their idol a fascist.
 Zsolt Makra, aged 83, was clad in astrakhan fur and black velvet that contrasted with his white Austrian imperial whiskers.  He cradled a jewel-encrusted sword hailing from 1609. "My country could be happy in an era like that, with justice, security and the rule of law," he said.
 Since 1989, large state funerals have provided the defining moments of Hungary's emergence from communism and the reclamation of national identity.
 First came Imre Nagy, then Cardinal Jozsef Mindszenty. Horthy, a much more controversial figure, followed on Saturday and Hungary has been riven by the dispute.
 His apologists, including leading members of the centre-right government, have characterised him as an avuncular, ultimately benign figure. While not opposed to the reburial, critics charge that Horthy personifies a less than noble era, and that government sponsorship of the return is a tawdry vote-catching exercise.
 Horthy, the last commander of the imperial navy, came to power in 1920, leading a wave of terror against those responsible for the short-lived communist regime of the previous year.
 Over the next 25 years, he presided over a quasi-feudal system that favoured the gentry to which he belonged and systematically persecuted the large Jewish population. He devoted himself to recovering the lost Hungarian lands - the two-thirds of the country containing one-third of ethnic Hungarians that was ceded to its neighbours in the Paris peace settlements of 1920.
 He failed to get them back, except briefly and partially, as a bribe for an alliance with Hitler. Relations between Budapest and Berlin ran "perfectly and harmoniously", Joachim Ribbentrop, Hitler's foreign minister, said in 1941. The Nazis, who occupied Hungary in 1944, were succeeded by the Red Army a year later.
 "He was not a dictator, he was not an authoritarian, he was not an anti-Semite," Tamas Katona, a leading government official, says.
 "That's a lie," responds Peter Sipos, a historian writing a biography of Horthy. Between 1941 and 1944, while Hungary was fighting on the Axis side but not under German occupation, thousands of Jews were massacred or deported to death camps in Poland, Mr Sipos says.
 From March 1944 when the Germans moved in, until October when Horthy was deposed by Hungarian fascists, Hitler's "final solution" was enacted with a vengeance. At least 450,000 provincial Jews were sent to the death camps, while Horthy managed to postpone the extermination of the Budapest ghetto.
 The row is part of an attempt to set the historical record straight after decades of communist suppression. But the past has inevitably become part of the post-communist political battlefield.

LOAD-DATE: September 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



244 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 7, 1993

JAPANESE BEAT RULES TO FLY HOME;
World news in brief

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 221 words

 
 TWELVE elderly women yesterday beat the might of the Japanese bureaucracy by refusing to be cowed by the rules, writes Kevin Rafferty in Tokyo.
 The women are Japanese who had migrated to Japanese-run Manchuria and China and wanted to come home. 
 One of them, in her eighties, obviously ailing and only able to walk with assistance, said: "I wanted to spend the remaining half year or year of my life in my own country." The women, with an average age of 67, defied the bureaucracy, got on an aircraft with a one-way ticket to Japan, arrived, and said they were staying.
 This was in defiance of the rules that such people need "sponsors" who are permanent residents of Japan before they can be allowed to stay. All of them have full Japanese passports, but this is not sufficient.
 After the women had camped for the night at Tokyo's Narita airport, the government relented and said they would be allowed to stay.
 The women said they had got fed up with waiting for permission to come home.  Most of them bundled a few possessions into a bag, spent their savings on a one-way ticket, and flew in.
 An estimated 1,800 Japanese women who were taken to China when it was occupied by the Japanese imperial forces and got stuck there, are in a similar plight. Some have Chinese husbands and children.

LOAD-DATE: September 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



245 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 7, 1993

WHEN THE SAG FACTOR LEADS TO THE SACK;
There is nothing to be said in praise of older men hooking up with young women

BYLINE: JUDY RUMBOLD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 979 words

 
 THERE was something more than usually repellent about the photograph of 57-year-old Michael Winner in a How We Met feature in one of the colour supplements at the weekend. While he was leering at the camera and giving it a load of the usual big I Am, Jenny Seagrove, 33, was pictured leaning on his shoulder, fiddling intently with his ear. An ordinary display of affection, you might think, except that hers seemed to be less the action of a besotted lover than the mild clinical concern a health visitor might register while examining the consistency of a baby's stools.
 I may be wrong; Seagrove could have been quietly pleading with Winner to beat her senseless with a black leather whip. But I think not. A more likely speech bubble would read: "God, Michael, does your ear hair ever need a trim" 
 It did too. What small portion of Winner's generous form was visible in the picture revealed itself to be a veritable garden rockery of random tufts and sproutings.
 Does Seagrove mind, or even notice, you wonder? She wouldn't be alone in her tolerance of the ravages of old age. Looking at the papers over the last few weeks, it is clearly a good time for randy dads to be casting off their cardigans and trying it on with younger women. And I don't mean the embarrassingly nearly-old like Bill Wyman and Rod Stewart; we're talking fully paid up members of old codgersville like Richard Ingrams, Sir Terence Conran and Anthony Quinn. Not to mention Sir Peter Hall's nauseating rantings in yesterday's Daily Mail. ". . . She was a fragile looking blonde with blue eyes, called Monica . . . I kissed her during Postman's Knock at a party. She seemed to find me absurd and I suppose I was". Too right he was.
 What is it about these superannuated oldsters that makes young girls want to throw away their Bunty annuals and allow themselves to be seen on the arms of pot-bellied, halitotic old fogies?
 Poor Jenny Seagrove might do well to consider what she has taken on with the geriatric battleground that is Michael Winner's body. She is youthful, radiant, blooming (a fact emphasised tenfold when pictured adjacent to the ageing Winner), yet the many-chinned director has the prospect of major heart surgery coming up and, after a lifetime of fulsome indulgence in cigars, women and fry-ups, possesses the failing stamina of an end-of-season housefly. "He doesn't like the long walks in the country that I like," admits Seagrove.
 Already, her nursing duties must be piling up. Along with ear-trimming responsibilites, does she harvest his nasal hair and turn him in bed? She might save time later on by starting to read up now about bedpans, blanket baths and Complan diets.
 Don't get me wrong; I've got nothing against old men - indeed, I believe they can be very usefully employed as car parking attendants and as seasonal department store Santas. As character actors in Yellow Pages adverts, they are irreplacable and as fathers, old men do a marvellous job. But while I have many feelings towards my Dad, the urge to rip of his herringbone effect tweed slippers and have wild sex with him - or anyone even remotely like him - isn't one of them.
 The reasons an old man takes up with a young girl are familiar, well-documented and as transparent as his M&S string vest. A young girl makes an old man look good and provokes untold envy amongst his peers; her legs are usually as long as his ageing girth is wide; her hair is lustrous, her smile glad. Her brain languishes untroubled by anything as complicated as coherent thought and, best of all, she laughs at all those truly awful daddish jokes that, way back in history, his own kids found pathetic.
 But it's the girls I worry about. They really let the side down. Why do they do it? I am 32 and the prospect of sleeping with anyone more than 10 years older than me max makes my stomach turn. Call me narrow-minded, but my reservations are purely physical. Weird things happen to genitals. Awful ravages occur in the jowl department. Smells develop; tea smells, tweedy tobacco smells, denture smells. No; given the choice between Horlicks and sponge cake with a pensioner and champagne and hanky panky with a toyboy, I know which I'd choose.
 BUT for the girls who, despite all the warning signs, still vote OAP, an old man surely has limited appeal. What do they talk about? Once the girl has nodded sagely about his time in the Home Guard, marvelled about how wonderful flares were the first time around, and cooed over his collection of rare coins isn't she dying to get home to Take That, Keanu Reeves and Kellog's Pop Tarts?
 And what about sex? I think, actually, that not much of it goes on. One of Sunita's Russells reasons for dumping Sir Terence - "It was a mistake. I admired him for his knowledge, his power and his kindness. But none of that is a substitute for real passion" - would seem to back this up. Indeed, I heard of one famous newspaper editor who does nothing more unhygeinic with his young bits of skirt than sit in bed clad toe to toupee in winceyette watching telly. Although in 78-year-old Anthony Quinn's case - who recently became a father for the 11th time - he must have been doing something a bit more lively than watching Baywatch with the sound down.
 The really tragic thing about all this would be if Sir Terence Conran and the rest deluded themselves that it was anything other than power, fame, money and the fact that they remind young girls of the way their dads used to part their hair/put up shelves/read them bedtime stories, that brought the girls flocking to their sides.
 Please tell me that Terence Conran didn't stand naked in front of a full length mirror a during his affair and say: "Tel, maybe you're not such a bad looking guy after all. In fact, you're rather sexy". That would be too horrid to contemplate.

LOAD-DATE: September 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



246 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 8, 1993

STORM FOLLOWS HINT OF REDUCED HOMES CHECKS

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 467 words

 
 MINISTERS moved quickly yesterday to limit the damage of a Department of Health letter suggesting the Government is considering reducing checks on old people's homes and could even scrap the existing system of regulation.
 The letter says a radical review of regulation is being conducted as part of the Prime Minister's drive to ease the regulatory burden on business. It provoked a storm of protest that the elderly would be left to the mercy of uncaring and unscrupulous home proprietors. 
 The letter was sent to groups representing proprietors, but not to local authority social services departments responsible for inspecting homes.
 John Bowis, a junior health minister, gave an immediate undertaking that there would continue to be a system of inspection.  The review aimed to discover if there was any unnecessary regulation throttling small businesses.
 "I believe there is a continuing need for us, as government, to monitor, to inspect, to look after homes in our care," Mr Bowis said on BBC radio.
 The letter, sent to associations representing private residential and nursing homes, is signed by a relatively junior health department civil servant. Similar correspondence has been sent to other groups in areas in which the department has a regulatory interest.
 The letter states: "We have been asked to assess the cost of regulation on business, to consider whether there is a continued need for regulation, and whether the system can be improved to reduce the burden in any way."
 The associations are asked to collect sample data from their members on the cost of meeting the requirements of the Registered Homes Act 1984, by which residential homes are inspected by local authorities and nursing homes by health authorities.
 Inviting the associations to comment on the need for inspection and registration, the letter warns of concern that standards could fall below acceptable levels. "You may, however, feel that essential safeguards could be maintained in some other way and have views on how this might be achieved. We should be interested to know."
 There has been startling growth in the private care home sector over the past 20 years. The number of residential homes rising from 1,871 in 1975 to 9,235 in 1992, and the number of nursing homes from 1,000 to more than 4,000 in the same period.
 Community care arrangements are expected to lead to the closure of hundreds of care homes over the next two or three years.
 James Churchill, secretary of the Association for Residential Care, said he welcomed the chance to "fine-tune" the system, but opposed dismantling it. "This would open the door to the get-rich-quick merchants again, just after we have finally managed to squeeze them out of the industry."
 Leader comment, page 17

LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



247 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 8, 1993

LEADING ARTICLE: CARE IS REGULATION

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 461 words

 
 MINISTERS must be writhing with embarrassment - and anger. Few recent missives from Whitehall have made them such hostages to fortune as the letter dispatched to nursing and residential homes on deregulation. Proprietors are reminded of the Prime Minister's new initiative to reduce the regulatory burden on business.  Community care is now big business, with a pounds 2,500 million subsidy from Whitehall for the provision of residential and nursing facilities. This huge expansion of private residential provision was given a further boost by the restructuring of social services into purchaser and provider divisions. With local councils under both political and financial pressure to use private or voluntary homes, along comes the deregulation letter. The aim is to be "radical". What was the original purpose of each requirement? Is it still necessary?  Are costs to the homes too high? 
 You don't need to be a political adviser to forecast what happens now. Some time in the near future, a new residential scandal will break out. Remember the Yorkshire Television documentary on Kent's private residential homes where old people were being dumped, unable to defend themselves or complain about the squalid conditions? Or, to select a home in the public sector, the scandal of Nye Bevan Lodge in Southwark where no-one blew the whistle about the ill-treatment of its residents?  Both were only six years ago. Certainly, standards have improved in the last decade. But with thousands of homes and hundreds of thousands of clients, a future scandal is inevitable. Indeed, according to the Royal College of Nursing, one is just "waiting to happen" because of the large number of elderly people who should be in nursing homes but are being placed in the less expensive and less skilled residential homes.
 Imagine trying to defend yourself when you've sent a letter asking whether regulation and inspection are still needed. No wonder ministers are worried about their credibility. Certainly John Bowis, the junior health minister, moved quickly to insist yesterday that registration and inspection would continue. Indeed, in the last two years, the Government has belatedly improved regulation by insisting on local councils setting up "arms length" inspectors in 1991, and then in 1992 by extending this inspection first to homes with even fewer than four old people, and then to children's homes. So what is going on? Whitehall got its wires crossed. The Health Department felt it must respond to the Prime Minister's initiative, instead of insisting on the differences between workshops and residential homes. An acute case of mandarin brain disengagement. But vulnerable old people are not widgets. Protection must be the first priority.

LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



248 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 9, 1993

MAJOR INTERVENES IN BUDGET ROW

BYLINE: STEPHEN BATES, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 436 words

 
 THE Prime Minister intends to call the bluff of rightwing ministers by rejecting any call to reopen discussion on the Government's Budget plans at today's first cabinet meeting for six weeks.
 Any attempt by ministers such as John Redwood, the Welsh Secretary, or Peter Lilley, Social Security Secretary, to launch a call for public spending cuts to take priority over increasing taxation will be deflected, informed sources said last night.
 With the party row over how to tackle the pounds 50 billion deficit threatening to permeate the Tories' autumn session, from the party conference through to Chancellor Kenneth Clarke's budget on November 30, Mr Major publicly intervened for the first time yesterday. 
 In an article circulated to regional newspapers, Mr Major warned of difficult decisions with a restatement of basic Conservative principle: "All social policy begins with economic policy. We can't spend what we haven't earned . . . the fact is we are living beyond our means . . . "
 The article responded to rightwing concerns about public spending by acknowledging that social expenditure was outstripping inflation by 3 per cent a year. "That can't go on. We need to decide now how to create the resources to care for the vulnerable, the sick and the elderly in the future. We need to reduce government borrowing and control government spending across the board."
 It did not add, as Michael Portillo, Chief Secretary to the Treasury, has pointed out recently, that the scope for further immediate cuts in spending is extremely limited.
 The message was reinforced in an interview given by the Chancellor to this morning's Daily Telegraph, rejecting cuts in public spending and leaving the way open for tax increases in Budget.
 "The big decision in June was when the Cabinet agreed the public spending total which they all signed up to. The big activity for the next month is going to be delivering that remit."
 Mr Clarke said: 'I regard myself as a keen supply-side economist. But you cannot have simplistic, self-denying ordinances that at no stage do you ever put taxation up."
 Mr Major's article was ridiculed by Tony Blair, the shadow home secretary, who said spending what had not been earned was precisely what the Government had been doing by running up the deficit in the first place.
 At Wellington, Somerset, yesterday Mr Major began a series of private regional meetings by attempting to reassure chairmen and party members from 43 West Country constituencies that the threat from the Liberal Democrats in the region was being taken seriously.
 "

LOAD-DATE: September 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



249 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 10, 1993

LETTRE: PAID OFF

BYLINE: BRIAN BETHELL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 234 words

 
 I HAVE today received the renewal notice of my Labour Party membership. With it came what? Exhortations to join the struggle?  A vision of the party's aims for a fairer and more just society? An explanation and apology for the previous cockups? No. It tells me that there are a whole range of financial services available to me as a party member and the accompanying leaflet offers me free advice on any aspect of my finances.
 I can get this from my broker or bank. What I want from the Labour Party is a bit of arsekicking on behalf of the desperate youngsters sleeping in the doorways of our towns and cities or the elderly about to face the winter with the worrying choice of whether to keep warm or eat regularly. On behalf of the unemployed driven to desperation or the poor devil hanging on to his or her home by their fingertips.
 Out of date? Unrealistic? Utopian? Well Walworth Road might be interested, and then again they might not, but that is why I pay my membership in the first place not for some Red Rose sponsored private pension plan. Or to put it in a language that the bright spark responsible for this mailing might understand: my membership is an investment towards a better society and as we know if investors don't see the prospect of getting the dividend they want then they very soon stop investing.
 Brian Bethell.
 3 Cherry Drive,
 Canterbury, Kent.

LOAD-DATE: September 10, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



250 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 11, 1993

DO IT YOURSELF;
AGE CONCERN PART 2

BYLINE: GARETH PARRY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 63

LENGTH: 477 words

 
 WORK SURFACES in kitchens used by elderly people should be lower than usual, with frequently-used items stored on racks, hooks and small boxes just above them. Carousel units and open shelving with wire baskets to pull objects at the back of the cupboard out into the open, will also help prevent accidents caused by things falling out or by over-reaching.
 Taps should be push-lever models. There are also kits to convert existing tap valves (provided they are made to British Standards BS 1010) allowing the water to be nudged on and off with just a half turn. Devices which grip the tap head at one end, and taper into a handle on the other, are less expensive options. 
 Stooping to reach electric sockets can cause dizziness, and kits to raise powerpoints to a reasonable height are available.  Some elderly people find rocker light switches difficult to operate, or positioned too high on the wall. These could be converted to pull-cord operation.
 Fear of falling, or shortness of breath makes climbing the stairs a serious challenge for some. Stairs should, in any case, be kept clear of all obstacles, and the handrails, and carpets regularly checked and secured. Chairlifts are an obvious, but expensive, solution.
 Safety in the bathroom presents special problems because of the need for privacy. The hot, steamy atmosphere can make anyone feel light-headed, so it should be possible to open door locks from the outside. A personal alarm kept in the bathroom could also be valuable.
 A fitted bathroom carpet is warmer and less slippery than vinyl as a floor covering. Bath mats must have a good quality backing, and non-slip rubber bath and shower mats are essential. Showering is so much easier and safer for elderly people (and children) if they can sit, and shower seats with simple flaps which pull down from the wall, or moulded plastic seats on sturdy legs are available.
 Safety measures in the living room and bedrooms are more obvious. Radiant electric fires should be banned, and over-loaded power points avoided as much as the trail of leads and flexes to them. Electric blankets should be regularly serviced and replaced.
 Light switches within easy reach of the bed are an important safety consideration, although an illuminated plug which slots into a 13 amp socket will emit a soft night light. Thick pile carpets are temptingly luxurious, but make it difficult for an older person to walk across a room.
 Burglars often target houses where elderly people live, so encourage them never to leave reminder notes on the door for the milkman or tradesmen and to keep their savings in a bank or post office.  Curtains should be closed at night, and the front door should be solid, with sturdy hinges, a deadlocking rimlock and a deadlocking mortice lock. Window locks are inexpensive and easy to install.

LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



251 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 11, 1993

ELDERLY ABLE TO JUMP ON HOME LOAN BANDWAGON

BYLINE: JILL PAPWORTH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 1081 words

 
 THE growing availability of interest-only mortgages, where no capital repayment vehicle is required by the lender, means that age is no longer a barrier to getting a home loan.
 This is welcome news for elderly people needing or wanting to buy a property, but without sufficient capital to do so outright.
 Frances Chaney, from Dorset, has been landed with this problem following a divorce at the age of 67.
 After the forced sale of the large home she owned with her ex-husband, she will be left with pounds 50,000 to buy a new home, but it will not be enough to purchase the size of property she wants in the area in which she lives. 
 Her son, Andrew Hirschhorn, wrote on her behalf to Money Guardian for help, explaining: "West Dorset is quite an expensive area and pounds 50,000 would not buy much.
 "The problem is that my mother needs a fair size property with a big garden so that she can house her large collection of books and her two large dogs."
 Mrs Chaney could get the size of property she wants for about pounds 70,000, which would mean her borrowing pounds 20,000.  The maintenance payments she receives from her ex-husband plus her state pension should be enough to cover the interest payments on such a loan.
 But, Mr Hirschhorn asks, surely no lender would be prepared to advance her a mortgage at her age?
 "As far as we are aware, mortgages are only lent to younger people with a steady job," he says.
 In fact, most lenders nowadays would be prepared to advance a home loan to someone in retirement, provided they can demonstrate that they, or their children, have sufficient income to cover the monthly interest payments.
 "So long as they have the status and ability to repay it, anyone can get a mortgage no matter what their age," said a spokesman for the Woolwich Building Society.
 The lender then has first charge on the property and redeems the capital loan from the borrower's estate when he or she dies, or earlier if the owner chooses to clear the loan by some other means, such as with the proceeds of a maturing endowment policy.
 To be sure that the eventual sale of the property will be enough to cover the outstanding loan, lenders will generally insist that older people only borrow a relatively small percentage of its value.
 The Halifax, for example, will advance a maximum of 75 per cent of valuation as an interest-only mortgage to the retired and elderly, while the maximum loan-to-value available from both the Leeds Permanent and the Woolwich is 60 per cent.
 Mrs Chaney would pay pounds 99.89 a month in interest on a pounds 20,000 loan from the Halifax at its current variable mortgage rate of 7.99 per cent. She could also choose to take one of the society's fixed-rate deals with no obligation to take out any insurance.
 She would pay pounds 84.39 a month plus a one-off arrangement fee of pounds 150 on the Halifax's two-year fixed offer at 6.75 per cent, for example, or pounds 93.14 a month plus a pounds 200 fee on the society's three-year 7.45 per cent fix.
 Also commonly offered to older borrowers are short-term, repayment mortgages, again with the lender taking a charge on the property to protect its money if the buyer dies before the mortgage term is complete.
 The most usual circumstance, under which older people request a mortgage to buy their own home for the first time, is where long-term council tenants decide to take advantage of the Government's Right-to-Buy scheme to buy a property at a sizeable discount to provide an inheritance for their children.
 Discounts available on houses under the Right-to-Buy scheme range from 32 per cent to a maximum of 60 per cent or pounds 50,000 for someone who has been a tenant for over 30 years.
 Four years ago, Herbert Monks, a retired BP engineer from Swansea, became a first-time buyer at the age of 81, to the benefit of both himself and his children.
 Having lived in his terraced council house for over 40 years, he qualified for the maximum discount and was offered the property, then valued at just under pounds 15,000, for pounds 5,600.
 With enough savings to put down a pounds 1,600 deposit, he made up the rest with a pounds 4,000 repayment mortgage from the Woolwich, repayable over seven years.
 His monthly repayments when he first took out the loan were pounds 78 with the variable mortgage rate then a hefty 13.5 per cent.
 This gave him a substantial saving on the pounds 30 a week he had been paying in rent, and the benefit has increased as the mortgage rate has fallen over the last 18 months.
 With only three years left of the mortgage term, Mr Monks will soon be free of any payments on his home and will also be the outright owner of a property to pass on to his children.
 Elderly people without a regular income sufficient to cover monthly repayments, however, will find it much more difficult to raise a mortgage.
 Some lenders will consider repayment mortgages for those who have children able to fund monthly repayments on their behalf.
 In Right-to-Buy situations, this is sometimes used by borrowers in their 40s and 50s as an effective way of investing towards their own retirement by buying their parents a property, which they will eventually inherit, at a discount.
 What the majority of lenders will not do is lend money to older borrowers who cannot afford to pay anything back until the house is sold or they die.
 The problem is that, if interest is deferred and rolled up into the capital loan, with the idea that the lender then redeems both capital and interest owed from the sale of the house when the borrower dies, it can mount up and exceed the value of the property within a relatively short period.
 While this may not matter if house prices are rising fast, it is very risky for borrowers when the housing market is static or falling as in recent years.
 Cecil Hinton, an independent adviser specialising in retirement planning, has long advised pensioners against taking any sort of deferred-interest mortgage, still occasionally on offer from smaller lenders.
 "With such loans, the debt can double every four or five years, depending on the prevailing interest rates," he says. "If, for example, the average mortgage rate were 10 per cent, a pounds 30,000 deferred-interest loan would become a debt of pounds 77,000 after 10 years and pounds 200,000 after 20 years."
 Money Guardian is edited by Margaret Hughes

LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



252 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 11, 1993

HANS LINDSTROM SEEKS LIFT FROM LONGEVITY

BYLINE: BEN LAURANCE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 37

LENGTH: 415 words

 
 IN THE 40 years between 1985 and 2025 the proportion of Europe's population aged 65 or more is likely to rise from 13.6 per cent to 22.9 per cent. Not a lot of people know that. But Hans Lindstrom does - which is why he is about to ask investors to put around pounds 140 million into his company. 
 Mr Lindstrom runs Arjo, a Swedish-based enterprise specialising in hi-tech equipment to help lift, bathe and generally manoeuvre the elderly and handicapped in such places as hospitals and nursing homes.
 The industry is large: Arjo's sales last year were more than SKr800 million ( pounds 65 million). And, simply because more people are living longer, demand for such equipment is expected to rise consistently over the next few decades.
 Arjo's thinking is straightforward. A large amount of effort is expended by nursing staff in lifting and moving patients: back problems are common among nurses, and a typical injury can cost employers more than pounds 12,000 in sick pay - on top of any claim for compensation.
 The company acknowledges that its equipment may be relatively expensive - a typical Arjo device for lifting a patient could cost around pounds 2,500 - but it argues that buying a mechanical lifting system, rather than relying on muscle-power, is a worthwhile investment. In simple, cold financial terms, a nurse with a back injury is bad news for his or her employer.
 As the proportion of the population that is elderly increases, the number of people who need help getting in and out of bed is likely to rise.
 In the United States, the number of people aged 65 and over is forecast to increase to 20.3 per cent of the population by 2025.
 The number of Europeans aged 75 or over is likely to rise by 5.1 million between now and the year 2000, and by 19.5 million in the next three decades or so.
 Many of them will require help to move around. Many of them will need to be bathed in one of Arjo's hi-tech baths, which can be raised up and down, to lift and lower them. The bath costs pounds 8,000.  Hence, Arjo's optimism.
 But the company is currently highly indebted, having bought the business in a leveraged buyout from conglomerate Malmros International at the end of 1990. Currently, about 38 per cent of the company is owned by CWB Capital Partners and Warburg Pincus Investors. Some of the shares to be offered to investors will come from CWB. Most of the money being raised will be used to pay off the post-buyout debt.

LOAD-DATE: September 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



253 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 13, 1993

ENDPIECE: A WORKING MAN ABROAD IN MERRIE ENGLAND

BYLINE: ROY HATTERSLEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 896 words

 
 THE summer is over and I have still not killed a tourist. Readers who think that they detect a scintilla of regret hiding within that statement of predominant relief are right. For although I give thanks each night that the corpse of one of our European partners is not attached to the front bumper of my motorcar, there are moments of each day when I am sorely tempted to make The Twelve one less.
 My uncharacteristic aggression is not solely directed towards citizens of the Community. Occasionally homicidal, I may be.  But prejudiced I am not. I feel equally murderous about Japanese, American, Saudi Arabian and Mexican holiday-makers. At work, they are fine. At leisure in Westminster, they are intolerable. Their too visible presence is a terrible price to pay for invisible exports. 
 Let me begin to justify my briefly brutish instincts by describing how near to death so many of our visitors get and how assiduously I concentrate on saving their alien lives. As far as I can recall, there are motorcars in most of the countries from which they come. But most tourists seem to forget about the existence of that potentially lethal weapon as soon as they arrive in London. They simply step off the kerb into the path of what police reports call "oncoming traffic".
 Those who remember that the British can drive seem to regret it - which is wholly unreasonable when you recall that we are driving cars that they made. Groups of giggling girls run, regardless of their doom, into the centre of the road, discover that a friend has paused on the kerb to admire herself in a pocket mirror, and run back again to keep her company. The male equivalent is far deadlier. Young men - usually smoking and sometimes drinking beer from cans - smile as they stroll elegantly across traffic lights which bid them to wait. Their whole demeanour is a challenge to drivers. The unspoken message is "kill me if you dare".
 Those who remain on the pavement have one characteristic in common. As they wander along, they block the path of busy locals who are hurrying about their business. To be fair, they block it in a variety of ways. Elderly Americans wander, romantically, hand in hand. Columns of young Germans saunter, three or four abreast, behind a lady who holds aloft a coloured umbrella which is the oriflamme behind which they rally for instruction about buildings of historic interest. Benign Japanese, who seem to be making normal progress, stop so suddenly to focus their cameras on something which has caught their attention that pedestrians in their wake run into them like trains into buffers.
 And that is only a list of the problems which are created by tourists who are moving in the same direction as I am. When they bear down upon me in an uncomprehending phalanx of training shoes, camcorders and unisex shoulder bags, they raise a profound and disturbing psychological problem. I have been on a collision course with tourists of every shape, size, nationality and age. Why am I always the one who steps off the footpath into the gutter?
 The few visitors who condescend to speak to the natives, invariably ask questions which it is impossible to answer. I do not mind them enquiring about the identity of Big Ben. When I first went abroad I had a clear view about the shape of the Eiffel Tower, the size of St Peters and the colour of the White House. So ignorance about the landmarks of London encourages a feeling of national superiority which few Britons have felt since the age of the Raj. But requests for simple items of information are usually only the beginning of the cross examination.
 Perhaps I ought to be flattered to be asked the time of the next bus to Oxford Street. It is not every man of my age who is mistaken for the holder of a PSV licence.
 But have you ever tried to explain the difference between Westminster Abbey and Westminster Cathedral to a Kuwaiti with 20 words of English? Worse still, imagine how you would feel if it was assumed that you knew how to get tickets for Cats and Aspects of Love.
 I seek consolation wherever it is to be found. All over Japan and North America, home videos are intriguing family audiences with Westminster's answer to Alfred Hitchcock, a disarmingly mysterious figure who passes silent and composed through the pictures of the House of Lords and the Jewel Tower.
 Then there are the ice cream vans which park in Parliament Street for as long as the police allow. I never buy a cornet myself. But, with other almost forgotten delights of my youth, it is exciting to remember old indulgences.
 All that is small consolation for what amounts to annual assault and temporary occupation by offensively friendly forces. The real trauma is the feeling that, since I am English, I live in a theme park and that I ought to play my part in the promotion of the national image by growing side whiskers and disguising myself as William Ewart Gladstone.
 Last week, two men dressed as Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson lounged on the corner of Bridge Street and Parliament Square. I could not decide whether they were actors advertising a restaurant or patriotic neighbours joining in the spirit of things. I suppose that I pay the price for living half a mile from Buckingham Palace.  Foreigners expect all the neighbourhood to be devoted to a pageant of Merrie England.

LOAD-DATE: September 10, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



254 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 14, 1993

MND: THE TERRIBLE FACTS;
How the untreatable disease affects sufferers

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 502 words

 
 MOTOR neurone disease is a progressive degenerative disease affecting the nerves (motor neurones) in the brain and spine controlling speech and movement.
 Intellect and memory remain intact in the vast majority of the cases, but the spread of the disease is insidious and around half of sufferers will be dead within five years. The cause is not known, and there is no treatment. 
 The initial symptoms and speed of progression vary widely between individuals, but common first signs are stumbling, weakened grip, cramps, a hoarse voice, progressing to loss of function of limbs and wasting of the muscles in the trunk and neck, eventually affecting all activities. Speech and swallowing often become increasingly difficult, and may end with the total loss of speech.
 According to figures from the Motor Neurone Disease Association, 40 per cent of people will survive for five years, 10 per cent for 10 years, and a small number have lived more than 20 years.
 It is estimated the disease affects between eight to 10 people per 100,000 of the population, and there are believed to be around 5,000 sufferers in the UK.
 There are three forms of MND. The most common form, affecting 66 per cent of sufferers, is known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). This affects the motor neurones in the brain and spine and is characterised by muscle weakness, spasticity, hyperactive reflexes and emotional lability. Age of onset is usually over 55 years, and average survival from diagnosis is 3-4 years. Males are more affected than females by a ratio of three to two.
 Progressive muscular atrophy (PMA) affects around eight per cent of MND patients, and predominantly results from motor neurone degeneration in the spine. It causes muscle wasting and weakness, often starting with the hands, with loss of weight and muscle twitching. Age of onset is usually under 50 years, male predominance is five to one, and most patients survive beyond five years from diagnosis.
 The third form of the disease is known as progressive bulbar palsy (PBP), and involves paralysis of the cranial nerves controlling speech and swallowing. Speech rapidly deteriorates, and swallowing difficulties may mean feeding by nasogastric tube becomes necessary. Most people retain use of their legs, but upper limbs progressively weaken. PBP occurs in older people, is slightly more common in women, and survival from onset of symptoms is usually between six months and three years.
 With all forms of the disease fatigue is common, as are depression and other pyschological problems, pain and discomfort, and respiratory infections. Although no treatment for the disease itself is possible, some of the symptoms can be relieved.
 Famous sufferers of MND have included Professor Stephen Hawking, Cambridge mathematician and author of A Brief History Of Time; actor David Niven and football manager Don Revie.
 The Motor Neurone Disease Association: PO Box 246, Northampton, NN1 2PR. Tel: 0604 250505.

LOAD-DATE: September 11, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



255 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 15, 1993

BACK TO THE FRONT WITH TOMMY;
'The scale and nature of this war were something beyond what people normally understood. In the numbers of dead and the manner in which they died there was something that taxed human understanding in the same way as Auschwitz'.  Sebastian Faulks visits the killing fields of Flanders, the backdrop to his new and acclaimed novel, Birdsong

BYLINE: SEBASTIAN FAULKS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 2039 words

 
 IN 1988 I was sent by a newspaper to report on the 70th anniversary of the Armistice. I went with a party of veterans organised by the historian Lyn Macdonald who, in the 1970s, had seen the danger that most of these old men were dying without ever having told their stories. We stayed in Bethune, in the flatlands of north-eastern France, and I remember being amazed at the passion for tea evinced by these old men. In the morning we drove to the battlefields of Neuve Chapelle and Aubers Ridge, where in 1915 the British launched their first attacks of the war.
 The old man sitting next to me on the bus took my hand as he explained how it felt to be wheeled on a general service wagon over rutted ground with the two parts of your shattered leg rubbing together.  When we stopped and got off, he showed me where the fire trench had been; he pointed to the German line about 90 yards distant, still marked by the indestructible concrete pillboxes.
 It was on this exact spot, he said, that his best friend had been blown to pieces beside him. "I picked them all up - none of them was bigger than a leg of mutton - and dropped them into a sandbag. I dug a hole in the ground and dropped the bag in.  I marked it with a cross but they never found it." 
 The following afternoon I was walking with him in one of the eerily beautiful cemeteries maintained by the War Graves Commission where the air of tranquillity given by the clean headstones and neat jars of flowers is threatened only by the terrible number of graves. Suddenly my veteran friend gave a start. He was staring at a headstone at our feet. It was marked with the name of the man he had buried: someone had found the emergency grave and buried him properly. "Oh I say," he said, reunited for the first time since 1915, "Oh I say . . . "
 For some time I had had the impression that the terrible scale of the Great War was something that had not been properly understood by people of my generation. Now, as I stood with the yellowish mud crawling over my shoe, I saw that it was not only larger but much more recent than I had imagined. It was not "history", something that could be kept comfortably at bay: this man was old, but he was cogent and alive. This was the place: here we stood in the same clinging mud - he and the rest of us whose grandfathers had survived. This was his life, and to some tragic but inevitable extent it was ours too.
 Later I watched a burly young Australian who had travelled all the way from Sydney to visit the battlefields. Lyn Macdonald took him to the cemetery where his grandfather lay, among furlongs, among miles of headstones, and the young man's body seemed to convulse with grief and shock.
 Initially the idea of that war repelled and bored me. One knew of great suffering and loss of life: that much remained from school history lessons. Yet it seemed unmanageably remote. The method of remembrance had a deadening effect: two minutes' silence on Armistice Day. More silence, more mystery to add to the self-imposed secrecy of so many of the combatants, few of whom talked of their experiences. Then there was the ambiguous poppy. Was it a lamentation or a symbol of Empire? Was it death or beauty?
 In newsreels you could see Tommies with their upturned, obedient faces, shuffling at double speed to their cheery death. All that seemed to remain of their feelings was an improbable stoicism, mockingly recalled in their sentimental songs. On the mantelshelfs of old people I had seen photographs of boys in flat service caps and puttees, their faces rendered smooth by sepia, the sensations they had felt removed, distanced and forgotten. I remember thinking: it cannot have been like this.
 But how to recapture or recreate what it was? The silence of the soldiers had all but buried the experience of war. Some did not speak at all for years; few talked about it openly. At the Armistice in 1918 Marshal Foch described it as a truce for 20 years. When the end of the subsequent conflict began to reveal the extent of the Nazi holocaust the world had something even more monstrous and perverted to remember. The existence of film and the insistent passion of worldwide Jewry made these events the touchstone of 20th century suffering.
 So the men who had fought at the Somme and Passchendaele, who had seen extermination on a scale never before or since witnessed in war, became the victims, to some extent, of their own reticence.  Because they could not, or did not care to, describe the scope of what they had seen they became remembered half-ironically: there was no museum of their holocaust, only songs and silence and quaint brown photographs.
 Six years ago I wrote a novel called The Girl At The Lion d'Or, set in France in 1936, in the course of which I had to research the French experience of the 1914-1918 war. The Price Of Glory by Alistair Home, an account of the siege of Verdun, was the book that first confirmed what I had suspected: that the scale and nature of this war were something beyond what people normally understood. In the numbers of dead and the manner in which they died there was something that taxed human understanding in the same way as Auschwitz.
 I suppose I had read Graves and Sassoon, but hastily, a long time ago. And these were the memoirs of officers, written with degrees of protective irony and suppression. I admit to being ignorant, but I believed that even well-educated people of my generation knew equally little. I asked my contemporaries about it. They shook their heads in sorrowful respect at the names of those foul places - Ypres, Verdun - but the truth was that they did not really know what had happened. I was not alone in my ignorance.
 When I returned from the first trip to the battlefields in 1988 I began to read about the war. It was not long before I came across a paradox: the first world war may be inadequately remembered, but it is extremely well documented. From the official military history to the numerous collections of private documents there is an abundance of material - from the rigorous to the useless, from the poignant to the banal. I followed a haphazard course of study, through the lists of specialist publishers, public libraries, private collections and the vast and expertly marshalled resources of the Imperial War Museum.
 I attended a lecture by its director Peter Simkins on "1917, the Year of Endurance". It was packed. Here was another paradox: perhaps the war was understood by few, but those who did were passionate about it. Excusing himself from talking about events on the Eastern Front or in Mesopotamia, Peter Simkins said, "I'm a Western Front man myself," and the audience let off a stifled murmur of approval. Later he showed a rarely seen film of the Battle of Arras.
 Although all this was interesting, none of it was helpful to someone contemplating a novel. If your starting point is a belief that the scale of something is almost beyond human comprehension, then you feel a sense of presumption in attempting to go where the actual participants have gone before. If you then have to grapple with the extent of documentation and amateur knowledge in an area which you believe to be under-reported, it is hard not to be discouraged.
 Soon I began to handle collections of documents. Here was the actual stuff: postcards written from the front, diaries and letters whose paper was wrinkled from rain that had penetrated the roofs of inadequate dug-outs. Here at last was food for the imagination unmediated by the selection and comment of another writer.
 The raw material gave a view of a world I was sure had been forgotten. The feudal attitude of the private soldiers to their officers, for instance, was striking. They expected little from their superiors except courage under fire. Their contempt for the occasional coward is withering. The letters of condolence are frequently works of art. I remember one lamentation from a schoolmaster to the mother of a boy who had just been killed: he was the last of his beloved class to die, all that talent nurtured, trained and wasted. The teacher's private anguish almost overwhelms the politeness of his sympathy. Boys of 19 or 20 write astonishing prose, spangled with classical allusion; private soldiers write the cool, neat hand of the elementary school.
 There was no typical attitude to war. One diarist who seems almost comically keen recounts in 1917 that he is to be transferred to a training job in Canada because he has not shown sufficient enthusiasm at the Front. Others lived and let live; few hated the Germans, but some emphatically did. Every man's war was different.
 Even the documents were of limited use until two other things happened. The first was my discovery of the extent of the mining operations under no man's land. This was a kind of special concentrated hell, contained within the greater inferno; and it was something not much written about even by the professionals. If I was to try to recreate the experience of 1916, I felt I should at least examine some unknown aspect of it, and here was a way in.
 Almost all the accounts of war stressed the strange persistence of natural life - birds, rats, dogs, cattle - even in the great bombardments and holocausts. The soldiers found it both perplexing and reassuring. In a book about mining I discovered the story of a cage of canaries that had broken underground, allowing the birds to escape. Each one had to be recaptured so that the enemy would not guess that there were mining operations in the area.  One canary flew out into no man's land. Three snipers shot at it, but could not kill it. Eventually they brought up a trench mortar and bombed the bird. I did not use the story in the book, but its symbolism was suggestive.
 The second development came about when I started to visit the Somme area. I looked at the great memorial at Thiepval, then wandered into the wood behind it, which had been the British headquarters on the terrible morning of July 1, 1916. The first thing I saw was a shell.
 It seemed like a lucky charm. My research had been based on a kind of faith: that this war was far more recent than people seemed to understand. Now here was the proof. Later I learned that ploughing in the spring frequently yields a harvest of unexploded shells, but that did not matter: this was my shell. It was by repeated visits to the area and simple contemplation that I began to form a larger picture in my mind. I filled a little jam jar with earth from the Sunken Road on the British frontline and kept it on my desk while I wrote in the superstitious hope it would keep my hand steady.
 As the hero I took someone who was not blue-eyed and innocent like so many who died, but compromised and involuntarily experienced before the war begins. Birdsong is in fact not a book about the war: it is a love story, the story of this man's life. Three of the six main characters are women; children play a peripheral but vital part. Yet at least half the book is about the war, an attempt to recreate the physical and emotional sensations of it, on both complete and minute scales: it is an attempt to understand.
 Remembrance is prompted by emotion, but becomes useless if it is mere self-indulgence. If the lamentation of the dead is to be turned into something purposeful, it takes not just compassion, but will and judgment. We have learned to endure the footage of the concentration camps, more or less at the insistence of the survivors, and we are all humbled by it. But what took place on the banks of the river Ancre on July 1, 1916 when 60,000 British casualties were sustained in a single day; what took place at Arras and Passchendaele; the ripping up and evisceration of a country's youth, the fragmentation of its society, the grief of mothers, lovers and fathers, not some amorphous national sadness, but each pain, singly, multiplied - this was our holocaust, and I think it was this more than anything else that has shaped the century that in Britain, Germany, France, and even in Sarajevo, is drawing to a close.
 Birdsong is published tomorrow by Hutchinson, price pounds 14.99.

LOAD-DATE: September 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



256 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 15, 1993

EUROPE: EDDY'S ONE-MAN STAND;
Ewoud Nysingh on a Dutchman bent on distributing aid in Bosnia, by bike

BYLINE: EWOUD NYSINGH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EURO PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 614 words

 
 volkskrant
 POSSIBLY the most popular foreign aid organisation in Sarajevo is Eddy Nieuwboer's one-man operation, run from the suburb of Gorica, behind the destroyed military hospital.
 Nieuwboer, aged 50, has been in Sarajevo since January. He has lost 20 kilos.  He has narrowly escaped death once or twice, and he sometimes fails to cope with the horrors. But "Crazy Eddy" or "Eddy Hollandija" carries on cycling through the city delivering letters from Bosnians abroad and handing out food. 
 Nieuwboer (divorced, with two children) usually calls himself an "non-commercial fixer". He used to run a service company in Belgium, but gave it up when it began to grow. "I can't work in an organisation," he says. "I can't be myself."
 He worked as a volunteer in Brazil for a year, and saw the Bosnian war on television when he returned to the Netherlands.  "When I see something like that, I can't stay at home," he says. So, he joined a refugee reception centre in Roermond. But the stories he heard did not tally with the television reports. The refugees wanted to tell their relatives back home where they were and how to get to the Netherlands. So, Nieuwboer bought an old Opel and set off for Bosnia - delivering letters.
 By mistake, he drove part of the way along the closed and deadly Zagreb-Belgrade highway. In Bosnia, he visited towns like Tuzla and Zenica, and a number of villages. He then tried but failed to get into Serb-controlled Banja Luka. With just a couple of letters left for Sarajevo, he then drove down Snipers' Alley, to the front of the Holiday Inn. "How could I know that that's where the snipers were?" he says now.
 He had seen dreadful things on his trip, but Sarajevo beat everything.  Nieuwboer stayed.
 He found lodgings with a 92-year-old blind Serbian woman, who had been left behind by her relatives. "After a while, the Muslims said I was helping a Chetnik. Things got so tense that I decided to take her to Belgrade myself. They were very surprised when I came back. Some of them now think that I'm a spy."
 Life in Gorica is not getting easier. When he leaves his house, he worries that someone will steal his modest provisions.  Serbs ask him to help them leave Sarajevo: they are sick of the bullets and the hunger and the burning newspapers stuffed down their letter-boxes.
 But Nieuwboer's main concern is the children and the old people. Gorica is a poor neighbourhood, with few contacts among the powers that be. "I've set myself the task of stopping people dying of hunger. I can't do anything against snipers and grenades."
 No matter how near the front the address, he still delivers the letters which arrive at Unprofor. Sometimes he manages to deliver medicine, too. Most of the food he distributes comes from Unprofor soldiers or the French aid organisation Equilibre.  He has no trouble getting cigarettes, the key currency of barter. "I could get very rich by swapping cartons of cigarettes for videos and other luxury items. A Croatian dentist offered me his brand-new Nissan to get him out of Sarajevo." Nieuwboer, an idealist who abhors the corrupt Ukrainian United Nations soldiers, remained unswayed.
 "In February, I organised a massive childrens' party in Hotel Belgrade.  Equilibre gave pasta and chocolate, Unprofor gave sausages and fish-sticks. Artists performed for the 122 children. It was a terrific success."
 Nieuwboer would like to go back to the Netherlands to raise more aid. For the moment, however, he is staying. If he left, returning to Sarajevo could prove difficult. The UN bureaucrats want official papers. Eddy has none.
 Copyright The Guardian/de Volkskrant

LOAD-DATE: September 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



257 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 16, 1993

SELF-INFLICTED WOUNDS;
Two London fringe productions share a taste for violence-and over-writing

BYLINE: MICHAEL BILLINGTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 511 words

 
 (London final editions)
 CHRIS Hannan and David Spencer have a lot in common. Both are talented young dramatists (born in 1958), both are non-metropolitan (from Scotland and Yorkshire respectively) and both are clearly fascinated by self-mutilation.
 Macu, the heroine of Hannan's The Baby, first seen at Glasgow's Tron in 1990 and now at The Bush, inflicts a thousand razor-cuts on her grief-stricken body. And the unseen pivot of Spencer's Land Of The Living, at The Theatre Upstairs, is a 50-year-old suicide who kills herself in the bath with "150 razor slices". But it is not the common preoccupation with violence that perturbs me so much as the strenuous over-writing that mars both plays. 
 Hannan's The Baby is reminiscent of Howard Barker in its use of history as metaphor. The setting is Rome in 78 BC, just after the death of Sulla: in place of order and reason we have intrigue and anarchy.  Macu, a professional "wailer" at state funerals, loses her daughter in a street fire initiated by Pompey when she refuses to mourn the death of Sulla. In consequence, she is driven into a state of vengeful, love-denying dementia that can be satisfied only by her own or Pompey's death.
 Hannan's portrait of Rome as barbarically chaotic in the wake of Sulla's reign of terror is highly impressive: well realised, too, in Polly Irvin's production, for Wild Iris, with its insistent drumbeats, rattles and metal-bashing sounds. But it was never clear to me whether Macu, who provokes Pompey by reminding him of his father's dismemberment, is meant to be a victim of a violent society or of her own inflammatory rhetoric. Nicola Redmond invests her with a dangerous manic gleam, and Tom Mannion is truly touching as her devoted lover; but you feel that Hannan himself is so fascinated by physical and verbal brutality that he has failed to tell his story clearly.
 Spencer's Land Of The Living also cries out for tougher script-editing. The form of the play is fascinating. We see two Yorkshire sisters both in marital maturity, just after their mother's suicide, and in a state of post-pubescent graveyard-haunting curiosity. Not only is it unusual to find a male dramatist writing about women with such transparent affection; Mr Spencer also captures well the disillusions and disappointments of age, even down to the sister who says, of her instantly forgettable husband, "If I leave him in Sainsbury's I can never find him."
 Sue Dunderdale directs sensitively. Lorraine Ashbourne and Sue Devaney as the older women, Sarah Doherty and Michelle Hardwick as their younger selves are impeccable. My one complaint is that when it comes to motivating the mother's suicide, Mr Spencer gives the characters wild, whirling monologues that obscure more than they explain. Like Hannan, he is passionately in love with language, but both writers need to remember that lucidity and economy are also vital weapons in the dramatist's armoury.
 The Baby is at The Bush (081-743-3388) and Land Of The Living at the Theatre Upstairs (071-730-2554).

LOAD-DATE: September 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



258 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 16, 1993

BOSNIANS 'MASSACRE CROAT CIVILIANS';
Journalists see bodies of women, children and the old

BYLINE: KURT SCHORK IN UZDOL, BOSNIA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 745 words

 
 Reuter: CROATIAN military officials vowed last night to avenge the deaths of more than 30 Croat civilians they claimed had been massacred by Muslim troops in the settlement of Uzdol in central Bosnia.
 The bodies of 27 villagers were shown to reporters yesterday. Tony Vucic, a Croatian Defence Force (HVO) official, said up to 100 Muslim soldiers tried to capture the Croatian command post in Uzdol and killed all the civilians who could not escape.
 Muslim military police identity papers were found on the bodies of attackers who died in a counter-offensive, he said. 
 The Bosnian Croat leader, Mate Boban, declared a day of mourning for the murdered civilians, while military officials vowed to retaliate against the Muslim enclave in Vitez, according to United Nations sources.
 "The Croats made the linkage explicit after word of the massacre began to spread," the source said yesterday. "They issued an ultimatum warning everyone in Stari [Old] Vitez to vacate the area by noon or face the consequences."
 Stari Vitez, with at least 1,000 residents, has been besieged by Croat forces for the past four months. Mortar, artillery and small arms fire into the Muslim quarter commenced in early afternoon and continued into the evening yesterday.
 HVO soldiers in Uzdol said 54 people were killed during Tuesday's three-hour battle, including 11 Muslim soldiers, nine HVO soldiers and 34 civilians. No independent verification of the death toll was possible.
 This correspondent and a Reuter photographer saw 21 bodies in a refrigerated lorry in the Croat-held town of Prozor, seven miles east of Uzdol, after they had been recovered.
 All appeared to be civilians, mostly women, children and old people. One young boy had had his throat slit and a middle-aged woman had been burned. Others appeared to have died from gunshot wounds, some from close range.
 The Reuter team also saw six dead Croats in the hamlet of Kriz, which is part of Uzdol and is accessible only by foot.
 Martin and Kata Ratkic lay huddled together in a dark corner of their cellar - he with his right ear cut off and she with a crimson stain over the bullet wound through her heart.
 Relatives said the grandparents , both in their mid-60s, had been unable to escape the house with other members of their family after the attack began.
 "I crawled away, but they couldn't escape," said Martin's brother Ivan, aged 59. "There were bullets flying everywhere. I was fortunate to get away."
 He said six of Kriz's 15 residents died in the attack and two were wounded.
 Reporters saw a middle-aged woman identified by survivors as Anica Stojanovic sprawled on a muddy lane in Kriz with the top of her head blown off. Her elderly relatives, Franc and Sarafina Stojanovic, had died at their home just down the hill.
 Franc, clad in trousers, shirt and a tweed cap, lay in the grass outside, one lens of his glasses missing. He had been shot through the left side, with a huge exit wound under his right armpit.
 Inside, Sarafina, in black sweater and scarf, had been shot through the head.  Pictures of the Pope, rosaries and crucifixes adorned the walls of her home.
 Croat soldiers at the scene said Muslim troops attacked at dawn on Tuesday, slipping between reinforced defensive lines and encircling Uzdol, Zelenika and Kriz - three settlements clustered around a pair of Catholic churches.
 "They attacked and burned the houses first and then they came after us [Croat soldiers] in the school," recounted Josip Prskalo, a Croat soldier.
 Some houses in the three Croat settlements were still smouldering yesterday.  Livestock wandered the streets and laundry flapped on clothes lines.
 One bar in the centre of Uzdol with its windows shot out still had empty beer cans on its tables from patrons who had been there on Monday night.
 "I would have cleaned up on Tuesday morning, but I never had the chance," said the elderly proprietor, who survived by hiding in his house.
 Croat soldiers alleged that the purpose of the Muslim government forces was to put fear in the hearts of Croat civilians in remote areas, forcing them to abandon their homes.
 "They killed my mother and burned her body in that house," Zarko Zelenika, an HVO soldier, said as he pointed to a smoking ruin. "They have killed many civilians in a terrible way, as you can see for yourself, but in the end the score will be even." - Reuter.

LOAD-DATE: September 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



259 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 17, 1993

US MILITANT IN COURT AFTER 23 YEARS ON RUN

BYLINE: SARA RIMER IN BOSTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 645 words

 
 TWENTY-THREE years after going underground as an anti-war radical wanted for bank robbery and the murder of a Boston police officer, Katherine Ann Power has surrendered to police.
 One of the last of a generation of fugitive student revolutionaries passionately opposed to the Vietnam war, Ms Power, aged 44, pleaded guilty in a Boston court on Wednesday to charges of manslaughter and armed robbery in 1970, when she was a senior student at Brandeis University, Massachusetts.
 She is to be sentenced on the charge, which was reduced from murder after negotiations, on October 6 and could be given life in prison.
 In surrendering, she shed the identity of Alice Metzinger, a small-town Oregon wife, mother, successful restaurateur, cooking teacher and taxpayer. She said she was "learning to live with openness and truth, rather than shame and hiddenness". 
 Ms Power was accompanied to court by her husband, Ron Duncan, an accountant, and her elderly parents, who said they had not seen or heard from their daughter in 23 years.
 Ms Power became Alice Metzinger in 1977 and it was only a month ago that she told her son Jaime, aged 14, who she really was.  Four days ago she told her Oregon friends at a goodbye party she gave for herself.
 Her husband, whom she had married a year ago after a 13-year relationship, had known for some time.
 Eighteen months ago, suffering from depression, Ms Power decided that she could not go on with her secret life.
 She consulted an Oregon lawyer Steven Black, a former Vietnam pilot, and then one in Boston, Rikki Klieman, who had been an anti-war student radical. The two began negotiating Ms Power's surrender with the district attorney's office.
 "She could not have intimate relations with people," Ms Klieman said. "There were all sorts of questions about who were her son's grandparents? Who was she? The only way to recreate her life was to own up to who she was and face up to the charges."
 On September 23, 1970, Ms Power and four associates, armed with guns, robbed the State Street Bank & Trust Company in Boston of $ 26,000. The first police officer to arrive at the bank was killed by a shot in the back from William Gilday, who is serving a life sentence. Ms Power drove the getaway car.
 In a statement released by Ms Klieman Ms Power acknowledged that she had committed "outrageously illegal acts", but blamed them on the Vietnam war. "At that time the law was being broken everywhere," she said.
 The crimes she had committed, Ms Power said, were rooted in "a deep philosophical and spiritual [belief] that if a wrong exists, one must take active steps to stop it, regardless of the consequences to oneself in comfort or security".
 She continued: "Although at the time those actions seemed the correct course, they were in fact naive and unthinking."
 She expressed deep regret for the death of the police officer.
 Mr Black said that Ms Power and her associates planned to use the money to buy explosives to melt down the wheels of trains that carried weapons and to arm the Black Panthers.
 In 1970, Ms Power was obsessed with the Vietnam war. In April, the Nixon administration launched a bombing campaign in Cambodia. In May, four Kent State University students who protested against the bombing were shot dead by the National Guard.
 A national student strike was called in protest, and at Brandeis its co-ordinators included Ms Power, Susan Saxe and Stanley Bond. All three took part in the bank robbery.
 In 1972, awaiting trial for the murder of the police officer, Bond blew himself up in prison when a bomb he was making detonated.
 Ms Power was on the FBI's most-wanted list until 1984, when the agency said they had no more leads in the case. By then, Ms Power was establishing her new life as Alice Metzinger. - New York Times.

LOAD-DATE: September 17, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



260 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 17, 1993

IT'S OVER, LET IT GO;
P.S.

BYLINE: NIGEL FOUNTAIN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 472 words

 
 JUST SHOW ME the empty pub, Mr Sherrin. The disinterment yet again of That Was The Week That Was has led Ned, its series producer, to trot out once more the TW3 catechism from the golden era of Christine Keeler and Billy Fury. "Nothing like it .  . . is there a telly to watch it at the party? . . . nation rocked . . .  outraged MPs . . . laughed so much forgot to put cat out . . . pubs emptied." 
 Like the JFK assassination, I know exactly where I was when TW3 came on: in the pub. And that was where I stayed. Call us young, call us foolish, but given the choice between Watney's draught Red Barrel and being in on the birth of ur-Luvvy, we kids knew where the action was.
 And we were not alone. The public then were tuning into programmes like Bootsie And Snudge and Double Your Money, neither of which has, mercifully, been the subject of sustained media interest. No BBC programme, with the exception of that surreal masterpiece Compact, got within a guffaw of the Top 20.
 Memories of late Saturday night pre-TW3 on BBC are of elderly gentlemen playing Tiger Rag to teen, woolly-jumpered jiving versions of Harold and Haroldina Wilson. Of course, in the aftermath of such shows TW3 must have been a relief, even - oh God, here it comes again - a breath of fresh air.
 But who was inhaling it? The same people who were watching Harold and Haroldina, by and large. Progressive housemasters trying to fathom out what these young people were doing, unprogressive Moral Re-arming housemasters trying the same and poised for complaints to the BBC duty officer, bemused parents, and infants too young for Wimpy bars and too old for bed. The media, not for the first or last time, had invented its own version of what radicalism was supposed to look like. David Frost was to Lenny Bruce what Mark Winter was to Elvis.
 There has, Sherrin added the other day, been nothing like it before or since.  Well, maybe. Such utterances are part of a specious post-war history in which the 1960s erupt in a fit of media giggling and carry right on through Mini, Fab, Love, 'Nam and Lib before colliding with the Maxi 1970s.
 Before? Subversion was around in the 1950s - a depressing, or illuminating, discovery is that Rattigan the upper-class snob was more of a radical than Osborne the petit-bourgeois snob - and Simpson, Galton and Hancock had more impact on sixties radicalism than any of TW3's interminable calypsos.
 And since? Something called Not So Much A Programme followed in TW3's wake, with people like Michael Crawford pretending to be a mod, and young and old buffers carrying on with just the same self-congratulatory tone. And later still? Well, those guys certainly kept on the cutting edge of satire, even unto the seventh generation of Stephen Sondheim revivals. Just when will it be over?

LOAD-DATE: September 17, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



261 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 18, 1993

BANKS SHUTTING THEIR DOORS TO THE POOR

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 33

LENGTH: 1048 words

 
 THERE is mounting concern that banking services are being withdrawn from the poor and the growing army of unemployed, who now account for more than 10 per cent of the workforce, according to figures published this week.
 Government advisers have started an investigation into the increasing number of people who have no access to affordable credit or mainstream banking services.
 The Social Security Advisory Committee has commissioned an independent report into why a fifth of all households do not have a bank account. The report is due to be published early next year. 
 Extensive branch closure programmes by the big banks and building societies have led to banking services being withdrawn from many communities. Fears are growing that many of our poorer districts are becoming "red-lined" as far as financial institutions are concerned, as has already happened in many inner-city areas in the US.
 In such areas, the more vulnerable members of the community, such as elderly people, single parents, the unemployed, and those on low wages, are robbed of all mainstream banking services, particularly access to credit, and are forced into the vicious circle of moneylenders and increasing poverty.
 As Barclays announced the loss of 18,000 jobs and the closure of some 600 branches from its 2,500 peak two years ago, the New Economics Foundation this week claimed that 1,000 bank branches have already closed over the past four years, with the loss of 70,000 jobs.
 The foundation, which is a voluntary sector think-tank, warned that 28 per cent of Birmingham's population has no access to a bank or building society because of branch closures, according to unpublished Bank of England figures.
 The report calls on banks to stop discriminating between customers. The foundation wants further development of community banks, to provide cheap loans for less-well-off people.
 The report's author, Ed Mayo, says: "The knock-on effect of losing a bank branch can be devastating for the community.  Experience shows that other businesses often shut down in twilight areas where there are no safe banking facilities nearby, until the community loses all neighbouring enterprises, and the jobs that go with them."
 The National Consumer Council is worried about the withdrawal of bank services from whole communities and is drawing up its own report, as are two academics - Professor Nigel Thrift of Bristol University and Dr Andrew Layshon of Hull University.
 Dr Layshon says: "There is mounting evidence that the financial sector is retreating to a middle-class heartland. The banks would argue that with home banking there is no need to maintain branches.
 "But access to home banking is much more rigorously credit-scored than ordinary bank accounts. Having a telephone is simply not enough to qualify for one. The first question most banks ask if you apply for an account is: what is your postcode?  "Banks have become much more risk averse. They do not want low-balance, high-transaction accounts."
 Dr Layshon and Professor Thrift hope to develop delocation programmes which would predict from which areas the banks intended to next withdraw. The banks are unapologetic for closing branches. A spokesman for the Banking Information Service said: "Banks are businesses, not charities. We do not provide social services."
 But the Government does not believe it should take over the role of quasi-bank for the poor, as is already happening with the social fund and student loans. A spokesman for the Social Security Advisory Committee said: "There have been a number of developments in the Netherlands and the US on the social loans front. We commissioned the report to establish whether the same sort of cheap credit should be made available in this country."
 In the longer term, the Government has good reason for wanting the entire population to have access to a bank account. A large proportion of the "unbanked" rely on state benefits, cashing their giros at post office counters. Should the Government proceed with privatising the counters at some later stage, there is no guarantee this service would continue.
 But unlike the US and Holland, there are no real alternatives to the handful of major institutions. Community banking in the UK is in its infancy, although growing rapidly. Next year, Mercury Provident, Britain's oldest community bank, established about 20 years ago, is planning to launch its first current account.
 It has a banking licence and offers building society-style savings accounts, investing the money in projects with so-called "added social value". Savers can chose between a variable rate account, at present paying up to 5 per cent, where Mercury choses where to invest the cash, or target accounts, where the investor chooses the project and also the interest rate he or she wishes to earn. This then sets the interest for the borrower.
 The bank, which has had two bad debts in 20 years, is raising funds for the Shawford Mill project, in Winchester, where an old mill is being converted to a counselling centre, and the potato storage depot Five Stones in East Anglia, which is converting to wind turbo for its energy needs.
 The Birmingham Settlement is hoping to set up the Aston Community Bank next year to provide banking for a community from which mainstream banks have largely withdrawn.
 Industrial Common Ownership Finance, which grew out of the Industrial Common Ownership Movement to provide finance for co-operatives, is undergoing a shake-up. It lost its deposit-taking licence in 1978 and has since raised funds primarily from local authorities to finance co-operatives.
 Next April, it plans to launch a new share issue to raise pounds 5 million to invest in social projects, which do not necessarily have to be co-ops. Shares will cost pounds 251 and will earn interest roughly in line with inflation. However, the value of the shares could go down.
 An Icof spokesman said: "These investments are not for people looking to maximise their financial return. They are for people who want to invest in the communities of Britain, because they want to help create opportunities where they do not currently exist."
 Money Guardian is edited by Margaret Hughes

LOAD-DATE: September 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



262 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 18, 1993

AGE CONCERN CAMPAIGN GETS ON ROAD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 147 words

 
 TRANSPORT and the problems it creates for the elderly is one of the issues that Age Concern Week, which begins today, will be highlighting. Tuesday's Transport Day marks the first step in a nationwide campaign to be launched in February with a national conference on transport and mobility.
 Age Concern points to the increasing cost of private motoring and public transport as well as the diminishing access to and design of public transport. Bus deregulation and preparations for rail privatisation mean fewer and less reliable services.
 Another concern is the decline of local services accompanying the growth of out of town stores and the increasing pedestrianisation of shopping areas.
 - Your Retirement, a new guide published by Age Concern at pounds 4.95, is available from its publications department at Astra House, 1268 London Road, London SW16 4ER.

LOAD-DATE: September 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



263 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 21, 1993

PAPERBACK ORIGINALS: HOPE SPRINGS MATERNAL

BYLINE: ELIZABETH YOUNG

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 744 words

 
 Limestone and Clay, by Lesley Glaister (Secker & Warburg, pounds 8.99)
 ALCHEMY must be one of the oldest metaphors for producing works of art. In her new novel, Lesley Glaister uses the natural substances of rock and clay to distill what Charles Lamb called "My proper element of prose."
 Glaister's work has always had an elemental, primal aspect. In earlier novels this was less obtrusive, veiled with an appealing mixture of humour, social observation and gothic melodrama. Her books conspicuously lacked the narcissism, the near-autobiographical self-obsession that characterises many writers' early work. They were so pleasurable to read that it was possible to miss the structured rigour and strong rhythmical sense that underlay the fireworks. Glaister excelled at animating very old and very young personalities. The elderly left-wing couple in Trick Or Treat, with their dog Kropotkin and their bald cat Mao, were tenderly evoked, and in Digging To Australia Glaister achieved the difficult fusion of authorial voice and immature adolescent narrator. 
 Glaister's work has been developing rapidly, and she may have felt it essential to outgrow the confines of the Gothic mode - with its corpses and shadows, its groundswell of deviant behaviour. Limestone and Clay focuses straightforwardly on young adults. There is only one grotesque, an elderly fortune-teller with a pet raven who seems thrown in solely for old time's sake.
 Simon and Nadia are an ordinary couple. Simon, a geography teacher, has a passionate interest in speleology. Nadia works as a sculptor and potter. She longs for a child and has suffered wretchedly through several miscarriages. Their relationship is threatened by Simon's ex-girlfriend Celia, cool, cynical - and happily pregnant. As the pressure mounts the characters spin off towards emotional devastation, chaos and destruction. Nadia's longing becomes obsession, and Simon courts death in the spectral caves beneath the moors.
 Glaister here works earnestly within a web of heavy-duty symbolism and symmetry. At the most basic level, there are the yin and yang oppositions of rock and clay and the interdependency of these two substances. Clay, the ancient synonym, for flesh, is both impermeable and endlessly regenerative. It is insistently linked by Glaister with the cycles of fertility. Glaister suggests that beyond the daily avalanche of trivia, we are all driven by the most powerful, unreconstructed emotional primitivism. Fortunately, Glaister's sense of humour, and her lyrical gift for illuminating the natural world, saves the book from being strangled by a kind of Cold Comfort Farm portentousness. This particular combination of fertility and maternity, with a tempestuous landscape, both beautiful and threatening, is strongly reminiscent of Sylvia Plath, and it comes as no surprise to find Nadia brooding restlessly over the Collected Poems every time she miscarries.
 The generosity and depth of Glaister's work augurs well for the future, if she can avoid the pointless fecundity of imagination that sometimes overtakes successful women novelists who drift into ceaselessly inventing and discarding new characters. The peripheral figures in this book - and even Celia - are sketched somewhat lightly in comparison to Glaister's early vivid portraits. In exchanging gothic sensibility for mature sense, Glaister may have lost a little of the ramshackle and idiosyncratic zest of her earlier work. Her spontaneous, ambiguous imagery has now become more laboured, more determinedly literary, and, although she gains in sombre insight, there is less vitality.
 More broadly, Glaister's work incorporates two important trends. Much post-war fiction in Britain has mysteriously neglected a central function of art - making creative sense of the changes in society. It has been left largely to Britain's provincial poets to do this (like some of those in Bloodaxe's recent anthology, The New Poetry). She represents and interprets ordinary British lives against a background of profound shifts in personal behaviour and national identity. Secondly Glaister seems concerned to return the novel to its roots rather than straining against its inevitable limitations. Considering how much fruitless experimentation has been lavished upon what is, after all, a narrow form, and considering how seldom this form has produced first-class work, such an aim can hardly be deemed ignoble.

LOAD-DATE: September 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



264 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 22, 1993

HOW WAS THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION FOR YOU?

BYLINE: LINDA GRANT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 696 words

 
 TWO YEARS ago, I placed a notice in the Bulletin section of the Guardian women's page, asking for women's experience of the sexual revolution for a book I was writing. The request found a wide audience and the response from women now in their 40s was particularly profound. "What sexual revolution?" they asked, bitterly.  Single, divorced, unhappily married, they felt themselves to be the debris of a great explosion in sexual mores, which had promised women sexual freedom but had failed to deliver.
 The most bitter were those who had once willingly embraced the prospect of a real enfranchising of desire. If the Pill had separated sex from reproduction and feminism had given them the right to say no as well as yes, if the new openness about sex had made it possible for women to talk about orgasms - why they didn't have them and how they might get them - then surely they had a lifetime to experiment? 
 In truth, there was almost no change in the way men related to women sexually, other than to welcome women's greater availability and later deplore feminism's condemnation of that apparent freedom. The sexual revolution had failed to shift that stubborn and all-pervasive icon of sexuality in our society, the young girl, against which all women were measured and generally found wanting. What women over 35 discovered - in all conditions of partnership or non-partnership, and in all classes - was that at the height of their sexual powers, they were forced to conform to a straitjacket image of what it was to be female (slim, young, large-breasted, etc) or become part of that great glut on the market, the unwanted older woman.
 The freedoms of the sexual revolution, they felt, had been squandered: in the saturation of pornography, in rape, prostitution, child sex abuse, sexual violence. And even the grandes dames of feminism could hold out little hope: Germaine Greer promised that once they reached the menopause, they would be free of all those troublesome desires anyway.
 But then there were the letters from young women: women who listened to Madonna tell them that they were young and bold and they could do what they liked. Madonna, they thought, was heralding a new sexual revolution: if only we were more open and honest about our desires, the world would be less screwed up. Older women, however, knew that we'd been this route before and it was a hiding to nothing.
 I spent two years trying to find out if anything of value had emerged from the sexual revolution. I charted the social, political, cultural and technological forces that have informed the past 30 years. I concluded that, yes, of course there had been solid and hard-won gains, such as the 1967 Abortion Act, the availability of contraception to single women, the new choices that do not trap women young into marriage and babies. And feminism itself had grown out of the sexual revolution, in response to and revolt against it.
 And yet male sexuality still dominates our culture, and even what we mean by sexual. The most shocking aspect of Nancy Friday's recent book, Women On Top, is the way in which women seem to have incorporated male pornography into their sexual fantasies. Even our unconscious has been structured by the male libido.
 Lesbians have argued that women can make no sexual accommodation with men; that women's sexual problems would be solved if we loved other women. As someone burdened by heterosexuality, I believe that to write off men as irredeemable is to concede the defeat of feminism itself.
 What we need is a new sexual revolution: to overthrow the cult of the young girl as the single symbol of sexuality in our society; to allow women, as well as men, the choice of having sexual partners throughout their lives; to address the political issues that trap women in loveless or violent or coercive sexual relationships. It's a big agenda but without hope that the future of sexuality might be female, we embittered old feminists leave no legacy but that of betrayal.
 Linda Grant's Sexing The Millennium: A Political History Of The Sexual Revolution is published tomorrow by HarperCollins at pounds 12.99.

LOAD-DATE: September 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



265 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 23, 1993

TWILIGHT ZONE'S NEW DAWN;
Hot flushes, hormone deficiency . . . must we think of the menopause as a disease of modern life? Or has it evolved because it carries benefits for both women and their kin?

BYLINE: GAIL VINES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 14

LENGTH: 1379 words

 
 PUNDITS often claim that it is our brains that set us apart from the rest of animal creation, but what is really distinctive about humans is the menopause. Unique among our mammalian relatives, women shut down fertility when they are still hale and hearty. A woman's fertility typically tails off during her 40s, and disappears altogether as the ovaries stop releasing any mature eggs round about the age of 50. Women stop reproducing in their prime.
 How are we to make sense of this peculiar phenomenon? One answer is to see it as a pathology of modern civilisation, an accidental side effect of living longer. This view became popular in the 1960s, largely thanks to the proselytising fervour of an ambitious Brooklyn gynaecologist, Robert Wilson, who became the doyen of the pharmaceuticals industry as he promoted universal oestrogen therapy for older women. "The unpalatable truth must be faced that all postmenopausal women are castrates," Wilson told his medical colleagues some 30 years ago.
 Author of a best-seller called Forever Feminine, Wilson referred to the menopause as a hormone "deficiency disease" and listed 26 awesome symptoms, ranging from frigidity to suicide, which only his oestrogen "youth pill" could avert. Wilson's language now seems old-fashioned but his ideas aren't. One of Britain's leading exponents of hormone replacement therapy, John Stevenson, at the Wynn Institute in London, recently remarked that women are "hormone deficient for a third of their lives". 
 Nature had not intended women to outlive their fertility, these doctors argue.  The menopause is best viewed as a "novelty" that arose as "an artefact of human civilisation", concludes Roger Gosden, Britain's leading ovarian researcher, in his Biology Of The Menopause. The Encyclopaedia Britannica warns that older women may need "medical management" in the form of "education to reduce fear and anxiety" as well as periodic physical examinations and oestrogen hormones. The menopause is even listed in the International Classification of Diseases. But must we think of it as a disease of modern life?  Evolutionary and cross-cultural perspectives threaten to undermine this particular medical diagnosis.
 It looks increasingly plausible that the menopause has evolved because it carries benefits for both women and their kin - because, in the language of evolutionary science, it is "adaptive". A set of mathematical models, recently published by Alan Rogers, an anthropologist at the University of Utah, portray the menopause as an eminently sensible evolutionary strategy.
 Rogers's work is a sophisticated reworking of the "grandmother hypothesis".  This is the notion that a woman maximises the perpetuation of her genetic legacy if, in middle age, she stops having children and concentrates on investing in her last born and her grandchildren.
 Rogers tried out and then discarded the idea that menopause might have evolved as a natural contraceptive because older women are more likely to die in childbirth. Relying on data from Taiwan in 1906, a well-documented agrarian society, he argues that rates of death in childbirth are not high enough, even as women age, to account for the evolution of menopause. Even a tenfold increase in the observed death rates makes no difference to his conclusion. So, as zoologist Linda Partridge concluded in a review of Rogers's work, "the peculiar hazards of human birth seem unlikely to account for the existence of the menopause".
 Menopause becomes much more plausible in evolutionary terms once Rogers adds into his model the adverse effects of continuing fertility on the care of existing children and grandchildren. If you reckon that a newborn child would significantly reduce the care of these relations for at least three years, menopause becomes an evolutionary winner.
 Rogers's models are, by his own reckoning, open to all manner of critique. What is most interesting about them is that they force researchers to put their cards on the table, and make explicit their assumptions.
 Linda Partridge, at the University of Edinburgh, argues that Rogers could make an even stronger case for menopause if he took into account that a postmenopausal woman is more likely to die than a younger woman simply as a result of ageing. If she remained fertile, each new child would be more likely to be orphaned at a dangerously tender age. Moreover, very young children are much more physically demanding than older ones, draining her resources further. All this tilts the evolutionary odds towards menopause, Partridge argues. Menopause has been thrust upon human women - and no one else - as a result of the "protracted, costly and widely dispensed care of descendants". If men were left holding the baby,
 they too might have evolved a menopause.
 Yet does all this evolutionary theory tell the full story? Anthropologists too have recently rediscovered the menopausal woman, and the cultural accounts they bring back from the bush seem to jar with the "grandmother hypothesis". Menopausal women outside youth-crazed Western cultures rarely fit our stereotype of the kindly stay-at-home grannie looking after her grown-up children's kids. In a remarkable range of different cultures, middle-aged women freed of reproductive tasks are at the height of their social and political powers. Far from being the domestic skivvies of their high-powered executive children, these women at last can command the labour of their juniors. In many cultures, their ability to delegate chores allows them to travel more widely and to engage in political affairs, says Karen Sacks, anthropologist at the University of California.
 As a result, women in Mayan villages actually look forward to the menopause, according to Yewoubdar Beyene, another University of California anthropologist. When she asked women about hot flushes, and other menopausal symptoms much talked about in our culture, she drew blank stares. "People thought I was out of my mind going around asking these questions," she says.
 Jane Lancaster, a biologically minded anthropologist at the University of Mexico, has argued that such women have a painless menopause because their continual childbearing and breastfeeding have altered their hormones: high levels of the hormones prolactin and oxytocin in breastfeeding women might mask the hormonal fluctuations around menopause.
 But on the Greek island of Evia, Beyene studied peasant women who have roughly the same number of children as American women, and she found that they too suffered few of the symptoms linked to menopause in the West. Like their Mayan counterparts, the Greek women also had few negative notions about menopause - perhaps because their culture does not idealise youth.
 "Menopause is part of being a woman, but the menopausal experience is shaped by culture," Beyene argues. In the West, the menopause is laden with very different symbolic meanings. "Current Western ideology emphasises loss, especially of sexual attractiveness, leading to depression and withdrawal," says Margaret Lock, of McGill University in Montreal.
 In many cultures, menopause does not signal the end of a woman's sexual interest - quite the reverse among the Lusi of Papua New Guinea, the Garifuna of Belize and !Kung women of Botswana. This can make the anthropologist's life a hazardous one, as Richard Lee of the University of Toronto recounts:
 "I well remember the day that five !Kung women aged 50 to 65 jumped a male co-worker, Richard Katz, and myself, with shouts of hilarity, and tried to force us to have intercourse with them. However, our virtue was preserved by the timely intervention of a Herero neighbour and by the fact that we were all laughing too hard to continue."
 Perhaps, in the end, menopause evolved because old women just want to have fun.
 Sources: Alan Rogers (1993) Why Menopause?, Evolutionary Ecology, 7: 406-420.  Linda Partridge (1993) Menopause For Thought, Nature, 364: 386. Virginia Kerns and Judith Brown (eds) In Her Prime: New Views Of Middle-aged Women 2nd edition, Urbana: University of Illinois
 Press, 1992.
 Gail Vines is the author of Raging Hormones, published by Virago on September 30, pounds 6.99.

LOAD-DATE: September 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



266 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 23, 1993

EYEWITNESS: BOUNCING BACK ON THE CREST OF A COUP

BYLINE: JONATHAN STEELE IN MOSCOW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 459 words

 
 SOME call him the Pumpkin. The even less respectful say "the Fat Boy".  Whichever nickname fits best, there was no mistaking the beam on the rotund and ruddy face of Yegor Gaidar yesterday. 
 Re-appointed to Boris Yeltsin's administration only last week, the architect of Russia's economic reforms was holding his first press conference since his return.
 What better time to do it than the morning after the President's constitutional coup? "You can argue over whether this was the right moment, or whether he should have acted straight after the referendum in April," Mr Gaidar reflected.
 Mr Gaidar is chairman of a recently formed group called Elections-Russia. Its main purpose was to push Mr Yeltsin towards dissolving parliament. The next is to get slates of candidates ready in constituencies, though Mr Gaidar will be stepping down as chairman.
 "The situation is stable in most regions of the country," he smiled. "None of the efforts to drag people into protest meetings is working."
 His delight was justified. Outside in Moscow's streets, it was business as usual. The kiosks were open. The rows of elderly women, holding up Pepsi bottles, cigarette packets and plastic bags for sale, stood glumly by the railway stations, as they have done since the reforms started.
 Those behind the dissolution of parliament seemed to outnumber opponents by about two to one. "Good thing," said one young man hurrying past the Barrikadnaya Metro Station, not far from the White House where the anti-Yeltsin pickets' protests were being ignored.
 "The time had come for Yeltsin to act," said Sergei Cherkazov, an electrician.  The market reforms meant you have to work harder now, he added. "In the past I had no choice. Now everything depends on you, whether you earn your money legally or not. At least it's up to you. That means a kind of freedom."
 Vera Popova, a veteran of the 1991 putsch protest, virtually exploded when I asked for her view of Mr Yeltsin's action.  "He's a criminal. He's broken the oath he swore to defend the constitution. We had so much hope. Now we're returning to a new Stalin."
 The rarest thing yesterday was a centrist line. One eventually emerged in the person of Grigory Yavlinsky, the economist who put together the "Grand Bargain" in 1990, an offer of western aid in return for market reforms.
 "You cannot support either side unconditionally," he said. Parliament had behaved irresponsibly by appointing Alexander Rutskoi as president, but Mr Yeltsin's decision was clearly illegal. His main fear was that it would lead to a further loosening of the Russian Federation.
 But on a day of varying images, it was the smile on the face of the Gaidar which remained the clearest.

LOAD-DATE: September 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



267 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 27, 1993

TELEVISION

BYLINE: NANCY BANKS-SMITH

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 658 words

 
 WHEN Kinsey brought out his deafening report on sex, our attitude, he said, was that the British didn't do things like that.  It would not be safe to assume that MeTV: The Future Of Television (BBC2) really isn't us. On Friday BSkyB will start showing Barry Diller's shopping channel 24 hours a day.
 Apart from religion and pornography on TV, it was shopping which gripped my attention in America this year. There seemed no moment of the day or night when elderly women were not snapping up showy jewellery on shopping channels. As the Marilyn Monroe lookalike presenter said, panting, "A cascade ring! Look at the rubies and diamonds! Oh, that's breathtaking. It's just a stunning, stunning ring." This was true. It could have felled a buffalo with one blow. 
 Barry Diller, who once ran Paramount, was introduced to television selling by his good friend, Diane von Furstenberg and anyone who doubles your money is a good friend. When he saw the selling floor at QVC (Quality, value and convenience), he said "My God!" He bought QVC, QVC bought HSC, its cheap and cheerful rival, and American women it seems, will buy anything.
 Diane was to be observed selling one of her dresses, a little number in exploding begonias. I would really love to see it in a large size and, of course, the future of interactive TV is that the viewer will be able to call up anything they want.  Including exploding begonias for the fuller figure.
 It is possible to listen to American media pundits talking seamlessly for quite long periods without grasping a single concept. Barry Diller is oddly inarticulate, which is quite endearing, but he did manage to say "We have an enormous future if we don't totally screw it up." The enormous future is fibre optiks, which will allow 5,000 channels to flow through your house. River, stay away from my door. The point of the title, MeTV, is that these unmanageable numbers can be tailored by computer to suit you. Kathryn Montgomery of the Centre for Media Education said, "The corporation that runs this system will be able to know everything about you. Your viewing preferences, what makes you nervous, anything that will provide them with the ammunition to target you personally." Listen to the language. Ammunition.  Target.
 And suppose a malign computer decided to send you everything that made you nervous?
 One charm of radio and TV is tripping over things by accident. Sometimes by cheerful human incompetence you have just got the wrong channel. Never again on MeTV would someone who hated fishing, for example, happen by accident on A Passion For Angling, and feel the goose calling evening wash over him.
 At the time it went past like a postman with no message for me, but it turned up again in Royal Celebration (BBC1), a play about a street party on the day the Prince and Princess of Wales were married.  The commentary as they left on their honeymoon: "So along the Mall, the escort under the command of Lieutenant Andrew Parker Bowles, Blues and Royals. Prince Charles and Lady Diana stayed with him and his wife, Camilla, in Wiltshire on two occasions at the end of the year. So they're among friends as they ride along the Mall. What a pretty hat!" This did not refer to Lieutenant Parker Bowles's hat, though his, too, was full of feathers.
 What a shock you get from life's rear-view mirror. It's as if you had run over someone.
 Danny Baker's son, called, reasonably enough, Sonny, turned up on Danny Baker After All (BBC1) to show that any six year old child can do a cereal packet jigsaw in four seconds. Any particularly chipper child called Baker. The infant looked as if Danny Baker had been well scrubbed and shrunk. Otherwise, an identical model.  My local has a bar called Ma Baker's Bar, after Danny's gran. A colourful character apparently. How many grandmothers do you know with a bar called after them? The whole thing is genetic, wouldn't you say?

LOAD-DATE: September 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



268 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 28, 1993

THE ANGELS OF DEATH;
A new TV film with a health warning: beware the caring killer

BYLINE: JOHN ILLMAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 578 words

 
 THE CASE of Beverly Allitt received extensive publicity. The former children's nurse received 13 life sentences in May after killing four children, attempting to murder three more and attacking another nine. But the publicity did not really look beyond Allitt into the darker side of the caring professions. 
 We still like to think of nurses and doctors as dedicated and heroic. For years we looked to TV to reinforce these stereotypes. Why else were medical soap operas so popular for so long? There is no room for Dr Kildare in the new era of medical glasnost. The new fashion is for gritty realism: witness Casualty (BBC 1).
 Even so, Casualty does not defy the traditional stereotypes in the way that Tender Loving Care does. Don't watch it if you are due in hospital on Monday. Small wonder that BBC executives were split over whether or not it should be screened at all.
 Dawn French plays Elaine, a nurse. She is bitter, frustrated, disillusioned, tired, overworked, underpaid, undervalued - and bumps off lots of elderly patients. Rosemary Leach plays her ageing sidekick, a care assistant who meekly goes along with it all. Elaine, she believes, is one of the best nurses in the hospital.
 This is a bleak, savage play. Producer Louise Panton insists that the theme needs to be publicly debated. I agree that medical controversy should not be kept from public view. Before "medical glasnost", medicine and nursing were the most publicly silent and privately critical of professions. The public was unaware of the great debates which were to determine maternity and the treatmemt of cancer and heart disease. Paternalism decreed patients were best "not worried".
 Panton defends Tender Loving Care by pointing to her documentary credits in the 1980s: A Time To Be Born criticised the Britis h maternity system; and Breast Cancer exposed doctors who had withheld information from women. Both generated controversy.  Both were justified, she insists.
 Both certainly caught the mood of the moment and gave a sharp definition to public debate. Both have stood the test of time.  But will Tender Loving Care do likewise? It is impossible to gauge the scale of the problem because "caring killers" like Elaine do not advertise their activities.
 The medical newspaper General Practitioner recently reported that surveys had uncovered about 50 physician murderers in the West since the 19th century, excluding the numerous SS doctors involved in medicalised killing in concentration camps.
 Elaine in Tender Loving Care becomes chillingly similar to the Nazi doctors who came to view killing as a therapeutic imperative. Writing in General Practitioner, Dr Raj Persaud, of the Institute of Psychiatry, said: "This process is a natural extension of the 'being cruel to be kind' philosophy which is widely adopted by physicians as an essential part of clinical practice.
 "Most doctors regularly function at the border of life and death, taking part in abortion and, less overtly, forms of euthanasia. These practices entail an ability to cross over from the territory of preserving life into that of aiding life with relative ease."
 The Nazi doctors actually felt "victimised" by their subjects and ended up feeling sorry for themselves rather than guilty for what they had done. Elaine felt hard done by because of the patients she had to look after.
 Tender Loving Care will be shown on BBC1, Sunday, October 3, 9.05pm

LOAD-DATE: September 28, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



269 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 29, 1993

HEALTH DRIVE FAILS TO STOP ONE IN 10 CHILDREN SMOKING;
Campaigners claim new figures confirm need for tobacco advertising ban

BYLINE: EDWARD PILKINGTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 537 words

 
 ONE in 10 children still smokes cigarettes despite the Government's efforts to discourage the habit, figures released by the Department of Health showed yesterday.
 The disclosure, contained in the annual report of Dr Kenneth Calman, the Chief Medical Officer, was seized upon by the anti-smoking lobby as evidence that the Government's resistance to a ban on tobacco advertising was undermining its health strategy.
 It also cast doubt on the department's ability to meet its target, laid down in the Health of the Nation white paper, to reduce child smoking to under 6 per cent by the end of next year. 
 The figures from the Office of Population, Censuses and Surveys showed that while the prevalence of smoking is on the wane among adults, it has remained stable since 1990 among the 11 to 15 age group - at 10 per cent.
 Although teenagers are increasingly aware of the dangers of smoking, this has not translated into practice. The report also highlighted the health divide between the sexes. Men continue to have a lower life expectancy than women.
 Dr Calman said the average British man could afford to stop smoking, cut down on alcohol and take more exercise. The frequency with which either sex took exercise was "remarkably low".
 The gulf between the health of men and women was most pronounced at two peak age ranges: 14 to 25 and 55 to 70. In the younger bracket suicides accounted for a quarter of unnatural deaths, with men twice as likely to take their own lives as women. There were 5,541 suicides in England last year.
 Other areas of concern emphasised in the report were:
 - E coli, an organism transmitted in food which causes disease particularly among children and elderly people;
 - Tuberculosis, which is still on the increase among the poor in certain areas;
 - Mentally disordered offenders who are in danger on leaving hospital of falling into dereliction and crime.
 Dr Calman agreed that childhood tobacco use remained too high: "This is is a very critical age. If you prevent children taking up smoking they are unlikely to start later in life."
 But he declined to add his name to the campaign for an advertising ban and refused to divulge his advice to Virginia Bottomley, the Health Secretary. Forty health organisations have called for a 10 per cent increase in the price of cigarettes in the November Budget. They estimate this would raise up to pounds 1 billion in revenue, while stinging smokers into quitting.
 The Health Education Authority has backed the proposal for tax increases and for an end to tobacco advertising.
 Ill-health induced by smoking claims 111,000 lives in Britain every year.
 Dr Calman underlined his concern by pointing out that in a sample group of 1,000 young people, of those who eventually died prematurely one would be murdered, six would be involved in fatal car crashes, but 250 would die from smoking-related illnesses.
 Dr Calman said: "I do not regard the latest figures as a failure." This contrasted with a statement he made in June in which he warned that on current trends the Health of the Nation targets would not be met.
 On the State of the Public Health 1992; HMSO; pounds 15.95.

LOAD-DATE: September 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



270 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 30, 1993

WIDER VAT NET 'WOULD HIT POOR HARDEST';
Clarke's hint at end to exemptions dismays welfare groups and has industry fearful for recovery

BYLINE: LOUISE JURY AND MAGGIE O'KANE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 522 words

 
 A GOVERNMENT threat to widen the VAT net to include food and children's clothing brought cries of outrage from welfare organisations, industry and the opposition yesterday.
 Kenneth Clarke, the Chancellor, was accused of trying to cover up the Government's economic failure by making the poor pay, after his speech in Washington to the International Monetary Fund was widely interpreted as signalling an intention to lift VAT exemptions.
 Alex Carlile, a member of the Liberal Democrat Treasury team, said such a move would clearly hit the poor hardest. "I thought that Mr Clarke intended to break away from the Thatcherite view that the poor are fair game." 
 Gordon Brown, the shadow chancellor, said: "Yet again the Conservatives are expecting people to pay for their economic mistakes irrespective of ability to pay."
 Industry and welfare groups said extending VAT to items such as food, children's clothes, and water and sewerage would hit the poor, dent economic recovery and cost jobs.
 "We are not talking about luxuries here, we are talking about 'buy or die' necessities," a spokesman for the charity Help The Aged said.
 The temptation to extend VAT to food, books and water is considerable. At full rate, it would raise about pounds 17.9 billion a year.
 By comparison, adding a penny to the basic rate of income tax would bring in only pounds 1.6 billion, at a time when the Government's public sector borrowing requirement is a record pounds 50 billion this year. The impact on spending of an extension of VAT would be comparatively small, said Peter Jenkins, partner at accountants Ernst and Young.
 "To say the consumer will be hard-hit would be overdoing it. None of [the possible changes] will be as great as the fuel and power change. That was the most regressive change he could make. It hits charities and old people."
 Ruth Evans, director of the state-funded National Consumer Council said: "When you tax essential goods - and fuel, food and water bills are essential - they will always bear most heavily on the poor.  There is already clear evidence showing that the poorest families simply don't have enough money for a proper diet."
 Mr Jenkins said the Chancellor's comments suggested extending VAT to more goods was the clear preferred option for the November Budget.
 He said the Treasury was likely to have to introduce a second band at a reduced rate, probably of around 8 per cent.
 In its pre-Budget statement yesterday, the Confederation of British Industry urged ministers to resist the temptation of tax increases which would jeopardise economic recovery.
 - Imposing VAT on fuel will be less effective in achieving environmental objectives than the carbon tax proposed by the European Commission, and will leave poorer families worse off, according to a study published today by the Institute for Fiscal Studies, writes Roger Cowe.
 Compensating poorer energy users will also cost the Government at least a quarter of the revenue raised, limiting the benefit to the Exchequer to little more than pounds 2 billion.
 Leader comment, page 23

LOAD-DATE: October 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



271 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

September 30, 1993

EYEWITNESS: BROLLIES AND BARRICADES CHALLENGE YELTSIN'S BATONS

BYLINE: DAVID HEARST IN MOSCOW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 703 words

 
 "SHAME! Shame!" It was an odd war-cry but these were odd warriors - mainly middle-aged men and women with brollies and shopping bags, and even one mother with her child in a pram - all pressed up against two lines of riot shields.
 As the 500-strong crowd was pushed back from one of the side streets leading to the White House, the besieged seat of Russia's parliament where MPs have been given until Monday to relinquish the building, there was the same mass shuffling of feet that you can hear on the Moscow metro, a sound devoid of chatter, giggles or normal human discourse. Just a mass of people pushed and pushing in silent determination.
 As the first snow of the Russian winter began to fall, an elderly woman, pressed against a police truncheon, turned around and said: "So this is how we live?" 
 Someone got knocked over. We couldn't see who. There was the hollow sound of a truncheon hitting human bodies. The air was filled with screams, and abuse rained down on the expressionless faces of the troops. "Fascists! Dictators! Prosecute Yeltsin!" The troops stopped pushing and the crowd was left on the streets.
 They stood in a small line, blocking Krasnaya Presniya street. A car screamed up to a toothless pensioner and braked. He hit the bonnet with a rolled up umbrella. Someone dragged a metal rubbish bin and placed it at the pensioner's feet. Just as quickly, metal railings and steel sheets appeared and were formed into a barricade.
 Rows started with passers-by. Groups formed around anyone with a notebook: "They call us hooligans on our own television, but do we look like hooligans? I am a painter; he is a worker," said one man.
 "They are all the same: Khasbulatov, Yeltsin, Rutskoi," said Svetlana Kurdiranshova. "But this is our parliament, our laws, the only laws we have got and we have to defend them."
 A man in military uniform popped up in the crowd. Fifty yards away, interior ministry troops were massing to clear the barricade. "I am not going to tell you my name, because if I did I would be retired early. I am a major in the army. There are no sons and daughters of businessmen or the administration in the army.  There are the children of workers. And if they knew what was going on in Moscow, they would be here behind this barricade. And then there would be blood."
 By this time both sides of the street were clogged with traffic. Articulated lorries tried to turn around. A foreign diplomat's car tried to pass through, but thought better of it and backed away. Silently a line of riot shields cleared the crowd, kicking the metal bins down for the third time in 24 hours.
 The women screamed abuse. They are called the "ladies in the knitted berets" and two years ago they faced the tanks, screaming for democracy, Boris Yeltsin and the end of communism. Yesterday they were nose to nose with riot shields and could not contain their rage at what the "demokrati", a word spat out with venom, had done to the country.
 Two 17-year-old women, wearing smart Western macs, stood by unimpressed: "You call these people intelligent?", Marina said.  One of the knitted beret brigade turned on her. "What money do you live on, then?" Another replied: "They are probably prostitutes."
 Marina stood her ground: "My father is a plant director in Podolski and my mother works in a kindergarten" - as if this information was enough to flatten the highest of barricades.
 The two girls were students "in flower arranging", one said proudly.
 "So you know the price of things, on a grant of 8,000 roubles ($ 8) do you? You say that 8,000 roubles is enough to buy food and that you can live off that?" the older woman snarled. She had won the argument, implying, probably rightly, that the two girls lived off handouts from their parents.
 The girls stood arguing, symbols of the new Russia that Yeltsin wants to promote. The old women turned their backs. The police cleared the barricade. "It will be here again tonight," jeered the crowd.
 All this took place outside a metro station called Barricadnaya. I asked someone why. "Oh this is where the 1905 revolution started," came the nonchalant reply.
 MPs get deadline, page 10

LOAD-DATE: October 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



272 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 4, 1993

EYEWITNESS: ELDERLY BRAVE BULLETS TO CHEER ON REBELS

BYLINE: RICHARD BALMFORTH IN MOSCOW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 544 words

 
 THOUSANDS of anti-government demonstrators cheered opposition forces who laid siege to Moscow's Ostankino television centre last night.
 As defenders of the building and its attackers exchanged withering automatic fire, elderly women circulated among onlookers crouched on the street in the dark, handing out bottles to make Molotov cocktails. "Come on. We've got to help our children," said one trying to thrust a bottle into my hands. 
 Up to 3,000 people - communists and nationalists - converged by bus outside the Ostankino television studios on the northern outskirts. Many carried iron cudgels and riot shields seized from troops of the so-called OMON special forces in earlier fighting near the White House parliament building. They ended up using them not to storm the OMON defenders of the television station but to cower behind as bullets flew.
 One terrifying explosion sent onlookers rolling on a grass verge. When they picked themselves up, a red-faced old woman smelling heavily of drink, who had sat unmoved, said: "It's all over children.  Get up."
 Many supporters carried red communist placards and called out slogans belonging to the bygone Soviet era. As gunfire crashed around, one old woman crouched behind a tree, her head covered in her hands with only a small red flag of the old Soviet Union sticking up.
 But many others had come simply out of curiosity - a sideshow for an evening out. One young woman in designer jeans and make-up crouched in an embrace with her lover. "What are they doing now, Borya?" she asked as gunfire crackled from the building.
 Across town at Sovietskaya Square, where the pro-Yeltsin supporters gathered, the crowd numbered 5,000 to 10,000 yesterday evening. "I'd have come earlier, if I had known where to go," said one middle-aged man who had defended the White House in August 1991.
 Only a dozen men with arm bands stood in front of the gates to the Moscow Soviet, organising men into groups to protect the building. The crowd let cars pass freely. A group of boys, who had attempted to build a barricade out of planks across the street, were dissuaded by the crowd. "No one here has any weapons," said a women standing at the foot of Dolgoruky's statue. On the plinth, a young man was handing out blue, white and red badges to a crowd of boys. "Instead of hand grenades," he joked.
 "I don't know if I would fight for Yeltsin. I'm here for peace," said one 17-year-old, pinning on his badge. He and his friend had been out for a walk and had come to Sovietskaya Square to see what was going on. Another man, standing apart from the crowd, asked: "Is it true that they've hanged Yeltsin?" He had just arrived from the country.
 Support for democracy and the reform programme rather than direct support for Yeltsin had brought most of the crowd.
 In much of the rest of central Moscow, it was business as usual. At Tverskaya metro station people stood selling kittens and puppies. In Pushkin Square the street portrait artists still had customers. The only sign that anything was happening was that McDonald's closed early and the crowds in the square had disappeared.
 Richard Balmforth is a Reuter correspondent. Additional reporting by Isobel Montgomery.

LOAD-DATE: October 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



273 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 4, 1993

POLL TAX DEBT 'PUTS SICK AND ELDERLY' IN JAIL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 630 words

 
 A THOUSAND people a year, most of whom are mentally ill or elderly, are being jailed for poll tax arrears, according to welfare rights campaigners.
 The "medieval" legal provisions of community charge legislation are to blame, they say.
 The poll tax was abolished last April, but its legacy is hitting some of the most vulnerable in the community, who are being sentenced to up to 90 days.
 Some arrears amount to as little as pounds 10. Welfare rights lawyers predict that the thousands of poll tax cases will take years to wend their way through the court system. 
 More than 11 million liability orders have been issued against people who have failed to respond to councils' final demands.  The latest Home Office figures show that by last March 39,000 people had received committal warrants for poll tax arrears which carry the threat of a prison sentence.
 The average sentence imposed is 37 days. Campaigners estimate that well over 2,000 people have now served jail terms.
 A solicitor, Richard Wise, is handling 200 cases for people he has managed to get freed on bail and for whom he has won leave to seek a judicial review. His workload represents 10 per cent of all judicial review cases in the country.
 He expects many cases to take up to two years to get through the courts, each costing the taxpayer about pounds 20,000.
 "Bolton magistrates court has sent 250 people to prison since January," he said. "Ninety per cent of these people should never have been sent to prison."
 Poll tax arrears can be deducted from income support but not from other benefits such as pensions and invalidity benefit. So it is the mentally ill, the sick and disabled and the elderly whom councils are chasing through the courts.
 The other most vulnerable group are married women financially dependent on their husbands.
 "I deal with about three women a week from Drake Hall women's prison, Stafford," said Mr Wise. "In a significant minority of cases where the relationship is not so good, husbands won't give the wife the pounds 5 a week she needs to pay off the arrears, and the woman is arrested and taken to prison.'
 Under the poll tax legislation, councils cannot cancel arrears, as they could under the old rates system, even though the cost of recovering the debt far exceeds whatever payment they might hope to get.
 There is no legal aid for cases in magistrates courts. This becomes available, enabling the person in arrears to get help from a solicitor, only when the case goes to appeal - by which time the person could be in prison.
 "Some of the things which have been going on don't fit into any concept of English justice," said Alan Murdie, a barrister and founding member of Captive, the campaign for those jailed for poll tax arrears.  "I haven't seen one committal hearing where the magistrates have used the law properly. There is meant to be a proper means inquiry by the court before someone is sent to prison."
 Dave Nellist, former Labour MP and now a welfare rights adviser, said people were borrowing money and going into another form of debt to pay off arrears. "To use fear of imprisonment or the bailiff to recover debt is medieval."
 Mr Wise said people aged under 21 were being jailed for poll tax arrears, even though the legislation says custodial sentences should not be given to this age group.
 He cited the case of a youth, previously sentenced to 26 hours' community service for handling pounds 4,000 worth of stolen goods, who got a 90-day prison sentence for poll tax arrears of pounds 350.
 The Home Office said yesterday it did not collect separate data on poll tax arrears. A spokesman for the Department of the Environment said such prosecutions did not come within its remit.

LOAD-DATE: October 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



274 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 6, 1993

TORIES AT BLACKPOOL: FULL SPEED ON RAIL SALE, MINISTER URGED;
MacGregor pressed to ignore opposition to BR privatisation - Home Secretary points to absent fathers as major cause of crime

BYLINE: PATRICK WINTOUR, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 605 words

 
 THE Transport Secretary, John MacGregor, came under sustained Tory party pressure yesterday not only to brush aside public opposition to rail privatisation, but also to overturn the Lords vote to allow British Rail to bid for privatised rail franchises.
 Mr MacGregor said peers had been badly misguided in thinking that his plans would have prevented BR managers from bidding. If British Rail was allowed to bid, he warned, it would deter BR managers from bidding for lines because they would fear unfair competition. With a group of Tory backbenchers threatening to defy their own whip if the Government decided this month in the Commons to overturn the Lords, Mr MacGregor refused to reveal his precise tactics. But he acknowledged the strong mood of delegates. "It's quite clear today that there is very strong support at conference for overturning the peers' amendment." 
 In his own speech to conference, he urged delegates to have faith and confidence in his plans: "Every big privatisation was criticised when it was going through Parliament. It was opposed apparently in the polls and certainly by the Labour Party, who pledged themselves to reverse it. Yet every one has been such a success that the Labour leadership has been forced to change their tune and privatisation has been copied all round the world."
 Mr MacGregor sought to soothe doubters saying: "The taxpayers will continue to pay subsidies for socially necessary lines.  We will maintain the national network. Pension benefits, safety standards and benefits of through-ticketing will be safeguarded. Unreasonable fare increases will not be allowed. Rail discount cards for the elderly, the young and disabled will be maintained. A national timetable will be published."
 Privatisation was right, he said, because it would encourage innovation, new investment and involvement, as well as brushing aside outdated rule books policed by leftwing unions.
 Not a single speaker opposed rail privatisation, with one urging Mr MacGregor to show greater enthusiasm for the scheme.  Nicholas Wood-Dow said: "We in Britain need a smart, safe rail service run by highly motivated staff which is a pleasure, rather than penance to travel on." Privatised services would be "smarter, swifter, faster, smoother and safer".
 Turning to the Lords' amendment, he said it had been passed "in the belief that it would allow those who know most about running railways to bid. It does not. It blocks the very people who know most because it blocks the in-house bids from BR's own employees. Secretary of State, this amendment must be overturned when the bill returns to the Commons to give in-house employees any chance or interest in preparing their bids."
 David Campbell-Bannerman said privatisation would give British Rail a fresh start and warned that the Lords amendment would deprive the most enterprising staff the chance to run their own affairs: "It means nationalisation by the backdoor and no Tory should touch it."
 Mr MacGregor also revealed that a public consultation on his road pricing green paper showed overwhelming opposition to motorists being required to buy permits to use motorways, although there was support for electronic tolling, so long as the income went back into the road programme. Mr MacGregor said no final decision had been made, but conceded the elctronic tolling option would take longer to implement than a permit.
 Mr MacGregor also said that he would not be allowing any more public money to be put into local authority airport capital projects, as part of a drive to make them privatise the airports.

LOAD-DATE: October 6, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



275 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 7, 1993

NATIONALISTS CHALLENGE MILOSEVIC

BYLINE: BARNEY PETROVIC IN BELGRADE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 530 words

 
 PRESIDENT Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia's problems will mount today when extreme Serbian nationalists table a no-confidence motion against his Serbian Socialist Party government.
 The challenge is being headed by Vojislav Seselj, the Serbian extremist leader and Milosevic ally-turned-rival, whose Serbian Radical Party's votes are essential to keep the minority government in power.
 The socialists have 105 of the 250 seats and have kept power through an informal pact with the Radicals, who have 79 seats. 
 Mr Milosevic has recently turned on his erstwhile ally to nip any challenge to his power in the bud.
 Last week, the socialists turned on Mr Seselj, threatening to release police dossiers alleged to prove him to be a war criminal and confirming reports that he runs a private army blamed for atrocities.
 To offset the no confidence threat, Mr Milosevic has been wooing the fragmented opposition parties. The main opposition party, the Serbian Renewal Movement of Vuk Draskovic, has said it will abstain.
 A propaganda campaign through the official media has been unleashed aimed at discrediting Mr Seselj. But he has hit back, saying that the socialists were upset at the prospect of being thrown out of power.
 While there is no suggestion that Mr Milosevic's grip on power is threatened, the economic problems wrought by two years of war and 18 months of sanctions and the world's highest inflation appears to be boosting Mr Seselj's popular support.
 Mr Milosevic, having essentially won the wars in Croatia and Bosnia through Serbian proxies in both countries, is desperate to have sanctions lifted. He had assurances that they would be lifted if the Geneva peace plan for Bosnia, which he backs, was signed.
 But last week the Bosnian parliament rejected the settlement, delaying any agreement and any progress on lifting sanctions.
 The United Nations Security Council this week set new conditions for lifting them, implicitly linking their removal not just to a Bosnian settlement, but also to the situation in Croatia, where Serb rebels block implementation of the UN peace plan.
 Mr Milosevic was furious with the security council decision and threatened to boycott future negotiations.
 With Serbian inflation running at a monthly rate of 2,000 per cent, industry virtually at a standstill and two in three workers effectively jobless, the government's response, after starting to print billion-dinar notes, was to strike six zeroes off dinar denominations two weeks ago.
 It is an economic policy that is of little comfort to ordinary Serbs. Food rationing has been introduced in a country where the average monthly wage is pounds 10, or enough to buy a pound of meat a week. Despite the rationing, even essential goods guaranteed by the government are missing from the empty shops.
 In Belgrade on average every day an old age pensioner commits suicide because of privation. Local newspapers reported that an 83-year-old retired engineer who could only afford a bottle of brandy and a bottle of petrol, drank the brandy, summoning up the courage to douse himself with the petrol before immolating himself.

LOAD-DATE: October 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



276 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 8, 1993

HAVE HANDBAG, WILL HIT BACK

BYLINE: SUZANNE MOORE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 1217 words

 
 SO SHE IS back. Like Freddy Kreuger, like Banquo's ghost, like a mongoose hypnotising a snake, the not-so-repressed Lady Thatcher returns. And the political commentators mix their metaphors because no one metaphor quite captures the power of the woman, the power of the myth.
 She shall go to the ball, they say, but this is no Cinderella awaiting her prince. As Major well knows, her standing ovation will always be bigger than his, so she must not be allowed to stand alone on the party platform. The back seat driver must never again be allowed to take the wheel. For, three years on, Thatcher has, according to Nigel Lawson, not come to terms with the manner of her leaving. She is hurt, betrayed, and although the Tory men only gesture towards it, we all know hell hath no fury like a woman scorned. 
 Three years on, though, I wonder if any of us is any closer to coming to terms with it. What role did we want her to assume?  What role is there for an elder stateswoman? Did we really expect her to devote more time to her family? Or to become a cross between Ted Heath and the Queen Mother? She could have smiled beatifically and handed over the baton to a chosen one like a saintly grandma. But this does not suit her, for the doting elderly relative who sees no bad in her progeny is an entirely female part and one she has never wanted to play.
 "We are a grandmother" she once said, that infamous "we" somehow turning a personal event into a political institution.  Thatcher was always able to invoke her own experience as a woman, a mother, in such a way that glossed over the reality of family life for most women. She could domesticise politics - it's all a matter of housekeeping - when her own life wasn't a bit domestic.
 The fantasy of family life that has once more gripped the Tories is enormously strong. It can withstand an awful lot of pressu re - and enormous contradictions. On one hand, John Patten can talk about the importance of parent power; on the other, we read that Carol Thatcher is thinking about emigrating because, largely as a result of her own parent's power and indeed policies, she cannot find work here. It is she who will take the place of the prodigal son, Mark, who has now returned from the desert and made good. It is the daughter who admits to not voting Tory in the last election, while the son ties up the big deals for Mummy's memoirs.
 Of course, whatever Margaret Thatcher "meant" or means now goes far beyond the realms of her position within her own family but because she so cleverly used the idea of family to prop up the Thatcher myth, it is interesting to see where that has led her. In traditional families, as women age they are allowed a degree of power; they can become grand matriarchs, presiding over their clans or, in this case, the Conservative Party.
 Anyone who has watched will know, however, that Thatcher is ambivalent about such a role, as she has been about every traditional feminine role. She is, on the contrary, a patriarch. Her heroes are her father and Winston Churchill. Her great strength is in bringing together masculine and feminine. As Beatrix Campbell wrote in her fascinating book The Iron Ladies: "She has not feminised politics . . . but she has offered feminine endorsement to patriarchal power."
 Or, to put it crudely, as that other material girl Madonna did: "Pussy rules the world, but I have a dick in my brain." Thatcher is resentful of being tucked away to be brought out like a mascot for the adoring masses, for "the dick" demands a place in public life. Home is still not where her heart is. If she cannot be the giving matriarch, there is the terrifying possibility she will turn into the other archetype of the old spurned woman: the mother-in-law who knows the dirty secrets of her offspring, the witch who will destroy what she can no longer control.
 For all the fuss about the damaging effects of her memoirs, the tedious in-fighting between newspapers, is anyone really surprised at what has been revealed so far? Did anyone think she would have thought any of her predecessors good enough? That she thought half her Cabinet intellectual drifters, even buffoons, is really no great shock. We all think that anyway.
 The credence we give to her ability to destroy the entire government is a testament not to her actual political power but to the pull she still has over something that politics seeks so desperately to deny. The symbolic. The unconscious.
 No better example is there than the continuous and barmy obsession with her handbag. Handbags are part of the great mystery of women. What on earth do they keep in there? What has she got in hers? Well, you never can tell. According to this paper, it is a cash register. The Sun, meanwhile, says: "That shiny black handbag is as lethal as ever." The Mirror captions her picture with: "Lady Thatcher checks her handbag is loaded as she is driven through the rain to appear as a star guest."
 Now, you may not accept the Freudian interpretation that handbags and purses represent female genitals but you have to admit that we are pretty fixated on what she's got inside her bag. While senior Tories are clearly horrified at what might be unleashed, the party faithful are still aroused by her particular brand of passion.
 Yet if Thatcherism were a coherent ideological project, a response to a particular historical situation, the question still remains: can it survive without her? Its supposed softening, its transmutation into "Majorism", is entirely unconvincing because, for all its social concern, it still ruthlessly seeks to blame the victims of the past 14 years for all that we can see has gone wrong. And that surely is more frightening than anything that might be revealed in Thatcher's book or even, God forbid, in the contents of her handbag.
 FutherMoore
 - "POWER is an aphrodisiac" may be very reassuring to revolting MPs and businessmen, but you do have to wonder at women who are turned on by such small amounts of "power" as to be ridiculous. At least Henry Kissinger, who coined the phrase, was by any standards a powerful man. Which is more than can be said for Stephen Norris, latest cheating MP. His position, apart from keeper of three mistresses, was junior transport minister. Can anyone think of a job title with less erotic charge than that?
 - I LOVE the way men still feel entitled to prescribe correct feminine behaviour. I found out this week that something I had no desire to do anyway is undignified for women. Playing the didgeridoo. Thank you, Rolf Harris, for sharing that incredible insight. And now Tony Parsons, in Arena, tells me I shouldn't be doing something I do all the time. Drink alcohol. "Why should a woman never get drunk? Because being drunk makes you loud, obnoxious, sentimental, self-pitying and stupid. And most women are like that when they are sober." Cheers, Tony, mine's a pint. Oh, and pass the didgeridoo . . .
 - THANK God for some sanity. Margaret Jagger, whose fiance was killed recently in Florida, has said the boys apprehended for it are too young to be executed. "I don't agree with capital punishment; neither did Gary." Braver words than any spoken in the hang-'em-high hysteria of the Tory party conference.

LOAD-DATE: October 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



277 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 8, 1993

REVAMP IN THE VALLEYS;
The quality of housing in Wales's former mining villages is being transformed

BYLINE: ENA KENDALL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 789 words

 
 BUDDUG EVANS lives in poets' corner, part of the former mining village of Cwmaman where steep rows of houses honour Byron, Wordsworth, Burns and Spenser. Hers is Milton Street, a terrace built of sombre grey and brown pennat sandstone known locally as Cockshott rock after the band of stone in a nearby quarry from which it was hacked 100 years ago.
 Cwmaman is in the Cynon Valley, a place rarely mentioned without the fact that it contains the Tower Colliery, the last working coal mine in South Wales, and that it is one of the poorest parts of Britain, with 60 per cent of the 67,000 population on incomes below pounds 4,000 a year.
 Tower is rumoured to be under threat. If it goes, unemployment, now 21 per cent, could balloon to 40 per cent, and the valley's struggle for economic salvation could be even more savagely impeded.  What silver lining may be glimpsed is an environmental rebirth following the death of heavy industry. It includes the rehabilitation of thousands of 19th century houses built cheaply by cottage companies at the height of the late Victorian mining boom. 
 Milton Street, where Buddug (pronounced Beethe-ig, Welsh for Boadicea) was born 80 years ago, is a row of three-bedroomed houses which cost about pounds 90 each to build in the 1890s. There are thousands of such terraces in the valleys where working class owner occupation, the highest in Britain, is deep-rooted. Many people bought their houses cheaply from the mining companies, a process accentuated when the NCB sold off its properties.  Owners too poor to maintain them found their houses falling into disrepair.
 The 1981 census showed that 15 per cent of houses in the Cynon Valley were without such amenities as plumbed-in kitchen sinks and washbasins, fixed baths or showers, hot and cold water, flush lavatories.  By 1984 a council survey of each of the 20,000 private houses in the borough disclosed some of the worst housing in Britain, findings so staggering that the Welsh Office would not accept them until its own survey confirmed them.
 The cost of tackling the backlog of disrepair was then estimated at pounds 64 million. Though in a poor state, many of the houses were substantial and well worth saving, and the local authority wisely decided to rehabilitate them rather than knock them down.
 Since 1986, huge amounts of public money, pounds 46 million so far, have been pumped into tackling disrepair in this valley alone. The number of unfit houses is down to 3 per cent, most of them occupied by elderly people who cannot face the upheaval involved in repair. The Labour-controlled council takes a pragmatic approach: the Welsh Office, it is generally conceded, has been "pretty good" and a partnership, based on trust, has developed.
 Initially, much of the exterior rehabilitation was by "enveloping" when whole streets, 1,200 houses in all, were fitted with new roofs, PVC windows and doors for nothing. But two years ago enveloping was replaced by group repair, seen as a fairer system. Last year, pounds 1.75 million was spent on group repairs to 266 houses, while this year's target of pounds 2 million on 250 houses has been cut to pounds 1 million.
 The council selects streets in which there must be at least four houses, consecutively numbered, in a bad state. A meeting is called of the whole street, a quarter of whose residents should be claiming some sort of social security, and they are asked if they would like to take part.
 "We can't make them," says Chris King, deputy director of environmental services. "We are looking at 23 schemes, large and small, and only four have dropped out. This tends to happen when we ask people to make a contribution. If their jobs are under threat, they might quite rightly have other priorities. Most people pay something but nobody pays more than 50 per cent and there's a sliding scale with the very poor not paying anything. It's complicated but fair, and houses are targeted to put a shining future back into a neglected area."
 Renovation grants deal with interiors and last year pounds 6 million was spent on these, with a projected pounds 8 million this year. Buddug and her sister bought the lease of their house from the NCB in the 1950s and she remembers a small lobby at the back with a bench and a pan for carrying in the water when her three brothers cleaned up in a tin bath after a shift at the coal-face. "And," she adds, "we had a big old grate in the kitchen that I used to black lead after I'd blue-stoned the front doorstep."
 Now she has central heating, a terrazzo doorstep and a new front door. A smart green-tiled bathroom has replaced the old lobby and she looks out not on tips but on a wooded hill.

LOAD-DATE: October 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



278 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 8, 1993

SKETCH: CURSE OF PRE-MEMOIR TENSION COMES UPON THE LADY OF THE MIRROR

BYLINE: SIMON HOGGART

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 24

LENGTH: 671 words

 
 THE Tory Conference rose as one to acclaim its lost leader yesterday. There must have been hundreds cheering in the hall who wondered ruefully just what they had tossed away three careless years ago.
 It was pungently nostalgic. The shimmering clothes, the beautifully coiffed blond hair, the gracious smile with the familiar steely glint in those piercing blue eyes. They cheered, whooped and whistled, till it seemed as if the whole conference would grind to a rapturous halt. 
 Yes, Michael Heseltine's first public appearance since his heart attack was greeted with near dementia.
 His reception was noticeably better than the one for Lady Thatcher. It must have been terrifically galling for her.
 She arrived at around 10.30. The car drove right into the building. One half-expected it to drive up on to the stage. Dame Wendy Mitchell, the conference chairman (they suffer from serious gender confusion here) announced coyly: "Hold on, ladies and gentlemen, I think we are going to have a visitor."
 She appeared on stage and sat next to Dame Basil Feldman, the chap who acts as chairwoman of the Tories' National Union. Oh, there was applause all right, lots of it, but very many people remained seated and much of the clapping was artificially prolonged by her claque of irreconcilables.
 The annual arrival is now a fixed event in Britain's calendar of colourful rituals, and is conducted according to time-honoured rules. At one point Lady Thatcher leans over to the chairperson and indicates she would like to hear the debate. Everyone knows this is the signal for the clapping to redouble, though yesterday it actually began to fade. Old people today have no respect for tradition.
 The fact is that many of the delegates are very angry indeed about the leaked criticisms of John Major in her book. For her part she is clearly suffering from pre-memoir tension, or PMT. The curse is come upon her, like the Lady of Shalott, who also had trouble with the Mirror.
 Cunningly, John Major arrived on the platform half an hour later. A brief handshake (to kiss or not to kiss - always a tricky social teaser, except when you hate the other's guts) and he won far and away the loudest stander of the day. They even stamped on the floor like a herd of stags preparing to rut.
 Later Kenneth Clarke made a quiet sort of speech, at times as gentle as any sucking pig. He even cut out a joke: "John Smith is a good name for a pint of beer, but as a prime minister forget it." I do hope Mr Clarke doesn't take all this nonsense about booze too seriously. To us drinkers it's one of his most attractive qualities. Apart from the obligatory support of John Major, the speech was quietly received as well.
 There were two theories for this. Possibly, with his threats of higher taxes, he has decided to treat the delegates like grown-ups - always a high-risk strategy at the Tory Conference.
 Or else it was a double bluff. A tub-thumping rant would have been seen as a leadership bid, and so disloyal, thus harming his chances of winning the leadership. In order to appear a better man than John Major, he had to make a worse speech.  Imagine if your job depended on such calculations, every single day.
 Over in the MGM cinema, where The Fugitive is now aptly playing, Norman Lamont was discussing the Budget. This was not his resignation speech. It was even more downbeat than Mr Clarke's. Here was a reformed toad, a chastened toad, a contrite toad.
 He did however say there should be no increase in taxes. Across the street Mr Clarke was asked what he thought of that. He chuckled and said: "I remember supporting Norman's last Budget when he increased taxes by pounds 111 2 billion . . ."
 That's what I like about the Tories - you get hand-to-hand fighting every day.  It's like that controversially violent video game, mortal kombat. They ought to have little captions floating above their heads saying "Finish Him Off!" and then rip out each other's spinal cords.

LOAD-DATE: October 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



279 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 9, 1993

HOT FOOD HEADS FOR ICE AGE AS MEALS-ON-WHEELS FACES FRESH CHALLENGES AFTER 50 YEARS OF CARE IN COMMUNITY

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 440 words

 
 FIFTY years ago this month the first plateful of wartime rations was rushed from a communal kitchen to a housebound pensioner, and meals-on-wheels were born.
 More than 200,000 people today rely on meals-on-wheels services for their daily hot meal. The growth of community care means demand is likely to rise sharply. 
 "If the aim is to keep people living in their own homes instead of going into residential care, the prospect is expansion - though perhaps with delivery of frozen meals, not hot ones," says Mandy Downes, director of food services with the Women's Royal Voluntary Service.
 WRVS pioneered meals-on-wheels in 1943 when somebody came up with the bright idea of delivering food prepared at the British Restaurant kitchens staffed by women volunteers.
 Delivery was then on foot, bicycle or tricycle. Today, the 68,000 WRVS volunteers involved in meals-on-wheels use usually their own cars, receiving only mileage expenses in return.
 The service, the biggest voluntary organisation with 16,000 men among the membership as well as the 124,000 women, has agreements with local authorities to run more than half the local meals-on-wheels operations.
 Ms Downes acknowledges there are problems. In some areas, central cooking facilities are limited and the meals go out somewhat earlier, or later, than the target time of between 11.30am and 1.30pm.
 "If the food is prepared in a school kitchen, or a residential home, it often has to be done before the meals for the children or residents, which makes it all rather earlier than we would like.
 "On the other hand, if you then try to alter it to something you might consider more reasonable, you often have the customers complaining it is too late."
 It is also not unknown for meals-on-wheels to be ordered for an elderly person simply because he or she is lonely.
 Ms Downes says this was more common until assessments began to be done more thoroughly about five years ago.
 "The assessments are much broader now, asking whether the person really needs a hot meal, or a frozen meal, or whether it would be more appropriate to go to a lunch club or just have a shopping service."
 Frozen food represents the most likely means of expanding the capacity of meals-on-wheels if demand does grow as expected.
 The WRVS recognises there are limits to extending the traditional, hot-meals service.
 Ms Downes, who is appealing for more volunteers to come forward, says: "It has got to be looked at carefully: we can't simply deliver double the number of hot meals we are doing now because we just haven't got the people to do so."

LOAD-DATE: October 11, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



280 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 11, 1993

TELEVISION: KICKS FOR FREE

BYLINE: HUGH HEBERT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 470 words

 
 WATCHING Tim Firth's Money For Nothing (BBC1), you don't even think it's about Thatcherism, or the rise and fall of the yuppie, the Me generation, market chicanery or the ghost cash on which billionaires float their bubble reputations. It's straight, greatly enjoyable escapism, and it does for the property boom what Trading Places did for pork belly futures.
 Gary is a mature and well scrubbed 16-year-old, a skilled player in classroom business games, whose best friend bets him a cheeseburger he can't become a real millionaire in the half-term holiday.  Natural chutzpah and test drives in increasingly expensive cars impress gullible bank managers and greedy estate agents. Until he overbids and gets a baronial old people's home he can neither pay for nor sell, where Lisa the caring, vibrant young nurse turns Gary's thoughts to guess what. And naturally you guess wrong. No teenage sex, we're into classic romantic comedy of the Depression and the war, clean as a Scout's promise. 
 It's perfectly paced high quality pastiche of those smart Hollywood scripts about comic chancers and curvy innocents - one drink and the girl's flat out, to be gently wrapped and left intact. Gary's back at school on Monday.
 Christien Anholt, age 22, provides a brilliant combination of cocky schoolkid and nervous conman, Jayne Ashbourne makes a zestful Lisa, and it's directed with exhilaration by Mike Ockrent. Even the music - John Dankworth - is kept in its place, now a rare virtue in television drama. And to qualify my first words, the seamless good humour does not blunt some shrewd satirical thrusts at those Thatcherite targets.
 The epic art-historical Civilisation began a round of repeats, a bit undermined now by John Wyver's profile of its presenter K: Kenneth Clark (BBC2). He emerges as a superb arts administrator and populariser, - first step, director of the National Gallery before he was 30, where he revolutionised the idea of what a great public showcase should be.
 But Lynda Nead rejects his vision of civilisation as developing in a single line, and sees him as a mere connoisseur, failing to connect art to the society that produced it. Charles Harrison is scornful of Clark's male, western bourgeois standpoint.  Worse, Clark is accused of skewing British taste and patronage away from the abstracts of European modernism (as in Ben Nicholson) and towards an English romantic, figurative art as in Henry Moore, Graham Sutherland and John Piper, though that ignores Clark's role as populariser at a time when abstract art did not suit the mood or purpose of a fatherly cultural leadership. Civilisation, ironically, was made after he had been the first chairman of the IBA, responsible for launching commercial television on the screens of a scandalised intelligentsia.

LOAD-DATE: October 11, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



281 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 11, 1993

THE BRAIN: COPING WITH ALZHEIMER'S;
More and more old people are suffering from Alzheimer's disease - a loss of brain functions associated with ageing. As medical science tries to find a cure, carers and families must learn to cope.

BYLINE: PETE MOORE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGE; Pg. E16

LENGTH: 1111 words

 
 MORE than 600,000 people in the United Kingdom now suffer from Alzheimer's disease and every day another 42 people develop the condition.
 The disease gradually stops the brain from working properly, so that those who are affected slowly lose the ability to remember, to learn, to think and to reason.
 Alzheimer's disease is associated with old age, affecting one in every 20 people over 65 and one in five of those over 80.  With improvements in living conditions and advances in medicine, people are living longer, and the number of Alzheimer's sufferers is increasing. Alzheimer's disease is not, however, always confined to the elderly. It can afflict people as young as 40. 
 The exact symptoms of Alzheimer's disease vary from person to person, and are similar to those caused by other diseases that lead to dementia. Dementia is a term used to describe all illnesses which cause a progressive loss of mental function. People with dementia have reduced abilities to think and reason. They may not remember events or people, nor what day it is, nor even where they are.
 With Alzheimer's disease, such symptoms may at first be confused with forgetfulness or depression. It is often only when a loss of memory or change in behaviour starts to affect someone else that the disease is spotted.
 A pattern of regularly forgetting incidents that have just happened, such as forgetting a meal that has just taken place, is frequently the first sign of the disease. Sometimes, the loss of memory can have potentially dangerous consequences, as sufferers forget the way home from the shops, or leave their kettles or ovens on.
 The disease was first described in 1907, by a German doctor called Alois Alzheimer. He used a newly-invented technique of staining slices of brain
 tissue to study the brain of a 51-year-old woman who had died after suffering memory loss and personality changes in the last few years of her life.
 Her brain contained many dark spots, not normally found in healthy brains, and Dr Alzheimer believed that these caused the changes in behaviour. These dark spots are now called senile plaques and neurofibrillary tangles, and they are known to be made of a substance called beta-amyloid.
 Diagnosis
 Proving that someone has Alzheimer's disease, rather than any other dementia, is very difficult. Diagnosis is carried out by eliminating other possible diseases and can only be finally confirmed once the person has died, when parts of their brain can be examined under a microscope to look for the plaques and tangles.
 However, we still do not fully understand why these plaques form or why they lead to dementia.
 Sadly there are no cures for the disease, although treatments are being developed that may slow its progress. Meanwhile, careful observation of the kind of mental dysfunction - loss of personal memory, disturbed sense of direction, etc - is important to both help and care for the person properly.
 It is therefore important that the disease is explained to carers, and to the family of the person with dementia. The symptoms of Alzheimer's disease overlap with other forms of dementia and observation of the person's behaviour may help consultants disentangle one form of it from another (see right).
 Our brains are made up of several million cells, called neurons, that are designed to communicate with each other. Each neuron consists of a cell body, many hundreds of dendrites and an axon. The dendrites receive
 chemical messages from other nerve cells and pass them on to the cell body, which sends a response down the axon. At the far end of the axon a chemical messenger, called a neurotransmitter, is then released so that the message can be transmitted to another cell.
 As we get older, many of these neurons stop working and die. Scientists used to think that a person's ability to remember declined as these cells died, but even though we lose up to one-fifth of our brain cells by the time we are 90, most of us will still have more than enough to store all the information needed. The problem seems to be that, although many of the cells are still alive, they are no longer doing their job. In Alzheimer's disease the senile plaques interfere with the transmission of the signal from one neurone to another, and the neurofibrillary tangles prevent the transport of essential chemicals within the cell body.
 The neurotransmitter that is released from the end of the axon is also in short supply in brains with Alzheimer's disease.
 While different neurons use different chemicals as neurotransmitters,
 in Alzheimer's disease the chemical which is most affected is one called
 acetylcholine. Therefore some attempts to treat the disease involve drugs that increase the amounts of acetylcholine in the brain.
 A genetic link
 NO ONE knows what causes Alzheimer's disease, although there is no shortage of suggestions.
 Quite possibly the disease occurs only when a number of conditions are met at the same time. There is nevertheless considerable hope that the causes will be found and that specific treatments and therapeutic techniques can be developed.
 Some families suffer from Alzheimer's disease more than others, suggesting they might have genes that either cause the disease, or make them more likely to suffer from it. While some diseases are caused by only one faulty gene, it appears that many different genes are probably involved in Alzheimer's disease.
 One clue to tracking down the relevant genes has come from the discovery that Down's syndrome sufferers are very likely to develop Alzheimer's
 disease. As sufferers from Down's have an extra copy of chromosome number 21, scientists are studying this chromosome to see if it carries the genes involved in Alzheimer's disease.
 At one point, scientists thought that aluminium might be responsible for Alzheimer's disease, as it is known to cause a type of neurofibrillary tangle in the brains of animals. This led to concern about the levels of aluminium in drinking water.  However, recent research shows that aluminium is unlikely to be the cause of Alzheimer's disease in humans.
 Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease and Kuru are two human brain diseases that are known to be caused by virus-like particles. It is possible that Alzheimer's could also be caused by some similar particle, although this appears to be quite unlikely. Much research is now being directed not only to the genetic determinants that may be behind a susceptibility to the deposition of beta-amyloid, but also towards the therapeutic strategies that may slow progression of the disease.

LOAD-DATE: October 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



282 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 12, 1993

PIT PROPS;
When the local colliery was closed a community discovered that unearthing their past provided a psychological lifeline

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 2396 words

 
 IF OLD HERODOTUS was allowed back on Earth for a spell, and happened to be flogging his mule along the A642 from Wakefield to York, do you think he would turn off to give his readers an account of Allerton Bywater? Would the Father of History deign to allow this little place the attention he reserved for "interesting places", which in turn guaranteed them a place in posterity?
 Would he heck. Nothing of note has ever happened in Allerton, they would tell him, if he stopped for a drink at the Old George in Garforth. No wrecks and nobody drowned. In fact, they'd have done better to call the place Allerton Backwater.
 And yet history, which comes in so many famous guises - as bunk, betrayer or haunting ghost - has appeared in modern Allerton Bywater in a most unusual manifestation. In the year since Michael Heseltine pronounced doom on most of Britain's coal industry, and since Allerton's own, last pit closed in the first tranche, the subject has been chosen as the stricken community's psychological lifeline. 
 Not history in the form of "heritage" recreations, which provide such a popular Aunt Sally for social commentators (especially those lucky enough never to have had to live in one of the real industrial communities for which they pine). But history in the weekly study - by redundant miners, young mothers, elderly residents of the Victoria sheltered housing complex, in fact just about everyone - of what, and particularly who, made Allerton Bywater what it is.
 "Come here," whispers 77-year-old Elsie Harris from her armchair in the Victoria housing's common room, crooking her finger and glinting through her specs in a way which Herodotus would have found hard to ignore. "I haven't told you about grandfather's beard, have I?"
 I listened captivated, crouching on the carpet at her knees, as she described how her grandpa had been struck by lightning in the 1890s while carving stone as a mason at the nearby (but now demolished) mansion of Kippax Park.
 He survived; but his beard, apparently one of the most impressive in the district, was entirely singed away. Mrs Ellis described its destruction with a mixture of awe and the sort of enthusiasm which marks an excellent teacher. "You must tell the schoolchildren at Allerton Junior that story. They'd love it," I said. "I have," she replied. And they did.
 The children have been down for regular visits to the history discussion groups and helped in collecting the old photographs, maps and paintings which now line the common room wall. "One discovery leads to another," says Derek Smith, a former deputy, or foreman, at the colliery. "If Mr X comes up with a picture of his great-grandmother, you can be sure that Mrs Y will say: 'I've got a much better one than that,' and she'll dig it out, too."
 In the same way, the children have spurred on the central project of Allerton's communal history tutorial: a half-hour film on the story of the village since the first pit was sunk, and the population exploded, in 1863.
 "We are proud to invite you," say the pale yellow cards in a stack ready for posting, "to the World Film Premiere of As Time Goes By at the King Edward VII Working Men's Club." The place will be packed to overflowing when the film is first shown on October 27. And European MPs and civil servants will see it shortly afterwards at screenings in Strasbourg, Brussels and London.
 "The kids have been saying: 'You'll never do it' and thinking that it will be really tacky, with their mums trying to be Cecil B De Mille, but they're in for a surprise," says Judi Alston, a young specialist with the One-to-One video company of Wakefield, who has advised the production team technically.
 CERTAINLY at a screening of the first, fully-edited 20 minutes this week, the amateur film-makers were full of the trade's argot. "I prefer this version of the voice-over," said Derek Smith, while two pensioners discussed the smoothness of segues taking the story through the 1920s.
 In the next armchair, the flickering images cheered up a solemn little girl being child-minded by Angela Rotherforth, a young mother who was in on the very beginning of Allerton's venture into historical studies. In the dismal days approaching the pit's closure (the last of three in Allerton to go) a women's group was suggested by Kathy Eason, Leeds city council's local community worker. She was given exceptional help by a colleague, Ann Walker, a tutor-organiser at Leeds University's department of community and industrial studies. This outfit has a deserved reputation both for using the university's power and prestige to open influential doors, and for showing outsiders that the academic world is for them too. Within a few months, Angela and two friends were enrolled for weekend courses at Northern College, the "Ruskin of the North" at Wentworth Castle near Barnsley; they came home and created an editorial team who gave Allerton Bywater its first edition of The Newsletter.
 "I'd originally joined Kathy's group when my baby was five days old and I just wanted something else to do," says Mrs Rotherforth, Allerton-born and previously in and out of office jobs in Leeds and at British Coal. "But then we started finding out so much about the village." They passed it on in three, ever-expanding issues of The Newsletter, which goes to press for the fourth time next month. They also came quickly to the underlying point of Allerton's history lessons: as a means of concentrating local minds on what the village should do now.
 One of the century's best poems, Spain by W H Auden, contains the pessimistic lines:
 History to the defeated
 may say alas but cannot help or pardon.
 Allerton's initiative is a frontal attack on that gloomy theory (which Auden later renounced). The village has been defeated, like so many others in history who have tried to prevent change. But the villagers are increasingly sure that the past can do more than just encourage them to wring their hands.
 "You can derive lessons and draw strength from the village's achievements in the past," says Anne Walker. "You can see how Allerton Bywater has changed and adapted, the part local people have played - and, from that, turn to the possibilities and problems facing the community now."
 One moment in the film makes this point with great strength. Archive clips of Northern seamstresses appear on the screen, while Elsie Harris's voice-over recalls the arrival of Montague Burton's ready-made clothing works in Harehills, a bus or (in those days) train ride away in East Leeds.
 "We women had a wage all of a sudden, which was something we weren't used to," she says. "We could go out and spend it on nice things." A powerful economic balance to King Coal's habit of dominating his communities suddenly, unexpectedly appeared; Burton, an enterprising Jewish immigrant from Lithuania, found his perfect match in skilful, hard-working Yorkshiremen and women.
 Today, Leeds is little-loved in Allerton. Brian Harris, Elsie's son, is one of many who complain about boundary changes which snipped the village off from its nearest town, Castleford, and tacked it on to the Yorkshire metropolis.
 "We've got unemployment here over and above the 19 per cent in the Castleford area," he says. "But the statistics have us as part of Leeds, where unemployment is only 9 per cent. Consequently we don't get a look-in at Rechar (the EC's fund for former coalfield areas), or other special measures." A section of the script contributed by Clive Cowell, the last NUM secretary at Allerton, makes the same comparison: "Allerton is like an island of poverty in the wealth of Leeds."
 But Leeds city council has provided Kathy Eason, the community worker; Leeds university has given Anne Walker; Leeds has currently laid on a big exhibition in its town hall honouring local mining, and borrowing exhibits from the Allerton group; and Leeds bulks very large and promisingly in the village video's history.  Across the River Aire, Brian Harris admits, the traditionally Leeds-linked village of Methley has made a dramatic transition from mining community to dormitory village.
 "There's even people from down South living there and commuting," he says.  "Would you believe - they find it cheaper to live all the way up here." If true, there are only a handful; but anyway they are not necessary. Leeds's own economic power has unquestionably stopped Methley from slipping into the doldrums.
 The city's famous diversity of trades, which has always seen it through recessions (including the current one) would now be reflected - in place of "Miner, miner, miner . ." - in a Kelly's directory of Methley occupations. There will be no depopulation, on the lines of Cumbrian coastal towns in the twenties and thirties, in the mining towns beside the M62.
 "But commuters . . ?" Allerton's historians frequently wonder aloud, and in alarm, at their discussion meetings. "If they come, what will happen to house prices? Will incomers gradually force us and our children out? They're talking of building on the pit site, you know, and it would certainly be a private estate." All the history students, from children to pensioners, are familiar with the next village to the north, Ledston, which looks as if it has just landed in its entirety from the Cotswolds. A quaint, rose-tangled pub; a stunning, white limestone Elizabethan hall; and the price of everything set accordingly sky-high.
 "On the other hand," says Laura Holmes, whose grandfather Butcher Holmes looks contentedly from an ancient photo of his shop on the common room's exhibition walls, "newcomers would definitely help the shops. They'd keep little businesses going which would be struggling otherwise." Mrs Holmes has relatives, too, in one of the flats made out of the imposing wings of Ledston Hall. The posh neighbour isn't quite as inaccessible as it may look.
 SHE and others - and, above all, the film - also recognise that Allerton Bywater's green surroundings are one of its great assets. As Time Goes By is subtitled From Green To Black And Green Again, and it opens with pastoral music over shots of swans on the Ings, the lake which replaced the second of the village's three pits.
 "Oooh, lovely," chorussed the audience at the editing session. "And it used to be so mucky when the pit was working, especially down this end of Allerton." Everyone applauds the landscape improvements under way by the South Leeds Groundwork Trust. Everyone enjoys the magnificent nature reserve on the flooded pit workings at Fairburn.
 All the older villagers, too, have sunny summer memories of forays in the rolling grounds of Kippax Park and the other surrounding great estates. Nowadays, North Leeds is flagged by estate agents as the desirable side of the city; but ironically, the Victorian new rich only built there because the southern rim was sealed off by the gentry. The Meynell-Ingrams at Temple Newsam, the Lowthers at Swillington, the Savilles at Methley; as usual, the aristocrats had bagged all the best bits of land.
 Their languid families have walk-on parts in Allerton's history studies; but the village's other great asset to emerge from the discussion groups, and to put beside its green setting, has been its "ordinary" people. Vigour beams from photo after photo in the sheltered housing exhibition, and it is reflected back in the enthusiasm the Allerton School of History has engendered. Look, there is Derek Smith's father, Jack, a professional double bass who handled the Kiosk ballroom at Castleford as deftly as opera engagements in the pit at Leeds Grand. Hey, here is a whole series of bonny Allerton Queens, at the village's annual Children's Day parade. Uh-oh, that's Dr Ashton in his surgery, sub-titled "A well-known village character."
 "He'd never give thee a sick note," says Brian Harris, falling naturally into the colliery vernacular. "At least, not if tha worked at pit."
 Tracking down these records has brought the 3,000 people in the long, straggly village together, according to Shelagh Daniels, warden at the Victoria sheltered housing, who is highly chuffed that her "girls" are getting so many guests and so much appreciation. "We love having all these people in here," she says. "And we've got so many interesting things to tell them."
 Brian Harris, meanwhile, lights up with that eager pleasure in knowledge familiar in a Patrick Moore or David Bellamy. "Do you know," he says, "when mining started here, there was such a rush for work that 60 families were living on the River Aire in boats. Not that Allerton's been only about mining. We're keen to emphasise that. We've had farming, pottery, even ship-building." And it all goes back, venerably, to Domesday Book and an entry for "Alretun".
 Most of the story is unexceptional, and none the worse for that. The historians can study human nature, undistracted by atypically dramatic human deeds. But there have been some exceptional events, including a terrible colliery explosion in the 1930s. And some Allertonians have made their mark in a very much wider world.
 Henry Moore, whose father was a miner and later mining engineer in Castleford, explored as a boy along the Lin Dyke and through Owl Wood. Jim Bullock, head of Britain's first management union (of colliery managers) and Lord Robens' sparring partner, started life in a two-up, two-down at Bower's Row in the village. His father, also a miner, was a famous Allerton character who faced down Sir Charles Lowther when the coal owner was about to hand school prizes to young Jim and his older sister.
 "Stop!" shouted Bullock senior from the hall. And then, before firmly leading his children away: "When people like you command my admiration and respect then, and only then, will I allow my children to salute or curtsy to you."
 None of Allerton Bywater's students is under any illusion that history will re-employ the 1,000 men who worked at the last pit until last year. They know that the village needs a practical hand, and more than the 60 new jobs provided by the infant Enterprise Park. But their studies are clearly refreshing the springs of self-confidence which flowed so abundantly in men like Mr Bullock. History, in this neck of the West Riding, is anything but bunk.

LOAD-DATE: October 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



283 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 13, 1993

COUNCIL DELAYS 'KEEP OLD IN HOSPITAL NEEDLESSLY'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 338 words

 
 PATIENTS have been sleeping in corridors in a west London hospital which says wards are full because it is unable to discharge elderly people, even though they are ready to leave.
 Ealing Hospital is the first in the country to complain of "bed-blocking" under the community care programme introduced in April. There are fears that the problem could become widespread. 
 According to the community care rules, elderly patients ready for discharge must first have their needs for further care assessed by social workers, and any arrangements such as transfer to a residential or nursing home put in place.
 The speed with which social services carry this out is critical for hospitals' throughput. Ealing claims that because its local authority is not acting quickly enough, it is stuck with patients whose treatments are complete.
 The hospital maintains that Ealing social services takes between 28 and 50 days to find nursing home places for elderly patients, although it admits local nursing homes are all full.
 It says up to 16 patients a night, including cancer and stroke victims, have been sleeping in beds placed in corridors because between 17 and 20 other patients cannot be discharged. Two people have died in beds in the corridors.
 To ease the problem, the hospital has had to spend pounds 74,000 to reopen a 12-bed ward closed earlier this year because of lack of money.
 Barbara Yerolemou, who chairs the social services committee of Conservative-run Ealing council, said yesterday that the council had been aware of the difficulty, but it had been sorted out last week.
 "It appears at the moment that the social services department is receiving contradictory information from the hospital. We are aware of the hospital's problem of bed closures, and we will be asking them to examine what impact this had on the current unacceptable situation."
 Ms Yerolemou said community care was not aimed at discharging patients to free beds, but at ensuring people got appropriate care.

LOAD-DATE: October 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



284 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 14, 1993

EYEWITNESS: GREECE SEES ACTION REPLAY AT HIGH NOON

BYLINE: HELENA SMITH IN ATHENS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 511 words

 
 THE bishop turned to the president who turned to the prime minister and said: "We've done this before." Then, as the clock struck noon and the Athens smog deepened, the swearing-in began.
 It was, of course, a ceremony most knew well which saw Greece's new cabinet sworn in. 
 Melina Mercouri, aged 70, was there. Giorgos Yennimatas, the terminally ill national economy and finance minister was there.  Carolos Papoulias, the veteran diplomat once again at the helm of the foreign ministry, was there.
 Only this time, eight years after the socialists' last and 12 years after their first landslide election victory, the faces were a little older, the hair a little greyer, the movements a little stiffer.
 When Greece's new prime minister, the septegenarian Andreas Papandreou, tottered across the room to greet his fellow "dinosaur" President Constantine Karamanlis, the mood appeared to become a little sombre.
 "You must succeed," the octogenarian head of state said. "The country needs success because it is facing very many difficult problems." With those words, the 30-minute ceremony was over.
 Mr Papandreou, whose Pasok socialist movement won a stunning victory in last Sunday's elections nearly four years after he was kicked out of office amid seamy scandals, has moved fast to create a government.
 "Our victory signals a new era - the Greek people deserve our serious work and responsibility," he said during the first meeting of his 43-member cabinet.
 The ailing socialist leader, who has made his personal physician, the heart specialist George Kremastinos, health minister, sees his re-election as a personal victory that vindicates him of corruption charges during his last days in power.
 It was his loyal followers rather than young and potentially headstrong socialists whom he promoted to key posts.
 It is widely believed this is because of the fate meted out to Mr Papandreou's arch rival, the conservative leader Constantine Mitsotakis. Mr Mitsotakis, who has announced his resignation from New Democracy, was toppled after his former foreign minister and protege, Antonis Samaras, called on rebel backbenchers to join his new Political Spring group - a move that stripped his government of its slim parliamentary majority.
 The government spokesman, Evangelos Venizelos, announced yesterday that Mr Papandreou had appointed his wife, 35-year-old Dimitra Liani, to head his private office. The position gives her a central role in who is allowed to see him.
 Senior socialists hope Mr Papandreou, whose health has deteriorated since open heart surgery five years ago, will eventually step aside or delegate more. This, they say, would radically democratise the party which has been under his iron grip since its foundation in 1974.
 In the meantime, it is business as usual. Down in the culture ministry which she headed for eight years from 1981, Ms Mercouri was blowing kisses yesterday and talking about the Elgin Marbles.
 As the bishop said to the president: "We've done this before."

LOAD-DATE: October 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



285 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 14, 1993

SURVIVORS OF SOBIBOR REMEMBER GREAT ESCAPE;
Julian Borger in Warsaw meets former inmates who returned to the site of the Nazi death camp on the 50thanniversary of one of the most dramatic and successful acts of defiance against the Holocaust's machinery

BYLINE: JULIAN BORGER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 736 words

 
 A HANDFUL of elderly men and women huddled together on a Warsaw street yesterday, trying to avoid being swept away by the lunchtime rush hour, and looking every bit as hunted and forlorn as the escapees they had been 50 years ago.
 In that small knot of people were more than half the survivors from the 300 Jews who broke out of the Sobibor death camp on October 14 1943, in perhaps the most dramatic and successful act of defiance against the relentless machinery of the Holocaust.
 The youngest among them is Thomas Blatt, who was 16 at the time. His role was to lure Nazi officers to the camp workshops where they were killed one by one. 
 "I went up to one Nazi and I asked him to come to a storeroom because we had found a beautiful leather coat for him and we wanted him to go to try it on. He did, and he was killed with an axe and a knife."
 The inmates killed 10 Nazis and 13 Ukrainian guards and disconnected the electrified perimeter fence before making a dash for freedom over the wire and across a minefield. Mr Blatt was trapped under the outer fence as it collapsed under the weight of desperate escapees but instead of killing him it saved his life.
 "Many of the people who went in front of me were blown up by the mines. When I was free, I followed the path of bodies into the woods."
 Mr Blatt, a tough and combative 65-year-old who now lives in the United States, has fought for years for recognition of the 250,000 Jews who were murdered in Sobibor's gas chambers. Under the communist regime, official plaques and literature emphasised the role of the Soviet army and played down the Jewish nature of the camp and the revolt. At a ceremony today at Sobibor (which now lies where the borders of Poland, Bielarus and Ukraine meet), Mr Blatt will unveil a new, corrected plaque.
 The revolt was led by a Jewish Red Army lieutenant called Sasha Pechersky (played by Rutger Hauer in a 1987 film) who died in obscurity a few years ago in Rostov-on-Don. The Soviet government, distrustful of anyone who had survived the camps, never allowed him to attend any reunions of Sobibor survivors.
 "I went to see him and I told him he was a hero, but the regime just ignored him," Mr Blatt said.
 Another of the escapees, Esther Raab, had arranged to meet one of the local Poles who had sheltered her and helped her to survive until the Soviet army arrived. Jan Marcyniuk was 17 when his father, Stefan, took in Esther and her brother and hid them in his barn.
 "We used to take food to her at night. Me and my brother were still boys, with short trousers, and nobody paid any attention to us," Mr Marcyniuk said.
 At the end of the war, Mrs Raab tried to persuade the Marcyniuk family to move to the US with her but they refused. Stefan Marcyniuk later died, but she has become a surrogate member of the family. As she spoke in a Warsaw hotel room, Jan fussed around her like an anxious brother.
 "This family were special people who felt that what the Nazis were doing was wrong, and the only way to prove it's wrong, or to fight against it, was to save Jews," she said.
 Not all the Sobibor escapees were as lucky as Esther Raab. Some were given away by local people. Thomas Blatt and two friends were shot by a farmer who stole their belongings. Mr Blatt survived by playing dead, but he still has a bullet wedged behind his jaw.
 Kurt Thomas is one of the few survivors who decided not to come to Poland for today's 50th anniversary, because he could not bear to see the spot where his parents and his sister were killed.
 "I cannot help them. To get there to face the mound of soil on which now grass grows makes no sense to me," he said on the telephone from Ohio.
 He will use the money he would have spent on the trip to buy an air ticket for the Polish family that sheltered him when he was on the run, so they can visit their son, studying in California.
 After the Sobibor breakout, the Nazis dismantled the camp and planted pine trees in its place. But they failed to wipe out all the escapees, who returned to bear witness to the extermination of a quarter of a million Jews, and to one moment of resistance, which Mr Thomas attempted to describe.
 "We felt a great desire for life and freedom and an urge to rid ourselves of the humiliation inflicted upon us and, until then, accepted, because of the constant, systematic terror."

LOAD-DATE: October 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



286 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 15, 1993

SOMALILAND FIGHTS A LOELY BATTLE;
'Small miracle' stands out as relief groups launch plea for 20m victims of war: A government which has successfully ended clan warfare is being ignored by aid agencies

BYLINE: JULIE FLINT IN HARGEISA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 858 words

 
 A SMALL miracle is taking place in the breakaway Republic of Somaliland, unseen and unappreciated by those whose armed humanitarianism has turned Somalia's famine into slaughter.
 Two and a half years after seceding from the rest of Somalia, the former British Somaliland is mending its divisions by discussion rather than arms. Tribal conflicts have been contained and demobilisation set in motion for 6,000 young men who have exchanged their weapons for the rigours of a former British prison camp.
 In this remarkable endeavour the international community is conspicuous by its absence. Last month a senior United Nations official recommended that it was "time to dismantle Somaliland and bring this nonsense to an end", prompting President Mohammed Egal to order the temporary expulsion of Unosom, the UN relief operation in the area. 
 Britain, like the UN, has promised much but delivered little.
 "We were a British colony, but so far we have not received even a pencil from Britain," said Mohammed Handule, commander of the Mandera demobilisation camp.
 "Unosom promised to fulfil all our needs, and has given nothing. But our government has supplied food - rice and tea - and we are satisfied. That's how we liberated Somaliland: on rice without sauce."
 Somaliland "liberated" itself within months of the overthrow of Mohammed Siad Barre, the dictator who condemned the north-west to under-development and political insignificance before launching a genocidal war against the civilian support base of the rebel Somali National Movement.
 At independence in May 1991, Somaliland was in ruins. Its capital, Hargeisa, was almost totally destroyed; towns and villages were sown with mines that still bring two or three victims a week to Hargeisa's rundown general hospital.
 Throughout 1992, security deteriorated steadily under the incompetent President Abdirahman Ahmed Ali.
 The turning point came in October 1992 when clan elders negotiated an end to potentially catastrophic clashes around Berbera port. Six months later, Somaliland's council of elders, the Guurti, negotiated a comprehensive peace agreement for Somaliland, drew up a new constitution and elected Mr Egal, a veteran politician, as president.
 "In three months he has accomplished things that were not even dreamed of in the two previous years, " said Sheikh Ibrahim, the Guurti's septuagenarian chairman.
 Mr Egal has appointed a government that not only has a wide clan base but includes many of the SNM leaders sidelined by the last administration. Hargeisa has a police force dressed in green uniforms - Unosom's single contribution to security. The supreme court is functioning again and Islamic law has been replaced by the post-colonial 1962 penal code, with minor amendments to make it acceptable to Muslim leaders.
 In Hargeisa, 150 telephone lines are now working. Local businessmen run a small electrical grid off two bulldozer engines and give free electricity to police stations, courts, mosques, ministries and main streets.
 In the last two months, taxes have been levied on Berbera port and on the leafy narcotic, qat. In Hargeisa, municipal taxes are being levied on street markets, meat, vegetable and milk sales, construction and transport. In the first eight days of taxation, pounds 1,000 was raised - to be divided between rubbish collection and salaries for 120 unpaid municipal workers.
 For the moment, all government taxes are financing the demobilisation experiment at Mandera - the first of six camps planned for 50,000 militiamen.
 "We must put all our efforts into security," said the health minister, Mahmoud Suleiman. "Some of these boys are threats to security today; some are potential threats. We must ease them back into productive civilian life. Everything else must be secondary."
 So far the government is fighting a lonely battle. The United Nations Children's Fund, Unicef, which promised latrines for Mandera, has not built one. Unosom, which promised uniforms, food and vocational training, has provided nothing. Britain, which promised police training for the demobbed, has trained no-one.
 "How much is being spent on forcible demobilisation in Mogadishu - $ 1.5 billion - and we are asking for $ 25,000 a month," exclaimed the vice-president, Abdirahman Aw Ali.
 "Unosom's task here was to help reconstruction and rehabilitation," said the interior minister, Musa Bihi. "But they told us there was no budget for reconstruction; everything was budgeted for the war . . . The [operating] cost of their aircraft here alone would have paid for our demobilisation."
 Somaliland faces a bleak future unless the international community belatedly makes good its promise of help. It has no salaries, no secondary schools, and no international recognition.
 But it is not deterred. "It will not be an attractive survival, but I think we will somehow survive," said President Egal.  A sympathetic Western ambassador in the region was less optimistic. "With these 6,000 guys," he said, "Egal has taken the tiger by the tail. If we don't help him, he'll be devoured."

LOAD-DATE: October 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



287 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 18, 1993

STUDENTS: 2: PLAYING PATTEN'S RAGTIME BLUES;
Will student volunteers now have to pay a fee to fill in for the state, asks Laura Matthews.

BYLINE: LAURA MATTHEWS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGE; Pg. E2

LENGTH: 792 words

 
 WE can't charge a membership fee. It's not ethical to charge people for volunteering. Renting an office in the union for a year would bankrupt us. We can raise funds partly through student rag, but that'll disappear as well."
 Paul Stowe, of Student Community Action (SCA) at Warwick University and a member of the national SCA committee, knows that unless volunteering is reclassified as a core union activity for student-union funding the projects his group undertakes could last another couple of years at most. 
 Under current proposals, volunteering is a non-core union activity - which means it will be unable to receive, even indirectly, public money, although the national SCA development unit estimates the value of student volunteers' work at pounds 9.6 million a year. Office space, sabbatical or full-time staff, telephone bills, volunteers' expenses, using the union's minibus for outings for people with disabilities or local children - all may have to be paid for at an "economic" rate.
 There are 15,000 volunteers in 125 SCA groups in the UK, undertaking local projects including babysitting, teaching social skills to people with disabilities, and digging old people's gardens. The brochure for Hull University SCA warns: "You may come across drug abuse, alcoholism, mental illness or violence, but committed volunteers are most
 welcome . . ."
 Hull students fill the gap between the closure of a day centre at 6pm on weekends and the opening of the night shelter at 10pm. Indeed student volunteers seem to be filling-in increasingly for services no longer provided by public agencies.
 The 300 students in Warwick's SCA run a driving scheme and are expecting increasing demand from their mostly elderly clients following the decision to end the public dial-a-ride scheme in Coventry.  Although they raised enough money to buy the car, as Paul Stowe says: "We can only run it if we can afford to put petrol in it."
 The students also help local people with literacy and are often the only group that will take on more challenging tasks.  "One thing about students is that they are incredibly open-minded, and don't hold the same stigmas. People who do meals on wheels for the elderly can always get helpers, the mentally ill can't. But they can come to groups like ours."
 SCA members at the University of the West of England (UWE) in Bristol work between one hour a week and three hours a day on projects as varied as the Wednesday afternoon crche for the children of visitors to Horfield prison; decorating community centres; working night shifts at the Salvation Army night shelter; taking people with learning difficulties on day trips; or entertaining 150 toddlers at the annual teddy bears' picnic.
 Simon Reid, SCA officer on the UWE student-union executive, is promising to do "something spectacular on the decorating front" as part of a student day of action against the Government proposals. He admits: "I would be very loth to impose a levy for joining, but it might come to that. We could keep going but it would be a struggle. The major expenses are publicity, training and travel, and we try to make no one out of pocket."
 The group stands to lose a full-time staff co-ordinator whose wages are currently paid by the student union and who is the first contact for local agencies needing volunteers.
 Rag, which also finds itself excluded from core activities, frequently funds SCA projects and donates money to small local charities as well as the large national ones. Rag makes grants of approximately pounds 2 million a year and its tradition goes back to 1865, according to Richard Turner, who founded the National Association of Rags.
 "Students put themselves over very enthusiastically. The most significant thing is that money is raised from the grassroots, street collections and sponsored events, not by fat cheques from corporate donors. A lot of it goes back to local organisations in grants of pounds 50 to pounds 200. It's essential income for play schemes as well as community centres."
 Increasingly, former student Rag organisers graduate to fundraising positions with national charities, reflecting the professionalism of their activities. Some Rags operate all year, not just for a week-long jamboree, and employ student sabbaticals and full-time staff.
 A group of SCA organisers has met Department for Education officials to put the case for their services to be regarded as core activities.
 Richard Turner says that the impact of the Government's proposals is uncertain. "Rag is a survivor and growing, but the key worry is that a lot of Rags get support in terms of offices and telephones in student unions. The proposals could slow things down."

LOAD-DATE: October 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



288 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 21, 1993

PENSIONERS TURN THE HEAT ON CLARKE OVER VAT ON FUEL;
Angry senior citizens descended on Whitehall yesterday. Martin Linton reports

BYLINE: MARTIN LINTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 532 words

 
 HUGH LAMBERT pays pounds 8.76 a week for lighting and heating - exactly the average bill for a single pensioner living on a state pension. But he draws no comfort from that fact.
 The retired welder from Rastrick, in Yorkshire, knows that if the Chancellor goes ahead with the levying of VAT on heating bills from next April it will cost him another 71p a week. 
 He also knows how much the single state pension will go up in April as a result of the Retail Price Index announced last week - exactly pounds 1, leaving him with just 29p of his pension rise.
 That so incensed him that he took out his best walking stick yesterday and set off for London, along with another 5,000 pensioners, to tell Kenneth Clarke just what he thought of his VAT on heat.
 Jim McCabe, a retired pattern-maker from neighbouring Brighouse, joined him because he thinks VAT on heating is the worst thing this government has ever done: "It's just a disaster. It's like the poll tax. It wasn't thought through in the beginning," he says.
 The promise of a special package of measures to help those in need cuts little ice with him. "The people it's going to hit worst are the people like me who have been putting a bit aside and are just above the benefit level.
 "We're getting penalised for trying to help ourselves and that's supposed to be one of the doctrines of the Conservative Party, isn't it? And we've got no choice, have we? We can't go over the Channel and get French electricity or Italian gas."
 "I'm lucky. I can get out and about, so I can keep my bills low. Hugh can't because of the stick and all that. But it's a risk. People are beginning to take risks because of this carry-on," he says.
 He had to be fit to get to yesterday's rally because, apart from the journey, there were 71 steps to negotiate into Westminster Central Hall and another 20 into the Commons to lobby their MPs.
 The hall was packed with respectable sexagenarians and septuagenarians who booed when Mr Clarke's name was mentioned and sprang to their feet to applaud John Smith, the Labour leader.
 George Maskell, aged 65, from Enfield, north London, declared that he had voted for Maggie Thatcher and John Major "but I have been betrayed". The pensioners, a quarter of the electorate, would have to vote him out next time.
 John Smith warned that some people could die as a result of the imposition of VAT and Sally Greengross, of Age Concern, pointed out that excess winter deaths are higher in Britain than in much colder countries such as Norway, Canada and Sweden.
 The Liberal Democrat frontbencher, Liz Lynne, urged the Government to "stop this insanity before it is too late".
 In the Commons yesterday, six Tory MPs signed an all-party motion expressing concern that "many hundreds of thousands of pensioners who miss out on benefits will have a real difficulty meeting the extra costs of fuel once VAT is levied".
 One of them, William Powell, who was at the rally, said the compensation package would not begin to mitigate the worst effects of the VAT extension "because it won't meet those people who are outside the existing social security and pension nets."

LOAD-DATE: October 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



289 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 22, 1993

WELFARE STATE EYED BY INSURERS;
Industry identifies big opportunities

BYLINE: FRANK KANE, CITY EDITOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 648 words

 
 INSURANCE industry chiefs are drawing up plans to "cherry pick" parts of the welfare state in preparation for the privatisation of large tracts of the health and social security services.
 Two Conservative politicians have helped with the plans.
 An internal briefing document from the Association of British Insurers, the industry's trade body, has identified the National Health Service, the provision of long-term care for the aged, and unemployment benefit as areas offering commercial opportunities. 
 The document, the Transfer of Responsibility from the Public to the Private Sector, concludes that there are "major opportunities for partnership with the Government over the next two to three years".
 It suggests that the ABI should explore with the Government how the industry could "assist in any re-definition of the welfare state", and how it could respond to "opportunities which may arise".
 Two Conservative politicians - Dr Liam Fox, MP for Woodspring and parliamentary private secretary to Michael Howard, the Home Secretary, and Peter Campbell, head of the home affairs section of the Conservative Research Department - have recently attended ABI meetings to discuss the plans.
 The insurers have identified areas where they see opportunities in taking over welfare state functions:
 - Collaboration and joint ventures with the NHS to help reduce the pounds 37 billion budget for 1993/94.
 - Expansion of private medical insurance beyond the current 6.5 million policyholders, either through fiscal incentives to the under-60s, or through a contracting-out system of certain NHS benefits.
 - The private provision of long-term care for the elderly, possibly through the tax-assisted release of equity tied up in property, estimated to be worth pounds 400 billion.
 - Private unemployment insurance. State jobless benefits are due to cost pounds 10.4 billion next year.
 - The transfer of liability for industrial injury, social security and invalidity to employers, currently costing the state pounds 7 billion.
 - Contracting out of the state pension, which currently costs pounds 26.6 billion.
 Mark Boleat, the ABI's director-general, said: "I would not call it cherry picking. The Government has clearly signalled it intends to reduce the public spending burden of the welfare state, and our members can help them do that.
 "It [the ABI document] has not been formally put to the Government, but I have lunch all the time with officials, ministers and politicians. So far there has been no concrete feedback. These are our thoughts, not proposals."
 A spokeswoman for Peter Lilley, Social Security Secretary, said: "We are obviously looking at a number of things that can be done with social security involving insurance companies. The Government is willing to take on board any comments from other parties."
 Gordon Brown, the shadow chancellor, challenged the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, and Treasury Chief Secretary Michael Portillo to rule out welfare state privatisation.
 "This is the most threatening document for welfare provision. It goes far beyond existing rightwing policy, with proposals for private unemployment insurance, health and care of the sick and elderly. If it were to go ahead, the Government would be washing its hands of responsibility for thousands of the sick, unemployed and disabled. It is clear that welfare is now seen simply as a business opportunity."
 The ABI has already been approached by Mr Lilley's department to extend mortgage payment protection insurance, which generates premiums worth pounds 500 million a year.
 Mortgage indemnity is likely to be made mandatory for all new housebuyers are likely in next month's Budget, so that those losing their job will not have their mortgages paid by the state, but by their insurance company.
 Notebook, page 16

LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



290 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 22, 1993

BIG BANG THREATENS GLOBAL CLEAN-UP;
Diary

BYLINE: MAEV KENNEDY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 760 words

 
 THE bit of the reconstructed Globe that has been finished, on Bankside in London, looks splendid. Just not very finished.  Ever since the Diary admired the beauty and variety of his excuses for its state, torrents of reports and technical briefings have come from Sam Wanamaker, on the Globe's healthy progress. It is to be hoped today doesn't result in his most magnificent excuse to date. A team from Fort Nelson, the Royal Armouries artillery museum in Hampshire, is trundling towards London with a big gun. His Bankside neighbours have already been warned that a cannon will be fired, to launch an educational collaboration between the theatre and the Tower of London across the river. The gun is a replica early 16th century wrought-iron breech loader. The last time it was fired in London was a couple of years ago, from Tower Wharf, to celebrate the 500th anniversary of the birth of Henry VIII. The original Globe, of course, burned to the ground in 1613, when the thatch roof caught fire after a cannon was discharged during the play Henry VIII. 
 AS they will be aware at the Globe, this is National Fire Safety Week. But everybody else should be told: this is National Fire Safety Week. Pay attention, or we all perish under the paper mountain: this is National Fire Safety Week. The first notice came from the Home Office press office last week, with a cunning little hole singed in the page. Then came Old Flames But the Embers Smoulder On, with a spent match taped to each copy. Then Will Your Bright Spark Burn Out Early, with attached birthday cake candle. Then one on elderly people, and another on children, mercifully without stapled grannies or toddlers.  Then a two page speech from the Minister. Now it's chip pan fires, beginning uncomfortably: "Chips can kill with more than cholesterol." The Diary opened it very cautiously, but the Home Office seems to have forgotten to put in the boiling oil.
 HURRAH for British Rail! Yesterday the train from Huntingdon arrived at Platform 9, Kings Cross Station, at 8.43 am, two minutes early! A tall, dapper, prosperous looking chap emerged from the first class compartment, and headed straight for the pay phone on the platform. Enthralled commuters couldn't avoid eavesdropping on the conversation with his office: "Michael here. Running late. Engineering works on the line." Michael's colleagues may have been sharp-eared enough to pick up, from the background hubbub, the commuters' chorus of "lying bastard".
 MORE from Mr Gummer on VAT. The Environment Secretary was launching some free energy advice centres yesterday. Wouldn't he get into trouble with his colleagues over this, he was asked. Wouldn't more energy saving mean less revenue from VAT on fuel?  "I would love to find that the Chancellor's return from VAT would be much less than he's expecting," Mr Gummer replied.
 THE Conservative MP for Langbaurgh, Michael Bates, has been inundated with calls praising his hearth-warming policy shift over VAT on domestic fuel. His column in the Middlesbrough Evening Gazette said firmly: "VAT is the other gross mistake the Government will make. I think the horror of what they are doing is best explained by a pensioner who wrote to me this week: 'I am afraid of what the winter might bring'." He alternates the column, Your Local MP, with Labour's Marjorie Mowlam. The incendiary views were those of Ms Mowlam, though the name and the smiley photograph on top were certainly Mr Bates.
 POOR old Boundary Commission, somebody loves them. The Consulate of Costa Rica has been in touch, on very nice Consulate note-paper. Costa Rica thinks the Boundary Commission's proposals for the Sparkbrook district of the Birmingham Small Heath constituency are "logical and sensible". Well, the letter is from Hilary Eccles-Williams, the Consul, who may be writing under his former hat as a Tory grandee of the Birmingham area. But it's nice to know Costa Rica cares.
 ACROSS reader rings. "I am an extremely busy woman. I am a freelance writer and broadcaster, and I am gutting a house. I also loathe mixing with the hoi polloi. They frequently talk to me when I am shopping, especially about the National Health.  I have rung Marks & Spencer at Marble Arch and left my name - but I have a feeling they are not going to call me back."
 FROM the very correct Yorkshire Evening Press: "A report in last week's Evening Press which stated that sixth-formers at Pock lington School use 'a five-bedroomed cottage' as common rooms should have read 'a five-room cottage'."

LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



291 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 22, 1993

ROCK/POP: TAKE THAT BACK

BYLINE: CAROLINE SULLIVAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 626 words

 
 TAKE THAT: Everything Changes
 (RCA 74321 169262)
 THAT these blow-dried Mancunians have established themselves as the nation's top teen group is an indictment of our times.  Take That could never have achieved such preeminence in the Eighties, which were dominated by the decidedly sexier Bros.  Anyway, herewith their last three hit singles (Relight My Fire, Why Can't I Wake Up and the rather fine Pray) plus 10 others, all engineered to emphasise those trademark boyish harmonies. The most interesting numbers have already been released as singles; regarding the rest there is little to be said other than that they share the hits' sparkling blandness. It must be noted that there is a future beyond Take That for lead singer/writer Gary Barlow. His lyrics deal succinctly, if adolescently, with every aspect of love, from sexual jealousy, eg "I'm mad at you because of the things you do", to transvestism - "I came to your door to see you again, but where you once stood was an old man instead". Spicy! 
 BIKINI KILL: Pussy Whipped
 (Wiiija WIJ28)
 THE PRESS release included with the second album by these American rad-fems boasts that it is "total girl-powered punk rock". That can be taken to mean "freefloating fury meets minimal musical ability". It's unfortunate that this most politicised of the Riot Grrrl groups has chosen to submerge qualities such as irony and articulateness beneath ear-scything guitar blasts. Singer Kathleen Hanna is so enraged that words to fetching tunes like Hamster Baby and Star-Bellied Boy are transmuted to wild shrieks. Does Bikini Kill's notion of feminism as incoherent anger do women any favours?
 PEARL JAM: Vs
 (Epic 474549 2)
 THE RELEASE of the sequel to their seven million-selling debut was delayed when Pearl Jam decided to change the album's title after the artwork had already been printed. Vs ("Versus") is said to signify the rivalry between the group and brother Seattle-ites Nirvana. The differences in their styles will preclude anyone ever confusing them - while Nirvana grunge away, PJ have moved on. Like its predecessor, Ten, Vs is, at least superficially, a cavalcade of cranked-up guitars weighed down by Eddie Vedder's histrionic vocals. It's quickly obvious, though, that this is a work of some depth and ingenuity. A few of the tracks, including Animal and the new single, Go, can be taken at thrashy face value, but for each of those there are two of the ilk of Dissident and WMA. The former is a heavyweight rockfest, the second a percussion-led jam whose muted sound induces a sense of claustrophobia. On Elderly Woman Behind The Counter In A Small Town, Vedder's voice adopts the sardonicism of Elvis Costello and the poignancy of folkie Gordon Lightfoot. If you can hack the negative lyrics, there's much to love on this album.
 ME'SHELL NDEGEOCELLO:
 Plantation Lullabies
 (Maverick 9362 45333-2)
 THE FIRST female signing to Madonna's Maverick label is more intriguing than the average American rapstress. Her cool, solemn rhyming style is more evocative of Nina Simone than of other hip hoppers.  Around half of the 13 songs proselytise about the African-American experience; the rest are straightforward love epistles. The common links are the unruffled soul arrangements (producer David Gamson's association with Luther Vandross is plain here) and NdegeOcello's reflective voice. Whether she's addressing black pride, eg Soul On Ice ("We've been indoctrinated and convinced by the white racist standard of beauty") or something baser, as in Picture Show ("The way you eat your cereal / So cute reading Shakespeare in your birthday suit"), the sense of calm contemplation never wavers. This is an album that will only improve over time.

LOAD-DATE: October 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



292 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 23, 1993

UNPOPULAR SOCRATES FORCES FRENCH TO RETHINK THEIR RAIL PHILOSOPHY;
Ticket sales fiasco compels SNCF to consult unhappy passengers

BYLINE: ALIX CHRISTIE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 39

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 THE mother and daughter wondered where all the non-smoking cars had gone, while the dapper pensioner wanted to get a seat facing front. The professorial type announced his "shock and horror" at an unannounced 50 per cent fare rise as, beside him, the elderly gentleman with designer spectacles was getting increasingly agitated.
 "Whatever happened to the idea of public service?" he finally exploded. "You are imposing a dictatorship of the obligatory reservation. The railway is no longer at the service of the passenger, it is the passenger who is at the service of the railway!" 
 Victoria station? Paddington? No, this irritable mob gathered last Wednesday at Paris's Gare St Lazare. And though it may seem incredible to British Rail travellers, even Societe Nationale de Chemins de Fer, the acknowledged paragon of national railways, can't keep customers happy these days.
 One could almost pity the SNCF. It has built "gee-whiz" high-speed trains that leave and arrive on time, can be reserved by computer from home and only rarely suffers from that problem curious to South-east England: leaves on the line.
 Last April it installed "Socrates", a computer reservation system aimed at making train travel more efficient without sacrificing affordability. But it brought protests from the public when the error-prone system cancelled trains, caused thousands of passengers to miss others, refused itineraries and pumped up fares.
 "Railways are technical things filled with mostly technical people," said Serge Sacalais, Montparnasse station chief. "But it's true we sort of put our foot in it because we didn't know how to communicate."
 The public fury has translated into an 8.8 per cent drop in passengers since January that will push the SNCF's 1993 deficit to an estimated Fr9 billion ( pounds 990 million) on turnover of more than Fr55 billion and force it to act. Hence the SNCF's Operation Dialogue, subtitled "We have so much to say to each other" (much of it unprintable). For four days this week 2,000 SNCF employees, from ticket sellers up to president Jacques Fournier, stood in the middle of 157 stations and let 100,000 passengers take verbal aim.
 "It serves as a kind of escape valve," Mr Sacalais said. And one is needed, for the SNCF seems to have a knack of shooting itself in the foot. Only six months after the Socrates public relations debacle, it has just unveiled a new automatic ticket machine which unintentionally sums up what many perceive to be the grasping nature of the new, improved SNCF, when it announces: "Does not give change" before adding helpfully, "Overpayment accepted".
 The notion of public service is increasingly at odds with modern commercial logic which the SNCF has adopted to compete head-on with air and road travel. The high-speed TGV, the first to break with the equal-pricing policy that was SNCF religion for decades, is the face of the future. SNCF's main lines will no longer be a public service geared to the typical passenger, known as "the widow from Carpentras". Instead, they will operate like airlines that must make money.
 Judging from Socrates and its application on the new TGV Nord, many rail passengers do not like this vision. Only 49 per cent approve of their railway today, compared with 58 per cent in 1988. "People think of the SNCF as a public service - they think there should always be a train when they need it," says Mr Sacalais. "Our job is to explain that it isn't so."
 Socrates, a Fr1.8 billion adaptation of the American Airlines reservation system, is demand-driven, allocating seats and choosing fares electronically.
 Far more sophisticated than the old price structure of peak and non-peak periods, Socrates decides when peak demand will force prices up, thereby attempting to divert lower-paying passengers to trains now running half-empty.
 In theory, it will allow those with fare reductions - the aged, families, students - more flexibility to take peak-period trains. So far, it has failed to do so.
 But at least this week's communications exercise proved bracingly honest.
 As one passenger, wondering why the computer always routed passengers on the most expensive itinerary, said slyly: "I hope you're not just doing it to make more money."
 Whereupon the SNCF agent grinned and said: "We may be Manichean, but we're not yet to that point."

LOAD-DATE: October 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



293 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 25, 1993

PORTILLO PREDICTS BIG WELFARE CUTS

BYLINE: STEPHEN BATES, POLITICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 22

LENGTH: 331 words

 
 THE state should not be relied on for health services and welfare where people could make their own provision, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Michael Portillo, suggested yesterday.
 It would not be able to sustain pensioners' standards of living in the 21st century, he told BBC TV's On The Record. He added: "I think we need to get away from dogmatic distinctions between private and public within the health service." 
 He criticised those who expected elderly relatives to be cared for by the state despite having the means to look after them.
 His comments come after the Guardian revealed last week that an internal document from the Association of British Insurers identified business opportunities in health care, unemployment insurance and care of the elderly as parts of the welfare state are privatised.
 Mr Portillo repeated his call for state spending as a proportion of national income to be cut from the present 45 per cent.  Some on the right want the figure reduced to 25 per cent.
 Politicians in all main parties have drawn attention to the burgeoning cost of social provision by the early years of the next century, but Mr Portillo is one who may still be around to take responsibility for it.
 He said: "The conundrum we have is how can we enable people to have all the health care that they would like, to enjoy the standards that they would like and yet commit ourselves also to restraining the size of the state?
 "I really believe that if it gets any bigger, it is going to impose such a burden on the wealth-creating sector of this country that it is going to crush it."
 He urged people to provide for retirement through private pensions rather than rely on state pensions which could not meet rising expectations.
 "One of the things in the 21st century you cannot rely on the state to do is to sustain the standard of living that you have achieved, which I think by then will be very high, into your retirement."

LOAD-DATE: October 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



294 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 27, 1993

BUREAUCRACY FIGHTS BACK;
Drew Clode on the worry of a community care jobs coup

BYLINE: DREW CLODE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 991 words

 
 DOES SOCIAL work have a future? It has been with us as a distinct profession for only just over 20 years, emerging from an array of child care staff, lady almoners, mental health workers and others who had provided the Beveridge state's response to the poverty and unemployment it believed were merely transient phenomena of Britain's post-war recovery. Today, however, social work is in danger of being usurped by a new youngest profession - care management. The issue is emerging as social services departments take on a new shape and it represents the basis of discussion at the opening session today in Solihull of the annual social services conference. The era of care management was heralded with the implementation in April of the community care shake-up. Grassroots accounts of how care managers are settling in are thin on the ground; there are almost as many definitions of their tasks as there are social services departments and neither the Department of Health, nor the Central Council for Training and Education in Social Work, has given the slightest clue as to what constitutes a workable job description or what training is relevant. Hard evidence, such as it is, suggests that two years ago local authorities in England and Wales were planning to create up to 2,100 care management posts in the run up to April, compared with some 25,000 practising field social workers in the United Kingdom as a whole. That figure of 2,100 will certainly have been passed this year. If the local authority associations were right when they calculated that an extra 100,000 or so referrals of elderly people would occur within the first year, with more down the line; and if an average, generous allocation of cases per care manager is 50; then either that caseload will have to increase, assessment time will have to shrink, some elderly people will have to be ignored, or local authorities are going to need some 20,000-plus staff to care for these new referrals as they enter the welfare market. The long-term question is: where are these staff going to come from? A joint survey by the Association of Directors of Social Services and Community Care magazine showed that some two-thirds of social services departments were planning to fill care management posts by redesignating some existing social workers. But recent evidence suggests that when these posts fall vacant, they are not automatically filled by those who were previously in social work or who even possess social work experience or qualification. They are as likely to be filled by occupational therapists, district nurses, home or domiciliary care managers and, in some cases, teachers.
 EMPLOYERS are only too aware of the issues at stake. Ian White, immediate ADSS past-president and director of social services for Oxfordshire, says that although on the face of it there is still clearly a shortage of social workers, nobody at present knows precisely what the impact of care management will be on the social services staff profile over the next two to three years. There is, it is widely felt, a particular need to monitor closely the move from occupational therapy to care managers.  A novel definition of the care managers' role was offered at a recent seminar held to examine training needs: "They're social workers without the stodgy glue," one participant said - a coarse definition of care management as an operationalised form of social worker. The emphasis is entirely on action whose outcomes can be measured, providing effective solutions to user needs and, perhaps somewhere further ahead, taking comprehensive responsibility for a delegated budget. Meanwhile, the "stodgy glue" discarded when care management emerges from its social work chrysalis is as likely as not to contain some traditional social worker roles such as counselling (as opposed to giving down-to-earth practical advice), what used to be called client-advocacy, as well as the habit of using a whole gamut of sub-Freudian psychodynamic jargon that leant itself more to analysis than action. More controversially, that "stodgy glue" will almost certainly contain beliefs inherited from the formative crucible of the 1960s and 1970s, that social workers are the moral guardians of the principles of social equality and the struggle against those oppressive forces which, as some see it, still permeate late twentieth century British society. And there lies the nub of the conflict. Advocating the interests of "clients" against the bureaucracy of the local authority "supplier" of services, for example, is given a completely different twist when the care manager is the chief agent of that local authority, and the local authority itself has long-since ceased to be the only supplier in the market.
 IF SOCIAL workers are attacked on this high ground there seems to be only three fallback positions they can adopt. They can:
 - Make substantial changes in their professional culture and embrace the new disciplines of care management. Not an impossible task, though there is scant evidence that they are either willing or able easily to make these adjustments.
 - Concentrate their specialist skills on so-called heavy-end, complicated assessments, leaving the easier, more straightforward problems to care management. This is precisely what is occurring in councils such as East Sussex and Cornwall.
 - Move wholly on to the provider side of their local authority, offering counselling and advocacy skills as and when care managers believe such therapies are part of their users' overall needs. But if the struggle between social work and care management hots up, the conflict will not just be about which profession is best suited to carry out what job. It will also involve the painful task of finding out just how much of the stodgy glue is lost forever, and how much of it - and in what for m - can and should be transplanted into the care manager's domain.

LOAD-DATE: October 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



295 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 27, 1993

DOCTORS FORECAST BAD WINTER FOR 'FLU

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL,MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 405 words

 
 BRITAIN may be in for a bad winter from the influenza virus and vulnerable groups such as the elderly and heart disease sufferers were yesterday urged by specialists to have themselves vaccinated.
 It is difficult to forecast the extent of influenza epidemics, but a leading researcher said early indicators pointed to a high level of cases.
 Last year was a mild winter for 'flu, but an estimated 3,000 to 4,000 people still died. In the winter of 1989/90, considered to be an epidemic year, between 19,000 and 25,000 died. 
 Dr Douglas Fleming, director of the Birmingham research unit of the Royal College of General Practitioners, which monitors 'flu cases at GP surgeries throughout the country, said that in the past overall cases of respiratory illness, rather than just 'flu, had proved an accurate indicator of trends.
 So far this year such cases were running at 50 per 1,000 of the population, compared with half this number for the same time last year.
 "Forecasting is very difficult, but certainly at the moment respiratory infections are running at quite a high level. A number of strains of influenza have already been isolated.
 "The message is that 'flu is about. It is desirable for people at high risk to get themselves vaccinated."
 Speaking at a meeting in London organised by the Association for Influenza Monitoring and Surveillance, which is funded by vaccine manufacturers, Dr Fleming said it was a misconception that 'flu was a trivial illness, and every year, apart from deaths, it put an enormous strain on hospital beds as elderly people living alone had to be brought in for treatment.
 Professor John Oxford, head of virology at the Royal London Hospital, said the current vaccine could provide around 70 per cent protection against the three strains of influenza circulating this year.  Even where people were not fully protected, they were likely to suffer fewer complications.
 He said protection would take place within five days of people receiving the vaccine, so although it was worthwhile getting vaccinated early, it was still not too late once an epidemic had started.
 Department of Health advice is that the elderly and those with long-term conditions such as chest complaints, heart disease or diabetes should be vaccinated, as should residents of nursing homes, old people's homes and other long-stay facilities, where rapid spread is likely.

LOAD-DATE: October 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



296 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 27, 1993

CARE IN THE COMMUNITY 'FAILING THE ELDERLY AND DISABLED'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 253 words

 
 PATCHY introduction of the community care system has left many elderly and disabled people in confusion and lacking the services they need, two reports claim today.
 Complexity, delays and lack of co-ordination in some parts of the country are undermining the system's fundamental aim of offering vulnerable people a choice of care services, according to the reports by Age Concern and the National Federation of Housing Associations. 
 However, social services directors - who are running the system - have released survey details which, they say, show that community care has been introduced successfully.
 The reports coincide with the opening today in Solihull of the annual social services conference which will review progress of the community care system introduced in April.
 The survey by the Association of Directors of Social Services says that more are being helped to live independently.
 The Age Concern report, however, describes the start of community care as very uneven and highlights "disturbing" variations in the system.
 The report criticises jargon and complexity in assessment.
 The housing associations' report says the social services "gate-keepers" are dividing people with equal needs into deserving and undeserving cases.
 "It is only the elderly who are eating at the table of community care. Single homeless people, ex-offenders and people with drug or alcohol problems are not even entering the dining room.
 "Community care jobs coup, G2 page 15

LOAD-DATE: October 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



297 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 29, 1993

COMMENTARY: THE TEENAGE MUM AS TARGET;
Commentary

BYLINE: ANN HOLMES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 709 words

 
 LET me begin by declaring an interest. My mother was a single parent. One of my great regrets is that I have never known her.  In the late 1940s it more or less went without question that unmarried teenage mothers gave up their babies for adoption.
 I have also been a single parent myself. In common with the majority so classified, I became a single parent as a result of ceasing to live with my children's father. Less than 35 per cent of lone parents are single and unmarried. 
 By contrast with many tenants, the equity from years of owner occupation allowed us the freedom to choose to live separately.  But freedom of choice gives rise to additional households. Lack of freedom traps people in living arrangements they find undesirable.
 This holds true not only for spouses but, for example, adult children, former friends and ageing relatives. Dealing with increasing numbers of households requires continuous investment in the process of construction and rehabilitation. That same process can be labour intensive and low on imports and, if pursued energetically, almost always enjoys a positive correlation with a vibrant economy.
 Remarks to the Conservative Party conference by Sir George Young and others about single mothers have been viewed with some scepticism. What outcome was he hoping for when he implied such mothers were the reason young couples could not get decent housing? What message was he wanting us to take on board?
 Was he admitting that the Government is incapable of ensuring an adequate supply of housing? With talk of yet further cuts in housing expenditure in next month's Budget, he might well have been.
 Was he heralding a move to cut down on the number of households? Can we look forward to the elderly being encouraged to cohabit as a means of simultaneously reducing the number of households and coping with increased fuel costs?
 Was he suggesting the thought that nowhere to live would deter teenage pregnancies? In fact, the number of births to teenage mothers has fallen by 37 per cent over the past 20 years and the vast majority of teenage mums live with their parents. Are we to look forward, however, to this group being drawn into line with students by having housing benefit withdrawn?
 Or was the Minister simply trying to divert attention from the inadequacy of the Government's housing programme, by turning a group of its victims into scapegoats?
 Households headed by lone parents account for less than 4 per cent of all households. The poverty of such households will inevitably mean a high percentage of that 3.8 per cent live in "social" housing. However, only 0.3 per cent of local authority tenants are women under 20. In 1992 only 2.4 per cent of new local authority lettings went to lone parents under 19.
 We should also ask ourselves where such young women tend to find themselves being housed. As the effect of public expenditure cuts and financial contraints on local councils have combined with the effects of the right to buy policy, new lettings are increasingly confined to the less desirable dwellings on the less desirable estates. Many such estates are becoming residual pools of welfare housing where poverty and lack of hope are the hallmarks.
 Despite evidence to the contrary, there has been talk about teenagers choosing to become pregnant as a way of buying a lifestyle. It would be hard to find a greater indictment of our society than acknowledging life as a single parent on welfare benefit on a run-down estate as representing achievement. Under-18-year-olds on income support receive a personal allowance of pounds 26.45 per week.
 A teenage mum pushing a pram round a run-down estate is an easy target. But targets have a way of expanding. If young women have a right to keep their babies and we recognise the right of those babies to be decently housed, then the Government must set about ensuring housing is available.
 It is not acceptable for government ministers to imply that it is only possible to house one group of people at the expense of another. That dilemma arises as a result of policies the Government has chosen to pursue.
 Ann Holmes is director of the National Housing and Town Planning Council.

LOAD-DATE: October 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



298 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 30, 1993

'NO ANGEL' JUDGE STOKES ANGER WITH NEW RULING

BYLINE: LOUISE JURY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 445 words

 
 THE judge who called a nine-year-old victim of a sex attack "no angel" yesterday gave two men who had unlawful intercourse with a girl aged 13 a conditional discharge.
 Judge Ian Starforth Hill, QC, said the girl had gone round "trying to find young men to satisfy her sexual desires" and that the offence was at the "bottom end of the scale."
 Philip Lemon, aged 21, unemployed, of Thornhill, Southampton, and Keith Dyer, aged 19, a factory worker, of Hythe, Southampton, admitted the offences. 
 The judge, who is 71, told the men: "I have to pass a sentence because it is against the law and to prevent other young men from falling into the same trap. It would be folly on my part to pass a custodial sentence on you whatever the Court of Appeal may think."
 Winchester crown court had heard evidence from police that the girl, now aged 14, was "more like (the model) Mandy Smith than the proverbial schoolgirl with pigtails."
 Detective Sergeant Robert Bowness said: "She is an exceptionally attractive girl with a bad reputation for her involvement with boys." Her parents had tried to protect her from herself but she lied to them. James Counsell, defending, said the girl had handed Mr Lemon a note while they were driving explaining what she wanted him to do to her. Mr Lemon admitted having sex with her in the car.
 Mr Dyer admitted sexual intercourse after she pestered him at a New Year's Eve party. "At first he ignored her telephone calls but she called at his home and persuaded him to have sex with her."
 The judge added: "This girl may have been a very willing partner and encouraged you to take part in this offence, but girls of 13 years have to be protected, even from themselves.
 "They may come across horrid old men, when the offence is serious, or it may be willingly with young men when they need protection against themselves.
 "I had better not say she was no angel or the national press with have a hundred field days."
 A youth, aged 17, who admitted intercourse with the girl, was cautioned on Crown Prosecution Service instructions.
 Jane Kilpatrick, of the charity Kidscape which helps abused children, said the judge, who has made a number of controversial decisions in sex cases, showed an extraordinary ignorance of the natural development of adolescent girls and should be retired.
 "Whatever a 13-year-old girl might look or sound like she is still only 13.  They are becoming more aware of their sexuality, but they do not go around trying to seduce adults.
 "Those who do are disturbed in some way and my question would be, why is she behaving in this way?"
 Leader comment, page 26

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



299 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 30, 1993

COMMUNITY CARE TO GET 20M POUNDS BOOST

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 559 words

 
 MINISTERS yesterday produced a surprise pounds 20 million increase in funding for community care next year, despite the tough public spending round. Dr Brian Mawhinney, the Health Minister, told local authority leaders he wanted the extra money spent on services to enable elderly and disabled people to stay in their own homes rather than enter residential care.
 Labour-controlled local authority associations said the total community care funding settlement of pounds 1.3 billion fell at least pounds 120 million short of what was required. But social services directors said they were relieved to have got as much as they had. 
 Both the associations and directors warned, however, that overall social services budgets could be torpedoed by the local government grant allocations in December.
 The community care funding for 1994/95 was set out by Dr Mawhinney at the annual social services conference in Solihull.  There had been fears he would announce a cut in the sum, announced last year, to be transferred from social security under the three-year shift of finance for the community care changes.
 In the event, the minister confirmed the sum of pounds 652 million which, added to last year's transfer and other elements, produces the total pounds 1.3 billion. Of that, pounds 736 million, including the pounds 20 million increase, is "ring-fenced" strictly for community care use, 85 per cent being reserved for spending in the private and voluntary sectors.
 The Department of Health is likely to have succeeded in protecting the cash transfer from the Treasury's grasp both because it had been signalled previously and because community care is seen as a long-term saving. The new system has capped the social security bill for residential care, which soared from pounds 10 million in 1978 to pounds 2.5 billion last year.
 Similarly, the pounds 20 million increase will have been presented as a real saving, enabling 100 people in each local authority area to have respite or home care worth pounds 2,000 and thereby to stay out of more costly residential or nursing homes.
 Dr Mawhinney said there was emerging evidence that the community care system, introduced in April, was enabling more people to remain in their own homes. In some areas, the reported rise in numbers of such people was already 10 per cent or more.
 Although the pounds 20 million is not being designated only for home or respite care, the minister said he would be looking to see it spent in that way.
 The Association of Metropolitan Authorities and the Association of County Councils criticised the overall cash allocation for including no extra money for staff training or infrastructure. The pounds 140 million allocated for this in the current year is simply to be repeated.
 Peter Westland, AMA under-secretary, said an extra sum of between pounds 140 million and pounds 200 million was needed in respect of the costs of managing the additional 110,000 elderly and disabled people expected to need services during the year.
 This under-funding and the likelihood of cuts in general local authority grants presented a "lethal mixture", said Mr Westland.
 However, Denise Platt, president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said directors had not expected any increase in community care funding.

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



300 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 30, 1993

YUGOSLAVS HUSTLE TO STAVE OFF HUNGER;
Serbia's burgeoning black economy is rife with hawkers, pimps and sharks as sanctions bite deeper, writes Yigal Chazan in Belgrade

BYLINE: YIGAL CHAZAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 651 words

 
 RADE never misses a trick. Moments after buying three cartons of cigarettes from a kiosk, this Serb refugee was hawking them at double the price to people fed up with queuing. Having made a tidy profit, Rade, aged 37, shuffled off to his store at Zelani Venac market, lugging a huge sports bag stuffed with food and knick-knacks.
 "You name it, I sell it," he said, winking. "These days you have to be a wheeler-dealer to survive." 
 Battered by sanctions and hyper-inflation, the Yugoslav economy is in a state of terminal decline. The closure of state factories and companies has left millions out of work, while those clinging to their jobs are paid a pittance.
 To stave off penury and hunger, hordes of Yugoslavs swallow their pride and take to the street.
 Nowhere is the black economy more visible than along Bulevar Revolucije, one of the city's main arteries. Petty traders line the road selling anything from stylish sports shoes to cosmetics, some displaying their wares on flimsy stalls, others on car bonnets.
 Most merchandise has been smuggled to Serbia from neighbouring countries.  Tourist agencies specialise in ferrying the touts back and forth to Romania, Hungary and Bulgaria, giving huge bribes to customs officials to turn a blind eye.
 Zeljko, a postman aged 28, normally finishes his shift at 3pm and then dashes down to the Bulevar for a bit of overtime. In just a few days of trading, he can double his monthly income, equivalent to about pounds 12, which is barely enough to buy a week's worth of groceries for his family.
 Zeljko's car bonnet is decorated with products including nappies, Swiss chocolate and toothpaste. He restocks on foreign shopping expeditions at least once a week.
 "When we arrive, it's like a stampede at a winter sale. I love watching those on the trip for the first time. They stare wide-eyed at mounds of toilet paper, just because it's three times cheaper than in Belgrade.
 "People haul all sorts of things on to the coach. Sacks of cement, onions, complete bathrooms. Unloading at home can take half an hour."
 In contrast to the roguish antics of Zeljko and Rade are sharks preying on the most vulnerable. The elderly, often seen fishing out scraps from city dustbins, are being exploited by a growing number of unscrupulous estate agents. They offer pensioners between pounds 80 and pounds 120 a month - to pay for food and medical bills - in exchange for the title deeds of their flats when they die.
 "It's a good deal for them and good business for us," bragged Gojko, the director of one agency. "Age, mobility and health," he said, "are important criteria when selecting clients.
 "We don't want them to live too long. If the value of the real estate is high, then death within five or six years is still profitable."
 Gojko has had to turn away scores of pensioners who do not fit the bill. "If they're too young we just tell them to come back in 10 years' time," he said.
 The pages of Oglasi, Belgrade's popular advertising magazine, reveal another growth sector - the sex industry. Brothels and pimps recruit poverty-stricken women.
 Two months ago, Tomo, aged 28, a former soldier, set up an "escort agency" in the back room of his flat. He left the Yugoslav army earlier this year after salaries were slashed. "It's not honourable, but neither are these sanctions," Tomo said. "I would go back to soldiering tomorrow, but it doesn't pay."
 He says some of the women on his books are single mothers who would be even worse off but for his offer of "work".
 Tomo plans to move into larger premises. He reckons his preference for local girls has given him an edge over pimps employing Russian and Polish protitutes. "No one's interested in them any more because they've been around too long, and the risks of catching something are high. Domestic women are better for business."

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



301 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 30, 1993

LAUGHTER'S LITTLE BIG MAN;
Obituary: Sydney Arnold

BYLINE: PETER COTES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 88

LENGTH: 426 words

 
 SYDNEY ARNOLD was 93 when he died recently and for more than 70 years of a life of comic versatility, he played a variety of parts in revue, musical comedy, stage farce and pantomime. In all - especially panto - he made his audience share in the fun of living hilariously, through his diminutive frame, timing and personality.  But he never became so typecast that he was thought incapable of playing anything but midgets. 
 Barely 5ft in height, and with an incorrigible roguish twinkle, he was made for the lighter stage, but like Wee Georgie Wood, who was even smaller, Sydney was well-proportioned. Unlike the incomparable Georgie (towards his end), the tiny Sydney retained his figure, even his boyish looks, until he was nearing his nineties.
 He was a mite of a youngster, still learning his trade, when in his teens he landed a part with the legendary Robert Courtneidge (star picker and father of the immortal Cicely).
 He was picked for Ian Hay's A Safety Match in 1921. With so much talent to watch ('Cis' became a reigning queen of revue), it was no wonder that Arnold found his most profitable career in stage comedy; also flirting with the circus as a clown for a short time and cinema as a street pedlar in the film of Oliver!
 There were many screen appearances throughout that long career, not only in England but in America, where he played cameos in such favourite films as One More Time, with Sammy Davis Jnr, and a "feed" role, for which he was well paid, in the Kraft Television Theatre series.
 Apart from 84 Charing Cross Road, much of his work on the small screen was in series such as The Sweeney, Robin's Nest, and Miss Jones And Son. Sydney was also one of the innumerable little old men in episodes of the Benny Hill Show.
 Most of his career, because of his physique, was devoted to playing funsters and although panto, revue and slapstick farce predominated his career, he found time to become momentarily serious in a London production of War And Peace and pop up again in Crime And Punishment, in Leicester.
 At the age of 80, he reverted to that side of show business he knew best - farce. He played George, the chirpy sparrow, in Wot! No Pyjamas, which was Whitehall farce with a vengeance and not very funny. It didn't last long. Neither did his marriage (to the actress Audrey Binham) last forever; ending in divorce.
 The last five years of his life were blighted when at the age of 88 he contracted Alzheimer's disease.
 Sydney Arnold, born February 21, 1900; died October, 1993

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



302 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

October 30, 1993

SHORT CUTS: NEVER CROSS AN EMU

BYLINE: ROBERT LEEDHAM

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 68

LENGTH: 312 words

 
 Nominee for Headline of the Year: the Daily Star's "Biker killed by an emu".  Despite inspiring visions of Hell's Angels being pecked to death and of Rod Hull grappling with a crack-crazed puppet, the facts behind the story are even more incredible. motorcyclist Stephen Cawthorne "fought off muggers in Mexico", was robbed in Peru and "survived a nightmare ride through war-torn El Salvador" - looking for trouble, was he? - before meeting his Australian nemesis, an emu that failed to look both ways before crossing. Stephen rode straight into it, did a somersault, and broke his neck. "I noticed a large puff of feathers as they hit," said eyewitness Keith Wright. 
 It's a complicated business, crossing the road; at least, in legal terms. New Jersey's Superior Court Judge Harold B Wells has just overturned the drunken-driving conviction of Paul Wagoner, 37, who was convicted of crossing a road while drunk - in a wheelchair. He wasn't driving, ruled the judge; he was "walking". In fact, he was jaywalking - which carries a $ 50 fine.  Touche.
 From the British Medical Journal: "Nuns have been known to have high rates of breast cancer since Ramazzini's observation of the association in 1713." However, it's taken the intervening 280 years to prove that social class and late childbearing have nothing to do with the link. The BMJ admits it's stumped for an explanation, so Short Cuts has a suggestion . . .  radioactive crucifixes?
 Turn on, tune in, drop out . . . and drop dead. That madcap Timothy Leary chap is back. And he's found a new drug to replace LSD. Goodbye ecstasy, hello . . . senility. Leary, obviously in full control of all his faculties, told students in Indiana that the onset of senile dementia is something they should look forward to.  "This great high has been wasted on old people," he announced. Timothy Leary is 73.

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



303 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 1, 1993

'THESE PEOPLE SHOT ONE OF THEIR OWN. THEY'D HAVE SHOT ANYBODY . . . THEY SHOULD BE ROUNDED UP AND GASSED';
Country and Western night out that became scene of terror - Relatives strive to come to terms with outcome of pub massacre

BYLINE: JOHN MULLIN.

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 517 words

 
 IN JOHN and Nellie Burns's council house, their 14-year-old daughter was bustling about, making tea and sandwiches for the vistors who poured into their home at St Canice's Park in the village of Eglinton yesterday.
 It was hard to believe she had just lost her father, and knew her mother was fighting for her life after loyalists sprayed the Rising Sun pub in Greysteel with gunfire on Saturday night. Gillian Burns is the youngest of the couple's three children.  Her father, who worked part-time in the old Ulster Defence Regiment, was a Protestant, killed by gunmen who claim to share the same faith. 
 She said: "They went to the Rising Sun every Saturday night. They loved the country and western music. These people shot one of their own. They would have shot anybody. You would be ashamed to be Protestant, you really would."
 John Burns, aged 54, left the UDR several years ago. He had worked as a shop assistant, but had been unemployed for some time, said a friend. "He was a real happy-go-lucky fellow. If you wanted something, he would be the first to go for you. It didn't matter what religion you were. It doesn't matter whether gunmen who do this are the IRA or UFF. They should be rounded up and gassed."
 In a bungalow just off the Ballygudden Road, they were mourning Moira Duddy, aged 59. She had bought the house 33 years before with her husband, John, for pounds 300. It was roofless then, and they spent their married life renovating it. They brought up five sons and a daughter there. They had five grandchildren. Des Killkey, her brother, said: "She lived for her family and this wee house. She had no interest in politics at all. Moira's death won't affect the situation in Northern Ireland. It is totally pointless."
 Her son Chris, aged 25, broke down. "She was a Christian, hard-working woman.  She looked forward to Saturday nights - it was the only night of the week she went out."
 The oldest victim was James Moore, aged 81, of Meadowbank Place, father of Jimmy Moore, who had owned the Rising Sun for 22 years. He hadfive children and leaves behind a 77-year-old widow, Rosie.
 Joe McDermott, aged 60, lived beyond neighbouring Eglinton. He was a single man, regarded by most locals as an eccentric, who would walk four miles to buy milk for his beloved cats, and almost 10 miles to the Rising Sun. He liked Saturday nights, because there were dances for older people.
 John Moyne, aged 50, was a supervisor at the Dupont chemical factory in Londonderry.
 Sweethearts Karen Thompson, aged 19, and Steven Mullan, aged 20, a joiner, were planning to get engaged at Christmas.
 Jeremy Thompson, aged 20, Karen's brother, said: "She was a Catholic but she went to mixed schools. Nobody bothered about religion round here."
 She and Stephen usually went to the pub for one drink on a Saturday before going to his house to babysit.
 Karen had trained as a hairdresser but was to start work at a clothing factory in Londonderry this morning. "She was exciting about it but now she's going to be buried on my 21st birthday," he said.

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



304 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 1, 1993

BURGLARS DO IT GENTLY TO RAISE CASH

BYLINE: DUNCAN CAMPBELL, CRIME CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 399 words

 
 CONTRARY to popular belief, most burglars do not break into houses at night, do not steal to feed a drugs habit, and do not attack their victims, according to a comprehensive study published today.
 But some victims are severely affected by the intrusions, burglars have little conception of the serious emotional harm they inflict, and the police response is often confusing and inadequate.
 The study, covering 20,000 homes in Watford, Hertfordshire, and including extensive interviews with burglars, 300 victims, and householders, was conducted under the auspices of the Hertfordshire Care Trust involving police, probation services, and statutory and voluntary agencies. 
 It concluded that burglaries generally occur during daylight with only 25 per cent of victims at home during an attempted or actual burglary; that damage to property occurred in only 18 per cent of cases; that there were few cases of gratuitous damage, with one of a burglar urinating on the floor, three of cutting telephone wires, and six of consuming alcohol on the premises and that most burglaries are to pay debts, four times as many as those carried out to fund alcohol or drug habit.
 A few burglars commit most crimes - of those surveyed 25 had committed 1,124 offences.
 The survey also showed that many elderly people are victims of "artifice" - impersonation of a water or electricty board official. Houses with dogs, occupants, easy visibility, and alarms tend to be avoided.
 WPC Sue Mantle, of Hertfordshire police, said that 30 per cent of burglaries were due to open doors and windows. Many people did not take even basic precautions.Victims found it disturbing that they were often visited by three police officers - one uniformed, one CID, one for fingerprints.
 They felt they were not kept in touch with the investigation.
 Helena Griffiths, of the probation service, said that burglars said victims could afford the loss, which was often untrue.  Most said that shortage of cash and easy opportunity led to their crimes.
 Sixty-one per cent of victims wanted custodial sentences and 32 per cent a community sentence.
 Detective Chief Inspector Peter Seaman, of the Hertfordshire police crime prevention unit, said that many people could not afford the pounds 400 a burglar alarm system costs but better locks and secure windows could be major deterrents.

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



305 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 1, 1993

BYLINE: ANNA TOMFORDE IN BONN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 499 words

 
 THE decision to site the European Monetary Institute and, later, the European Central Bank in Frankfurt could be a timely boost for a city hovering on the brink of bankruptcy.
 "We are proud that Europe has entrusted us with the responsibility of looking after its monetary policy, and we shall make a good job of it," Andreas von Schoeler, the city's mayor said at the weekend.
 But as the champagne corks were popping, the mayor who rules the city of 650,000 in a precarious Social Democrat-Green coalition must have felt deep relief at the prospect of attracting new tax-paying institutions, with the potential of 4,000 new jobs, to Frankfurt, which holds the dubious distinction of being Germany's most indebted city. 
 It is a fact in stark contrast to the impressive skyline of Germany's business capital where there has so far been no threat of the trams stopping or garbage being left uncollected.
 But, like most other German cities, Frankfurt has woken up to the fact that it has lived beyond its means for too long. It hopes to remedy its DM8.3 billion ( pounds 3.3 billion) deficit with drastic cuts in spending on culture and social institutions.
 In charge of the cost-cutting drive is Tom Koenigs, Frankfurt's Green treasurer and a veteran of the 1968 students' movement.
 Mr Koenigs has made headlines by hiring Wolfgang Nierhaus, a banker and leading member of Deutsche Bank, to help him trim spending. Deutsche Bank has agreed to continue paying Mr Nierhaus's salary during his three-year effort to try to balance Frankfurt's books.
 "With 400 leading banks on our doorstep we would be crazy not to use their concentrated expertise," said the Green treasurer. A one-time anti-Vietnam war campaigner who donated a large private inheritance to the victorious Vietcong, Mr Koenigs said of Mr Nierhaus: "I don't care about the colour of the cat as long as it catches mice."
 Mr Nierhaus said he was motivated by the banking community's concern for the city's image: "It is for us an almost patriotic task to help the municipal authorities."
 Spending on unemployment benefits, social security and care of the elderly threaten to spin out of control. Public swimming pools, youth centres, theatres, cinemas, libraries and pensioners' clubs face closure. Even the city's elaborate concert halls will be made to feel the pinch. Schools and municipal offices will be cleaned less often.
 The cash shortage means that for next year Frankfurt, a city with a desperate demand for affordable housing, will have a mere DM27.2 million to spend on new council flats.
 Residents also fear that rent levels will rise dramatically with the arrival of the European institutions.
 Mr von Schoeler, presenting next year's draft budget, said the measures only marked the beginning of Frankfurt's "slimming cure".
 "We are only applying the emergency brakes. What's required is a total rethink by everyone of the notion that the city can do everything."

LOAD-DATE: November 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



306 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 2, 1993

POOR PICKINGS FOR ARMENIAN LOOTERS AMONG THE BURNT-OUT BUILDINGS OF FALLEN AZERI TOWN;
Suzanne Goldenberg in Agdam reports on the desolation wreaked by the war in Nagorno-Karabakh

BYLINE: SUZANNE GOLDENBERG

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 923 words

 
 ONCE a town of 50,000 and the most important staging post in the Nagorno-Karabakh war, Agdam is now a place of charred buildings and deserted streets.
 The only signs of life are ripening fruit trees and bundled-up old women who move like wraiths through the ruins. From abandoned gardens they pick persimmon which will be sent to Armenian forces on the front line nearby.
 Clutching their laden sacks the women wait by the roadside for the lorries that will take them back to the enclave's capital, Stepanakert. Dozens of labels from the defunct local wine factory lie at their feet on the dusty road. 
 Although Armenian civilians have ventured into Agdam since its capture in late July, they say they feel uneasy amid the desolation caused by their armies. "This is an Azerbaijani town," said one old man, wheeling a trolley of pomegranates out of town. "Why should we want to live here?"
 Some of the first looters who arrived in Agdam said they found burned corpses in the wreckage. Others are quick to load up with whatever they can salvage before they leave.
 But despite the Karabakh government's claims that it is punishing looters, there is only one desultory checkpoint outside the town.
 Although there is some evidence of the heavy shelling that accompanied Agdam's fall, the burnt-out buildings are testimony to the town's sacking after its capture. In the centre, there is hardly a building left intact, just blackened empty husks.
 Agdam was the most strategic Azeri town to fall as the Armenian forces punched their way out of the enclave to occupy a huge swathof Azerbaijan. Its capture was followed by the seizure in August of Jebrail and Fizuli to the south, which cut off tens of thousands of civilians from Azerbaijan, forcing them to flee towards Iran a few miles away.
 The few Western aid agency officials to have visited these areas have spoken of deliberate destruction through fires and looting.
 Officials in Nagorno-Karabakh have not said so outright, but it seems clear that the land seized from Azerbaijan to the west, east and south-west of the enclave will act as a buffer zone until the war is over.
 "We consider this our front line. We will keep the occupied territories as a no-man's land. The army is busy terminating strongholds as military bases," Manvil Sarkissian, the Nagorno-Karabakh ambassador to Armenia, said.
 The Karabakh advance into Azerbaijan was halted by a ceasefire in early September, but the fighting to the south resumed a few days ago. A second exodus is in progress through a corridor carved out of the Zangelan region - destroying any hope of the ceasefire being extended when it expires next week.
 Western aid agencies are warning of a new humanitarian disaster in Azerbaijan.
 The Karabakh Armenians in Stepanakert have been buoyed by the military successes. They are relishing a rare period of peace since the war began in 1988. A besieged city 16 months ago, it is now easily reached from the Armenian capital Yerevan by coach and taxi.
 However, the Karabakh authorities are angry at the international condemnation of their offensive and the focus on Azeri refugees. Last week they declared a state of emergency in the enclave, restricting the movements of all outsiders.
 Even Armenian journalists are barred from battle zones and need entry and exit visas for Karabakh.
 But with the Azeri forces so savagely defeated, the Karabakh authorities feel confident enough to begin resettling refugees in three regions of the enclave. Mardakert in the north - which changed hands several times before the Azeris were forced out in June - is the scene of the most ambitious resettlement.
 Most people are eager to go back, although electricity has yet to be restored and the villages are as devastated as Agdam.
 "This is my land. I cannot live anywhere else in the world," Asdghig Asarian said. She and her three children fled from the area to Yerevan in July 1992. They eked out a living on International Red Cross food and clothing handouts and a payment from the Armenian government of 1,000 roubles (less than $ 5).
 Her husband lost the use of his right hand in the fighting but they were among the first to return to Zardakhaj village this summer. "There was nothing left, only the walls of my home," she said. "But life is simpler here; we can hope to survive."
 Government construction workers from all over Armenia have been working in Zardakhaj and six other villages for the past two months, trying to guarantee each family one habitable room before winter.
 The authorities in Karabakh and Armenia are anxious that people return home, to stop the drain on finances and to bolster the recent military victories.
 But some observers in Yerevan are worried. They say the latest Karabakh attacks are born of desperation. With negotiations on Karabakh's future blocked at the conference on security and co-operation in Europe, Armenian troops are anxious to force the president of Azerbaijan, Geidar Aliyev, to negotiate by inflicting defeat after defeat.
 The Armenian side is trying to extract a pledge from Mr Aliyev to gradually lift a two-year blockade of Armenia and Karabakh in return for a staged retreat from Azerbaijan.
 But time is on Mr Aliyev's side. Despite the horrific Azeri losses, winter is approaching. Economic life in Armenia is already near standstill and it is unclear how many more sacrifices people are prepared to make on behalf of their brethren in Karabakh.

LOAD-DATE: November 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



307 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 2, 1993

CIVILIANS CLING TO UN SOLDIERS IN BOSNIA

BYLINE: KURT SCHORK IN VARES, CENTRAL BOSNIA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 516 words

 
 HUNDREDS of Muslim and Croat civilians gathered in the central Bosnian town of Vares yesterday in a desperate attempt to escape marauding soldiers.
 "Many civilians are being terrorised in the area and are seeking our protection," said Captain Bjorn Borqvall, a Swedish medical officer on United Nations peacekeeping duty in Vares. "We are doing our best, but we haven't the men or the facilities to do the job we would like." 
 About 120 Muslims, mostly women and children, could be seen cowering on the main street of Vares behind UN armoured vehicles manned by Swedish peacekeepers. Heavily-armed Croat gunmen, who have been terrorising the local Muslim population for 10 days, swaggered past.
 Croats fleeing soldiers of the mostly Muslim Bosnian army were seen walking into Vares from the north, where the village of Dubostica fell to Muslim forces over the weekend. Elderly Croat men led horses piled high with carpets, blankets and pots and pans salvaged from their abandoned homes.
 Most Muslim men in Vares have been arrested and interned in two schools, under what UN officials describe as "dirty and degrading" conditions.
 Masked Croat gunmen have been raiding Muslim homes every evening, robbing and beating residents. Many Muslim women and children were so frightened they planned to spend the night sleeping on the pavement in sub-zero temperatures next to UN soldiers rather than return home.
 "I've spent four nights here on the street and I'm freezing to death," complained Huma Geko, aged 65, as she huddled among a group of women on a pile of blankets and suitcases. "I trust only the blue helmets," she added. "They saved my life last night."
 Ms Geko said the only time she had been home in recent days, she had been grabbed by Croat gunmen who threatened to kill her.
 More than 100 terrified Muslims are staying at an abandoned sawmill adjacent to the Swedish base outside Vares.
 The Swedes transported 99 Muslims south across Croat lines to Muslim-held Dabravine yesterday. Swedish peacekeepers, who recently arrived in Vares, have had their hands full dealing with a surge of fighting between the Muslims and the Croats and the resulting flow of refugees.
 They wonder why the International Red Cross and the UN refugee agency are not playing a more active role.
 "I think that we are doing a lot of the work the Red Cross and the UNCHR should be doing," complained Captain Borqvall.  "We have saved a couple of lives here. For the ones in Stupni Do we could do nothing, but for the Muslims here in Vares we have made a difference." The Muslim village of Stupni Do was obliterated in a Croat attack on October 23.
 - A UN spokesman dismissed as "disinformation" a US newspaper report yesterday that UN peacekeeping soldiers in Sarajevo were clients at a Serb-run brothel staffed by captive Muslim and Croat women.  The report in New York Newsday said visits to Sonja's Kon-Tiki, a restaurant and brothel about six miles north of Sarajevo, took place in the summer and autumn of 1992. - Reuter.
 Force of impotence, page 18

LOAD-DATE: November 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



308 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 2, 1993

A COUNTRY DIARY

BYLINE: JOHN VALLINS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 315 words

 
 SOMERSET: We have had crisp, bright, frosty conditions on the last two Saturdays for the nearby legs of the Wessex Grand Prix Carnival Circuit, at Castle Cary, by 7pm rows of eager tiny children, wrapped in blankets and topped by bobble-hats, were sucking toffee-apples in ad hoc grandstands. At Wincanton, the sloping bank of the churchyard, on the bend, is the favoured spot. We had a preview of one of the local floats. It was made up of one long and one short trailer, hauled by a big farm tractor. It measured a shade longer than a cricket pitch. It had 3,000 light bulbs, fired by the big generator at the back.  Twenty-five to 30 people make up the club which, all year round, in a farmer's barn, prepares this float - theme, design, music, lights, costumes - for the new season. It costs pounds 3,000 to get it on the road. And it is just one of five or six giants of amazing sophistication. They compete for prizes in several categories: Best overall float. Tableau, Feature on vehicle and so on. There are family categories, juvenile categories, classes for Masquerade and Masquerade with wheels. Four teams of majorettes pranced, pirouetted, and twirled their batons. The route was lined in places, six deep. Through big front windows of the Castle Cary Red Cross Hall you could see senior citizens getting a good view from the warm inside, and sipping cups of tea. There are non-competitive participants - police, fire brigade, ambulance service, the Wessex Queen of Oueens and her entourage. The firemen put ladders up to top windows and climbed up to collect donations. Three marching bands competed with amplified sound from the floats. Entries numbered 1 to 84 at Castle Cary and 1 to 65 at Wincanton. Many of those who made up these hour-long nose-to-wheel processions will go on to join the Bridgwater Circuit. Bridgwater's carnival is the biggest of all.

LOAD-DATE: November 2, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



309 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 3, 1993

HONOUR BOUND;
The voluntary sector is being called on to play an ever-increasing role. A new award backed by the Guardian applauds the work of innovators in QBY: David Brindle

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. S2

LENGTH: 721 words

 
 MORE than 130 entries were received for the Guardian/Jerwood Award. They came from national associations and community groups, and they ranged from advocates of holistic healthcare to groups giving support to prisoners' families.
 What all the entries had in common, though, was that they each highlighted the work of one individual who had made a distinctive contribution to the growth of a young charity in the social welfare field. And those contributions were deeply impressive. 
 No fewer than 18 entries achieved maximum marks on the tough criteria set for the award. The judging panel, chaired by Health Secretary Virginia Bottomley, then had to produce a shortlist of eight and, finally, select the winner and two runners-up. It was not easy.
 Mrs Bottomley said: "I would like to congratulate the Jerwood Foundation and the Guardian for sponsoring this award. There were many excellent entries, but the judges decided that first prize should go to Alison Oldland, of the Living Paintings Trust, for her outstanding work in helping visually handicapped people share the joy of appreciating paintings."
 The idea of the award was to recognise and promote excellence among those working for small and relatively new charities.  Most entries were from charities with a turnover of less than pounds 100,000, and 80 per cent were from groups based outside London.
 Joining the Secretary of State on the judging panel were Lord Rix, chairman of Mencap; Simon Armson, chief executive of The Samaritans; Lesley Ackers, director of Reliance Care and adviser to the Jerwood Foundation; and David Brindle, the Guardian's social services correspondent.
 When the prizes were presented yesterday at a reception at the Savoy in London, Alison Oldland took the first prize of pounds 5,000 and the two runners-up, who each receive pounds 1,000, were Penny Dobson, of the Bristol-based Enuresis Resource and Information Centre, and Fiona Smith, of the Urban Farm Association on Merseyside.
 But the other five entries which were shortlisted, but pipped at the post, underline the breadth of the charity sector. These included Christine Colhoun, of the Airedale Voluntary Drug and Alcohol Agency.  The charity works to prevent abuse of drink, drugs and solvents in the Keighley area of West Yorkshire, and Christine, its project leader, has been the driving force behind its success.
 Having previously worked in a local chip shop, bookmaker's, bingo hall and post office, Christine has the kind of community roots that set her apart from others with more conventional social welfare backgrounds.
 Also in the final eight was Mary Thomas, founder of the Dark Horse Venture on Merseyside, which works to encourage elderly people to develop new interests and try new activities. The scheme is now being extended to Northern Ireland, Scotland and the Isle of Man, with a view to going national.
 Another excellent entry came on behalf of Mike Daligan, director of the Walter Segal Self Build Trust. The charity helps people, especially the homeless and unemployed, to construct their own homes.
 Since he joined, Mike has galvanised the trust into fresh activity, and it is now working with groups including disabled people and residents of a drug rehabilitation project. One aim of the award was to mark the achievements of people toiling in more unfashionable fields.
 The work of Prue Stevenson, of Wish (Women in Special Hospitals), a charity which has won the support and respect of both the authorities and women patients themselves, so impressed the judges that she too reached the last eight.
 The shortlist was completed by Nicolle Levine, founder of Write Away, a charity based on the simple but enormously effective idea of providing penfriends for children with special needs.
 Nicolle conceived the idea while working as a teacher with deaf children. The group now has 3,000 members and organises social events so the children can meet each other.
 Like all those who entered for the award, Nicolle is continually developing the basic idea - in this case by planning a similar network for adults with special needs, who have complained that they feel excluded from the service. For any charity, reacting to such demand must be the real mark of effectiveness and success.

LOAD-DATE: November 3, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



310 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 4, 1993

SOCIAL SATIRE AND SPECTACLE MARK FELLINI'S FINAL SCENE;
Ed Vulliamy in Rome jostles with Italy's meek and mighty for a glimpse of the absurdity and pretension at a cinema maestro's swansong

BYLINE: ED VULLIAMY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. *

LENGTH: 719 words

 
 IT WAS Federico Fellini's last great scene, as though arranged for one of his more piquant sequences of social satire. Except that this time it was his own funeral: a spectacle which unfolded with all the absurdity, pretension and genuine affection of the director's masterpiece, Roma, in the church of Santa Maria dei Angeli, built by Michelangelo.
 By far the most Fellini-esque element of the ceremony was the portable cellular telephones among Italy's fashionable elite.
 They began squealing almost as soon as the ethereal, solemn bars of the De Profundis from Mozart's Requiem forced their way through the crackly speakers on the baroque walls. 
 "Pronto? Pronto?" answered well decked-out mourners, ostensibly too important to have switched off their gadgets in order to pay homage to the man whose death was being heralded in one newspaper yesterday as "the end of all cinema".
 Fellini's lifelong companion, Giulietta Masini, had requested no flowers, saying that her late partner hated them and asking that money be donated instead to an artists' pension fund.
 But there they were, arrays of huge wreaths being hauled about the altar steps by men draped in sashes.
 The arrangements were in accordance with Italy's inimitable treatment of the "pezzi grossi" or big-wigs. They enjoyed a separate, heavily guarded entrance and section of the church away from the crowds who had queued for hours.
 The latter were packed into the aisles so as to pay humble homage and indulge in Italy's favourite pastime of gawping at the rich and famous.
 And there were plenty of those to behold: actress Monica Vitti, looking pallid, director Michelangelo Antonioni, Vittorio Gassman and Lina Wertmuller; there was fashion designer Valentino, directors Franco Zeffirelli and Francesco Rosi, and also the nation's adored television stars such as Sandra Milo. Hollywood was noticeable by its absence.
 There were lots of women in late middle age who would remember well the days of the La Dolce Vita, now thin and dripping gold jewellery.The males in the VIP enclosure presented a more self-confident lot, strutting and sporting their November tans.
 There were the politicians too - President Oscar Luigi Scalfaro, who embraced Ms Masini warmly, and a phalanx of parliamentary dignitaries. Father Arpa, the Jesuit who defended La Dolce Vita from the censor, was also there.
 Outside, the age range was remarkable: curious youths from the university department next door and elderly ladies mumbling liturgical responses. The doors had been shut 30 minutes before the service, leaving 10,000 in the square.
 The coffin arrived, to a ripple of applause and sincere, heartfelt sobbing from the public.
 Ms Masina, who had been waiting in the sacristy, emerged tearfully and was engulfed by a swarm of caring and compassionate politicians.
 Cardinal Achille Silvestrini did his best to body-swerve Fellini's equivocal views on the clergy by saying that he had "criticised the church with irony and love".
 The most poignant moment was the playing of a recording of the Flight of the Spirits by Nino Rota, as trumpeted in a memorable scene from Fellini's first major film, La Strada.
 But within minutes, the droll Fellini movie had begun again, with a crushing, barging and shrieking as policemen secured a trouble-free exit for the pezzi grossi.
 The funeral closes the exhaustive mourning of a man of whom Italy can be proud in times of international humiliation. On Tuesday, there had been an extraordinary wake at the Cinecitta studios, where Fellini's coffin was laid out under a painted blue sky.
 The Milanese daily paper L'Indipendente, marked the funeral with a front-page editorial which echoed the widely held sentiments of many: "In the bars Fellini's death is a far less charged piece of news than the newspapers think . . .
 "Fellini was an uncontroversial director, who never took intellectual or political positions which were awkward. For this reason, the death of the master is a timely one, because it puts into second place all the other things that are happening in this country."
 The coffin will now travel to Fellini's home town of Rimini, where it will be buried and the main seafront square renamed Piazzale Federico Fellini.

LOAD-DATE: November 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



311 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 5, 1993

FUEL BILLS AFTER VAT 'NO MORE THAN 1983';
Major will referee Clarke - Lilley scrap on safety net

BYLINE: MICHAEL WHITE, POLITICAL EDITOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 465 words

 
 THE Chancellor's increasingly vehement opposition to sweeping concessions in the imposition of VAT on domestic fuel is to be reinforced by a Treasury campaign to persuade voters that even with the full 17.5 per cent tax they will be no worse off than a decade ago - thanks to falling real-term prices.
 As Kenneth Clarke accused critics of raising groundless fears among the old and poor, it emerged that John Major himself will next week chair a meeting between the Chancellor and Peter Lilley, the Social Security Secretary, to resolve an impasse marked by growing antipathy on both sides.
 At Question Time, the Chancellor acknowledged the fears of the elderly and said: "The Government is going to come forward with a package of measures to give some help in paying the new tax." But he stressed: "There has been such a fall in gas and electricity prices during the 1980s that even with the tax imposed in full, fuel bills will be no higher than they were 10 years ago." 
 In fact, fresh Treasury figures will suggest that, in post-inflation terms, prices have fallen 18 per cent since 1983, almost exactly the 17.5 per cent which the Lamont formula will impose in two stages, starting next April. Mr Clarke wants to help hardship cases without creating "massive exemptions" across the network of benefit recipients, which may create a precedent.
 In the Commons the shadow chancellor, Gordon Brown, urged Mr Clarke to close tax loopholes and his deputy, Harriet Harman, revealed that more than 1,000 Tory councillors had voted for motions condemning the VAT switch. Mr Clarke called the loopholes illusory - "about as much use as brass washers".
 The two-stage imposition of VAT on domestic fuel and heating, Norman Lamont's fiscal timebomb from the March budget, was not discussed at yesterday's cabinet. What Downing Street officials call a classic battle between the Treasury and a spending ministry will come back to cabinet when Mr Major has knocked heads together.
 But other officials suggest it is becoming more personal, that Mr Clarke and his Thatcherite deputy, Michael Portillo, are increasingly irritable with the equally rightwing Mr Lilley, whose anti-welfare state rhetoric is not matched by deeds in the current spending round, they say.
 Non-Treasury sources argue that Mr Lilley's pounds 70 billion budget is already bearing the brunt of controversial cuts, including restrictions on invalidity benefit. "He's already very much in the firing line and doesn't want to carry all the burden," said one.
 In effect, the two ministers are engaged in role-reversal, with Mr Clarke refusing on philosophical as well as budgetary terms to reverse the 1980s shift from special tax exemptions and Mr Lilley wanting to protect his clients.

LOAD-DATE: November 5, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



312 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 6, 1993

BAD BLOOD ON THEIR HANDS;
An estimated 1,000 people have been infected with the HIV virus by contaminated blood in Germany. DAVID GOW and ANNA TOMFORDE report on a scandal rocking a country that prides itself on efficiency

BYLINE: DAVID GOW AND ANNA TOMFORDE AND ADDITIONAL REPORTING BY CHRIS MIHILL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 25

LENGTH: 2906 words

 
 THE nervous woman, her face white with fear, sits with her husband in the waiting-room of Professor Rolf Herzog, chief gynaecologist at Bad Godesberg's Protestant Hospital. She tells of the panic that has gripped her village since Germany's Aids scandal took on ever-greater proportions this week.
 "It's not that they're stupid simply because they are village-folk," she says.  "But the news that this Koblenz firm knowingly sold HIV-infected blood to hospitals has unleashed fear of an Aids epidemic. They know that they personally are unaffected, but they worry about friends, family, and say they will not submit to any operations from now on . . . All I can say is that, if I were faced with the choice after a dreadful accident, I would take the risk and agree to a blood transfusion."
 Prof Herzog's desk is strewn with the latest fax from Bonn's health office listing batches of blood- and plasma-bags delivered to regional hospitals by this "Koblenz firm". Its name, which millions not only in Germany have learned to fear this week, is UB Plasma. It has been forcibly closed after the scandal erupted and four employees are under arrest. 
 Ulrich Mobius, a physician who has campaigned tirelessly to expose the story, believes 1,000 or more patients may have been infected with HIV-contaminated blood; three are known to have died. Two infected patients are suing different former health ministers for criminal negligence, while the current incumbent, Horst Seehofer, called this week for every German who has had an operation in the last 10 years or so to undergo an Aids test. Doctors accused him of wantonly panicking the nation.
 Prof Herzog's hospital has just set up a special hot-line for worried patients. More than 40 have rung in the first 12 hours of its operations. They should be among the least-worried in a country gripped with collective hysteria: he uses so little blood in operations that even Jehovah Witnesses come to him from all the country. The hospital received no UB Plasma supplies.
 Elsewhere, hospitals, official Aids-screening stations and self-help organisations for HIV-positive men and women report a huge increase in anxious callers. "I took a call today from an elderly woman who had had an operation in 1972 and has since been totally healthy," a counsellor at Bonn's Aids-Help office says. "Absolute idiocy!"
 At a Frankfurt clinic, where up to 500 patients were given UB Plasma samples in 1991 and 1992 and one has since died, elderly men recovering from operations yesterday sighed with audible relief that no transfusions had been required. Fellow-patients there and elsewhere are, however, refusing life-saving operations from fear of HIV infection.
 Germany's months-old Aids scandal now threatens to equal that of France in the late 1980s and early 1990s that, partially at least, led to the downfall of the Socialist government earlier this year. It could soon engulf senior members of Chancellor Helmut Kohl's government and party just a year before a critical general election.
 Horst Seehofer, the youthful health minister determined to cast light on every aspect of the affair, has unleashed a trail of anxiety that may cost him his political career with his call for mass testing.  Dr Mobius, the campaigning Berlin-based physician, who has now been offered a post as ministerial adviser, sees Seehofer as acting more and more insecure. "We're going to put more fire under his seat," he said yesterday.
 The federal environment minister, Klaus Topfer, has seen his name dragged into the scandal because he was health minister in the Rhineland-Palatinate in 1986-87 when an anonymous UB Plasma employee warned the authorities of Aids-infected blood reaching the market - when the firm was not even licensed to handle blood products for human medicine. And, worst of all, it carried on trading until last week.
 The international nature of the pharmaceutical marketplace has ensured that this is no longer merely a German issue. UB Plasma products have been bought by countries ranging from Sweden to Saudi Arabia, including Greece and Switzerland, Italy and France. And last night it emerged that two Austrian pharmaceutical companies, Immuno GmbH and Octopharma GmbH, also took blood serum from UB Plasma. The Vienna government said it would personally contact all patients treated with the blood products in question and offer them an Aids test "for their own peace of mind".
 Members of the United States armed forces who were based in Germany may also have been infected. US military authorities are now tracking down Americans who may have received tainted blood transfusions at German medical facilities.
 Hospitals and clinics in Switzerland also bought products from two German companies supplied with blood by UB Plasma. Last night the Swiss government announced it had banned their sale.
 The trail has led too to Romania, where a Bucharest firm, said to be a UB Plasma subsidiary, has confirmed that it sent 1,545 litres of deep-frozen and untested plasma to Koblenz in May. It may have made other deliveries that were passed off as German products.
 Britain, at least, has been told that it need not worry that any infected blood may have strayed into the health service, although yesterday a Department of Health official said Immuno had recalled eight batches of two products sent to Britain and the rest of Europe, but that there was no evidence they contained the Aids virus and that the measure was purely precautionary.
 Dr Harold Gunson, director of the National Transfusion Authority, said that German blood was not imported into this country.  Consultants who used specialised blood products, such as clotting agents and other constituents of whole blood, had the right to buy foreign products from commercial companies, rather than using UK supplies, if they thought these were better suited to particular patients. However, all imported blood products had to be tested for HIV and other infectious diseases by the National Institute for Biological Standards in North London. "They are all tested before use in this country," said Dr Gunson. "We are self-sufficent in blood itself and none whatsoever is imported. We should be safe."
 Nor, officially, have members of the UK armed forces based in Germany been at risk. Colonel Mike Thomas, head of the army's blood transfusion service at Aldershot, said all UK servicemen and their families treated in military hospitals in Germany, or anywhere else in the world, were supplied with blood from the Aldershot depot.
 In Germany, the scandal has exposed at least one rotten apple in the DM30 billion-a-year ( pounds 12bn) pharmaceutical industry. In a country where 100,000 regulations determine every aspect of human life, it also reveals gaping holes in the public supervision of firms prepared to use every manipulative trick to make a buck.
 For Heribert Prantl, a senior editor with Munich's Suddeutsche Zeitung newspaper, it has revealed that for supervisory bodies like the Federal Health Agency or regional/supervisory inspection boards "there's not a jot of difference between a landlord serving beer and a laboratory producing blood plasma". Plasma, he says, has been subjected to as much control "as any old person running a canteen".
 The scandal has laid bare structural weaknesses in the German federal system in which competing national, regional and local bodies assert their own authority - and, as has happened in the past few days and weeks, pass the buck to each other when a failure on this scale emerges.
 It has also awoken Europe's most health-conscious people, used to regarding their country as the epitome of regulated efficiency, to the unpalatable fact that even enormous amounts of money cannot buy insurance or security against human error - or what Ellis Huber, head of the Berlin doctors' association, calls "mafioso practices", in reference to the importation of unchecked supplies from Romania. .
 And, even with insurance, there is no guarantee that victims will receive adequate compensation. Television viewers were rocked on Thursday night when the Panorama programme on the first public channel disclosed that a Berlin man, infected by his wife with HIV after she received contaminated blood, had to fight for years before receiving a miserable DM1,000 ( pounds 400) a month pension shortly before he died. "It was like a hammer to our head, a catastrophe," one of his two surviving daughters said.
 A 13-year-old Bonn boy, advised by Dr Mobius, is now suing another firm, the Darmstadt-based Biotest, which bought blood samples from UB Plasma, for insurance-based compensation of more than DM500,000 ( pounds 200,000), including a monthly "pain-money pension". He is infected but he does not know it, so Biotest insists it cannot pay up as the boy "does not know he is in pain". Dr Mobius commented bitterly: "It's cruel, but that's German law."
 The boy's father, who insists on remaining anonymous, says: "We used to go to France camping a lot, but now we have to stay in hotels. My son, of course, always asks why. When puberty comes, and it won't be long, I'll have to tell him to be careful with the girls. It's very hard for all of us . . . "
 How has it come to pass that Germany, the world's biggest consumer of blood plasma (2.15 million litres a year, according to the federal health ministry), has abruptly been forced to confront the fact that "blood is not an ordinary merchandise but very special stuff that can transmit life-threatening diseases", in the words of Dr Mobius?
 The story of its awakening to reality resembles a detective novel, set in the opaque world of the relations between pharmaceutical firms and senior government officials and strewn with false scents and clues. At least three victims are known to have died because of UB Plasma's alleged machinations. But Dr Mobius believes that the number of non-haemophiliac patients infected through blood treatment may be more than 1,000.
 Since 1985 in Germany all blood samples and donors - who make four million "donations" a year - have had to be tested for HIV. Normally, each 750 millilitre sample is individually tested, and new procedures for rendering the virus, and others, inactive are scrupulously followed.
 Prof Herzog say that the risk-factor, depending on the type of blood or plasma, varies between 1 in 100,000 to 1 in a million. In fresh-frozen full blood, containing red and white corpuscles, it is probably lower than one in a million. In products derived from plasma, the yellowish fluid without the blood corpuscles, it is nearer to 1 in 100,000.
 But the screening of regular donors has proved to be extremely lax. One firm, Immuno, operating near Hamburg's main station, is accused by local junkies of continuing to use them, even though they are in a high-risk group or have been proven to be HIV-positive.
 UB Plasma donors, according to a Koblenz newspaper editor who works above their now-empty offices known as the death-lab, "looked as if they had crawled out of the last hole". They got DM30 ( pounds 12) a shot but Dr Mobius reports that regular donors can get DM80 ( pounds 32) for samples used in vaccine production. Blood donors can only give samples every two months but plasma donors can attend a clinic four times a month and earn up to DM200 ( pounds 80) regardless of health.
 What Ulrich Kleist, chief executive of the Koblenz firm, and up to five employees stand accused of is systematically cutting corners and costs to try and keep their business alive when it was near-bankrupt. They "pooled" the tests for the Aids virus: of 7,000 samples, it has been disclosed, only 2,500 tests were carried out.
 As long ago as the winter of 1991, reports say, the Berlin-based Federal Health Agency (BGA), now axed by Seehofer, found infection in two of UB Plasma's samples. But the firm was allowed to carry on normal working because - according to Georg Pauli, the BGA's chief virologist - "nobody could even begin to think the firm could have manipulated its samples".
 Then, on April 14 this year, UB Plasma alerted a Fulda hospital after discovering a long-term donor had suddenly tested positive. It was too late to save two patients from infection. Besides, the hospital denies it ever received a clear warning.
 In May, Pauli bought for DM1,000 ( pounds 400) six bags of frozen plasma from UB Plasma to aid his research. The firm had suggested that one might be contaminated, but he found that at least four tested positive.
 He did not, however, alert the authorities in the Rhineland-Palatinate. His reason: "Would anyone sell the evidence of his criminal activity?" Only later, in October, did he come upon the notion of "mini-pools", and the police raided the firm's Koblenz premises. But Seehofer retorts: "If a firm had been shown to misbehave several times the relevant authorities should have been informed."
 EVEN now, the four UB Plasma employees under arrest are being investigated merely for allegedly causing bodily harm through negligence. This is similar to the situation in France, where doctors at the national blood-transfusion centre, who knowingly distributed Aids-contaminated blood, were condemned for "deception about the basic property of a product".
 Laurent Fabius, the then French premier, supposedly looks in his mirror and asks himself whether he is a murderer as 300 of the infected haemophiliacs died.
 What this sorry German tale of greed and incompetence discloses is not just the woeful inadequacy of the law and supervisory procedures. The latter are bad enough. It has been underlined that the legal requirement for bi-annual inspections of plasma-producers has led to merely cursory examination of procedures and personnel.
 It has also led to fundamental questions about medical production for profit, state control of blood donations, and the over-consumption of blood in German hospitals.
 The German Red Cross, which supplies 80 per cent of national blood output, turns over around DM750 million ( pounds 300m) a year selling surplus requirements (around 80 per cent) to hospitals and firms.  Its president, Prince Botho of Sayn-Wittgenstein, said yesterday that it knew of less than 20 cases of HIV infections resulting from its supplies of blood.  Of 25 million donations since May 1985, only 382 had tested HIV-positive and been withdrawn.
 He called on Germany to meet its own needs. Now the country has to import every year 1.07 million litres of specialist plasma-products from abroad, the overwhelming bulk from the US. Prince Botho, demanding a cut in such imports, urged more donors to come forward - on a day when his organisation disclosed a drop of up to 10 per cent in donors coming forward.
 Dr Mobius, who insists that imports are made only because they are cheaper by at least a half and enable bigger profits to be earned, wants a Fortress Europe based on US and Belgian models. This would include a Centre for Aids epidemiology along the lines of the US Disease Centre in Atlanta, to which all cases of infection would have to be reported, including their causes.  It would also include a criminal-investigation police force to examine drug-related incidents.
 If compensation has to be given to donors, he argues, then it should be on Belgian lines where civil servants, for example, get free tickets for the opera or extra time-off and German clubs could organise the donations. Belgium, he points out, has a population of 10 million, but only 17 cases of HIV among haemophiliacs and a further 17 due to imported blood products - a near water-tight system.
 Germany consumes far too much blood. "If a patient does not want a blood transfusion during an operation then he should not get one," Prof Herzog points out. "It's not required in more than 90 per cent of operations and may only be necessary in major surgery like removing a tumour from a kidney."
 A new system of blood donation and transfusion, experts such as Dr Mobius argue, could minimise the risk of infection even further. Patients now supply only 10 per cent of their own blood for operations but it is estimated that this proportion could rise to as much as 25 per cent.
 Seehofer favours a six-month quarantine for blood products which, after heat-treatment, would be stored in deep-freeze before being re-tested for the Aids-virus. Finally, Dr Mobius and a range of politicians believe, "there must be no commercial trading in blood which belongs under public control".
 But this, as the federal health ministry pointed out yesterday, is not necessarily the point. The French system was entirely in state hands and its scandal showed that a state-run system was far from risk-free. "What we need are secure measures to ensure that firms stay strictly within the law."
 Germans, a people prone to talk their way into a crisis, yesterday took stock amid what Huber called a mass-hysteria unleashed by "the criminals in the blood business". They clearly began to heed the advice of specialists that the risks of death via a blood transfusion remained lower than through anaesthetics. But they also increasingly demanded what the husband in Prof Herzog's waiting-room called "the political consequences of this dreadful national disgrace".
 Additional reporting: Chris Mihill

LOAD-DATE: November 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



313 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 6, 1993

COMMENTARY: A FLOWERING OF EMOTION

BYLINE: MARTIN KETTLE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 27

LENGTH: 1073 words

 
 I'M not sure when I began to change my mind about Poppy Day, but it was probably during a journey down Whitehall on a 172 in the days when London buses were still red and when, indeed, the 172 still ran between here and Westminster.
 I had not taken any notice of the two elderly men sitting talking to one another on the seat opposite me until the 172 reached the Cenotaph. But as it did, they stopped their conversation. Then, without either consultation or embarrassment, they both raised their hats for a moment. The bus passed on. The two old men resumed their talk. My eyes prickled with tears, and I think maybe yours might have done too. 
 In those days I still thought it was possible to stand apart from the whole Remembrance Day ritual. It was a day that belonged to the generations who had fought the war, not to those of us who had not. And I felt alien to it too. It embodied a vision of Britishness and extolled a military culture which I felt no motive to share. The nation united in solemn remembrance seemed a sham in a society so divided and a state so dedicated to nuclear weapons. It was a common attitude among those who find it hard to identify with the trappings of Britain. And for many it still is.
 But those two old men on the bus made me feel small-minded. I've no idea where, when or whom they fought, or even whether they did so. I've no idea what they believed in and I dare say that if we had all got into a conversation they might have started to say things with which I could never agree, even now. What I learned from them, however, was something for which the only word is respect.
 On one level, it was the respect which the living will always pay to the dead, the feeling which impels one to behave respectfully at a funeral, in a cemetery or in a church. But those who are commemorated in these annual November rituals are not just any dead. They are people who died for something of which we are still part, whether we like it or not. Imperfect in innumerable ways, it is our community, our society, even our nation. And they died for it, and thus also for us.
 I'm sure that I have changed. But I also think that Britain has changed too.  The passage of time alters the way we see an event like the first world war, which is still the central stimulus for this whole network of remembrance. Seventy years ago, these were rituals which mattered directly, in a personal sense, to millions of bereaved families who had lost sons, husbands and fathers on a scale which this country had never known before or since. They were a focus of grief for the loss of people we had known. It was the Great War not because it was grand, but because it was incomprehensibly immense.
 Thirty years ago, even though many of the bereaved were still alive, the rituals had become more questionable. The pain and immediacy of the lost generation had abated. The pointlessness of the slaughter was now a matter of public acknowledgement, but it was unreflected in changes to the ceremonies. We still bought our poppies and we still stood for two minutes' silence and it seemed somehow tainted with dishonesty. It was right to respect the dead, but it was no longer right to respect the war.
 Today, both the war and almost all those who fought in it are deep in the past. For all but a handful of survivors, there is no impulse to take sides any longer. It was a war. Wars exist. In this case we can now focus our thoughts more on the human cost and simply respect our loss as such.
 Strangely, this still remains difficult with the second world war. It was only this year that the youngest people to fight in the war started drawing their state pensions. Pride about the cause and the outcome are profoundly woven into our public life to this day. Fewer people died, but none are held to have done so in vain.  There are millions among us who remember. When the Ulster Unionist leader Jim Molyneaux mentioned on television this week that he was at Arnhem, it was a useful reminder that, even now, our civic life is still formed by people whose attitudes were forged in that conflict.
 Yet because we won in a cause it is still right to believe in, and because individuals were lost whose memory remains fresh, the second world war is very much a present experience. Even for those of us who are only the children of the war generation, it stirs genuine if inherited emotion. In some ways, in fact, you could say we have the best - or the worst - of both worlds.  We did not live it directly, but our upbringing was saturated with it.
 If I watch the Remembrance Day parade at the Cenotaph I am still largely unmoved save, I have to admit, by the sight of the Queen Mother, emblematic ageing witness of the changing order of things. Most of the rest is self-regard. Especially in Mrs Thatcher's day - though she looks great in black and doesn't she know it - it was all too redolent of that wartime poster which inadvertantly gave the game away by proclaiming words to the effect that Your Effort and Your Sacrifice will Bring Us Victory. One day, when the Queen Mother and the rest of the second world war generation are dead, the Whitehall ceremony ought to be scaled down, and then gently laid to rest.
 But until that time, I will go on buying a poppy from the man on the station forecourt weighed down with medals. I will wear it because I think it matters, not because I feel I have to. I will go on noticing the names on the war memorial as I try to do each time I walk through town to do the shopping. If the two minutes' silence still existed I might even stop and observe it if it didn't make me feel too ridiculous. If I wore a hat more often I would doff it as I passed the Cenotaph and hope that someone might notice and ponder why.
 And I won't indulge myself by affecting to be superior to the memory of the wars that the poppy seller, the old men on the bus and my parents' generation fought. For in the end, none of these acts of remembrance is about the false pride or cheap posturing that I once half thought they were. All of it is about belonging. In an age when the private locality of our identity feels as though it is being swept aside without a thought, and global forces threaten to deny the specificity of our own experiences and hopes, that paper poppy is far more than just a gesture. It is an affirmation that we still remember who we are.

LOAD-DATE: November 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



314 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 8, 1993

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 631 words

 
 BENNY Wilson, aged 43, came to London from Jamaica with his family as a baby.  He grew up and went to school in Stoke Newington, north London.
 He had been in trouble with the police in his younger days but at the time of his arrest on January 11, 1991, he was working as a club DJ and looking after his daughter, aged four. He is now a voluntary care worker in an old people's home. 
 The raid took place at 10am as Mr Wilson was returning from dropping his daughter off at school. Mr Wilson says he was handcuffed during the raid but that he thought the police had made a mistake and the error would soon be sorted out.
 But he said that the police then proceeded to produce plastic bags from the kitchen cabinet which he had never seen before and from the pockets of two jackets of his which were in the flat.
 Then one of the officers produced a sawn-off shotgun and some ammunition, he says. They also removed a number of passports of his relatives, including those of his mother and sister. He was told he was being arrested in connection with a robbery in Edmonton, north London, and for possessing a Rhomer self-loading pistol and a sawn-off shotgun.
 He was charged with 12 offences, including possessing cocaine, amphetamines and cannabis with intent to supply, and with dishonestly handling social security books and building society cheques.
 Mr Wilson was held in Pentonville prison, north London, and refused bail. He was eventually offered bail but was unable to provide the pounds 50,000 in cash required.
 "The police told me that by the time I came out of prison my daughter would be grown up," he said. If convicted, he could have been jailed for up to 10 years.
 Mr Wilson protested his innocence in letters to the organisations Liberty and Justice. After six months the charges against him were all thrown out.
 After his release, Mr Wilson was informed that Roy Lewandowski, a former detective constable at Stoke Newington police station who was facing charges himself, might have information that could assist his case. He went to the City of London magistrates court where Mr Lewandowski was appearing. He explained his case to him and Mr Lewandowski agreed to help.
 In a statement made to Mr Wilson's lawyers, Mr Lewandowski said he recalled the case and that another officer who had previously served at Stoke Newington had approached him. "He wanted me to plant a sawn-off shotgun in the premises," he says.
 Mr Lewandowski says that while he has no evidence that drugs were planted during the raid, he knows that all the drugs items found were easily obtainable by detectives.
 He adds that all his experience of raids on private houses leads him to believe that users and dealers keep their drugs in one place. It would be highly unlikely for a dealer to keep his drugs in a variety of different places, he suggests, particularly if there was a small child around.
 Mr Wilson has since decided to take a civil action against the police and has been interviewed by the Operation Jackpot inquiry team.
 Graham Smith, of the Hackney Community Defence Association, which has campaigned for an inquiry into policing in Stoke Newington, said: "We have said all along that Lewandowksi was being scapegoated and more officers were involved in organised crime. This is the proof. Operation Jackpot and the police complaints procedure generally have been found wanting time and time again. Maybe now there will be a judicial inquiry."
 Mr Wilson's lawyer, Jean Gould, said: "What concerns me is the difficulty of corroborating the evidence of Mr Wilson and Mr Lewandowski because the police are immune from full disclosure of documentation in civil actions because of the wide ambit of public interest immunity."

LOAD-DATE: November 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



315 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 8, 1993

WORM'S EYE: BRITISH SENIOR CITIZENS TURN UP AS REFUGEES IN KENYA

BYLINE: DAN ATKINSON IN MOMBASA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 442 words

 
 KENYA is crawling with refugees, helpless people in flight hoping to find a safe refuge on the Equator. The refugees in question are not, as you might expect, hightailing it from wartorn Somalia.  Rather, they are Britain's senior citizens, in full-scale retreat in the face of the council tax and the looming VAT-laden fuel bills. 
 It's really happening. For someone living on the state pension, it makes a lot more sense to spend pounds 5 a night in a half-oard hotel here in the sunshine than to hang around in England waiting for various government officials to confiscate your contribution to reducing their deficit.
 Once upon a time, we exported engineers and soldiers to this part of the world. Now we send frightened old ladies. Not that the life is that bad. With the money left over they can purchase the International Express, the overseas version of Britain's daily, stuff themselves at the cold buffet in the evening and - in return for showing newly arrived Brits around Mombasa - they can expect a decent lunch and a few drinks.
 Of course, it does mean living in a Third World country. Or rather, as a far from senior citizen pointed out in the bar the other night, another Third World country. In fact, plenty to make the Brits feel at home. Beggars, for instance. Ludicrous "heritage" shows put on for the tourists. And large numbers of people in security uniforms who guard banks and hotels to keep the public away from the trippers. We'll have them in Britain, too, for sure.
 On top of these home comforts there are, of course, the British residents (packets of Embassy and Land Rovers). And the whole place is reasonably peaceful. Cousin Yank has his transporters parked on the runway at Mombasa for servicing the soon-to-be-axed invasion of Somalia.
 Our lot are keeping a lower profile at the British base in the north.
 All in all, it's not surprising that our persecuted oldies have headed here.  There are a lot worse places to spend the winter. Of course, the idea of unleashing western welfare claimants on poorer coun-tries has long appealed to the free marketeers in our midst. They see it as a sort of cost-free aid programme.
 It is not an idea entirely to be despised - British income support and other payments must do something for the local economy. It's just that some of us would rather see the elderly travel of their own free will. To do this they would need security at home. And what with the above-mentioned confiscation, plus the crime wave, they feel safer and richer behind the security guards on an Indian Ocean beachfront than at home.
 It all seems rather shameful.

LOAD-DATE: November 8, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



316 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 10, 1993

SOCIETY: REGISTERING CONCERN;
Fears that dishonest and violent people may be working in residential homes are behind calls for tighter vetting of carers

BYLINE: ANNE FRY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 772 words

 
 IN THE absence of a nationwide register of care workers employed in private residential homes there is growing concern that dishonest, bogus, and possibly dangerous people are being hired and escaping detection.
 Susan Brooks, who runs a training school for care workers, established the National Register For Carers in an effort to plug this loophole. She believes that violent workers, turned down for registration after 10 or more checks, may still be employed in hospitals and homes. "They could have been abusive to elderly patients, managers and us, but the weakness is we're powerless to act," she says. 
 Registration costs individuals pounds 15 for checking and 25p a week, and the register's confidential database holds informati on on 10,000 carers. Mrs Brooks is worried that in some cases up to 10 per cent of the workforce quits suddenly when private home owners announce compulsory registration.
 Checks on the rest have revealed evidence of possible fraud in one tenth of applications for registration. Care staff keen to get an ID card and pin number sometimes supply forged birth certificates and driving licences. They provide glowing references, either written by themselves or supplied by other members of reference rings. The same sources can supply false medical information.
 Worst of all, says Mrs Brooks, these irregularities confirm that a minority of rogue staff are working under false names in private residential homes where employers are unaware of their criminal past.  Because most of them work as part-timers the employers do not deal with their tax or national insurance.
 At present, Mrs Brooks claims, malpractice is often covered up. If sexual or physical abuse comes to light, perpetrators may be counselled and given a warning before being told to find a new job. Their managers are pleased the potentially scandalous problem has been kept quiet. But this effectively empowers them to commit further, and possibly worse, abuse elsewhere.
 Sir William Utting, a leading campaigner for the proposed General Social Services Council, believes Mrs Brooks's allegations strengthen the case for a statutory body to prevent suspect workers getting employment in the personal social services.  "Things are coming out that indicate more management vigilance is needed.  People shouldn't be getting references. It's a disquieting situation that suggests tighter regulation is needed."
 Critics condemn Mrs Brooks for going it alone and "muddying the waters" in relation to the proposed Council. There are complaints that her efforts overlap those of the influential UKCC (United Kingdom Central Council for Nursing, Midwifery and Health Visitors). There are also issues of civil liberty in the compilation of a national blacklist of people apparently regarded as unfit to care.
 The Royal College of Nursing has observer status on the organisation's advisory board, and its recently retired director of policy and research, Derek Dean, is surprised at the extent of the problems, adding that Mrs Brooks - and any RCN member with similar knowledge - has a professional duty to blow the whistle.
 Susan Brooks established the register after researching conditions in 40 private old people's homes. Some are excellent and others horrific, with residents subjected to poor care, cruelty and abuse. At worst, low-paid, untrained workers, desperate for employment, carry out nursing tasks with inadequate supervision. "It's frightening," she says, "and the public hasn't a clue about what is going on."
 The criticisms are rejected by Colin Grimes, of the British Federation of Care Home Proprietors. "These are not problems of which we are aware. She seems to be describing a criminal sub-culture which is foreign to us. We have no evidence of this and I need to know more about the motivation." Mr Grimes strongly defends standards, adding that 350,000 residents are cared for by 500,000 staff.
 Three or four care homes get in trouble annually and he is unaware that fake identity is ever a factor. The register is welcome, he says, but anything a private individual can do will be weak.  Compulsory regulation of all aspects of community care is needed.
 But that is a large task. Peter Westland, of the Association of Metropolitan Authorities, believes one million people could be eligible for registration. While Liberty is satisfied that the National Register for Carers is covered by the Data Protection Act, and was set up with good intentions, it suggests the real answer is a vetting agency, based in the public sector and accountable to Parliament.

LOAD-DATE: November 10, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



317 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 12, 1993

SCARS REMAIN FROM CARNAGE THAT COST A 'WONDERFUL GENERATION';
John Ezard attends the packed service at Westminster Abbey to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Armistice

BYLINE: JOHN EZARD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 413 words

 
 SIR Edward Grey, foreign secretary at the outbreak of the first world war, was vindicated in his world-famous saying, "The lamps are going out all over Europe. We shall not see them lit again in our generation", a service commemorating the 75th anniversary of the Armistice was told at Westminster Abbey yesterday.
 The Rt Rev Michael Mann, chaplain to the Royal British Legion, said the carnage had not merely decimated "a wonderful generation full of patriotism, honour and self-sacrifice. "It erased from the survivors that joyous spirit in which they set out. A light had indeed gone out, quenched by these bitter experiences. The scars are, even now, tender to the touch. 
 "If we think of remembrance as just a matter of old men polishing up their medals, and their memories of best-forgotten wars, we have missed the whole point."
 The service filled the Abbey's 2,000 seats with veterans of both world wars.  Others wanting to go could have filled it several times more.
 For its climax Brigadier the Rev Charles Harris, aged 97, who saw cavalry slaughtered around him at the Battle of Cambrai in 1918 and went on to fight from 1943-45 in the second world war, spoke Binyon's poem We Will Remember them.
 John McCrae's poem Flanders Field, ending "If you break faith with us who die/ we shall not sleep, though poppies grow/ in Flanders Field", was read by Sara Jones, widow of the Falklands Victoria Cross holder, Colonel H. Jones.
 The Queen Mother led the act of national homage to the war generation intently and with barely a falter as she placed a wreath on the tomb of the unknown soldier.
 She spent nearly an hour at the service and opening the Royal British Legion flower garden of remembrance outside afterwards when she talked to the veterans, aged between 93 and 101. Henry Tinsey, aged 95, of Wymondham, Norfolk, recalled the exhilaration he felt as an able seaman at home on leave when the Great War ended on November 11, 1918, the "11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month".
 "I was living near Farnham in Surrey and I was helping my father cut branches off oak trees when suddenly all the factory hooters started sounding," he said.
 The Royal British Legion denied reports that yesterday's first world war services at Westminster and in France were the last which would officially be held. "Judging by the way things are going, there will still be veterans available to attend in 10 years time," an official said.

LOAD-DATE: November 12, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



318 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 13, 1993

REAL LIVES: THE VILLAGE PEOPLE;
When British artists were commissioned to create work expressing their feelings about the coming of the Channel Tunnel, a series of inquiring critiques of the way we live now emerged instead. None was more critical than The Village, a study of a Sussex community by photographer ANNA FOX.

BYLINE: VAL WILLIAMS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 2551 words

 
 IN 1994, the Channel Tunnel will open and Britain will no longer be an island.  However logical and welcome that link must seem to business people, tourists and international commuters in south-east England, doubts over the coming of the Tunnel have been profound. There have been fears of blighted villages, desecrated woodlands and trains roaring heedlessly through an idyllic countryside.
 Like a Moloch on the move, the tunnel seems to threaten not only a landscape but a heritage, a fabric of traditional life which has existed for centuries. Politicians, confronted with enraged rural constituents at the Sunday coffee morning or the summer fete, have felt the terror of those who challenge a deeply enshrined orthodoxy.
 Arts funders in Britain are not known for their innovation. Aficionados of the well-crafted budget rather than the unpredictable obsessions of artists, they tend to steer towards the safe. The Cross Channel Photographic Mission, set up in 1987 and funded by the South-East Arts Board and Kent County Council, was a bold initiative to commission some of Britain's brightest talents to make artworks which would express their feelings about the coming of the Tunnel. 
 The Mission avoided the more predictable landscapists and selected instead photographers like montage artist and satirist Peter Kennard, who constructed Welcome To Britain, an installation of scavenged materials and distorted perspectives and Sunderland documentarist and film-maker Huw Davies, who photographed English families who had abandoned Britain altogether for the cheaper properties and more enticing lifestyle of the countryside around Calais. Paul Trevor, well known for his incisive photographs of inner city housing conditions, made bleak portraits of city commuters. The references to the Tunnel were oblique and tangential - no roaring trains or scarred landscapes. Rather than defending a heritage, these projects were inquiring critiques of the way we live now.
 And none were more critical than Anna Fox's study of Compton, a tranquil Sussex village with a population of 200 retired people and prosperous commuters, some ten miles from Chichester. When she began to photograph Compton, Anna Fox was already well known for her 1988 photo documentary Workstations, an acerbic tale of office life at the height of the enterprise culture.
 She had been taught in the 1980s by Martin Parr at the progressive photography department at West Surrey College of Art and became one of a new wave of colour documentarists who used bright, often garish colour to produce photographs which largely subverted the dignified classic photo-reportage epitomised by magazines like Picture Post and Life.
 Fox, like Parr, used photodocumentary to peel away the surface of contemporary life, exposing vulnerabilities and vanities.  When Anna Fox looked at Compton, the village where her elderly grandmother still lives, and where her mother spent some of her teenage years, she set out to confound a myth.
 For the village is always with us. Even those who live in the heart of the city like to see themselves as rustic types with their own very local identities. The urban sophisticates who settle in Hampstead Village, Greenwich Village, Blackheath and Kew are tenacious defenders of the rural pasts of their highly protected neighbourhoods.
 Being part of a village is like being a member of an extended family and city dwellers, often far away from their roots, long for this sense of belonging. Viewed from the city, village life seems so secure, with its bastions of the vicar, the schoolteacher and the local squire. The school is a cosy, well-disciplined place where the old values persist, a log fire burns in the pub and the troubles of the workplace and the home can be forgotten in its flickering ambience.
 THE SHOP, often managed by former city dwellers is a place where information is exchanged, connections made. The modern village is a stage-set for our aspirations and our dreams of an idyllic past.  It has a super-real and sometimes surreal authenticity. Cottages, which housed the desperately poor families of the agricultural working-classes now feature in the pages of The World of Interiors. Lovingly restored, they have become homes for two rather than for 10. They have French kitchens and Scandinavian bathrooms and are cleaned by the ladies from the council estate whose grandparents once lived in them.
 Given that the English countryside has for centuries been a site of dire poverty and need, it may seem surprising that the village has been so idolised. A system of tied cottages, poor public transport and rigid class demarcation ensures that the rural poor are even more trapped than their urban counterparts.
 The high value of even the smallest country cottage means that the sons and daughters of working-class rural families are unlikely to be able to raise their own families in the villages where they grew up. English villages are fast becoming retirement communities. Suicide rates in the farming community are among the highest in Britain. Country life, with its intricate web of gossip and intrigue can be a fearsome existence to those who do not fit in.
 During the second world war, politicians and propagandists looked for ways in which they could encourage the British to defend their territory. The Shell Guides of the 1930s had employed some of Britaint's most exciting artists - Paul Nash, Edward McKnight Kauffer, John Piper - to extol the grace and charm of rural Britain and to deflect growing criticism of the invasion of the countryside by the motor car.
 In wartime, this idealisation of the countryside became a potent morale booster. The mass circulation magazine Picture Post ran a three page story headlined What We Are Fighting For. The inhabitants of the industrial heartlands of the North and Midlands, of the docklands of London, Liverpool and Bristol (all prime German bombing targets) may have been surprised to see a set of deeply atmospheric photographs of a leafy lane and a thatched cottage.
 It was an image of Beautiful Britain, unsullied by industry, a remarkable rural heritage. "The English", suggests radical second world two historian Angus Calder, "conquerors of a vast Empire, famous once all over Europe for the violence of their politics, the clarity of their philosophical thought and their innovations in business and technology, must now be portrayed as gentle, pacific until provoked and temperamentally at odds with merely rational thinking, with careful organisation, with new-fangled machines".
 In 1947, John Hinde, pioneer of early colour photography, published his classic study of country life, Exmoor Village. One photograph showed a cheery couple sitting at the kitchen table in their cottage, posed against the background of a polished dresser set with gleaming china. It was a perfect reflection of post-war longing for a halcyon rural past.
 At around the same time, photodocumentarist Edwin Smith and writer Olive Cook were compiling their chronicle of vernacular buildings in the English countryside. Published in the mid-1950s with titles like English Parish Churches and English Farmhouses and Cottages, they reinforced traditional ideas of a secret, undiscovered rural paradise.
 As Britain became more prosperous, car ownership increased and a wartime dream became an attainable reality. Baby Austins took thousands of urban families to Snowdonia and St Ives, to the Cotswolds and the Yorkshire Dales.
 FASHIONABLE pundits of the Forties predicted the terrible consequences of this mass invasion: "Motorists" wrote the BBC's in-house philosopher CEM Joad with alarm, "have turned the roads of this country into maelstroms of destruction and have, in their desperate eagerness to get away from each other, invaded the by-roads and lanes, where they are to be seen on banks and commons, picnicking determinedly in the shadow of their cars, inhaling oil and petrol and extracting music from machines".
 Families moved out of the inner city and into the suburbs - with their cosy railway stations, nuclei of local shops and cunningly pastiched half-timbered houses, they were the practical realisation of a middle class dream. Even today, the fantasy remains. Books which recount a contented rural past are certain sellers. The photographs of Wiltshire farmer's wife, Vera Punter, were published recently. All her pictures pull at the heartstrings.
 Anna Fox's photographs of Compton in the 1990s defy this meticulously crafted myth of country life. She has looked without nostalgia at the modern village, gone beyond the facade and portrayed it as an entirely modern phenomenon. Her portrait of Compton is more fearful than satirical. Like Gretel creeping towards the cottage of the wicked witch, she is both fascinated and alarmed by what she sees. But she edges her fear with irony. Like Jane Austen, the greatest portrayor of village life of all, Anna Fox appreciates that wit can be more incisive than anger.
 As one of her research sources, Anna Fox used The Octagon, the parish magazine shared by Compton and its neighbouring villages. The Octagon is redolent with an irony and understatement which Austen would have appreciated. One terse entry in The Octagon reads "The ladies who do such a wonderful job cleaning the church would very much appreciate some more help. The cleaning is done on Thursday afternoons at 2.30." Who knows the simmering resentment and weariness which lay behind this polite appeal? And why, one might ask in this post-feminist age, are there no men on the cleaning rota?
 In fact, the men of Compton figure little in this saga. Women do all the business here - adorning children as angels and madonnas for the Christmas play, weaving flowers into a bride's headdress with cruelly deft fingers, whispering, organising, planning, defending. When men appear, they are on the periphery, lost souls in a matriarchy, dazed, placeless and without any clear function. Former captains of industry, lawyers, financiers and soldiers they may be, but here they are powerless in a more arcane hierarchy, its membership unlisted, its rules unwritten, its rites the property of the properly initiated.
 LIFE IN Compton emerges as a stately minuet, and everyone knows the right steps. When people kiss in Anna Fox's Compton, they do it politely, without uncomfortable passion. They have very practised smiles. Their fingers are emphatic and pointed, cutting the air as they speak. These are people who understand their agenda, who know all the movements in their carefully structured drama.
 Life in the village is clearly divided between the public and the private; the many social events, coffee mornings, summer fetes, the harvest festival are the core of Compton's corporate life. Compton people are full of energy, raising funds for causes as disparate as dying children in Romania to church repairs. It is a kind of enterprise culture devoted to charitable aims. The presence of the Conservative Party is always apparent.
 Elderly and retired people form a large percentage of Compton's population; no longer caught up in the drama of making their way in the world and raising their children, they have time on their hands.  Everything is spotless and well-ordered. In Compton, old women keep up appearances, they roller their hair and wear elaborate hats and shiny blouses defiantly resisting the passing of time. They have tenacity and glamour, and if we fear them, perhaps it is because of their certainty and their disconnection from what we see as the real world.
 Compton's women emerge from the photographs as decorated high priestesses - an awesome chorus of ancients who administer the rites, write the laws and, in genteel whispers, cast judgments on those who have erred.
 When the socialising is over, the coffee cups washed and the bunting put away, Compton people live privately, in neat houses surrounded by lawns and hedges. Anna Fox's photographs show an eerie world, its inhabitants apparently whisked away to oblivion. There are patios where no one sits, summerhouses where no tea is drunk, topiary which forms close ranks against the casual stare of the passer-by. "Bleak and empty stage sets for a play which might never take place," wrote critic Joanna Lowry, "or which has, perhaps, been rudely interrupted and from which the players have fled. It was probably by Alan Ayckbourn or Mike Leigh and the characters have all gone indoors to murder each other over their afternoon tea."
 WHEN Anna Fox set out to photograph Compton, she wanted to "subvert the image of the picture postcard; the images of thatched cottages, leafy lanes and quaint old people that are imprinted on our memories, fixed there by a desire to maintain our idea of the country as a pre-industrial haven, neatly packaged in the top pocket of the heritage industry".
 The Village is a meticulous retelling and revision of an old story - while the characters and the plot remain fixed, the language has been subtly altered. Like an inquisitive being just landed from some distant planet, Anna Fox has explored a mysterious world of an alien people peeped over their hedges, crouched behind their shrubberies, wondered at their rituals and their conceits. There is, too, a sense of loss in these photographs, of a disappeared innocence. We are conscious of the disturbing presence of the wise child, laconically assessing the strange phenomenon of being grown-up.
 Given the vehemence of many of these photographs, the villagers of Compton have been surprisingly undisturbed by their portraits. No one objected to being included in the exhibition (first shown at Worthing Art Gallery) and the villagers who visited it "loved the way it portrayed the secrecy of village life".
 The mother of the bride who invited Anna Fox to photograph her daughter's wedding was delighted with the results. Teachers at the village school were only sorry that so few children were included, and Anna Fox's grandmother was disappointed that the village was not more identifiable, that few landmarks were on display. "It could," she said, "have been anywhere."
 One of the photographs in The Village shows a dead pheasant, killed by a passing car. Its entrails, fringed by delicate wing feathers and downy underbelly, spill out from its body. In its revelatory quality, its awareness of the implied violence of everyday life, it encapsulates this saga of rural life in the 1990s, proves what happens when you strip away the surface of the everyday and penetrate to the gore inside. Jane Austen, who delicately unpicked the fabric of village society over a century ago, to reveal concealed ambitions and subsumed desires, would have been intrigued.
 The Village: Compton, West Sussex 1991-1993, will be on show at The Edge, 92 Cromer Street London WC1 (071 278 9755) from December 7-22 1993 and from January 10-Feb 5 1994. Admission pounds 2. Other exhibitions organised by the Cross Channel Photographic Mission are currently touring the South East and will be on show in London during 1994. Whitsunday's Child: A Country Life in Pictures by Vera Punter is published by East Herts Publishing.  Price pounds 14.99.

LOAD-DATE: November 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



319 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 15, 1993

FOUR MEN WANTED: POLICE SEND NAZI WAR CRIMES FILES TO DPP

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 587 words

 
 Antanas Gecas
 In August, Gecas was named by the Wiesenthal Centre as the second-most wanted war criminal in the world, after Alois Brunner, Albert Eichmann's right hand man, writes Madeleine Bunting.
 The 77-year-old Lithuanian, a former mining engineer who lives in Edinburgh, switched sides in the last years of the war to fight alongside the Free Polish in Italy and was decorated for bravery. He came to Britain in the late 1940s, and became a British citizen in 1956. 
 In 1941 he was a junior officer in the 12 battalion of the Lithuanian police - a unit notorious for atrocities committed in German-occupied Soviet territory.
 Kurt Klebeck
 Klebeck, aged 87, is unlikely to stand trial because of his age, according to a spokesman for the German Embassy.
 Klebeck was deputy commandant in the only SS camp on British soil in the second world war, on Alderney in the Channel Islands. After the Guardian traced him to Hamburg in Germany last year, the local prosecutor's office opened an investigation into his wartime record. Klebeck served seven years in a German prison after a British military court sentenced him for lesser crimes committed in Germany during the war. But he has never been prosecuted for the crimes he committed in the Channel Islands.
 Klebeck admits he was stationed on Alderney but claims he was an ordinary soldier. SS records prove he was a member, and that he also worked at the Sachsenhausen and Neuengamme camps.
 The only war crimes which can still be tried in Germany are those directly implicating the defendant in murder. A spokesman for the German embassy said last week: "If the prosecution service has begun this investigation it must be because there is evidence of murder either in the form of documents or witnesses."
 But he added: "There's not much hope of a trial in court. Klebeck is now 87 and procedures can take a very long time. At 88 or 89 an elderly person is not in a mental position to follow a trial."
 David Winnick, Labour MP for Walsall North, who has campaigned for Klebeck to be brought to trial, said: "If the matter is delayed much longer, Klebeck will be dead. If the attitude of the German government is that now nothing can be done, that is most disappointing."
 The names of the following cases are known to the Guardian but identifying them could prejudice possible future trials.
 Case C
 A retired 82-year-old carpenter who has lived in Surrey for 28 years with his wife and son. He admits he commanded a battalion responsible for atrocities and was present when men under his direct command killed civilians, but insists he never killed civilians or Jews.
 A Catholic priest now living in Israel has given statements to the war crimes unit alleging atrocities committed in Mir, Belorussia, on August 23, 1942 by Case C.
 Case D
 The US Office of Special Investigations has begun proceedings to deport Case D, a British citizen, from his home in Florida where he emigrated in 1965 on the grounds that he lied on forms applying to live in the US. He is expected to be deported to the UK before the end of the year.
 Born in Czechoslovakia, he is alleged to have been a Nazi concentration camp guard at Munthausen. His job was to shoot prisoners attempting to escape. His name appeared on documentation provided by former Eastern bloc governments when files were opened after the fall of communism.
 Case D came to Britain in 1948 and worked in factories in Ashton-under-Lyne and Manchester.

LOAD-DATE: November 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



320 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 15, 1993

EYWITNESS: MENTAL PATIENTS CAUGHT UP IN CROAT ADVANCE

BYLINE: NATASHA NARAYAN IN FOJINICA, CENTRAL BOSNIA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 674 words

 
 CROUCHED against the wall, her arms and legs bare to the freezing wind, Inez flinched in imagined pain as gunfire echoed around the asylum. "Boom boom," she muttered, drawing her threadbare red pullover more tightly around her body. "It hurts inside my head. Are you taking us away from here?"
 Inez and the 364 other inmates of the Bakovici mental hospital had little sleep on Saturday night as artillery and heavy machine-gun fire whistled over the building. The Croatian HVO had set up their guns 100 yards from the hospital, which was unlucky enough to be in the way of their advance on the Bosnian-held town of Fojinica. 
 Abandoned by their doctors and nurses, who had fled the Croat offensive, the patients were forced to take over their own asylum.
 An elderly hunchbacked woman wandered in the road, her legs splattered with mud and snow. A group of Canadian and Danish United Nations soldiers looked on, wondering how to cope with the unfamiliar job of psychiatric nursing.
 The soldiers explained they had to guard the hospital because there were fears that the advancing Croats might kill the Muslim and Serb patients.
 Fojinica started to empty at the end of last week as rumours spread that the Croats were coming. On Saturday evening, hundreds of refugees were still trekking over the mountain roads out of the town. Bedraggled and desperate, most moved slowly through the falling snow, clutching their paltry possessions.
 One elderly woman, her face blue from cold, lay on the back of a mule-drawn cart covered in snow. A mother and her two toddlers rested exhausted in a ditch.
 Soon after daybreak yesterday the UN soldiers looking after the Drin hospital - home to 255 mentally handicapped adults and children - as well as the Bakovici hospital, went into Fojinica to find the staff.
 The town was a scene of desolation. Houses were scorched, shops had smashed windows. Only five staff had turned up for work, all of them for the Drin.
 Kadira Pesic, who has been director of the Drin for 25 years was in anguish "I can't leave these children," she said. "I feel responsible."
 Back at the Bakovici hospital, as the UN soldiers arrived yesterday bringing bread, they found that one old woman had died overnight. A medical orderly said she had died from natural causes, but the lack of heating or electricity did not help.
 "The patients have had no medication for days," he explained. "Even if we did have the medicines, we wouldn't know which ones to give them."
 Inside, the air was thick with the odour of stale clothing, unwashed bodies and the stench from unclean lavatories.
 The more lucid patients - called "trustees" - had taken over the job of caring for the others. They cooked lunch on wood-burning stoves and washed clothes in iron buckets.
 "This is a metaphor for Bosnia," someone said. "The lunatics have taken over the asylum and the UN is here supposedly trying to stop them killing each other."
 Marco was the chief trustee. He had spent years working in Canada and was in the hospital he said because he had broken his feet.
 In the wards patients with shaved heads were feeding each other a thick paste.  Another room was sectioned off. "We have to lock these people away for their own protection. They can hurt themselves," Marco said.
 Yesterday at midday, the Croat advance party arrived at the hospital. Led by a commander in a flak jacket, they fired in the air. "No Muslims will live here," one fighter with a swastika headband bragged.
 A Muslim woman in a red woolly hat came out of the asylum to meet them.  Confused, she sang a Muslim song, smiling and dancing for the HVO fighters. They laughed and jeered and egged her on. One soldier spat on the ground and turned away, disgusted.
 Pushing his friend's wheelchair through the yard, Nikola, an elderly Croat, seemed saner that the fighters outside. "In 1945 I served in the army. We fired at soldiers not civilians," he said sadly. "Our people should learn the ABC of democracy."

LOAD-DATE: November 15, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



321 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 16, 1993

MODEL PATIENTS;
Embarrassed at gawping medical students? A new way of teaching could make intimate examinations less stressful

BYLINE: JANE FEINMANN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 818 words

 
 WHEN Jane was 23 she stopped having periods and had to go to a London teaching hospital. "Come over here", shouted the consultant when he had examined her. "This is the first normal one we have seen today." Before she knew what was happening, an orderly queue of 10 embarrassed medical students were waiting to find out for themselves what a normal vagina felt like.
 "Obviously I should have stopped it," says Jane. "But I wasn't given the opportunity. You're not in a position to make a fuss when you're on your back." 
 It is a common experience. Even worse, thousands of anaethetised women awaiting operations have been used as teaching material for gynaecological students. It was only two years ago that medical schools were warned that simply presenting as a patient at a teaching hospital did not indicate consent to examination by students. The warning followed findings by the Women in Medicine group that many medical schools had no inbuilt system of obtaining informed consent because of the belief that, if informed, insufficient numbers of women would consent. The group claimed that without consent, students risked prosecution for assault.
 Concern about use of women as guinea pigs and the fear that insensitive teaching affects students' later attitude to patients has forced gynaecology departments throughout the world to rethink teaching methods.
 In some American and Australian medical schools women are specially trained to teach the gynaecological examination while themselves being examined. The idea is to reduce student anxiety and enhance learning opportunities while "addressing the discordance in the perception of a vaginal examination between physician and patient."
 The idea was considered by UK medical schools and rejected as culturally non-transplantable. It was felt that women would not volunteer and that medical students would become even more anxious.
 Instead St Bartholomew's Hospital medical school has imported an idea from a medical school in Maastricht, Holland. Instead of practising on vulnerable, real flesh, students learn the technical skills of examination and other medical procedures on models.
 This is not the first artificial vagina. St Mary's Medical School, London, tried one in the sixties, but a former professor there, David Paintin, explained: "It felt wrong so it didn't help students."
 Three years ago, a medical sculpture company began to develop three-dimensional models using rubbers and plastics. There is a set of vaginas, made of leather and silicone, in a variety of forms: after the birth of one child, after a number of children, elderly and cancerous.
 There is a model penis for practising urinary catherisation (20 per cent of which cause trauma in teaching hospitals). There are arms you can take blood from, breasts with and without lumps and a shoulder which lights up when given injection for arthritis correctly.
 Dr Jane Dacre, senior lecturer in clinical skills at Barts, has been assembling the collection. Until last month, she kept the bits of body in her car boot and carried them to lectures, trying to look unobtrusive and keeping well away from nearby Smithfield Market. Now they are kept in Barts' new pounds 1 million clinical skills unit (the first in the country).
 Dacre has been interested in other methods of learning clinical skills since, as a junior doctor, she was called in the middle of the night to put in a pacing wire in the chest of a man who had suffered a heart attack. It is a tricky, life-saving procedure and she remembers panicking, knowing she had to get it right first time.
 She says students will always have to do procedures for the first time on people. "There is no substitute for the experience of putting your hand in someone else's vagina. Anything else will never be the same. But you can get to grips with the technology by trying it out on simulated models. You can find out which hand you need to hold the speculum in, which hand you use to spread the labia and so on. Only when you are comfortable with the technology do you move on to real people."
 The hospital has always been at the forefront of taking women's rights seriously. The medical school dean, Professor Lesley Rees, has led the fund-raising drive for the pounds l million unit and sees it as "signalling a change in attitude to patients which students need to take notice of."
 However, other medical schools are wary. Susan Bewley, gynaecologist at University College Hospital, says the key technique students need to learn is to earn the patient's trust. "Getting the consent of patients to do an examination is what matters. You do that by body language, by showing that you respect their privacy, by covering their tummies. If you're relaxed, the patient will tell you whether it hurts or not. I don't know whether the new toys will help with that or not."

LOAD-DATE: November 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



322 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 16, 1993

DRUGS: THE LONG, PAINFUL BIRTH OF A DRUG;
As many as 10,000 potential medicines can be discarded in the search for a drug which has that star quality.

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN EDUCATION PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 964 words

 
 IT IS small enough to hold between your fingers or balance on your tongue. It takes up to 20 years and costs up to pounds 150 million to develop. It saves millions of lives and is a symbol of the success of the therapeutic revolution of the last 50 years. Yet we hear very little about the way scientists pack life-saving power into pills and other medicines.
 It is easy to see why we take the medicinal pill for granted. About five tonnes of aspirin are consumed every day. In Britain alone in 1990, doctors wrote 446 million prescriptions for drugs: eight for every man, woman and child. 
 There are vaccines to protect children from old scourges like polio, diptheria and tuberculosis; anti-inflammatory drugs to improve the quality of life for millions of arthritis sufferers; beta-blocker drugs which help to control high blood-pressure.
 More people than ever before are living into their eighties and nineties. As they grow older they need more medical care.  Drugs are not solely responsible for increasing life expectancy. Improved hygiene and living conditions reduced the annual death toll from 177 per 10,000 population in 1900 to 125 for per 10,000 in 1940, just before the introduction of penicillin, the first of the so called "modern drugs". By 1986, the figure had fallen to 117 deaths per 10,000.
 But drugs could play an even bigger role if scientists find new ways of treating conditions like Aids, which threatens the young, and dementia, which threatens the elderly. The therapeutic revolution is not restricted to pills, capsules, sprays, ointments etc. Among the 25 or so new drug products in Britain this year is a contraceptive device which is implanted in a woman's upper arm (see page 11). Forty years ago the idea of such an implant would have been dismissed as science fiction.
 How were this year's products born? Scientists begin by trying to find out the cause of the disease they want to treat. This helps to identify the target and provides clues to which types of chemical might work. As many as 10,000 potential medicines are discarded in the search for a new drug. The scientists seek drugs that, like natural chemicals produced in the body, can latch on to specially receptive sites in the body's cells. Few have that extra special something which makes for star quality. Many are rejected by computer analysis because of side-effects, cost or lack of stability or effectiveness.
 Plants have provided nearly half of the world's most successful drugs and could yield many more. The painkiller codeine comes from the opium poppy, and aspirin comes from willow bark. A new cancer drug has been derived from the bark of the Pacific yew. Plants from threatened areas such as the world's rain forests are being nurtured in botanic gardens. The US National Cancer Institute is screening more than 10,000 tropical plants a year. Many antibiotics have been isolated from microbes in soil. Marine organisms such as sponges and corals also contain healing power.
 The discovery of a potentially effective medicinal compound is only the first stage of pharmaceutical roulette - a game of high stakes with fabulous rewards. Zantac, the best selling drug of all time, is reported to have earned the British firm Glaxo more than pounds 10,500 million. The active ingredient in Zantac is called ranitidine and heals painful peptic ulcers which affect up to 10 per cent of Britons. The reason that it has been so successful is that it is very effective and causes few side-effects. It has improved the quality of life of millions of people.
 However, only one in ten of new licensed medicines in Britain goes on to earn UK sales of more than pounds 5 million a year.  Many potential products fall by the wayside of testing. New drugs are tested on small pieces of animal tissue. If these are successful, tests are extended to whole animals, usually rats and mice, sometimes rabbits, dogs and monkeys. The idea is not only to find out if a drug works, but if it has side-effects. New in vitro (in glass) tests means less animal experimentation. Increasingly, scientists use clumps of laboratory-grown cells, but they claim that much information they need can only be obtained through animal work.
 After two to six years of research and development, only five chemicals might be in the running out of the 10,000 originally investigated; and after a further three to five years, perhaps only one.
 Up to three-quarters of the time spent researching a new drug goes on human studies - starting with healthy volunteers. These early studies are designed to elicit further information about side-effects and to establish what kind of dose will be needed. The next phase typically involves groups of 200 to 400 patients and the third and final phase 1,500 on average.
 This might seem a large number, but the thalidomide tragedy shows scientists cannot be too careful. Thalidomide was given to pregnant women in the late 1950s as a sedative. Many of the babies were born with seriously deformed limbs.
 Although many countries reformed drug testing procedures after thalidomide, some dangerous drugs still became available. In the 1970s a drug called Eraldin was taken to control blood pressure but was later found to damage the eyes and the abdominal and connective tissue. In the early 1980s some patients died and others suffered sensitivity to light after taking the anti-arthritis drug Opren. It was also found to be linked to liver and kidney problems.
 Before a company can obtain a licence for a new drug in Britain, it has to submit a dossier to the Medicines Control Agency which is responsible for licensing new drugs. These are to 40,000 pages long and document up to 20 years of research and development.

LOAD-DATE: November 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



323 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 17, 1993

WHEN THE HELP RUNS OUT;
Calls for the regulation of private care agencies are growing more urgent but the Department of Health is sitting on the fence

BYLINE: JOY OGDEN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 847 words

 
 HOME helps wearing aprons, wielding vacuums and popping to the shops for elderly people living alone are becoming a thing of the past. Care assistants are taking over, their duties changed in line with the profile of those they tend.
 Older people who just need a bit of extra help are cut out by the demands of increasing numbers of very frail, vulnerable people who, since the introduction of community care, are to be looked after in their own homes. Household cleaning and pension collection are bottom of the local authority home care shopping list, although these are what older people want most.  And huge increases in charges effectively deny such services to many people, according to No Time To Lose, a report on community care by Age Concern. 
 Top priority now is help with personal nursing care. Since councils are instructed to spend 85 per cent of the total community care budget in the private sector, they are turning to growing numbers of private agencies to fill in the gaps in the service. There's the rub. The agencies, which must register with the employment department, are subject to the same checks as those which supply office, shop or factory employees. But there is no requirement to register with the local authority social services department and the council has no right to inspect information about them. As duties become more intimate and patients more vulnerable, the need for regulation becomes more pressing.
 David Hinchliffe, shadow minister for community care, plans to introduce a private members' bill providing for the registration of domiciliary care agencies in the new parliamentary session, assuming there is nothing in the Queen's speech.
 But his bill would coincide with a blitz on red tape by the Department of Trade and Industry. This has spawned a letter from the Department of Health to care home proprietors calling on them to review "regulatory burdens" and asking if inspection could be reduced.
 This is aimed at shielding small businesses from the cost of complying with regulations but it has enraged care professionals in all sectors. They fear that hard-won advances in safeguarding those least able to protect themselves will be lost.  Luciannne Sawyer, director of Care Alternatives, and president of the United Kingdom Home Care Association (UKHCA), believes the deregulation drive could even be counter-productive: "A mandatory system of registration might well actually help the growth of private agencies."
 Meanwhile the arguments for a level playing field have contributed to the London Domiciliary Care Initiative, set up after discussions between the UKHCA and the Association of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) to explore the case for a voluntary registration system across the capital. The organisation is to be launched next month. Agencies in the scheme will have to prove they have reached agreed minimum standards, while those outside will be increasingly squeezed.
 The argument seems to have been won, according to Denise Platt, chair of the working group, director of Hammersmith and Fulham social services department and president of ADSS. Platt said the scheme, which has to be self-financing, will alleviate some of the problems for private agencies with different branches, operating across local authority boundaries. As de-registration must be notified to all London boroughs, who will review and possibly withdraw contracts, it will make it easier for the council to identify rogue agencies.
 If the Government is serious about removing inhibitions to good practice and private enterprise while keeping costs to users under control, said Sawyer, it should start with the VAT regulations. These deter agencies from directly employing staff because they then have to impose VAT on both wages and commission. An agency which recruits self-employed people and introduces them to users, charges VAT only on the commission. But an agency can only supervise and dictate standards for staff it employs directly.
 Lesley Bell, chair of the Joint Advisory Group of Domiciliary Care Associations, also believes the VAT regulations should change. But she points out: "Even registration is not a foolproof system, but when you had most of the market being supplied by local authorities you had a certain amount of control. The more you go in for a fragmented market - and some authorities have up to 30 different suppliers - the more necessary it is to have a framework, otherwise it leads to chaos."
 Her research has also identified nurses' agencies as another area which is ripe for rationalisation. The agencies must be registered for providing nurses, but sometimes supply unqualified people who act as care assistants.
 Meanwhile the Department of Health is sitting on the fence about the need for statutory regulation. A spokesman said: "If the industry feels there is a problem, or administrative difficulties come up, we will think again. We are very keen that the private sector should grow and that the Government should not bind them up with red tape."

LOAD-DATE: November 17, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



324 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 18, 1993

PAST NOTES: MY LAI MASSACRE TRIAL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 329 words

 
 November 18, 1970
 AN ARMY prosecutor today accused Lieutenant William Calley of "shooting down in cold blood" unarmed and unresisting Vietnamese civilians during the alleged massacre in the village of My Lai two years ago. The lieutenant is accused of murdering or directing his platoon members to murder 102 civilians.
 Calley's platoon landed by helicopter on March 16, 1968, on the outskirts of My Lai without coming under any enemy fire. They found in the village undefended and unarmed women, children and old men. These people were taken in a group to the southern side of the village and Private Paul Meadlo and Private James Conti were directed to guard them. The two men were told: "Take care of these people." They started to guard the people. When Calley returned he asked: "Why did you not take care of these people?" They replied: "We have," and Calley told them "I mean kill 'em, waste 'em." Captain Daniel said Calley and Meadlo, Calley using a rifle with full bursts of automatic fire, shot the unarmed and undefended men, women and children.  Daniel said that some of the villagers tried to run but were shot down in cold blood. Meadlo was crying. The prosecutor said Conti moved his people to a large irrigation ditch and continued to guard them. He was later joined by Calley, Sergent David Mitchell and Meadlo, still crying. Calley ordered the people to be pushed into the irrigation ditch to be executed, and they were. 
 "Conti refused, but Meadlo did fire and he cried," Captain Daniel said. During the action Chief Warrant Officer Hugh Thompson and Lawrence Coldburn were flying in a helicopter, and saw the bodies in the ditch. They could not believe it, so they landed. "Over 70 people were executed in that ditch," the prosecutor said. Captain Daniel said that when a child crawled from the ditch, someone had shouted: "There is a child getting away." Calley had picked up the child, thrown it into the ditch and, shot it dead.

LOAD-DATE: November 18, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



325 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 19, 1993

PROTESTERS BLITZ MYSTERIOUS HESS MEMORIAL ON SCOTTISH FARM

BYLINE: ERLEND CLOUSTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 169 words

 
 A MEMORIAL celebrating one of the second world war's most notorious parachute jumps was summarily blitzkrieged yesterday.
 Anti-Nazi protesters moved swiftly into a field at Floors Farm, 15 miles south of Glasgow, hours after the discovery of a marble-and-slate monument to "brave, heroic Rudolf Hess", who descended, unexpectedly, on the same spot at the start of an abortive peace mission in 1941. 
 The owner of the 200-acre dairy farm, Craig Baird, had kept his head down at the Ayr cattle market as the demonstrators weighed into a structure whose building, according to Mr Baird's older brother, Basil, had been commissioned by "an elderly man from Yorkshire". Mr Baird emphasised that Craig, aged 55, a church elder and keen member of an East Kilbride curling team, was not political.
 "I don't know what the financial arrangements were," said Basil Baird, whose grandfather and father took charge of their distinguished German visitor when he appeared, so to speak, out of the blue.

LOAD-DATE: November 19, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



326 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 20, 1993

IL DUCE'S GHOST HAUNTS THE NEW ITALY;
This weekend's local elections could alter the country's political map. Ed Vulliamy reports from Naples on Mussolini's granddaughter's fight with the left

BYLINE: ED VULLIAMY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 1101 words

 
 THE signals were clear from the start. "We are proud of our origins," the man at the microphone said, as he declared the rally under way in front of the monumental central post office of Naples, built during the fascist era.
 The crowd cheered loudly, in an unusually chilly wind, and up went a forest of Nazi salutes to the chant of "Duce, Duce, Duce" as the star of the evening appeared, a flash of blonde hair. Alessandra Mussolini, granddaughter of the dictator, took the stage. 
 About 2,500 people had come to hear the finale of Ms Mussolini's campaign to become the mayor of Naples, which next year hosts the Group of Seven (G7) summit.
 That 1994 marks the 50th anniversary of the allies' liberation of the city from fascism was an element in Naples' favour when the G7 venue was selected. The formal host of the gathering of the most powerful leaders in the world is traditionally the local mayor. There is considerable alarm in the White House and the US state department that the hand that greets President Bill Clinton may well be that of Mussolini's granddaughter.
 Italy's flag hung at Thursday night's rally alongside red ones featuring a white circle in the middle and the black Celtic Cross of the contemporary European fascist movement, echoing the colours of Benito Mussolini's allies in the Third Reich.
 The crowd too was mixed. Skinheads and trendy lads decked out in leather jackets at the front mingled with elderly ladies and gentlemen in trilby hats, and smarter admirers wearing fur coats or talking on mobile phones.
 Ms Mussolini is certain to get through to the second round of balloting, which follows this Sunday's poll. Her main rival is set to be Antonio Bassolino, making the battle for Naples one between two extremes.
 Mr Bassolino is a hardline Marxist. Although a member of the face-lifted former communist PDS, he opposed its decision to ditch the hammer and sickle along with the title of Communist Party. He comes from the hard-headed ranks of Naples' industrial working class movement. In rotten, collapsing Naples, the centre cannot hold.
 The city has been run by an alliance of Christian Democrats, Socialists and Liberals, in cahoots with the Camorra Mafia syndicates, since the fall of Benito Mussolini, and the allied liberation. The entire leadership of all the parties is now under either arrest or investigation for bribery, corruption, embezzling aid after the 1980 earthquake, Camorra association and gross mismanagement of the health service and Aids emergencies, which have been used to harvest a fortune in kickbacks.
 Both Ms Mussolini and Mr Bassolino claim to offer deliverance from these corrupt but powerful men.
 "Bassolino - son of a whore," shouted the boot boys as Alessandra began to speak. "Sei bravi [you're great]," she replied. She protests that this is not a fascist campaign, but one of "moral renewal".
 The former soft porn model and failed film actress (her aunt is Sophia Loren) gave a short and undistinguished speech at tremendous speed, in which she said she had seen "the real Naples, and what the Christian Democrats have done. I have seen it in the slums and in the prisons . . . Long live Naples! Long live the unity of Italy!"
 We do not know yet whether Ms Mussolini's strong candidature is a farce signifying the dismal poverty of post-crisis Italian politics, or a serious threat representing the revival of a fascist right in southern Italy. Perhaps it is merely an exercise in crass populism; perhaps Ms Mussolini's Italian Social Movement (MSI) can replace the Christian Democrats as the main conservative force.
 Either way, she has become respectable. None of the sycophantic Italian newspapers has dared print one of the hundreds of existing photographs parading her physical attributes. She is interviewed on television by serious political hosts, and weighty columnists have compared her to Eva Peron.
 The lads in the crowd knew why they were there: "We love her because she comes from a great family," said Fabrizio, who works for the railways. "And because she'll kick the filthy Arab shit out of the city." The old men stood in rapture, perhaps recalling what they saw as better days. Others simply wanted to vote against the city's corrupt establishment, but refused to vote communist.
 Yet Ms Mussolini finds it hard to form a coherent political manifesto. At the MSI headquarters in Rome on Tuesday, the telephone rang. Ms Mussolini had been contacted by a television station, and was asking advice on what to say. "I love the people; I hate the bourgeoisie," was a recent gem, along with "I am not a fascist, I am a democrat" and "I am an anarchist".
 The MSI leader, Gianfranco Fini, was at the rally too, intent on dodging the fascist label, and promising "a fascinating challenge, the democratic conquest of consensus, with a vote which offers Italy the chance to rediscover herself around a national axis which can win the battle against the left."
 Naples' new mayor will take on a city which has been governed more badly than any of comparable size in Europe. There is fabulous wealth, all of it the direct or indirect fruit of the Camorra cocaine business or of state grants secured by local politicians when they become ministers.
 But in this Colombian-style arrangement, the Camorra's money is a private matter and the grants are embezzled. Little of this wealth filters down. Despite the lavish grants, the Naples local authority was unable last financial year to pay its telephone and electricity bills.
 The roads are potholed; the water is polluted and hazardous; schools are often closed because the buildings are falling down; hospitals turn away emergency patients; traffic is out of control; rubbish piles up on the streets. (The refuse service, like everything else, is in the hands of the Camorra.)
 The periphery of the town is a stinking concrete sprawl of unplanned housing, violence, cocaine, firearms and rigorous Catholicism. Children live on rubbish heaps; three died in a gas explosion last week.
 For this responsibility, the ideologies of fascism and Marxism now compete.  Opinion polls suggest in a play-off, Mr Bassolino would beat Ms Mussolini by 52 per cent to 48 per cent.
 The lads fold their flags away, and those who can remember the good old days hobble off, invigorated. There is a message from Ms Mussolini for President Clinton: "When he comes to Naples, he will have to give me his hand, and I will take him on a trip around Naples to look at the beautiful views. What's the problem?"

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



327 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 20, 1993

WESTSIDE WOUND UP;
Money Watch

BYLINE: DAN ATKINSON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 35

LENGTH: 309 words

 
 THE Securities and Investments Board has obtained a High Court order winding up Westside Securities, the firm at the centre of allegations that pounds 2.1 million may have been defrauded from an elderly woman.
 Westside, of Salisbury, Wiltshire, is now in the hands of the Official Receiver and it is being wound up in the public interest. 
 The firm was a category three member of Fimbra, the brokers' watchdog. It was allowed to advise clients and for a time was also authorised to handle client money.
 Westside personnel are alleged to have concocted a fraud involving pounds 2.1 million of shares in drugs giant Glaxo, belonging to an elderly and infirm woman client. SIB and other investigations are continuing.
 Fimbra has suspended:
 - Gerald Anthony Buddell, of Aquila Financial Management, Crowborough, East Sussex. Mr Buddell has admitted falsifying clients' signatures on application forms;
 - Christopher Maah & Associates, of Kings Langley, Hertfordshire. The firm - which was not authorised to handle client money - appears to have failed to maintain at all times sufficient financial resources to ensure that it meets its liabilities as they fall due.
 Merchant bank Singer & Friedlander is at the centre of an application for judicial review by the High Court of the Securities and Futures Authority's handling of a complaint brought against the bank.
 Bernard Panton, former chairman of quoted company Gresham Telecomputing, is claiming pounds 6,000 in interest from Singers for alleged delays in settling the sale of his stake in Gresham.
 He wants the High Court to order the SFA to reopen its investigation of Mr Panton's complaints against Singers.
 Mr Panton is challenging the SFA's view that Mr Panton's complaints were insufficiently serious to have Singers struck off from doing business.

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



328 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 22, 1993

LABOUR ATTACK ON 'BENEFIT ROBBERY'

BYLINE: MICHAEL WHITE, POLITICAL EDITOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 20

LENGTH: 465 words

 
 LABOUR last night denounced the Chancellor's plans to commit "the fiscal equivalent of assault and robbery" on unemployment benefit by halving eligibility from 12 to six months in his Budget on November 30.
 But ministers' short-term need to ensure a politically successful first Budget for Kenneth Clarke is certain to keep out any money-saving changes that could be vetoed by a backbench Tory revolt.
 Though ministers seem determined to announce a squeeze on unemployment entitlements, Mr Clarke will not legislate right away and legislation is not likely in this session, colleagues predicted. 
 The Treasury's long-term determination to cut the pounds 80 billion a year cost of the welfare state will reach into the heart of the middle class's welfare net as well as further squeezing the poor.
 Though only some immediate changes can be expected in the Budget, they would eventually tax child benefit, force wives to make separate pension arrangements and make businesses fund sickness and injury insurance without reimbursement.
 Above all, Treasury policy would reverse John Major's election rhetoric about ever-more widespread middle class inheritance of property by making elderly people use their own assets before the state's.  In the words of one Tory strategist, people must be prepared to "eat your house".
 It is certain that the Social Security Secretary, Peter Lilley, will legislate to impose stricter medical tests for invalidity benefit, and could cut reimbursement to employers for sickness insurance from 80 to 60 per cent - or even zero.
 Cabinet moderates, William Waldegrave and Virginia Bottomley, were quick to rebut shadow chancellor Gordon Brown's charges that their plans "go right to the heart of the welfare state" with cuts in dole entitlement.
 As with long-term efforts to force people to use their savings, that would require legislation which ministers may hesitate to risk while 2.9 million people are jobless.
 Fears which ministers denounce as scare-mongering were again reinforced by Mr Brown himself who attacked last week's revelation of seven official committees examining long-term changes. If implemented these would seek to encourage volunteers to opt out of basic state pensions, unemployment and other benefits.  It is a move which Labour expert, Frank Field, predicted would be attractive only to people in safe jobs - whose national insurance contributions would be lost to the Treasury.
 Labour's social security spokesman, Donald Dewar, warned of scapegoating the most vulnerable. Given that millions had contributed to national insurance throughout their working lives, "it would be the fiscal equivalent of assault and robbery.  The public loses both ways, paying more for less," Mr Dewar said.

LOAD-DATE: November 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



329 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 23, 1993

THEATRE: WINGS;
Harrogate

BYLINE: ROBIN THORNBER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 6

LENGTH: 357 words

 
 ANYONE who knows someone who has suffered from a stroke must have wondered what it's like to be locked in your own head, imprisoned in aphasia, unable to say what you mean. Improbably, this new musical from America sets out to show you.
 Not that writer Arthur Kopit has been there. But moved by his father's experience he researched among other apoplectics and came up with this sympathetic identification which is probably as near as we'll get until we can free up seized synapses. 
 The character from whose sanatorium armchair he has chosen to explore this enclosed world is, to point the contrast, a former aviatrix and wing-walker from the interwar days of flying circuses, when biplane aerobatics was a public spectacle in the States.
 All the more moving that this frail, hesitant old lady who once danced daredevil with the clouds is now, in her own faltering words, "captured" - spoonfed by her condescending carers and "wrapped in the dark".
 With the armchair's embrace enclosed in a cylinder of light Eve Shickle's performance as the indomitable and gradually recovering Emily Stilson is a triumph of both empathy and projection from a confined base. And the shifting screens and gauzes of Julie Henry's design, lit by Will Ballard, beautifully convey an uncertain claustrophobia.
 The translation from its original form as a radio play to an operatically styled musical, with music by Jeffrey Lunden and book and lyrics by Arthur Perlman, isn't entirely successful, in spite of endlessly imaginative invention from director Andrew Manley.
 So don't expect a thigh-slapping barrel of laughs, although there's a gentle humour to be relished. Go for a brave, perceptive adventure in understanding that uses music and drama as expressive tools.
 And without stereotyping Harrogate as full of elderly people, the town does have a lot of nursing/retirement homes; how could Harrogate Theatre's artistic director serve that community of caring professionals better than by offering them the European premiere of a clinical case study with songs?
 Harrogate Theatre (0423 502116) until December 4.

LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



330 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 23, 1993

WRIT LARGE

BYLINE: MARCEL BERLINS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 18

LENGTH: 629 words

 
 I HEAR that Mishcon de Reya, the firm handling Princess Diana's pix-in-gym litigation, have recently been investigated by the Attorney-General, along with Lawrence Lever of the Mail on Sunday, over unauthorised access by Lever to a restricted High Court insolvency file in the Maxwell case. Creditors are one of the limited categories entitled to look at such files. Lever was able to get a sight of the file because forms signed by two clerks from Mishcon de Reya stated that the firm - which also acts for the Mail on Sunday - represented a creditor of the insolvent Bishopsgate Investment Management, which managed most of the Maxwell pension funds. It turns out that the Maxwell pensioner who authorised Lever to inspect the file was not, in legal terms, a creditor. Last December Mr Justice Vinelott referred the case to the Attorney-General, Sir Nicholas Lyell, to consider whether contempt of court proceedings should be brought.
 I'm told the Attorney-General's department told Mishcon de Reya in August that no action was to be taken against the firm or any of its partners. Lever is still waiting to hear. 
 THE FOUR senior judges are soon to tell the Lord Chancellor whether they approve of the Law Society's plan for solicitors to get rights of audience in the higher courts. If they say no, it will be because they object to the society's insistence that solicitors outside private practice should also be eligible to appear in the higher courts. The judges feel iffy about Crown Prosecution Service lawyers conducting their own crown court cases. But if they say no to the whole scheme, what then? The society, I hear, has retained Sydney Kentridge QC to advise whether the judges' decision could be challenged in court by judicial review. But who would hear the case? Which judges would have the nerve and dispassion to entertain a legal attack on four of their most eminent seniors, including the Lord Chief Justice and the Master of the Rolls? And who would be the Big Four's solicitors? The Treasury Solicitor's department, the Government's lawyers, is made up of employed lawyers - precisely those the four judges would exclude from rights of audience. But judges aren't government: so would they have to go to private solicitors? I'm almost hoping for a "No" from them just to see what happens.
 REMEMBER Sir Michael Davies, the judge who used to hear lots of spicy libel cases and became the first judge to apologise to a Volvo (his own) for nasty remarks he made about it? I think Sir Michael has managed another first. He's retired from the full-time bench, but still does a lot of judging. I came across a transcript of a case in which he had to decide something or other, and there it was, in brackets: "(pause in proceedings for judge to take telephone call)." A bit much, I thought. I'm a great fan of mobile phones but, call me old-fashioned, I feel the middle of proceedings in the High Court is not the time nor place for phone conversations. Besides, to whom had he given his number, no doubt coupled with an exhortation to "phone me anytime"? Alas, the truth was less exotic. It was, I discovered, a call from another judge involved in the same case, to discuss matters of urgent relevance.
 THERE'S this big City law firm with video cameras in its offices. They're there for security, of course. But cameras film what they see. And what one of them saw recently was naughtiness of the kind usually seen in films prohibited to under-18s.  Moreover, the number of people involved in the activity was not the normal two, but four. I know which firm is in the frame, but I just need confirmation. A bottle of champagne to the first informant; anonymity is, of course, guaranteed. A copy of the video gets three bottles.

LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



331 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 23, 1993

POLICE WIDEN SEARCH FOR ELDERLY COUPLE TO BANKS OF RESERVOIR

BYLINE: LAWRENCE DONEGAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 270 words

 
 POLICE in Leicester yesterday extended their search for a missing retired couple to the banks of the Rutland reservoir.
 Derek Severs, a former ICI executive, and his wife Eileen disappeared 10 days ago from their home in the village of Upper Hambleton, overlooking Britain's largest man-made lake. Police have already dug up the couple's garden.
 A spokeswoman for Leicester police said last night that 60 officers, including a team specially trained in search techniques, were combing the seven-mile perimeter of a peninsula jutting into Rutland water. The use of divers was being considered.  Detectives were also intending to speak to some business contacts of Mr Severs to see if they could shed any light.
 Mr Severs, aged 68, worked in sales at ICI for more than 40 years and continued to do freelance work from his home. He is a prominent member of the local Conservative Party. Mrs Severs, aged 69, received an MBE five years ago for voluntary work.
 The couple have not been seen since November 13, when Mrs Severs presented prizes at a charity function. Neighbours reported them missing last Thursday but police found their cars, a VW Golf and a Rover, parked in their driveway.
 There were no obvious signs of a struggle, although detectives are treating the couple's disappearance as suspicious.
 Mr and Mrs Severs were well known in the community of 40 houses and villagers told detectives that it was out of character for either to go away without telling anyone.
 A 37-year-old man arrested on Friday in connnection with the investigation was still in custody last night.

LOAD-DATE: November 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



332 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 24, 1993

TUMBLING RETURNS SEND THE ELDERLY INTO DESPAIR

BYLINE: TERESA HUNTER AND NICK PANDYA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 16

LENGTH: 494 words

 
 FALLING savings rates will plunge many elderly savers, already concerned about how they would pay for Christmas, into despair.
 NatWest Bank yesterday cut the rates on many of its savings accounts by at least 0.6 of a percentage point - reducing to just 3 per cent the net return on pounds 10,000.
 The latest round of interest rate cuts will hit hardest those savers who depend on income from their bank or building society investment accounts. 
 These people are typically aged over 50 and retired; their cash accounts for 80 per cent of funds on deposit.
 Such investors have already seen their returns slashed by more than half over two years. A pensioner living off pounds 10,000 would have enjoyed income of pounds 85 per month after tax in 1991. That nest egg now earns only pounds 34 a month - and this will shrink to just pounds 29 per month if savings rates are cut by 0.5 per cent across the board. Although building societies are anxious to do all they can to stimulate the housing market, they cannot afford to antagonise their savers - many of whom are deeply disgruntled at the interest rates they are already receiving.
 A Woolwich Building Society spokesman said: "This must be one of the worst Christmas presents, which many savers were dreading. It will be a very bleak moment for people relying on their savings to live."
 Funds have been pouring out of building societies for many months into equity-based investments. In June, July and August investors withdrew pounds 249 million more than they invested with building societies. Savings institutions are keenly aware of the difficulties they will face cutting savings rates around Christmas - which is traditionally the poorest time of the year on the savings front.
 Societies are concerned that savers will desert them in droves, in favour of either gilts - yielding about 6 per cent gross - or equities, which are yielding 4 per cent.
 Mercury Asset Management's spokesman, Jonathan Ruck Keene, said: "Many investors will ask themselves why, if they can get more income from a safe blue-chip share, should they stick with a building society where there is no prospect of capital growth."
 Sales of unit trusts are already higher this year than they were for the whole of 1987, when sales were booming.
 Unit trust sales last month were the highest October figures on record, with net sales reaching pounds 846 million, compared with pounds 37 million in the same month last year. Actual sales were 95 per cent up on a year ago.
 The Association of Unit Trusts and Investment Funds' spokesman, Victoria Nye, said: "As long as interest rates are low we expect unit trusts to become increasingly attractive to private investors."
 But before rushing to withdraw their funds, building society savers should remember that with inflation down to 1.4 per cent they are still getting a very low-risk real return. Shares prices go down as well as up.

LOAD-DATE: November 24, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



333 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 25, 1993

THEATRE: MASTER BUILDER;
Edinburgh

BYLINE: JOYCE MCMILLAN

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 467 words

 
 All eds London and Manchester
 ONE OF the key exchanges in Ibsen's Master Builder comes early in the play, when the hero, Solness, is complaining to his friend the doctor about his fear of youth and how it will one day come banging on the door, forcing him to make way. "Well, what of it?" says the doctor. "Then that will be the end of Master Builder Solness," the answer roars back, all outrage and disbelief. For Ibsen's hero is a man in full rebellion against his own mortality and looming old age; and despite the occasional irony in what is often seen as a self-portrait of the artist as an ageing man, there can be no doubt that Ibsen saw his story as a tragic one. Everything about Solness - his childlessness, his sense of professional unfulfilment, the unhappiness of his marriage - cries out against the idea that this is where his life must begin to end; and when the young girl Hilde Wangel strolls into his office like a streak of sunshine he is utterly seduced, and lured on to a foolish death. 
 And what is strange about Brian Cox's Master Builder at the Royal Lyceum - co-directed by Cox himself and John Crowley - is that it captures every dimension of the play except that truly tragic one.  Perhaps the mere fact of appearing in this most revealing of plays about male middle age, playing opposite his own much younger girlfriend Siri Neal, has simply used up Cox's capacity for self-exposure. At any rate, the Solness he gives us is rather held up for examination as a faintly comic, ridiculous figure - vain egotistical, a lovable rogue in a too-youthful suit - than entered into as a human being full of immense pain.
 The result is a surprisingly brisk, pacey, amusing production, which makes fine comic play of the obvious affinity between the guilt-ridden Presbyterian cultures of Scotland and Norway, but rarely touches the wellsprings of pity and terror beneath the surface. The long exchanges between Solness and Hilde zip along at a fine pace, but seem simply to state and re-state the chemistry between the characters. And the effect of Cox's curious distancing from Solness's inner drama is to throw too much emphasis on the character of Hilde, who is really little more than a catalyst of Solness's crisis. Morag Hood does her best to invoke real sorrow and pain in her performance as Solness's grief-stricken wife, but the overall impression is too flippant, as if the pain of unhappy old men was something our feminist-influenced culture could no longer take seriously; or as if Cox had succumbed to the old exile's temptation of using his Scottish self as a vehicle for satire and reductive humour, and leaving the exploration of the full, terrifying range of human emotion to more complete cultures, elsewhere.
 Until December 11 (031-229 9697)

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



334 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 25, 1993

AND GOD SAID: LET THERE BE STYLISH CASSOCKS

BYLINE: DAVID PRESSWELL

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 799 words

 
 "THIS IS our most popular, the Childrey, more curvy and with a frill, though not overly feminine. This one, the Hasley, is definitely designed for clerical women with an hour-glass figure: defined waist, soft tucked skirt, curved shoulder wings, leg-o'-mutton sleeves."
 The Reverend Betsy King enthuses her way along a rail of cassocks, drawing attention to every design detail and urging me to feel the fabric - a non-crease polyviscose. Each cassock comes in a range of colours, including chestnut, grape, hyacinth (the bestseller) and peanut shell, allowing, in the words of the Oxenford catalogue, each woman to "choose her most flattering 'required' colour". 
 "How about red?" I ask.
 "You mean 'poppy'? No, not popular. Maybe that would still be too shocking - the scarlet woman and all that."
 Yet evidently King has divined a ground-swell of the unorthodox among her fellow female clerics: the Milbrook, the most traditional cassock she stocks, is also the least popular - and less than 18 months after Oxenford was founded, it has attracted 200 customers. Next year, the company hopes to break into profit, capitalising on a new trend in mix 'n' match cassocks with detachable coloured frill collars.
 King struck upon the idea of designing and selling cassocks back in 1988 when a day spent trying to find one ended in her buying material to make her own. In those days, not only was the choice of colours and materials "dismal" but none was designed specifically for a woman's shape. The experience was made worse by a fitting session with an elderly gentleman who clearly felt uncomfortable measuring a woman.
 Taking up the post of minister at Temple Cowley United Reformed Church in Oxford, where King has been the minister for the past five years, she met Bridget Welland, an image consultant with the House of Colour, as well as an Elder of the church.  King, who trained as a designer in America, realised their skills would be compatible and suggested the idea of a company.  They set up Oxenford together, with Welland as marketing director and King as artistic director and designer.
 What she had not fully appreciated were the particularities of designing cassocks. The sleeves need to be tight-fitting otherwise they might catch on the chalice during communion; the hem has to be ankle-height or the wearer is in danger of tripping over when genuflecting or climbing the pulpit steps.
 Then there is the matter of changing, in what are almost always uni-sex vestries, and the aesthetic consideration of what the garment looks like from the rear at those moments of the service when the wearer has her back to the congregation. Among other innovations, King has introduced the replacement of the traditional stiff "dog-collar" with a softer collar in a more sympathetic curved shape.
 However, the designing of cassocks for women is controversial in itself. Many people within the Christian Church simply do not believe that women should be doing this job and even among those not opposed to women priests, there are some who believe they should attempt to draw as little attention to themselves as women as possible.
 King is impatient with these arguments, dismissing the idea that the function of a cassock is to "neuter" a priest, of either sex. "If neutrality is so important, why weren't women ordained generations ago?"
 Underlying much of the criticism is the age-old stereotyping of women as more vain than men. It is one that has long been directed explicitly at female clerics, as in Chaucer's Prologue to The Canterbury Tales in which he pokes fun at the Prioress for her obsession with fine clothes. At a recent Christian Resources Exhibition, one old lady passing the Oxenford stand turned to her son and said: "Those aren't cassocks. They're gowns, women's gowns."
 King's customers would not agree. One wrote to her recently: "Every time I put on a male cassock, I feel I am putting on a dressing gown. Now I feel good. I feel I can do the job."
 A Scottish cleric wrote to say that such was her congregation's approval of what she was wearing that she eventually had to hang it on its own at the back of the church so they could take a closer look.
 Oxenford already plans to expand. Next year will see the opening of offices in the US and the launch of a range of "accessories", including everything from crucifixes to a waterproof surplice for graveyard funerals. Whatever happens, however, King does not intend to give up being a minister or to spend more than one day a week working for the company. What she does hope is that she will soon be able to pay her own stipend from company profits and will one day be able to respond to repeated enquiries from male colleagues, with an Oxenford for Men.

LOAD-DATE: November 25, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



335 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 26, 1993

FIRST PERSON: THE OLD GIRL NETWORK;
To strangers, they are frail widows, ageing, coughing, limping, shaking. To each other, they are freedom fighters

BYLINE: ALISON MOTLUK

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 5

LENGTH: 697 words

 
 THE LAST real conversation I had with my Polish grandmother, Babcia, was during the breaks in a TV docu-drama. We shouted over hucksters selling soap powder and insurance policies, and continued on a theme that had fittingly dominated the three-day visit: independence. Hers. She is 83 and independence, she impressed upon me, means ringing friends whenever you please and not having to explain the bill. It means staying in all day if you feel tired or going out late if you feel lively. It means spending an hour in the loo guilt-free.
 Babcia has guarded these simple freedoms shrewdly since the death of my grandfather a decade ago. Arthritic ankles, high blood pressure and atrocious rents notwithstanding, she has insisted on living alone. At first, she kept up the family home; when that became too oppressive, she decided to move - not into the plush and welcoming home of her son but into her own flat in a building populated by other old people. To the unacquainted eye, this apartment building is like any other. Perhaps the flats are more cosy and contain rather more knick-knacks and family photographs. The corridors are tidier. The lifts climb and descend more slowly. None of this was decisive in Babcia's move, however.  It was the subversives in the building that attracted her. 
 Who are they? Mostly frail widows, shrivelling with age, cradling brittle bones, coughing, limping, shaking. They are a most unlikely force. But they hold their ground. No amount of coaxing from relatives or slashing of social services weakens their resolve: they haven't lived 80 years to become baggage. They want their independence. And the only way to safeguard that is to exercise it - no small task for an octogenarian.
 The resistance is elaborate and covert, a sort of ad hoc vigilante group. My suspicions were aroused when Babcia excused herself for a stroll down her corridor. She did not tell me where she was going or why or how long she might be. I waited, patient but perplexed. Ten minutes later, she teetered back in, satisfied, and announced that all was well. "Bette's TV was on, Lizzie's in, Agnes's son is visiting."
 "You didn't talk to them?"
 "No, no, I didn't want to bother them, just to make sure they were all right. I heard Bette missed bridge last night. But she's fine. She is watching the right programme."
 Clearly I had been missing something all these years. What I had mistaken for spontaneous knocks on doors and random pleasantries was really part of a sophisticated network: Elders Resisting Dependence. Each old woman, it seems, has a beat.  Thrice daily, she prowls her part of the building and files reports by telephone to the others. Inconsistencies are noted and followed up; in the event of an accident, building supervisors are alerted, ambulances hailed or relatives summoned.
 For these old women, the job is taxing. Often it means struggling to understand conversation marred by stroke or Parkinson's.  Sometimes it means discovering a close friend passed out on the floor. (In one notorious incident, the discoverer promptly collapsed by her friend's side.) It always means bravely facing the prospect of ageing and death.
 That last conversation stays with me because later that night, my Babcia suffered a stroke. The morning found this sharp-minded, fastidious woman trapped in a drooling, paralysed body. Worst of all, she did not know. I was overcome, faint.  I asked her to trust me - that we had to go to the hospital, that something was wrong - yet I couldn't bring myself to tell her what it was.
 In the hospital, she suffered an even more powerful stroke. The doctors refused to speculate on her fate. We family members huddled together uselessly in the waiting room. For the first time, we contemplated alternatives to Babcia's living alone.  For the first time, we admitted we had never really spoken with her about what she would want.
 Five weeks have now passed. She has learned anew how to walk, to dress, to swallow. She can talk. She makes the same old jokes. Her mind is still razor-sharp. Most important, the freedom fighters at home say they are ready to take up her cause.

LOAD-DATE: November 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



336 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 26, 1993

COMMUNITY CARE CHANGES 'HARM ELDERLY'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 11

LENGTH: 391 words

 
 DOCTORS alleged yesterday that serious problems have been caused by April's community care shake-up, with many patients getting a worse service.
 A survey by the British Medical Association found that almost 85 per cent of doctors thought the service had either deteriorated or not improved since local authority social services departments took the lead in assessing and meeting the care needs of elderly, disabled and mentally ill people.
 Among doctors specialising in the care of the elderly, 72 per cent found that hospital beds were being blocked because social services were not making rapid enough arrangements for patients fit for discharge. 
 The BMA called for an urgent review of community care. Dr Alistair Riddell, chairman of its community care committee, said: "The survey does not say that community care isn't working, but it does say that there are problems."
 But social services directors said their research showed that community care was enabling more people to stay at home rather than enter residential care. Denise Platt, president of the Association of Directors of Social Services, said: "Our perception is that people are getting a better experience and better choice of care."
 The BMA surveyed 2,000 doctors but got only 553 responses. It insists the sample is statistically valid.
 Of those responding, 15.4 per cent thought community care had improved the service to patients, 45.1 per cent thought it had made no impact and 39.5 per cent thought the service had worsened. Among elderly-care specialists, 25 per cent reported an improvement and 43 per cent a deterioration. Among psychiatrists, the figures were 11 and 52 per cent.
 One in three doctors said they knew of no system for emergency referral and those who did know of a system said it took an average of more than a week to get an assessment.
 Dr Andrew Carney, a community psychiatrist in south London, said: "Probably what people have found has got worse is the bureaucracy - the form-filling, the increase in meetings required to get things done - and the slowing-up of discharge procedures."
 A survey by the social services directors' association has suggested there have been no significant delays in assessments, no cases of people being given inappropriate care and no serious cases of beds being blocked.

LOAD-DATE: November 26, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



337 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

November 27, 1993

DESPERATE BOSNIANS RISK MINEFIELD DEATHS FOR US ARMY RATIONS

BYLINE: MAGGIE O'KANE IN MOSTAR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 662 words

 
 NO ONE knew the dead woman's name. She lay in the basement corridor of Mostar hospital for a few hours, while a woman in a white bib and green overall mopped up her blood as it dripped slowly on to an icy tiled floor.
 Her first name was Semsa. She was a refugee aged about 45. Saudin Guja met her in the crowd that flooded past his house at dawn to look for the emergency food aid air-dropped on the mountain by the Americans the night before. 
 He woke about 5am as the crowd shuffled by his window, searching for packages they knew had been dropped in the night from the hum of the planes. He had heard nothing, but saw the crowd heading towards the field around Jeha Deiho's house on Ravinica hill.
 He decided not to go, to stay in bed. The field was mined and only a few hundred yards from the front line with the Serbs. He was hungry but it was not worth the risk.
 Blaguj has been cut off for months. The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees has not visited, and the nine-mile road that leads to Mostar can be passed only at night. Sometimes a truck makes it through from Mostar with flour and oil, but it is not enough. Saudin had not eaten for two days.
 For a while, he watched the crowd from his bedroom window coming back from Jeha Deiho's field carrying United States army rations.
 Cardboard packages left over from the Gulf war, holding packets of chilli con carne and chicken a la king mix. Packages with Juicy Fruit chewing gum and brown plastic sachets of cherry and cocoa powder.  Packages saying "Made in Kansas City" in white letters.
 Saudin kept telling himself the trip was too dangerous, but the returning crowd was euphoric and he was hungry. "I saw old women coming down the street carrying bags full of the ration packs and then I couldn't stop myself," he said.
 He met Semsa just outside his front gate. He knew her as one of the refugees who had fled from the town of Stolac.
 "Are the packages in Deiho's field?" she kept asking. "It is for my children. I have nothing to cook for them. No food."
 They walked quickly. She talked about her children. He wondered if there would be anything left. On the way up, they were passed by two soldiers carrying an old man. His leg had been blown off by a mine in Deiho's field.
 As they reached the field, they saw another explosion in the distance. A mine detonated by someone else scavenging for packages.
 They kept going. Semsa kept talking about her children being hungry. He nodded, let her ramble on. As they reached the field, the Bosnian soldiers called to them: "Don't go on, the field is mined."
 But nobody listened. "They were calling to us: 'The Chetniks [Serbian soldiers] are at the end of the field, stay away.' But the people ran deeper and deeper into the minefield."
 Another woman, a 22-year-old local called Colla, passed them on a stretcher.  She had reached the hill at 5am and picked her way carefully through the field. But looking up, she saw a woman about to step on a mine and called to her to watch out. Then one exploded under her feet, breaking the bones.
 Semsa and Saudin had gathered about 12 packages when he heard shouts from the end of the field. "Come on you Muslims. Come on over here and we'll give you some food."
 "The Chetniks were laughing at us," Saudin said. Five Serb soldiers walked towards them. "Come on Muslims, get your American parcels."
 They panicked. Semsa was running about 5ft in front of him when she hit the mine. It blew her apart.
 A second later, he felt the blast under his foot. He heard Semsa beside him.  "When she was dying, she kept repeating: 'My children, my children'."
 They buried her at night in Mostar graveyard, wrapped in a brown wool blanket, in a coffin made from a teak veneer wardrobe.  On it, they wrote: "Semsa". No one knew anything else about the refugee from Stolac, who died on the mountain.
 Croats halt Sarajevo evacuation, page 13

LOAD-DATE: November 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



338 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 1, 1993

INCOME TAX: 'DEVIOUS' WAYS FOUND TO ADD TO TAX BURDEN

BYLINE: MARGARET HUGHES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 558 words

 
 THE Chancellor claimed he had introduced "no new measures to increase income tax". But the reality is rather different, with most taxpayers facing major tax increases over the next two years,increasing the tax bill for a pounds 20,000 earner by almost pounds 65 a month.
 Mr Clarke said the three tax rates, at 20 per cent, 25 per cent and 40 per cent, would remain, adding that he had no plans to raise the higher rate beyond 40 per cent which is deducted from income of pounds 23,700 and above. But by once again freezing allowances, which is a tax increase in all but name, and by freezing the threshold at which people pay higher rate tax, he has dragged more people into the tax net. 
 According to the Low Pay Unit, more than 200,000 workers will be dragged into tax by freezing allowances. John Smith, the Opposition leader, branded the freezing of personal allowances for two years in succession as "a devious way of increasing income tax" and a betrayal of election promises.
 Taxpayers will, in any case, be worse off in the next tax year, thanks to measures introduced in March by Norman Lamont, which mean the average married person earning pounds 20,000 a year will pay over pounds 38 more a month more in taxes and National Insurance contributions.
 Part of this increase will be due to the one percentage point rise in employee NICs to 10 per cent. And Mr Clarke hinted at more pain to come by disclosing that he will join Peter Lilley, the social security secretary, in looking at moves to align income tax and NICs.
 Mr Clarke has also taken a leaf out of his predecessor's book and announced tax changes which will store up future pain for taxpayers. He has used his chisel to chip away further at the married couples allowance, tax relief on maintenance payments and mortgage interest tax relief. Such moves will increase the tax bill of a married person on pounds 20,000 a year by almost pounds 65 a month in 1995-96.
 Even pensioners have not escaped, for the Chancellor has reduced the tax break on private health insurance for the over-60s.  Tax relief on medical insurance premiums, which can be paid by relatives as well as pensioners, will be limited to 25 per cent from April.
 Miras and relief on maintenance payments, already restricted to 20p in the pound from next April, will be cut to 15p in April 1995.
 The married couples' allowance, along with the single parent's allowance and the widow's bereavement allowance, which are being restricted to the 20 per cent tax band next April, will similarly be reduced to 15 per cent a year later.
 The married couples' allowance, which the Chancellor described as an "anomaly", has been frozen at pounds 1,720 since it was introduced as a sweetner to replace the married man's allowance when independent taxation started in April 1990. Like Miras, the Government is clearly intent on phasing it out altogether.
 The reduction to 15 per cent will apply to the higher age-related allowances enjoyed by pensioners, though there will be some offset in April next year when the married couples' allowance for those aged 65 and over will be increased by pounds 200.
 The Chancellor's only concession was to unfreeze the blind peoples' allowance, frozen for the past four years. It will rise from pounds 1,080 to pounds 1,200 next April.

LOAD-DATE: December 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



339 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 1, 1993

DIARY: COURT SHORT

BYLINE: DESMOND CHRISTY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 726 words

 
 THINGS that go bump in the night. The Polish weekly Polityka reports on an unusual noise nuisance that has come before the district court in Wroclaw. Lawyers are arguing about the permissible level of noise during sexual intercourse. If a decibel level is agreed I will let you know.
 A number of pensioners - "pensioners do it quietly" it probably says on a car sticker somewhere - have complained about noise from athletic neighbours. Polityka, not an organ to neglect such a tale, spoke to several troubled old people. "My neighbours are incredible," said one pensioner who has taken the lovers to court, "their orgies start at five in the afternoon and go on until three in the morning. I can hear them even though I take out my hearing aid." Some couples have already had their coitus interrupted by policemen who handed out on-the-spot fines. They loved not wisely, but too loudly. 
 - A FRENCH socio-psychologist, not a beast often seen on this side of the Channel, has taken out a full-page advertisment in Liberation, entitled England against Europe. This insertion cost Jean-Claude Charra a little over pounds 12,700. And what does he want to say? Why that "Great Britain has continued, with unceasing energy, to try to prevent any attempts at building a united Europe." So others have noticed, eh? Mr Charra goes on to criticise Britain's indifference to the Soviet threat to Europe after the second world war; Thatcher's behaviour at EC meetings; BA's refusal to buy Airbus and the Westland affair. That will be pounds 7,000 Mr Charra. Anything else, Mr Charrra?  Certainement! GATT. Britain, you can read in the advertisement, is in cahoots with America to fashion a GATT deal that is against the interests of the rest of Europe and only joins EC projects when their success is guaranteed.
 I do hope he advertises here.
 Garlic dread
 YOU might, as I have, felt got at by other advertisements. All those ones that persuade men of a certain age to swallow lots of garlic. It is not all that different in Romania. But it is a bit different.  Evenimentul Ziliei, a daily mostly read (and believed?) by country folk, has been telling them to smear garlic over their doors and windows and rub it on the horns of cattle by nightfall yesterday, St Andrews Day, to ward off werewolves and other spirits that are said to wander around as good souls are celebrating the saint's day. As history has proved, it does not work against any werewolf calling itself Nicolae Ceausescu.
 - IT will be interesting to see how and if Der Spiegel, Germany's top news magazine, responds to Claudio Abbado's triumph with the Berlin Philharmonic at the weekend. As I reported last week, they did devote many column inches to criticising him.  Audiences, it seems, do not agree.
 - WHAT are the monks at the Spanish Benedictine abbey of Santo Domingo de Silos, near Burgos, but pop stars? The choir has won two platinum and one golden disc after selling more than 160,000 copies of their recordings of Gregorian chants. The abbot, Clemente Serna, says he feels "bewildered and embarrassed" but denies that the monks are pop stars. Why does Gregorian chant sell so well? "Because," says Father Serna, "people need to find themselves, to search the deep internal peace of true happiness and find a real sense of themselves." If you want to listen to the monks, you'll have to go to Spain. Their records are not released here.
 Bubbles burst?
 YOU might think that the victory of French champagne growers over Yves Saint Laurent, who called his latest perfume Champagne, would be cause to pop a few corks. Sadly, the champagne growers are rather miserable nowadays. They have tried to keep the price of their bubbly up by hyping their region's reputation at a time when Spanish and Californian producers were learning how to produce something just as good as champagne, although they are not allowed to use the name. And the sacred name has cost the growers dear. They have employed a network of high-powered lawyers around the world to stop anyone using the name - even for a perfume that you probably wouldn't drink. The investment in the lawyers may now seem to be have been a folly of the most expensive kind. Many growers say they may not be able to survive as the fizz goes out of their lives. Time to turn to perfume making?

LOAD-DATE: December 1, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



340 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 3, 1993

REBUILDING THAT TURNED TO RUIN;
Corina Courtney on how her corner of Leeds became a playground for vandals

BYLINE: CORINA COURTNEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 21

LENGTH: 617 words

 
 UNTIL a few weeks ago, I was a council tenant, living in the Richmond Hill area of Leeds. Not so many years ago, it was what you would call a "desirable" residential area. Now I have been forced to move out and, thanks to the lack of forward planning and co-ordination of different council departments, the area looks more like a war zone.
 It started in August last year when the land was earmarked by Leeds City Council for redevelopment by a local housing association. My home was in one of six blocks of terraced houses, some owned by former council tenants who had taken up the option to buy, some still rented. Properties, my own included, were maintained to high standards and the area was clean and tidy. 
 The council's clearance department told us of a three-phase plan which they intended to implement so that the houses would be emptied to allow for demolition. But as the first families started to move out and the properties became vacant, the vandals moved in - or rather broke in - and took all they could in the way of useful or saleable fittings, including roof tiles and guttering.
 Pavements made of highly prized Yorkshire stone started to disappear piece by piece during the night, and joy-riders discovered that these streets were an ideal place for practising their skills.
 Then the burglaries started of houses still occupied. It was not simply stealing for gain, more a case of vandalising homes for some sort of gratification. A few more tenants were frightened into moving prematurely and, as they left, their properties were broken into, sometimes wrecked and flooded and even burnt out.  As the streets became emptier, the vandals became even bolder and started stealing, or stripping down or setting fire to cars - even during daylight hours.
 Several of us pleaded with the council but without real results. The police, undermanned and under-funded, could no longer keep pace with the spiralling crime. Windows started to be smashed regularly in occupied properties, elderly residents told of being terrified by gangs of youths, and street lights were smashed to provide cover.
 By this time, I was calling the police and/or the fire brigade three or four times a night, and some of us were contacting the council every other day to ask for empty houses to be made secure with metal shuttering. On each occasion, we were met with indifference and very little interest in our predicament, and some of us were made to feel a nuisance. By last March, the area was so devastated that it was used on television to represent a Belfast street at the height of the troubles.
 One family I know of left to stay with relatives after being burgled three times in 15 hours. It was when joy-riders threw lighted matches into the petrol tank of a stolen car outside my front door that I began to fear for my own safety.
 After a few weeks, I was forced to admit defeat and had to leave. I have now taken refuge with an aunt in another part of Leeds, but I know that within hours of leaving my Richmond Hill house, it was stripped and vandalised and everything I couldn't afford to put into storage was destroyed.
 One of my neighbours, 74-year-old Michael, has stayed on. He is in poor health and now spends his time, terrified, living behind metal shutters in one room, too afraid to go out of his house. He says he has been told the council cannot house him.  We have jolted a few individuals in the police and the council into taking action, but nothing has really changed. Meanwhile, Michael and I, and others like me who have left the area because we were frightened, are obliged to go on paying rent for the properties we used to call home.

LOAD-DATE: December 3, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



341 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 4, 1993

OVER-60S HARDEST HIT BY TAX CHANGES

BYLINE: NICK PANDYA

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 35

LENGTH: 458 words

 
 PEOPLE who take out private health insurance plans will have to pay the new Insurance Premium Tax adding at least 3 per cent to their yearly healthcare costs.
 The tax affects all health insurance contracts, including Permanent Health Insurance, which make monthly pay-outs based on policy-holders' income in the case of an accident or long-term illness. Under the new rules, from next April the period of tax-free replacement income has been reduced to 12 months from two years. 
 Hardest hit by the Chancellor's proposals are the over-60s whose tax relief on health insurance premiums is cut back to 25 per cent from the top rate of 40 per cent, for premiums paid on or after April 6, 1994.
 However, the Chancellor has made it easier to claim the tax-break by abolishing the existing requirement that the Inland Revenue must certify private medical insurance contracts before they can attract tax relief, from July 1, 1994.
 Tax relief on medical insurance plans was introduced in 1990 to reduce the burden on the National Health Service by attracting as many of the elderly as possible into the private sector.  Currently anyone aged over 60 taking out health insurance, or a younger relative or a friend paying the premium, can claim full tax relief on the premiums.
 Most of the tax relief has gone to people who already had private health insurance and simply switched from policies which did not qualify for tax relief to ones that did.
 The limit on the tax relief and the Premium Insurance Tax could not have come at a worse time for private health insurance subscribers over 60, who face an increase of up to 6 per cent in next year's premium.
 Health insurers routinely review their premiums twice a year in July and January. Next year, Bupa will cut rates on some of its plans and raise others. For example, from next January, a Bupa policy-holder over 60 on hospital scale A or B will see premiums go up by between 3 per cent and 6 per cent. This, Bupa claims, is thrust on it as elderly subscribers tend to make more claims than other policy-holders.
 However, the health insurer is freezing prices for its older subscribers who are on hospital scale C, which generally means treatment at provincial hospitals. A Bupa spokesman said those affected can avoid some of the increased costs by choosing treatment at a provincial hospital or by paying a higher excess or switching into one of its no-frills policies.
 But while Norwich Union, as well as Bupa, said it will try to reduce the impact of the new tax on its customers, other industry insiders warn that yearly premium rises are unavoidable as prices for medical treatment, products and equipment tend to go up much faster than other prices.

LOAD-DATE: December 6, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



342 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 7, 1993

BIG CUTS FOUND IN LONG-TERM BEDS FOR ELDERLY

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 448 words

 
 MORE than one in two hospitals have cut the number of beds for elderly people with long-term illnesses despite the growing incidence of dementia, a survey says today.
 Almost three in four health districts are failing to provide the number of such "continuing care" beds indicated by guidelines drawn up by the Royal College of Psychiatrists, according to the survey by the Alzheimer's Disease Society.
 Four districts Grimsby, East Birmingham, Wolverhampton and Kettering, are said to have no National Health Service continuing care beds, relying instead on buying care from neighbouring districts and the independent sector. 
 A similar survey earlier this year by the Guardian of the Northern and South Western health regions showed that the number of beds had dropped by 40 per cent since 1988.
 Today's survey was conducted by MPs, on behalf of the society, among 64 health districts in England, Wales and Northern Ireland in May and June. Of 48 districts able to provide comparable figures for 1990 and 1993, 56 per cent had cut continuing care beds by an average of 35 per cent.
 Thirty-one per cent were providing more beds and 13 per cent the same number, but the society says the average cut by the majority represents "a massive abdication by the health authorities of their responsibilities to the care of chronic and terminally ill people".
 Chances of receiving continuing care depend on where one lives, the society says. The survey found that 72 per cent of districts are failing to meet royal college guidelines, with 46 per cent supplementing NHS provision by funding beds in the independent sector.
 Warwickshire health district is quoted as saying: "The health authority does not envisage direct NHS provision of continuing care within NHS provider units."
 North Nottinghamshire is said to have stated: "We do not see the provision of continuing care for people who do not require active treatment or health interventions being the function of the health service."
 By contrast, districts including Macclesfield and Dudley are shown to have increased their NHS provision.
 - People wanting private operations should shop around, haggle and ask for no-frills packages, as costs between hospitals in the same region can vary by thousands of pounds, the Consumers' Association says today.
 Its magazine Which? Way to Health, found in a survey that among 10 hospitals in the West Midlands and South Yorkshire a hernia repair cost from pounds 1,470 to pounds 738; among 10 in Essex varicose vein surgery cost from pounds 1,544 to pounds 567; and among 10 in Greater London a hip replacement cost from pounds 8,281 to pounds 5,320.

LOAD-DATE: December 7, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



343 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 9, 1993

SELF-IMAGE: MIKE MCSHANE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 12

LENGTH: 313 words

 
 ACTOR Mike McShane, 38, is best known for his appearances on Channel 4's Whose Line Is It Anyway.
 What image do you have of yourself?
 I am fat - but the word fat is not pejorative for me. I consciously use it because I don't like dancing around the issue. I have always been fat and had a very bad self-image as a kid. I used to be filled with self-hatred and try and ignore it. 
 Has your appearance affected your career?
 Yes, some roles are completely defined by your appearance and I try to avoid those. It is irritating when journalists focus on my "heavyweight potential", ha ha.
 What kind of clothes do you wear?
 Loose clothes. I get them from High And Mighty, and the tailor Eddie Kerr builds my suits. He also dresses Robbie Coltrane and Lenny Henry, so he knows a fat person is not just a fat person but that our weight is distributed in different places. I have no ass, Robbie Coltrane has a big ass.
 Do you exercise?
 Yes, I got a trainer last year because I got very sick and couldn't climb the stairs. He had me doing two hours of exercise a day.
 Are you happy with your body?
 I am now. There was a period in 1985 when I went on a fasting programme and I lost 110 pounds. I was down to 190 pounds and was very thin. I thought it would solve all my problems, but I was still full of the same fears. I put the weight back on.
 Do you diet?
 No, I just try not to eat high fats.
 Would you have plastic surgery?
 I would only have surgery if I lost a great deal of weight and my skin didn't snap back, but I'm not going to have anyone hoover my butt.
 Are you worried about ageing?
 Yes, because we are the last of the baby boomers. We're ignoring old people now, but give it 15 years and we'll be racing around on matt-black zimmer frames, pushing kids out of line. It will be hilarious, and sad.

LOAD-DATE: December 9, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



344 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 10, 1993

YOUNG 'MISLED BY ALCOHOL BENEFITS'

BYLINE: CHRIS MIHILL, MEDICAL CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 360 words

 
 DRINK limits recommended by doctors and the Department of Health should be reassessed to produce lower levels for young people who were misreading messages about the health benefits of alcohol to excuse heavy drinking, liver specialists said yesterday.
 The doctors accepted that two or three drinks a day had benefits for middle-aged and elderly people in reducing heart disease. But they said that messages about the protective effects of alcohol were sending the wrong signals to young people, who were predominately responsible for road traffic accidents, violence and crime when drunk. 
 Dr Peter Elwood, head of the Medical Research Council's epidemiology unit in South Wales, told a meeting organised by the Royal College of Physicians and the British Liver Trust, in London, that the benefits in reducing heart disease occurred in elderly people, who only gained a few years, whereas the deaths caused by alcohol in young people caused a much larger toll in terms of life years lost.
 "To talk in terms of safe limits is misleading. It is a very complex issue and it is dangerous to simplify it by talking about limits. The possible benefits for heart diseases have to be balanced against the risk of vehicle accidents. It would be more helpful for public education to say the risks increase with increasing intake."
 Current limits say that men should not exceed 21 units a week, and women 14. A unit is half a pint of beer, a measure of spirts or a glass of wine.
 Professor Oliver James, of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, said liver damage from drink was rare in people who consumed less than 50 units a week.
 "We are almost frightened to talk about the benefits of alcohol in case it opens up a Pandora's Box where it is said drink is good for you, which is just not the case."
 The Department of Health and the British Medical Association expressed scepticism yesterday over the value of a drug called Detoxahol developed by American researchers which is said to be able to remove the effects of alcohol even after several hours of heavy drinking. Its makers hope to sell it in bars without a prescription.

LOAD-DATE: December 10, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



345 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 11, 1993

THROW AWAY LINES;
Television

BYLINE: PAUL BAILEY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 30

LENGTH: 446 words

 
 "IF YOU'RE going to heckle, put your hands up first, because you all look alike to me," said the only black ventriloquist in Britain to an overjoyed white audience. Scarlet Watt, who comes from Huddersfield, is a big star on the club circuit, as Distant Voices, Still Lips, the latest film in the engaging series, Short Stories (C4) demonstrated. Scarlet learned his craft from Terri Rogers, a large, jolly woman who is regarded in the business as a "great vent". Scarlet worships her, and she thinks his fame is going to reach far beyond the pubs and clubs. She could be right, for Scarlet came across as an amiable young man. 
 There was one scene of quiet surrealism, when Scarlet took his dummy, Max, to his tailor for a new suit. Max was headless, the better to facilitate shoulder measurements. Scarlet treated himself to an outfit, too, and was almost in tears when the tailor produced the finished garments. The jacket probably had a vent at the back, but since we only saw the vent from the front, it was difficult to be sure. "The time is ripe for another vent right now," observed Scarlet's agent, the cheery Roy Gumble.
 Nine months ago, Scarlet added a second dummy to his act, a racist skinhead, John. Max, who has some pretty awful views himself, refuses to speak to him, thus complicating the act. A tasteless, but funny, gag about Terry Waite went down a treat with the inebriated punters. Scarlet must be aware that he is in dangerous territory, playing the likes of Bernard Manning at their own suspect games. Yet Scarlet is at his most felicitous when he isn't being topical at all. He had Max pretending to be the vent, and the result was innocently silly, and wholly delightful.
 Beadle's About (ITV) is not so much silly as stupid. Does anyone who is even moderately civilised enjoy practical jokes? Last night's programme contained an extremely unpleasant sequence in which an elderly man berated a couple of labourers who had dumped piles of pig manure outside his house. He went for the men with a pitchfork and threatened to run it through them if they didn't remove the - expletive deleted, with comic exclamation remarks - stuff. He then promised to do the same to an officer from the Department of the Environment. The folks in the studio roared their loudest when the near-demented pensioner advised the officer to stick his note of complaint up his ****. Beadle himself appeared at the close disguised as a policeman. Oh, the dreadful hilarity of it. To contemplate that this is one of the most popular series on TV is to know that hell itself, should it exist, can promise nothing more terrifying, nothing more repellent.

LOAD-DATE: December 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



346 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 13, 1993

STATE HAS BETRAYED PENSIONS PROMISE;
If provision for retirement is handed over to sellers of insurance schemes, welfare of the entire economy is placed at risk

BYLINE: WILL HUTTON

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 1513 words

 
 REMEMBER popular capitalism? Britain was going to become a nation of self-reliant share-owners whose rugged individualism would spearhead a new industrial revolution. The reality is different; millions with stock market-related investment schemes, many of which involve them being systematically fleeced and whose purpose they only vaguely understand. It is one of the cons of the century.
 Perhaps the most serious area is pensions. The post-war settlement established a perfectly viable system of state provision with private sector add-ons - either through occupational schemes or insurance contracts - that have given those who retired over the last decade perhaps the best living standards ever enjoyed by the elderly. It will be a transient gain.
 The public/private partnership smacked too much of collectivism for our Conservative governments - and in the name of individual choice and reducing the burden of taxation they have encouraged the growth of personal provision. The flat state pension has been degraded by indexing its growth to prices rather than wages, the value of the painfully crafted top-up, the earnings-related pension, has been capped, and a rebate offered to those who contract out of the state earnings-related pension. Here, as elsewhere, the realm of the public is being emasculated, and the private advanced at any cost. 
 The reasoning behind this is spurious on any number of counts - not least in terms of our personal finances. Begin with the flat-rate state pension. Year by year, indexation to price increases rather than earnings is making it progressively more worthless - for had the same process been practised since 1948, today's pounds 56.10 single pension would be worth only pounds 23 a week. Even to maintain today's real pension demands taking out a private contract to compensate for the progessive loss of value - but the two-thirds of Britons who earn average earnings or less can only lose out.
 Brian Wilson at Bacon & Woodrow, a leading firm of actuaries, has computed for the Economics Page that a 30-year-old man earning pounds 18,300 a year would have to pay pounds 1,897 a year to a private insurance company to get the equivalent of today's married man's state pension. But his national insurance contributions from next April will be pounds 1,597 a year, and that buys unemployment benefit on top. Paying pounds 300 a year extra for just a private pension to match today's state pension is irrational by any standards, and the more earnings fall below the average the worse the deal becomes. The average man or woman is being conned - by their own government.
 For its part, the Government insists that it must scale back the state pension because as the numbers of pensioners rise so the tax burden to maintain pensions' current relationship to average earnings will become insupportable. But this is nonsense. In the Rowntree Trust report The Future of Welfare, John Hills computes that taxes would have to rise gradually by just 2.3 per cent of national output up to the year 2030 to hold pensions' current value - no more than the increase in taxation planned by the Government over the next two years. But after 2030 taxes would fall as the number of pensioners fell.
 The concern over the tax burden in the years ahead is scare-mongering to achieve an objective today - enlarging private provision. But here there are even larger grounds for concern, and they relate to the way the whole British private pension system is organised.
 The principle of the pension fund is relatively simple. Stocks and shares are bought over time with tax-relieved savings to accumulate a fund on retirement that buys an annuity, which produces a steady income in old age. How much the fund grows depends upon the performance of the underlying assets - and, since the war, shares have produced phenomenal returns.
 IN THAT time, the stockbrokers BZW calculate, the stock market has multiplied more than 30 times to produce an average nominal return on equities of more than 16 per cent; adjusting for inflation, the real return is more than 9 per cent.  Anybody taking out a pension plan in the last 40 years has achieved returns higher than in history - and the funds they have built up have allowed them to buy relatively generous annuities.
 These returns dominate everything. They are why the pension fund salesmen can promise large sums to even modest savers; why the public can believe them - and why the Government feels it can cheerfully shrug off its obligations to the elderly. The equity market has become the home for nearly all our savings, with insurance companies and occupational schemes alike betting that the returns from the last 30 years will reproduce themselves in the future.
 Since 1988, 400,000 British adults, we learned last week, have been persuaded to transfer out of occupational schemes and buy personal pension plans investing directly in the stock market - again, deluded by riches beyond the dreams of Croesus. But this was wrong on two levels. First, they lost their companies' contributions, so necessarily they were worse off; but they also surrendered guaranteed returns, often extremely good, and substituted whatever their personal fund might buy when they retired - and that depends on the stock market.
 But the market is fickle. If it is high on retirement day, they can do well; if not, with some poorly designed schemes they do badly. The new personal pension holders run the risk individually - and lose the protection of guaranteed rights and pooled risk.
 But the 400,000 are only the most exposed of a more general trend. Even those who remain in occupational schemes are losing guaranteed rights; with three million unemployed, companies are eroding pension scheme benefits - and if the funds do well, the companies scale back contributions rather than improve pensions. Insurance companies are less and less willing to sell pension fund contracts with guaranteed bonuses that build up over time; rather they want to sell "unitised" contracts, laden with fees, that vary with the level of the stock market. They run less risk - that is suffered by the individual investors.
 But can the fabulous returns continue? Those of the last 30 years have been produced by a combination of rising inflation and ever-higher dividend pay-outs. Yet companies now pay out 40 per cent of their profits in dividends, the highest ratio in the industrialised West; future dividend growth can be no faster than that of the underlying economy.
 At the same time, if inflation stays low then another source of stock market buoyancy is removed, because it has been investors wanting the protection of rising money dividends to protect themselves from the depradations of inflation who have found equity investment so attractive. Low inflation, low growth and dividend saturation add up to the conclusion that the dazzling returns must disappear.
 However, our pensions still depend upon the funds meeting those returns, and the industry is structured so that pension fund manager vies with pension fund manager to deliver the best return. Pension fund managers win their mandate by promising that they will be in the top quartile of performers; a promise that definitionally not all can keep. But the losers know the price for failure - somebody else will win the management contract together with its juicy fees.
 This gives stock market investment its febrile short-term character. Companies know that their new owners need dividends above all else to justify their investment promises; and if they fail to deliver then they risk takeover and dismemberment.  Dividends have doubled over the last decade as a proportion of national output as companies have struggled to meet the funds' demands, and investment has reached a 30-year low. The larger the pension funds, the worse British economic performance.
 Which gives the lie to the Government's argument. Pensioners do not go away because they are no longer the responsibility of the state; it is just that their claim on future national output has changed.  Under the current arrangements they make their claim partially through taxes and national insurance; in the future they will increasingly make their claim on company profits through the shares they have acquired. We can have a higher tax burden, or a higher dividend burden. To pretend that the latter is virtuous while the former is not is disingenuousness of a high order.
 The system is a mess. As consumers we are sold plans on promises of returns that are increasingly unattainable while a viable state system is allowed to wither on the vine. The funds that invest on our behalf thus make impossible demands upon British companies, weakening the performance of the economy. And at any stage we are vulnerable to being ripped off by fraudsters and dodgy salesmen.
 There is a remedy. This is our money. It should and could be spent as we want.  That it is not is down to us. Some pension fund activism is long overdue.

LOAD-DATE: December 13, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



347 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 14, 1993

D-I-V-O-R-C-E: HARD AT 30, HELL AT 50

BYLINE: NAOMI CAINE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 17

LENGTH: 1082 words

 
 "MY HUSBAND walked out on me just before Christmas. I was 57 years old. Funnily enough, the thought of spending Christmas alone didn't really bother me. But the thought of spending the rest of my life alone made my heart go cold," says Caroline, recently divorced after 32 years of marriage.
 Divorce is traumatic at any age. The aching sense of loss is as painful at 25 as it is at 55. But older women - women like Caroline - suffer particular problems after the break-up of a marriage. 
 "Women who divorce in their fifties must learn to stare loneliness in the face because the chances of an older woman finding another partner are slim," says Zelda West-Meads, counsellor at Relate. If the children have flown the nest, or if the divorcee is menopausal, the future will seem bleak.
 "My ex-husband is making a new life for himself with a woman who is several years younger than me, but I feel too old to start again. When you are young, you bounce back. But I have lost the optimism of my youth." According to West-Meads, Caroline's reaction is not untypical of women her age. "Younger women recover from rejection more quickly than older women.  Women spurned in their fifties often feel that their lives are all but over."
 If rejection makes the nights seem long, guilt draws them out further. "Yes, I blame myself for the failure of the marriage," Caroline admits. "I lie awake at night wondering where I went wrong. Now I devote my life to my children. To put it bluntly, they are my only reason for living."
 Married for 28 years, Maggie divorced her husband in 1991 when she was 55. "I married Peter for all the wrong reasons and I stayed with him for all the wrong reasons. Ours was not a happy marriage and I regret all the years we spent together. It would be unfair to list all his faults as if I were blameless, but he made my life hell."
 Maggie had a brief affair when she was in her late forties and she says that Peter never forgave her infidelity. "After my affair, he watched me all the time, even hiring someone to follow me. He used sex as a sort of punishment and made me beg for it. It was only later that I discovered he spent hours watching pornographic videos.
 "I thought my friends would back me up when I petitioned for divorce but my children were my only allies. Even my mother said I should have waited until after her death."
 Divorce may have lost its stigma for the younger generations but people in their fifties often find it hard to shake off their traditional values. Chances are they will feel a shudder of social embarrassment at the mere mention of the word divorce. They may also suffer from divided loyalties and from the uncertainty cast over their own marriages by the break-up of another.
 "You find out who your real friends are after you get divorced," Caroline confirms. "My ex-husband and I had a large circle of friends, some of whom we had known for 20 years or more. Now I hardly see any of them."
 A woman in her thirties might use her career to stem the tide of pain but that option is rarely open to one in her fifties.  As West-Meads says: "These are the women who held the career ladder steady while the men climbed to the top. They may be uneducated, untrained or both. Even stepping on to the first rung takes all the courage they can muster."
 Employers grant women in their fifties a chilly reception at the best of times but in these days of high unemployment, that reception is likely to be downright frosty. However, Lilian Bennett, chair of recruitment agency Manpower, issues women with a call to arms: "Yes, it's tough but women who have run a house and raised a family have skills that are valued and recognised. They can find work if they want it."
 They may have to. Divorce isn't just about losing your husband. It is also about losing your home and your means of support.  Maggie is just one of many women who stayed in an unhappy marriage because she simply could not afford to get out. "I had given up work to bring up the children," she explains, "and I did not have the means to support them on my own."
 David Pickering, a divorce lawyer in Manchester, defends what he describes as the even-handedness of the law. "Financial payments are not a way of settling old scores. Whatever the grounds for divorce, the payments are structured according to the same criteria." The law takes into account, among other things, a woman's income and earning capacity, as well as her needs, obligations and responsibilities. "But the fact is, unless the woman is working, the husband's salary will have to pay for the upkeep of two households instead of one. For women in their fifties with no income, low earning capacity and modest family wealth, the financial future is gloomy."
 It might be a little brighter were the courts allowed access to pension funds.  The law has always treated husbands' pension funds as untouchable, leaving women exposed at retirement age. However, recent legal decisions point to a more equitable distribution of pension benefits in the years to come. Change is on its way, say the lawyers, although it may be some time coming.
 Lady Sarah Moon, founder of the Old Bags Club for divorced women, believes older women must shoulder some of the blame for paltry financial settlements. "The images are of ex-wives milking husbands dry or taking them to the cleaners, but the reality is quite different. Women born in the 1940s have learned the role of 'good wife' and arguing over money is simply not in the script."
 Divorce may result in the loss of husband, friends and financial security, yet more and more women are doing it. Women instigate 75 per cent of divorces and although we do not know how many of them are older, more and more women are choosing a happy single life above an unhappy married one.
 "Many women in their fifties have spent years subjugating their wants, needs and abilities to those of their husbands, but they are not prepared to put up with it any longer. As women's expectations of marriage shift and as economic independence becomes a possibility, they want to reclaim their own identity," West-Meads explains.
 Maggie waited until the children had left home before she divorced her husband. She found herself a job, took up ballroom dancing and has never looked back. "I had forgotten who I was. It has been wonderful to rediscover myself and you know what?  I happen to like me. I happen to like me very much."

LOAD-DATE: December 14, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



348 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 16, 1993

IRELAND: THE PUSH FOR PEACE: LISBURN: ULSTER AWAITS BREAKTHROUGH;
'It's not a matter of politics, it's gangsterism which keeps it going' QBY: David Sharrock

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 371 words

 
 IN THE Linfield bar on the high street in Lisburn, staff and customers knew all about history - and declarations in Downing Street by "a dance hall manager and a high-wire artist" weren't part of it.
 "Historic day? The only historic day is the Twelfth of July ," grumbled Norman, a retired merchant seaman. "They've sold us out again. No one understands our background, that's the problem." 
 Lisburn, home to army headquarters in Northern Ireland, is James Molyneaux's power base. His constituents like to draw a comparison between him - "a gentleman" - and Ian Paisley, who is regarded in much the same light as Gerry Adams of Sinn Fein. The commercial centre was, as usual, ringed with checkpoints yesterday.  An RUC officer wasn't impressed by the notion of peace by Christmas. "Bollocks," he said, waving the car on.
 The Linfield bar is named after the football team that recruited their first Catholic player last year. Jim, the barman, had firm ideas about how to bring peace: "It's not a matter of politics, it's gangsterism which keeps it going. Let the army go into the ghettoes and clean them out."
 He and his customers puzzled over the lunchtime TV news and then switched in disgust to a country and western cable channel.  "No, it's not a good day here," said Jim. "It's never a good day here," said Wesley, who theatrically choked on his Guinness at the thought of paying "Free State" prices.
 Andrew, who arrived from Cookstown to empty the vending machines, said: "I'd like to see peace, as long as it didn't affect me financially."
 With this he retreated to Cookstown, pursued by taunts from the old men, who were keen to correct the assumption that they were from Lisburn. "Hell no, I'm from the Shankill. We're all blow-ins here. We were chased out of west Belfast in the 70s."
 Lisburn is attractive to Protestant ladies as well. Zandra and Pauline, both in their 40s, from Portadown, had made the 20-minute journey for the "lovely shopping".
 "There's too many people making money out of the situation," said Zandra.  "Besides, the South can't afford to keep themselves, let alone us. It's a frightening thing for the next generation, but I'll never live to see peace."

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



349 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 16, 1993

MAN'S BODY FOUND IN FLAT AFTER 3 YEARS

BYLINE: VIVEK CHAUDHARY

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 9

LENGTH: 307 words

 
 AN inquiry was launched yesterday after the body of an elderly man who had been dead for more than three years was found in his flat.
 Workmen found the skeleton of John Sheppard, aged 72, on the Stonebridge Park estate in Harlesden, north-west London, last Wednesday when they entered the flat to investigate a water leak. He is believed to have died around June 1990. 
 His skeleton was in a chair surrounded by Christmas decorations from 1989. It was naked apart from a pair of socks. At first it was thought that he died that same Christmas, but his doctor later disclosed that he last saw him in January 1990.
 Mr Sheppard's rent for his council flat was paid by direct debit from a private pension plan, but payments stopped last year.  Brent council said it began eviction procedures against him in October 1992 after writing to him several times about the arrears.
 "We did not visit the address to find out why there was no response to our letters - you can't go breaking down doors over rent arrears," a council spokesman said. "It is not possible for us to monitor every individual living in the borough."
 Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding Mr Sheppard's death.
 They said they were puzzled why the council or social services had not chased up the pounds 4,500 rent arrears on the one-bedroom flat. The council said it was launching an investigation with police, its housing department and electricity and water companies into why the body was not discovered earlier.
 Mr Sheppard was described as a recluse who was rarely seen around the estate.  He had a history of heart disease and diabetes.
 Neighbours had complained several times of bad smells from the flat but blamed it on drains.
 Police said Mr Sheppard had no known next of kin. There will be an inquest.

LOAD-DATE: December 16, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



350 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 17, 1993

BROADMOOR STAFF SUSPENDED AFTER SECOND ESCAPE

BYLINE: JOHN EZARD

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 3

LENGTH: 482 words

 
 WARNING sirens sounded from Broadmoor Hospital, Berkshire, yesterday after the eighth violent patient to escape in six years eluded escorts during a visit to a nearby hospital.
 Kenneth Erskine, aged 30, who strangled seven elderly people in south London out of perverted sexual desire in 1988, ran away from two prison officers after using a lavatory at Heatherwood hospital, Ascot, where he was being treated for an injured hand. He was recaptured on Ascot racecourse. 
 The two prison officers escorting him, both men, were suspended by Broadmoor's general manager, Alan Franey. Earlier yesterday two other officers, a man and a woman, were suspended for failing to prevent the escape by a similar ploy of a double killer, Anthony Pilditch, on Wednesday.
 Pilditch - who is still at large - slipped away from prison officers after saying he wanted to use a lavatory in a Reading pub where he and the officers were due to have lunch after a Christmas shopping trip. Police believe he may try to travel to Morocco, where his wife lives. He speaks Arabic and recently transferred pounds 1,000 saved from prison earnings to an outside bank account.
 Pilditch, aged 47, and weighing 20 stone, was convicted of murdering two women. One of them was a waitress, Agnes Duff, whose decomposed body was found in a Luton bedsit in 1978. Pilditch confessed seven years later when arrested for another offence.
 Wednesday's outing was his sixth in a rehabilitation programme. Mr Franey said: "I find it difficult to understand how a patient with two escorts can abscond when the instructions are clear that patients must be in sight of staff at all times."
 Frank Mone, the general secretary of the Broadmoor branch of the Prison Officers' Association, said: "I think it was a knee-jerk reaction of a management who panicked when they saw the newspaper coverage of Pilditch's escape. Mr Franey believes that by losing sight of Pilditch the staff were in breach of policy. I do not accept that."
 Mr Mone put the number of escapes this year as high as eight or nine, blaming a more liberal regime since Broadmoor came under the control of the Special Hospitals Service Authority four years ago.
 "Patients have access to phones, to banking systems, their mail is not looked at or read. A number of patients are manipulating the prison system to their benefit."
 The suspensions were "something that has been done to appease the public and throw the light from the administrators of the hospital".
 The hospital's escapers since 1986 include a man convicted of threats to kill and of burglary with intent to rape; a rapist of two girls aged 11 and 15 who was described as a danger even to his own mother; a man convicted of sexual assault and wounding; a murderer; an arsonist and an armed robber who attacked three girls after escaping. Most were quickly recaptured.

LOAD-DATE: December 17, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



351 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 18, 1993

HAPPY GIRL 'WITH MIND OF HER OWN';
Father describes Suzanne as polite but naive child

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 440 words

 
 "SUZANNE was a fairly high-spirited but well-mannered girl," said John Capper, who became her step-father when she was just two. "She had a lot of friends. She was happy."
 Her mother Elizabeth remembers her in much the same way: "She was fun-loving but not boisterous. She was like any 16-year-old girl who wanted to be out with her friends. Suzanne never brought any problems home. She enjoyed doing things for other people and was always giving love and affection. She was never interested in getting anything back." 
 She liked music, particularly Michael Jackson records, and had a passion for Atlantic 252, an Irish-based pop radio station.
 Mr and Mrs Capper married in 1979 and separated in 1990 after several attempts at reconciliation; they now have no dealings with each other. Suzanne at first lived with her step-father, but later spent some time with her mother and with friends - including Jean Powell. At one point, she put herself into the care of the local council. She returned to Mr Capper's home six weeks before her murder, but Mrs Capper says she had planned to move in with her on Christmas Eve 1992.
 "In those six weeks, she did more than her fair share of work around the house," said Mr Capper. "She was polite and thoughtful. I have asthma and she made sure she went to the front door to have a cigarette. She was a very polite child. And she was only a child. I would say she was naive."
 John Watkins, head of Moston Brook high school, said: "She had a mind of her own - she wasn't meek or mild. Not lippy, but a strong personality. She made her wishes known. While she was in school, she was fairly conforming, not one of those regularly being bundled into my office for not doing what they should."
 But Suzanne did not like school. "She liked wagging so that she could go to work," said Mrs Capper. "When she was 14, she had a cleaning job in a Manchester office when she should have been at school.  She wanted to work as a care assistant in an old people's home. In the holidays she used to come to the home where I work and she was idolised by the residents. She used to do errands for them and take them out to the park."
 Suzanne got to know Jean and Glyn Powell through Clifford Pook, Jean's brother. Suzanne always liked babies and she started minding Mrs Powell's three children and sometimes took them up to her grandmother's house.
 But the friendship worried Mr Capper. "The involvement with those people had a very strong pull. Suzanne kept coming back and I'd try and lay rules down, mainly for coming in late at night. But in the end it didn't work," he said.

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



352 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 18, 1993

WHY PENSIONERS MUST BE TOLD THE DANGERS OF RISKING THEIR SAVINGS

BYLINE: MARGARET HUGHES AND TERESA HUNTER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 29

LENGTH: 926 words

 
 ADVISING elderly people on how to invest their life's savings is not an easy matter. But it involves an additional duty of care to ensure that they invest in the correct product and fully understand the nature of their investments and the risks involved.
 Fimbra, which regulates independent financial advisers, has recently impressed upon its members that giving financial advice to pensioners and those approaching retirement should be dealt with more sensitively than other investors - bearing in mind that such people have no means of making good through earnings an investment which turns sour.
 And the regulators have now told the Guardian that they are keeping some independent advisers under close scrutiny. They include Knight Williams, a firm of independent advisers which specialises in retirement planning. But while Knight Williams agrees that it is in constant contact with Fimbra, it strenuously denies this has any particular significance. 
 Director Robin Knight Bruce said: "We are breaking new ground in the investment world. The regulator wouldn't be doing its job if it wasn't keeping a close eye on us."
 Knight Williams, which grew rapidly in the late 1980s and early 1990s, now has 24,000 clients. Its highly effective sales operation has turned the company into one of the biggest sellers of unit trusts.
 But there is growing concern within the financial community about the Knight Williams marketing approach, for while advertising its position as an independent and impartial financial adviser specialising in retirement planning, part of its clients' money goes into its own unit trust company.
 As an independent adviser, it is expected to review the entire market in making recommendations to investors. In this case, however, virtually every penny of investors' money which it advises should be invested in equities, is placed in Knight Williams' own unit trusts. According to Knight Williams' own figures, this represents some 40 per cent of each client's wealth.
 Until recently, its salesmen were paid 20 per cent more commission for recommending KW's own funds than they were for recommending another company's bonds or trusts.
 Knight Williams points out that its funds are managed by well-known companies, like Mercury and Schroders. The funds also allow the customer to switch between fund managers within the unit trusts. This enables Knight Williams to argue that it is acting independently and switching more cheaply between fund managers to the advantage of its clients.
 It is also true that the regulations allow independent advisers to sell their own unit trusts - but only when these represent a better deal than anything else in the market. The Consumers' Association believes that acting as an independent financial adviser and selling your own unit trusts is a conflict of interest.
 Jean Eaglesham, who heads the CA's money unit says: "I am still very concerned there might be a conflict of interest. It is a matter I have raised with the Securities Investment Board." The CA has criticised the firm on two occasions this year after complaints from readers of Which magazine, who, it claims, were told to sell all their existing investments to buy those of Knight Williams.
 An additional concern is that the charges on Knight Williams' funds are about 20 per cent higher than the unit trust industry's average. The initial charges are more than 6 per cent - compared with 5 per cent usually levied elsewhere; and there is a growing industry trend towards abolishing front-end charges. The annual management charge is 2.5 per cent, compared with the 1.5 per cent generally charged by the rest of the industry.
 Given that Knight Williams typically pays its fund managers 0.5 per cent, that leaves it earning an attractive 2 per cent of funds. This means that an investment must rise by nearly 9 per cent in the first year before a client begins to make any capital appreciation.
 Knight Williams claims that the annual management charge brings investors other benefits such as free switching, free Personal Equity Plans, free bed and breakfasting, and free capital gains tax forms. However, there are free PEPs elsewhere on the market, and few investors really need to bed and breakfast.
 Last year, there were 79 complaints - more than average - referred to Fimbra against Knight Williams. The firm itself has revealed that a further 50 complaints have been lodged against it so far this year.
 The company claims that of 79 complaints against it made to Fimbra last year, only half of those went to arbitration and half of those were found in its favour. But this still means that half were found in favour of the client and the company was asked to compensate 16 clients. Knight Williams declined to give a figure for the total compensation paid but says the largest claim it settled cost pounds 12,500.
 The majority of last year's complaints about Knight Williams followed the world stock market collapses around the time of the Gulf war. This year's complaints also mainly relate to market movements.
 Selling at the bottom of the market is a not uncommon reaction by small investors - which can cost them their life's savings.  This does not make unit trusts or similar products a bad investment. But it does mean that recommending such products to certain kinds of investors must be approached with caution.
 If somebody sells at the bottom of the market, it raises the question of whether they should have bought in the first place.

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



353 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 18, 1993

NOTEBOOK: CORPORATE BRITAIN IS REALISING THAT SHARES ARE OVERVALUED

BYLINE: EDITED BY ALEX BRUMMER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN CITY PAGE; Pg. 34

LENGTH: 1001 words

 
 THE current buying frenzy on the London stock market seems overdone. Whichever way one looks at it, there is very little in terms of fundamentals to justify the pounds 40 billion rise in share values since the Chancellor, Kenneth Clarke, announced his deflationary budget, which hoisted the FTSE to its current record of 3337.1.
 When the market is rising, it is always easy for traders to find justification. At the moment the rise in equity prices appears to be built around the gilts rally, with the analysts arguing that a half-point drop in gilt yields has made equities more attractive. 
 Certainly, there are all kinds of economic reasons to be hopeful. On the global front this was the week in which the world issued a collective sigh of relief after the marathon seven-year Uruguay trade round was completed. Oddly enough, however, on the day that the US and the EU reached their historic agreement which unlocked the deal, equity prices fell. Then there has been some good UK domestic economic data: inflation seems under control, retail sales are rising (if modestly) and unemployment is falling.
 But how is all of this likely to be reflected in corporate results? Low inflation will make it that much harder for companies to return the kind of profits increases and dividend yields which fund managers have come to accept. Just how difficult a marketplace it is has been evident from a stream of profit warnings and downgrading ranging from Fisons to Pentos and Trafalgar House. Now Asda is expressing concern about the margins pressure in the retail sector. If earnings are to be so precious then some current price-earnings ratios could begin to look top heavy.
 Followers of this column might well point out that we have been issuing such warnings for much of this year, during which the FTSE has risen 600 points. Nevertheless, investors should be as cautious as ever. Price-earnings ratios are now higher than at the peaks before the 1987 crash (after adjusting for inflation), and the lack of hostile takeovers suggests that corporate Britain has concluded that shares are overvalued. It may not be necessary to sell, but buying at this point would be folly.
 Knight errant
 THIS has not been a good week for the financial regulators. The survey by KMPG Peat Marwick shows that, in the field of personal pensions, the regulators have a great deal of trouble enforcing their guidelines for the way in which plans are distributed.
 Today's Money Guardian explores further weaknesses in the regulatory structure in the case of Knight Williams, a firm of independent financial advisers which specialises in providing assistance to pensioners (see page 29). The difficulty is that although Knight Williams offers independent advice, it also runs its own unit trust company. Indeed, some 40 per cent of the money it collects from the elderly is directed into those unit trusts. This is not surprising, in that until recently it paid its salesman higher commission for doing just this - recommending its own unit trusts. This practice ceased in September.
 Higher commission or not, there is a matter of principle here: a firm describing itself as an independent financial adviser and advertising with the Fimbra imprimatur should not be running its own investment vehicle. There is no suggestion that this practice breaches Fimbra rules; neverthless, the rules need changing. However high the Chinese Walls between the distributor of financial advice and the supplier of the product there is a danger that the principle of independence is compromised. This is clearly a loophole which needs to be closed. Knight Williams and others in the same situation must decide whether they are independent advisers or representing one company. They should not be allowed to have the best of both worlds.
 It also turns out, as we report today, that Knight Williams has received an unusual number of complaints from among its 24,000 clients. These complaints have been, or are now, under review by the regulators. However, would-be seekers of advice or investors in Knight Williams have no means of knowing that this review of complaints is taking place. Fimbra has no way of keeping consumers informed of potential problems.
 In the US, the onus is on the regulators to let investors know if a particular firm or investment vehicle is under review. By making the system transparent, the seeker of advice or investor is at least alerted to potential difficulties. There is no such mechanism in the UK. Fimbra urgently needs to address this problem. If it is unwilling to do so then the Securities and Investments Board, as the senior City watchdog, should do the job for them.
 Card crop
 THE annual crop of Christmas cards is piling up in heaps around this office and adding some gaiety to the walls. St Paul's Cathedral may be the great appeal of the Lord Mayor of London, but it has fallen out of favour with the City card creators who, in a year when family turmoil has been so widely discussed, return in numbers to traditional images of the Madonna and child.
 J.Sainsbury, naturally, have dug into their own wing at the National Gallery to come up with Wilton Diptych's fine Virgin and Child, while Midland Bank (thinking along the same lines but without the gallery) have a Benedictine monk painting the virgin and child. All of this seems much more tasteful than mammon.
 As for HM Treasury, it has picked for its seasonal greeting a cartoon by Low of Sir Austen Chamberlain, who served at the Treasury three times between 1900 and 1921. When preparing his Budget in the post-first world war era, Sir Austen remarked that he was "unable to find out what our expenditure will be this year, and only able to make wild guesses at our future position". This piece of wisdom will not be lost on Chief Secretary Michael Portillo who this week apologised for misplacing pounds 1 billion in social security payments in last year's public spending round.

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



354 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 20, 1993

CRITICISMS LEAD HOSPITAL TO CAST CLOSE EYE OVER GERIATRIC CARE

BYLINE: MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 248 words

 
 A LEADING Northern hospital is introducing close monitoring of geriatric treatment after two reports criticised patient care.
 Pinderfields hospital trust in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, will "audit" nurses, doctors, and consultants for a year, as well as review standards on elderly patients' wards. 
 The trust has been shaken by reports from the Royal College of Physicians and the Nuffield Institute of Health, which were called in after allegations of ill-treatment and humiliation dating back three years.
 In spite of measures taken following relatives' protests and the successful suing of the trust for neglect, the Nuffield report concludes that patients continue to be treated with a lack of confidentiality, dignity, and respect.
 Elderly patients expressed concern that staff would discuss their conditions publicly and as if they were not there.
 The Royal College investigation, by two senior geriatric consultants, describes plans to integrate geriatric care with general medicine as vague. It recommends auditing medical and clinical care under the direction of a new steering group. The consultants, Professor Raymond Tallis, of Manchester University, and Dr Douglas MacMahon, of Cornwall Healthcare Trust, visited Pinderfields last month.
 A spokeswoman for the trust said Pinderfields was making a determined effort to right wrongs. After becoming a trust, it had decided to audit departments and was starting with geriatrics immediately.

LOAD-DATE: December 20, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



355 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 21, 1993

MILOSEVIC POLL GAMBLE PAYS OFF

BYLINE: IAN TRAYNOR IN BELGRADE

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 687 words

 
 PRESIDENT Slobodan Milosevic of Serbia went to Geneva for pre-Christmas peace talks on Bosnia last night confident that his gamble to call a snap general election had left his power base largely intact and anxious to make a strong case for an easing of United Nations sanctions against Belgrade.
 As unofficial results of Sunday's ballot trickled in, Mr Milosevic's ruling Socialists claimed a "great victory" and predicted they would enjoy a slim but absolute majority in the 250-seat parliament.
 But while opposition leaders conceded the Socialists would be the biggest single party in the new parliament, they claimed the ruling party would fall short of an overall majority, and prepared themselves for a possible coalition government.
 The Socialists claimed to have won about 37 per cent of the vote, an improvement on their performance 12 months ago. That result would net them a majority of up to three seats - about 26 more seats than they held previously. 
 But Vuk Draskovic, the main opposition leader who heads the Depos coalition, said almost two-thirds of voters had opposed the ruling party, and that the fragmented opposition parties were entitled to try to form an anti-Milosevic government.
 Yet Mr Draskovic's statement was half-hearted. Analysts were virtually unanimous that Mr Milosevic was the main winner.
 It was unclear what impact Mr Milosevic's renewed confidence might have on the Bosnian peace talks that opened last night in Geneva. They are to continue tomorrow with European Union foreign ministers in Brussels.
 Mr Milosevic is keen to deliver a Bosnian peace deal in return for the relaxing of the UN trade embargo against Belgrade.  Under the terms of the proposed three-way partition plan, the Bosnian Serbs are to cede a further 3 per cent of their territory to the rump Muslim republic.
 Some Western diplomats here expect the international mediators, Lord Owen and Thorvald Stoltenberg, to step up the pressure on the Bosnian side to accept a deal. Had Mr Milosevic suffered in the poll, the mainly Muslim Bosnians might have held out in the hope that sanctions would further weaken the Serbian president.
 But it is still not clear whether Mr Milosevic can deliver a Bosnian deal acceptable to the Muslims, with guarantees on further Bosnian Serb territorial concessions. Similarly in Croatia, Mr Milosevic appears interested in a deal with Zagreb on the status of the rebel Serb minority, but may no longer wield decisive influence over the rebels.
 His pitch to the mediators and the EU will be that the sanctions are no longer justified if his authority over the Bosnian and Croatian Serbs is in doubt.
 Mr Draskovic warned yesterday that continuing Socialist rule would bring "apocalypse" within months, with the national currency being withdrawn, the elderly deprived of pensions, wages unpaid and farmers obliged to surrender their produce to feed the cities.
 None the less, all the permutations for the next Serbian government favour Mr Milosevic.
 A Socialist government is likely to continue - even one based on a narrow minority. The onus would then be on the opposition to bring down the government and trigger another election, a move that would be unpopular with the electorate and which Mr Milosevic could call irresponsible.
 Alternatively, if the opposition is able to form a government, the president would retain his formidable powers while blaming his opponents for the economic disaster.
 The centre-left Democratic Party, which quadrupled its seats from eight to a projected 32, could alternatively be wooed into a coalition with the Socialists. Its leader, Zoran Djindjic, is keeping all options open and calling for a cross-party government of national unity.
 - The United Nations General Assembly last night recommended exempting the Bosnian government from the weapons embargo on former Yugoslavia, but the Security Council is unlikely to repeal its ban.
 The United States supported the non-binding resolution, which passed by 109-0, with 57 countries abstaining including Britain and France.

LOAD-DATE: December 21, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



356 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 22, 1993

HESELTINE PUTS GAS ON COMPETITION FAST TRACK

BYLINE: SIMON BEAVIS AND STEPHEN BATES

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 353 words

 
 THE GOVERNMENT yesterday put the gas industry on a fast track to full competition within five years but immediately faced warnings that proposals to wipe out British Gas's monopoly could increase prices for many of the 18 million domestic consumers.
 The Trade and Industry Secretary, Michael Heseltine, announced the changes as he overturned recommendations from the Monopolies and Mergers Commission which would have split British Gas into two companies and delayed full competition until 2002.
 Instead he proposed that British Gas, whose privatisation in 1986 was widely criticised, be left intact. Competition is to be phased in between 1996 and 1998. 
 The announcement ends months of prevarication, made worse by rows between the Department of Trade and Industry and the Treasury.
 At Westminster, the Government was accused of delaying its announcement until Parliament's Christmas recess to avoid further political difficulties over consumer fuel costs, already increased by the imposition of VAT. Mr Heseltine's supporters, however, said he had deflected the issue.
 Mr Heseltine said: "I have approached these decisions with the primary objective of securing full, effective and self-sustaining competition throughout the gas supply market at the earliest possible date."
 With some aspiring independent gas suppliers claiming that price cuts of up to 10 per cent or pounds 30 a year on average bills were in prospect, the industry regulator, Clare Spottiswoode, said: "Millions of gas users will reap the rewards of greater choice and lower prices."
 But consumer groups, Labour and the unions said the most vulnerable could face higher gas bills. A National Consumer Council spokesman said: "Poorer consumers, who use less gas, such as the elderly, will be forced to pay significantly higher bills."
 Labour's industry spokesman, Robin Cook, said that competition raised the prospect of independent companies cherry-picking markets and differential pricing. "Your gas bill will depend on how far you live from the North Sea."
 City Notebook, page 10, MMC spurned, page 11

LOAD-DATE: December 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



357 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 22, 1993

THREE MEN ARE KILLED AS STORMS AND FLOODS BATTER THE CONTINENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 278 words

 
 Reuter in Bonn
 STORM havoc hit western Europe yesterday, killing at least three people in southern Germany, closing hospitals and schools, and curbing Norway's oil exports.
 In France a high-speed train jumped off a rain-weakened track north of Paris at 185 mph but no one was seriously hurt. 
 Dutch air force helicopters rescued inhabitants of two swamped southern villages after the Maas, known in French as the Meuse, rose to its highest level since 1926. More rain was forecast for today and tomorrow.
 The Rhine was closed to commercial shipping for a 32-mile stretch near Bonn.  The Moselle reached a record level of more than 30ft at Trier, on the German border with Luxembourg and preparations were made to evacuate part of the city.
 Towns were cut off and schools closed in wide areas of Bavaria, Rhineland-Palatinate and Saar states after weekend downpours worsened on Monday.
 A state of emergency was declared in Saarbrucken, capital of Saar state on the French border, and in the Bavarian town of Cham near the Czech Republic.
 A man aged 34 died when his car crashed into a tree felled by high winds in Schwabmunchen near Augsburg late on Monday night.  Another driver died when his car slid off the road in floods near the south-western town of Trittstadt. In southern Bavaria a forester was killed by a unrooted tree and in northern Bavaria a girl was reported missing from a boat.
 In southern Belgium flooding forced the evacuation of hospital patients, schoolchildren and elderly people.
 Norwegian oil production was cut by nearly 1 million barrels a day because tankers could not load at offshore platforms.

LOAD-DATE: December 22, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



358 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 23, 1993

IT WAS ONLY A WINTER COAT;
Here is a moral dilemma that could affect anyone. Your response will reveal what sort of person you are, so think carefully

BYLINE: LINDA GRANT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 13

LENGTH: 802 words

 
 A FRIEND COMES round to dinner on a cold November night. It is warm in your house and when she leaves, she climbs into her car and drives off, leaving behind her coat. You wait for her to arrive home, then you
 call her.
 "Don't worry about that," she says. "I'm off to Mozambique tomorrow for six weeks to photograph the aftermath of the war.  I'll pick it up in the middle of December." 
 You go to put the coat away and as you hang it up, you note the very deep blue of its fabric, almost a black. It's like a duffel coat but with tiny white stitching along some of the seams. The buttons are fastened with long tabs, tapering to arrows. You think: "This is a very nice coat, I wonder where she got it?" You look at the label. It's a Nicole Farhi.
 The question is, would you wear it while she was away?
 I got on the phone at once to a friend, a good friend, though of relatively recent acquaintance, and put this profound ethical dilemma
 to her.
 "Oh no," she said, in the shocked voice of someone who has just been invited out on a burglary spree, specialising in the pension books of the elderly. "To start with, I'd be worried that someone would spill a bucket of paint over me while
 I was out. But anyway, I couldn't.
 I would think, it's not my coat."
 "But you'd try it on?"
 "No."
 I had already tried it on and with two different outfits. I felt my ethical world tilt on its axis. I felt low and dishonest.  I needed to find someone who might just be as morally unscrupulous as myself.  Myra Hindley, perhaps?
 The next person I tried was more encouraging. "Are you asking me would I, or should I?" she asked, cunningly. "Because if it's would I, then yes, I would but I'd do it in stages, first down to the post office, then perhaps a further outing."
 "Would you be more likely to wear it if it was an old mac?"
 "Oh no, I'd be much more likely to wear it if it was a Nicole Farhi. So have you worn it yet?"
 "No, I haven't made my mind up."
 I next tried my sister who had the added advantage of knowing the person whose coat it was.
 "How come she's got a Nicole Farhi coat and I haven't?" was her first response. Then we settled into another bout of Jesuitical hair-splitting. "When you say, would you wear it, do you mean you in general or you in particular? Because
 I would."
 One would have to mention here that this is the sister who, when
 I inadvertently left a skirt behind after going to university, had it taken in while I was away. And it was while at university, she reminded me, that one naturally regarded all the clothes of all the people one shared houses and flats with as a God-given extension
 to one's wardrobe, so one was frequently rummaging around for that little black backless number to wear to a party, only to be informed that Debbie or Ceri or Patsy or Brenda had gone out in it only half an hour before.
 Within two or three days, the BT airwaves were jammed with women, across the country, discussing the dilemma of the Nicole Farhi coat. It was a gripping subject of conversation over the dinner table, it came up at parties. Old friends looked at each other in a new light, stunned to discover a) their moral unscrupulousness or b) their puritanical possessiveness.
 "Well, I wouldn't like someone else to wear my clothes," was countered with: "A coat is all right, I'd draw the line at trousers or anything else next to the skin."
 There were accusations of descent into Thatcherite reverence for things over people. "Not let your friend wear a coat?"
 "But she'd paid for that coat, probably saved hard for it."
 A major check in all this seemed to be the hypothetical pot of paint which balanced perilously on ladders throughout Britain, ready to teeter over as soon as a Nicole Farhi coat hove into view. Nobody had actually heard of anyone who had ever had a garment destroyed by such a mishap but the threat of it loomed so large in so many people's imaginations that it utterly dissipated the desirability of the coat itself.
 I got home one day last week to find a shivering message on my answering machine from a very cold friend, requiring a quick return of her winter protection.
 "Ha, ha," I said. "While you've been away there's been such a funny debate going on."
 She listened to my run-down of the various conversations I'd had. "That's nothing," she replied. "What would you do if Julie Christie left her silk knickers behind in a flat you had been staying in in Managua? I hope you did wear it. I would have done. It's to do with living communally for years. I was invited to a wedding recently and the first thing I did was to ring up all my friends to see what I could borrow."
 Did I wear the Nicole Farhi coat while my friend was away?
 Of course I did.

LOAD-DATE: December 23, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



359 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 24, 1993

CONFLICT AND JOY;
For some it's a time of good, God and goodies. Others await its arrival with dread. Our guest writers tell what Christmas has meant to them

BYLINE: JOHN MORTIMER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 4

LENGTH: 1469 words

 
 CHRISTMAS EVE. The midnight service in the village church. The place is packed with weekenders, commuters to London, sons of merchant bankers and their girlfriends, trying to while away the longeurs of a family holiday spent in the converted cottage, all paying their annual visit to a place of worship. The few churchgoing regulars, elderly ladies, a retired schoolmaster, can scarcely find a seat. I am also there paying my annual visit. I stand up for the Creed but I don't add my voice to the casual murmuring around me. Why? Because I don't believe in God.
 Not that I have total faith in my unbelief. It's more that if God did exist I'm not sure I'd like Him. I'm not able to cope with an all powerful, apparently all loving Creator who allows massacres, mass starvation, children burning to death in crashed mini buses, children dying of leukaemia. "Did heaven look on, and would not take their part?" Macduff asked when he heard of the slaughter of his wife and children. It's a question that has never received a satisfactory answer. I'm also unable to think of any circumstances which would persuade me to send my son out to be crucified. But, in spite of everything, there I am at a service in the village church on Christmas Eve.
 My unbelief doesn't mean that I could do without churches. 
 The village used to have a school, a pub and a church. Now the school is gone, the pub has changed, like all country pubs, into a sort of restaurant for the consumption of carafino wine and lasagne verde. The church remains, I hope forever. I also couldn't do without the vicar, an irreplaceable cleric who sees much good in the Militant Tendency and spends his time looking after the homeless in the nearest town, to the annoyance of the commuters, who think the Church should keep its nose out of politics. Even the prayers are exciting, as he invites us to commend the TUC to the particular attention of the Almighty, to sharp intakes of breath from kneeling Conservatives. During the Falklands war I lived in the hope that he would invite prayers for President Galtieri, but he disappointed me. All the same, he is a good man. In the temporary absence of the Labour Party we have to depend nowadays, for sane and liberal opinion, on the judges, the Church and certain members of the Royal Family.
 "Not all the steeple shaking bells" wrote John Betjeman,
 "Can with this simple truth compare -
 That God was man in Palestine
 And lives today in Bread and Wine."
 Is it true, I wonder, as the slow queue shuffles up to the altar rails and the vicar says: "You will be as much loved in this church whether or not you take Communion." Whether it's true or a myth I feel completely at home in this church at Christmas. Even as an unbeliever I am part of a Christian civilization; in its declining years, perhaps, but Christianity has been responsible for me. The poetry I value, the art that is important to me, have existed in a Christian framework and can't be understood without a reference to Christian values, even when they are rejected or outraged, or used as a cover for more ancient and pagan sensuality. The politics I admire come from the Sermon on the Mount by way of Victorian Christian Socialists and the preachers in Welsh chapels.
 For this reason, if for no other, Christianity has to be treasured and learnt; without it we couldn't understand Shakespeare or Milton. Without the Bible, in the form it was in before the new translation wrecked it, spoken English is reduced to the meaningless waffle now heard in law courts and the Houses of Parliament.
 So should I be sitting, huddled in my overcoat, while the others kneel? Why shouldn't the ungodly pay their respects to this great myth, this superb invention, if that's what they believe it is. Voltaire said that if God didn't exist it would be necessary to invent him. But does it matter if God is man's creation and He is, like the Greek gods, a supreme character in fiction. Fictional characters can influence our lives, and from the jumble of myth and history which, perhaps, produced the Christian legend there emerged the revolutionary idea which has changed us all for the better; the belief in the supreme importance of each individual soul. A character in Dostoyevsky says that if human beings invented God it was the greatest achievement of mankind. So celebrating Christmas in the village church is at least as important as going in procession to lay flowers on Shakespeare's grave.
 The service is over, the militantly minded vicar is shaking hands with everyone at the church door. The bells are ringing and the cold in the graveyard slaps us across the face. December 25th was the first day of the year long before the peoples of the Angli were converted to Christ. They called it Mothers' Night and kept awake till dawn, in celebration, I suppose, of conception and birth. To the Victorian, Christmas, with magical trees imported from Germany, wasn't an entirely religious ceremony. For Dickens Christmas didn't mean the sacrifice of a son to redeem the sins of the world, it was all about helping the poor and buying them a socking great goose.
 A Christmas Carol must be, outside the New Testament, the best known Christmas story in the world and it asks us to believe, not so much in God, as in ghosts. It is also a text of 19th century humanism.  The Dickens who wrote it was not the man at prayer but the committee man, the visitor to Samuel Starey's Field Lane Ragged School, and the chairman of a meeting of the Manchester Athenaeum, founded to bring culture and education to the "labouring classes". His concern wasn't with the stable birth centuries before, but with the cry from the streets from the children of his day, "condemned to tread, not what our great poet called the primrose path to the eternal bonfire, but over jagged flints and stones laid down by brute ignorance".
 He contempalted writing a pamphlet called An Appeal to the People of England on behalf of the Poor Man's Child. Happily for us he changed his mind and wrote a fictional story. Does it really matter if the founders of the Christian religion did the same? You could say Dickens' conception of Christmas was highly commercial, with the sale of huge birds, great puddings and plenty of port and brandy. Sue Townsend has described Adrian Mole's ghastly Christmas with his girlfriend's father, a puritan parson who believed the sacred day shouldn't be commercialised. There was no turkey, no wine and no presents. Adrian and his Beatrice had to escape to Soho and make love for a record period of time. I'm tired of denunciations of Christmas today.  What's wrong with lights in Regent Street and people giving each other presents even if, and Christmas has to be a festival of tolerance, such presents consist of computer games and Lady Thatcher's memoirs? John Betjeman also said that,
 "No loving fingers tying strings
 Around those tissued fripperies
 The sweet and silly Christmas things
 Bath salts and inexpensive scent
 And hideous tie so kindly meant
 No love that in a family dwells
 Carolling in the frosty air. . ."
 can compare to a religious festival. Perhaps they can't, but it's no bad thing to have a day in the year when family life, an institution much idealised by politicians who are too busy sleeping with their researchers and attending all-night sittings to know much about it, consists of often warring, jealous, quarrelling and closely related people doing their best to give each other pleasure. It's also important to have festivals, and their enhancement of life doesn't depend at all on literal beliefs. The Roman centurion, posted to Britain after the birth of Christianity, may have started to doubt the powers of the old gods, but he still paid his dues to Vulcan and Mars.
 Sinister news comes from Australia, where some dotty government commission has banned the singing of Christmas carols in kindergartens as they are "culturally irrelevant" (regardless of the fact that Christianity is the basis of one of the world's greatest cultures). An equally dotty London borough has apparently followed suit and banned nativity plays. The brave new world is threatening in all its greyness and its hideous attempt to impose a dictatorship on thought. The great advantage of the old gods is that they were true to life and so cared nothing for political correctness. No celebration we are likely to invent is going to be an improvement on a midnight service in a village church, or going home to put out mince pies and glasses of wine to be consumed by a mythical figure your younger children scarcely believe in. Happy Christmas.
 John Mortimer is a barrister and writer. His latest book, Rumpole on Trial, is published by Penguin, pounds 4.99

LOAD-DATE: December 27, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



360 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 26, 1993

CLOSE THE BOX, KEEP THE MONEY

BYLINE: DAVID SPITTLES

SECTION: THE OBSERVER BUSINESS PAGE; Pg. 15

LENGTH: 571 words

 
 EXPENSIVE gifts could prove a mixed blessing this Christmas. With burglaries on the rise and insurance costs soaring, new owners of valuable jewellery, art and other items will be wondering how to protect them.
 Increasingly, people are turning to safe deposit boxes and companies providing such services report brisk business.  Sophisticated surveillance systems, extended opening hours (every day except 25 December) and low charges are attracting customers who find insurance prohibitively expensive. 
 Nick Cook, of Metropolitan Safe Deposits, says: 'Some insurers won't cover costly items at all.' With four branches, the Metropolitan is the largest company of its kind in London. There are only a dozen or so in the capital, mainly in the West End.
 Cook says customers reflect a complete cross-section of society, not just the 'seriously rich'. Another company says some elderly people keep not much more than their pension book and a little cash in a box, so worried are they about security. But all safe deposit companies confirm that boxes are popular with the Asian community, where dowries of gold and jewellery are common.
 The Chancery Lane Safe Deposit, owned by Sterling Granada, claims to be the cheapest. It offers 14 sizes of box. The smallest, 2 ft long, 5 in wide and 2 in deep, costs pounds 44.59 a year. The largest, 2 ft x 2 ft x 18in, costs pounds 590 a year.
 At Metropolitan, the smallest box costs pounds 125 a year, including pounds 25,000 insurance cover. The company can also arrange 'all risks' out-of-box cover for up to 60 days worldwide. Customers must specify items covered and the premium is pounds 2 per pounds 1,000.
 A spokesman for Berkeley Safe Deposit, another West End vault, says: 'Most insurers want to know what is in the box before agreeing cover. But we don't want to know who you are or what you have - that's part of the service.'
 Inevitably, some stolen goods are thought to end up in safe deposit boxes. But companies will usually accept firearms provided the owner holds a licence.
 Berkeley operates the traditional two-key system, one held by the customer and the other by the company - both necessary to open the box. Metropolitan uses an electronic system; customers have a card and punch in their personal identification number to gain access. The company's Knightsbridge branch was robbed in 1987. Since then Sir Kenneth Newman, former Metropolitan Police Commissioner, has become a director of the company and each box is wired directly to the police.
 Elsewhere, people who need to deposit bulky possessions can rent cabin trunks, or even their own walk-in vault. Christie's claims to offer the most advanced security system at its storage plant in London, where it is possible to keep small items (paintings, for example) for a few days, or customers can rent a cage for pounds 3,000 a year.
 Selfridges and Harrods also provide boxes. Selfridges' prices range from pounds 65 to pounds 210 a year, with a pounds 50 key deposit. At Harrods, where there is a waiting list for large boxes and strong rooms, prices start at pounds 95 a year.
 Most clearing banks operate a 'safe custody' service, but usually charge at least pounds 5 for each inspection. Sealed envelopes cost about pounds 10 a year to lodge. Lloyds says many branches also offer deed boxes costing between pounds 20 and pounds 50 a year, depending on size.

LOAD-DATE: December 28, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



361 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 28, 1993

ETHICAL HURDLES WHICH WOULD THWART BRITISH CASE

BYLINE: MICHAEL WHITE AND MADELEINE BUNTING

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 2

LENGTH: 369 words

 
 IT IS not illegal for a woman in her fifties to seek infertility treatment in Britain.
 But there are a number of hurdles which would prevent cases such as that of the 59 year-old woman who gave birth to twins two days ago receiving the kind of treatment in the UK which she found in Rome.
 It was because she had been refused treatment at the London Fertility Clinic that she went to Dr Severino Antinori in the first place. 
 It was the ethics committee of the London Fertility Clinic which would have judged her case; comparable bodies adjudicate sensitive cases in hospitals - both in the private sector and the NHS - throughout the country under an arrangement put in place under the aegis of the Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA).
 The HFEA is not sympathetic to older mothers wanting to have children. Last July, the HFEA chairman, Hugh Whittal, ruled out test tube baby procedures for women in their fifties. He admitted there was no legal upper age limit but said there were concerns for the children being brought up by elderly mothers.
 The HFEA has a statutory duty to vet the work of clinics carrying out in vitro fertilisation. Under its rules female egg donors should not be over 35 and male sperm donors over 55.
 David Shapiro, secretary of the Nuffield Council of Bioethics, explained last night that the treatment given to the 59-year-old could only happen at a clinic licensed by the HFEA.
 "Any clinic doing that sort of work would require licensing from the authority and would be expected to have an ethics committee which would worry about the implantation in a woman in her 50s. Who is going to be around for such a child's adolescence?
 "It's not forbidden but there are arrangements for review that would take into account considerations of that sort. It is unlikely that you would get any English clinic willing to do this," Mr Shapiro said.
 It is believed that most NHS infertility clinics draw the line at the mother being no older than 38 and private clinics will rarely go beyond 48 or 49.
 But because there is no statutory age limit, doctors have some flexibility to consider the individual circumstances of each case.

LOAD-DATE: December 28, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



362 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 29, 1993

HUNDREDS OF HELPLESS JOIN SARAJEVO JOURNEY FROM FEAR

BYLINE: REUTER IN SARAJEVO AND IAN TRAYNOR

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 1

LENGTH: 578 words

 
 HUNDREDS of women, children, elderly people, and wounded were bussed out of Sarajevo yesterday after queuing for hours in snow for a place in the exodus from 21 months of siege, suffering and fear.
 About 1,100 people began the arduous journey over freezing and perilous mountain roads, most of them heading for refugee status in the Croatian port of Split. A mixed batch of Muslims, Serbs, and Croats have been waiting for months for a chance to leave Sarajevo, but the evacuation has been repeatedly delayed by bickering among the political leaders of the three sides. 
 Eight buses carrying several hundred Sarajevans left the sector held by the Bosnian government and made their way without incident across the frontline to the Bosnian Serb military barracks at Lukavica on the city's outskirts, United Nations relief officials said.
 There they were to be organised into another convoy for Split, with up to 200 going in the other direction to the Serbian capital, Belgrade. Later, under a full moon, a second and final group boarded three buses which returned for them from the Lukavica shuttle.
 A city official who organised the evacuation estimated that about 150 of the 1,265 people on the departure list had failed to turn up.
 "There could be a variety of reasons," she said. "I know of at least one who died and there may have been others. Some are sick or wounded and too ill to travel."
 Perched on crutches in the snow and peering anxiously at the surrounding mayhem, Josip Hodzek craned his head to glimpse the point where hundreds of Sarajevans were squeezing past police into the railway station.
 "I was in the hospital when applications were taken. I'm hoping they will let me go because I'm disabled," he said. Mr Hodzek, who is 53, lost a finger and parts of his stomach to shell fragments in July last year. He was wounded again in January when a mortar bomb landed at an outdoor market and ripped through his legs.
 "I've got to get out of the city," he said. "I live all alone and I don't have any wood for my stove. I can't survive the winter alone."
 Before the buses arrived, women, children and war-wounded on crutches queued in the snow, dragging whatever luggage they could through the slush towards the building's shell-charred facade.
 "These people are hungry and cold and they've been waiting to get out of the city for more than a year," said a representative of the city office of evacuations.
 In the 21 months that the encircling Serbian forces have kept the Bosnian capital under siege, more than 50,000 residents - almost one in 10 of the pre-war population - have been killed or wounded by shelling and sniping, scores of them in a Serbian bombardment that marked the Christmas holiday.
 The Bosnian Serb leadership, which has fought successfully to seize the lion's share of Bosnia and carve it into ethnic mini-states, has long demanded the evacuation of Serbs who remain in the city.
 It intends to separate the population along ethnic lines as a prelude to dividing the city itself.
 The mainly Muslim Bosnian government has sought to resist the evacuations, and Muslim and Serb officials continued haggling yesterday.
 "You don't have to ask why I'm leaving, you can see I have two children," said Azra, a Muslim woman who was leaving her husband behind. "I am happy to be getting them out, but it's difficult to leave my husband behind under these circumstances."

LOAD-DATE: December 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



363 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 29, 1993

HOMES' REFUSAL TO TAKE PETS 'DETERS ELDERLY NEEDING CARE'

BYLINE: DAVID BRINDLE, SOCIAL SERVICES CORRESPONDENT

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN HOME PAGE; Pg. 7

LENGTH: 348 words

 
 ELDERLY people and others needing residential care may be avoiding it because they fear being parted from their pets, a study says today.
 Only a minority of care homes allow residents to keep their pets, the study found. Calling on homes to review their policies and practice on pet ownership, the study report says that the loss, or feared loss, of a pet can provoke anxiety and stress. 
 The study, carried out by psychologists at Warwick university and funded by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, is based on questionnaire returns from 276 care homes in six parts of Britain, followed by interviews with one in 10 of the homes.
 In addition, animal welfare shelters in the six areas reported that up to 1,500 pets were placed with them each year because their owners were entering care.
 The survey found that only one in five homes for the elderly, and one in 20 for children or people with learning disabilities or mental handicap, had any written policy on pets.
 Only 27 per cent of homes for the elderly, and 20 per cent of others, said they always accepted pets. About half of all homes said they sometimes permitted pets, but almost a third of these said they excluded cats and/or dogs.
 When the researchers contacted 35 advice bureaux they found that just 26 per cent could offer information on homes and pets.
 More than a third of the 276 homes surveyed had encountered residents affected badly by being parted from their pets. All of those interviewed had come across people reluctant to enter care because of their pets.
 The report says homes often reject pets because they think there will be problems of health or safety and extra work for staff. But the survey found very few such problems at homes which accept them.
 Although 59 per cent of homes for the elderly, and 50 per cent of other homes, said they kept a communal pet, the researchers say this is no real substitute for somebody's own animal.
 Pets and People in Residential Care - Social Care Research Findings 44; JRF, The Homestead, 40 Water End, York YO3 6LP; free

LOAD-DATE: December 29, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



364 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 30, 1993

SAFETY FOR SARAJEVAN EVACUEES

BYLINE: KURT SCHORK IN SARAJEVO

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 8

LENGTH: 527 words

 
 THE first group of hundreds of civilian evacuees fleeing shells, snipers, cold and chronic shortages in besieged Sarajevo reached safety yesterday.
 An official of the Serbian commissariat for refugees said by telephone that 76 evacuees from Sarajevo reached Banja Koviljaca in Serbia and would "remain there until arrangements are made for their accommodation".
 More than 900 others, mostly women, children and elderly people, were heading for Croatia after their evacuation had been delayed for months by haggling between Serb and Muslim authorities. 
 Having finally won permission to pass through the battle lines around the Bosnian capital, the evacuees' fleet of ramshackle coaches was held up by fuel shortages and breakdowns.
 "The convoy to Split [on Croatia's Adriatic coast] discovered it didn't have enough gasoline and that it needed another bus to carry all the people," said Ray Wilkinson, spokesman for the UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR).
 Fuel and another bus eventually arrived and the 16-bus convoy set off from the Serb-held district of Lukavica, its first staging post just outside Sarajevo, at 4am yesterday.
 "Everyone spent an extremely uncomfortable night huddled together on the bus for warmth," Mr Wilkinson said.
 Meanwhile Muslim authorities in the besieged Bosnian city of Mostar issued an urgent appeal for food, fuel and medicine.
 A radio broadcast said late on Tuesday that 55,000 Muslims trapped in the eastern part of the town by Croats had not received any food for 20 days, but the United Nations in Sarajevo denied the claim.
 Mr Wilkinson said there had been no convoys since December 16 but one was scheduled for yesterday with 52 tonnes of flour and mixed foodstuffs.
 "The situation is still very bad, but to suggest they [east Mostar] have not received anything for 20 days is not really true," he said.
 The radio said people had started eating wild vegetables and grasses and indicated food poisoning was rampant in the eastern sector of the city.
 In Sarajevo, the UN dismissed as "serious exaggeration" reports that 11 Canadian peacekeepers in Bosnia were subjected to a mock execution by their Serb captors a week ago.
 The Canadian defence ministry confirmed, however, that its soldiers had been stood against a wall by Serbs who then opened fire around them.
 It added that the Canadian peacekeeping forces would remain in Bosnia.
 - The Yugoslav National Bank, facing record hyper-inflation which renders currency worthless within days of issue, chopped nine zeros off the dinar yesterday.
 The last time the central bank knocked zeros off the dinar was on October 1, when six noughts were dropped; 18 zeros have gone in the past three years.
 The monthly inflation rate hit 20,190 per cent in November and was running at 569,000 per cent in December. Economists predict it will exceed one billion for the year.
 The decision to redenominate the dinar had been expected to go into effect on January 1, but new year holidays and monthly wage and pension payments prompted the bank to bring the move forward.
 Letters, page 19

LOAD-DATE: December 30, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



365 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 30, 1993

LEADING ARTICLE: GINNY PLAYS A BLINDER

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FEATURES PAGE; Pg. 19

LENGTH: 291 words

 
 OUR dominantly male political parties appear to have invented the most baroque of positive discrimination initiatives.  Briefly, push off over Christmas and leave the women to do the work. Labour's trophy for unseasonal endeavour goes to Harriet Harman for her Bank Holiday report on the baleful effects of the last Budget.  But the overall winner, without doubt, has been Mrs Bottomley. Indeed, those who think that rest and recuperation are health-giving may now be rather worried about Virginia.
 The turkey was barely out of the oven before she was taking "decisive steps" to make sure that elderly ladies would never be allowed to conceive twins in an Italian clinic if the British Government had anything to do with it (which it doesn't).  And yesterday, as her deputy readied another anti-smoking blitz, she herself was first into print with acid words for Gloucestershire social services department's decision to send a young offender round Africa at pounds 7,000 a trip. Mrs Bottomley, one guesses, is the all-purpose Duty Minister, available for quotation whenever mini-crisis breaks. From Italian twins to the Victoria Falls to rallying behind Tim Yeo, she's been mustard: so hot off the mark, in fact, that a groaning Michael Howard had to limp tardily towards a microphone yesterday lest revellers forgot all about him. Substance, on these occasions, is not important. Of course the DM knows enough about the workings and costings of Bryn Melyn to realise that its success rate with troubled young people makes it a Gloucester bargain not a scandal. But that's not the point when the seasonal soundbite rules. Her snoozing colleagues owe Virginia a debt of gratitude - and at least one day of silence for the New Year.

LOAD-DATE: December 30, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



366 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 31, 1993

'DISAFFECTED MEN' BACKED ZHIRINOVSKY

BYLINE: STEVEN ERLANGER IN MOSCOW

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN FOREIGN PAGE; Pg. 10

LENGTH: 737 words

 
 A PICTURE of those Russians who voted for the ultra-nationalist Vladimir Zhirinovsky in parliamentary elections two weeks ago is beginning to emerge from an analysis of polling data that suggest his electorate will not be stable.
 The vote for Mr Zhirinovsky, an extreme rightwinger whose oddly named Liberal Democratic Party secured the highest percentage of the party-preference votes on December 12, has been interpreted as a vote against economic reform, crime and instability, and a vote for empire and Russian primacy.
 But little information has been available about who voted for Mr Zhirinovsky or why.
 Yuri Levada, director of the All-Russian Centre for Public Opinion and Market Research, one of Russia's best polling groups, stressed that the analysis was preliminary. He found that Mr Zhirinovsky's supporters are predominantly men, but of two very different kinds. 
 One group are middle-aged and older, mostly from cities with populations under 100,000 - workers with average skills and earning average wages in state-run industries. Mr Levada called them "a sort of lower-middle class", with below-average education.
 These men are not jobless or poor, he added, but they work in a vulnerable sector of the economy that is already shrinking and is widely expected to shrink further. They are anxious about the future, for themselves and for their country, and they worry about crime and "weak government". They miss the great-power status of the Soviet Union, Mr Levada said.
 Mr Levada said these Zhirinovsky supporters are "the old Soviet working class", while the core support of the revived Communist Party lies with older people already on pensions.
 The second group of supporters, the researcher said, are men mostly under 25 years of age, better educated and from big cities, a group that had been considered essentially non-political. Mr Levada found that many in this group were drawn by Mr Zhirinovsky's intensive and skilful television advertising; more than a third of his supporters did not make up their minds until election day.
 "This was an emotional movement of the younger generation, a young opposition, young men demonstrating their youth, energy and resolution," Mr Levada said. "They were drawn by Zhirinovsky's television propaganda and the sense of action and force."
 These supporters seem to know little about Mr Zhirinovsky or his party, he said, "but for these people, he seemed very decisive".
 While many people are angry or confused, Mr Levada said, "there were a lot of ways to protest," with votes for centrists like Nikolai Travkin or for Grigory Yavlinsky, a reform economist critical of the pro-government Russia's Choice party and its leader, the deputy prime minister, Yegor Gaidar.
 "But a vote for Zhirinovsky was the most dramatic protest available," he said.  "In a way, he seemed to be the only truly anti-establishment figure."
 At the same time, some Zhirinovsky supporters already regret their votes, Mr Levada said, and up to a third say they would not vote for him for president. "So he may only be a temporary figure," Mr Levada said. "It seems to me his electorate will not be stable."
 In a recent all-Russia poll of 1,655 adults, conducted from December 10 to December 26, Mr Zhirinovsky led all other figures as Russia's "Man of the Year", Mr Levada said, though with only 15 per cent of respondents. President Boris Yeltsin, who led last year with 22 per cent, got 14 per cent; Mr Gaidar got 10 per cent; the former vice-president, Alexander Rutskoi, who is now in jail, got 7 per cent.
 "It means people don't really like anyone," Mr Levada said. "It's the crisis of our young democracy."
 Mr Zhirinovsky and his party received 22.8 per cent of the party-preference votes on December 12; Russia's Choice got 15.4 per cent. But party-preference votes determined only half the 450 seats in the lower house of parliament, and Russia's Choice seems to have done well enough in the district-by-district voting for the other 225 members to win the largest bloc of seats.
 Mr Zhirinovsky's party got 59 seats from the party lists but only five from constituencies. Russia's Choice, which won 40 seats from party lists, says 94 of its members or supporters won seats. The Communist Party is expected to have 48 seats and its partner, the Agrarian Party, 33. - New York Times.
 Leader comment, page 21

LOAD-DATE: December 31, 1993

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited



367 of 367 DOCUMENTS

The Guardian (London)

December 31, 1993

TRAVEL LAPLAND: IN THE LAPP OF LUXURY;
Racing a dog-sled team through the Arctic is the ultimate adventure holiday, writes Perrott Phillips

BYLINE: PERROTT PHILLIPS

SECTION: THE GUARDIAN WEEKEND PAGE; Pg. 31

LENGTH: 1507 words

 
 I have always wanted to snap the reins on a pack of Arctic huskies and shout "Mush!" So "mush!" I shouted. The 10 dogs strained forward until their eyeballs popped but the sledge didn't move an inch. My Lapp driver, huddled in furs like a character in Chaplin's The Gold Rush, looked at me pityingly. "You've still got the anchor in," he said, pointing to a chunk of metal embedded in the snow.
 I didn't do any better on the reindeer sleigh. Valle, the reindeer, looked docile enough when I clambered aboard. "Mush!" I yelled again. This time, the reindeer shot off like a rocket, leaving me spread-eagled on the ice. The last I saw of Valle, he was well on the way to Murmansk, chased by his furious owner.
 It was an inauspicious start to a winter adventure holiday at one of the most eccentric places on earth - Jukkasjarvi, 250 kilometres inside the Arctic Circle, in Swedish Lapland, where the winter sun shines for only three hours a day and temperatures can drop to -25C. 
 The first thing I saw when I arrived was a crowd of elderly people hurtling towards me clutching Zimmer frames on skis.  They're called "kickers" in Swedish and you just scoot them forward uphill and hang on for grim life going down. It could make a great new Olympic event.
 Jukkasjarvi is a pretty, 17th century village of icicle-festooned wooden houses, earth huts and a traditional Lapp "wigwam", where visitors gather for barbecued reindeer, the smoke funnelling out from a hole in the roof.
 The doors of the houses have old, iron locks operated by keys as big as Colt revolvers and are full of antique country furniture: chunky, wooden chests and chairs, beds as warm as boiler-houses and spears and traps for catching bears. Not that there is much use for the spears these days as there are only 30 bears left in 20,000 square miles.
 "We never draw the curtains in our homes", one woman told me. "Because every sliver of light is precious in this climate and, anyway, you shouldn't have anything to hide from your neighbours."
 The Lapps here are called Same. And in the Same Museum, the curator showed me their bright summer costume of scarlet and blue and explained the tell-tale placing of the woolly pom-pom on the hat; brushed forward if married or backwards if single, pushed to the left if on the way home or to the right if going hunting. Little wonder the Lapps aren't particularly voluble; the pom-pom says it all.
 I asked why the suitcases they carried were all rounded off, with no sharp edges at the sides or corners."That's so there are no corners for ghosts to hide," he said.
 Jukkasjarvi's wooden church was founded in 1608 and has painted smokeholes in the ceiling to make the Lapp congregation feel at home. A lively, carved triptych shows the 19th century priest Lars Laestadius converting local boozers, fornicators - presumably they pulled their curtains - thieves and usurers. When it was first unveiled, the worshippers thought it was all too much like a comic strip and only by a narrow vote was it preserved.
 The village old folks' home is now the Vardhus restaurant, serving regional dishes like char from the mountain streams, shiitake mushrooms - grown in disused mine workings - ptarmigan in juniper sauce, roast capercaillie and reindeer in every conceivable form. A bottle of Chablis can set you back pounds 38, but the "speciality dessert" is environmentally sound at pounds 8 - "a Lapland hut made from wafers and ice cream decorated with Arctic raspberries on a mirror of blueberry sauce".
 Jukkasjarvi shares its New Year Snow Festival with the hairy-chested mining town of Kiruna, 16km away. This year, the main events will be held on January 28, 29 and 30.
 Kiruna's iron-ore mine is the biggest underground workplace in the world with 400kms of galleries. The town plans to use it for the world's first underground marathon race. I am not making this up. The average age here is 36, with men far outnumbering the women.
 This might explain the behaviour at the bizarre striptease show at the Ferrum Hotel, when a huge crowd of well-oiled miners shouted the local equivalent of "Get 'em off!" to a luckless stripper trying her best to please - not an edifying sight.  Neither was the Saturday-night drunkenness, with revellers staggering through the streets, their shirts open to the waist, and bouncing off the walls of the disco.
 One thing always mystifies visitors: the sight of cars apparently tethered by cables to the lamp-posts, like dogs waiting for their owners. "The Lapp culture is so deeply rooted here that we even treat our cars like stray reindeer," said Roger Soup, one of the festival organisers.
 He was winding me up, of course. The cars are actually plugged into the electricity system overnight to prevent them freezing up.
 For the festival, Kiruna's main square is transformed into a refrigerated art gallery; a deep-freeze of elaborate ice sculptures created by competing teams from all over Scandinavia. Well past midnight, sculptors are still putting the finishing touches to their work. Their greatest fear is a warm snap, which can turn every sculpture into an instant Henry Moore and transform a work of art into so many ice cubes. The more ambitious the effort, the greater the risk.
 In the town, they were getting ready for the reindeer race. The streets had been cordoned off and every balcony was crowded.  Blink and you miss it. The reindeer thunder down the main street pulling either sleighs and their drivers or grim-looking Lapps on skis. They skid round the corner, pick up speed, then vanish in a flurry of ice.
 "Reindeer aren't very bright and they tend to bolt," said my guide, Yngve, a towering figure in a reindeer-skin outfit, a so rt of Arctic Davy Crockett. "The first time we held the race, they ran amok in the town. It was all over in 30 seconds."
 The snow scooter was easier. With a group of other adventurers, I revved through the snow forests for 10 kilo-metres to meet Lapland's answer to Rambo - Lars Falt, the country's leading expert on Arctic survival.
 Dressed in Swedish army kit, with more knives in his belt than an old-time butcher, he showed me how to brew pine-needle tea and make a fire from lichen.
 "Anyone can name 10 types of car," he said derisively, "but not 10 edible plants. Yet they can be the difference between life and death." Lars can survive off the land for three weeks. Without training, most lost or stranded victims perish within three days, usually because they use up energy by aimless wandering.  "Your best friend is not a dog, but fire," he told me. "If you can bring the tip of your thumb and little finger together in extreme cold, then you can make a fire and live."
 As a souvenir, he handed me an "Arctic Lifesaver", a tiny metal rasp which struck sparks. I might need it, I thought, as I set out the next day on the Great Dog-sled Race, a 65km round trip, sleeping overnight in log cabins at Vakkarojrvi wilderness camp.
 Our 10 huskies yelped with impatience as I wedged myself into the grotesquely-uncomfortable wickerwork seat. But the moment we were off, they fell silent. The only sound was the soft padding of their feet and the hiss of the sledge as they raced on at a steady 20kph, along narrow forest trails and across deserted, frozen lakes.
 It was 4pm and already dark. My driver, a wild-eyed Lapp named Taisto, had a miner's lamp strapped to his head. In the beam, all we could see was a landscape like a black-and-white photographic negative and 10 twirly tails wagging ahead of us. Taisto has 70 dogs and goes all the way to Alaska to buy them for breeding at around pounds 1,000 each. I noticed that only the two lead dogs, Jennie and Algren, got hugs and kisses when we stopped for a rest.  "It is a lesson to the others," said Taisto.
 It was a white-knuckle ride in every way - spine-jarring bumps, twigs whipping the face and the temperature falling off the end of the thermometer. "Keep your legs in or you'll break them on the tree trunks!" shouted Taisto, urging on the dogs with a strange chirruping sound.
 The dogs veered only when they saw a reindeer. There are 15,000 in the area, which explains why their meat - smoked, dried, roasted and stewed - is the staple diet. On the return run, Taisto and I came second, although he complained darkly of dirty tricks by the sledge in front which robbed him of the first prize of pounds 420.
 The surreal experience wasn't over. I stayed on my final night at Jukkasjrvi's Arctic Hall Hotel. It is a huge igloo. They build it in December from 200 tons of snow and it holds around 20 people who pay pounds 18 a night to rough it in dormitory bunks.
 Everybody has to check out by March. That's when it melts.
 Eight-day husky-sledging tours in Lapland, including visits to Kiruna and Jukkasjrvi, are organised by Arctic Experience (0737 362321), from pounds 1,298. Information on Swedish Lapland from Swedish Travel & Tourism Council (071-935 9784).

LOAD-DATE: January 3, 1994

LANGUAGE: ENGLISH

Copyright 1993 Guardian Newspapers Limited

