bananaSPLIT/TestFiles/GUARDIAN 1989.txt

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The Guardian (London)

January 2, 1989

The year ahead: Nurse and worse - Health Care

BYLINE: By MELANIE PHILLIPS

LENGTH: 571 words

 
 The ageing of the population is a phrase that has become common currency. The assumption that lies behind it is that as more of us get older, the greater the burdens will be on the health service and personal social services. Allied to this concern is the anxiety about the shortage of nurses which is also likely to worsen with the drop in the number of young adults. In fact, it is difficult to generalise. People in Britain are living longer, but there are now several countries, including Japan, France, Switzerland, Greece, Spain, and Denmark where both men and women can expect to live longer than they will in the UK. According to Promoting Health Among Elderly People, a report published last November by King Edward's Hospital Fund for London, one crucial reason for the discrepancy is proverty. The decline in mean household income after retirement age is steeper in Britain than in the United States, West Germany, Norway, Sweden, and Canada. At the same time, the report says, during the last half century the standard of living of elderly people has improved with better specialised housing, residential care and domiciliary services. Old age is accepted less as an explanation for ill health and the view is spreading that the common diseases of later life can be treated or cured more often or at least effectively managed. 
 However, it is a mistake to lump the elderly together as a homogeneous group. Although old age is healthier than it was, the accelerating problem is the steep rise in the number of people aged over 85 who do make heavy demands on health and social services with such specific problems as dementia, and the fact that the people caring for them are themselves becoming elderly, maybe in their 60s, with their own frailties too. Meanwhile, there is a crisis in nurse recruitment. Currently, one quarter of all appropriately qualified femal school leavers train as nurses. The Institute of Manpower Studies has estimated that, given a one per cent growth in the workforce, nearly one third of allfemale school leavers would need to be recrufited as nurses by 1992. yet westage from the profession is more than twice the teacher drop-out rate - 35 per cent from Registered General Nursing courses.
 Jean Hooper, Director of Nurse Education for Portsmouth Health Authority, has had considerable local success in bringing mature entrants into the profession. In 1970, as a result of work done by Southampton University on jobs for women with young families, Ms Hooper started up her nurse training scheme specifically for women with domestic responsibilities - looking after children or aged relatives. The training takes place from 9am until 3.30pm with long holidays to coincide with schools. Most entrants are in their 30s. there's room for about 20 per year, and this year there are still 183 suitable women waiting. The wastage rate is only eight per cent, and some 70 per cent of graduates go onto full-time nursing. Husbands are interviewed to screen entrants for good family back-up; by the time women have got to that stage in their lives, she said, they are generally very committed.
 'There's a range of reasons why nurses give up', said Ms Hooper. 'Once we're over the teething troubles, the clinical regrading will be very positive. But health authorities have got to be more flexible with things like job sharing. And a few more men are looking at nursing now.'

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The Guardian (London)

January 2, 1989

The year ahead: Decline of the British teenager - Fewer births, longer lives

BYLINE: By MELANIE PHILLIPS

LENGTH: 376 words

 
 The shift has been caused by two main factors. The birth rate which reached a peak in the 1960s, which caused the current peak of people in their early 20s and led to a rise of some 2 million people of working age between 1976 and 1986, dropped in the 1970s. As a result of that drop, the labour market is expected to grow far more slowly over the next few years, with a pronounced decline in the number of young people. Between now and 1995, the number of 16-19-year-olds is expted to fall by 23 per cent or nearly 600,000, while the number of 16-24-year-olds is expected to drop by some 1.2 million. 
 At the other end of the age scale, numbers are rising steadily, both because of the rising birth rate in the early years of this century and because people are now living longer, thanks to improvements in nutrition and public health as well as advances in medical science. You can now expect to live for an average 74 years - 71 if you're a man, 77 if you're a woman; three decades ago the average was 69 years, and three decades hence it is expected to reach 77 years.
 And within this increase in elderly people there will be a further sharp rise in the numbers of the very old - from 1.8 million over-80s in 1985 to 2.4 million in 2001 and 2.6 million ten years later. The number of children aged under 15 is expected to rise from 10.8 million in 1986 to 11.7 million in 1996.
 The government's main anxiety arising from these changes is their impact upon the labour force. But one minister involved in working out what it all means issues a health warning with the statistics. Mr John Patten, the Home Office Minister of State and by academic training a historical demographer, says no-one knows what will happen. 'Whatever projections are coming out of the Department of Employment and this place, they won't be exactly what we think they are going to be in 1995. They never are. Although you can say today there are so many people alive of a certain age and within a certain time only a certain number will enter the job market, this is only if certain other things are equal. We don't know how employers' and employees' behaviour are going to change. The demographic time-bomb will either be a firecracker or a hydrogen bomb.

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The Guardian (London)

January 2, 1989

Social services face breakdown of care for elderly, warn nurses

LENGTH: 235 words

 
 Local social services would not be able to cope with the needs of the growing number of elderly by the end of the century, the Royal College of Nursing said yesterday.
 It was inconceivable that they would be able to deal with the explosion in demand for 24 hour care, it said in a new year's message to Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary. There would be 80,000-100,000 more dependent old people needing skilled nursing care.
 As the number of people living beyond 75 grew, so would the number suffering from dementia caused by ageing. The RCN estimated that 10,000 extra residential and nursing home places would be needed each year for the foreseeable future.
 It called for national planning to improve standards, and said the tendency of some old people to move to coastal resorts had made it possible for local councils to plan for the future.
 'It is the test of a civilised society that such individuals should not be left to the arbitrary effects of local democracy,' the college said.
 'It could threaten to overwhelm local government social services in those areas as the retired population becomes less active and more dependent.'
 It was essential for health and social services to be combined in the future to provide effective care.
 The needs of an ageing population should not be dumped on local authorities incapable of responding to them, the college said.

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The Guardian (London)

January 3, 1989

Tuesday Women: Bulletin

LENGTH: 513 words

 
 EVENTS
 Women Writers' Workshop
 Sixth in the annual series run by the Commonwealth Institute. Two sessions, morning and afternoon. Workshop leaders include Margaret Drabble, Leena Dhingra, Merle Collins and Dorothy Hewett. Fee Pounds 13.80 (choose two out of eight workshops), concessions Pounds 8.05 (OPAs, students, unwaged, friends of the institute). Fee includes coffee and tea. Applications before tomorrow to Commonwealth Institute, Kensington High Street, London W8 6NQ. Contact: Christine Bridgwood (01 603 4535 ext. 263) or Roisin Tierney (same number but ext. 251). 
 Black Women in Business
 A first-ever two-day conference to be chaired by ex-BBC governor, Jocelyn Barrow. Winner of the Black Businesswoman Of The Year to be announced at the conference. At the Commonwealth Institute (address as above) from February 14-15. Contact: Sue Page (01 978 4259).
 Advocacy: Voicing the wishes of the older person
 One-day conference for professionals and others working with older people. Speakers include: Andrew Rowe MP, Lydia Sinclair of Advocacy Alliance and Rosemary Laxton, author of Age Concern's Guidelines for Advocacy Schemes. January 31, 9.15am-4.45pm, Baden Powell House, Queens Gate, London SW7 5JS. Cost: Pounds 26.45 (includes lunch, coffee and tea). Contact: Linda Simmons, Age Concern England, 60 Pitcairn Road, Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3LL. Closing date for bookings: January 10.
 Women Writers Network
 Sara Fisher, foreign rights editor of literary agents, A M Heath, is the speaker at 7pm on January 16 at The American Church, 79 Tottenham Court Road, London W1 (nearest Tube, Goodge Street). Contact: Leslie Mandel-Viney on 01 399 7238.
 Fat Women's Group
 The first-ever National Fat Women's Conference will be held in London on February 11. The conference aims to highlight the oppression fat women suffer through society's chronic negative attitudes. SAE to The London Fat Women's Group, London Women's Centre, Wesley House, 4 Wild Court, London WC2 5AU.
 POETRY
 Margaret Atwood
 Rare UK reading by the celebrated Canadian poet/novelist. January 27, at 1.15pm at the National Poetry Centre, 21 Earls Court Square, London SW5 9DE. Telephone: 01 373 7861/2 for details.
 HELP
 National Helpline
 A new national telephone helpline operating from tomorrow to respond to women's needs for more counselling, support and information about cervical and breast screening programmes. Experienced female health professionals will answer the calls. Helpline number: 01 495 4995, 9.30am - 4.30pm, Monday to Friday.
 PUBLICATIONS
 Women Of The Arab World (Zed Books, Pounds 7.95 pb, Pounds 24.95 hb)
 Arab women have become more active in recent years in confronting issues which face women in Muslim societies. A new organisation, The Arab Women's Solidarity Association, brings these women together and this book reflects their thinking. Edited by Nahid Toubia. Published: January 23.
 PS
 Pauline Willis is unwell and will be away for a while but please keep sending your items for Bulletin addressed to her.

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The Guardian (London)

January 3, 1989

Britain Today: Elderly thrive in healthier nation - Population

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 418 words

 
 People are healthier and living longer, and the percentage of elderly people is increasing sharply.
 Although there are still more births than deaths in Britain - 775,600 against 644,300 in 1987 - the fertility rate at 1.8 per cent is still well below the 2.1 per cent needed for population replacement.
 The population is on the increase - partly because of immigration - but slowly. The 56.9 million population in 1987 makes Britain the world's 15th most populous country. It is expected to increase to 57.5 million in 1991, and 59.4 million in 2011. Since 1983, the traditional net population loss through emigration has been reversed. In 1987 there was a net gain of 2,000. 
 Late marriages, late conception, an increase in voluntary sterilisation by men and women, and smaller families are all slowing down population increase. More than a third of pregnancies occur outside marriage, and of these more than a third end in legal abortion.
 In 1972, there were 480,000 marriages. In 1987 this had fallen to 398,000.
 The trend in the 1960s to earlier marriages has been reversed. In 1986, of the population aged 16 and over, 60 per cent were married, 26 per cent single, 9 per cent widowed and 5 per cent divorced.
 The divorce rate has been increasing steadily. It was 13 for every 1,000 marriages in 1987, compared to two in 1961. Both partners had previously been divorced in 12 per cent of all marriages in 1987.
 The trend noted in last year's handbook, of children born in stable, non-marital relationships, is continuing. Two-thirds of illegitimate births, which make up 23 per cent of all live births, are registered by both parents.
 Life expectation is 72 years for a man and 78 for a woman, compared with 49 and 52 in 1901.
 The annual death rate has remained constant for 40 years, at about 12 per 1,000 of the population, but fewer of these are children or young adults.
 The percentage of young people has fallen, and of elderly risen sharply - in mid-1987, 18 per cent of the population was over normal retirement age.
 There are more women than men - although more male children are born, male mortality is higher at every age.
 In every 1,000 live births, the mortality rate for infants under a year old was 9.1 in 1987 and for infants under four weeks, five. Maternal mortality is 0.06.
 Better nutrition, rising standards of living and working conditions, and education and medical advances are all aiding the improvement in the population's health.

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The Guardian (London)

January 5, 1989

Elderly risk eviction due to low benefit levels, say care groups

BYLINE: By SARAH BOSELEY

LENGTH: 293 words

 
 Thousands of elderly and disabled people risk losing their place in a residential home because of inadequate benefit levels, says the National Council for Voluntary Organisations.
 A report by the council claims that Department of Social Security board and lodging payments no longer cover costs for a well-run residential home. Some homes reduce costs, and standards, by employing non-qualified staff, while others have closed.
 Ms Christine Peaker, author of the report, said yesterday: 'Individuals are being denied access to residential care of, in some cases, face eviction from private homes'.
 Of 131 homes surveyed by the council last August, two out of three reported that they faced deficits: costs (staffing, maintenance, and capital spending) were rising faster than inflation, while for the past two years residents' DSS benefits had failed to keep pace with inflation.
 Help the Aged, with a deficit of Pounds 174,000, is considering quitting residential care altogether.
 Servite Houses Ltd, which commissioned the report, faces a deficit of Pounds 450,000, and has closed two homes, one being for the physically disabled.
 Examples of individuals are given by the report, three cared for by a private nursing home in Surrey: a wheelchair-bound sufferer of multiple sclerosis, aged 54, with a pensioner husband; a confused widower of 92; and a stroke victim in her seventies. All three may have to leave, following a rise of Pounds 28 in the weekly fees to Pounds 255, but there is nowhere cheaper in the area where they can go.
 Who Pays, Who Cares?: The Future Funding of Residential Care, is available from the Residential Care Project, NCVO, 26 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3HU, price Pounds 3 including postage.

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The Guardian (London)

January 6, 1989

Hip patients 'starved and sedated'

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 419 words

 
 Elderly patients with broken hips are being kept 'starved and sedated' for up to 14 hours in hospital before they reach the operating theatre, according to a report published yesterday by the Royal College of Physicians.
 In many cases, they are given such low priority that they are not operated on for two or three days after admission. By then, because they cannot move, pressure sores develop, which can mean a six-month stay in hospital at a cost of Pounds 25,000 to the National Health Service. 
 Miss Pamela Hibbs, chief nursing officer of the City and Hackney health authority and a member of the working party which produced the report, said: 'One of the problems is that such patients are so very quiet. They are often elderly women who don't look as if they are in a critical condition.'
 In a busy ward, their operations could often be put back after they had been prepared for surgery, in favour of an emergency case. The report emphasises that old and frail patients with hip fractures who need the highest degree of clinical skill may be anaesthetised and operated on by less experienced doctors, often at night.
 Patients from the upper social classes were most likely to be operated on by a consultant and were likely to wait less time, the report concludes.
 The Royal College warns that the number of hip fractures is rising sharply and calls for urgent research into the reasons. After allowing for the fact that people are now living longer, the incidence has doubled in recent years. One theory was that people have become more sedentary in the last 30 years.
 The report is critical of British Rail's introduction of marble-type station floors which become slipper when wet. It calls for more careful design to avoid the risk of falls.
 Hospitals spend Pounds 160 million a year treating patients with hip fractures, who take up a fifth of all orthopaedic surgery beds. Almost 60 per cent of hip fractures occur in women over 75.
 Dr John Kanis, president of the European foundation for osteoporosis and bone disease, and a member of the college working party, said one third of women suffered fractures as a result of bone thinning.
 He said those most at risk of developing osteoporosis were women who had an early menopause, smoked heavily or abused alcohol. The report also recommends regular moderate exercise to avoid osteoporosis.
 Fractured neck of femur; prevention and management. RCP, 11 St Andrews Place, Regents Park, London NW1 4LE; Pounds 5.

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The Guardian (London)

January 6, 1989

Electronic tag to be kept on old

LENGTH: 108 words

 
 A social services department is to go ahead with a scheme to tag confused elderly people electronically in two council-run homes. 
 Humberside county council is to introduce the system for a six month trial. A spokesman denied it was a Big Brother system and said it would only be used with the consent of the person concerned or a relative. He said the tag could be fixed to footwear or clothing to enable staff to detect people leaving the home.
 The social services chairman, Mr Eric Blackband, said: 'It makes sure they don't come to any harm when they cross over the doorstep. We are taking advantage of modern technology.'

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The Guardian (London)

January 6, 1989

Dead bank robber 'used murder to satisfy greed'

BYLINE: By PAUL HOYLAND

LENGTH: 357 words

 
 A bank robber involved in the shooting of two police officers in coventry used murder and terrorism to satisfy his greed, an inquest in the city heard yesterday.
 David Raymond fisher, a 20-year-old delivery van driver of Newport, Gwent, South Wales, shot himself in the head after he was surrounded by armed police at a house in Coventry.
 Members of the West Midlands tactical firearms unit laid siege to the house in Stoneleigh Avenue where Fisher and his accomplice had sought refuge. 
 Earlier, Fisher robbed the Midland Bank in Tile Hill of Pounds 600. He and his accomplice broke into the house after a car chase in which PC Gavin Carlton, aged 29, was shot dead, and Detective Constable Leonard Jakeman, aged 38, was shot in the stomach and seriously wounded. Both officers were unarmed.
 Recording a verdict that Fisher killed himself after his accomplice had surrendered, the Coventry coroner, Mr David Sarginson, said: 'I was absolutely delighted and full of admiration for the police and the way in which they dealt with this matter and acted with such great speed and efficiency and above all with the daring bravery that they showed throughout that morning of December 19.
 'Fisher had used murder and terrorism to try and satisfy his greed. He was surrounded and killed himself to avoid facing ignominy. It was a violent end of a violent man.'
 Detective Superintendent Lyndon Farr, who led the investigation into the bank robbery and the shooting of the two police officers, told the coroner that Nicholas Anthony Hill, aged 20, of Rockfield Street, Newport, Gwent, had been charged with robbery, murder and attempted murder. A report was being prepared for the crown prosecution service.
 An elderly couple who escaped after a pair of armed robbers broke into their home in Finham, Coventry, yesterday described them as amateurish.
 Mr Horace Oughton, aged 80, and his wife, Beryl, aged 78, set off a burglar alarm after the two masked men attempted to make them disclose the whereabouts of a non-existent safe. In the confusion, Mr and Mrs Oughton fled.
 The robbers left before police arrived.

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The Guardian (London)

January 7, 1989

Weekend Money: House-rich have plans to generate cash - Home-owning pensioners can make their properties pay for them

BYLINE: By TERESA HUNTER

LENGTH: 880 words

 
 The folklore figure of the poor old widow unable to afford a crust of bread has been superseded by the equally sad figure of today's asset-rich old woman, unable to afford decent meals or to keep warm.
 'House-rich, cash-poor' is the jargon used to describe the plight of thousands of elderly people who, having struggled all their working lives to pay a mortgage, find on retirement that despite having finally cast off that heavy load, they are still unable to live in comfort.
 Just such a couple were Jeff and Dixie Jeffrey of Cornwall who discovered that after retirement their bills escalated far above the rise in their pension. Mrs Jeffrey, aged 74, says: 'Our rates bill in particular rocketed, but all the others as well just kept going up and up. We paid off our mortgage before we retired but it wasn't doing us any good.' 
 Harold Poore, aged 80, from Essex agrees: 'It was getting more and more difficult to make ends meet. The house needed some work and I simply couldn't afford it.'
 And Mrs Renee Plummer, aged 79, of Essex says: 'My husband retired on a very good pension, but it wasn't index-linked. He died aged 60, and in a very short time his pension had dramatically devalued. It hardly went anywhere.'
 The most efficient way for retired homeowners to boost their income is to move to a smaller property, releasing capital which can be invested to produce regular injections of cash. But for many pensioners, such as the Jeffreys, Harold Poore and Renee Plummer, leaving the family home and moving away from their friends was an option they would not consider. They chose instead a home income plan.
 There are a number of variations on home income plans, some of which should be avoided. But in essence you mortgage your property and use the loan to buy an annuity, which provides a regular income until you die. Generally half the income from the annuity goes to repaying interest on the mortgage, on which you get tax relief, and the other half goes to you.
 The ages at which home income plans can be taken out vary, but they become attractive only for single people over the age of 69 and married couples with a combined age of 145. Plans generally have a Pounds 30,000 ceiling because this is the limit for mortgage interest tax relief.
 As with all annuities, you and the company are taking a gamble on how long you will live. It is possible to opt for limited capital protection, which means that if you die within the first few years of taking out a plan a proportion of the mortgage will be refunded to your beneficiaries. So if you die in the first year only a fifth of the mortgage must be repaid, two-fifths in the second year and so on until year five. This protection costs about Pounds 12 a month.
 The Jeffreys took out a Pounds 30,000 plan secured against their Pounds 40,000 home three years ago. This has given them an extra monthly income of Pounds 103.17. Meanwhile their house has risen in value to about Pounds 80,000. Mrs Jeffreys says: 'Now we're letting the house pay for us instead of us for the house.'
 Mrs Plummer took out an Pounds 18,000 plan 10 years ago, which has since given her a Pounds 125 monthly income. Her home, at that stage worth Pounds 30,000 is now valued at Pounds 90,000.
 Harold Poore, who has no children, first took out a plan 10 years ago. Subsequent top-ups mean he enjoys a monthly income of Pounds 230 on plans totalling Pounds 45,000 secured against his Pounds 100,000 home. 'I run a new car, and keep my home in excellent condition. I could do neither were it not for the home income plan.'
 But these incomes could be doubled if pensioners did not have to repay interest on a mortgage to a lender - in other words if they moved down market by Pounds 30,000, and then bought an annuity. A 70-year-old man could hope to get as much as Pounds 4,000 annually net of tax by moving and then investing Pounds 30,000 in an annuity. Moving fees have to be taken into consideration, but solicitors fees could become payable when arranging a home income plan.
 Cecil Hinton, of specialist brokers Hinton and Wild, in Surbiton, Surrey, admits home income plans are not for everyone: 'There are other ways to raise an income on your home, and people should consider very carefully before opting for a home income plan. But if your children are already well-provided for, and you don't want to move, or can't move, this is one option you might consider.'
 Roll-up home income plans look like an attractive version of these schemes, but they should be treated with extreme caution. Instead of halving income from the annuity by paying interest as you go along, these plans roll up the interest which is paid out of your estate when you die.
 The problem is, interest rolls up very fast and the interest no longer qualifies for tax relief. There is thus a possibility, particularly at times of stagnating property prices, that the debt could exceed the value of the house.
 Reversionary schemes are another variation with some attractions. In this case you sell your home to a company which permits you to remain in the house as caretaker for a pepper-corn rent. However, you may only receive between one-third and two-thirds of the market value, depending on your age.

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The Guardian (London)

January 9, 1989

Financial Notebook: Reagan rides off leaving Bush to rein in the deficit

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 1033 words

 
 The release of President Reagan's valedictory budget today, like almost all its predecessors, will produce an incredulous yawn. In previous years the standard refrain has been dead-on-arrival, this year - as the Presidency shifts from Ronald Reagan to George Bush - the budget died before it went to press.
 Nevertheless, if one ignores the bottom line numbers, including the projected deficit of Dollars 98.6 billion for 1990, the budget drawn up after months of work in dozens of government departments, agencies and outposts does offer some clues on spending trends and priorities.
 Mr Reagan's las budget will bring the Pentagon budget full circle. It will reflect a new austerity under which military spending grows by some 2 per cent above inflation (against the near double digit increases in the early Reagan years). Certain older strategic systems including the B-52 bomber and an older generation of nuclear submarines are to be retired while production of the most modern systems, such as the B-2 stealth bomber, will be slowed. 
 Just how far circumstances have changed at the Pentagon will be reflected in terms of budget authority which will be an astonishing Dollars 176 billion less in 1990 than envisaged in a 1986-1990 spending plan.
 Another indication of fiscal parsimony ahead will be Mr Reagan's efforts to restrain the amount the federal government spends on medical care for the elderly and the needy. The goal in the final Reagan budget (one which may well be adopted by Mr Bush) is to hold health care costs to 8 per cent in 1990 against the 14 per cent in the current financial year which began in October.
 This is interesting in that it is the first serious effort in the Reagan years to grapple with the entitlements, such as old age pension (known in the US as Social Security), which have been regarded as politically off-limits. It is no coincidence that the Bush budget czar, Richard Darman and the bipartisan National Economic Commission have also latched on to this slice of spending which occupied 43 per cent of the 1989 budget pie chart (against 27 per cent for defence).
 Given the budgetary legacy which Mr Bush will inherit on January 20 it is not surprising that even the most sacroscant areas of the budget, like the entitlements, are coming under scrutiny. In the period between the election and the release of today's 1990 spending blueprint two major new liabilites have emerged: the clean-up and refit of the US nuclear warhead production plants and the lifeboat for the savings and loans system.
 The Energy Department has estimated the eventual cost of the nuclear clean-up at some Dollars 92 billion. This is a figure challenged by Congressional experts such as Senator John Glenn who suggests it will be closer to Dollars 200 billion. Either way the modest request of some Dollars 1.3 billion for the clean-up likely to be included in today's budget will be wholly inadequate: in keeping with the Reagan team's tradition of creative bookeeping.
 Similarly, the Reagan Treasury's first efforts to deal with the burgeoning crisis in the savings and loans system (which historically performed much the same functions as Britain's building societies) also look wholly inadequate. The budget is expected to propose some Dollars 10 billion be set aside in 1990 to deal with the savings and loan problem. This would comprise Dollars 5 billion to support rescues already announed and Dollars 5 billion towards future transactions. A further Dollars 5 billion would be appropriated in each of the next four years.
 This proposal begs more questions than it answers. Given the current rate of savings and loan insolvencies, which many experts predict will eventually cost the government Dollars 100 billion or more, the small amount of funding suggested would be hopelessly inadequate. The Congress through the new chairman of the House Banking Committee, Representative Henry Gonzalez, is already pressing for a more radical approach under which the most sick institutions are closed immediately and the insured depositors paid-off. He estimates the cost at Dollars 50 billion.
 Critics such as Mr Gonzalez are deeply sceptical about the case-by-case approach currently being pursued by the regulators. Armed with generous tax incentives and deposit insurance funds the regulators have conducted what amounts to a savings and loan fire sale which has attracted a puzzling array of corporate buccaneers.
 Among those rushing to jump on the lifeboat are a former Secretary of the Treasury William Simon, a former Secretary of Commerce Pete Peterson, the corporate raider chairman of Revlon Mr Ronald Perleman, the Texas billionaire Robert Bass and the most profitable industrial corporation in the United States - the Ford Motor Company.
 What this ecletic group of financiers have in common is a recognition they are in a no lose situation. They are buying the right to conduct a wide ranging banking business at bargain basement prices and receiving sweeping government guarantees against future losses for the privilege. Mr Bass, for instance, gains control of American Savings' Dollars 14 billion of deposits for 3.6 cents on the dollar: not bad when Mexican loans sell for more than 50 cents on the dollar.
 The purpose of the deposit insurance schemes for deposits, which were rooted in Franklin D Roosvelt's New Deal, was to protect depositors and prevent cascading collapses which hurt the small investor not to bailout poor and sometimes fraudulent management and replace it with some of the shrewdest financiers of the eighties. This is an expensive perversion of the system. No wonder Congress is removing the federal guarantees against losses.
 What is absolutely clear is the Dollars 10 billion tossed in by the Reagan team into the 1990 budget as a parting gesture is no more than crude windown dressing. It has made no intellectual effort to deal with a crisis it helped create through deregulation of the financial system. It is bequeathing Mr Bush and the Congress a Dollars 100 billion headache and pretending its doesn't exist - providing an eloquent parable for eight years of Reagan fiscal misrule.

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The Guardian (London)

January 10, 1989

Bush in fix over social funding

BYLINE: By MARK TRAN

LENGTH: 341 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 If President-elect George Bush really does want a 'kinder, gentler' nation, he will have to throw out large chunks of President Reagan's budget on social programmes.
 He might start by dumping Mr Reagan's proposal to cut school-lunch and school milk programmes by reducing aid to 'non-needy' families - thus saving Dollars 626 million.
 Other social spending cuts sought by Mr Reagan include the abolition of discretionary grants to distressed urban areas (Dollars 310 million), and special educational grants (Dollars 396 million). 
 Mr Reagan also seeks to restrain the annual increase in Medicare (health insurance for the poor), and also Medicaid (health insurance for the elderly) by reducing federal grants to states by 3 per cent.
 Such proposals fly against the spirit of Mr Bush's election campaign, when he promised a raft of new social programmes and expanded funding for many existing ones.
 Bush aides estimate that one key proposal, a child care package, which features a new Dollars 1,000 per-child tax credit for poor families, would cost Dollars 2.2 billion in its first year. Yet a single component of that plan, extending Head Start (giving poor children special help to catch up), would cost Dollars 2 billion to implement immediately.
 Mr Bush will find it difficult to square increased social spending and the steady deficit reduction required by the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law.
 With his no-new-taxes pledge, he may have painted himself into a corner.
 Still, Mr Bush's willingness to distance himself from Reagan dogma on social policy has heartened many.
 'Bush at least acknowledges that there are problems,' said Mr Robert Fersh, of the Food Research and Action Centre. 'They may disagree on how to solve them, but, compared with an administration that denied there even was a hunger problem, it's refreshing.'
 As it is, many of Mr Bush's social ideas sound suspiciously like Democratic proposals. So, as Democrats see it, unlike President Reagan, he is already at the bargaining table.

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The Guardian (London)

January 11, 1989

Company Briefing: Kunick nurses its profits

LENGTH: 104 words

 
 Kunick, the Leeds-based leisure and nursing homes group, reports pre-tax profits up 49 per cent at Pounds 5.1 million for the year to the end of September 1988. 
 Nursing homes and sheltered housing for the elderly led the growth, with a 330 per cent jump in operating profits to Pounds 977,000 - double the number of beds and five new homes. A Pounds 10 million 150-bed nursing home in west London to be called the Kensington Care Complex, has planning permission and will be built this year.
 Pub juke boxes still contribute the greatest share of profits, up 41 per cent at Pounds 2.3 million in the year.

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The Guardian (London)

January 11, 1989

Anti-abortionists draw new breath

BYLINE: By MARTIN WALKER

LENGTH: 448 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 The constitutional right of American women to an abortion, established in a landmark decision by the Supreme Court in 1973, was reopened yesterday as the new Supreme Court agreed to consider a new law which decrees that human life begins at the moment of conception. The law, passed by the state of Missouri, also bars the use of federal funds for abortions.
 The case is unlikely to reverse the 1973 decision, but anti-abortion activists see it as their first chance to begin chipping away at abortion rights, and, more critically, as a roll-call to establish whether the court's traditional pro-abortion majority has been overturned. 
 'This means a state of emergency for the nation's women,' said Ms Molly Yard, head of the National Organisation for Women, who announced a rally in Washington for April 9 'to send the message that American women will not accept the loss of their abortion rights'.
 'If the court upholds the Missouri decision, it will reflect an important change of direction - from a majority opposed as a reflex to any restriction on abortion to a majority permitting some meaningful regulation,' said Mr Douglas Johnson, a director of the National Right to Life Committee.
 In the last legal battle three years ago, the Supreme Court upheld the right to abortion by five votes to four, the narrowest of margins. But last year's retirement of the liberal Justice Lewis Powell means the balance of the court now rests with the new Justice Anthony Kennedy, who was nominated to the court by President Reagan for his broadly conservative views.
 Justice Harry Blackmun, who wrote the judgment in the landmark Roe versus Wade case of 1973, said recently that there was 'a distinct possibility the decision will go down the drain this term'.
 This latest submission to the Supreme Court was given a powerful push by President Reagan's Solicitor General, who filed a brief to the court suggesting that this might be the right time to reconsider Roe versus Wade.
 Mr Bush will almost certainly have an opportunity to remake the Supreme Court in his own moderately conservative image during the next four years. The three staunchest liberals on the court are octogenarians, Justice Brennan, Justice Thurgood Marshall and Justice Blackmun.
 If the Supreme Court signals that it is ready to rethink the abortion laws, pro-abortion campaigners fear that this will transform the national climate, and encourage legislators in many states to pass stiff new state laws against abortion.
 The Supreme Court, meanwhile, also agreed to consider whether a new law banning dial-a-porn telephone services infringes the constitutional right to free speech.

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The Guardian (London)

January 11, 1989

Empty cots rock EEC

BYLINE: By JOHN PALMER

LENGTH: 324 words

DATELINE: BRUSSELS

 
 Having devoted years to the study of excess beef, milk, wine, wheat, and other food products, members of the European Parliament now plan to turn their attention to a new and critical 'shortage' facing the European Community - a looming deficit of babies.
 Alarmed at signs that the birthrate is falling in a growing number of member states, a committee of MEPs is to study ways of reversing the tendency to fewer births and smaller families.
 The MEPs echo the longstanding concern expressed by the French Government in particular at demographic trends in Western Europe. A motion before the Strasbourg Assembly states that the declining birthrate in the EEC poses the 'threat that there will be an excessive population of elderly persons'. 
 The issue has been referred to a special committee following the resolution put down by a Greek MEP, Mr Spiridon Kolokotronis, which claims that births in the EEC 'are not sufficient to ensure the natural renewal of the population'.
 Mr Kolokotronis says that it is high time the European Communtiy took action to 'change attitudes towards births and large families'.
 A number of MEPs from different countries and political parties are believed to support an EEC-wide strategy to encourage larger families. Mr Kilokotronis and his colleagues also want a Community-funded information campaign presumably to persuade young women who plan to limit their families to change their minds.
 In a response which may have had at least half an eye on the likely reaction on those sections of the British popular press whose anti-Europeanism is equalled only by their interest in questions of procreation, Mr Glyn Ford, Labour MEP for Greater manchester, said yesterday: 'The motion effectively calls on people to bonk for Europe. It is nonsense.
 'If we had lots of children born as a result of this campaign, what would we do with them? There are already millions of unemployed.'

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The Guardian (London)

January 12, 1989

Thursday People: A better class of cast-off - Peter Lloyd

BYLINE: By DENNIS BARKER

LENGTH: 586 words

 
 Strange how little awareness some politicians have of how fairly sensible remarks can boomerang, given the wrong context.
 It cuts right across the political spectrum. It is not necessarily absurd to imply that people should get out their bikes to hunt for jobs, but Norman Tebbit found that, with unemployment at such massive levels, the idea sounded fatuous. 
 Ken Livingstone could not see that saying the IRA were more than 'just psychopaths', though historically accurate, would fall with a sickening thud at a time of murderous IRA outrages.
 Now Peter Lloyd, junior minister for social security, has got bogged down by suggesting that old people on income support should buy second-hand clothes to save money.
 Coming from one poor old person to another, such advice might not be resented by anyone, since it is a practical suggestion. But from the Conservative MP who represents Fareham, a resolutely middle class Hampshire constituency, a Lloyd's underwriter who comes from a public school (Tonbridge) and Pembroke College, Cambridge, it could be seen as presumptuous.
 The Opposition called it 'patronising and insulting'. Second-hand clothes should be a matter of choice and not necessity, said the director of Age Concern, Sally Greengross.
 Lloyd claimed to use local second-hand clothes shops. As critics pointed out, his constituency is the sort to have middleclass used clothes boutiques selling wearable stuff.
 'If the Opposition ever tried to build Peter into a demon figure, okay, that is politics. But it would be an operation doomed to failure,' said one MP who has worked closely with him yesterday. 'With someone as fundamentally decent as he is, it could not be done. If there is one person on whom a sort of Marie Antionette remark could not be hung, it is him. It could not be more out of character.'
 As school, Lloyd had Liberal and Welsh Nationalist tendencies, which observers believe had not entirely disappeared when he became chairman of Cambridge University Conservative Association and then vice-chairman of the North Kensington Conservative Association.
 From 1972 to 1973 he was chairman of the basically left-of-party-centre Bow Group and later editor of its magazine Crossbow. His voting record squares with this, though it is interlaced with some activities which tend to support his friends' picture of him as a traditional rightwinger, like introducing the Cinematograph Bill to control pornography in bogus film clubs.
 He has been against attempts to bring back hanging, opposed Government pressure on athletes not to attend the 1980 Moscow Olympics, suggested higher direct taxation on the employed, and accepted a PLO invitation to tour the Lebanon.
 Until he became member for Fareham in 1979, he was marketing manager of United Biscuits. Richard Fairley, commercial director of KP Foods, worked with him then: 'I am sure he meant it in the best possible way, because he was not the sort of guy to make that sort of remark. If anything, he was quite human in his ways, and tried to help people as much as possible.'
 This 51-year-old son of a bank manager and JP, who once worked for the giant advertising agency, J. Walter Thompson, has perversely remained a rather anonymous character; and perhaps, in the light of yesterday's difficulties, anonymity suits him. One of his aides at the DSS said yesterday: 'Sorry. At the moment it seems as if he is not responding to the response to his remarks, if you see what I mean.' Definitely.

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The Guardian (London)

January 12, 1989

UK News in Brief: Pensioner gives up fight

LENGTH: 48 words

 
 Miss Jemima Wilson, aged 68, has given up her fight against Bradford council after losing her High Court challenge to the Tory authority's plans to sell off the old people's homes where she lives and seven others. She has been told she can stay at the home even it it is sold.

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The Guardian (London)

January 13, 1989

Financial Outlook: Yuppies - or how TSB lost its saving grace

BYLINE: By ROGER COWE

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 How many of the TSB's seven million customers remember that its initials used to mean Trustee Savings Bank? Not many, to judge by the fact that its lending grew by 40 per cent last year while deposits rose only 17 per cent.
 That is good news for TSB's profits, signifying a further rapid move away from its roots as a savings bank towards yet another diversified financial institution. (It begs the question of why we need yet another such animal, but that argument was lost when TSB was snatched from its customers in 1986 and flogged off to 3.1 million of the brave new shareholding public - nearly half of whom have proved to be not so brave after all, having dwindled to 1.8 million.)
 The process has some way to go yet and it has become decidedly more difficult in the few months since the year end last October. Which explains why TSB shares are still languishing only a few pence above the Pounds 1 issue price, having slipped steadily against the banking sector after the initial euphoria of the flotation. Yesterday it was virtually the only UK bank share not to rise sharply. 
 In trying to become a general financial services group, TSB's problem always was that it had the wrong customers in the wrong place at the wrong time.
 During the consumer boom which has just ended the money was made from young, southern professionals. They had more money than sense and so borrowed even more on credit cards, mortgages and through every other product the banks threw at them.
 Poor old TSB, on the other hand, had lots of relatively poor, elderly customers in the north and Midlands. This group, with more sense than money, are the banks' least favourite people.
 TSB has worked hard both to 'improve' its customer base and to diversify away from purely personal banking. So hard that it has been accused of paying too much for the privilege, notably when it refused to reduce its offer for Hill Samuel despite the stock market crash.
 Hill Samuel brought in a small merchant banking arm and a considerable unit trust operation. (TSB is naturally smug about having sold stockbroker Wood Mackenzie and closed the Eurobond and gilt operations, in the light of others' disastrous experience since.) The other major purchase, Target, added a personal financial services operation - with a strong emphasis on the lucrative South-east.
 Apart from these purchases, TSB has also built up a major mortgage business with Mortgage Express - another way of attracting those profitable young southerners.
 All this explains much of the profits advance last year. Hill Samuel and Target added nearly Pounds 80 million profit. That is not the entire increase, despite appearances, since interest income fell by Pounds 42 million as the money from the flotation was spent.
 Operating profits from the existing businesses increased by 15 per cent, thanks partly to the major advance in mortgage lending and despite a fall in profits from the existing unit trust business.
 The second half of the year illustrated the sharp slowdown in late summer, however. Profits were actually slightly less than in the first half of the year. And while they were still higher than in the second half of the previous year, the increase was only just in double figures.
 And despite assurances that the acquisitions would not dilute earnings per share, it is now clear that they did, with this figure rising by only six per cent on the year. That explains the very modest dividend increase, which helped to restrain any enthusiasm for the shares yesterday.
 The fact is that, through no fault of its own, TSB has missed the boat. The yuppie boom is over with TSB still having too few on board. The bank is in a very strong financial position (which is ironically bad for profits since that means its funds are not working hard enough). And it now has a new leader in Sir Nicholas Goodison, the man who made the Stock Exchange what it is today (make of that what you will).
 It faces a long haul, though, to build corporate business and the profitability of its retail base in a hostile economic climate. And in the meantime it also faces even greater competition. Abbey National is not only showing TSB how to privatise a mutual body, by accepting that it already belongs to its customers. It will also attack the areas where TSB is most differentiated from the other banks.

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The Guardian (London)

January 17, 1989

Boris Yeltsin sails through constituency reselection

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE

LENGTH: 634 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW

 
 Half a dozen policemen stood guard as several hundred people pressed up against the imposing portico of the House of Culture in the Moscow borough of Gagarin.
 'Only those with invitations,' growled the husky man at the door. 'Why aren't they letting people in?' a woman asked. A man shrugged cynically and turned away. 
 Gagarin is the borough represented on the Moscow city council by Boris Yeltsin, the former politburo member who has become a hero for many Russians because of his attacks on party privilege.
 Already rejected as an official party candidate, the word had gone out that 'they' might be trying to stop him getting onto the forthcoming ballot to the new Soviet parliament, even as a constituency MP.
 Upstairs in the hall, the suspicion of rigging hung heavy in the air as the chairman, Vladimir Mikhailov, called it to order. No one was sure how the borough council had distributed the invitations, and small groups of Yeltsinites did not know if they were in a controlled minority.
 Under the election rules, any candidate has to get at least half the support at a meeting of 500 local residents.
 Mr Mikhailov introduced himself as a pensioner, the chairman of a local veterans' organisation. In Gagarin, as in many other places, some of the most active party people are the veterans, the loyal mainstay of conservative Soviet traditions. The pro-Yeltsin people were not reassured by his presence.
 'Eight local groups called for this meeting,' he announced. 'Two party organisations, residents' committees in two blocks of flats, two veterans' groups and two women's councils. As candidate, they have all proposed Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin.'
 Tension immediately eased and people began to applaud. Relief among the pro-Yeltsinites was everywhere.
 'Are there any other candidates,' Mr Mikhailov asked. An elderly man, Leonid Biryukov, put himself forward. Then a younger man stood up, a deputy in the borough. 'I think we should have someone who actually lives in our region,' he said. 'What about our mayor, Vladimir Kalinin?'
 This brought knowing looks from some of the Yeltsin supporters.
 Three more offered themselves as candidates. The list was closed. 'How shall we vote?' the chair asked. 'Why not vote for them all as a list? We are not limited to one,' a member of the audience suggested. Again the Yeltsinites were suspicious. An election commission has to study all the candidates put forward and then nominates a few. If Mr Yeltsin's name is just one among many, he might be rejected. 'Let's vote for them one by one,' someone shouted. This procedure was adopted. Second victory to the Yeltsinites.
 The clapping spread. The Yeltsinites' blood was up. The whiff of a landslide was going round the room.
 The mayor's announcement, that 'I see you want Mr Yeltsin. In that case I withdraw,' provoked prolonged clapping.
 When the vote was taken 510 voted for putting Mr Yeltsin forward, three against and five abstained.
 Ever since he spoke at last June's party conference, Mr Yeltsin's star has been rising among ordinary working class Russians. Unlike many of the young New Left, who talk of pluralism, developing a civil society, Trotsky, Gramsci and even social democracy, Yeltsin speaks the language of the system which Russians know.
 He attacks party privilege, Calls for social justice, honesty and discipline.
 Meanwhile, another face of the new Soviet politics appeared at a meeting in the Moscow borough of Sverdlovsk. Seven hundred people came together to propose Vitaly Korotich, the editor of the radical weekly Ogonyok, as a candidate to the Congress of People's Deputies.
 However, 70 members of the rightwing group, Pamyat, disrupted the meeting, shouting 'long live Russia', and 'down with the Jews'.

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The Guardian (London)

January 17, 1989

UK News in Brief: Bradford case revived

LENGTH: 67 words

 
 The High Court in London was asked yesterday if Mr Frederick Corris, aged 74, a disabled war veteran, can take to the House of Lords the case against Bradford council initiated by Miss Jemima Wilson, aged 68, over the use of the Lord Mayor's vote to approve the sale of old people's homes. Two High Court judges rejected the case last month. Mr Corris's lawyers continue their plea today.

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The Guardian (London)

January 18, 1989

The Day in Politics in Brief

LENGTH: 368 words

 
 The employment minister of state, Mr John Cope, promised to look again at the possibility of compensation for families of young people killed on youth training schemes, after the High Court award of Pounds 20,000 to a Sheffield family. At question time, he told Mr David Nellist (Lab. Coventry SE) there had been 34 deaths since 1983, including 13 in road accidents which did not normally count in health and safety statistics. 
 * * *
 Mr John Hughes (Lab. Coventry NE) was given leave under the ten minute rule to introduce a bill requiring the provision of essential fuel and energy to every home and abolishing standing charges for gas and electricity. He said it was aimed at helping the unemployed and elderly people. The bill has little chance of becoming law.
 * * *
 There were 917 complaints about low-flying aircraft last August, the worst month for two years, according to armed forces minister Mr Michael Neubert in a reply to Mr George Foulkes (Lab. Carrick, Cumnock and Doon Valley).
 * * *
 Twelve notices were served last year under the Tuberculosis Order to restrict the movement of deer and one to restrict the movement of alpacas and guanacos, the first such orders since 1985, agriculture minister Mr Donald Thompson told Dr David Clark (Lab. South Shields).
 * * *
 A total of 24,123 cases of human salmonellosis were reported in 1988, according to provisional figures from the Public Health Laboratory Service, Mr Roger Freeman, junior health minister, told Mr Martyn Jones (Lab. Clywd SW) in a written answer.
 * * *
 Around 5,000 passengers a week are carried on the seven riverbuses operated by Thamesline, Mr Michael Portillo, transport minister, told Mr John Bowis (C. Battersea) in a written answer.
 TODAY IN PARLIAMENT
 House of Commons: Trade and Industry questions; debates launched by the Opposition on child benefit and pre-school education; debate on Common Market beef rules.
 House of Lords: Short debates on Scotland, money management education, and court procedures.

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The Guardian (London)

January 19, 1989

Financial Outlook: 007, the musical - or why Delfont will run and run / First Leisure

BYLINE: By JANICE WARMAN

LENGTH: 773 words

 
 Yes folks, this one is going to run and run. Yesterday the First Leisure extravaganza's star Lord Delfont took centre stage for a sparkling performance which belied his 80 years.
 Back on the boards after a brief retirement, Lord Delfont gave a rousing rendition of that old Broadway favourite, There's No Business Like Show Business.
 When Trusthouse Forte sold its leisure interests to the Delfont management team in 1982, it must have been relieved to be out of what was seen as a mature market.
 With chief assets including Blackpool's Tower, three piers and the Winter Gardens, the show appeared to be in its closing stages. 
 But the elderly doyen of the West End has proved his instinct for a revival. The group has succeeded in shifting itself away from the pier and on to the dance floor.
 And also into the bowling alley, as unlikely as that might seem.
 Yesterday's 25 per cent year-end profits boost to Pounds 20.2 million came as no surprise after a 54 per cent half-time boost.
 The figures included a 39 per cent profits improvement from dancing and sports, which has become the group's largest contributor at Pounds 13.3 million.
 Both are prime examples of First Leisure's nose for a high margin. Ten-pin bowling, itself regarded as on the way out, owes its revival largely to the group. It has succeeded in shifting the perception of the game upmarket at the same time as improving margins.
 While you wait for an alley, you may lounge in the bar, grab a bite to eat or play snooker. Even the scoring system has been simplified.
 An investment of between Pounds 2.5 and Pounds 3 million is achieving the required 20 per cent return, with some producing a great deal more. The benefit of the four second-half openings will feed through into this year's figures.
 The group's 29 discotheques work on the same principle - get them in at a reasonable price, sell them drinks at less reasonable prices, get them on to the dance floor.
 Its stringent rules for return on capital are best illustrated by the 18-strong J M Inns pub group purchased in December 1987. It was originally intended as the basis for a chain of between 250 and 500 pubs.
 The pubs have not performed up to expectations and are to be sold. 'They are not part of our core strategy,' said Mr Conlan. Unlike cafe-bars - which have greater capacity, higher turnover, and higher margins, producing five times the sales of a conventional pub.
 First Leisure has already turned its attention away from pubs to other, more lucrative areas such as fitness - it already owns 16 squash and health clubs and 14 snooker clubs - and Europe targeted for discos and Superbowl.
 Lord Delfont has not been neglecting the company's original assets: the resorts, including the Blackpool attractions, have boosted profits by 12 per cent to Pounds 11.4 million despite a poor summer.
 Profits from its two West End theatres have declined, as the Time Rice musical Chess began to tail off at the Prince Edward. With advance bookings for Andrew Lloyd Webber's new Aspects of Love, starring Bond star Roger Moore, already at Pounds 2.5 million profits look likely to show an upturn in 1990.
 The balance sheet showed a comfortable gearing level of 18 per cent by the year end and the group has succeeded in pegging a large slice of its borrowings at a modest interest rate.
 The group has remained faithful to its promise of producing more than 20 per cent growth in profits and earnings per share.
 It has also produced a 25 per cent increase in the year-end total dividend, a fact which should not fail to endear it to longer-term holders.
 Despite its devotion to leisure, it claims some defensive properties in the face of a possible slow-down in spending as the squeeze on consumers continues. Most of its custom is in the North, where the consumer boom has not had the same effect, and most of its business is in low ticket items.
 With overseas holiday bookings falling off, First Leisure is ideally placed to benefit from the stay-at-homes.
 Given that property accounted for some Pounds 900,000 of profits, with a further Pounds 400,000 benefit from the accounting policy switch to non-depreciation of freehold and long-leasehold assets, the company's profits were somewhere at the lower end of expectations.
 Between Pounds 23 and Pounds 25 million is expected in 1989. That produces prospective price/earnings at a premium to the market of up to 25 per cent. On present performance that seems a little steep; but given the star quality of the management, long-term expectations seem rather more attractive.

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The Guardian (London)

January 19, 1989

Legal aid for council fight

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 165 words

 
 Legal aid was granted yesterday to a 74-year-old disabled pensioner, Mr Frederick James Corris, who is challenging the use of the Tory Lord Mayor's casting vote to push privatisation plans and spending cuts through Bradford city council.
 The decision by the legal aid committee in Leeds eases the way for Mr Corris to take his way to the Court of Appeal in London at a hearing expected next month. The court will consider a High Court decision last month to uphold the use of the casting vote.
 Mr Corris, who is in a wheel-chair after the amputation of both legs, took over the case from Miss Jemima Wilson, aged 68, a resident of an old people's home which the council plans to sell. She dropped out because of the media attention. Mr Corris is objecting to a Pounds 2.85 a week rent rise on his sheltered home which he is refusing to pay.
 The council, which already faces Pounds 20,000 legal costs from the case, applied yesterday for an order to expedite the hearing.

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The Guardian (London)

January 20, 1989

Hormone course cleared of risk

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 307 words

 
 The latest combined form of hormone replacement therapy (HRT) for combating bone-thinning and other effects of the menopause does not involve an increased risk of cancer of the lining of the womb, a comprehensive study of 23,000 women published today reveals.
 The old form of oestrogen-only HRT carries a three-fold risk. 
 Research at King's College Hospital, south London, involving 900 women, on the new form of combined oestrogen and progestogen therapy is confirmed by the study carried out by the University Hospital in Uppsala, Sweden, and the National Cancer Institute, Washington, US and published in today's British Medical Journal.
 Mr John Studd, consultant gynaecologist at King's College, said it was tragic that only eight per cent of menopausal women were on HRT. A two-year study of 80 women at King's showed 80 per cent with depression responding to the treatment. Many doctors still confused HRT with birth pill side effects but 'for a quarter of the population HRT is the most important item of preventive medicine in the western world for half a century.'
 This month, in a report highlighting the costs to the National Health Service of an increase in hip fractures among elderly women, the Royal College of Physicians also stressed the preventive effects of HRT.
 Dr John Kanis, president of the European foundation for osteoporosis and bone disease, said a third of women suffer fractures from bone-thinning.
 Sir Raymond Hoffenberg, president of the Royal College, said all women who had reached the menopause would benefit from HRT with the exception of those whose mothers or sisters had developed breast cancer or who had themselves had breast cancer.
 Previous studies, based on oestrogen-only therapy, show HRT also providing additional protection against heart disease and strokes.

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The Guardian (London)

January 24, 1989

ET curbs meals 'on feet' service

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 170 words

 
 A unique 'meals on feet' service, which ferries meat, veg and pudding to elderly people in a close-knit, inner-city area, is struggling to survive after changes in government funding.
 The emphasis on training in the Employment Training scheme, which replaced the Community Programme, has cut the meals delivery team in Woodhouse, Leeds, from 11 members to two. 
 The staff, who collect orders for hot meals, cook them and deliver on foot every day of the year, have mostly been recuperating from psychiatric illness or breakdowns.
 'They're a tremendous help to the elderly, and that helps them in turn,' said Mrs Doreen Tinker, vice-chairwoman of Woodhouse community association, which began the project.
 The problem under ET is that few of the workers need the formal training, including block-release courses at college, which the scheme requires.
 Volunteers, many referred by Leeds social services, are keeping the scheme going while Leeds city council investigates funding possibilities.

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The Guardian (London)

January 25, 1989

Health Guardian (Body Matters): Metal fatigue

BYLINE: By JUDY SEAGROVE

LENGTH: 157 words

 
 Anyone who has ever cooked rhubarb in an aluminium saucepan will know how clean the pan is afterwards. Its surface has been eroded and swallowed alongside the rhubarb. When drinking water in Camelford, Cornwall, was accidentally contaminated with aliminium sulphate last year, no one knew the biological effects of aluminium. It was known to cause renal dementia in kidney patients exposed to high concentrations of the metal in dialysis fluid and antacids. Alzheimer's disease (senile dementia) has recently been associated with unusual amounts of aluminium deposited in the brain.
 Substantial amounts of aluminium may also be consumed via medicines. Some commercial antacids contain aluminium hydroxide. Old people (who take aspirin containing aluminium) and kidney patients (who take large doses of antacids) may be unable to excrete the metal efficiently and risk softening of the bone, as well as Alzheimer's disease.

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The Guardian (London)

January 25, 1989

Health Guardian: A hold-up down at the waterworks end - Prostate trouble

BYLINE: By CHRIS BARTON

LENGTH: 296 words

 
 So you thought a prostate condition was amusing and affected only old men? I was 15 when I and 30,000 others watched the Australians at Old Trafford in 1961. Most of the spectators seemed to be standing right behind me in the gents as I failed to do what Bill Lawry had been doing to the England bowlers all day. 
 I managed it OK after the tea interval, entering a cubicle to ensure privacy. But for 20 years or so I believed I had a psychological problem condemning me to a lifetime of solitary urination.
 There is no comfort for the person with acute urinary retention caused by enlargement of the prostate gland. So what happens when the cross-legged sufferer reaches the head of the queue in casualty? Catheterisation is the only answer. But having a tube passed through the penis to reach the bladder (which I had suffered before) is, as you can imagine, painful - but not when you are unconscious. On awakening from prostate surgery to relieve the obstruction, I found a double-track plastic tube already in place - running cleansing liquids in and urine out - which was eventually removed without discomfort.
 On departure from hospital, patients receive an elderly-looking photocopy. Hidden away at the end of the list of bad news is a description of backwards ejaculation, the prospect of which has an inhibiting effect, but which does not, according to the photocopy, affect enjoyment. And, incidentally, it was left to me to warn my partner of the risk of sterility following prostate resection.
 Overall, the workforce of the hospital were infinitely better at playing their parts than I was at playing mine. Now and again, I remember the whole business with something approaching nostalagia as, anxiety-free, I pee happily alongside other men.

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The Guardian (London)

January 26, 1989

UN forces protest as Lebanese expelled

BYLINE: By JULIE FLINT

LENGTH: 433 words

DATELINE: BEIRUT

 
 Forcibly overriding the protests of United Nations peacekeepers, Israeli forces yesterday expelled 38 old men, women and children from the town of Shebaa in occupied south Lebanon.
 It was punishment, the victims said, for their refusal to support the Israeli-controlled South Lebanon Army.
 'Our only guilt,' one of the women, Amal Nassib, told reporters later, 'was our opposition to their occupation.' 
 The incident, the largest expulsion of native Lebanese since Israel fenced off the so-called 'security zone' in 1985, followed a large anti-Israeli deomonstration in Shebaa on Tuesday night.
 Witnesses said members of the South Lebanon Army opened fire on the demonstration, but without causing injury.
 The UN peace-keeping force, Unifil, lodged an immediate protest against the expulsion of the 26 children, seven women, and five men over 50.
 Its commander, General Lars-Eric Wahlgren, flew to Shebaa by helicopter to supervise an inquiry into the incident.
 The 38 said more than 100 SLA militiamen and plain-clothed Israeli agents entered at dawn, broke into seven homes, and gave them 10 minutes to get out.
 Mr Asaad Khalil, aged 80, said Norwegian troops from Unifil blocked the main street with a jeep, but saw it 'crushed' by an SLA armoured car.
 SLA men 'confiscated' video cameras from the Norwegian troops.
 Driven to the edge of the 'security zone', the 38 made their own way to Bar Elias in the Beka's Valley.
 Here they decided on a sit-in in the local mosque, and sent a message to the UN Secretary-General, Dr Javier Perez de Cuellar, urging him to strengthen the role of Unifil and to help them return home.
 It was the second time this month that Lebanese have been thrown out of south Lebanon. Another 27 were expelled on January 5.
 The SLA, shaken by a near-fatal assassination attempt on its leader late last year, has faced the thret of increased pressure in the 'security zone' since lat December.
 It was then that the Shi'ite movement, Amal, and the Palestine Liberation Organisation agreed to end their hostilities in south Lebanon.
 The accord reportedly included agreement to concentrate the resistance to Israel, for the time being, inside the security zone.
 Evidence of this came on Tuesday morning, just 24 hours before the attack on Shebaa, when two SLA soldiers died in a mine attack claimed by Amal.
 In an indication of the tension building in the area, the SLA opened fire on Irish peacekeeping troops and bombarded a nearby village, forcing the evancuation of 50 children trapped in the local school.

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January 27, 1989

The Day in Politics: Smith says Chancellor robbed pensioners for budget surplus - Economy

BYLINE: By PAUL NETTLETON

LENGTH: 342 words

 
 The shadow chancellor, Mr John Smith, yesterday made his return to the despatch box after his heart attack, and told the Chancellor that 'not much has changed'.
 Leading a Labour assault on Mr Nigel Lawson's high interest rates policy and its effect on homebuyers, he said Mr Lawson was still boasting about a public-sector surplus when Pounds 10 billion of it was made up of asset sales, an exercise in transferring money from the balance sheet to the profit and loss account which would leave some people in the private sector liable to arrest, and the other Pounds 4 billion of which came from robbing old age pensioners.
 He wished Mr Lawson luck over the coming weeks that the Prime Minister 'does not continually seek to express her disagreement with his policy on monetary affairs, on fiscal policy, or on mortgages'. 
 Mr Lawson replied: 'I observe with some envy that he has lost a great deal of weight, but apart from that nothing at all has changed. He is as entertaining as ever and as totally devoid of policies as ever.'
 Mr Lawson said that investment growing at more than double the rate of consumption in 1988 was 'no flash in the pan'. Investment had grown faster since 1981 than in any other EEC country or industrial nation.
 Mr Gordon Brown, shadow chief secretary to the Treasury, asked if the Chancellor recalled previous statements that Britain would join the European Monetary System when the time was right, and his speech on Wednesday night that previous difficulties had diminished over time. 'Would the Chancellor now give us his own assessment of joining EMS and whether he has persuaded the Prime Minister.'
 Mr Lawson said Britain would join when the time was right 'as indeed the Prime Minister has said on a number of occasions'.
 Mr Peter Lilley, Economic Secretary to the Treasury, said mortgage rates showed no correlation with difficulties over arrears and repossessions.
 The biggest single factor, he said, was marital discord and unemployment.
 'Happily the latter is coming down.'

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The Guardian (London)

January 28, 1989

Weekend Money (Cashpoints): Lambeth loans

LENGTH: 290 words

 
 Lambeth Building Society is offering elderly homeowners personal loans secured against the value of their home to supplement their monthly income. There are three options. A lump sum loan is used to buy an annuity which services the debt and provides a regular income. Interest payments qualify for mortgage tax relief. Then there is an annual drawdown facility which pays the money borrowed in annual instalments over a number of years where the interest due is added to the balance of the loan. 
 Alternatively a one-off lump sum may be drawn, subject to the age of the borrower, where all or part of the interest is rolled up.
 As with all such schemes where the interest is rolled up it does not qualify for tax relief and there is a risk that the eventual proceeds from the house may not cover the full amount owed. The scheme is aimed at the 70-plus age group but the society will lend a 65-year-old homeowner rup to 10 per cent of the value of the house.
 Option 70 is Eastbourne Building Society's variation of this, which offers two choices. Option 1 allows homeowners over 70 to borrow up to 40 per cent of the agreed value of the house, without making any repayments of capital or interest. Here again the deferred interest is added to the loan and repaid either from the eventual sale of the house, or from the estate on the death of the borrower.
 Option 2 has the facility for paying a proportion of the annual interest at a fixed rate of 5 per cent with the balance added to the capital.
 If you are considering either of these schemes, Age Concern has published a fact sheet, Raising Capital From Your Home. Send an SAE to Age Concern England, 60 Pitcairn Road, Mitcham, Surrey CR4 3LL.

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The Guardian (London)

February 1, 1989

Eyewitness: Shamir honours Stern mentor

BYLINE: By IAN BLACK

LENGTH: 675 words

 
 In shafts of sunlight glinting through the pine trees that shade the cemetery from the streets of Tel Aviv, the old fighters stood stiffly to commemorate their lost leader, as Kaddish, the Jewish prayer for the dead, echoed through the bright afternoon.
 Yitzhak Shamir, neat in dark suit and brown velvet skullcap, bent briskly over the white marble grave ('Only death can liberate,' the headstone proclaims) to lay a wreath in the name of the Israeli Government.
 Other floral tributes followed to Avraham Stern - Yair, they called him in those underground days - who led the most extreme of the Zionist groups struggling against the British and the Arabs.
 No one in the Nahalat Yitzhak cemetery yesterday used the name Stern Gang - a byword for jewish terrorism during the final years of the Palestine Mandate. But Lehi - the Hebrew acronym for Fighters for the Freedom of Israel - is a name these old men are still proud to utter. 
 Comtemporary questions about terrorists and freedom fighters are easily answered. 'We were fighting for the freedom of Israel, and Arafat and his people want to destroy Israel,' insisted one bereted veteran, shuffling to the graveside to pay his respects.
 Yehoshua Zetler, who commanded the Sternist hit-team that assassinated the Swedish UN mediator, Count Folke Von Bernadotte, in 1948, agreed: 'When you have an end, any means are justified. But what means do you use? Did we attack women and children? There is no room for comparison between us and the PLO. Yes, I attacked British targets. But Joe or Johnny wasn't an individual. He was a foreign occupier who was preventing us from living freely in our homeland.'
 Most of those gathered here had code names 47 years ago, when Stern, a Pounds 1,000 bounty on his head, was gunned down by British detectives as he hid in a comrade's home. Mr Shamir, now Israel's Prime Minister, was called Michael and he ran the group's operations.
 Stern, a handsome Polish-born poet, broke away from the larger Irgun group in 1941 to wage a war of assassinations and ambushes against the British. The gates of Palestine were closed and in Europe, while Jews were being herded into Hitler's death camps, the mainstream Zionist leadership was seen as too soft.
 Ceremonies like this are held on the anniversary of Stern's death every year, part of the comforting ritual of old comrades who have elevated their own history into a part of the Jewish struggle for independence.
 Until 1977, when the rightwing Likud swept to power, they were still outsiders in Labour-dominated Israeli politics. The Prime Minister's presence is the ultimate proof that they have shed their pariah status as gangsters and assassins.
 Mr Shamir has always been reluctant to talk about this part of his life, but has said he has no regrets about the killings.
 Stern was tracked down by monitoring of notes smuggled out of Jaffa hospital by two wounded members of his group. A party of British policemen found him hiding in a cupboard in a Tel Aviv house. According to Geoffrey Morton, the CID officer in charge, Stern was 'shot while trying to escape.'
 Stern became a martyr, but his comrades carried on. Two of them killed Lord Moyne in Cairo in 1944. Yehoshua Becker was sentenced to death after robbing a bank and killing two Jewish cashiers, but was reprieved. 'They wanted to hang me,' he said yesterday, an old man enjoying unaccumstomed attention, 'but they couldn't do it.' Moshe Svorai was shot and captured by Morton while trying to escape down a drainpipe, but lived to grow a grey goatee and tell the tale. 'Now the PLO are fighting their was as well but attempts to make peace with them will fail,' he predicted. 'Only blood can decide who will rule here.'
 Nissim Naamat wept uncontrollably under his brown hat as he left the cemetery. He hid weapons under the floor of his workshop and Stern's operations people came at night to collect them. 'What a man Yair was,' he sobbed. 'It was a black day when he died. Curse those who betrayed him.'

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February 1, 1989

Leading Article: Got a migraine, get a transplant

LENGTH: 1684 words

 
 The Health Service (Prime Minsterial pledges notwithstanding) has not actually been safe in Conservative hands. And yesterday its future became even more insecure with the publication of the Government's fabled review. Two key changes - budgets for GPs and hospitals that can opt out - are unnecessary, undesirable and unfeasible in the near future. A third, tax relief for private health insurance premiums for the elderly, is a dangerous wedge which will erode a founding principle and provide no extra funds for the service.
 It was the cash crisis in the Health Service which forced Mrs Thatcher to set up the review. Yet there is a mere .00005 per cent increase in next year's budget earmarked for clinical services: the initial cost of 100 extra consultants spread over three years. There will be extra money on top. Huge amounts for the computers, information retrieval systems and managers needed to transform the NHS from a health service into a health market. But that will be of no direct benefit to patients. 
 It's not surprising that the NHS is the last part of the welfare state to face Government reconstruction. It has always been the most popular service of the State. Not just more popular than housing, social security and schools: but even more popular than the Royal Family. The apprehension with which Tory backbenchers have awaited the conclusion of the Government's review is one reflection of this popularity.  They are keenly aware that the changes which Whitehall intends to rush through are due to come on stream before the next general election. There is to be consultation; but it will be restricted to how, not whether, the proposals should be implemented. Doubt remains, however, over whether they will in fact be implemented. The last managerial restructuring of the health system, begun five years ago, is still not in place; but that exercise is the equivalent of taking a pulse compared to the heart transplant announced yesterday. Just as vital is the power of the medical profession. Doctors are not going to be pushed around like the teachers.
 'All in all,' says the peoples' guide to yesterday's proposals, 'Britain's Health Service is unsurpassed anywhere in the world.' The response to that paean of official praise is obvious: if it isn't broken, why mend it? No other health system in the western world is administered so cheaply. Its principle of providing a national framework, free at the point of service and available to all, has won the respect of administrators round the globe. Excellence is not just confined to London or the teaching hospitals. It was in Bolton that Dr Patrick Steptoe developed the procedures which produced the first test tube baby.
 The Conservative Government's record is by no means all negative. It has recruited 6,000 more doctors and dentists and 70,000 more nurses. It has improved the productivity of the NHS. More patients are being treated in fewer beds. It has improved the managers of the service by increasing their authority and introducing performance-related pay. It has made the doctors more accountable through the introduction of clinical budgets, performance indicators and audits of their work. It was on the brink of improving the performance of GPs through a new system of monitoring prescribing patterns following the introduction of limited drug lists.
 But there is an equally important negative record. Opinion polls indicate that this darker side is well understood by the public. The Government has been too ready to squeeze the NHS. It has also been supremely cynical. Compare the cuts in 1983/84 or 1985/86 with the four per cent boost in the pre-election year of 1986/87. It was the Conservative-dominted Commons Select Committee on Social Services which concluded last year that the cumulative under-funding of the NHS amounted to Pounds 2,000 million. The increase which followed that report only made good half that shortfall because of the nurses' pay rise. That rise, too, remains a monument to Whitehall mismanagement: a Pounds 1,000 million pay increase which increased dissatisfaction within the nursing profession. Nine years of Conservative rule produced the unprecedented appeal to the Prime Minister, from the presidents of the three royal medical colleges, to 'save our NHS.' It came after a year in which 3,000 hospital beds had been shut down because of the shortage of funds.
 So we turn to yesterday's Pounds 1 million PR exercise by health ministers: a nationwide TV lining of studios across the country so that the goals could be explained to NHS personnel. Kenneth Clarke is right to complain that communication within the Health Service is still like a Cowley Car plant in the 1960s. That was one of the problems of the nurses' pay package. Yet, but for the leak of the Government's review to the Labour Party at the week-end, last night's exercise would have been more a national hoodwink than a national hook-up.
 Ministers claimed yesterday that they wanted to improve the proper management of the NHS, increase its financial accountability, and extend the choice open to patients. These are important and fundamental goals; but none of the structural changes announced yesterday are needed to achieve them. The report expresses concern about other defects of the NHS: the 50 per cent variation in hospital cost for identical cases; the twofold variation in prescribing patterns of GPS; and the (dubious) 'twentyfold' variation in hospital referral rates of GPs. But the problem still requires urgent attention. Again, the structural changes are unnecessary.
 There are two paradoxes in the package: a government which came into office declaring there were too many administrators is going to have to produce an army of them to run its new market model; and a government which believes in cutting costs is moving the NHS, internationally known for its cost controls, towards a model where costs are unconstrained. Prices in the UK private sector have far outstripped the NHS in the last decade.
 So to the precise proposals: GPs are too be given budgets. All 32,500 in their 11,000 practices will have a drugs budget. In addition the 1,000 biggest practices - with over 11,000 patients - will be offered a practice budget with which they will be able to purchase hospital care for their patients from private or NHS hospitals. What's wrong?
 The defects of the drugs budget is that it is bound to deter some doctors from prescribing important but expensive medicines: H2 blockers to prevent gastric secretions from stomach ulcers; hypolipidaemic agents to reduce high cholesterol in heart patients; or the new erythpoietic drug to stop chronic anaemia in patients on dialysis. The average prescription costs Pounds 5, but the stomach drug costs Pounds 200 a treatment; in many cases, however, it makes an operation unnecessary. The heart drug runs to Pounds 1,000 and the new dialysis drug can cost up to Pounds 5,000.
 'Government Curbs Drugs Bill' sounds OK. Written another way it reads: 'Patients' medicine withdrawn.' The Government says there is no question of cash-limited GP practices being left too short of funds to give out prescriptions. But five years ago nobody would have believed that ministers would have allowed entire hospital wards to shut when the cash ran out. The budgets will deter doctors from taking on expensive patients like the elderly, disabled and sick. The weighting which practices in socially deprived (that means Labour) areas will need could lead to the same political infighting that operates with rate support adjustments.
 The change is designed to stop the drugs bill rising any higher. It is one of the last areas of the NHS where there are no central controls. Drugs now account for almost Pounds 2 billion out of the Pounds 26 billion NHS budget. But some perspective is needed. Prescriptions have only risen by six per cent since 1979, although prices have run at four per cent ahead of the rate of inflation. UK doctors remain one of the lowest prescribers in Europe - 6.8 per person per year compared to Belgium's 9.9, Austria's 14.9, Italy's 21.5 and France's 28.9. There was a better way than this. The Government should have established an independent assessment of new drugs (as happens through the Federal Drug Administration in the US); introduced new procedures which would have required the substitution of cheaper, but just as effective generic drugs, for brand names; and made bolder use of the prescribing monitoring agency.
 The GP budget purchase scheme is equally wrong. It will mean less patient choice because GPS will want to send patients to the cheapest hospitals. Some of these will be dragging travel time outside the district. It does not deal with the GPS who make too many referrals, because most of them are in small practices.
 Allowing hospitals to opt out is absurd. It will end the capacity of the NHS to plan its services and introduce a damaging encentive for hospitals to concentrate on profitable work: such as the non-urgent surgery which private medicine specialises in - like hernias, hysterectomies, hips and cataracts. But this end of the market amounts to three per cent of the NHS budget. It should not be allowded to wag the rest of system. There is no profit in chronic treatment: but that is one resason why the Health Service has been so important.
 Of course there are some good ideas in the review: the introduction of appointment times in hospital outpatient departments should raise a cheer, together with the speed up in the results of diagnostic tests; regional pay; reforming consultant distinction awards; extending pilot management experiments. There is even an argument for experimenting with GP budgets and opt-out hospitals within one of the 14 NHS regions.
 But this is the small change of big change. What the review has failed to justify is the introduction nationally of structural upheavals which will reduce choice, restrict access, increase inequality and impose new central controls on GPs, hospitals and managers.

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The Guardian (London)

February 1, 1989

NHS Review: Tax relief to be allowed on policies for pensioners' private care

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE

LENGTH: 368 words

 
 New-style insurance policies aimed at allowing the higher-rate tax payer to claim tax relief for the private health care of their elderly relatives are to be introduced next year following the tax concessions announced in the white paper yesterday.
 The reference to the new relief is confined to one sentence in the report. 'The Government proposes to make it easier for people in retirement by allowing income tax relief on their private medical insurance premiums, whether paid by them or, for example, by their families on their behalf.' 
 The concesson follows the insistence of the Prime Minister, who will, incidentally, be one of the beneficiaries.
 Mr Nigel Lawson, the Chancellor, in a written answer last night said the new concession will come into force on April 6, 1990. Everybody over the age of 60 will be eligible and relief will be given like mortgage tax relief for all basic rate taxpayers. Higher rate taxpayers will receive adjustments to their codes.
 At present very few pensioners have private health care insurance because of the huge cost of the premiums and a reluctance by many private health insurance companies to cover them.
 A typical premium is well in excess of Pounds 1,000 a year and may include many exclusion clauses, such as psychiatric treatment and cover for previous illnesses and disabilities. This compares with an average figure of around Pounds 600 for a family with parents aged around 40.
 Many private health companies refuse to take on new patients over the age of 65. Others stop insuring existing patients when they reach the age of 75.
 The new concessions will be of limited value to most pensioners, and none at all to the many whose income is too small to be taxed.
 The scheme is expected to be of more benefit to the higher-paid who can afford to pay Pounds 1,000 a year premiums for their elderly parents or relatives, since they will receive Pounds 400 back in extra tax relief.
 The concession will also lead insurance companies to examine whether they can offer a new 'whole life' cover scheme for people in work. New-style policies could mean that a proportion set aside for old age could qualify for tax relief.

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The Guardian (London)

February 1, 1989

NHS Review: GPs may face dilemma of cash limits versus a suitable case for treatment - The doctor

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 729 words

 
 Dr Costas Dellaportas, a GP in a London inner city practice with a large number of elderly patients, says some doctors would welcome the chance of managing their own budget - if they are given enough money.
 One advantage, for example, is that they could opt to employ a physiotherapist rather than spending money on vast amounts of anti-inflammatory drugs for elderly patients. But some element of weighting for the elderly would be essential.
 'If a patient with high blood pressure is well stabilised on an expensive drug treatment, it would be unprofessional to switch her to another type just because it is cheaper. If strict cash limits are be imposed on GPs there will have to be exemptions for some types of drug treatment - and for certain types of patients, such as the elderly,' he said. 
 Many general practitioners believe the Government's proposals to 'tag' each patient with a limited amount of money for treatment, operations and prescriptions, will put patient care at serious risk - and permanently alter the present relationship of trust that exists between doctor and patient.
 Under the review proposals, if a doctor goes over his budget he will be penalised financially and will have to carefully balance the cost of treating the patient according to his best clinical judgment and staying within cash limits.
 The following are examples from doctors of how they believe working within a fixed budget could affect their patients.
 A 60 year old woman has shingles. The doctor can see it is progressing. If he thinks it is moving towards the eye, he should prescribe a course of anti-viral tablets to protect against the rare possibility that it might affect the patient's vision. But a week's course of anti-viral tablets cost Pounds 120 compared with the average prescription cost of about Pounds 4.50.
 Does he follow his clinical judgment and give his patient the best treatment possible - or preserve his budget in case it runs out during an outbreak of meningitis among the children in his practice?
 A 45-year-old man, who smokes, and gets bronchitis every winter comes into the surgery. As always it is difficult to tell if this is a bacterial infection, which will benefit from a course of antibiotics - or a viral infection - which will get better on its own. If the doctor prescribes nothing - and takes the risk of the cough progressing into something worse - he will save money on his budget.
 A 40-year-old woman has her blood pressure checked. It is just on the high side of normal. The GP has a choice between the no-cost option of recommending relaxation techniques, and putting her on long-term drug treatment to control her raised blood pressure. Twenty years later, without drug treatment, she may have an increased risk of a stroke because her GP had an added incentive to choose the least expensive measure.
 A man, aged 50, tells his doctor he is having intermittent diarrhoea and constipation. The doctor decides it's not worth sending him to hospital for a test to check to ensure that he does not have bowel cancer. It costs Pounds 50; the chances of finding anything are slight, and his budget is running out. The man develops cancer - which could have been far more effectively treated if it had been picked up earlier.
 A women aged 28, has Aids. She is on Zidovudine (formerly AZT) which, in spite of its toxic side effects, appears to prolong life by about a year. It costs Pounds 5,000 a year. Dr Roy Robertson, an Edinburgh GP who treats more Aids and HIV positive patients than any doctor in the country, points out that already, many GPs are only too ready to say 'I don't want that sort of patient.' Unless the Government introduces special exemptions for such treatment, he says, the position will get worse.
 Over 90 per cent of all our encounters with a doctor are with a GP. If cash has to be limited, some doctors argue, they would prefer to be the 'rationer' - rather than leaving the role to an administrator who, as one put it, 'knows as much about medicine as I know about plumbing.'
 The main benefactors from the review are likely to be computer manufacturers poised to enter a growth market. As the GP looks up the state of his weekly budget, and checks the price of the drug he is about to prescribe, many patients may feel this is the end of the NHS as they know it.

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February 1, 1989

NHS Review: Best buy principle restricts choice - The patients

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 410 words

 
 The NHS review holds out hope of more choice for patients ' over the time or place at which treatment is given' - but the Patients' Association says the end result is that they will be 'packaged like a parcel' to the hospital which offers to do the cheapest operations.
 In some cases elderly patients may have to travel 40 miles for an operation and continue to travel to the same hospital for follow-up treatment.
 The review is critical of the long wait for treatment some people suffer, yet no new money is offered to cut waiting lists. The review simply points out that the Government is spending Pounds 40 million this year on an initiative to reduce the waiting. 
 Figures published by the Department of Health last July showed that a similar Pounds 30 million initiative last year resulted in a fall of only 1.3 per cent in the waiting list figures. There were still nearly 180,000 people in England waiting for over a year for surgery, according to Department of Health figures. It is difficult to see how the same initiative this year is going to significantly alter the waiting time for such patients.
 The number of people waiting for hospital treatment in England last summer was 678,800 compared with 687,900 at the same time last year. A quarter of those had been waiting for more than a year for operations.
 There is now no longer the assurance that a doctor will refer patients who need operations to the NHS surgeon he thinks will do the best job - the 'best buy' principle will have to be followed.
 Patients whose long-term drug prescription are likely to be expensive may also find themselves going back and forth between hospital and GP unless special measures are introduced. For example:
 A 35-year-old man has just had a kidney transplant but needs anti-rejection drugs for the rest of his life. He has also moved house and is looking for a GP who will provide the drugs because his hospital cannot afford to pay for them. When the GP had an open budget, this created no problem. Now, the man can find no GP willing to take him on.
 A 30-year-old woman and her husband want to start a family. Tests have found that she is not ovulating. The hospital consultant prescribes a course of the fertility drug, Pergonal, which costs Pounds 500. The hospital's budget is cash limited so she has to get the prescriptions from her GP. Her GP tells her he has switched to a fixed budget - and cannot prescribe the drug.

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February 1, 1989

NHS Review: Unions fear privatisation as BMA voices unease - Mixed reception for the proposed changes

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 799 words

 
 The health service unions yesterday greeted the NHS review as the start of 'a two tier health system,' while the British Medical Association expressed 'serious reservations' about the Government's claim that the proposals will improve the quality of service.
 'We have always supported measures to improve efficency in the NHS, but the clinical needs of patients must come first,' said a spokeswoman for the BMA, which represents the country's doctors. 'We are particularly concerned that there is no provision for pilot studies, so that the changes will be introduced without anyone knowing whether they will work.'
 Miss Ada Madocks, staff side secretary of the NHS Whitley Council, which represents NHS employees, said the review was a major step towards privatisation. 
 'While there is no direct privatisation involved in the present proposals, it is crystal clear that the opted out 'super hospitals,' with their high degree of specialisation will be perfect candidates for privatisation in the future.
 'They will be able to sell their services to private hospitals.' She said the proposals would lead to the concentration of scarce NHS resources in the 'opted out' hospitals, while others would become 'second class institutions.'
 Mr Toby Harris, director of the Association of Community Health Councils, the patients 'watchdog' body, said the review would reduce patients' choice. Calling it 'Working for Patients' was a disgrace, he said.
 The idea of giving GPs limited budgets was 'frightening.' The end result would be a health service dominated by 'managers, cash limits and markets.'
 Mr Martyn Long, chairman of the National Association of Health Authorities, welcomed the commitment to 'a high quality health service free at the point of delivery.'
 However, the association would seek assurances that the 'self-standing' hospitals and GP budgets for hospital services would not detract from NHS's ability to provide a comprehensive service. It was essential that health promotion, services for the elderly and vulnerable, and teaching and research should not be adversely affected.
 Mr Rodney Bickerstaffe, secretary of the National Union of Public Employees said the review was a cynical charter to dismember the NHS. The plans to encourage locall hospitals and health centres to opt out were 'a charlatan prescription for market medicine.'
 Treatment would be 'price tagged,' leaving the poor, the chronically ill and the elderly out in the cold. 'Sick people will be shunted around the country in a scramble for the cheapest care.'
 He said NUPE members would be mobilised to challenge the plans.
 Mr Hector MacKenzie, general secretary of the Confederation of Health Service Employees said patients would be on the receiving end of a commercialised system where competition would breed needless over-treatment of those requiring profitable care, and chronic under-treatment of those most in need.
 He said the United States was a tragic illustration of the failure of commercial medicine.
 'No private American hospitals want to take on the unprofitable burden of Aids sufferers, so such patients have to rely on very limited public drug programmes. Aids patients ultimately face destitution and homelessness - conditions that accelerate the spread of the epidemic.'
 Mr Trevor Clay, general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing welcomed the fact that the NHS would still be funded from taxation. He also welcomed the extra consultants, the extended role for nurses to help solve the junior doctor problem, and the review of regional heatlh authorities.
 But he added: 'I do not see much consumer choice in these proposals. The choices will be made by doctors and managers. As patients, we all have a price tag on our heads now.'
 Sir James Ackers, chairman of West Midlands Regional Health Authority, said: 'We feel that the white paper will take forward the improvement in management of the NHS started by the introduction of general management in 1984, and lead to speedier decisions, greater patient choice, and a more effective use of resources for the benefit of our patients.'
 But the charity, Help the Aged, said the proposal to provide tax relief on private health insurance for pensioners was 'marginal to the real health needs of our elderly population.'
 Only a third of pensioners paid tax. 'Of those who do, many cannot afford private health insurance.'
 Mr John Mayo, the charity's director general, said: 'The proposal to give
 large general practices the management of a  fixed budget may have serious
 implications for elderly people. They are intensive and expensive users of
 health services and will therefore be unpopular patients for GPs operating a
  practice as a business.'

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February 1, 1989

Parliament and Politics: Cook warns of hospital sell-off

BYLINE: By MARTIN LINTON and PAUL NETTLETON

LENGTH: 714 words

 
 Mr Robin Cook, the shadow health secretary, told the Commons yesterday that the proposal to allow hospitals to opt out of local health authority control should be exposed as a staging post to opting into the private sector.
 Similarly the proposals for GPs to run their own budgets would not give them more freedom. 'In truth, they limit the freedom of GPs to decide what treatment their patient needs and replace it with the freedom to decide what treatment they can afford.'
 Patients would have a price tag and GPs would have an incentive to turn away costly patients. The elderly, the disabled, the chronically sick would be told sorry, you do not fit. The minister 'had a brass neck to claim this white paper would increase patients' choice'. 
 'Why does he not admit that his scheme means that the patients will not go to the hospitals they want to. They will go to the hospitals where their doctor has got the cheapest bargain,' he said.
 The tax relief on private health care for the over-60s was a 'fatuous irrelevance' to the problems of the elderly. It spoke volumes about the Government's priorities, he said, that it proposed a subsidy for private hospitals but no relief for geriatric wards.
 The white paper was the product of a review behind closed doors by closed minds. Junion ministers were consulted over dinner at No. 10, but junior doctors and nurses and patients were not consulted.
 Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, said there was no question of hospitals leaving the NHS. The proposal was to allow hospitals to become self-governing and free of detailed restraints from health authorities and government.
 Labour did not like proposals to give greater freedom to those with responsibility nearer the patient, he said.
 The proposal to allow GPs to run their own budgeets would in no way inhibit the choice of a GP or a patient. 'Doctors seeking to increase their patients will have just as much regard, if not more so, to the quality of care which a hospital might provide to the patient and not just to the cost,' he said.
 The tax relief proposals would help many elderly patients who had been paying for private health care but found costs increased when they reached the age when they most need extra surgery.
 Mr Archy Kirkwood, the Democrats' spokesman, said the proposals could inflict great damage on the fundamental principles of the NHS. Leaving it to the vagaries of the free market was very unsafe.
 Mr Clarke said: 'There is no prospect of any patient dropping through the system without either essential care or essential medicine or anything else.' He told Mr Jerry Hayes (C Harlow) there were no danger of surgery closures or patients being turned away through lack of resources under the proposals. 
 At Question Time the Prime Minister attacked Mr Cook for using leaked documents to disclose the contents of the white paper.
 Mr Paul Marland (C. Gloucestershire W) said it had traditionally been agreed that there must be confidentiality in government. 'Would she take this opportunity of roundly condemning the grossly irresponsible behaviour of Mr Cook in receiving stolen documents and thereby aiding and abetting a criminal offence?'
 Mrs Thatcher replied: 'I believe it is absolutely vital that confidentiality should be maintained. When the Labour Party was last in power that was the view taken by the then Labour Prime Minister and he was supported by the then Leader of the Opposition.
 'It seems to me now that the Labour Party is so bankrupt of argument that they seem to have appointed an official receiver.'
 Mr Neil Kinnock, the Labour leader, intervened: 'Will the Prime Minister confirm that the last MP who was responsible for a major leak was given a knighthood and made a European Commissioner?'
 Mrs Thatcher replied: 'The question was about receiving documents that can only have been stolen and we resent deeply on this side his strictures on my distinguished right honourable friend (Sir Leon Brittan).'
 Dr David Owen, leader of the SDP, asked: 'Is the Prime Minister aware that it is because she herself cannot bring herself to use the NHS that she does not understand the NHS? The NHS is not safe in her hands because there is no place in her heart for the NHS.'

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February 2, 1989

Boddingtons moves into nursing homes

BYLINE: By BEN LAURANCE

LENGTH: 223 words

 
 Manchester brewer Boddingtons is moving into the nursing home business. A deal unveiled yesterday will give the company 12 homes and comes just months after a similar move by Sunderland-based hotels and brewing group Vaux. 
 Boddingtons is buying two businesses, Country House Retirement Homes and
 Nursing and Health Care Services. It will pay up to Pounds 7.6 million, the
  exact figure being determined by the size of the homes' profits. And the
 company maintained yesterday that the move into care for the sick and
 elderly is no more than an extension of its restaurant and property
 business.
 Country House was started just nine years ago. It owns and operates six nursing homes, two near Guildford plus one each at Leatherhead, Maidenhead, Hitchin and Maidstone. NHCS's homes are at Esher, West Byflett, Hayward's Heath, Uxbridge and Walton-on-Thames.
 Boddingtons insists that the move is quite logical, fitting in with the company's steady diversification away from its traditional brewing roots. The group has already bought Village Leisure Hotels and the Bentley's group of restaurants. 'In considering areas for further expansion, Boddingtons identified care for the elderly as an important growth market which suited its existing retailing/hospitality and property management skills,' it said.

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February 2, 1989

Financial Notebook: Drinking their good health - why a famous brewer is moving into nursing homes

BYLINE: By HAMISH MCRAE

LENGTH: 468 words

 
 A brewer is not the most natural purchaser of a set of nursing homes. The image it conjures has, to be sure, certain attractions: octogenarians pulling each other pints in the 'there's life in the old dog yet' scene in an olde English pub. At least it makes a change from lager louts. 
 But it is not what synergy is supposed to be about .. or is it? The significancce of Boddingtons' move into nursing homes is twofold. Here is a brewer heding its bets about the future and using its pub management skills to diversify into an area with greater growth prospects.
 To understand the hedging element, you have to understand that the brewers run two businesses. One is a mass manufacturing business: running specialised factories (called breweries) which produce a product in high volumes.
 The skills here are those of running factories efficiently to produce the product as cheaply as possible, and then the various marketing skills to make the product as attractive as possible to the punters. There are a small number of highly-automated plants, but with a fair-sized staff in each.
 The other business is a service industry: running pubs, hotels and the like. There are a multiplicity of units, with low technology and a handful of workers at each unit. Some units are owned, some franchised. The key here is that of all service industry: to deliver a consistent service at a cost with allows adequate margins.
 But putting the point in management school jargon you can see the difference: one is manufacturing, the other service; one large-scale, the other small.
 The essential link, of course, is the tied house system, where brewers sell their products through their own 'shops'.
 This, however, is likely to be swept away by the Monopolies Commission, which reports next month. It is not that likely that brewers will have to sell all their pubs. But it is likely that they will have to allow a wider choice and end practices where they sell the beer and other drinks to the pub at a price higher than the local supermarket charges.
 At the moment, the brewers do not know what they will be allowed to do, so it makes sense to hedge their bets. If, eventually, they have to make a choice between being a manufacturer or a service industry, they will have more options if they have more service businesses under their wing.
 And so the final point: running pubs is very similar to running nursing homes. The unit size is quite small; the choice of operator is vital; and central management can support the individual operators by supplying capital and expertise.
 The big, big difference is that while pubs are a shrinking industry on the wrong end of social change, nursing homes are a growing one on the right end of demographic change.
 Canny people, Mancunians.

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February 3, 1989

The Day in Politics: Elderly tax relief scheme will help the NHS, says Thatcher

BYLINE: By PAUL NETTLETON

LENGTH: 203 words

 
 The Prime Minister yesterday strongly defended the Government's proposal of tax relief for elderly people's private medical insurance and said those who paid for private health care on top of their contributions to the health service were 'helping the NHS'.
 At question time Labour leader Mr Neil Kinnock asked her: 'Do the changes the Prime Minister proposed for the NHS mean that she will actually use the service herself?' 
 The Prime Minister replied: 'Mr Kinnock always mystifies me that he's quite prepared to purchase a private house, but not prepared to purchase private health. I should have thought he would have realised that those people who both pay for the NHS and then pay again for private health are actually helping the NHS.'
 Mr Kinnock said if she was saying that people could afford private health care, 'can she tell us why such people should get a tax subsidy to do so?'
 Mrs Thatcher said people with private medical insurance coming up to retirement may find themselves facing higher premiums. 'We thought it right to give tax relief at that stage so that people can continue to use the scheme privately, and by using the scheme privately bring more benefit to the NHS.'

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February 4, 1989

Weekend Arts: Family ways - Radio

BYLINE: By VAL ARNOLD-FORSTER

LENGTH: 761 words

 
 Tricky creatures, prepubescent girls. The last two Monday plays (Radio 4) have both been about family tensions, with a young girl at the centre. And both illustrated very nicely the age old dictum: 'Where is a mother's place? Answer: In the wrong'.
 Last week's The Playgirl, by Alan Berrie, was about 12-year-old Cordelia; her dad, Jim Brannigan, a weak, charming, Irish actor now 'resting' and looking after his daughter; and Helen, her mother, involved in her career. 
 Father and daughter play a long game of adoring fantasy together; mother, overworked and strained, resents the relationship. Brannigan, urged on by Helen, gets a plum part in a new TV soap, falls for a colleague and provokes in his daughter a furious reaction of jealous resentment.
 Then the play moves into melodrama - daughter accuses father of sexual abuse; new girlfriend rejects him; he kills himself. But child abuse is melodramatic; and the fact that the accusation may or may not have been true did not alter the play's timely interest.
 It all rang nastily true; the intensity of the father-daughter relationship was believable, and if Cordelia was a tiresome brat, well, we've all met those before. The three central performances from Tony Doyle as Brannigan; Frances Geater as Helen and Clare Travers-Deacon as the aptly named Cordelia were all beautifully judged. An easy play to over-act, over-produce or even over-write; but Richard Wortley's unfussy production was just right for Berrie's script.
 Another, and nicer, young girl, Rosie, was to be found in this week's My Mother Said I Never Should (repeated today, Saturday, 2.30 pm) by Charlotte Keatley. Three generations meet to clear out the old grandmother's house. Gradually we realise that Rosie is not, as she believes, the sister of Jackie, the successful young professional, but Jackie's daughter.
 Melodramatic, too, and here the malodrama is less believably handled. There's little in the relationships that lead us to believe in the final denouement with the child and old grandmother settled peacefully together. It is a common fictional device to portray a warm sympathy between the unhappy young and the elderly: and how handy it would be if it were more often true in reality.
 The play certainly had well observed insights into the irritations between generations, and the way in which successive mothers try to fulfil their own aspirations through their daughters. Some humour, too, and strong performances, particularly from Sonia Ritter as Rosie. But the intrusive flashbacks and the muddled construction of the play made it difficult to grasp which mother had which ambitions, and why. And those inserts of little children chanting skipping songs are getting to be a production cliche.
 Personally, I suspect the relationships in After Henry (Radio 4, Tuesdays and Thursdays) are nearer the mark. Maybe the grannie, as played by the admirable Joan Sanderson, is a bit of a caricature; and since the series comes into the general category of light entertainment, the reactions are oversimplified. But the three women - grandmother, mother and daughter - represent no more than a slight exaggeration of real life. One of the constant themes is grannie's belief that she has a meaningful relationship with her granddaughter; mabe she's been listening to too many radio plays.
 Reality came clearly through in If You Will Make It So. (Radio 4, Saturday and Monday) - not surprisingly, since the play by Martin Staniforth was adapted from the autobiography of Winifred Haward Hodgkiss. It told of the love affair, and eventual marriage, between Winifred, a Cambridge-educated, upper-class woman who becomes a BBC producer, and Louis, a Lancashire miner. A gentle, moving play, warmed by a lovely performance from Anne Jameson as Winifred, happy in her late blooming romance and yet keeping the ascerbic streak in her character.
 Next week is the start of a new classic serial in the Friday afternoon slot. Judging from my spot-check on a dozen well-educated persons, The Brothers Karamazov is, I suspect, one of those great novels that we all know something about but haven't actually, er, read.
 This is an adaptation by Michelene Wandor, directed by Philip Martin, with Freddie Jones wonderfully fruity as father Karamazov, and Michael Maloney, Stuart Wilson and Tim Brierley in well-differentiated performances as the three brothers. A notable chance to hear a powerfully dramatic adaptation of one of Dostoevsky's most difficult novels; a pity there's no immediate repeat.

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February 6, 1989

Financial Notebook: Still waiting for Bush to face up to the deficit

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 1037 words

 
 The long bout of shadow boxing between George Bush and the Congress will come to an abrupt end this week when the new President unveils his February budget package before a joint session of the House of Representatives and the Senate. While Mr Bush, who has sweetly cultivated allies on Capitol Hill, is assured of an enthusiastic public reception it is plain his fiscal message will be rancourous at home and abroad.
 In his own backyard there will be dismay that his budget supremo, Mr Richard Darman, has chosen to keep faith with the 'rosy scenario' - economic assumptions - which seriously underestimate the United States's borrowing needs on the financial markets. On the international front there will be public disappointment that Mr Bush is no more able to meet his Group-of-Seven committments on the deficit than Mr Reagan. 
 There are several developments in Washington clouding the horizon for Mr Bush's first important policy statement, which is likely to set the tone for his first 100 days in office, when political goodwill is traditionally at its maximum.
 Firstly, new budget forecasts from the Congressional Budget Office (Capitol Hill's own fiscal watchdog) suggest that even if all the spending cuts and revenue raising measures proposed in Mr Reagan's valedictory budget were implemented the deficit would be Dollars 120 billion in the 1990 fiscal year, starting in October. If the budget were left on automatic pilot (ie no changes were implemented) then the deficit would reach Dollars 146 billion. In each case the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings mandatory target of Dollars 100 billion would be seriously breached.
 Secondly, any hopes that the bipartisan National Economic Commission (NEC), formed in the wake of the Crash of '87, would come to grips with the US's medium to long term fiscal strategy in the manner of the Greenspan Commission on social security (old pensions) in 1982 have been dashed.
 Instead of offering a detailed strategy including cuts in entitlements (such as medical care for the elderly) and tax increases, the Commission is likely to produce an anaemic report which does no more than issue warnings about problems already widely discussed including the spurious economic assumptions used by the White House Office of Management and Budget and the way in which the growing Social Security surpluses (as much as Dollars 90 billion annually) mask the underlying size of the deficits.
 The stalemate on the NEC reflects the true state of the political economy in Washington. Despite all the inauguration talk of a bipartisan approach to national problems Mr Bush's no tax pledge effectively means the Democrats will not play ball. They are not willing to be lumbered with a record of having raised taxes when the Republicans refuse to come off the sidelines. As was demonstrated in 1987 only the financial markets can cut through the fiscal logjam.
 Far from raising taxes Mr Bush's first financial package is expected to propose yet another tax reduction to go with the supply-side revolution of 1982. Like Mrs Thatcher's cuts in the highest rates of income tax Mr Bush seems prepared to buy a more permanent Republican/conservative majority by cutting the capital gains tax as promised during his election campaign.
 Under the Bush proposal the top rate of capital gains, which is currently the same as income tax at 28 per cent, would be chopped to 15 per cent. Mr Bush claims that the supply-side effect, the new investment and profits unleashed by the move, means that the capital gains tax cut will pay for itself. But the Congressional Budget Office suggests it could cost the US Treasury billions in revenues widening the deficit further.
 There is, however, a potential compromise here. The chairman of the Senate Finance Committee, Lloyd Bentsen of Texas, has suggested a sliding scale capital gains tax which would penalise short-term speculative profits such as those accumulated on Wall Street and reward the longer-term investor. It is an intriguing concept, first propoed by investment banker Felix Rohaytn, which could well prove acceptable to the Treasury Secre tary, Mr Nicholas Brady, were there to be serious negotiations between the White House and Congress.
 Several other tax changes are also expected to be included in the Bush package - each of them honouring campaign pledges. With US domestil oil production currently on a downward turn Mr Bush will propose new tax incentives for oil and gas exploration; an idea which seems certain to become law given the regiment of Texans hotly pursuing a kinder and gentlier attitude to fossil fuels.
 Tax incentives will also be used to fulfil campaign promises to provide child-care for the families of the working poor and to rebuild the inner-cities through Enterprise Zones.
 The common theme which runs through each of these tax proposals is that the financing is murky at best. Indeed, the fear must be that they will considerably add to a budgetary shortfall which is being under-estimated anyway. Ironically, these costly ideas are causing less political angst than the one self-financing proposal being floated by the US Treasury - the rescue package for the Savings and Loans system.
 Rather than add a further Dollars 90-100 billion to the US Government's considerable long-term budget liabilities the Bush team is proposing a self-financing solution. This consists of a charge of 25 cents on every Dollars 100 invested in a federally insured institution. While disguised as a 'user fee' for savings and loan investors it is, in effect, a large disguised tax increase. This means it both breaches Mr Bush's no tax pledges and shifts responsibility for paying for the savings and loans mess from the unscrupulous managers who created it to the depositors whose financial safety was put in jeopardy.
 It is small wonder the S & L rescue is a contentious concept which will receive a rough ride in Congress. It at least, however, addresses the fundamental issue of cost. Whereas the shuddering reality behind most of the proposals likely to be included in Mr Bush's first financial statement is that the new President has yet to face up to the Reagan debt legacy.

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February 7, 1989

Obituary of Percy Hoskins: Crime and innocence

BYLINE: By IAN AITKEN

LENGTH: 583 words

 
 Percy Hoskins, legendary crime correspondent of Beaverbrook Newspapers from 1924 until only a few years ago, has died after a brief but painful illness at the age of 84. He was the last of a long line of flambuoyant crime reporters who covered the activities of the old-fashioned Scotland Yard.
 His outward personality was that of an amiable extrovert from the West Country. But it concealed a tough, iron-hard integrity which came to the surface at the time of the arrest and trial of the Eastbourne doctor John Bodkin Adams. 
 Dr Bodkin Adams was accused of murdering many of his rich but elderly patients with an overdose of painkillers, and then benefiting from their wills. Even the Rolls-Royce he drove was alleged to be the result of one such transaction.
 But when Scotland yard finally began to investigate these allegations, Hoskins took strong exception to their choice of the detective in charge of the enquiry. He regarded the individual concerned as untrustworthy, following a number of earlier experiences with him.
 When the police began to plant stories in national newspapers suggesting that Dr Bodkin Adams was a mass murderer, Hoskins became indignant. In spite of heavy pressure from the Daily Express news desk - pressures which went all the way up to the proprietor - he refused point blank to write matching stories. The Express increasingly took the view that it was being scooped by its rivals.
 But Hoskins' indignation extended beyond the big black glass palace of the Daily Express. His anger against the police mounted, and he took advantage of his personal friendship with the then editor of the left wing weekly Tribune, Mr Michael Foot. He provided Foot with the background material for a series of articles exposing the yard's conduct, much of which was picked up by the national Fleet Street press.
 When the Bodkin Adams case finally came to trial, the jury rejected the police evidence after 17 days of hearings and found Dr Adams not guilty.
 There were two direct spinoffs from this verdict. The first took place a few minutes after it was delivered in the Old Bailey court room, when the phone rang on Percy Hoskins' desk. A familiar Canadian voice - that of Lord Beaverbrook, the proprietor of the Daily Express - came on the line.
 'Percy,' said the voice, 'two people were acquitted in the old Bailey this morning - John Bodkin Adams and you.'
 The other immediate outcome was that Dr Adams took his capacious hat down Fleet Street, seeking out of court settlements for the inevitable action he would bring against most of the natioanl newspapers for prejudging the outcome of the trial. The good doctor received massive payments from almost all the popular papers in Fleet Street, with the sole exception of the Daily Express. Percy Hoskins' conduct was therefore recorded in cash as well as moral terms. (When Adams died in 1983, he left Hoskins Pounds 1,000.)
 The Express recognised the service Hoskins had delivered to them by keeping him on as an adviser until 1986, long after his formal retirement. But he would have been an outstanding crime reporter even if Dr Adams had never fallen foul of Scotland Yard. (His invaluable and extraordinary range of contacts was said to include J. Edgar Hoover as a personal friend.) He was, in a word, unique. He was appointed CBE towards the end of his career, but might well have been given something more exalted.
 Percy Hoskins born December, 28, 1904; died February 6.

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February 7, 1989

Tuesday Women: Casting to type - The contempt with which we treat senior citizens is staggering. Too often they are presented as an uncomfortable statistic

BYLINE: By BRYONY COLEMAN

LENGTH: 855 words

 
 Barbara Bush is news. 'My mail tells me a lot of fat, white-haired ladies are tickled pink' has become the darling quotation of the international press. Comparisons with her predecessor, Nancy, flow. As one tabloid put it: 'Move over, Barbie Doll; here comes Babs.' While Nancy's having another tuck put in, Barbara's letting out another seam. She's happy to look her age, even a little older, and to be counted among America's senior citizen brigade, bizarrely labelled 'The Grey Panthers'.
 In 1988, a conspiracy among women's editors to popularise grey hair - it all started with Lacroix's model, Marie Seznec - was remarkably prescient. For this year is heralding the dawn of a silver age. And not before time. 
 It's not only Barbara's corpulence and crow's-feet that reassure. Printed on the mind is that picture of The First Granny of the White House: a benign matriarchal figure presiding over 28 members of the Bush dynasty at the inaugural ceremonies. The lapsed ideal of the family unit might appear to be born again. We have few such cosy set-ups in Britain and, even in the States, the Reagans' strained relationship with their dispersed offspring was easier to identify with. This protected and protective image of Barbara Bush may be a hit, but it's also a myth.
 The contempt with which we treat our senior citizens is staggering. Patronised or ignored, the over-60s are too often presented as an uncomfortable statistic, lumped together as inflexible stereotypes: victim, valetudinarian, mother-in-law, Mrs Grundy. Whether pensioners are 85 or 65, an institutionalised neglect is depicting them as out of touch and a burden.
 But circumstances change cases. Yesterday's baby boom is tomorrow's granny boom. By the year 2001 there could be over 4 million Britons aged 75 plus, a million more than in 1981. The grey area is spreading rapidly and, as average life expectancy continues to increase, the elderly will have to be addressed. Not just addressed, but courted.
 Advertisers are only slowly recognising the huge potential of a granny culture. Roughly a third of the over-60s population has a healthy disposable income; their children are no longer dependants; they joined the property markets before prices shot up and interest rates have improved their position as traditional savers just as they have hit younger Yuppie borrowers. Here come the recently christened Woopies (Well Off Older People) and Jollies (Jet-setting Older People with Loads of Loot). A new magazine, Retirement Planning & Living, is glossy and brashly money-orientated - a sort of pensioner's Excel. Yet its advertising still centres on saving schemes, private health deals, travel and retirement homes. An underlying assumption persists that many products, from compact disc to Diet Coke, are simply beyond the ken of a senior citizen. Eastenders' Dot Cotton has probably done more than any advertiser to boost Walkman sales among the over-60s. Ad agency creatives, usually thirty-something or under, are still writing scenarios for their own dwindling generation. A blinkered snob factor's at work, resisting all the demographical signs that the young may have had their day.
 The Government is facing not merely a U-turn but a youth-turn. Out with the new and in with the old. Last week, Mrs Thatcher's new plans for the elderly were unofficially outlined in the press. Whereas in the past few years many have been forced into early retirement to make way for school-leavers, now employers, tails between legs, are having to invite pensioners back to take up part-time work - whether as a source of cheap labour is not made clear. Norman Fowler envisages a 'decade of retirement' for those between 60 and 70, who would have the choice of continuing to work or not. Again, no indication is given as to the sort of provision to be made for those who do opt for retirement at 60 rather than 70 when the Government would prefer otherwise. And what about the over-70s? The Treasury has long considered state pensions an unnecessary financial drain and, on its past record; it seems unlikely that assistance will increase for those who need it most but can offer nothing in return.
 Meanwhile, another third of all pensioners live on Pounds 41.15 a week. Even with income support, this wouldn't go far at a second-hand clothes shop. Queues for hip replacements and cataract removal are growing and private medicine is not always an option. We urgently need to put more cash into cures and treatments for age-related illness, if not out of a sense of justice to ensure dignity and comfort in later life, at least out of a mercenary desire to increase the mobility and therefore the 'usefulness' of the old.
 The passion for retro-chic currently possessing style gurus could profitably be extended to people. After all, if we fail to stop treating our senior citizens as juniors, manipulating them at every economic whim, how should we expect to be treated when we approach our Biblical span? As Groucho Marx pointed out: 'Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.' Something to bear in mind.

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February 9, 1989

UN secures transport for Kabul airlift

BYLINE: By KATHY GANNON

LENGTH: 511 words

DATELINE: ISLAMABAD

 
 United Nations officials said yesterday that Ethiopian Airlines had agreed to fly 32 tonnes of emergency medical and food supplies to the Afghan capital of Kabul.
 The announcement came after an EgyptAir crew on Tuesday balked at flying into Afghanistan because of fears of inadequate security at Kabul airport, a UN official said.
 In Cairo, a senior official at EgyptAir's headquarters denied the company had backed out of the airlift. He said the airline wanted 'to make sure about the safety of the flight route from Islamabad to Kabul and also landing clearance in Kabul'. 
 'Once we are sure the plane has the necessary overflight and landing clearances, the plane will go as planned,' the official added.
 Egypt's state-owned Middle East News Agency quoted Mr Hassan Afifi, EgyptAir's operations director, as saying flights from Islamabad to Kabul 'have been postponed, not cancelled, until security conditions there stabilise'.
 Prince Sadruddin Aga Khan, who heads the UN programme to assist Afghan war refugees, said in a statement that his group 'does not share the apprehension of EgyptAir and is convinced of the urgent needs to be met'.
 Mr Rene Albeck, a spokesman for the UN programme, said the Ethiopian airline would fly emergency supplies to Kabul from Pakistan's south-western border city of Quetta.
 Mr Albeck said the staging area for the airlifts moved to Quetta because the UN has storage depots there and in Peshawar.
 Mr Albeck said the flight 'could be in Kabul tomorrow (Thursday).'
 Several airlifts have been planned, he said, and 'maybe we can do two per day within the next five of six days.'
 The supplies were intended for the most vulnerable groups such as women, children and the elderly, he said.
 The Mojahedin have blocked land supply routes to Kabul, causing acute shortages of food, medicine and other essential supplies.
 In New York, a UN official said the rebels had agreed in principle not to attack UN flights into the Afghan capital in exchange for a promise that UN convoys would bring supplies into guerrilla-held regions.
 'We have been all the time of the opinion, with the messages that we got, that it should have been safe to fly into Kabul,' Mr Albeck said.
 However, Mr Qaribur Rehman Saeed of the Majahedin's Afghan News Agency said: 'No one can guarantee the UN plane's safety. The Mojahedin don't know.'
 UN teams monitoring the Geneva accords have made regular trips between Islamabad and Kabul. - AP
 Seven people died in a rocket attack on central Kabul yesterday as the Mojahedin intensified their campaign to hamper the Soviet Union's hurried troop withdrawal, Reuter adds from Islamabad.
 The rocket, which exploded among a crowd of people collecting flour and cooking oil from a distribution centre, was the first big missile strike after a period of calm in the Afghan capital.
 Tass reported yesterday that the rebels had attacked posts along two roads out of Afghanistan which withdrawing Soviet soldiers are handing over to Afghan government troops.

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February 9, 1989

And umbrellas are down, too: How the weather is hitting traditional British winter behaviour

BYLINE: By SHYAMA PERERA

LENGTH: 721 words

 
 A curious fact about the British is that, after years of complaining about snowbound transport and rocketing central heating bills, they greet a mild winter with almost as much suspicion as a big freeze.
 Ben Nevis is stripped of ice and there are bees in Regents Park; the tabloids are starved of opportunities to snap naked girls frolicking in the snow; in the Yorkshire Dales, where roads remain unfrozen, there is a salt mountain to match anything the Common Market could cook up.
 We could be celebrating, but instead of that there are stories bemoaning the problems in the Cairngorm ski resorts and warning of the threats to earlyblooming daffodils. There is an underlying concern that a cold snap will descent the minute winter woollies are stored. 
 Jokes about overcoat manufacturers going bust, however, are wasted - stalwart veterans of British winters buy their coats and hot water bottles in early autumn. As the January sales attest, by the New Year the winter stock is marked down for the fast sell and spring collections are on the racks.
 A Marks & Spencer spokeswoman cheerfully confirmed yesterday: 'All our winter stocks were sold by Christmas. The buying pattern of the British public is to be prepared, so most of our winter stock went in September.'
 For the average punter, these balmy February days promise lower heating bills and better health. And this means that as many as 20,000 lives could be saved amongst the elderly alone. Help the Aged recorded 42,000 cold related deaths during the severe cold snap of 1986. In the relatively mild winter of 1987, the figure was 25,172.
 Press officer, Liz Juggins, said: 'Although the problem of inadequate heating remains, the results will be less acute. We are getting calls to our helpline all the time, but not in the same numbers as during a really cold spell.'
 The good weather is considered a sliver-lined cloud by mountain rescue services. In some parts of Scotland it has rained heavily lately, but it is still very mild and there has been little snow. The voluntary team covering Ben Nevis and the north west Scottish highland had dealt with 16 call-outs this time last year. This year, there have been three.
 Team secretary Andy Nichol said yesterday: 'It has had a very dramatic effect and things are obviously brighter from a rescue point of view. People just aren't coming out.'
 On the east coast however, the prestigious St Andrews golf course has seen a 35 per cent increase in winter players. Club official, Mr Ian Forbes, commented: 'Normally the golfing season is from the beginning to April to the end of September, but in the last few weeks there has been an upturn - we are up 35 per cent.'
 The cash registers of the Electricity Boards are not tinkling as handsomely. Although it is too early to say how electricity and gas will be affected by the mild weather, February consumption has dropped by five per cent.
 A CEGB spokesman added: 'Peak demand is down by about 9 per cent and the number of units used by householders has dropped by 5 per cent in the last week.'
 The mild weather has no doubt had a similar effect on the fortunes of British Gas, but their spokesman preferred to look on the bright side yesterday. 'The funny thing about gas is that there are very rarely major swings in its income. Of course, we add about a quarter of a million new customers each year which helps the swing,' he said.
 The unpredictable nature of British winters in recent years is no doubt to blame for the suspicion with which the average Briton is treating the long mild spell. Thomson Holidays says that the demand for hot-spot holidays is as great as ever, and yesterday the British Tourist Authority was not aware of any rush for long weekend breaks in Aberdeen, which has boasted Britain's highest temperatures this week.
 A spokesman for North Yorkshire County Council, which has so far saved nearly Pounds 1 million on its winter maintenance budget, pointed out dourly: 'Three years ago we had snow on the dales in May.'
 But it is not just snow that has eluded us this winter. At the top London umbrella manufacturers, James Smith (established 1830), the manager admitted that the record shortfall of rain over the last four months had led to a noticeable drop in passing trade.

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February 9, 1989

Bush's budget will trim defence costs: Democrats expected to welcome spending changes

BYLINE: By MARK TRAN

LENGTH: 607 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 The budget that President George Bush unveils tonight in his first speech to a joint session of Congress will recommend slightly less money for defence and more for new domestic initiatives in keeping with his vision of a 'kinder and gentler nation'.
 Mr Bush's Dollars 1.16 trillion budget request should set the tone for his dealings with Congres for the rest of his administration.
 Mindful of the importance of the occasion, the President spent yesterday on the Hill, lobbying Democrats and Republicans for his plan. 
 'I am under no illusions that we are going to keep everybody happy,' Mr Bush told Senate Republicans at a Capitol Hill luncheon. The administration will have to juggle its budget to meet reduction targets mandated under the Gramm-Rudman-Hollings law.
 But even Democratic congressional officials predicted at least a polite welcome for Mr Bush's budget, in contrast to the hostile reception that greeted all of Mr Reagan's budgets, 'Democrats found them really offensive - boosting defence while cutting social programmes. They will all be much more conciliatory towards Bush,' said one Democratic aide.
 The President has already won plaudits for his handling of the savings and loan (the US equivalent to building societies) crisis. Congress liked the way Mr Bush took the lead in unveiling the administration's initiative to cope with the Dollars 100 billion mess, and gave the package a positive response.
 Democrats will certainly acknowledge Mr Bush's decision to trim the defence budget as a step in the right direction, although there will be inevitable demands for actual cuts rather than slower growth.
 After a heated debate between his top advisers, Mr Bush has opted for no real growth in military spending for the next fiscal year, about Dollars 2 billion less than President Reagan's farewell Dollars 300 billion plus budget proposal, which called for a 2 per cent increase to make up for inflation.
 Mr Bush's proposal would mean Dollars 6.3 billion in cuts to Pentagon programmes next year, although the administration will end up actually saving only about Dollars 2 billion in 1990 because of the long lead time in procurement programmes.
 Mr Bush's budget then calls for a 1 per cent increase after inflation in 1992, and 2 per cent growth over inflation in 1993. The Bush proposal would cut Dollars 50 billion in programmes over the next four years. On the other hand, President Bush will dump Mr Reagan's plan to cut spending on Medicaid (health care for the poor), although he will stick to proposals to reduce projected Medicare (health programmes for the elderly) spending by Dollars 5.5 billion next year.
 While Democrats are expected to applaud Mr Bush's trimming of the defence budget and increased spending for the homeless, education, the environment, and child care, they will be less thrilled by the President's proposal to cut capital gains tax.
 Mr Bush's belief that the measure will actually lead to a Dollars 5 billion gain in revenue has been derided by most economists and lawmakers as the President's own brand of 'voo-doo economics' and just a tax break for the rich.
 The preferential tax gain was eliminated by tax reform in 1986, and Mr Bush promised to restore it.
 The lower tax rate is expected to apply to sales of shares, land and other non-depreciable assets, but not to profits from the sale of art, antiques or buildings.
 Nearly all the added revenue projected from cutting capital-gains taxes would be offset by proposed tax breaks, including incentives for oil and gas exploration, and tax credits for childcare expenses.

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February 10, 1989

Splits mar dream of Islamic rule: Attempts to reassert Afghan culture and virtue after the years of Soviet occupation

BYLINE: By DEREK BROWN

LENGTH: 928 words

DATELINE: ISLAMABAD

 
 This afternoon, in the gaunt cement meeting hall of the Haj complex on the edge of the Pakistan capital, 526 Afghans will try to build a new government for their battered country.
 All will be men. All will be Muslims. Most will be extravagantly bearded, and in traditional sombre dress. 
 On the face of it, this shura, or Islamic consultation, will be the embodiment of Afghan culture and virtue, triumphantly reasserting itself after the dark and bloody era of Soviet occupation. But nothing in Afghanistan, or to do with it, is ever that simple.
 The outcome of the shura, whatever it decides or fails to decide, will be bitterly contested by groups excluded from the process. Most obvious among them is the communist regime in Kabul, which insists that it will share power but not surrender it.
 But among the Mojahedin rebels, who all reject any deal with Kabul, there are also deep currents of unrest. Monarchists, tribal leaders, members of the Shi'a minority, are to say the least unhappy about the composition of the shura.
 Others who are nationalists first and foremost say that Pakistan is railroading the movement into premature judgement. Liberals fear the shura will be dominated by fundamentalists.
 Military commanders who have fought and beaten the Soviets and now believe they are on the verge of a final victory for Islam, are offended by the incessant political feuding and incompetence.
 Many seasoned and cynical observers say that it was ever thus; that Afghanistan is simply reverting to its pre-Soviet status as an ethnic, linguistic, and cultural stew. Government in Kabul was ever a polite fiction, they say, in a land where true power lay with the maliks (landowners), khans (traditiional rulers), mullahs (priests) and all manner of warlords.
 Only now Afghanistan is more heavily armed, per head, than any country on earth. One third of its 16 million people are exiled refugees, another three million are displaced internally, and a million more have been killed. One civil war is already being fought by the Mojahedin against the godless communists in Kabul. In the worst analysis, the Islamabad shura could provoke a couple more.
 Only a couple of days ago, the passions and frustrations of the post-Soviet era flared to the surface in the border city of Peshawar, when several thousand monrachists held a rally to protest against the shura in its present form.
 There was much applause for Mr Azizullah Wasifi, a former culture minister under Mr Zahir Shah, who said the shura was unacceptable; an imposition by Pakitan, and against the Afghan national interests.
 The same can be heard from a multitude of mouths in Peshawar, but this public proclamation was too much for a bunch of Hesbe-i-Islami fundamentalists.
 Shouting 'Death to Zahir Shah' they rushed the platform, ripped down microphones, beat up Mr Wasifi and several other elderly men, and for good measure seized and smashed the camera of the watching American CBS news team. Three of the attackers were then shot and critically wounded, and in all 25 people were injured.
 The rally was held outside the headquarters of the Afghan National Liberation Front. Its leader, Professor Sibghatullah Mojadidi, is the current chairman of the seven-party Mojahedin Alliance based in Peshawar.
 He is also a monarchist. The Hesbe-i-Islami also belongs to the alliance. Its leader, Mr Engineer Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, is ardento for an Islamic republic.
 For many years, Mr Hekmatyar has been the favourite of the Pakistan military and its intelligence service, the ISI. The head of the ISI, Lieutenant-General Hamid Gul, is the last survivor of the inner circle of the late dictator, Zia ul-Haq.
 After Zia's death in a still-unexplained air crash last August, Mr Hekmatyar described himself as an orphan. Many colleagues and onlookers agreed, and believed he would fade from the centre-stage. He is still there, and still being stoutly backed by Gen Gul.
 Indeed, many of the so-called moderate Mojahedin see the Islamabad shura as the intended creature of Mr Hekmatyar and Gen Gul. The former is vigorously promoting the cause of Mr Ahmed Shah, the 'prime minister' of last year's short-lived provisional government-in-exile, to be confirmed as head of the next Kabul regime.
 It is an outcome which the anti-Hekmatyar faction is determined to avoid. Mr Ahmed Shah's government, they point out acidly, was actually dissolved after a few months.
 Its only success was in persuading the Saudi Arabians to disgorge handsome amounts of dollars to set up an entirely useless secretariat. Only two of its 15 members had the remotest claim to experience or expertise in government. One of them, and many of the others, have since drifted away from Peshawar in disillusion.
 The anti-Ahmed Shah forces insist that other candidates will emerge, though they offer no names. For that matter, the entire shura is an almost anonymous affair, in keeping with the far from exacting standards of Afghan democracy.
 Each of the seven Peshawar parties have nominated 60 members. Another 80 have been allocated to the Shi'a parties based in Iran.
 The clouds of intrige and speculation are unlikely to be dispelled during the two or three days the shura is expected to sit. The press will be excluded, and the delegates confined to the sprawling Haj complex.
 At the end of each day the Mojahedin's own news agency (actually controlled by Hekmatyar) will release a communique which will astonish the press only if it says anything at all.

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February 11, 1989

Weekend Money: Window closing on income bonds

BYLINE: By MIHIR BOSE

LENGTH: 620 words

 
 If you want to make the most of high interest rates now is your chance. Annette Burton, financial adviser iwth Berkeley St James's says: 'I would say the window of opportunity for such investment will be open for another month.' Investors may be encouraged to open the window by the fact that companies offering fixed rates of investment are already withdrawing their offers or cutting rates. 
 Last week Canterbury Life offered one of the best rates for three or four-year fixed rate investments at 9.05 and 9.25 per cent net. The offer has now been withdrawn. Hambro Guardian launched a February Bond paying 10.1 per cent net of basic rate tax guaranteed for one year.
 Midland Bank cut its interest rates on its high interest deposit bond by half a per cent. The Midland bond, introduced to compete with the National Savings Capital Bond, which pays 12 per cent gross if held for five years, has already attracted Pounds 50 million. Since Midland cut the return it is not as competitive as some of the guaranteed income bonds on offer.
 These bonds, like all such fiex interest investments, lock the investor into a fixed rate of interest for a fixed period of time - anything from six months to 10 years. Traditionally, such bonds have appealed to older people looking for security. But if you think, as the industry does, that interest rates are at a peak then it is a good investment to make.
 Guaranteed income bonds are not the only form of fixed interest investments. They are sometimes offered by building societies, though generally they simply guarantee a fixed rate differential above the ordinary share account rate. The only society that offers a product to compare with guaranteed income bonds is the Portman. But while its 10 per cent is the same as that offered by Confederation Life on its one-year guaranteed income bond, the rate is fixed only for six months and the minimum deposit of Pounds 5,000 is five times that of Confederation Life.
 Generally companies utilise unused tax reliefs to offer attractive interest rates, which is why guaranteed income bonds are often offered by smaller companies. Some guaranteed income bonds - those written by insurance companies as single premium bonds - also have advantages for high rate taxpayers compared with other fixed-interest investments.
 Standard rate tax is deemed to have been paid on these bonds. If you are a higher rate taxpayer then you can take 5 per cent income annually 'tax-free' (the tax is in fact deferred for up to 20 years, when higher rate taxpayers have retired and pay standard rate). Over the first 5 per cent you pay the different between the standard and higher rate - 15 per cent on the quoted return.
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 GUARANTEED INCOME BONDS: THE BEST RATES
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
                         Rate   Term      Minimum
                         (%)    (years)   investment
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 Regency Life            10     1         Pounds 10,000
 New Direction Finance   8.75   2         Pounds 1,000
 Liberty Life            9.25   3         Pounds 5,000
 American Life           9      4         Pounds 1,000
                         9.25   4         Pounds 15,000
 Financial Insurance     9.25   5         Pounds 2,000
 Midland Bank            9.5    6 months  Pounds 2,000
 Portman BS              10     6 months  Pounds 5,000
 Hambro Guardian         10.1   1         Pounds 5,000
 ------------------------------------------------------------------
 Rates net of Basic tax. Source: Chase de Vere Moneyline
 (01 404 5766).
 ------------------------------------------------------------------

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February 13, 1989

Agenda: Tell me the old, old story - What do health professionals think of the government's review of the NHS / The Consultant

BYLINE: By KALMAN KAFETZ

LENGTH: 749 words

 
 From its beginnings, the NHS, uniquely among health care systems, was committed to the care of elderly people when it took over the Workhouse Infirmaries. As a result, the principles and practice of a medical approach to elderly people developed, much admired worldwide, which makes the NHS ideally suited to coping with the ageing population.
 The basis of the approach is that disability amongst elderly people is primarily caused by disease rather than age and that prompt treatment can prevent dependence and the need for institutional care. Such an outcome is preferred by elderly people and taxpayers alike. 
 Crucially, there needs to be involvement of specialists in the medical problems of elderly people in acute care to prevent the need for chronic care. Any separation of the so-called 'acute sector' and the so-called 'geriatric sector' is expensive and inefficient.
 Nevertheless it is clear, both from the DHSS performance indicators and the reports of the NHS's own inspectorate, that standards of both acute and chronic care for elderly people are extremely variable. The elimination of such variability is a major aim of the NHS review. The chances of success, however, are questionable.
 The major reason is that the review ignores the vast amount of money pumped into residential care of elderly people by the DHSS, recently strongly criticised by the Audit Commission. A proposal by Sir Roy Griffiths that this should be channelled to local authorities conflicted with the government's political aims of reducing council's influence. So the money continues to be spent.
 Some of what is spent on paying for institutionalising elderly people could be more effectively transferred to treatment of the disabilities that lead to the institutionalisation in those districts where poor performance is due to poor resources rather than poor management or clinical incompetence.
 Some of the money could also be transferred to GPs to increase their control of community care. The White Paper proposes that GPs in large practices should hold a budget for aspects of accute care. But they are unlikely to use this for elderly people partly because a defeatist attitude to care of the elderly is still rampant and partly because there will be no financial incentive.
 increasing numbers of GPs are committed to the concept of primary care teams and are qualified in the care of the elderly. Devolving budgets to such GPs may be more appropriate than the porposals of the White Paper. They could buy institutional or community care within cash limits, invest in therapists in the community and be able to pay for adaptions to homes.
 This would involve an extension of the current role of the practise manager. They would need to have support from, and instant access to a specialist hsopital unit, at no cost to their own budgets.
 Tax relief for elderly people for their contributions to private health insurance will have a marginal effect. Increasing claims by elderly people from private health insurers will bring a disproportionate increase in costs because the elederly stay longer in hsopital than younger people. So premiums are likely to increase and at least balance out the discount to the consumer that tax relief will provide.
 There is much in the White Paper that may inhibit health authorities and local authorities from working together. While one may have reservations about the roles of councillors on heath authroties, the fact remains tha tthey are elected by local people. Removing them, as is proposed, can only make joint working more difficult.
 Elderly people will also lose out if their local hospital is less efficient than its neighbour, to which resources may be transferred. Admitted to a local hospital, fast and cost-effective throughput of elderly people can be arranged safely if there is co-ordinate ddischarge planning between hospital and community staff.
 But discharge planning is more difficult the further away elderly people are from their own locality and to maintain cost-effectiveness they may find themselves discharged without plans.
 They need to improve the quality of helath care of the elderly countrywide, so that the benefits of good practice in some areas can spread to all areas, is undeniable. This is the avowed aim of the NHS review, but there seems little prospect of engineering this sort of change by the proposals in the White Paper.
 Kalman Kafetz is a consultant geriatrician.

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The Guardian (London)

February 14, 1989

Charges dropped against tourist over deaths in Miami hotel fire

LENGTH: 190 words

 
 Charges of killing two pensioners in a hotel fire in Miami, in the United States, were yesterday dropped against Ms Tara Terry, 19, of Camberley, Surrey.
 The holidaymaker had been charged with arson after a fire at the Nassau Hotel last September had killed two elderly Americans, an 82-year-old man and a 76-year-old woman. 
 The prosecution said she had set fire to her third floor room after an argument with her boyfriend Mark Richardson, from Berkshire. But he refused to return to Miami to give evidence against her and yesterday, as the case opened, the chief prosecutor, Mr Dexter Lehtinen, said the charges, which carried a maximum sentence of life, were being dropped.
 Earlier, Judge Kenneth L. Ryskamp had questioned the basis of the case. 'There would be a problem proving wilful intent on the part of this defendant,' he said.
 Miss Terry had been charged under an infrequently used federal arson statute, making it illegal to set fires in establishments doing inter-state business.
 As she left the courtroom, Miss Terry told the prosecutor: 'You have put me through hell. You ought to go to church.'

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The Guardian (London)

February 14, 1989

Drug firm seeks court ban on anti-depressant warning

BYLINE: By CLARE DYER, Legal Correspondent

LENGTH: 349 words

 
 A drug manufacturer yesterday asked the High Court to prevent the Department of Health warning doctors not to give elderly patients an anti-depressant that has been linked to at least 12 deaths.
 A warning of the potential hazards of the drug, Bolvidon, is blocked by an injunction obtained by Organon Laboratories, pending a decision in its case, the first challenge to the Government's drug safety procedures to be brought by a pharmaceutical company.
 The official Committee on Safety of Medicines' notice was to have appeared in Current Problems, the early warning bulletin for doctors. It advised them not to prescribe Bolvidon (also marketed by Beecham as Norval) for patients over 65, with two exceptions: those who fail to respond to other anti-depressants, or those with glaucoma or an enlarged prostate. 
 Following advice from the committee, the Department of Health decided to put similar restrictions on Organon's product licence for Bolvidon, whose generic name is mianserin.
 The department's concern centres on patients suffering from agranulocytosis, destruction of white blood cells that fight infection. In 1985 Current Problems reported 113 blood reactions in patients taking Bolvidon, twelve of them fatal, and that the elderly appeared particularly susceptible.
 The drug is Britain's third or fourth best-selling anti-depressant, widely prescribed for elderly people; one million prescriptions a year are written, worth Pounds 2 million in sales. A restriction on the British product licence could also have substantial repercussions for sales of Pounds 35 million worldwide.
 Organon says that the department failed to take account of the relative safety of other anti-depressants to which patients would have to switch if the licence was restricted. It argues that studies show, for instance, that Bolvidon is safer than other anti-depressants if taken in overdose, and that it has fewer adverse effects on the heart. The department says it considered the latter in reaching its decision.
 A court decision is expected by the end of the month.

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The Guardian (London)

February 15, 1989

Company Briefing: Healthy profit at Egerton

LENGTH: 170 words

 
 Egerton Trust, the property developer with quarrying and other interests in the eastern United States and rapidly-expanding geriatric care activities, made healthy profit progress despite some temporary handicaps last year. Ahead of the presidential election, housing demand in the US was sluggish and a Pounds 2 million profit realisation on a property sale at home was delayed. 
 Turnover was consequently Pounds 3.7 million lower at Pounds 110.6 million after a strong start and some contribution from acquisitions. Led by UK housing, profit climbed by Pounds 2.1 million to Pounds 10.07 million. Minerals, were close behind, including initial contributions from two small US aggregates acquisitions.
 Health care moved into the black and the link with Private Patients Plan presaging developments in which the frail elderly will be nursed in more congenial surroundings than the National Health Service can provide.
 A final dividend of 4.5p, up 1p, makes the total 6.5p net a share, against 4.75p.

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February 15, 1989

Bush refuses to put the squeeze on spending

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 451 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 President Bush has expressed strong opposition to any furthe tightening of US credit conditions despite new figures, released yesterday, which suggest consumer demand is growing too rapidly.
 In a wide ranging interview with the Wall Street Journal Mr Bush said he would not like to see any tightening now, arguing: 'We've got excess plant capacity in the country.'
 Mr Bush's remarks appeared to put him on a collision course with the chairman of the Federal Reserve Board, Dr Alan Greenspan who has been pushing up short term interest rates in response to fears of higher inflation. 
 The January retail sales figures released yesterday climbed by 0.6 per cent suggesting that consumer demand remains exceptionally strong. The Federal Reserve and Wall Street economists fear high demand in the US could threaten overheating of the economy and a worsening of the US's international trade position.
 'It's another element that edges the Fed in that (higher) direction,' warned Mr Greg Gieber, Vice-President of the New York brokers Smith Harris Upham & Co. The retail sales figures showed strength across the board from cars to clothing.
 However, the Bush White House is counting on high growth and low interest rates to lower the budget deficit which it says will fall to under Dollars 94.8 billion in the 1990 financial year.
 Mr Bush and his Budget Director Mr Richard Darman are being severely criticised on Capitol Hill for a financial sleight of hand which leaves his budget some Dollars 10 billion short of the cuts required to meet the deficit target even if the most favourable economic conditions prevail.
 In his Wall Street Journal interview Mr Bush suggested that some of the cuts he is seeking could come from Medicare health insurance for the elderly while he also looked unfavourably at government grants to the Amtrak railway system.
 The President is seeking an early agreement with Congress on a negotiating forum where budget diferences can be better resolved.
 Among the other difficulties Mr Bush could face on the budget is the cost of the savings and loan rescue plan. With short term interest rates rising the cost of the bail-out could eventually prove greater than the Administration's current estimate of Dollars 90 billion of which some Dollars 50 billion will be borne by the federal authorities.
 However, with growth in the US economy apparantly booming and inflation on the rise Mr Bush could find himself under pressure from the Federal Reserve - the US central bank which controls monetary policy.
 While the dollar eased yesterday on Mr Bush's interst rate remarks many analysts believe the trend in US money costs will continue upward.

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February 15, 1989

Parliamentary Sketch: Food warnings to be taken with a pinch of salt

BYLINE: By ANDREW RAWNSLEY

LENGTH: 572 words

 
 To clear up public confusion about food poisoning, this column's medical advisers have issued the following guidelines on which Government statements are now safe to consume. The short advice is: none of them. The longer advice is inevitably rather more complicated. 
 In general, the risk to the healthy adult from ministerial statements on the the safety or otherwise of eggs, cheese or other dairy products is quite small, providing anything said by ministers on radio or television is taken only as part of a normal balanced diet of light entertainment and comedy.
 The elderly, the sick, babies, pregnant women, cheese producers, egg farmers and other vulnerable groups should not be fed any ministerial statements, which carry an unacceptably high risk of spreading panic and confusion.
 Everybody should avoid anything produced by John MacGregor or Kenneth Clarke, where the Whitehall foot-in-mouth outbreaks is at its worst.
 According to the Agriculture Minister: 'There is no question of banning sales of cheese made from unpasteurised milk.' According to the Health Secretary: 'John has said he is considering banning cheese made from non-pasteurised milk.'
 All further statements by Mr MacGregor or Mr Clarke should be regarded as unfit for human consumption until further notice or they are told to hand in their notice, whichever is the sooner. The column's Chief Medical Officer has also issued the following advice about anything said by the Prime Minister. For healthy people there is the usual level of risk associated with believing anything said by the Prime Minister, whether hardboiled or scrambled.
 Everyone should avoid listening to answers to questions made out of raw or chilled Thatcher. She is best served as she was in Question Time yesterday by Mr Kinnock - thoroughly roasted.
 Answers made up of mouldy statistics or stale scorn - 'I really had expected better of you' to Mr Kinnock - are a reliable sign that she is in trouble, he has asked an excellent question and she knows it.
 The Government's latest statement on cheese - read by Mrs Thatcher at Question Time - must be regarded as unsafe. Preliminary tests suggest it, too, is badly infected with the fatal mixture of confusion, panic and complacency which is sweeping Whitehall.
 'The position,' Mrs Thatcher said,' is that in Scotland there is already a ban on sales of unpasteurised liquid milk and cream to the general public ..' Yes, but read on. ' .. the Ministry of Agriculture is considering whether unpasteurised liquid milk and cream for sale to the public should also be banned in England and Wales ..' Notice the first symptoms of confusion.
 Are the Scots more easily poisoned than the English or Welsh, or is their milk and cream more poisonous? Confusion is usually followed by a severe outbreak of consultation documents. ' .. a consultation document will be issued shortly ..'
 After a while they will develop into a Code of Practice. ' .. A Code of Practice for major manufacturers has already been issued ..' Told you so. 'A Code of Practice for smaller cheese-makers is in draft.' By now confusion is epidemic. Why less urgency about smaller cheese producers? Are they less likely to be poisonous than taller ones?
 Until further clarification is available, only buy cheese from Welsh dwarfs. In the meantime, take all Government advice about food only with a large pinch of salt.

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February 16, 1989

Hunt for masked gang preying on elderly in isolated farms

BYLINE: By TONY HEATH

LENGTH: 197 words

 
 Police yesterday stepped up the search for a gang of robbers preying on elderly people living in isolated farmhouses in the Shropshire countryside after two raids within a few miles of each other.
 In the first raid, three masked men forced their way into an isolated cottage outside Ludlow and tied up Mr Sidney Evans, aged 75, who suffers from arthritis and walks with the aid of sticks. After wrapping a blanket round his head, the raiders ransacked the house, ripped out the telephone and made off with Pounds 200.
 In the second raid, less than an hour later, five masked men forced their way into a farmhouse at Bolden near Craven Arms. They tied up Mrs Edna Bradley, aged 60, and Mr Jack Wall, 73, and threatened them before searching the house for valuables and making off on the farm's tractor with Pounds 50 in cash after ripping out the telephone.
 In both raids, the victims eventually freed themselves and raised the alarm.
 West Mercia police described the gang as dangerous, and warned householders to be on their guard.
 Thieves broke into an antiques shop in Llandrindod Wells, Powys, yesterday, making off with an 18th-century Welsh dresser.

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February 17, 1989

Third World Report: Apartheid's vicious assault on the poor - News Analysis

BYLINE: By VICTORIA BRITTAIN

LENGTH: 932 words

 
 The link between poverty and powerlessness is the same the world over. So, in South Africa, where the government represents only 15 per cent of the population, it is hardly surprising that the gap between rich and poor is the highest in the world - way above, for instance, Brazil and nearly twice as high as the US.
 Half of South Africa's people live below what is estimated as subsistence level, while in the reserves, 80 per cent of people live in poverty so dire their very survival is in question from day to day. But unlike the poverty of every other country, there is, in the view of South Africa's own academics, who have worked on this mammoth research project, a single precondition for tackling it seriously in their country and the surrounding region - the end of apartheid. 
 The second Carnegie Commission's eight-year study now reveals with a wealth of detail what its academic writers call, 'apartheid's assault on the poor'. Professor Francis Wilson and Dr Mamphela Ramphele of the University of Cape Town identify 'six major lines of attack .. the shift in policy to dispossession; anti-black-urbanisation, forced removals; Bantu education; crushing of organisation; destabilisation.'
 The first Carnegie Commission in the 1920s was funded by the US-basded Carnegie Corporation to study the conditions of poor whites in South Africa. It was enormously influential and became the basis of effective state aciton to improve their lot. Could Carnegie II become a similar watershed for the South African Government and the many international agencies working there to confront the terrible evidence of the inexorably worsening poverty revealed in the vast statistical annexes of this book?
 Can the fact that one-third, and in some places two-thirds, of black children are now underweight and stunted be tolerated as a side-effect of apartheid?
 Or the old people found by one researcher 'in dark rooms, on ragged beds, mostly hungry, often filthy .. a paralysed old woman, persistently scraping the bottom of an empty pot and putting her claw-like hand to her mouth in despairing imitation of eating, or an old man bludgeoned by poverty into .. vacant apathy, alive only because he was not dead, who only said when asked what was wrong, 'I am hungry.''
 'The countryside is pushing you into the cities to survive, the cities are pushing yuo into the countryside to die,' a migrant worker told one of Carnegie's several hundred reserachers. It is a simple formulation of the disaster of the social engineering project that lies behind South African government policy.
 The book weaves together the structural and interlinked causes of poverty which have sprung in large part from the 'rapid and artificial increase' in the rural population of the reserves. The pressure of population in these areas has brought the fuel and water crises so familiar in much of rural Africa, and an ecological disaster which has produced 'dustbowl conditions.'
 The drought of the early 1980s brought into sharp relief the accumulated vulnerabilities of rural life. The researchers found, for instance, in Gazankulu in the Eastern Transvaal where 50 per cent of rural families are landless, people paying 67 times more for their water than suburban dwellers in the Cape Town suburbs. And as the supply of wood for fuel dwindled under the pressure of people cutting it in ever-widening circles around their homes, families were found, in Bophuthatswana for instance, who cannot afford to cook once a day.
 Against this background of poverty it is not surprising to find that two-thirds of black households have no electricity. But with South Africa generating 60 per cent of the electricity in the whole continent of Africa, it is surely legitimate to ask why this pattern cannot be changed. In addition, the data on the huge expense of fuel in urban areas 'clearly dispels the popular myth that most black households canot afford electricity'.
 With urban unemployment running at a level measured in some areas, Grahamstown for instance, at a staggering 60-70 per cent, poverty in the towns is no less acute than in rural areas. The despair and powerlessness the researchers report are described as 'the inability of people without boots to pull themselves up by the straps'.
 A vivid description of the Ithuseng community health project, which Dr Ramphele herself started when she was banished to a remote areas for a period in 1978, is one of many pinpricks of light in the grim picture this book presents. The authors expect no swift end to the apartheid regime, and in their strategies for the immediate alleviation of poverty concentrate on the 'empowerment of people', as Ithuseng did with its host of projects which grew from the health centre, and on the building of organisations.
 Pretoria's banningo f 32 organisations during 1988, and the systematic withholding of power from 85 per cent of its population demonstrated by the conduct of last October's ethnic municipal elections, goes of course in the opposite direction. This research explains as nothing has in such detail before, the unprcendented upsurge of black revolt against the apartheid system which has spread from urban to rural areas since 1984.
 Uprooting Poverty, The South African Challenge, by Francis Wilson and Mamphela Ramphele. Published in South Africa by David Philip, and to be published in Britain on March 8 by W. W. Norton, price Pounds 18.95. Picture from The Cordoned Heart, published as part of the Carnegie inquiry by Gallery Press/Norton, price Dollars 14.95

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February 20, 1989

Moscow Diary

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE

LENGTH: 736 words

 
 The sky outside my open window is blue, women are sunbathing on balconies nearby, and the first fly of 1989 has just settled on top of my word processor. Europe's warm spell has not missed Moscow out. The weathermen say there has never been a Russian winter like it for 120 years.
 It has not been quite as warm as Britain, even though one day last week the mercury on the thermometer outside the kitchen window soared up to a cheery 15 degrees. For the last three or four weeks it has been hovering between five and ten degrees by day. 
 At night, of course, the temperature falls and therein lies the problem. Most of theh city's side-roads and pavements are covered in black ice. The warm days are not enough to melt more than a top coating of the snow which fell liberally in December. At night the surface freezes over, forming a slippery crust. The courtyards of virtually every block of flats as well as the sides of the roads are littered with piles of black snow. The accumulated grime and muck of a city where factory chimneys push out fumes with near-total impunity settles like a film on the pristine snow.
 People walk along taking tiny awkward steps like pigeons. The hospital casualty departments are full of patients with fractured arms and legs. You see at least one car crash every day. Whatever else perestroika has done, everyone complains it has not improved Moscow's street-cleaning services. In the old days, they say, the formidable army of machines had the job done perperly.
 Lorries would grit the streets. Machines with a sloping conveyor-belt contraption at the back and two metal arms at the bottom would gather in the snow as soon as it settled and lift it out of harm's way. Wielding old-fashioned brooms and shovels, retired grandmothers would handle the problem in every block of flats.
 Anatoly Meshkov, who has the thankless task of running Moscow's clean-up operations, has a pile of excuses as high as the snow outside. Lack of government money, the need to make staff cuts, sloppy workers, no appropriate technology - he knows them all. The city's 2,177 snow-removal machines take four hours to handle a normal snowfall.
 This sounds impressive, until he explains that this is too slow to prevent ice forming. Anyway, the machines are too huge to manoeuvre on pavements and side-roads so these get neglected. The city pays only 10,000 old people to clear the yards, which is two-thirds less that it needs. Another 1,000 were sacked in December. Many others find the work too arduous and give up.
 The worst aspect of the warm climate is that it has ruined winter sports. The soccer fields and playgrounds which are flooded with water to make skating rinks are either a sea of crunchy mush, or when they freeze again they become a bumpy version of the moon's surface, craters and all.
 In the woods around the city the snow is cleaner but we have only managed to get on our cross-country skis about four times. One of the best places is the monastery complex of Kolomenskoe beside the Moscow river where you can glide along within sight of snow-covered onion domes. Or there is the city's last forest at Bitsa.
 The birch trees are packed close together and you ski down narrow paths, marvelling at the clarity of the contrasting light and shadows of branches on the snow. In desperation we tried again last weekend but the top of the snow is crusted with ice and the tracks worn down by other skiers are like hard mini-canyons. The fun went after the first three minutes.
 So winter sports are reduced to being a spectators' thing, and not as popular as one might imagine. There is the ice hockey league at the stadium beside the great outdoor Olympic arena. It always has plenty of empty seats. Last week we were introduced to a new game, the world championships of bandy. The game is described as ice-hockey with a ball. It is played with eleven players on each side on a huge rink as large as a luminous orange thing which can be hit high into the air on goal-kicks. Only five countries took part in the world championships, Finland, Norway, Sweden, the Soviet Union, and the United States. We watched one match in which the Russians lost to Sweden. The crowd minded less than we expected. As far as we were concerned, the scores mattered less than the sight of an acre of smooth, lovingly tended ice, a hint of real winter beyond our reach.

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February 22, 1989

Health Guardian: Dying for information? - Are old people starving because so little is known of their nutritional needs

BYLINE: By SIMON WOLFF

LENGTH: 724 words

 
 Much is known about the nutritional requirements of young, growing, fit people. But we know very little about what and how much elderly people need to eat. Accidentally, they may be starving to death.
 The increase in the numbers of the elderly is new. The virtual eradication of life-threatening infectious disease, improved sanitation and housing, and less overt malnutrition has greatly increased life-expectancy. 
 But little research has been done on the special nutritional requirements of the old. Investigating causes of ageing and age-related disease are seen as low priority at a time of generalised cuts in research funding.
 Our knowledge of the relationship between height, weight and health comes not from medical research but from life insurance statistics collected over decades. This information is based on young adults. How many 70-year-olds seek life insurance? Little is known even about their desirable weight range. Some old people lost weight dramatically, yet remain healthy for years. Others seem simply to waste away. Similarly, recommended dietary allowances (RDAs) of vitamins and minerals are based on young people, not on the elderly's special needs.
 Old people who stay in hospital for extended periods often lose a lot of weight. It was always believed this was a result of increased metabolic rate caused by disease. But although it is true that young people experience weight loss and metabolic rate increase during acute illness, perhaps as part of the fight against infection, this does not occur in the chronically sick elderly. They lose weight for the simple reason that they do not eat as much as they did at home.
 'Institutionalised starvation' may occur despite the good intentions of nursing staff. Dietary habits are grossly disturbed by a move into hospital. Having to eat three standard cook-chill meals a day in hurried, uncomfortable circumstances can make elderly people lose their appetite. At home they may eat just one leisurely meal each day and lots of snacks when desired.
 Another factor affecting food intake is the state of people's teeth. Poorly fitting dentures and missing or rotten teeth affect the desire and ability to consume enough food.
 But the problem is greater than institutional care or bad teeth. As we grow old, we become more susceptible to infection and our tissues become damaged, resulting in arthritis, kidney failure and heart disease. This decline in function is not simply due to wear and tear. As we age, the rate of tissue damage probably increases alongside a decreased ability to repair such damage.
 Recognition of the importance of vitamin D in bone growth helped eradicate childhood rickets, but how much vitamin D is required by older people to keep their bones strong? And how well do they utilise their intake of calcium?
 The availability of fresh fruit and vegetable made scurvy, severe deficiency of vitamin C, rare. But little is known about the consequences of vitamin C subnutrition - less than optimal levels of intake. Vitamin C also acts as an antioxidant, protecting tissues against the damage caused by free-radicals, reactive molecules causing unwanting oxidation.
 One theory of ageing and age-related disease is that free radical production increases over the passage of time. It may be that the elderly do not get enough vitamin C, and possibly vitamin E and selenium, for this vital protective function.
 Levels of vitamin B2 may also differ between healthy old people and those with clinical disease, although it is difficult to assess how much of this vitamin is needed to maintain adequate tissue function. Recognising complete tissue breakdown is easier than measuring a decline which has not yet reached danger levels.
 Widespread concern has been expressed about the lack of information on age-related disease and the importance of trace elements and vitamins in the diet. A recent workshop, organised by the charity Research into Ageing, highlighted these failings and the lack of basic information on desirable weight ranges, RDAs, and the worrying phenomenon of institutionalised starvation. The chance to reduce much of the pain and disability of old age remains slim until these questions are answered.
 Research into Ageing, 49 Queen Victoria Street, London EC4N 4SA (01-236 4365).

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February 22, 1989

Health Guardian: Under pressure - Hypertension - the 'silent killer'

BYLINE: By ANN ROBINSON

LENGTH: 642 words

 
 High blood pressure (BP) is known as the silent killer. It contributes to heart disease - the commonest cause of death in western nations - plus strokes, kidney damage, eye problems, and hardening of the arteries.
 People with very high BP are about four times more likely to suffer a heart attack than people with low BP. It is believed to affect about 15 per cent of people over the age of 30, but only half are known to their general practitioner. 
 There is no such thing as normal BP, only a range within which people fall, depending mainly on age and sex. It is described by an upper (systolic) and lower (diastolic) figure recording the pressure of blood in blood vessels.
 BP can be as low as 60/30 during sleep and shoots up to 150/90 during sexual intercourse. It varies throughout the day and many normal, mildly stressful activies such as driving can cause it to rise. When pressure is high for a long time it indicates that the blood vessels are damaged.
 Most people feel fit and well when they learn they have high BP (hypertension). Contrary to belief, headache, dizziness, or palpitations are rarely signs of the condition.
 BP over 160/95 must be treated, although there is dispute over the importance of treating borderline cases (over 140/90) and elderly people.
 No one should be told that their BP is raised on a single measurement. Ideally, at least three measurements should be taken over a few weeks. Simply visiting the doctor is enough to cause a transient rise in BP.
 General practitioners have been urged to measure BP at least once every five years, as it rises from birth to adulthood and in men continues to rise with age. It is lower in women until the menopause, when it starts to rise.
 Apart from age, sex, and a family history of hypertension, environmental and lifestyle factors are important. Obesity, dietary factors, and heavy drinking have all been shown to contribute to its development. The first step in reducing BP is changes in lifestyle. Moderating salt intake can help and also ensure that BP does not rise so fast with age.
 Vegetarians have lower BP than meat-eaters, which may be due to the beneficial effects of high levels of potassium in fruit and vegetables. High BP is also more common in soft water areas. The magnesium in hard water may be protective.
 Simply losing weight may be enough to reduce hypertension without resort to medication. For each stone increase in weight, systolic pressure increases by 4 mm of mercury. Continuing to smoke increases the risk of a heart attack or stroke. And people who drink more than 10 pints of beer or 20 glasses of wine a week should cut down.
 Stress control and relaxation techniques, such as yoga, meditation, and biofeedback, can be remarkably effective in lowering raised BP. Hypertensives should also consider stopping or changing any drugs which cause BP to rise, such as some contraceptive pills.
 While lifestyle modification may do the trick, medication is often necessary. Today's range of drugs, aiming to reduce diastolic pressure to below 90 mm in most cases, can all have unpleasant side-effects, including headaches, sleepiness, flushing, and impotence in men. They include beta-blockers, diuretics, calcium antagonists, and ACE inhibitors.
 The most important advice for anyone with mild to moderately high BP is to learn to relax, to lose excess weight, to drink less, and to stop smoking.
 The diet should also be improved by reducing consumption of saturated fat, salt and sugar, and increasing consumption of fruit, vegetables, and unrefined carbohydrates. Regular exercise strengthens the cardiovascular system and aids weight loss. Home-monitoring devices are a new development in control (the cheapest machine costs around Pounds 30) but their reliability is reported to be variable.

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February 22, 1989

Leading Article: The trial and the odd, old men out

LENGTH: 666 words

 
 Kafka's The Trial is scheduled for publication in Prague in 1992, now that the authorities have nervously authorised a limited edition of The Castle for the first time in over 20 years. The trial of Mr Vaclav Havel, the Czechoslovak playwright arrested after the demonstrations last month in Wenceslas Square, was summarily settled yesterday with less delay. The sentencing of Mr Havel to nine months of harsh regime in jail echoed the brutal repression of those demonstrations by the Prague authorities and their defiance then of international as well as domestic opinion. Their action had coincided with the signing in Vienna of the new international accord on human rights, and it offered western sceptics a free handful of ammunition against glasnost, much to Soviet annoyance. Last week Mr Gorbachev pointedly lectured the Czechoslovak Prime Minister Mr Ladislav Adamec on the need for democracy, and a Soviet newspaper called for a reassessment of the 1968 invasion. 
 Yesterday's court decision means that Prague has again chosen to isolate itself from the mainstream of state socialist reform. Its conservative leadership still seems well entrenched, lagging so far behind the mood for change in Hungary, the Soviet Union and now Poland as to appear to belong to an earlier generation. Yet to cling to the neo-Stalinist line now means increasingly to lodge Czechoslovakia in a state of floodlit anachronism - another Romania or Bulgaria. And how many Czechs or Slovaks really relish that sort of comparison? The inner signs of conservative weakness are visible behind the talk of defending the gains of socialism against its enemies. Mr Jan Fojtik, the party head of ideology, urges a tough campaign against the human rights organisation Charter 77. But interestingly he does so on the grounds that the government has 'underestimated' its strength. Mr Milos Jakes, the party's General Secretary of just one year's standing, and the party purger after 1968, keeps quiet. Those who were purged - fully one third of the party at the time - remain outside. This is both an obstacle to reform because it represents a real threat to the authorities, and a reservoir for long-term renewal. Meanwhile Mr Miroslav Stepan, head of the Prague party organisation, tries to open some doors towards the alienated intelligentisia.
 Reform has been frustrated so far in Czechoslovakia largely because its historical trauma - the 1968 Prague Spring and the Soviet invasion -was so recent. Most of those responsible have not aged sufficiently to take the chauffeur-driven car and retire. The struggles to neutralise Stalinism in the Soviet Union and to broach the taboo of 1956 in Hungary have taken much longer. And the Polich trauma - which also dates back to 1956 - is only beginning to be seriously dismantled after eight years of apparent political stale-mate. The relatively stronger Czechoslovak economy (until recently) also helped to anaesthetise public opinion which settled on the whole for a process of reluctant adaptation. In his famous open letter to President Gustav Husak in 1975, Mr Havel acknowledged that a sort of stability had been created. 'True enough, the country is calm,' he wrote. 'Calm as a morgue or as a grave, wouldn't you say?'
 Summing up this enforced normalization, the Czechoslovak dissident writer Milan Simecka has called 1968 'the penultimate chapter' in the struggle. The final chapter, he wrote prophetically, 'may well be provided by anotehr country, or more than one country at once.' Here we return to Mr Gorbachev. Two years ago, when he attended the party plenum in Prague, the Czechoslovak conservatives could still find support in the Soviet press. Tactically, Mr Gorbachev at that time would not have been helped by political convulsions elsewhere. Now his own future may depend in part on the momentum for reform being maintained on the periphery as well as in the ceentre. The Czech conservatives are playing a deeply dangerous end game.

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February 23, 1989

Hirohito's mourners vie for diplomatic gains

BYLINE: By MICHAEL WHITE

LENGTH: 456 words

 
 TOKYO
 President George Bush arrives in the Japanese capital today to head an extraordinary congregation of world leaders assembled to pay tribute to the late Emperor Hirohito and to the economic ascendancy of modern Japan.
 Mr Bush will arrive after Sir Geoffrey Howe, the Foreign Secretary, but ahead of the Duke of Edinburgh. The Duke's every public move in a 48-hour trip will be scrutinised by journalists eager to sense the mood of the irascible second world war veteran towards a fellow-royal who led the losing side in a Pacific conflict notorious for racial bitterness. 
 The duke will apparently join others in making 'an act of reverence', likely to be a minimalist nod or bow, before the coffin. On Saturday he will pay a visit, not his first, to the Commonwealth war Graves Cemetery at Hodogaya. Sir Geoffrey will also attend.
 The familiar twin rirtuals took place in Tokyo yesterday of intense security precautions and frantic efforts to secure diplomatic advantage in bilateral exchanges on the margins of tomorrow's state funeral.
 Police announced at Narita international airport, as close to central Tokyo as Reading is to Charing Cross, that two 90-centimetre mortars with primed time-firing devices had been found in a forest a mile from the runways.
 Neither contained explosive charges, but they were construed as one of the threatened leftwing attacks upon the 'emperor system' which could yet mar the elaborate ceremonials. Suicides by the elderly bereaved on funeral day are not being ruled out either.
 On the diplomatic front, the Soviet Vice-President, Mr Anatoly Lukyanov, one of tomorrow's Second X1 guests among the 163 countries to be represented, met the embattled Japanese Prime Minister, Mr Noboru Takeshita. They appeared to agree to disagree over the centrality of four Kurile Islands. Their competing claims for the isalnds have delayed a post-war peace treaty between Russia and Japan.
 Mr Bush will present no such difficulties. Before leaving on an arduous direct flight from Washington - which would have necessitated a three-day 'jet-lag' dawdle for ex-President Reagan - he again spoke of 'renewed partnership' with the US's key military ally, and economic rival, in the Pacific.
 Japan is juggling efforts to accommodate bilateral meetings at appropriate levels with all the visitors, though some will have to be collective efforts. It has hinted that welcome condolences should not be accompanied by inappropriate demands on its fat wallet.
 Amid the flurry of kings and presidents, both British VIPs will meet the new Emperor Akihito and Empress Michiko before flying home - separately. Sir Geoffrey flies British Airways, the Duke the Queen's Flight.

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The Guardian (London)

February 23, 1989

Drug injunction waived

BYLINE: By CLARE DYER, Legal Correspondent

LENGTH: 297 words

 
 Organon laboratories, makers of the anti-depressant drug mianserin, yesterday agreed to waive a high court injunction preventing the publication of a warning about the drug's side effects.
 The Government drug watchdog, the Committee on Safety of Medicines, will now publish its findings in the bulletin Current Problem, which is distributed to doctors. 
 The high court imposed the injunction after Organon challenged a Department of Health decision to restrict the use of the drug, which is sold under the trade name Bolvidon. The department had intended to try and get the injunction lifted today but Organon yesterday agreed to a compromisie in which the wording of the warning was changed. The warning will no longer recommend that Bolvidon should only be used for elderly patients if other anti-depressants failed.
 The case is the first in which a drug company has succeeded in preventing the safety committee from warning about drug hazards.
 Concern about the drug centres on reports from doctors of blood problems in patients including the potentially fatal agranulocytosis, destruction of the white blood cells that fight infection. More than 130 reports have been received by the department, including 18 deaths.
 Organon won a high court ruling last week quashing the department's decision to restrict Bolvidon's use in patients over 65. The department proposed to limit its product licence to patients under 65, except for those with glaucoma or symptoms of prostate enlargement, or those failing to respond to other anti-depressants. The high court held that the department made a legal error in ruling out evidence that Bolvidon may be less likely than other anti-depressants to prove fatal if taken in overdose. The department is appealing.

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The Guardian (London)

February 24, 1989

Leading Article: Caring questions

LENGTH: 567 words

 
 After the nanny state, the granny state. By the end of this century the number of people over 85 will have increased by 50 per cent, to over one million. Although the vast majority will still be looked after by family, friends and neighbours, the demands which they will make on the health and social services will be immense. And one group will be particularly difficult: the psychogeriatric suffering from dementia or other mental illnesses. Degenerative changes in the brain and its blood vessels in people over 65 result in a large increase in mental illness. There are other age-related factors as well: retirement, bereavement, poor mobility, physical ill health and the unwanted side effects of medication. A joint working party of physicians and psychiatrists looked at some of these challenges in a major report published yesterday. 
 Their first concern is the informal carers - the families who spend 24 hours a day looking after granny. Even the most stoic carers can be worn down dealing with the same question from the armchair in the corner from morning to night. Yet this is often the lightest burden compared to the restlessness, aggression, disturbed nights and incontinence which many people with dementia suffer from. No health system can cope with the numbers involved. But even with informal carers, the costs are high. There have to be day centres where the demented can be taken to provide some relief. Community nurses are needed to monitor the patients and provide links to the hospitals when acute care is needed.
 The working party estimates that there are presently about 250 consultants dealing with the psychogeriatric. It cannot begin to cope. That force in the field will need to double in the next decade. The report calculates that a population of 20,000 pensioners produces 300 new hospital referrals annually, continuing contact with another 400 existing patients, some 400 admissions a year and about 4,000 home visits from the staff of the psychogeriatric unit.
 Few will want to argue with the main thrust of the findings. It maintains the trend fo the alst two decades: reducing to a minimum the numbers who have to go into longstay hospitals because of the cost and the inhumanity of institutional care. The aim has been to treat the medical problems of the elderly as quickly as possible in an acute hospital so that they do not get worse and the patient can return home. But the prospect of psychogeriatric services developing in the way which the report wants looks considerably less likely since the Government unveiled its new plans for the health service. Under those plans, hospitals will become more autonomous. One area which hospitals will not want to extend into is psychogeriatrics, with its low status, high staffing ratios and longer than average use of beds. It also requires close links with community medical services. Theoretically, these could be linked to the hospitals; but in such doctor-dominated institutions, the wards will take priority over community services. The more one looks at psychogeriatrics the move obvious becomes the need of a co-ordinating health authority which can require hospitals to provide particular services. The system is already in place, but the Government believes a health market would be better. here is an area of special and growing concern; and, in this area surely, it must be wrong.

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The Guardian (London)

February 24, 1989

Day-care services 'haphazard and failing to reach needy'

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE

LENGTH: 219 words

 
 Day-care services for elderly people are growing in a haphazard way and are sometimes failing to reach those who need them most, according to a study published today.
 Services need to be better coordinated and defined, the study says. There should be a distinction between day care, with emphasis on therapy and support for individual, and day facilities offering primarily social activities.
 The study, by the Centre and Policy on Ageing and funded by the Department of Health, says: 'In the interests of 'normalisation' we do not consider that older people whose main needs are for social contacts should necessarily be taken away from their homes to spend all day in a centre which they may find stigmatising.
 'The less gregarious people may prefer social contacts on a smaller scale in their own or neighbours' or relatives' homes. Others may appreciate help in travellng to a local pub, restuarant, cinema or bingo hall, or to a hairdressing salon, rather than going to receive meals, entertainment or hairdressing all in the same place, however convenient that may be for service providers.'
 Ms Susan Tester, the author, urges the creation of a national body specialising in day-care issues.
 Caring By Day: Bailey Bros & Swinfen, Warner House, Folkestone, Kent, CT19 6PH; Pounds 11.

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February 24, 1989

Dementia forces families to make agonising choice

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 561 words

 
 Up to one in five couples is likely to have an elderly parent suffering from dementia and 'living and moving in a time and space that is are not our time and space', said Professor Bernard Isaacs of Birmingham University, an expert on geriatric medicine, yesterday.
 He had regularly seen marriages break up as a result of the strain of coping with someone who needs total care, turns night into day, and may accuse neighbours of 'stealing things' they think they have lost.
 'Sometimes a husband will just walk out on the grounds that his home is no longer his own, and tell his wife: 'You have to choose between your mother and me.'' 
 Professor Isaacs finds that in the many areas with lengthy waiting list for NHS long-stay beds, the alternative to the burden falling on a daughter and her partner is often 'one frail elderly person caring for another frail elderly person with dementia', or finding a private home at a cost of around Pounds 250 a week.
 'That is if you find one,' he added. 'Many homes will say they don't have a place, because demented people can upset other residents.'
 Dr Colin Godber, a consultant old-age psychiatrist in Southampton, said that often a family caring for a demented relative also teenage children - and is forced to choose between the needs of the two.
 Both Professor Isaacs and Dr Godber are are members of working party on the care of the elderly whose report is published today.
 The growing problem of dementia is peculiar to developed countries: the likelihood of getting it increases sharply the longer you live. Experts now put its incidence at one in 20 in those aged over 65; for those over 80 (whose numbers will increase dramatically in the next decade) it is one in five.
 As a result, said Professor Isaacs, up to one in five couples is likely to have an elderly parent suffering from dementia.
 There is no treatment, and no immediate prospect of one being found, for a disease that slowly robs a person of their intelligence.
 'It often starts with a loss of memory for recent events, and progresses to a loss of ability to do basic tasks like cooking and dressing yourself, then on to incontinence. Eventually, the sufferer is hardly able to walk or talk,' said Dr Godber.
 Yet even after the disease is advanced, and much memory has been lost, the sufferer may still retain many of their skills, points out Professor Isaacs.
 Dementia comes in two types.
 Alzheimer's disease, which is thought to be caused partly by an imbalance in the chemical messengers to the brain, leads gradually to considerable personality changes and severe memory loss.
 The other, commonly referred to as 'hardening of the arteries', is caused by a series of 'mini-strokes' to the brain.
 Without an effective treatment, doctors admit it is not economic to order a brain scan to decide which type of dementia is involved. Although the causes are different, the prognosis is the same: total care, 24 hours a day.
 Tim Radford adds: Neuroscientists at Boston University report today in the British science magazine, Nature, that Alzheimer patients often have a poor sense of smell, and sufferers were found to have abnormalities in the olfactory, or smelling, nerves in the nostrils; biopsies from the lining of the nasal passages may be a way to diagnose the development of the disease.

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February 24, 1989

It's like living with someone who has already died / Coping with aged relatives with mental disorders

BYLINE: By ANGELLA JOHNSON

LENGTH: 514 words

 
 Former deputy headmaster Sam Wood has to be tied to a chair at meal times and when his wife needs to work in the house. He is incontinent, unable to wash or dress himself, speaks incoherently and will wander for miles if not watched constantly.
 Mr Wood, aged 73, suffers from Alzheimer's disease - a progressive brain disorder for which there is no cure. He is cared for by his wife, Elsie, aged 68, at their home in Shepperton, Surrey. It is a thankless task done out of love which, she says, she can no longer continue without damaging her own health. 
 'I'm getting very little sleep because he wakes up at nights and gets restless. If he messes his incontinence pads I have to change and clean him. It's like looking after a child, except there is no joy in watching a once alert and active man decline into a vacant shell,' she said.
 Mrs Wood treats her husband as one would a truculent, hyperactive toddler. 'Sometimes he won't stand still while I'm getting him dressed and I have to slap him on the bottom. I try not to lose my temper with him, but it's difficult not to feel angry when someone regularly wakes you two or three times at night.'
 In 1980, Mr Wood retired from his job teaching maladjusted children and the couple moved to their two-bedroom bungalow. Soon afterwards, Mrs Wood noticed her husband was displaying some early signs of the disease - memory loss, hypochondria and dramatic personality changes.
 Once patient and placid, he suddenly became aggressive, bad-tempered and difficult to live with. It was not until 1985 that Mr Wood was diagnosed as suffering from Alzheimer's disease and in the last eight months his condition has deteriorated.
 Mrs Wood said: 'It's like living with someone who has already died - everyday is a living bereavement and I am slowly being worn down.'
 Once an active member of the county Women's Institute, Mrs Wood had to pass up the chance of becoming chairwoman when she joined the army of about two million people - most aged between 40 and 60 - who care for elderly, sick or disabled relatives at home.
 She can no longer cope and is trying to put her husband into a residential home where he can receive 24-hour care. But it has been a difficult and fruitless task trying to find the right facilities in many local authority institutions.
 'Most charity or DHSS-run places can only cater for elderly people who have a certain amount of independence. They have not got the staff to care for someone who is as demented as my husband,' she said.
 Inquiries to the local private nursing home showed it would cost Mrs Wood about Pounds 1,000 a month for her husband to be 'locked-up in a room for most of the day'. This would take all his pension and more, leaving very little for her to live off.
 'I do get some assistance from the local hospital - they take Sam for about six hours three days a week and for two or three weeks every year so I can go on holiday.'
 Mrs Wood feels she was given little information by her doctor about what to expect as her husband's condition worsened.

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The Guardian (London)

February 24, 1989

More psychiatrists urged for elderly

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 503 words

 
 The number of consultants working in old age psychiatry needs to be doubled over the next 10 years because of the rising number of elderly people with mental disorders, according to the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists.
 Health services in many parts of Britain are failing to help families cope with the problem, the colleges say in a joint report published today. 'There are few families who do not have some experience of looking after confused elderly relatives. 
 'Many such families have difficulty obtaining prompt help at times of crisis.'
 As a first step, the colleges want the Government to recognise old age psychiatry as a distinct specialism. At present, they say, it has no place in over-all health planning and monitoring, and is losing out to less pressing sectors.
 The report comes from a working party set up to review services for the ageing population, expected to include 1 million aged over 85 by the end of the century.
 It admits that specialist services for old age psychiatry have been pioneered in Britain and have expanded rapidly in recent years.
 But it says that progress has been patchy, and that some health districts have yet to start making provision. Variation among health regions can be such that Oxford provides three times as many specialist consultant sessions as North West Thames.
 A survey quoted by the report found that at the end of 1986, no psycho-geriatric service was available to 30 per cent of the UK's elderly population, and that just 243 consultants were working in the specialty, only 87 of them full-time.
 The colleges say that 240 more full-time, or 290 full and part-time, consultants will have to be recruited over the next five to 10 years to attain minimum service standards of one full-time post for every 20,000 people aged over 65. This number could be expected to generate 300-400 patient referrals every year.
 A clearer central policy is needed, as well as more commitment from those teaching hospitals which have shown 'limited enthusiasm' for encouraging students.
 In the community, the report says, priority must be given to guarding against the 'overloading' of informal carers who look after mentally ill relatives and others. 'In the management of demented patients, attention has to be paid to those aspects which wear carers down, such as restlessness, aggression, disturbed nights and incontinence.'
 Assistance and training in basic skills are needed for staff of residential and nursing homes, day centres, sheltered housing wardens, home helps and non-specialist doctors and nurses.
 The colleges say: 'With appropriate help, a family can often continue to manage. Without it, they may be unable to do so and hospitalisation - which most people wish to avoid - may become necessary.'
 Care of Elderly People with Mental Illness - Specialist Services and Medical Training; Royal College of Physicians, 11 St Andrew's Place, Regent's Park, London NW1 4LE; Pounds 5.

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The Guardian (London)

February 25, 1989

Diary: A trembling of the almond blossom

BYLINE: By JOHN MORTIMER

LENGTH: 1294 words

 
 You drive from Marrakesh across the High Atlas, where white almond blossom is flowering against blue skies on the snow line. Precipices beside the road fall to lush, green valleys. On the way you pass 'Le Sanglier Qui Fume', a bistro with red and white checked tablecloths, vin ordinaire from Meknes and a stuffed boar's head smoking a pipe, a relic of the French occupation of Morocco. Then you see nothing but a very few mud brick villages, people dressed as though they had emerged from a children's illustrated copy of the Old Testament and engaged on the endless walks that men and women must have taken from village to village in Victorian England.
 Earlier this century you might have expected to have had your head cut off by bandits on this road, or at least have been captured and held to ransom. Now there are only a few old men trying to sell sparkling quartz and amethyst or armies of children who appear from nowhere holding up handfuls of wild flowers and calling out for dirhams and cigarettes.
 Then you come down into the southern plain and drive towards Taroudant, a town with pink, castellated walls where the Saadis once rose against the Portugese and established an independent principality. 
 On the way into Taroudant you come to this hotel, where waiters in long white djellabahs lay log fires in your bedroom. Round the pool, high above the incessant twitter of the birds, the cries of donkeys and the roaring winds from the desert, insistent English voices are heard discussing Chipping Norton and Henley-on-Thames, listeria in supermarkets and the M40 extension.
 I see long forgotten faces I was at school with, or perhaps I was at school with their fathers. I sit writing every day under the bougain-villea and pay the inevitable price of having shown my face on British television. 'I say,' an elderly Englishman comes tottering up. 'We know who you are. But who are you?'
 What I am writing is fiction, which I have always thought of as a way of telling the truth and not merely the spinning of yarns, although plots are, in my opinion, essential to keep the reader turning the pages. Often fiction has to sound more probable than fact; in writing 'Rumpole' stories I have often found myself toning down the description of things which occured in law courts because they would have been thought too absurd to be possible. Witnesses reveal more of the truth by the stories they make up than by their efforts, never, even with the best intentions, entirely successful, to describe what actually happened.
 The best thoughts on this subject came from two accountants I heard talking beside a Moroccan pool. One was reading a novel. The other said, 'I never read fiction. If it isn't true, why bother to read it?' 'Well,' said the novel reading accountant, 'you could say exactly the same thing about accounts.'
 The people of Morocco seem to have swung between periods of comfortable sensuality and movements of great puritanism when wine, women and even music were considered to be works of the devil. At the moment it seems blessedly free from Islamic fundamentalism. Older, blue robed country women are veiled but most of the young women in the market in Taroudant are unmasked.
 Meknes rose and Moroccan beer are very good and there seems to be no strong prohibition on drinking. Perhaps we exaggerate the resistance to alcohol in the Arab world. I remember going to Oman and welcoming the thought of being teetotal for a week, to the great benefit of my weight and health. I only had to step into my hotel to see the 'Allo! Allo! Bar' filled with Omanis in dish-dashes downing pints of draught Bass and smoking Hamlet cigars.
 Islam, a religion which speaks specifically of tolerance - the Koran says, 'You have your religion and I have mine,' - has shown a detestable face in the death threats and fierce and unjustifiable reaction to Salman Rushdie's book.
 Listening to the World Service I discover that Muslims in England are asking for a bill of rights and calling, among other things, for our blasphemy laws to be extended so that those who say or write impertinent things about Mohammed may be persecuted together with those who print the sort of poems about Christ for which the editor of 'Gay News' was, on a bad day for English justice, sentenced to a suspended prison term.
 The moral is that we should never have allowed the medieval concept of blasphemy to creep back into our legal system. It's very doubtful whether any religion that cannot stand up to criticism and ridicule is worth having. Christianity and Islam are certainly strong enough to do so.
 The other lesson is that 'Charter 88s' may be dangerous and two edged weapons.
 Like blasphemy laws everyone may want one, for entirely different and, perhaps, mutually destructive reasons.
 A great advantage of being far from English newspapers south of the Atlas mountains is the restful sensation of not being involved in British politics.
 Perhaps the worst aspect of life in our country today is the feeling of living with a government which has run out of things to do and can only satisfy its craving for activity by finding things to spoil. Everything from television to the legal system and the local bus services has to be changed, and always for the worse.
 Queen Elizabeth the First had a foreign policy which, I seem to remember, historians called 'masterly inactivity,' which is what our government needs to learn.
 Just before I left England I spoke from a City pulpit (I suppose as the statutory atheist) and the Rector told me that his friend Michael Ramsay was telephoned one evening by Harold Macmillan and asked if he'd care to be Archibishop of Canterbury. When the flatered cleric said he would like a little while to think the matter over and asked if he could call back in the morning and what time would be convenient, the Prime Minister answered, 'Oh, any time. I usually spend the mornings lounging about with a book.'
 How greatly the quality of life in England would be improved if Mrs Thatcher could be induced to spend her mornings lounging about with a book.
 Talking of the proposed changes to the legal system, it's extraordinary that barristers, who lay claim to being the sole practitioners of the magical arts of advocacy and persuasion, are so inept at arguing their own case. As I left England Lord Mackay, in the popular esteem, was running rings round Mr Desmond Fennell, QC, the Chairman of the Bar Council, who was managing to sound like the most entrenched defender of tradition and privilege.
 The bar should make concessions. It is absurd to think that judges have to be drawn from the ranks of advocates. In fact the best advocates make terrible judges because they will take sides and won't shut up. There also seems no reason to deny rights of audience in all courts to solicitors.
 Anyway most solicitors are making more money sitting in their offices and don't want to spend hours hanging about court corridors.
 But there is a great deal to be said for the freelance, independent barrister, not tied to a big law firm or bound by government supervision. On such legal hacks our constitutional freedom depends.
 The Bar should hire a good advocate to defend it.
 At sunset we ride around the orange groves and through the villages on placid horses which only trot on verbal instructions from Omar, our leader. The houses all have television aerials but no electricity. The villagers, in their Old Testament costumes, walk about carrying old batteries on which their TV sets run.
 Such are the priorities of our world, television comes before electricity.
 John Mortimer's novel, Summer's Lease, has just been published in paperback by Penguin.

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March 1, 1989

Health Guardian: Inhale and breathe easy - A new treatment that brings relief to asthmatics

BYLINE: By DAVID LOSHAK

LENGTH: 406 words

 
 A new type of inhaler, launched after seven years of research and development, could prevent many of the 2,000 deaths caused by asthma in Britain each year. Unlike conventional press-and-breathe pressurised aerosols, which provide relief for only about half the number of people suffering asthma attacks, the new device is triggered by inhalation.
 An asthma attack narrows the airways, sometimes to the size of a virtual pinhole, producing much the same effect as strangulation. This is extremely frightening. Many patients liken it to trying to breathe in through a straw, inducing the sensation of drowning. Recovery can take days and even breathing out, which requires no muscular effort, becomes hard work. 
 There are about three to five million asthmatics in Britain. Asthma affects around one in ten adults and one in seven children at some time in their lives. It may disappear after puberty although it can endure into old age.
 Its causes are unknown. It can be triggered by all kinds of allergens, including pet hairs, pollen, dust, house mites, feathers, smoke, various chemicals, foods (particularly cow's milk in babyhood), and by violent exercise or emotional upset.
 There is no known cure. Although the condition can be relieved by the pressurised inhalers that have been available for the past 30 years, they all require patients to co-ordinate pressing the trigger with inhalation. That can be difficult both for children and for elderly people.
 Made by the Loughborough company 3M Health Care, the Aerolin Autohaler overcomes this major problem. According to respiratory physicians, conventional inhalers often fail to deliver salbutamol (the most widely used broncho-dilating drug) to the lungs because of difficulties in proper inhalation. The Autohaler provides the correct dose of the drug every time it is used. It needs no co-ordination. There is no loss of the drug due to wrongly-timed pressing, ineffective inhalation, or accidental triggering. Nor do patients waste doses with test firing.
 In na study of 70 adults carried out by Dr Graham Crompton, a respiratory physician in Edinburgh, over 60 per cent of patients were able to use the inhaler efficiently after reading instruction pamphlets, compared with only 39 per cent who used a conventional inhaler.
 And when patients were given further verbal instructions, efficiency in using the new inhaler rose to over 90 per cent.

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The Guardian (London)

March 1, 1989

Ethics of rock have judges mixed up

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 425 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 The nine venerable justices of the US Supreme Court, including its three less than spritely octogenarians, were yesterday wrestling with the alien issue of whether attempts to lower the decibels at loud rock concerts is an interference with free expression.
 At an unusually jovial public hearing, which at times bordered on high farce, one of the country's best known civil rights lawyers, Mr William Kunstler, struggled to educate the justices in the ways of rock n' roll.
 'Is there such a thing as quiet rock music?' queried Justice Thurgood Marshall, aged 80, who seemed totally befuddled by the technical intricacies, including such concepts as 'sound mix'. 
 The case of Rock Against Racism versus New York City has aroused some strong emotions, despite the good-natured hearing before the Supreme Court. Since 1979, Rock Against Racism has held concerts and readings in New York's Central Park to raise funds and draw attention to apartheid.
 As the concerts have become more popular, New York City, with the support of some residents on Central Park West - notably the inventor of the Foundation, the author, Isaac Asimov - has insisted on controlling the sound mix.
 'Whoever controls the mix controls the noise,' Mr Kunstler said yesterday.
 Explaining this to the old Supreme Court fogies was no easy task. So, in a brilliant exposition, Mr Kunstler sought to enlighten the justices.
 The sound mixer in a rock band and the conductor at a symphony concert performed broadly the same functions, he explained. 'It is as if the city said we are going to put George Solti in there instead of Zubin Mehta, because Solti plays andante and dolce and Mehta always plays loud.'
 Even this did not quite resolve matters. Justice Marshall wanted to know whether a symphony orchestra could be as noisy as a rock band. Mr Kunstler suggested respectfully that the sound of the kettle drums and cannon at Carnegie Hall during the 1812 Overture was certainly comparable.
 Justice Antonin Scalia, a mere stripling at 52, offered an astounding confession. He admitted that as a young man at Harvard he 'occasionally' went to parties 'that got a little loud'.
 All of this music-speak seems to have so confused the justices that they are holding off final judgment until early summer - just in time for this year's Central Park concert.
 In the end, however, the case if likely to turn on fundamental first-amendment rights to freedom of speech and expression, Mayor Koch and Mr Asimov's sound sensitivity not withstanding.

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The Guardian (London)

March 1, 1989

Patients to try out 'life-saving' care cards

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 511 words

 
 The National Health Service today takes a small but significant step into the 21st century in the unlikely surroundings of Dr Robin Hopkins's surgery in Imperial Road, Exmouth.
 Mr David Mellor, the Health Minister, will be in the Devon town to launch a pilot scheme which may lead to the use of computer 'smart cards' throughout the NHS and, as the Guardian disclosed yesterday, by the Department of Social Security as well.
 The minister will joint the 9,000 Exmouth residents, one in four of the town's population, who have in the past week been issued with a 'care card' - a blue plastic card including a microchip containing a summary of the patient's medical records. 
 The card, intended to be carried voluntarily at all times, is designed to be read whenever the patient is seen by a family doctor, dentist or hospital staff. Pharmacists can also consult it when the patient seeks advice about over-the-counter drugs.
 Dr Hopkins, who is in no doubt about the merits of the scheme, says: 'I wanted them to put a warning on the card which said: 'Failure to carry this card could cost you your life.''
 Smart cards are already used by health services in parts of France. But Bull, the computer company supplying the Exmouth cards, says the NHS trial is the first time the idea has been comprehensively applied.
 Exmouth was chosen partly because of its integrated care structure; partly because of its proximity to Exeter University, which is monitoring the scheme; and partly because it has a large population of elderly people who are expected to benefit.
 Cards have been issued to all the patients of Dr Hopkins's group practice, the under-fives and over-65s of a larger practice, and every diabetic in the town. Equipment to read and write on the cards is installed at both practices, a large dental practice, the casualty units at hospitals in Exmouth and Exeter, and Exmouth's eight pharmacies.
 In addition to comply with data protection legislation, a 'card viewing room' has been made available at Dr Hopkins's surgery so that patients can see the information on their cards by slotting them into a reader and entering a personal identification number.
 There has been early concern about others having access to the information. Bull insists that security is total: that nobody can read the card without the combination of the right equipment, a separate key card and knowledge of passwords.
 Pharmacists, for example, cannot read the clinical information and laboratory data on the cards and can only write prescription details; dentists cannot write on them at all.
 For a dentist, the card gives accurate information about anything which may cause a patient to react adversely to anaesthetic. For a pharmacist, it offers similar reassurance about medicines. At casualty, staff will know without asking often confused elderly patients, or checking with their family doctors, what drugs they may have been taking and why.
 Dr Hopkins says the cards give him an up-to-date snapshot of his patients' health records.

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The Guardian (London)

March 6, 1989

Law Report: Commission must consider all effects

BYLINE: By SHIRANIKHA HERBERT, Barrister

LENGTH: 616 words

 
 Queen's Bench Divisional Court
 Regina v Medicines Commission and the DHSS, ex parte Organon Laboratories Ltd
 Before Lord Justice Glidewell and Mr Justice Pill
 February 17 1989
 When the DHSS, in its capacity as the licensing authority for drugs, is considering varying a product licence in respect of a drug, it should take account of all factors which are relevant in relation to the grant of a licence.
 Thus when varying the licence for an anti-depressant drug, including restricting prescriptions to elderly patients, because it is said to cause blood circulation disorders, it is wrong to ignore evidence that the drug is safer than other anti-depressants in that it is less likely to result in overdose deaths.
 THE FACTS
 Product licences under the Medicines Act 1968 were granted in 1976 for Mianserin based anti-depressant drugs which were made and marketed by Organon Laboratories. From 1979 reports appeared which suggested that the drugs caused disorders of the blood circulation system. 
 In 1988 the Committee on Safety in Medicines (CSM) advised the DHSS as licensing authority to vary the licences under section 28(3)(g) of the Act which provides for the suspension, variation or revocation of licences on the ground that the drugs could 'no longer be regarded as products which can safely be administered for the purposes indicated in the licence ..' It was suggested that use of the drugs for the elderly should be restricted.
 The Medicines Commission, after considering the matter in accordance with the statutory procedure, affirmed the CSM's conclusion and advised the DHSS accordingly. The DHSS notified Organon that the product licences were to be varied. 
 Organon challenged that decision on the grounds that the Medicines Commission had refused to take into consideration evidence that Mianserin based drugs were safer than other anti-depressants in that they were less toxic and overdoses were less likely to result in fatality.
 Organon applied for judicial review by way of certiorari to quash the decision.
 THE DECISION
 Lord Justice Glidewell said that section 19 of the 1968 Act sets out the factors which are relevant to the determination of an application for a product licence. By section 19(1) the DHSS is required to take into account the safety, efficacy and quality of the medicinal product. Section 19(2) provides that the efficacy of competing products is not to be taken into account but as between two products of equal efficacy their relative safety may be relevant.
 If at the licensing stage comparative safety was urged as a relevant factor, the DHSS should normally take it into account. That could include evidence of a lesser risk of overdose. Organon argued that it would be strange if a factor which was relevant at the original licensing stage under section 19(2) was not relevant under section 28(3)(g) at the stage of variation.
 In his Lordship's judgement that argument was persuasive. Factors which were relevant in relation to the grant of a licence must be equally relevant in considering its variation.
 While some overdoses must be deliberate (suicide attempts), others would be accidental, specially in the category of patients for whom these drugs were prescribed, so that even on the stricter reading of section 28(3)(g) urged by the DHSS, the lesser risk of fatality from overdose was a relevant factor to be taken into consideration.
 Mr Justice Pill agreed, and the application was granted.
 Appearances: Ronald Walker QC and Alexander Hill-Smith instructed by Waltons & Morse for Organon; Michael Beloff QC and Richard McManus instructed by the Treasury Solicitor for the DHSS.

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The Guardian (London)

March 6, 1989

Benefits threat over 'too many rooms'

BYLINE: By ALAN TRAVIS, Local Government Correspondent

LENGTH: 388 words

 
 Children under 10, regardless of their sex, may have to share bedrooms or their parents could face a reduction in housing benefit payments under a draft parliamentary order expected next month.
 The proposal arises in stringent new criteria for assessing whether people applying for housing benefit have too many rooms in their homes.
 The maximum accommodation rules for benefit claimants arise under an obscure parliamentary order laid under section 121 of the 1988 Housing Act. 
 The legislation gives powers to rent officers to determine whether a family has too many rooms. This could lead to a cut in the housing benefit subsidy paid by central government to the local authority.
 Councils will face the choice of cutting benefit payments or making up the difference from rates or poll tax.
 The draft order allows one bedroom for each of the following groups; a married or unmarried couple; for each adult; for two children of the same sex; two children less than 10 years old, regardless of sex; or for a single child.
 One living room is allowed for up to three people, two rooms for four to seven people, and three rooms for more people.
 The proposals have united local authority associations. The Conservative-led Association of District Councils' housing committee is concerned that the accommodation standards are too severe. Its housing officer, Mr Paul Johnson, said the standards were only just above legislation against overcrowding.
 'It means an elderly couple would have to share the same bedroom and that is not always appropriate.' he added. 'It also does not specify the size of the rooms. You cannot put two children in a box room.'
 Grandparents who kept a spare room for visiting relatives could be penalised.
 Mr Mike Reardon, housing officer for the Labour-led Association of Metropolitan Authorities, said the criteria were stricter than those used by councils and housing associations in allocating property.
 The proposal has also attracted criticism from the Institute of Housing, the professional body, which said it believed everyone should have the right to a room of their own.
 The draft order is expected to be debated in the Commons this month. It will apply from April to new lettings to housing association and council tenants in 'assured tenancies'.

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The Guardian (London)

March 7, 1989

Futures: Quickening thoughts and a faster flow of blood - A new drug that shows promising ability to restore failing memory and learning power

BYLINE: By JOHN NEWELL

LENGTH: 493 words

 
 A new drug may help to restore failing memory and learning power to elderly and senile people. The first scientific test of its powers, carried out on aged rabbits, showed it can restore learning ability to that of youthful bunnies. If it has the same effect in people, it may help the victims of Alzheimer's Disease and other forms of senility. 
 Nimodipine was first used to improve the flow of blood to the brain in elderly people with chronic problems with blood circulation, especially people who had had or were at risk of strokes.
 The doctors giving the drugs to such patients couldn't help noticing that their memory and ability to learn new things sharpened up while they were taking Nimodipine.
 So as to get a proper scientific measurement of its effectiveness, Dr John Disterhoft and his clleagues in Chicago University's Medical School tested Nimodipine in rabbits. They gave the drug to ageing rabbits, more than three years old - that's old for a rabbit - and tested the rabbits to see if the drug helped them to learn a simple response faster. They also gave Nimodipine to young, three-month old rabbits and compared their learning rates, and those of the elderly rabbits who had been given the drug, with the performance of both old and young rabbits who had not been given Nimodipine.
 Results showed not unexpectedly that the young rabbits given Nimodipine did best of all. But the elderly rabbits given Nimodipine performed very nearly as well as the young rabbits who hadn't been given the drug.
 Some of the elderly rabbits who hadn't been given Nimodipine, on the other hand, found it very difficult to learn the task at all.
 Altogether, the results were startling. If they turn out to apply equally to human beings, and if the simple test used turns out to be a fair reflection of more complex learning tasks, then elderly humans who become forgetful and find it harder to learn new things could become nearly as good at it as when they were young. Alzheimers patients could benefit too.
 Dr Disterhoft isn't certain how Nimodipine works. At the molecular level, it reduces the flow of calcium in to cells. Calcium stimulates muscle cells to contract. So one way in which Nimodipine works is probably by preventing the muscular walls of arteries from tightening up, thereby increasing the flow of blood to the brain.
 There may also be a direct affect on brain cells. There is evidence that too much calcium leaks into elderly brain cells and perhaps into brain cells affected by Alzheimers Disease, and that this can harm the cells. Calcium inflow inhibitors such as Nimodipine could restore things to nearer normal.
 Proper human trials of Nimodipine are now being planned. Whatever the results, the fact that drugs can have such startling effects in animals, must mean that sooner or later drugs which really can rejuvenate some functions at least of the ageing brain are going to become available.

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The Guardian (London)

March 7, 1989

Channel 4 chief Michael Grade to head crime working party

LENGTH: 226 words

 
 Mr Michael Grade, Channel 4's chief executive, has been put in charge of a Home Office working party which will investigate how the combat fear of crime.
 Mr Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, said the move was aimed at making sure the 'good news' about the fights against crime was put across. 
 'I was anxious to put in charge of that working group someone whose background has been with the media rather than in the field of crime prevention,' Mr Hurd added.
 'I am particularly glad that Michael Grade, a man with an outstanding career in broadcasting, has accepted my invitation to take the chair of this working party.'
 He urged politicians, voluntary organisations and the private sector to make 'good news' on crime available to the media, to help give people a more balanced picture.
 Mr Hurd unveiled research by his officials, showing that elderly people are rarely attacked - but their lives are often blighted by fear of crime.
 Mr Hurd said a third of elderly women felt very unsafe out at night. But only one in 200 was the victim of a street crime in 1987.
 'In general, the fear of becoming a victim of crime increases with age, while the risk of becoming such a victim actually diminishes,' Mr Hurd told a meeting at Conservative Central Office in London. 'Most violent crime involves fighting between young men.'

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The Guardian (London)

March 9, 1989

Public's lack of confidence in NHS boosts Nestor-BNA

BYLINE: By ROSEMARY COLLINS

LENGTH: 276 words

 
 Private health group Nestor-BNA is profiting from continued loss of public confidence in the NHS, with pre-tax profits up 44 per cent at Pounds 4.7 million last year, a figure that would have been Pounds 200,000 higher but for delays in regrading nurses pay.
 The nursing agency was obliged to supply nurses at 1987 rates for much of the year, and was simultaneously hit by NHS nurses' reluctance to change jobs while waiting for their grading-related pay settlement. Mobility is now almost back to normal, and BNA is currently supplying 8,500 nurses a week on 12,400 nursing assignments, 40 per cent of that business going into NHS hospitals.
 Mr Mike Rogers, group managing director, is optimistic about the Government's proposed changes in the health service. 'Making people within it become more commercial can only lead to better use of resources', he says. 'It will not pose a threat to the private sector. The NHS has been giving away free for years what we have been selling, and that must be competition. If the NHS starts charging it will make less competition, not more.'
 Nestor bought its first hospital, New Hall near Salisbury, last year and at the same time diversified into the supply of non-health personnel like computer engineers and industrial efficiency experts through the acquisition of the Scott-Grant employment agency, with 6,000 skilled personnel on its books.
 Supplying nursing staff has dropped from 75 to 55 per cent profits, but running top-of-the-market nursing homes for the elderly and infirm was 80 per cent more lucrative for Nestor in 1988 than in 1987 and the group is keen to buy more hospitals.

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The Guardian (London)

March 11, 1989

Leading Article: Doctor, they're in trouble

LENGTH: 569 words

 
 Imagine the fuss if an untested and untried drug appeared on the market? Doctors would be in the van of the protests. And ministers would be right in there behind them. So how should the doctors respond if something much more fundamental than a new drug is being introduced: a nationwide restructuring of the NHS that is untried, untested and not at all thought-through? Meek compliance is clearly what ministers want; but they are not getting it. Not one of the 70 divisional meetings of doctors held so far has supported the Government's proposals. Several have voted unanimously on the unacceptability of the package. Yet, far from becoming emollient, ministers have waxed more provocative in face of these genuine misgivings. 
 In his speech to the Royal College of General Practioners this week, the Health secretary, Kenneth Clarke, referred to the need for the Government and GPs to avoid a pointless battle. Amen to that. Mr Clarke says he wants to improve family doctor services and appeals to doctors not to doubt 'the sincerity of my motives.' Fair enough. Yet, in his very next sentence, the Health Secretary ignored his own prescription with a gratuitous insult. The very mention of 'reform,' he suggested, found 'the more suspicious of our GPs. . . feeling nervously for their wallets.' His deputy, David Mellor, has been equally cutting about the 'Dr Noes.'
 This is not the language of ministers who want to have a genuine discussion with the medical profession. Certainly, the BMA has had an inglorious history of opposing genuine reforms - from Lloyd George's health service for workers to Nye Bevan's comprehensive NHS. But ministers delude themselves if they believe this third war is following a similar pattern. It is not. Thee is overwhelming public opposition to the Government's plan (fewer than two out of 10 support the idea) and the divisional medical meetings already show that the opposition of GPs is even more united.
 Ministers may be able to divide the hospital doctors because the opt-out proposals have attractions for the surgeons, even though there are grave disadvantages for the more numerous, but less glamorous, specialties. They may also be able to rig the subsidy system so that the incentive to opt out becomes too attractive for hospitals to turn down. But hospitals only deal with a small minority of NHS patients. Nine out of 10 people who use the NHS turn to their GP. Messrs Clarke and Mellor had better come to terms with the fact they may well end up the losers in 'a pointless battle' with the GPs.
 More important still, the grievances being expressed by the family doctors are genuine. The proposed financial system, designed to encourage GPs to attract more patients, means doctors will have less time to visit the elderly and carry out screening programmes for the young and vulnerable. Inner city practices, where as many as one third of all patients move on within a year, would be unable to reach the proposed immunisation targets and miss out on the bonuses. It is still unclear what will happen to patients if a GPs drug budget is spent before the end of the year. GP contracts with specific hospitals means patients will have less choice. None of this is trivial. Far from gearing up for a pointless scrap, the GPs are defending fundamental principles. Mr Clarke should take a dose of his own medicine; and call in the doctors.

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The Guardian (London)

March 14, 1989

Tuesday Women: Working class heroine - Pat Barker thought the way to write was to be 'sensitive and polite', then she got the message and wrote about the real people she knew

BYLINE: By MICHELE HANSON

LENGTH: 1249 words

 
 Maggie used to spend 'eight hours a day, five days a week shoving chickens' legs up their arses'. Along with other factory workers, prostitutes and worn out women with too many small children or varicose veins, she is one of Pat Barker's heroines. Barker writes about working class, regional women, 'the sort who are not taken seriously in any terms, specifically not as material for literature'.
 It's difficult subject matter. You need impeccable credentials to write about the working class and even then no one's waiting to read about it. Pat Barker has those credentials. These are the sort of women she has lived among for most of her life, there's nothing quaint or condescending about her observations and she never was just an outsider goggling at life in the raw.
 'My family, for a variety of reasons, was dominated by women,' she says. 'They had to be strong because no one was doing them any favours. They certainly didn't mince up their emotions out of existence by overanalysing them.' 
 With the support of her grandmother, who brought her up, Barker went to grammar school and university. 'In those days accents were corrected. You weren't to speak the way your family spoke. It's a terrible thing to do to a child.' Although now happily married to an academic, she was never quite comfortable crossing the class divide. 'It's not a matter of decision. You either make that transition or you don't (D H Lawrence did; Alan Sillitoe didn't). It's entirely possible to get stuck and this is what I've got stuck with.'
 It took her some time to work that out. Her first attempts at 'sensitive and politer' novels were repeatedly rejected. She's been successful only since, encouraged by Angela Carter, she began writing about what she knew. Reviewers have admitted to crying over her books. I cried. Her first novel, Union Street, about the lives of seven women from Middlesbrough, has been described as a long overdue working-class masterpiece and is now being made into a film starring Jane Fonda and Robert de Niro and set in Boston.
 This suggests that the plight of Barker's women, their courage and endurance, is universally recognisable. The problem of the North/South divide shrinks from that distance. 'The Americans brush all that aside and just identify with these lives in Union Street. And a fire in someone else's back yard is never bad news.'
 Fonda may not be quite the right build for Iris King, the Middlesbrough matriarch but she has been on the look out for roles about older women who are courageous. Naturally such roles are few and far between. Iris may not at first seem very palatable. She slaps her 16-year-old pregnant daughter around the hospital ward, more or less forces her to have a back-street abortion and disposes of the foetus herself but somehow, like all Barker's heroines, she commands only respect. You're not meant to think: 'Look at what this poor woman has to put up with.' You're meant to be exhilarated.
 Barker takes a close-up look at what ought to be the nastier details of life, wretched, sorded or pitiful and demonstrates that they are nothing of the sort. To Pat Barker 'polite' has become almost a dirty word and she denies her characters even the thinnest coating of manners. You're taken almost near enough to smell them and then made to stay and look properly. But it's never a prurient look.
 'My husband tells me that inside this moderately well-selling serious novelist there's a wrestling pornographer waiting to get out. I'm sure he's right.' It doesn't look as if the pornographer will ever escape. But can you look so hard at the potentially rotten side of life, at deprivation, murder and sex, without being corrupted yourself? Pat Barker faced that question when she wrote Blow Your House Down, a novel about a group of prostitutes coping with the threat of a serial killer.
 'It's very difficult to write about the sexual victimisation of women in any way which doesn't reinforce it and make women feel that this is bound to happen to them. By not looking at it at all you tend to be a Pollyanna but to look into the abyss is to fix your imagination in a way that endangers you, assuming that we're vulnerable to the nasty attitudes that go with contemplating violence.
 'I think one of the most disappointing things about women is that they find misogyny very, very easy to understand. You'd never get a man to empathise imaginatively with hatred of men. He wouldn't understand what it was all about but all women, at some level, know what a misogynist feels like. I remember going to a police talk on the Ripper before they released the details. There were, in the room, some very nice ladies, from the CAB, the Samaritans, a social worker or two. God, were we nice. And when the details were revealed we were very accurate. Everybody could imagine what the Ripper did.'
 Fortunately, when considering men, Barker doesn't only try to get inside the mind of a murderer. In her latest book, The Man Who Wasn't There, she looks at women through the eyes of a young boy who is being brought up, as she was, in a female household. 'I'm asking to what extent can a boy be nourished by strong women and to what extent does he need, not necessarily a father but a friendly, supportive man.' She feels that women cannot supply everything for the boy needs. he turns to film for his images of masculinity and the films are misleading.
 And so her women are not all-powerful but they do as much as they possibly can with the very little they have. 'I'm interested in the creative moment in a fairly bleak and unpromising landscape. Whatever the people have they create with. A lot of people have a lot more and destroy with it.'
 She now has more herself and lives, surrounded by prison warders on an estate next to one of Durham's large prisons. It's enough for people to assume, wrongly, that there is great divide between her present and her past. 'Somebody said: 'Here you are living with this kind of life and there was your Mother scrubbing floors.' But he was thinking in terms of the lecturer whose father was a miner. It's never quite like that for women. The idea that everything has been liberalised is complete rubbish. Some tasks get easier but nothing changes very much. I think this is why women make such good historical novelists. They've got a way back in. Their world within the house hasn't changed violently.'
 Some of the more distasteful tasks have been moved out of sight, like Maggie's job in the chicken factory. 'Another effect of women working in these awful conditions is that we don't have to pluck and truss our own chickens any more or bake our own cakes. They're our equivalent of the people who used to toil below stairs. You don't have the hassle in your own house.
 'I feel very rarely consciously angry or even mildly irritated but in some sense my books are angry, so it's there somewhere. I'm capable of it, but I don't go around being militant about anything. You only devalue your currency.'
 Angry young men have looked at the working classes, but woman has rarely looked back at woman. 'There was Mrs Gaskell and Charlotte Bronte but they were writing very much from the outside.' And so Barker never expected to be published. But her women deserved and needed a spokesman. They still do. Such stoics are often too busy and too tired to think or to speak for themselves.
 The Man Who Wasn't There by Pat Barker, Virago, Pounds 10.95.

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The Guardian (London)

March 15, 1989

The Budget: Low paid disappointed as reforms take a rest - Income tax

BYLINE: By MARGARET HUGHES, Personal Finance Editor

LENGTH: 838 words

 
 In sharp contrast to last year's Budget when he cut two pence off the basic rate of income tax, slashed the higher rate bands to one top rate band and rasied allowances by twice the rate of inflation, the Chancellor has done little this year to further his reform of the nation's income tax structure.
 Despite again stressing the Government's commitment to 'reforming and reducing taxation' as part of its key economic objectives, the Chancellor has neither cut the rates of tax nor raised allowances by more than inflation. But there are concessions for the elderly.
 The basic rate remains at 25 pence and the higher rate at 40 pence. 
 And although a rise in tax allowances by up to twice the rate of inflation had been generally predicted to help the lower paid, they have only been raised in line with inflation - by 6.8 per cent.
 The single person's allowance goes up by Pounds 180 to Pounds 2,785 and a married couples allowance by Pounds 280 to Pounds 4,375.
 The basic rate threshold above which taxpayers become liable for higher rate tax has been lifted by Pounds 1,400 to Pounds 20,700. Similarly age allowances go up by Pounds 220 to Pounds 3,400 for a single person and by Pounds 350 to Pounds 5,385 for a married couple. The changes mean that an averae earner of Pounds 12,500 will now be 87p per week better off.
 The extra allowances previously given to those aged 80 and over are now being extended to those aged 75 and over. These allowances will be Pounds 3,540 for a single person and Pounds 5,565 for a married couple.
 Mr Lawson estimated that this change would mean a further 15,000 married and single elderly people would no longer be liable for tax. 'Three quarters of all those aged 75 and over will not be liable for income tax at all,' he claimed.
 By not raising the allowances thresholds by more than the rate of inflation the Chancellor has failed to help the lower paid. Mr Alex Bryson of the Low Pay Unit said he was extremely disasppointed, pointing out that each percentage rise above the rate of inflatian would have taken 80,000 people out of the tax net. Even those taken out of the tax net by virtue of the indexation of the tax allowances will find that the higher income which they received as a result will affect the eligibility for benefits.
 The rise in the tax threshold combined with the changes in National Insurance contributions produced a total benefit of only Pounds 2.55 a week for a married couple earning Pounds 120 a week - half the average weekly wage.
 By comparison a single person earning five times average earnings - Pounds 1,270.50 a week - is now Pounds 5.17 a week better off.
 The changes in National Insurance contributions have replaced three small proverty traps by one large one since those who earned more than Pounds 43 a week would now have to pay 2 per cent on their earnings up to Pounds 43 and 9 per cent on all their earnings above that threshold instead of 5 per cent on the whole amount up to Pounds 75 a week.
 A change in the way schedule E income is assessed will simplify the system for around half-a-million directors and tohers who regualry receive pay some time after the year for which it was earned; the prime example being December 31 bonuses which the employee doesn't actually get until January tyeTthe following year. From 6 APril, income tax will no longer be assessed on the amount earned for the tax year but on the amount received in the tax year which brings it into line with the PAYE cash basis.
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Tax rates and allowances
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Before the budget                     After the budget
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Taxable                   Tax on      Taxable                 Tax on
 income        Rate        band         income          Rate   band
 (Pounds )     (%)         (Pounds )                   (%)     (Pounds)
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 0 - 19,300     25         4,825       0 - 20,700      25     5,175
  Over  19,300  40                     Over  20,700    40
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Personal allowances                           Old             New
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------
 Allowances for people under 65
 Single person and wife's earnings           2,605            2,785
 Married man                                 4,095            4,375
 Age allowance for people aged 65-74
 Single person                               3,180            3,400
 Married man                                 5,035            5,385
 Age allowance for people aged 75 and over
 Single person                               3,310             3,540
 Married man                                 5,205             5,565
 Income limit for age allowance             10,600            11,400
 Additional relief for single parent         1,490             1,590
 Widow's bereavement                         1,490             1,590
 ---------------------------------------------------------------------

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The Guardian (London)

March 16, 1989

Grassroots: Fuel's paradise

BYLINE: By ALAN COMBES

LENGTH: 313 words

 
 A way of life is coming to an end in our village. The only outward sign of change to passers-by is the vulgarity of yellow pipes crushing the crocuses at the roadside. But if you parked your car and ambled up Yedmandale, you would see a fearsome machine which nods like a donkey and crunches up earth and tarmac on every downward stroke. For the gas man cometh. 
 I never believed he would. Our village is full of elderly people and it's already rejected gas once, years ago. A new plebiscite was called with a ten per cent demand required to make it viable. A showroom display was arranged on the car park of the main pub. The following month the solid fuel people booked the same spot for their counter punch.
 Gas won. Where did the swing come from when rejection had been so emphatic last time? The answer is Harold and Edith.
 Our good friends and neighbours Harold and Edith have done a complete volte face. They approach their late sixties with the realisation that 'hoiking in mucky coal on a miserable winter's neet' is no dignified manner in which to warm oneself in age. But, more important even than that, they've realised that gas is not as explosive as they once believed.
 Nellie it was who sold us our house and left for York three years ago. When she moved into her new hme, she had all her new neighbours openmouthed. All the gas appliances were taken out because she felt that gas was not to be trusted. People she had left behind in the village felt the same.
 So I'm going to have to place an advert in the local freebie: 'One eight-year-old Rayburn in excellent condition throughout. Has operated six-radiator central heating. Sale due to gas conversion.' I'll miss that range - it is at one with the architecture, both human and brick, of this village.
 Though it is worth pointing out that the bloody thing has just gone out again.

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The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1989

Commentary: Victims of a careless scandal

BYLINE: By MELANIE PHILLIPS

LENGTH: 1034 words

 
 A shameful anniversary was marked yesterday. one year ago, Sir Roy Griffiths published his recommendations on care in the community. Nothing has been done with that report. There is no immediate prospect that anything will be done with it. It has foundered on Prime Ministerial prejudice and ministerial indifference, despite the fact that Sir Roy is (or was) Mrs Thatcher's most trusted adviser on welfare matters, that other reports before and since have emphasised the urgency behind his proposals, and that the wasteful shambles, confusion and misery that fuelled them continue to accelerate. None of these facts seems to count for anything, because of the Prime Minister's hysterical opposition to anything which accepts that local authority social services departments have a useful and positive role to play - albeit a role which, if Griffiths were implemented, would involve a substantial shift in their whole approach and thinking. 
 Sir Roy was not the first person to criticise the current chaos. The Audit Commission had said in 1986 that much of the Pounds 6 billion being spent on care of the elderly, handicapped and mentally ill through the NHS, local authorities and private homes was being misspent. There was particular concern that social security spending was going through the roof, with payments to residential homes soaring from Pounds 10 million in 1979 to Pounds 1 billion per year. So along came Sir Roy, managing director of Sainsbury's, trusted acolyte of Mrs T, a true believer with all the appropriate ideological baggage in his trolley.
 And his diagnosis was absolutely in line with current political orthodoxy. The existing system, he said, was a disorganised mess, almost designed to produce a patchy performance because of the split in funding between the three arms of government. He wanted one system under a new Minsiter of State who would set standards and objectives, meeting up to half the bill from central government and with poll tax and charges making up the remainder. There would be more consumer choice, controlled experiments with vouchers and experiments with insurance and tax incentives.
 So far, so ideologically acceptable. But Sir Roy also concluded that the lead body for coordinating all this care should be the local authority social services department. Never mind that his proposals massively increased central control over those departments; never mind that they would become for the first time managers of mixed packages of local authority and private provision.
 One look at the dread phrase local authority and the PM took to Sir Roy's report like a dose of listeria.
 It was published - or rather, is sidled out - while Sir Roy himself was on sick leave. Ever since, despite being endorsed by an inter-departmental working party, it has been passed back and forth between ministers and advisers desperate to find some lead authority for community care other than the local authority. The trouble is (to coin a phrase) there is no sensible alternative. If there were, you can bet Sir Roy would have found it.
 Meanwhile, the toll of confusion and distress increases. Everyone behaves as if we have a policy of community care, even though in some cases the care just doesn't exist. Health authorities continue to close down hospitals regardless and decant their mentally ill and handicapped patients into a vacuum. Such behaviour is itself a kind of collective insanity, a delusion on a grand scale. The results can be seen pitifully wandering the streets of our cities every day. Handicaps that once would have killed are now containable, so that there are more and more very handicapped people to be cared for. Hospitals under pressure to increase throughput, in the jargon beloved of Sir Roy's supermarkets, are sending patients home earlier to complete their recovery in conditions of patchy or indifferent or even non-existent care.
 Health authorities and social services departments are paralysed, the development of their community services blighted while they wait fruitlessly for some order to be constructed out of chaos, for someone to be chosen to take a lead and set out a coherent policy. Because there's no clear responsibility, money is being spent on meeting relatively easy needs rather than the people with multiple handicaps and problems who require the kind of coordinated planning that at present is just too much hassle.
 And all this is happening when the numbers of old and very old people are remorselessly and rapidly rising - more who need help with dressing or bathing or shopping, more who can't cook any longer, more who are incontinent, more who are demented. The burden is falling upon their relatives - where they have them - whose lives may be blighted by such unrelieved pressure, who may themselves be elderly and whose own health may crack under the strain.
 The situation is nothing short of a scandal. It is even more remarkable when compared with the government's behaviour over the NHS, the most efficient system of health care in the world, now about to be subjected to a root and branch upheaval and at breakneck speed. Compared with community care, the health service is an absolute model of efficiency and effectiveness; yet this government, which is supposed to be attracted towards inefficiency and waste like a heat-seeking missile, has chosen to leave the more desperate problem unattended.
 The conventional wisdom is that the NHS deeply touches each and every voter and is thus far more politically sensitive than any other social policy. Community care? How boring. Shroud-waving is what gets onto the television news, after all, and gives ministers a nasty turn. But demography and medical science are changing the political landscape under the government's feet.
 More and more families already have, or are likely to have, a dependent relative to care for. The crippling burden of unrelieved care is turning into the same kind of anxiety as disease management, one that crosses class and voter boundaries. There are shrouds here as well, some of them for the living. Perhaps Sir Roy should start thinking of ways to wave them on the television, too.

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The Guardian (London)

March 17, 1989

The Day In Politics: Cook derides Lawson's 'Bupa budget' - Budget debate

BYLINE: By PAUL NETTLETON

LENGTH: 897 words

 
 The Chancellor was guilty of 'crazy economics' in proposing tax relief for the elderly to buy private medical insurance, the shadow health secretary, Mr Robin Cook, told MPs yesterday.
 In the continuing Budget debate in the Commons he challenged Mr Nigel Lawson's calculation that the measure to assist 'people like the Prime Minister' will cost only Pounds 40 million.
 'This indeed has been a Bupa Budget. The subsidy offered is substantial,' he said. It was 'an old-fashioned hand-out to the private sector'. 
 Mr Cook said Mr Norman Lamont, Treasury Financial Secretary, had claimed the cost per taxpayer of the relief would be around Pounds 100. But the Bupa premium for a 60-year-old wishing to continue with the kind of cover provided by employers was Pounds 1,080 a year. 'At 40 per cent tax relief that means a cost to the public purse of not Pounds 100, but of Pounds 430.'
 Mr lamont had also suggested that the average cost to the NHS was Pounds 1,000 per elderly person. but his own white paper showed that the cost of hospital services for a 65-74 year old was Pounds 415.
 'I'm beginning to understand why the forecasts given by this Treasury team are often so widly wrong. What that means is that the Treasury is proposing to spend more in subsidy to wealthy elderly people to go private than it would cost to treat them in the NHS.
 'This is crazy economics, but of course the whole Treasury team knows it is nothing to do with economics. It is entirely the product of political dogma.'
 The cost was estimated at Pounds 40 million to cover existing elderly private patients and a maximum of 10 per cent more. But Bupa expected the number of patients to rise from 350,000 to one million. 'They add that the one million is a modest estimate.' This meant the true cost would be Pounds 120 million, he claimed.
 But even if we accepted Pounds 40 million, it was sufficient to pay the annual salary of 3,000 nurses or 1,000 consultants. 'It is enough to purchase 20,000 ventilators or 1,300 ambulances. It is enough to meet the operating costs for 35,000 cataract removals or 17,000 hip replacements.
 'Those are the substantial lost opportunities of putting this money into private care rather than into the NHS.'
 The effect of this subsidy was to target help on those who were most fit and least in need of help. 'The private medical sector, unlike the NHS, screens applicants to make sure they're well enough. Unlike the NHS there's no Hippocratic oath in the private sector to treat the sick when they discover them. The private sector smartly passes them back to the public service.'
 Mr Tony Newton, the Trade and Industry Minister, had opened the debate by saying it was a measure of the Government's successful economic policies that for the second year running Pounds 14 billion in national debt was being repaid.
 The economy had been transformed in the past 10 years, and predicted growth next year of 21/2 per cent meant this would be maintained.
 Productivity had increased by more than a half since 1980, and was now the best of the seven leading industrial nations, the British industry had overcome its past failure to invest.
 Since the Budget there had been news that capital investment in 1988 was nearly 11 per cent higher than in 1987, with the volume of manufacturing industry investment up by 91/2 per cent. In February car production was up 14 per cent, with production for export up by 21 per cent on a year ago. This was 'striking evidence' of progress in an industry which had long been in decline.
 Also unemployment in February had fallen by 41,000, the thirty-first successive monthly fall.
 But Mr Newton conceded when pressed by mr Christopher Hawkins (C. High Peak) that the 'somewhat moderated' growth expectations would have implications for the continuing rate at which unemployment falls.
 Mr Newton said that the beneficial effects of the Government's policies were now being felt throughout the United Kingdom. In the North of England, for example, unemployment had fallen by a third in the past three years.
 'It's now clear .. the effect of our policies is now being increasingly felt in areas which had felt themselves left out in the past from the general improvement in the economy. The mood in places like South Wales, Newcastle, Merseyside, Manchester and Bradford and Leeds, and almost wherever one goes, is of a much greater degree of confidence and optimism about the way things are going.'
 Pointing out that for seven years the growth of investment had outstripped the growth of consumption, Mr Newton defended the levels of imports of capital goods and semi-manufactures. He said they were a necessar part of the process of strengthening the British economy 'to build up the capacity of our industries for the future'.
 Mr Dale Campbell-Savours (Lab. Workington) asked if Mr newton could see a connection between these imports and the 'very areas that we've lost to British industry.'
 Mr Newton replied: 'What I can see .. is the difficulties of many parts of British industry that were associated with the policies pursued not least by the last Labour government which left them in a significantly weakened state which it had necessarily taken time to overcome.'
 He said: 'You can manifestly see a restrengthening of important parts of British industry.'

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The Guardian (London)

March 18, 1989

Weekend Arts: Murder most masculine - Radio

BYLINE: By VAL ARNOLD-FORSTER

LENGTH: 702 words

 
 Those who take the 'damned lies' view of statistics won't, presumably, be listening to the new five-part series, A Year Of Dying Dangerously (Radio 4, Wednesday, to be repeated today). It's about homicide (murder, manslaughter and what used to be called infanticide); and this week started with a collection of 1986 statistics, the latest year for which the figures are near completion.
 The figures could surprise the saloon bar experts; 685 dead - leaving aside death by drunken or reckless driving, or as a result of terrorist attack. You're most at risk if you are a baby (probably male) or a 16 to 30-year-old man (that's the group that accounts for more than half the increase in murder over the last 10 years). Women are less at risk than men; the elderly are not particularly vulnerable. Murder is often a domestic crime: the victims are likely to know their assailants, for in less than one in four homicides is a stranger killing stranger. Sundays are the dangerous days; the home of the victim is the most dangerous place. 
 Set these against the 5,382 killed on the roads, the 100 a year who die falling out of bed and the death once a week on a DIY job. Let alone the figures for cancer or heart attacks.
 Presenter Hugh Prysor-Jones and producer John Forsyth are careful to be careful, not to sensationalise nor yet to take the crime lightly. These programmes, it was made clear, were a cut above mere media interest in murder, which was illustrated by a few racy headlines - though the news bulletins used seemed to be television rather than radio. The first serious examination of homicide, for many years, we were told, was the implication that this was an establishment job - they had got the officials of the Home Office, the Scottish Office and the Northern Ireland Office to help them 'make sense of the figures'.
 But statistics, however accurate and however interesting, only take you so far. What is the reality like? We'd heard that three-quarters of homicide victims were killed by people they knew; but the two moving interviews we heard were with the families of two victims, a girl, killed in her bed, and a 17-year-old boy stabbed in a post pub brawl. Both were killed by strangers - the boy, alas, part of an increasing number of deaths in his age group, but the girl, murdered while her parents slept nearby, was, thank heaven, a totally untypical victim.
 One of the problems of statistics is that they whet the appetite. Listen to those saloon bar discussions, just the thought that these programmes are meant to put right, and other questions arise. Those increased statistics for the murder of young men, for instance: what part does alcohol play? How easy is it to buy those lethal knives? What about the murdered babies: what sort of support for young mothers is needed? We may get answers in the rest of the series.
 And in plenty of saloon bars, too, there will be questions about race. Will we get an ethnic breakdown of victims or assailants? I doubt it.
 A New World In The Mourning (Radio 4, Monday to be repeated today). Greg Cullen's play, or maybe farce, takes Emlyn Parry, a headmaster standing as Labour candidate for Parliament, through a series of headlong adventures. A varied bunch of farcical characters, from a bomb slinging Welsh Nat schoolgirl to an ex-policeman turned religious bigot, even includes God, portrayed as a scaly and foolish hermaphrodite - rash, perhaps, in these blasphemy conscious days. The plot is complex. Who's going to get blown up? What's happened to the photographs of the gay encounter?
 In Adrian Mourby's production, it's all at an unrelenting energetic pace, full of ear jangling background noise and with a confusing cast of Welsh actors at a full throttle. But in among the bluster there's a serious theme. This was the election of 1987: how far should a Labour candidate trim the Left-wing sails? Do people vote for anti-nuclear policies and support for the miners' strike, or for local schools and roads? Politics, as Mr Cullen perceives, has its ludicrous side: there was an authentic note to the refrain of the gloomy political agent .. 'You've lost a lot of votes there, Emlyn'.

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The Guardian (London)

March 18, 1989

Weekend Money (Budget Extra): Four cheers for the Chancellor - The Budget helped ease some of the burden for pensioners

BYLINE: By MARGARET HUGHES and JILL PAPWORTH

LENGTH: 626 words

 
 If this was anyone's Budget it was the pensioners'. The Chancellor introduced four changes to ease their financial lot in retirement.
 He abolished the earnings limit which cut their state pension if they work, reduced the tax penalty on their earnings, lowered the threshold at which the higher aged allowance is paid, to 75, confirmed government plans to allow tax relief on medical insurance premiums for the retired from next April as well as making it easier for those in company schemes to retire early.
 Earnings rule. The Chancellor's most wide-ranging measure to help the elderly was to scrap the much-loathed earnings rule. 
 Now, men between 65 and 69 and woman between 60 and 65 who continue working, lose 50 pence of their state pension for every Pounds 1 they earn a week between Pounds 75 and Pounds 79. Once they earn Pounds 79 a week they lose Pounds 1 of their pension for every Pounds 1 they earn until their earnings reach Pounds 118.15 a week when they lose all their state pension of Pounds 41.14 a week of they're a single and Pounds 65.90 if they're a married couple.
 When the rule is abolished on October 1, the elderly will be able to earn as much as they like without losing their state pension.
 Age allowance clawback Changes to income limits linked to age allowances - which determines how much a pensioner's incomes is taxed - will affect fewer of the elderly.
 On retirement an age allowance replaces the single person's or married couple's allowance giving more tax-free income - Pounds 615 if you are single or Pounds 1,010 if you are married. People older than 75 receive a further allowance of Pounds 140 if single and Pounds 180 for married couples. Previously this top up became available at age 80.
 This allowance, however, is only available if your income does not exceed a specific limit. If your earnings exceed this toal income threshold you gradually lose part of your age allowance until you reach a maximum threshold where you lose the extra age allowance and receive the single or married couple's allowance.
 This threshold has been increased in the Budget by the rate of inflation, from Pounds 10,600 to Pounds 11,400, whether you are single or married. The earnings ceiling at which you lose all your age allowance have similarly been raised as the accompanying table shows.
 Until the Budget, the rate at which you lost your age allowance was Pounds 1 for every Pounds 3 of income earned within this band so these pensioners were effectively being taxed at a higher rate than higher rate taxpayers.
 This has been eased to a Pounds 1 loss of allowance for every Pounds 2 earned.
 This means that, whereas previously the clawback of age allowance meant that pensioners were suffering the equivalent of a tax charge of 41.67 pence for every Pounds 1 they earned within the band, they will now be effectively taxed at 31.75 per cent.
 For instance, a married man aged 65 will payt tax at the basic rate of 25 per cent on any earnings above the married couple's allowance of Pounds 5,385 as their earnings do not exceed Pounds 11,400.
 Their maximum tax bill will thus be Pounds 1,503.75 on earnings of Pounds 6,015. However, were their earnings to total Pounds 11,600 - Pounds 200 more than the income threshold - their age allowance would be reduced by Pounds 100 to Pounds 5,285 - Pounds 1 for every Pounds 2 earned.
 Earnings of Pounds 200 above the threshold would therefore be taxed at an effective rate of 37.5 per cent making their total tax bill Pounds 75 higher at Pounds 1,578.75.
 Anything they earn above their upper earnings ceiling of Pounds 12,910 will be taxed at 25 per cent in the normal way until earnings reach the normal higher rate threshold.

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The Guardian (London)

March 20, 1989

Commentary: Labour in a litter local difficulty

BYLINE: By IAN AITKEN

LENGTH: 1035 words

 
 Almost 20 years ago, on the Monday after Labour's defeat in the 1970 general election, a few of us hacks were idly propping up the Strangers' Bar in the Palace of Westminster when who should walk through the swing doors but a former Treasury minister. Though shellshocked, he had held his own seat in spite of the national result.
 After accepting a consolatory drink this man, who had just been controlling the nation's destinies, remarked that he'd been forced to come to the House by public transport for the first time for years.
 'And do you know how much it costs to get here by tube from Kentish Town nowadays?' he asked us, in genuinely shocked tones, 'Yes,' we replied, almost in unison. 'And the fact that you don't know is one reason why you lost the election.' 
 This trivial vignette has remained in my memory as a permanent reminder of the way Jacks (and Jills) in Office can lose touch with the most elementary things, and how they sometimes pay the price. The man on the Clapham omnibus, together with the woman on the clapped-out tube train, rightly resent the indifference of their masters to the way they have to live their lives.
 Few things fall more clearly into the category of imporotant trivia than the matter of filth in the streets. It is only necessary to look at the faces of middle aged or elderly people, as they pick their way through the mountains of rubbish on city pavements, to realise how much they hate it. Yet it is only recently that politicians, and specifically our principle politicians, have begun to take notice.
 To be sure, Mrs Thatcher did momentarily become aware of it some years ago. It happened as she was being driven back to London from Heathrow after visiting some European capital. Gazing idly out of the window, she noticed how scruffy the roads were compared to those she had just left.
 She reacted indignantly, expressing patriotic shame about the contrast. But her response was to condemn the delinquents who 'throw things down,' not to galvanise those responsible for picking things up. Then she wound up the window and averted her eyes for several more years.
 Next came last year's comic episode of the 'photo opportunity' in St James's Park, with the black bag and the stage-prop litter. Once again, the Prime Minister tut-tutted about people who 'throw things down.' But she had precious little to say about clearing it up, beyond her Fred Karno-ish exhibition with the plastic bag.
 Now, however, it looks as if the subject has got through to her at last. Presumably someone at Tory Central Office (it couldn't have been Nick Ridley, whose nose is too high in the air to notice) has told her that clearing-up litter is also part of the green cause to which she has become converted.
 Indeed, they seem to have persuaded her that litter in the streets is a vote-catching issue. So last weekend, at Scarborough, she unveiled her latest toe-curling slogan. It was 'Bag it and bin it, and that way we'll win it,' in which the 'it' was clearly the next general election.
 Not surprisingly, the Government is now planning legislation based on the proposition that it is town halls and not Whitehall departments which are responsible for keeping the streets clean. Its aim will be to force local councils to discharge this duty. 'We are going to make them do it,' said Mr Ridley at the same Scarborough conference.
 And quite right, too, you may be tempted to say. For it is undeniable that keeping the streets clean is one of the prime duties of a local authority, just as it is undeniable that many local authorities do it very badly, if at all. So isn't a good idea tochuck a firecracker into the council chamber, and force them to get on with it?
 Well, yes, up to a point. No one can deny that many urban authorities have been outrageously remiss in this respect, and have preferred to spend their ratepayers' money on more glamorous or more ideologically satisfactory services than emptying litter bins and sweeping the streets. Moreover, many of the dirtiest areas either are, or have until recently been, controlled by recognisably'loony councils.'
 All this is self evident, particularly to residents (like the present writer) of certain London boroughs. Few London Labour councillors could seriously deny that it was their past behaviour, and that of the unions which organise council employees, which made possible the ruthless attack on local government which has become an essential feature of phase two Thatcherism.
 Yet if the antics of the loony left triggered the government's attack on town hall democracy, the relatively small number of remaining loony councils cannot be used to justify it. And the latest move in the Prime Minister's campaign is at least as outrageous as its earlier stages.
 For what Mrs Thatcher and Mr Ridley are now proposing is to nail local authorities to the wall on street cleaning just at the moment when they have made certain that most councils won't have the money to do it. When they fail to deliver the spotless streets and empty litter bins which the Finchley Housewife demands, it will be the councillors who will have to carry the can all the way to the polling station.
 It is, one has to admit, as neat a piece of Catch 22 politics as any so far devised by the devious and unloveable Nicholas Ridley. Never forget that it was Ridley who hatched the plan to destroy the NUM by enticing Arthur Scargill into an unwinable strike.
 But even Mr Ridley is fallible, as the embarrassing fiasco of the Water Privatisation Bill demonstrates. So it remains possible that even this latest trick will backfire, and that a fairminded electorate will see through the litter wheeze and realise where the ultimate responsibility really lies.
 They won't do so, however, without some help and encouragement from the Labour Party, and in particular from its erstwhile 'loony' councils. They could do what they like doing best, which is to launch a nice big campaign. But they could also have a go at doing what they do worst, namely, collect a little of that damned litter. Or, to put it in someone else's words: 'Bag it and bin it, and then they might win it.'

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March 21, 1989

Futures (Daedalus): Zoom with a view

BYLINE: By DAVID JONES

LENGTH: 532 words

 
 All of us, as we grow older, find it harder to focus on small print or anything else that needs to be looked at closely. Bifocal, trifocal, and even distributed-focus glasses are a very imperfect solution; in any case they merely trade strained eyes for an arthritic neck.
 So Daedalus has been recalling the variable-focus glasses he once invented, with flexible plastic-film lenses that could be pumped up with water to vary their focal length. He now returns to the idea with the key improvement needed to make it practical and popular: autofocus. The autofocus systems used by modern cameras are not ideal for this job. They cannot reliably improve the eye's focusing, because they cannot tell how well it is focused already. So Daedalus's ingenious Autospecs take their cue from the eye's own focusing efforts. 
 As you look at something closely, the flexible lens of your eye thickens to increase its optical power. This makes the surface of the eye, just in front of the lens, bulge slightly. The movement is detected by infrared position sensors on the frame of the Autospecs, and triggers their own lenses to inflate in sympathy. Thus Autospecs follow and amplify your own instinctive focus movements, and as long as you have even the slightest focusing ability, they can make up the deficit. Their action is entirely 'transparent'; you will have no sense of being tracked by an optical mechanism, but will merely find your focusing range magically extended.
 Daedalus prototype Autospecs are unavoidably heavy and clumsy. They contain not only glass corrective lenses and variable-focus liquid lenses, but a fair amount of electronics as well. Dreadco's opticians are working hard to miniaturise them, while Daedalus himself hampers their efforts with repeated suggestions for useful added features. Thus he is arguing for a vastly greater focal range than any natural eye, so that the wearer can focus closely and minutely without needing a magnifying glass. He wants the focusing signal to be able to drive a servomotor on a suitable microscope, camera, or pair of binoculars, so that Autospecs can automatically focus these instruments too. He likes the idea of telescopic and zoom facilities - which make his opticians cringe at the added weight and complexity.
 These arguments should ultimately be resolved, and some commercial form of Autospecs will then hit the market. They will be snapped up, not only be middle-aged and elderly citizens, but also by watchmakers, fine mechanics, entomologists, stamp collectors, and interpreters of insurance contracts. For everyone who now struggles with bifocals, or multiple pairs of special spectacles, or newspapers scrutinised at arm's length, the world will snap blissfully into fine focus.
 Daedalus even hopes for sales among the careless young, who can focus perfectly well as they are. With Autospecs, he argues, their eyes will always be perfectly relaxed: the specs will focus for the. Their eye lenses will be saved from constant focus flexing and the fatigue and work hardening that it causes. They will enter middle age with eyes so youthful that they will never lose their close-focus ability at all!

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March 21, 1989

Nuclear missiles stuck in the mud

BYLINE: By MARTIN WALKER

LENGTH: 292 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 Part of the West's nuclear deterrent was out of action throughout 1986, and nobody noticed.
 While Reagan and Gorbachev were at the Reykjavik summit, a squadron of the Minutemen intercontinental ballistic missiles was n ot capable of responding to an order to launch. 
 Incorrectly programmed with launch codes by Strategic Air Command technicians, the elderly Minutemen would have remained in their silos, the Pentagon confirmed yesterday.
 'As a result of the incident, a number of procedural changes have been introduced into the coding process, and during subsequent coding changes all missiles were correctly programmed,' a spokesman for SAC said yesterday.
 Confirming the exclusive story of the sudden failure of the Minuteman in yesterday's Washington Times, SAC insisted that only a few of the 1,000 Minutemen missiles were affected, and that 98 per cent of America's strategic missile force remained on 'ready alert' status.
 But the rogue missiles at Malmstrom air force base in Montana were showing 'ready alert' throughout the year, although they were effectively out of commission.
 And retired SAC officers yesterday charged that the failure of part of the force to respond to preliminary launch orders would have thrown into disarray the rest of the 50-strong Minuteman squadron at Malmstrom.
 At least five missiles were fed the incorrect codings in late 1985, during the annual recoding procedure, and the error was not discovered until a year later. The codings are part of the fail-safe system which guards against accidental launch, and if the electronic launch orders which the missile receives does not accord with its own check code, the Minuteman will not fire from its protected underground silo.

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March 21, 1989

Win for woman mayor completes a personal triumph for Rocard

BYLINE: By PAUL WEBSTER

LENGTH: 616 words

DATELINE: PARIS

 
 The election of Mrs Catherine Trautmann as the Mayor of Strasbourg in the French municipal elections on Sunday completed a personal triumph for the Prime Minister, Mr Michel Rocard, while relaunching the Alsatian city's drive to become the European capital.
 Mrs Trautmann's bid to be the first woman mayor of a big French city was backed by Mr Rocard. His hold on the premiership was also reinforced by Socialist gains in 35 towns of more than 20,000 people with the loss of 14 to the right. Socialists or allies now control 136 big towns and the Communists 68 (one gain, 15 losses). The Gaullist-RPR control 80 (13 gains, 20 losses) and other rightwing parties 82 (19 gains, 28 losses). 
 While President Francois Mitterand's supporters have seized or maintained control of cities like Marseilles, Lille, Brest, Avignon, or Nantes, the Strasbourg victory destroyed a traditional rightwing stronghold. Mrs Trautmann's success was achieved despite falling out with the local Green party leader, Mrs Andree Buchmann.
 The 38-year-old future mayor had been given little chance of winning. Less than a year ago, she lost a parliamentary election and had to give up her first government post as junior Minister for Old People.
 Her comeback was achieved by a model campaign. She was opposed by Mr Marcel Rudloff, a veteran centrist politician who took over the city of 250,000 people in 1983 from Mr Pierre Pflimlin, the last Fourth Republic Premier. Rather than stress Socialist policy, even refusing to use the rose emblem, Mrs Trautmann attacked the mayor for failing to push Strasbourg's claims as European capital.
 Mrs Trautmann accused Mr Rudloff of refusing to enter the fight for Strasbourg's international role. Mrs Trautmann, a Protestant like the Prime Minister, also blamed Mr Rudloff for losing high-technology European Community contracts to more progressive cities like Grenoble and for apathy over future extension of the TGV super speed train network.
 But Mrs Trautman, who studied seven languages including English and Hebrew at Strasbourg's theology faculty, also gained votes by neglecting working class areas to seek middle class support against Mr Rudloff's pet project - a highly-automated Metro that would have taken 10 years to build. Instead, she lobbied for a tram system, the main claim of Green Party rivals.
 She was so successful that part of the Green electorate switched between rounds, giving Mrs Trautmann 42 per cent of the vote, while Mr Rudloff polled 36 per cent. The Greens, who scored more than 12 per cent in the first round, saw their share drop to less than 9 per cent after Mrs Trautmann accused the movement of being rightwing reactionaries who wanted to turn Strasbourg into a museum. With Mr Rocard's support, Mrs Trautmann has promised to lobby European civil servants and MPs in a major campaign to ensure Strasbourg is not relegated as a European centre. She hopes to win over apathetic international journalists by building a modern Press Centre that was refused by the previous mayor.
 Her main critics could be the Greens who are mounting a big campaign for the European elections in June. The Strasbourg leader, Mrs Buchmann, a 33-year-old university teacher, answered Mrs Trautmann's criticism of the local Greens by saying it was the Socialist candidate who was a reactionary, refusing to support her party's proposals to give votes to immigrants. The issue was exploited by the racist National Front in Strasbourg where Mr Jean-Marie Le Pen's party took 12 per cent of the poll with more than 10,000 votes.
 Rightwing parties' refusal to deal with the National Front cost Gaullists and centrists several towns.

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March 22, 1989

Wednesday Women (First Person): Death on the clock - When the end is inevitable, why not accept it?

BYLINE: By JEAN DAVIS

LENGTH: 661 words

 
 As I waited in the queue at the supermarket I could not help overhearing the elderly woman (obviously a grandmother) who was pouring our her story: 'They took him back in .. then she had to travel all the way to the hospital every day .. poor little mite .. nothing but trouble .. if he had lived he would never have been right ..'
 Her companion could do nothing but make sympathetic noises and I pondered on the tale of a baby, born with defect so severe that all the aids of modern technology had proved useless.
 As she reached the check-out the grandmother said: 'You know, in the old days, they let them die and we had to learn to live with it. I think it was kinder.'
 Which left me wondering. Was that acceptance necessarily a sign of uncaring? Was it fatalism, or a shell grown to protect the soul from hurt and was it so wrong to come to terms in the knowledge that some things were just meant to be? 
 Nowadays, it seems, modern medicine, modern surgery, is clutching at straws and that miracles not only are but should be, all the time, the order of the day. Faced with malformation, abnormality, malfunction or any hiccup in the human condition everything possible should, of course, be done. But every day sees more disorders, diseases, rarer and rarer symptoms and syndromes, until each quirk brings with it another category, and, like the Victorians naming hitherto unknown plants, whole new genera find their way into medical books.
 To that grandmother, all the to-ing and fro-ing from hospital to clinic, from waiting room to surgery, and the dedicated work of doctors and nurses, to try to undo what harsh nature had produced, was a lost cause. Moreover, she considered them unkind, unnecessary and unnatural.
 It could be argued that while that particular child could not have been saved, what was learnt through the vain attempt would benefit some other future case, but meanwhile the cost in the suffering within that family needed to be calculated.
 Daily there are occasions when life-support systems are at the centre of moral dilemmas and when old people are kept alive (sic) long after the Shakespearean stage of 'sans teeth, sans eyes, sans taste, sans everything' made life anything but worth living. The old midwife and doctor, working together, when faced with this sort of dubiety, helped the old to die with dignity, or put the baby on one side to concentrate on the mother and knew what they were doing. They followed through the heartbreak and hard work that would face parents with helplessly malformed children, or families with senile, incontinent elderly relatives, and were not afraid to leave some things to nature. If the child revived, then that was meant to be and if the old lingered, that, too, had to be faced, but using energy, resources and over-reacting to what was unalterable was regarded in a harsh society as a waste of time.
 Death is the one thing, in these days of openness, frank talk and no holds barred, that is unmentionable and not a subject for polite society.
 We are bombarded with programmes wherein people's innards are pulled hither and thither, cut into and sewed neatly back together again.
 But that five-letter word is swept under the carpet, is euphemised and regarded as obscene, because it is the one finite reality.
 It is a wonderful fact that the strides made in medical science over the past century have improved the quantity, as well as the quality of life: it is equally wonderful that every disability, affliction, handicap, should be fought, tooth and nail. But that grandmother was quite right, too.
 Her instinct to accept, sometimes, what must be without subjecting baby or family to protracted - and, more than likely, useless - treatment, was based on the acceptance of life as it is.
 We all have to die of something, at some time or another. Perhaps it is time we came to terms with the fact that there is virtue in accepting that.

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March 22, 1989

Burton head gloomy over retailing

BYLINE: By ROSEMARY COLLINS

LENGTH: 316 words

 
 Sir Ralph Halpern's Burton Group is suffering from depressed levels of high street spending. Pre-tax profit rose 7 per cent to Pounds 117.5 million, slightly ahead of City forecasts, in the six months to the beginning of March and the shares rose a few pence to 213p on the news, but Sir Ralph presents a gloomy picture of current trends and future prospects.
 'We are trading in a very difficult market,' he says. 'The general economic situation is tough, the Budget has changed nothing at all, and we now believe the difficulties will last longer than anyone expected.' 
 Burton's retail sales were up 12 per cent at Pounds 851.9 million in the half year, with trading profit 2.3 per cent higher at Pounds 104 million, but margins fell a full percentage point, only partly because of increased costs. The group claims 11.5 per cent of the UK clothing market, half a per cent up on last year.
 Debenhams performed best of the retail division, with Top Shop for teenagers and the Principles shops for 'the older, sophisticated woman' doing worst. Burton has already given 50,000 square feet of retail space from Top Shop over to Dorothy Perkins or Champion Sport and more will follow. Top Shop's problems are due to demography, says Michael Wood, Burton's finance director.
 There are fewer young shoppers than there were. We have an ageing population, and a new chain for older men, by which Sir Ralph means the over-35s, has opened experimentally under the name Huttons.
 The trouble at Principles was that the customers did not like last autumn's merchandise, Sir Ralph admits.
 The problem is being addressed. Costs are to be cut. Burton's property division doubled profits to Pounds 12 million at the trading level on turnover which rose Pounds 10 million to Pounds 45.5 million. The group has 4 million square feet of retail and commercial property under development.

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March 25, 1989

Holiday traffic imprisons Lake District dwellers

BYLINE: By MICHAEL MORRIS

LENGTH: 461 words

 
 There's a flower that shall be mine. 'Tis the little celandine.
 Wordsworth's daffodils and celandines tremble this Easter as the sheer pressure of traffic in the Lake District threatens to ruin the beauty which visitors come to see. 
 Every holiday weekend - but worst at Easter, if the weather is good - nose-to-tail queues stretch 12 miles from near Kendal to Ambleside, after a 40-mile long crawl on the M6 motorway.
 The congestion can amount to more than 24,000 vehicles a day throughout the district during peak holiday periods.
 The situation has become so bad that some of the elderly between Windermere and Bowness are forced to stay at home because they fear to cross the road. Double yellow lines gash even small villages, like Glenridding and Patterdale. Parking is becoming a problem in remote valleys like Kentmere.
 Lake-lovers say it is time to weigh the cost-benefit of tourism in Britain's most famous national park (Pounds 256 million spent in 1985) against its devastating effects.
 The problems are exemplified in the daffodil and celandine-spangled park at Ambleside, where the building of a relief road is feared. Mr John Toothill, the national park officer, says the only cure for the problems is fewer cars: it is just not tenable to go on improving and widening roads, let alone building new ones.
 But Friends of the Lake District are worried that the relief road, to start in 1992, will be extended (from nearby Waterhead) through the park and fields to the Keswick road.
 The county council says it would be logical to extend the relief road at the northern end to Rydal, but acknowledges it is a sensitive issue.
 'It is too nice to spoil,' commented Mr Peter Spurrier, a retired chartered surveyor, whose house overlooks the route where Wordsworth walked from his home at Rydal Mount to visit a local artist. He said that to break through a scenic area would just 'shuffle traffic from one place to another.'
 The Staveley bypass between Kendal and Windermere, just opened, has its first real test this weekend. Mr Toothill expected that it would move the bottleneck to Windermere.
 Windermere resident Mrs Sally Sim, a solicitor's wife, is getting up a petition for a zebra crossing. She has joined forces with Mrs Sylvia Hicks, warden of a sheltered housing project for old peoople, in moves to get a new crossing. So far, the only hope is a mid-road refuge.
 Mrs Hicks said many of her residents, mostly in their 80s, would not go out at Easter, or other busy weekends, as they found it virtually impossible to cross the main road.
 Mrs Neil Hudson, who is nearly 90, said: 'I can only walk with difficulty, and if I cross over, I just have to take my heart in my mouth and hope for the best.'

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March 28, 1989

Private medical tax plan 'could hit NHS shake-up'

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 451 words

 
 Plans to give tax relief on private medical insurance for the elderly could wreck the Government's health shake-up, ministers are warned today.
 The warning comes from one of the few NHS groups to be broadly supportive of the reforms. In evidence to the Commons Social Services Committee, the Institute of Health Services Management says: 'The success of implementing the measures in the white paper will depend to a large extent on winning the hearts and minds of the million or so staff who work in the NHS. 
 'This support is unlikely to be forthcoming as long as funds that could be used for much-needed public expenditure programmes are used to give an artificial boost to the private health insurance market.'
 The criticism will scarcely surprise Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, who is known to have doubts about the wisdom of the plan, thought to have been forced through by the Prime Minister, to offer tax relief to people over 60.
 He will, howver, be concerned at the tone of the institute's wider appraisal of the reforms. Compared to its earlier enthusiasm, the IHSM appears markedly lukewarm. With the medical and nursing professions ranged against him, Mr clarke badly needs its backing.
 The institute also criticises the speed at which the changes are to be introduced, the lack of any pilot schemes and the absence of any attempt to tackle the 'endemic underfunding.'
 Questioning claims that market forces will balance work-load and funding, the institute says: 'Hospitals will still be able to provide more care than their funding allows and the district health authority will have to impose restrictions on the volume of patients because of its own limits on funds.'
 The institute welcomes the proposals to bring doctors and nurses into the management process through budgeting and medical audit procedures. However, it is concerned at plans for family doctors to run their own budgets. It also fears confusion and fragmentation if some hospitals opt out, leaving health authorities buying care from one hospital while providing care in another.
 The institute urges authorities to avoid this problem by putting all their care services on an arms-length contract basis now.
 Judging the reforms against the four founding principles of the NHS, the institute expresses doubts on all counts. It says that while the comprehensiveness of services could be improved, it could also suffer; that access to the services might be boosted but not on the basis of equality for all; that equity will be damaged by tax relief for the elderly; and that the ideal of free services at the point of delivery is already being damaged by prescription charges.

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March 28, 1989

Strike threat over licensed teacher plan

BYLINE: By DAVID GOW

LENGTH: 396 words

 
 The National Union of Teachers yesterday threatened strikes in individual schools if the Government imposed licensed teachers as a way of easing chronic shortages.
 Mr Doug McAvoy, deputy general secretary of the NUT, the largest teacher union, told its annual conference in Blackpool: 'I believe the scheme will be resented and resisted by a majority of our members because it is an insult to them. It is not a means of solving teacher shortages; it downgrades teaching and says anybody can do it.' 
 The issue was of such fundamental importance to the profession that many teachers would simply refuse to work alongside licensed teachers or help to train them, but the boycott could, he realised, conflict with trade union legislation.
 Mr Kenneth Baker, the Education Secretary, plans to introduce the scheme in September. It would allow people aged 26 or over with minimal educational qualifications to switch careers and start teaching immediately, with only on-the-job training.
 The conference had earlier strengthened the union's opposition to the scheme, and demanded that the executive draw up strategies to defeat 'an unacceptable dilution of the profession'. The executive had originally wanted to tone down the policy motion.
 NUT policy will be to insist that teaching is an all-graduate profession. It wants Mr Baker to deal with growing shortages by encouraging qualified teachers, particularly women, to return to the profession, and older people to join through access courses leading to fullscale training.
 Mr Don Winters, the union's treasurer, told delegates Mr Baker's scheme would dilute the profession and cheat children by bringing in people without the necessary standards and with no training at all.
 'I'll tell Mr Baker what to do: send these licensed teachers to Eton, Harrow, Roedean, and Winchester. Privatise them. Let them practise on the children of the rich,' he said to loud applause.
 Ms Ann Moran, for the executive, declared: 'I don't want someone who has been burned out by ICI and pensioned off at 40 to be let loose in any school I am connected with.'
 Mr Peter Griffin, another executive member, said the licensed teachers device would not do.
 'Mr Baker cannot have high standards of teacher-training and education in schools and this shabby, back-door route to qualified status at the same time.'

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March 29, 1989

Leading Article: Come up with the answer I want

LENGTH: 640 words

 
 Undaunted by the failure of her health review to produce a viable reform, the Prime Minister is about to plunge into a new social policy review. Her newly assembled ministerial committee on community care is the third on this issue in the past three years. The first, by the Comptroller and Auditor General, identified the problems. The second, by Sir Roy Griffiths, provided the solution. This third is designed by the Prime Minister to produce a different solution. For all Sir Roy's impeccable credentials - Sainsbury's managing director, deputy chairman of the NHS management board and the Prime Minister's special adviser on health - not even he could persuade the Prime Minister to accept the obvious sensible course: to make local council social service departments responsible for co-ordinating the present diverse and unco-ordinated services for the elderly, disabled and mentally infirm.
 Everything about local authorities is anathema to the Prime Minister. Not even the prospect of a further year of unco-ordinated policies, unintended policy developments and worst of all, uneconomic programmes has deterred her from blocking Griffiths. The cash involved is huge: an estimated Pounds 6 billion when all the various contributions by different state agencies - health, social security and social services - are added up. The main thrust of the Griffiths report has been welcomed by all the relevant agencies except the agent in Downing Street. 
 The present system is a mish-mash of waste and underfunding. Much of the waste is linked to residential care where the social security system's open-ended commitment to people in residential accommodation has seen this subsidy rise from Pounds 18 million in 1980 to almost Pounds 1,000 million this year. The Audit Commission noted this unintentional development and the discrepancy between the 30 per cent increase in the over-75s between 1975 - 85 and the 70 per cent increase in the number of residential places. This is not just a problem of the diversion of funds which might have been used to allow elderly people to remain in their own homes: there is the additional dilemma of the abuse which old people are suffering in some private and public residential homes. Yet in the face of all this, key community care elements remain underfunded. The number of NHS beds occupied by the mentally ill, mentally handicapped and geriatrics dropped by 35,000 in the last decade but the number of extra day care places increased by only 9,000.
 If, as all sides agree, the main problem with community care is divided responsibility and unco-ordinated programmes, there are three options open to ministers: a new agency; an NHS-led service; or the Griffiths solution of local social service departments with improved lines of responsibility and accountability. A new agency would only create new boundary disputes, new gaps between the new and old services for clients to fall through, and several years of disruption as the reorganisation was put into place. An NHS-led service is neither appropriate (since many of the needs of the clients are not medical but practical like cleaning, shopping, getting dressed) nor viable, absorbed as the service is with its own restructuring. This leaves local social service departments.
 Sir Roy looked at all three options much more closely than Mrs Thatcher's new committee of cabinet ministers will have time to do. In a warning which Mrs Thatcher has foolishly ignored he reminded the Government that the separate agencies providing community care are not like a Rubik Cube, only waiting for a great co-ordinator to twist them into a perfect solution. There is no perfect solution. Nor, more importantly, can the Prime Minister become 'the great Rubik co-ordinator.' That has already been demonstrated by the health review.

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March 29, 1989

PM urged to free care homes market: Councils by-passed in scheme for residential choice

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE, Westminster Correspondent

LENGTH: 581 words

 
 Proposals to let people place their mentally ill or handicapped, elderly or disabled relations in residential homes of their choice at the state's expense are to be put to a cabinet committee, chaired by the Prime Minister.
 The proposals - being drawn up separately by the right wing Adam Smith Institute and the No Turning Back group of MPs - aim to extend the ideas of opting out of the National Health Service and building an internal market within it. They would involve an important role for charities in providing care. 
 The plan also conflicts with one of the main recommendations of a report on community care by Sir Roy Griffiths last year in curbing the role of local authorities.
 Under it, money allocted for the care of a disabled person would go to the relatives who would be entitled to spend it at a home of their choice up to a fixed limit.
 Different limits would be set for each disability and the area where a person lived. Top-up money from private sources would be allowed for relatives who wanted superior facilities.
 The aim would be to transfer the placing of sick people from the professions to parents and guardians.
 There would be no change in the system for ordinary residential care of the elderly which will continue to rely on the present means-tested social security payment system.
 Doctors would have to certify people to decide whether they qualified for the higher level of community care.
 The proposals are to be discussed by Mrs Thatcher's personal policy advisers at Downing Street this week.
 Other suggestions include:
 Residential homes should have the option to become 'budget holders' - like GPs under the NHS reforms - receiving money for each person placed there by relatives.
 Charities which provide residential care should be allowed to apply for 'budget holder' status to attract residents.
 Successful homes which attract residents should be allowed to expand and those which fail left to close. An indemnity body - based on the Association of British Travel Agents which protects holidaymakers against tour operators which collapse - would guarantee all residents in a failed home an alternative place.
 Two new agencies - one for England and Wales, the other for Scotland - should be set up to co-ordinate the new scheme. They would take over powers from the Department of Health and local councils to inspect premises, check fire regulations and approve conversion of homes.
 The local authority role should be reduced to approving planning permission for new homes. Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, and Mr Malcolm Rifkind, the Scottish Secretary, would appoint members of the agencies' boards.
 The proposals will be published by the Adam Smith Institute and the No Turning Back Group next month.
 Both groups are confident that the Prime Minister will be sympathetic to the proposals which will be put on the agenda of a Cabinet committee set up to review community cre.
 They follow a flurry of activity over the last week by right wing groups determined to influence government policy.
 Mr David Willetts, director of the Centre for Policy Studies, the Conservative think-tank, held a meeting to discuss reforms, attended by Mr Clarke and Sir Roy Griffiths.
 The institute held a meeting with several providers of private community care to discuss its proposals. The meeting came out firmly against extending the role of local authorities, favouring new agencies.

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March 30, 1989

Thursday Women: Nuclear power can't destroy my mum - The ranks of those protesting against atomic power stations include more than the young, fit and single

BYLINE: By BEATRIX CAMPBELL

LENGTH: 1331 words

 
 My Mother is a criminal. For the last two years she has been perpetrating premediated acts of alleged criminal damage against the leaky nuclear power station near the Lake District that not even a name change can launder, Sellafield.
 She is Catharina Barnes, a 72-year-old former nurse, the subject of local paper headlines like, 'I'll go to jail says demo gran.'
 'I don't really believe in doing things against the law. But people had to break the law during the last war to resist the facists when they cam eto my country (the Netherlands). And I believe it is war crimes to use nuclear bombs agianst people.' 
 Catharina Barnes took up with criminal damage a couple of years ago after many years as a peaceful peace campaigner. her mantra is the memory and the message of Hilda Murrell who was murdered five years ago this week. 'She was 78, she led a very Quaker, respectable life, had taught herself about nuclear power and she was clever enough to foresee all the problems we are having with nuclear waste. I admired her very much. She was a rose-grower and I love that - to create beauty in this world. She was murdered, and the fact that she was silenced in this terrible way, I can't put the thought away just so easy, I feel if I don't protest against it, I condone it.
 'Young people get into trouble and get a bad record if they do things against the law, so it is up to me to take up her protest because I've got nothing to lose - I'm older, I can't lose my money, I've not got any; I can't lose my job because I'm pensioned off.
 'I don't know of any better way than to ptotest against Sellafield, because it is on my doorstep. It is there not just for nuclear power but for bombs.
 'I used to go to Greenham, But I never stayed there because, at my age, I'm always worried that I'll be a bit of a liability.' But she did join the young anarchists' Stop the City demo in Londona few years back. 'It was to bring to our attention that it is the money business that makes war. The police were hacking very viciously into the young people and calling them scum - and they were just like our kids and their friends. I thought there ought to be a lot more older people, who people would think were respectable. So when some of the young people went to sit in front of a bus, I went to sit down as well.
 'A young policewoman came up to me, she obviously thought I was a poor old lady, and she said: 'Are you all right, dear, do you wan tto go to the other side? And she tried to help me up. I said: 'No, I just want to demonstrate.' One of the police said to me: 'You're not in with this scum?'
 That was followed by the civil disobedience campaign, the Snowball, launched in 1984 when, as at Greenham COmmon, people cut the wire at a US base.
 'So we started to cut the wire to breing to the attention of the public the wall of secrecy and lies around Sellafield. I was around and had young children when the big fire happened in 1957. Over the years there have been more accidents and leaks.
 'About 100 women went to mark the fire and the six babies who died around there that year. The gates were very securely closed. It looked so very strong and inaccessible. But I was walking around a bit and realised that nomatter how strong the gates were, underneath the fence was just soil. SO I started to scrape it away, just withsticks, and then we got under it. We looked a terrible mess. The others tried to get some of the babies' coffins through, too, but that was hard, because they were rigid, and we were not.
 'The guards had not noticed us at first, but then they started coming towards us, looking like robots. And then I got scared. We'd been warned thast the police were armed - I don't know if they are, but I'm more scared of dogs than guns - because guns are clean in a way. 'So we marched up to them - it seemed such a long time before we met, it was like High Noon. We didn't know what to expect, because we hadn't planned anything, but anyway we handed over one of the coffins to a guard and said we wanted to give it to him as a token of mourning from the women of Cumbria. His first inclination seemed to be just to grab it - you do when anybody hands you something - but then he pushed it away.
 'When I said: 'Thanks very much, we want to go now,' he was very pleased. 'Certianly, madam!'
 SInce then seh's been arrested half a dozen times, and appeared in court about 20 times. 'I'll do anything, even go to jail, I don't know any other way, the other ways don't seem to be enough. Nobody likes to be arrested, and I'd be scared stiff to go to jail, but I am prepared to go if it gives any more attention to what Hilda MUrrell did. She lost her life, and we are trying to make what she did more worthwhile - in the end she didn't have her life in her own hands, but I have.
 'The first time I got arrested I was trying to cut the fence - it's such a good fence you never get through it, but I've made two or three scratches. And they confiscated my tools and, me being a pnesioner, I can't afford really good tools. But the Crown Court judge said it was 'a very understnable attempt to convince the public that what is going on at Sellafield is perfectly intolerable.'
 'We had a celebration there last summer, and I had learned off by heart the speechfrom Agincourt. I'd taken our old broken, electric hedgecutter and was waving this great big rusty, oily thing around like a sword. 'A nice young police lassie comes up and says: 'Are you trying to get through the fence?'
 'I'm not getting very far,' I said. 'Have you come to give us a hand?' and she said: 'No, I'm coming to arrest you.'
 'We've never done any damage really, but the people who live around there are so eager to cover up the danger because they're frightened of it; it is very suppressed there, and the magistrates act accordingly.'
 The 1971 Criminal Damage Act says it is excusable to do damage if it is to prevent bigger damage, 'and every time I've been in court I've said Hilda Murrell was murdered and I feel I ought not to sit back and let her be silenced; I would condone her murder if I didn't protest. I find the court an ordeal, but I do it with my eyes open and I don't get any joy out of being againtst the police person who is just doing a job - one time there were seven police people there for this little scratch. My battle is with the powers who spend Pounds 3 million on a visitors' hall at Sellafield when mental hospitals are run down.'
 Most of my mother's convictions have resulted in fines, which have ended up being dismissed ultimately, but she is always, of course, bound over to keep the peace. That's what she's doing anyway, she says. 'I'll be back, mister,' she says as she leaves the court, always joined by supporters with flowers, game for a cup of tea and a cake ot celebrate.
 Our reactions to my mothr's mission vary: her teenage grandson follows her court career assiduously. My father, an activist himself, was always anxious. 'It upsets me. I see this little body faced with those people. I'd like to put the judges and the Sellafield management on trial, it's arse about elbow.' He joins the supporters handing out leaflets during her court appearances and savours her performances - always iconoclastic and yet polite, almost to the point of parody.
 My brother thinks she is a heroine, which of course she is, my sister thinks she is, well just like our mother would be. And me - I worry, after all she is not a well woman, though she told at least one judge who asked her how she was that with her pacemaker she was probably helathier than he was. But heroism can be a health hazard and she promised me sh'd live forever.
 The last twist in my mother's criminal career thwarted the court's misplaced magnanimity, when it tried to 'commute' a substantial fine to community service. She had served her community for 40 years, my mother said, but service as a punishment? Oh, No.

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March 31, 1989

Murder plot nurse jailed for 10 years: Patient attacked during rest home convalescence

LENGTH: 496 words

 
 A rest home nurse who tried to kill an elderly patient was jailed for 10 years at Liverpool crown court yesterday.
 Mr Justice Sanderson Temple, QC, told deputy matron Ruth Thomas, aged 37, that her conduct was 'revolting and abominable.'
 She pleaded guilty to attempting to murder Mr Abraham Rosenfield, aged 67, at the Sharon Jewish rest home in Southport, Lancashire, by poisoning him with a cocktail of whisky and drugs during a late night card game. 
 Thomas, of Southport, Merseyside, also admitted drugging the home's matron, Mrs Monica Sawitz, and Mrs Maggie Korwin-Grantford, the owner of another Southport rest home where she had worked.
 Thomas's lover, Robert Burns, aged 19, of Dumfries, who admitted burgling Mr Rosenfield's flat in Blakely, Manchester, stealing his Pounds 19,500 savings, was put on probation for two years.
 A care assistant at the home, Sara Wrighton, aged 24, of Southport, pleaded guilty to administering a noxious substance to Mr Rosenfield endangering his life, and two charges of handling stolen goods. She was jailed for 4 1/2 years.
 The judge told the two women: 'The account of the way in which you behaved almost beggars belief,'. Mr David Turner, prosecuting, told the court earlier that Thomas and Wrighton held a late-night card game with Mr Rosenfield in his room at the rest home where he was staying for a fortnight's convalescence last June.
 They gave him the whisky and drugs and Thomas then hit him over the head with a wine bottle and kicked him, shouting: 'Die, you bastard.'
 The pair attacked him to cover up the flat burglarly, which took place after Mr Rosenfield told Thomas where he hid his savings. Thomas earlier drugged Mrs Sawitz.
 Thomas and Wrighton previously worked at the Brooklyn rest home, Southport, and Thomas drugged Mrs Korwin-Grantford, its owner, before stealing Pounds 1,500 and splitting the money with Wrighton.
 Mr Rosenfield said later that he was 'full of bitterness, hatred and poison. I looked upon Ruth as a friend.' He plans to sue the rest home.
 Police managed to recover Pounds 8,000 of his stolen money but that had all gone on nursing home bills as he recovered.
 Asked how he had managed to survive after being left naked all night in a pool of blood, he said: 'I have no idea. I wasn't meant to die - I was meant to live, that's all I can say.'
 Detective Inspector Phil Walker, who led the investigation, said after the hearing: 'If the two women hadn't been caught, it doesn't bear thinking about. They had hit on a formula which worked and this could have gone on and on.'
 After getting rid of blood-stained clothes, Thomas and Wrighton were stopped by police and, Mr Walker said, Wrighton claimed Thomas told her to run down the police officer as he got out of his car.
 Fortunately, Wrighton refused to carry out the order. 'The officer was absolutely astounded later when we told him he could have become one of their victims.'

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April 1, 1989

Weekend Money: Age-gauge in full measure

BYLINE: By TED NICHOLAS

LENGTH: 706 words

 
 Having escaped from their parents in their late teens, an ever-rising number of people face the spectre of life with mummy all over again in middle-age, as she survives, ever more querulous, into her nineties. Parent Plan, a new and revolutionary insurance scheme launched by National Provident Mutual of Texas, now offers yo a polcy which will pay some or all of the costs of her living elsewhere.
 'In many cases one parent coming to join a married couple can ensure husband and wife end up in the divorce courts,' says James Habbish, NPM's director who dreamt up the scheme. 'Our plan aims to build up capital so that people can cope with the costs of sheltered housing for their parents when the time comes.' 
 The premiums vary depending on where you live, for the cost of sheltered accommodation in London can be up to 10 times the rate charged in Wales. But research in NPM's American base shows that the cost of accommodation is only one of the factors the company has to consider when setting its premiums.
 'We talked to our potential customers before we started and now realise just what a difference personality can make,' says Habbish. 'Remember that the older people get the more pronounced their characteristics become. Parent Plan assess elderly parents on three grounds before we work out the premiums. The overall idea is to mesure how much emotional pressure - or blackmail - parents can bring on their children in old age and just how tough the children can be in resisting it.'
 Inevitably that's where the snags start. Middle-aged people who take out parent Plan certainly don't want their parents to know that they've done so. So National Provident Mutual's 'relationship consultants', many of them moonlighting social workers, have to see the family covertly. They often come to look at the parents on a family visit, usually pretending to be friends or business acquaintances of the children.
 What do they assess? Inter-personal relationships - or the vibes factor as the professionals call it - comes first. Some mothers talk only to their child, others include their son or daughter-in-law in the conversation, and just occasionally they will even include any children there may be on the visit. Spotting body language showing boredom or irritability, like the tell-tale wagging foot, is crucial for the relationship consultants. Parent Plan insists meetings go on for at least two hours so they get the full feeling of how parents and child inter-relate.
 Observers also check how often the old people will produce references to members of the family who've been dead for 10 or 20 years. The potential insurees - MACARS (or middle aged children at risk) - will normally tell NPM's consultant the names which are likely to come up more than two or three times at each meeting.
 Finally comes the 'age gauge', to use parent Plan jargon. The social workers have to decide whether the parent treats his or (overwhelmingly) her child as under 12, between 12 and 18 or as a fully-fledged adult. 'The more a son or daughter gets treated as a child, the more they have to pay in premiums' says Habbish. 'The reason is easy. If children remain in emotional short trousers for all the time between their first and second childhood, they are far more prone to give in to their parents when they ask to come and live with them.'
 National Provident Mutual wants access to doctors' files on the elderly parents concerned, and is surprised and angry that the British Medical Association has blocked their request.
 'Perhaps we got off to a bad start', announced NPM's sales director Avril Primo. 'We didn't know the etiquettes. We wouldn't have offered GPs a 10 per cent discount for their own Parent Plans in return for a quick glance at their patients' records. If we'd realised people thought it unethical, we would never have done it .. but we've stopped now.'
 Parent Plan, for the moment, goes ahead without a medical check on parents, using what actuaries call 'the mean infirmity factor' in working out its calculations. Certainly the new insurance policy is going to be controversial. But it could at least save a lot of middleaged heartache provided people start saving early.

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April 1, 1989

Weekend Money: Pain relief aims to lure the over-60s - Private medical insurance incentive proposed to ease burden on NHS

BYLINE: By DEBBIE HARRISON

LENGTH: 788 words

 
 With the introduction next April of tax relief on private (PMI) for the over 60s the Government aims to reduce the burden on the National Health Service by attracting as many of the elderly as possible into the private sector. At present only 4 per cent of the over 65s have PMI compared with about 10 per cent below this age.
 The Budget statement gave the bare bones of the proposals but much of the detail is expected to be published in the Finance Bill. What is certain is that individuals over 60 will receive tax relief on private medical insurance premiums at their top rate. Basic rate tax relief will be awarded at source, as it is under Miras for mortgages up to Pounds 30,000, while higher-rate taxpayers will receive the excess relief through their PAYE codes. 
 One welcome clarification in the Budget is that basic rate tax relief will be available to everyone - not just taxpayers. This is the Inland Revenue's way of saying that non-taxpayers - a large proportion of the over 60s - will have their private medical insurance subsidised to the tune of 25 per cent by the Treasury.
 In effect, what will happen is that the insurers will reduce their premiums for the over 60s by 25 per cent and will claim a rebate from the Revenue. For taxpayers this will be a rebate against tax paid, while for non-taxpayers it will be a subsidy.
 A second group will also benefit from the tax relief. Where younger individuals are prepared to pay for elderly relatives, they will be able to claim full tax relief.
 If you fall into one of these categories and want to take advantage of the tax perk you should examine carefully exactly what you will get for your money.
 For the average retired couple standard cover, which offers unlimited refunds on treatment, curretnly costs between Pounds 1,300 and Pounds 2,200 a year. Even with tax relief this will be too expensive for most people.
 Several leading providers, including BUPA and PPP, have introduced special schemes for the elderly over the past two years. It is likely that many similar plans will flood the market in the lead-up to next April. These schemes, while worthy of consideration, do need a health warning.
 In order to avoid the high premiums associated with the risk profile of the elderly, these insurers have taken a cut price/cut benefits approach to the market. As a result, for a modest annual premium of between Pounds 250 and Pounds 420 a year, depending on age, subscribers are covered to a maximum of Pounds 15,000 under BUPA and Pounds 6,500 under PPP (plus an extra refund for open-heart surgery).
 You might get a cataract operation or just about squeeze a hip replacement out of the budget scheme, but anything more major, or two minor operations in one year, will bust the budget and land you with a large medical bill.
 Furthermore, an important feature of several plans for the elderly, including those offered by PPP and Sun Alliance/Healthfirst, is that treatment which can be obtained within six weeks is dealt with by the NHS. To encourage subscribers to try to obtian state treatment, insurers offer a sweetener in the form of a cash payment of about Pounds 20 a night for treatment under the NHS. Clearly, this reduces the number of claims considerably, particularly for serious emergency treatment, and is a major factor in providing low premiums.
 The government has indicted that the inclusion of cash benefits for NHS treatment may be unacceptable - for obvious reasons. The whole point of the introduction of tax relief is to get as many people as possible out of the NHS. Schemes which cut underwriting costs by trying to reduce claims in this way do little to ease the NHS burden.
 The position of the schemes will be clarified in the Finance Bill or possible in the statutory regulations which follow. If the Government refuses to sanction schemes which incorporate an NHS cash benefit, insurers will be caught in a cleft stick. If they drop the cash payment the palns will seem less attractive, but if they abandon or reduce the six-week deferment period they will face increased claims and have to push up the cost of premiums considerably.
 Tax relief on pre-funding schemes is expected to be announced in the next Budget. In a similar way to pension schemes, individuals would get tax relief for contributions during their working life to pay for a private medical insurance benefit in retirement.
 Pre-funding is an essential element of the Government's plan to encourage the elderly to use private rather than state medical resources, since many people will not be able to afford private treatment in retirement unless they build up a fund during their working lives to pay for it.

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April 3, 1989

Austria's last empress is buried with pomp as thousands turn out for rainy farewell

BYLINE: By IAN TRYNOR

LENGTH: 651 words

DATELINE: VIENNA

 
 Romanesque vaults of Vienna's 13th centry St Stephen's Cathedral echoed to the strains of the old Imperial anthem for the first time in more than 70 years on Saturday when Austria said farewell to its last Empress.
 Thousands lined the streets in pouring rain for the funeral of Zita, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, to give but tow of her many titles.
 Tokyo tourists and the pious elderly women of Vienna jostled for a glimpse of the former empress as the jet black carrigage made the one mile procession from the cathedral to the Cappuciner crypt, where Zita finally came to rest beside her dynastic predecessors.
 There were four hours of pomp and ceremony for the woman who spent only two of her 96 years as empress and had spent the past 71 years in various places of exile till her death in Switzerland a fortnight ago. 
 The spectacular solemnities that brough Europe's royalty back to Vienna evoked a tidal wave of imperial nostalgia that the media were eager to capitalise on. 'Vienna the empire city once again,' one tablid daily wrote on its front page yesterday.
 The elements cotnributed to the spectacle. The heavens opened just as the ceremonies were beginning and, uncannily on cue as Mozart's Requiem began on the stroke of three, thunder and lightning split the skies, putting an end to the best weather the capital had seen for the time of year since Zita's birth in the 19th century.
 As Mozart boomed out triumphantly in the cathedral, European royalty joined the grieving family, led by Zita's eldest son, dr Otto Habsburg, and leaders of the Uastrian Republic around the coffin, draped in balck velvet and red, white and green, black and gold, representing all the peooples of the empire.
 President Kurt Waldheim put in a rare public appearance to head Uastria's official representation. A few rows behind him stood a grim-faced Dr Alois Mock, the conservative People's Party leader, who faces a mounting chorus of demands for his resignation following recent election disasters. Chancellor Franz Vranitzky, the Socialist leader, had a pressing engagement elsewhere.
 A frisson of controversy was clearly required to pierce the pieties and add an edge to the proceedings. This was duly supplied by Vienna's Archbishop Hermann Groer, who said the Requiem Mass, flanked by an army of clerics.
 He told the assembled royals and dignitaries - not to mention the publics of
 Austria and Hungary watching the proceedings live on television - that we
 were witnessing not a state event, but a 'national funeral' that testified
 to the 'love and loyalty' of Zita's people. 'Mozart's Requiem is worthy of a
  ruler, an empress,' he declared, dismissing the notion of nostalgia.
 And standing a few paces away from the President of the Republic, the
 Archbishop sounded riskily restorationist, when he qupted glowingly from
 the last interview Zita gave for the Austrian public when she was finally
 permitted to visit the country at the time of her 90th birthday, 60 years
 after the death of her husband, the last emperor, Kaiser Karl: 'I am
 convinced that the lands of the Danube will once again stand under God's
 protection.'
 The Vatican appeared sympathetic to such sentiments when the Archbishop opened the Requiem bny reading the Pope's message in Zita's honour. It was addressed to her son and heir, Otto, as his 'Imperial Highness.'
 From the cathedral, the funeral cortege made its way to the imperial crypt, the black carriage drawn by six black horses.
 Three knocks on the bronze doors of the crypt. Who wants to enter? demanded the doorman. Zita, Empress of Austria, Queen of Hungary, came the reply. Sorry, can't come in.
 The procedure was repeated then, to the question who is there? came the reply, Zita, a mortal and a sinner. Finally the gates opened and Zita was granted her place beside her forebears.

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April 4, 1989

Tuesday Women: Workforce waiting in the wings - Now that pensioners' earnings are de-limited, employers can learn from the US's unretirement programmes

LENGTH: 846 words

 
  
    BY MAGGY MEADE-KING
 Americans are now accustomed, as perhaps we shall become, to finding 'senior citizens' serving up their hamgurgers in McDonalds, carrying-out the groceries at their local supermarket or looking after their children at their day-care centre. While many organisations here operate a recruiting ban on the over-35s, US comapnies like IBM, Wells Fargo, Aeroscpace, and The Ravelers comapnies are encouraging their retirees to come back to work.
 The Travelers insurance and financial services company saw a match between their need for temporary workers and their retirees' interest in part-time work and set up a highly successful 'unretirement program', with a Retiree Job Bank, as long ago as 1981. They have since moved on to hire retirees from other comapnies and other US employers are following their lead. Barbara Greenberg, spokesperosn for The Travelers, says they also discovered some hidden benefits in that 'older workers have a very strong work ethic and theys erve as positive role models for younger people within the organisation.' 
 Now the Chancellor has abolished the eranings limit for pensioners, it seems likely that, with a skills shortage looming in the 1990s, far more workers will be encouraged to stay on or start a new career after retirement. The over-65s represent a considerable job pool, with their numbers already totalling 8.8 million and considerable increases expected over the next decade.
 Some companies in the south-east are already operating a 'wrinklies' policy to try and attract older workers to fill their increasing staff vacancies. The retailer, DIxons, for instance, is trying to attract women over 40 in some parts of London by offering them the chance to work in shcool term times only. Sainsburys and Tesco are chasing the over 50s; agencies are looking for pensioners to work as temprary secretaries and the Norwich Union is recruiting.
 However, despite these pointers, many organisations are stilll operating a recruitment age ban, particualrly for training positions. A recent survey by MSL, the human resources consultants, found 88.5 per cent of the positions. A recent survey by MSL, the human resources consultants, found 88.5 per cent of the positions described in a sample of 928 ads specified an upper age limit of 40.
 These sort of advertisements are illegal in the US, as are any sort of limitations or classifications of workers on the grounds of age, and compulsory retirement before 70. The Conservative MP, Barry Field, has introduced a private member's bill to ban age discrimination in job ads. He says he was inspired by a man who, having lied about his age, was still working for him at 77, and by his three constituency secretaries who all responded to the challenge of another career late in life.
 'I realised there were hundreds of thousands of people who find themselves without a job later in life, but who can't get the opportunity to present themselves at interview, because the advertisement precludes them from applying,' he says. 'We've got to get employers attuned to that tremendous reservoir of talent and ability.'
 Baroness Phillips has entered a similar bill in the House of Lords but neither, as private members' bills,s tand much chance of success. They may, however, drop some hints to a Government tha tis already concerned to lengthen people's working lives. As the Prime Minister, now 63, seeks a fourth term of office, the message from Whitehall is that the elederly will be encouraged to stay in paid employment until they are 70 or even older.
 In the absence of any legislation to back up that encouragement, there is, nevertheless, one weapon, at least, which can be used to combat age discrimination. Mary Jones, a careers advisor, backed by the Equal Opportunities Commission recently won a sex discrimination case against the University of Manchester's Careers and Appointments Service on the grounds that the University had applied an age requirement which was indirectly discriminatory against women. The University's advertisement had stated a prefered age rang eof 27-35 and Ms Jones, who was 46 at the time, was not shortlisted for a careers advisory post for which she was well qualified.
 'It was the last straw and I felt I had to do something about it,' she says. 'I'd applied to 12 or 14 universities after I'd completed my degree in 1983 and, apart form one temporary job, I was always turned down because the adverts all said 27 to 35, or I found out later that was the standard they were using.' Sixty per cent of university careers advisors are men, as are 91 per cent of heads of carers services.
 'i knew there were other people suffering like me and that this would be a test case,' says Mary Jones. 'I hoped it would set a precedent that would help everybody, men as well, who have been turned down simply on the ground sof age. I've got to know people in Job CLubs around here and they're capable, keen and qualified; there's nothing wrong with them, except their date of birth.'

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April 5, 1989

Health Guardian: Deceiving the doctors - Bizarre phenomenon

BYLINE: By JOHN ILLMAN

LENGTH: 605 words

 
 Every schoolchild in Germany has heard of der Lugenbaron, the lying baron, a swashbuckler notorious for exaggerating his military and sporting exploits. But until now Baron Munchausen (1720-97), the subject of Terry Gilliam's new film, has been forgotten in Britain - except by doctors.
 Patients who present with a harrowing history and acute symptoms requiring emergency treatment are very occasionally found to be imposters. Their stories sound so plausible, however, that serious surgery may be undertaken leaving severe scars. The malingerers wander from hospital to hospital attempting their deceptions. In 1951, the late Dr Richard Asher (father of the actress Jane) gave the disorder the name Munchausen's syndrome because, like the baron, these patients 'have always travelled widely and their stories are both dramatic and untruthful.' The syndrome describes people who seek treatment they do not need either for themselves or their children. 
 Munchausens fake heart attacks, alter urine specimens, and feed themselves with salt - to produce bizare biochemical reactions. Older people may present themselves as heroes, sometimes dressing the part. One man hired a naval uniform for his story of extensive wounds in the Battle of the Atlantic. Alleged wartime injuries are popular among older patients to explain scarring caused by needless operations.
 One man fell off a lorry and telephoned the emergency services pretending first to be a policeman reporting the accident and then to be a bystander summoning an ambulance. He was put into splints by an ambulanceman, only to be recognised as a veteran Munchausen. In the classic tradition, he jumped off the stretcher and ran off before he could be persuaded to see the hospital psychiatrist. Some cases are more bizarre, involving self-mutilation. One young woman was referred to hospital with a baffling high temperature. It was discovered that she had been drawing blood from her arm, mixing it with salad cream, and then re-injecting it.
 Doctors are mystified by Munchausens who actually yearn for the surgeon's knife, particularly for abdominal operations. But some motives are comprehensible - someone may want to be the centre of attention or seek a way out of a difficult life via acute illness and hospital admission. The most worrying cases of all, however, are those known as Munchausen by proxy, where parents induce symptoms of illness in their children.
 In one case a child was admitted 12 times, had seven X-rays, six examinations under anaesthetic, was given unpleasant drugs, her urine was analysed 150 times, and 16 senior doctors were involved in attempting to understand what was wrong with her. In another case, a mother made bogus patients out of both her children. The boy (aged five) underwent more than 100 investigations for 'bizarre neurological symptoms' - he had been poisoned with a drug. And the girl (aged two) was treated for diabetes for six months after sugar had been added to her blood. The insulin she was prescribed could have caused brain damage if the mother had not swapped it for distilled water.
 Parents may make patients out of their children as a way of expressing anxiety. A mother might fake symptoms to ensure further medical attention should she fear that her child has not received adequate treatment. But why will someone subject themselves to unnecessary treatment? One recent study could conclude only that Munchausens have a defective personaltiy characterised by sexual difficulties and deviancy, a history of alcohol abuse, and an extensive knowledge of the workings of hospitals.

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April 5, 1989

Eyewitness: When marketing launches itself into a grey area

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 582 words

 
 All over the nation the Grey Panthers and the Lions, the Pippies and Woopies, pace up and down the unmodernised kitchens and bathrooms of their mortgage-paid homes, baying for someone to come and relieve them of their Pounds 70 billion a year discretionary spending money.
 The Yuppies have fallen into the sere and yellow leaf, bare ruined choirs where once the lager lout sang. The baby boom has bust. There's no growth market like an old growth market. There's no other growth market at all. 
 For three days at the Barbican, London, a gathering of bright young advertisers, market researchers and sales persons is considering every aspect of the proposition 'the grey market - a golden opportunity?'
 If they can only crack the code. Yesterday there were only five grey heads among them, and three of those were on young shoulders. One of the problems of 'advertising and marketing to the over-55s', the experts kept telling them, is that the market researchers, the advertising copy writers, the product designers, are all young, and the past of the Well-Off Older People and the People Inheriting Parents' Property is a foreign country to them.
 'The leading edge of the 50-60 age cohort is the class of '52', Greg Watson, aged 46, media director of the advertising agency, Holmes Knight Ritchie, told them.
 Mr Watson has been studying these people for the last two years. he gave the audience a check list of events from ancient history that will, arranged int he correct order, help to sell non-slip bathroom surfaces, coach holidays and age-specific cosmetics in older-friendly packaging: rationing, Concorde, the conquest of John F Kennedy, and the Three-Day Week.
 Mr Gerry Smith, aged 42, the managing director of Headland Press, sent out a fieldworker, who identified four main groups. The problem was the researcher so loathed some of those he had defined, particularly the 'poor but proud' non-drinking, guilty and labour-saving devices and staunchly Thatcherite neo-puritans, that Mr Smith had to inject a little editorial balance before publishing the results.
 Mr Smith has also published a study of the Baby Boomers. 'The Mature Consumer - Segmenting the affluent over-55s through psychographic grouping' - is outselling it by 20-1.
 'We're all arthritics now,' Mr James Woudhuysen, of the design company, Fitch & Co, said sadly. Mr Woudhuysen is beginning to have difficulty with child-proof packaging, due to a spot of keyboard-induced repetitive strain injury. Mr Woudhuysen found he couldn't read the label on the bottle yesterday morning as he was stealing his wife's body lotion. Mr Woudhuysen is 36.
 Coming later this week, the good news - the over-45 man drinks on 9.2 days of the month, 0.3 days more than the average; the worrying question - 'but do they drink enough?'; and the possibly related topic - Sex and the Older Man, Money, Freedom and Immortality, the Over-45s usage and attitude to Fragrance and Personal Care.
 Dr Eric Midwinter, director of the Centre for Policy on Ageing, condemning the ageist question but admitting to 57, floated a cloudlet of gloom into the bright grey dawn.
 'Some older people are undoubtedly well off, but two million are living on the state pension. And that, compared to the average industrial wage, is still the equivalent of people living on the 1908 state pension, or the 1840 Poor Law handout.'
 The PLOPLs, nobody's idea of a golden marketing opportunity, are with you always.

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April 8, 1989

Red Tape: Government repair job takes a beating

BYLINE: By DAVID LAWSON

LENGTH: 348 words

 
 Plans to reform home improvement grants have come in for a hammering from the most unlikely quarter. That bastion of tradition and free enterprise, the Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, is almost as blistering as bodies such as Shelter about changes due to come in next year.
 Elderly and disabled people will suffer because of what the Government calls a streamlining exercise meant to concentrate on those very groups, according to the property industry's elite corps. One of its typically severe and official-looking responses to policy changes is enlivened by fiery terms such as 'grossly unreasonable' and 'virtually incomprehensible'. 
 At the heart of the protest is despair at the relentless bureaucracy promised against anyone foolish enough to call for government aid in future to repair or improve their home. 'The proposals are far too complex and will not lead to a high take-up from those who most need help,' say the surveyors. No grants would be given for adapting homes to the disabled because all landlords' applications would be discretionary. It was also 'grossly unreasonable' to expect disabled people to plough through so much bureaucracy.
 The elderly, living in some of the poorest housing, would be reluctant to spend their limited income. The RICS says there should be no means test for anyone over 65. But even the ordinary owner-occupier, faced with tests of income and savings, and the need to produce detailed plans without being sure of a grant at the end, would have to be very determined to pursue an application. The proposals were hard enough for professionals to understand; they would be virtually incomprehensible to lay people, says the RICS. The more difficult a scheme was to understand, the more likely to miss the people at whom it was aimed.
 Shelter says pensioners live in about 500,000 of the 3.5 million unfit homes in England and points out that home improvement grants have been more than halved since 1984. The Government says it will not be cutting spending from next year but targeting it at the neediest.

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April 8, 1989

Protesters pursue Clarke in hospital: Ministers and doctors clash again over NHS reforms

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE and TOM SHARRATT

LENGTH: 574 words

 
 Demonstrators yesterday chased Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, through the corridors of a Manchester hospital as ministers and doctors clashed again over the Government's health service reforms.
 Mr Clarke accused the British Medical Association of making 'scandalous and untrue' claims about the reforms in leaflets it is distributing to patients.
 Mr David Mellor, his deputy, said there was evidence that public money, intended to improve services, was being used by family doctors to give themselves more leisure time. 
 Dr John Marks, chairman of the BMA council, last night likened the reforms to a leaky old tub. 'Any other master mariner would put in to port to make his ship seaworthy. But not Captain Clarke. Instead he has turned on the crew.'
 Mr Clarke's confrontation with demonstrators came at the Hope Hospital, Salford, where he was making one of a series of hospital visits to try to whip up support for the reforms.
 About 20 health workers and trade union officials had gathered outside to protest. When they found that Mr Clarke had entered by a back door, they brushed past police and pursued him.
 One of the demonstrators, Mr Mike Graham, an official of the North-west TUC, shouted: 'Why are you afraid to talk to us, Mr Clarke? This is pathetic.'
 The minister replied: 'You are illustrating by your behaviour exactly why a meeting with the TUC would have been pointless. My visit was arranged at short notice and I have no time to spare for a political barney.'
 As Mr Clarke was ushered behind a curtain in the hospital's accident department, police escorted the demonstrators from the premises.
 Later, Mr Clarke said the BMA's campaign against the reforms was seriously alarming many sick and elderly people. Its arguments were distorted and its leaflet made five points which were inaccurate.
 Contrary to the leaflet, he said, family doctors would not run out of money; they would be monitored, not restricted, in their access to funds; they would remain free to prescribe all necessary medicines; medical incomes would be unchanged; and they were not being forced to take on more patients than they could cope with.
 However, a specialist in the care of the elderly in Salford warning that the reforms posed 'a greater threat to elderly people than Alzheimer's disease'.
 Professor Raymond Tallis, professor of geriatric medicine at Manchester university and consultant to Salford health authority, said the elderly needed integrated caring services. The reforms would instead fragment services.
 Mr Mellor's comments came as he addressed the Brighton conference of the Royal College of General Practitioners, a body which ministers still hope will support the reforms.
 He said it was not clear where extra government money for primary health care was going. While many GPs were using the funds very well, 'I must also point out that research .. calls into question just how far these extra resources have gone into better health services and how far into increased leisure time'.
 Mr Mellor said the Government would not shirk its duty to safeguard taxpayers' money through better managerial control.
 Dr Marks said Mr Clark's assurances had a familiar ring. 'They came off the same assembly line as the pledge that hospital ward closures would cease, that there would be no charges for eye tests and that differential eye tests were not on the agenda.'

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April 11, 1989

Whitehall eyes over-sixties to plug jobs gap

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE, Westminster Correspondent

LENGTH: 515 words

 
 The Government is considering a campaign to recruit thousands of well educated people in their 60s to meet a growing shortage of suitably qualified civil servants.
 A confidential Treasury report discloses that Whitehall will be facing a severe staffing crisis in 1990s when the pool for its two principal areas of recruitment - the 16 and 18-year-old school leaver and the graduate trainee - plummet by as much as 22 per cent.
 The report, sent to the senior establishment officer in every ministry, discloses that the Treasury is considering more than 20 initiatives to attract staff, including a plan to 'sell' the advantages of becoming a civil servant by brightening up the bureaucratic image. 
 The report shows that Whitehall, the armed forces, the National Health Service and the teaching profession face a serious skilled labour shortage only 10 years after the Government encouraged thousands of people to take early retirement in their early or mid-50s.
 Although the number of civil servants has fallen from more than 733,000 in 1979 to just under 600,000, there is little scope for further cuts. There has been an increase in administrative staff since 1984.
 The report admits civil servants' pay will have to go up, conditions improved and offices made more attractive and offices made more attractive to compete with other employers. 'The increased competitiveness of the 1990s means that the civil service can no longer rely on the kind of young entrants we have traditionally recruited.'
 The proposals amount to a reversal of policy with a plan to encourage people aged 60-64 to join the service as executive, clerical and administrative staff.
 The report identifies a pool of some 700,000 men receiving early retirement pensions, some of whom could be lured back to work with the offer of an additional index-linked pension. It says the civil service pension scheme could offer pension rights after just two years service to the over 60s.
 Other plans include ending the traditional retirement age of 60 in ministries which have a shortage of staff and reintroducing a 'sweetener to discourage staff from leaving at 60 by allowing them to collect their lump sum retirement benefits and then be re-employed at the same grade.
 The other two areas of recruitment are married women aged 25-44 now bringing up a family and the growing number of young people from ethnic minorities.
 The report points out that the proportion of young blacks and Asians will increase. 'It will therefore be important to ensure that recruitment and selection methods attract applications from ethnic minority candidates and do not unfairly discriminate against them.'
 The report says career breaks must be made more attractive for women looking after families.
 More part-time jobs and job sharing must be introduced at a senior level. More creches, holiday playschemes and more generous parental leave is proposed.
 Other measures include relocation of more civil service departments away from London and the Midlands to East Anglia and the South-west.

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April 11, 1989

The Day In Politics: Kinnock on work of the nineties

BYLINE: By PATRICK WINTOUR

LENGTH: 495 words

 
 The Labour leader, Mr Neil Kinnock, yesterday called for radical work changes, including more job opportunities for women and the elderly, to prevent a demographic time bomb from exploding in the face of employers.
 In the third of a series of economic lectures, Mr Kinnock also endorsed the call for more flexibility at work, so long as it genuinely benefited workers as well as employers.
 The lecture at Newcastle upon Tyne set out Labour's vision of the workforce of the nineties. Mr Kinnock argued that government had a legitimate role in preparing the workforce for technological and demographic change. 
 The Government had failed to help employers to adapt to the projected 20 per cent drop in the number of 16 to 24-year-olds joining the labour market in the next five years, he said.
 The labour force would grow by a million by 1995, with increases of more than 15 per cent in the 25-34 and the 45-59 age groups. There were nearly a million people who had been unemployed for more than a year, and to these should be added the many women and older people who would like to work, or carry on working, but were prevented from doing so.
 Instead of leaving employers to scramble for young talent, 'a rational government would now be planning - and providing - to ensure that these groups take over the flexible mobile role traditionally played by the young,' he said.
 This new pool of flexible labour could be encouraged by high-quality training and retraining, inproved employment rights and conditions for older workers and part-time workers, and 'a significant expansion of childcare services'.
 There was no systematic provision at present to help women back into work after childbirth. 'Women who are well trained or even professionally qualified often abandon their employment when they have children, or move into jobs which do not make full use of their skills, frequently as part timers'.
 Company child care facilities were important, he said, but the Government should also provide facilities available to all.
 Legislation was needed to give mothers statutory time off after birth and allow them to work shorter hours while their children were young.
 Mr Kinnock also promised to end compulsory retirement ages and move towards 'the concept of the flexible decade between 60 and 70, where there is a greater choice about retirement and semi-retirement'.
 Labour's vision of flexibility recognised that 'the old model of employment has limited relevance to the nineties'. In future workers would be employed for periods tailored to their individual needs.
 A departure from the standard negotiated working week need not be a threat to union agreements, he said. 'If workers and their organisations take the lead in securing flexibility, they prevent attempts to use new technology to impose inferior working conditions on unprotected working hours, and instead secure the advantages of flexible new technology.'

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April 12, 1989

Police criticised over hospital deaths

BYLINE: By IAN TRAYNOR

LENGTH: 438 words

DATELINE: VIENNA

 
 The Vienna police and health authorities faced growing criticism yesterday over the key question of how the wave of murders of elderly patients at one of the capital's main hospitals went undetected for so long.
 The official number of murder victims in the biggest criminal case in Austria's post-war history rose from 44 to 48.
 The protests grew after the disclosure on a television programme on Monday that police had been called to Lainz General Hospital last April to investigate the death of an elderly woman patient. 
 The Interior Minister, Mr Franz Loeschnak, defended the police against charges of laxity, saying there were no grounds for prosecution in the case. A post mortem had found the woman died from natural causes.
 Earlier, the mayor of Vienna, Mr Helmut Zilk, accused the police of negligence. But despite Mr Loeschnak's support, the police chief, Mr Guenter Boegl, who has described the deaths as the 'biggest series of murders ever committed in Europe,' appears under growing pressure, as do local hospital and health service managements.
 One question being asked with increasing vehemence is how hospital orderlies - three of the four in custody were orderlies - gained access to the drugs with which they are alleged to have overdosed the victims and how they are allegedly able to continue carrying out injections of insulin against hospital rules.
 Likewise, the reliability of the post mortems is being questioned, given reports that the trail of 'mercy killings' of frail, elderly and dying people - a motive that has failed to convinced almost anyone here - goes back to the early 1980s.
 One MP asked why the post mortems had failed to reveal water in the lungs after police statements that the leading suspect, Waltraud Wagner, had confessed to killing more than 20 patients by forcing water into the lungs.
 The hospital authorities were also forced further on to the defensive by Ms Wagner's statement, through her lawyer, that medical supervision in unit five, where the murders occurred, was virtually non-existent.
 'The doctors usually told me to do it and then they went to bed,' she said of procedures for administering injections on the night shift.
 But Dr Franz Pesendorfer, the unit's medical chief, rejected charges of lax regulations. 'It is I and my entire team that, through our incessant work, have uncovered monstrous crimes such as have never been seen before in this country.'
 He claimed credit for discovering the 'criminal administration' of insulin to a non-diabetic - the case which was spotted and led to the murders being uncovered.

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April 12, 1989

Charity goes into business to help aged

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 331 words

 
 Help the Aged yesterday broke new ground for charities by launching a profit-making consultancy and advice venture to promote services for the growing number of elderly people.
 Age Care and Leisure Services, trading as Partnership in Practice, has been set up jointly with a Danish charity, EGV Services, in anticipation of the opening up of the EEC single market in 1992.
 All the big charities are considering how to adapt to the commercial opportunities emerging in community care which will mushroom once the Government makes its policy decisions on the care of elderly, disabled, mentally ill and mentally handicapped people. 
 Whatever policies are adopted, it is certain that charities will be invited to take a bigger role in service provision, if they can reconcile it with their traditional aims.
 Help the Aged said while its main objective would still be raising funds to relieve poverty and isolation, 'it has been impossible to ignore the mounting requests from organisations within the public, private and voluntary sectors for support and assistance, other than financial, to confront the challenges of an ageing and increasingly frail population.'
 Help the Aged and EGV have each put in Pounds 60,000 initially for two years, and profits will be convenanted to the parent charities.
 Mr John White, the company's chief executive, said the service would offer comprehensive advice on issues including social work, nursing, architecture, building, supplies and research and evaluation. 'We believe that the environment is absolutely right for this sort of service to be provided.'
 The company has already negotiated four contracts: to advise Basildon and Thurrock health authority on services for the elderly; to develop a housing scheme in east London for pensioners and medical students; to create a retirement leisure and care centre in Haslemere, Surrey; and to review elderly care services provided by an as yet unnamed London borough.

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April 14, 1989

Budget agreed

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 331 words

DATELINE: WASHINGTON

 
 After two months of talks White House and Congressional negotiators yesterday broadly agreed on a compromise 1990 budget designed to keep the deficit below Dollars 100 billion in the 1990 financial year.
 The package, however, seems unlikely to impress the financial markets since many of its most important details - including how to raise new revenues - remain unresolved. The most important component of the package is the agreement to chop some Dollars 14 billion from public spending with the defence budget taking almost half the cut: a far larger figure than President Bush had originally proposed. 
 The Defence Secretary Mr Richard Cheney indicated last night that some of these cuts will have to come from hitech weapons systems in which the Pentagon has placed so much faith in recent years.
 Mr Cheney is looking for at least Dollars 6.4 billion of immediate cuts and is said to considering a slowdown in the production of the advanced Trident 2 submarine - which is also to become part of Mrs Thatcher's nuclear arsenal.
 Other spending cuts to support Mr Bush's programmes for a kinder and gentler nation, including greater education, child care and environmental spending, will have to come from escalating Medicare payments for the health care of the elderly. As much of Dollars 2.5 billion of cuts could be found in this category.
 The most contentious aspect of the budget package, which has been prepared in time for passage of the Congressional budget resolution on April 15, is likely to be on the revenue side.
 The negotiators have specified some Dollars 14 billion in increased 'non-tax' revenues of which around half could come from asset sales and higher user fees for government services.
 However, the negotiators and the White House remain divided on the rest with the Administration wanting a capital gains tax reduction and Democrats disputing forecasts of higher revenues and seeking to close existing tax loopholes instead.

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April 14, 1989

Police shoot dead two raiders

BYLINE: By GARETH PARRY

LENGTH: 666 words

 
 Police marksmen shot dead two armed robbers and wounded another yesterday, after a Flying Squad chase in a suburban road in north London.
 The three men had sprayed bullets and gunshot at the police officers, wounding one in the ankle, in their attempt to escape after an abortive battering-ram raid on a post office.
 An elderly man somehow walked unscathed through the cross-fire in the street, which is lined with semi-detached houses. He thought it was all part of a realistic film set. 
 It was the fourth occasion in two years that police have shot dead armed robbers.
 Commander John O'Connor, the head of the Flying Squad, later said the officers from Scotland Yard's 'Blue Beret' PT17 Squad acted 'correctly and courageously'.
 They had prevented any members of the public getting hurt in the gun battle in Twyford Road, West Harrow.
 The shooting has been justified by police sources as the inevitable response to armed robbery.
 The incident began just before 9am when the three men, who the police suspected of specialising in ramming security vehicles, pushed a steel girder out of the back of their Ford van and, reversing at high speed, used it as a battering ram to smash through the rear doors of Rayners Lane Post Office, close to streets busy with commuters and shoppers.
 Although the three, in balaclavas and motorcycle helmets, got into the Post Office, they failed to reach the area where valuables were kept. They had chosen the wrong doors. They aborted the robbery, and drove off in a stolen Ford Sierra.
 Flying Squad and PT17 officers, who had been covertly observing them, gave chase but the robbers abandoned the car after weaving through side-streets.
 Mr O'Connor said the robbers then embarked on what he described as 'a classic ploy', running down an alleyway so the police car could not follow them. They had left a getaway car on the other side of the alley which runs from Rayners Lane Station, over a railway bridge and down into Twyford Road. When the robbers got on to the bridge, they opened fire on the pursuing officers.
 Mr O'Connor said: 'A warning was given that they were armed police officers, and to surrender. They continued firing. Police officers returned fire.'
 Police discounted suggestions by local people that officers were waiting for the men and 'staking out' the stolen getaway car in Twyford Road.
 Mr O'Connor said the robbers continued firing in Twyford Road, spraying 'bullets everywhere'.
 In all, about 30 shots were fired. Some bullets from the shoot-out lodged in parked cars and spent cartridges still littered the scene several hours later.
 Mr Paul Duego, who lives in nearby Welbeck Road, said: During the shooting, an old man was right in the middle of it. He turned back and said, 'What are they doing - are they shooting a film?' He was completely oblivious to what was really happening.'
 Tony Dewsnapp, aged 48, a married man of Margate, Kent, died at the scene. James Farrell, 52, also married of Hanwell, west London, died in hospital. The third man, who has not been named, has shoulder and leg wounds but is not in a serious condition.
 The robbers were armed with a sawn-off shotgun, a Colt 45 pistol and a Luger-type automatic handgun, Mr O'Connor said. 'With that kind of firepower and with that number of bullets, there is no doubt that they intended to shoot their way out and would not have hesitated in killing police officers.'
 Although the robbers were being observed police did not know for certain that they were armed. 'It's a fair assumption,' said Mr O'Connor.
 Acting Deputy Assistant Commissioner Malcolm Campbell, in charge of
 specialist operations, said later: 'I have to say we are dealing with a hard
  core of ruthless and sophisticated criminals. The officers  who
 courageously tackled them ought to be praised.'
 Mr Campbell said police regretted incidents involving loss of life and extended sympathy to the dead men's families.

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April 15, 1989

The 'cowboy' robber who paid the ultimate penalty

BYLINE: By SHYAMA PERERA

LENGTH: 457 words

 
 Men like Jimmy Farrell - shot dead by police during the bungled Post Office raid at Harrow, north London on Thursday - are the cowboys of the robbery trade.
 Just as new technology has put safe breakers and explosives experts out of a job, hard line policing has sent most would-be 'blaggers' into low-profile industries like drug dealing and fraud.
 Farrell, aged 52, was killed with Terry Dewsnapp, aged 48, as they attempted to escape after the abortive raid. A third robber was wounded. 
 There is no entry into the more sophisticated trades of drugs and fraud for older men like Farrell, recently released after serving 10 years of a 17-year prison sentence for armed robbery. It was almost inevitable that someone of his background would drift back into villainy. But his modus operandi was high risk, out-of-date, and promised little return.
 The police have made it clear that they will shoot in such situations, and the professional robbers know this.
 Farrell's only hope of 'retiring' was to grab the 'big one.' It meant shooting from the hip in a cowboy operation involving a battering ram.
 A reformed armed robber said yesterday: 'Men like that are still living in the past. It is the classic get-rich-quick type of crime. It doesn't require a lot of pre-planning, but it does need derring-do.'
 Farrell claimed he had been 'set up' over the bank robbery of which he was convicted in 1978. In 1985, after new evidence was uncovered in a BBC Television programme, he and three others were granted an appeal which failed.
 A friend said last night: 'I think when he finally came out, he was a little stir-crazy. That was how he became involved in such a scheme.'
 Farrell, an Irishman living in West London with a woman identified only as Sharon, went for what seemed the easy option, but he was out of touch. A former prisoner said: 'These crimes are no longer viable as in the sixties and seventies.
 'The only robberies that work these days are the ones with connections; the big operators who get a bit of help from inside Scotland Yard.'
 Walter 'Angel Face' Probyn, once the most wanted man in Britain, said last night: 'They live in a time warp. They come out and find that people younger than them are involved in drugs or long firms - where you buy lots of things on credit and then disappear.
 'When Farrell came out of prison he probably had no abilities, no skills, no family and no incentive - when you have nothing to lose, your life does not carry the same sort of weight.'
 The shootings will be investigated by Mr John Wright, assistant chief constable of Hampshire, not a senior officer from Sussex as previously announced, the Police Complaints Authority said yesterday.

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April 19, 1989

Health Guardian: Home hazards - Only a fraction of the chemicals, used around the house have been safely tested

BYLINE: By BRIAN PRICE

LENGTH: 659 words

 
 Two hours after switching on her new central heating, Eileen found she could not breathe. Choking flumes, released from the paint as the radiators warmed up, had filled the flat. She was admitted to hospital overnight and then had to stay with friends until the fumes had dispersed.
 Two years on, she still suffers from coughing fits and has been unable to resume her career as a nurse. She has become sensitised to formaldehyde, a chemical she would encounter during her work. 
 The factory-applied radiator paint was found to release formaldehyde and other toxic fumes when heated. Four staff in the laboratory where the paint was tested were reported to be affected by coughing and running eyes when the paint was heated for analysis.
 Formaldehyde is a well-known irritant, allergen and suspected carcinogen and its effects seem to have been aggravated by the other substances released.
 Uncured epoxy resin - an ingredient of some everyday glues - was also found. It, too, is a powerful irritant to lungs, eyes and skin.
 We tend to assume that if a chemical is on sale it is safe providing we follow instructions. Yet only a small fraction of the 60,000-odd chemicals in common use in the home and at work have been tested for safety. Where tests have been carried out, they may not be relevant to the domestic situation since their aim is to protect industry employees.
 Safety limits for exposure are normally based on a fit young male working an eight-hour shift, with proper industrial precautions. Elderly people, pregnant women, people with lung disorders, and young children exposed to paint fumes until they disperse will not be as resistant.
 Most people know that bleach, caustic oven cleaners and insecticides can be harmful, if misused. But there are other, more insidious, domestic chemical hazards.
 Substances in air fresheners have been linked with feelings of muzziness, unreality and depression. Dr Richard Lawson, an Avon GP, has treated 50 people complaining of these and similar symptoms which improved when exposure to products ceased.
 One of his patients, Justin, suffered uncharacteristic near-suicidal depression which cleared up when carpet fresheners, perfumed fabric conditioners, biological detergents, and air fresheners were banished from his home.
 Some people seem to be susceptible to some chemicals and may develop sensitivity after a single exposure. We all respond individually to toxic materials and certain groups are particularly vulnerable without being allergic.
 The harmful effects of lead - still present in potentially lethal concentrations in some paints - on the intellignece of young children are now well documented.
 Pregnant women, those trying to conceive, the elderely and the very young have their own susceptibilities. Hydrocarbons and other solvents, for instance, have been linked with birth defects in the children of parents of both sex exposed to them. These materials are present in adhesives, paints wood treatments and many other household and DIY products. Young children breathe in more air per unit of body weight than adults and their lungs are more efficient at extracting pollutants such as solvent vapours, leaded dust or toxic gases from the air.
 When chemicals are used in the home, air pollutants can build up to levels which would require through-ventilation or protective clothing in industry. Painting a radiator in a small room, for instance, can lead to very high solvent concentrations and noxious fumes as the paint cures.
 Sick building syndrome is a growing source of physical and psycological illness in office workers. Yet we are in danger of turning our homes into sick buildings with solvent-based and other chemical products and the obsessive use of synthetic fragrances.
 Brian Price is the co-author, with Michael Birkin, of C for Chemicals - a new guide to household chemical hazards (Greenprint, Pounds 4.99).

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April 19, 1989

Washington Commentary: Buggins' turn that loses the bully pulpit

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 1019 words

 
 The Opprobrium heaped upon the Speaker of the House Jim Wright may perversely turn out to be a blessing for the Democratic Party. Like the elderly mourner who is convinced the spouse is still there knitting or reading the newspaper, the Democrats have never seriously come to grips with bereavement.
 A series of humiliating defeats in the Presidential elections (five out of the last six) have been shrugged off by the party elders. They have engaged in a form of group therapy to convince each other that the White House doesn't really matter. It is the Congress which counts. With each successive election, as the Democratic stranglehold in the House grows and the majority in the Senate strangthens, the self-deception becomes more chronic. Some of the more celebrated and cerebral party leaders - Senator Sam Nunn of Georgia, Senator Bill Bradley of New Jersey and House Majority leader Tom Foley of Washington State - have even managed to convince themselves that more power attaches to their perches on Capitol Hill than to the White House. 
 All this is patently untrue. There are not many among us who can reverentially recite the names of recent Speakers, majority leaders or committee chairmn, but only a minority would have trouble with the Presidents. Few institutions (with perhaps the execption of the Fourth Estate) are more reviled outside Washington than the Congress. It is consistently blamed in the opinion polls for all that hurts governance, and even its own members are inclined to adopt populist poses and attack the breadwinner when making speeches in Kalamazoo, Lubbock or Peoria. As Mark Twain so aptly observed, America has 'no distinctly native criminal class except Congress'.
 The Wright imbroglio potently pricks the myth that, somehow, power in the Congress is sufficient for the Democrats. It has demonstrated that Mr Wright is a deeply unsatisfactory party leader and that the Democrats, despite all the protestations of success in Congress, are a rudderless political force which has still to decide how to recover from three successive Republican victories.
 Any system which throws up men of Mr Wright's calibre as the hhighest elected official in Congress (and second in succession to the Presidency) must be suspect. Because so many House elections are all but uncontested (the re-election rate is around 98 per cent), a deathly system of seniority and Buggins' turn determines the House leadership. It is by scrambling up this particular ladder to power, rather than by any display of charisma, that Mr Wright rose to the Speakership. As a loner he rules by diktat rather than consensus, springing all manner of surprises on his colleagues - including a mishandled peace initiative in Central America in Reagan's final days. Moreover, his treacly voice and manner make him entirely unsuitable to be the party's most senior spokesman. But most damaging of all, his petty enriching activities (which have produced what amounts to 69 separate indictment) have robbed the Democrats of the moral high ground which appeals to the nation's puritanical soul.
 While Mr Wright struggles vainly (like John Tower) to preserve his own reputation, it is the Democratic Party which will suffer. Although there is a credible and respected alternative, majority leader Tom Foley, standing in the wings, it is the chairman of the Democratic National Committee, Ron Brown, who must keep confidence high. Mr Brown, the first black to hold office, points to the recent Democratic upset in Dan Quayle's former House seat in Indiana and the potential victory in Defence Secretary Dick Cheney's vacated House seat in Wyoming as evidence of a Democratic resurgence nationally. This, as they would state plainly in Iowa, is hogwash designed to keep up the morale of the troops.
 Mr Brown leads a party spinning out of control. Its leading candidate for the 1992 Presidential election, the Reverend Jesse Jackson, remains as unelectable as in 1984 and 1988. His meddling in the Chicago mayoral elections earlier this month helped provoke a white backlash of unusual ferocity. Now he threatens the same divisive nonsense in New York's mayoral race. He has signalled that he will not back Mayor Edward Koch even if he becomes the Democratic nominee in September. Thus Mr Jackson, whose tantrums of pride unsteadied Mike Dukakis at last year's Atlanta convention, is now destabilising Mr Brown - the wealthy Washington lawyer and insider who ironically managed his Atlanta gala. Moreover, the primary rules which Mr Brown negotiated for Mr Jackson, in the hothouse of an Atlanta summer, are now being seen by political analysts as an obstacle on the road to the White House.
 The Wright affair offers the Democrats a rare opportunity to face up to the reality of Congressional impotence in the face of the White House juggernaut and to prepare for 1992. This can be done firstly by deposing Mr Wright swiftly and cleanly (allowing the matter to drag until December would be a disaster), and elevating Mr Foley, a man of Presidential calibre, sound judgement and a pleasant persona, to the high profile position of Speaker.
 Secondly, the party should reopen the question of primary rules. By rebelling against Richard Daley, the official (and non-racist) candidate in the Chicago elections, Mr Jackson for all his moral power and authority, has forfeited his right to dictate the party rules.
 Finally, it is up to Mr Brown to show that he is chairman and powerbroker in the true tradition of such heavyweight lawyers as Robert Strauss and Edward Bennett Williams. He must do this by persuading leaders such as Sam Nunn, Bill Bradley and Mario Cuomo that responsibility for a high purrpose in domestic and foreign policy cannot be trusted to a Republican Administration or be achieved in Congress or the governor's mansion.
 The pinnacle of power - the bully pulpit as Lincoln called it - dwells at 1600 Pennsylvania: Capitol Hill is second best.
 Alex Brummer is the winner of this year's Overseas Press Club award for the best foreign reporting of the United States.

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April 20, 1989

Inspectors damn bleak mental hospital

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 842 words

 
 Conditions at a hospital for mentally-ill people in Staffordshire have been described as deplorable in an report by government inspectors.
 They found that the circumstances in which more than 200 elderly patients were living at St Edward's hospital in Cheddleton, near Leek, provoked reactions of 'shock and anger'.
 Although the report has just been published, changes are under way in response to the criticism.
 The inspectors visited the hospital last summer and the local health authority was warned of the report's contents. 
 The report is bound to renew concern about standards of care in long-stay mental hospitals at a time when the alternative, care in the community, is under attack and the Government is under pressure to halt its gradual hospital closure programme.
 The inspectors, from the National Health Service Advisory Service and the Department of Health Social Services Inspectorate, were checking services for elderly people in North Staffordshire health district.
 Their report says services generally lack 'direction, shape, style and leadership'. But the strongest criticism is reserved for St Edward's, a typical Victorian asylum with, at the time of the inspection, 700 beds including 265 for the elderly mentally ill and almost 100 more for rehabilitation patients aged over 65.
 Behind an entrance and front garden maintained to a reasonable standard, the inspectors found poor maintenance with, on wards for the elderly, little sign of significant expenditure for several decades.
 In many wards, there were as many as 24 beds in four rows without any form of screening and with unacceptably little space between them. Some wards had upgraded toilet and bathroom facilities, but provision remained inadequate.
 Because of problems recruiting domestic staff, with vacancy rates at 14.5 per cent, cleaning was concentrated on the wards and was below standard in corridors and elsewhere.
 The inspectors note that the hospital's annual furniture and equipment budget was only Pounds 19,500; ward kitchens were well below environmental health standards; there was a lack of diversional therapy for patients; and the shift system for nurses and domestic staff discouraged recruitment.
 Elderly mentally ill patients had been 'relegated to the worst wards'.
 In language rarely used in such documents, the report says: 'The wards lack homely amenities, are sub-standard in design, bleak and inconvenient for nursing frail, disabled, confused and incontinent patients. Dormitories and washrooms are mainly featureless, lack of comfort, domestication and privacy.
 'The effect of these profesionally isolated, drab, depressing and de-personalising wards for elderly people on newly-admitted patients, relatives and new staff is one of shock and anger.'
 Care standards were correspondingly poor. 'The invariably inaccurate 'day and date' board on each ward reflects the hopelessness, apathy and resignation.
 'Care is largely unstructured, kindly but misguided and defensive. Cotsides and Buxton chairs are much in evidence.'
 Cotsides are used to keep patients on their beds. Buxton chairs are similarly used to constrain them in a seated position.
 The inspectors, who concluded that it would be better to close the wards than to improve them, and to spend money on community-based care homes, have prompted action six years ahead of changes planned under a new strategy for mental health care in North Staffordshire.
 The report should have appeared in February but was apparently held back while hospital improvements were agreed.
 West Midlands regional health authority has allocated Pounds 5 million to develop services for elderly mentally ill in neighbourhood hospitals and Pounds 2 million for two day hospitals. The district authority is to spend an extra Pounds 750,000 a year on 65 more psychiatric nurses and revised shift patterns.
 Elderly mentally ill patients will be moved out of St Edward's during the next three years, with beds in neighbourhood hospitals being freed for them by transferring 219 other elderly patients to private residential homes.
 Responsibility for care of the elderly mentally ill is being transferred from North Staffordshire's mental health unit to its elderly care unit.
 Mr Chris Calkin, elderly care manager, said yesterday: 'This report reflects the change of attitudes and approach to care for the elderly that has been taking place in the past few years. What it has done is to accelerate the pace of change.'
 However, Mr Bill Finney, deputy district manager, who was seconded to St Edward's shortly after the inspectors' visit, felt the report was too harsh. 'I personally think that the team went a little over the top.
 'I don't think they struck quite the right balance so that they stimulate change without having a counter-productive effect on the local population and the nearly 1,000 people working in the hospital.'
 Many changes had taken place at St Edward's and it had a flourishing future, he said.

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April 21, 1989

Commentary: Time to apply the brakes on divorce

BYLINE: By MELANIE PHILLIPS

LENGTH: 1038 words

 
 Single parents are becoming a hot political issue. Last month, official figures were published suggesting that nearly four marriages out of every ten were heading for divorce. The number of one-parent families has now passed one million, with nearly one child out of eight cared for by a single parent. Such figures are alarming. They imply a large and widening pool of emotional and material deprivation. They seem to furnish ammunition for the case bieng made by Mr John Moore, the Social Services Secretary, that something has to be done about single parents, who now claim some Pounds 3.4 billion per year in benefits.
 He has tried to dress up the issue as a moral concern, conjuring up the image of the typical single parent claimant as the feckless teeenager who brings a child into the world in order to cement her dependence upon the state. His concern, however, is probably rather cruder than a desire to alter the moral climate. It is much more likely that it is rooted in his endless quest to cut back his huge expenditure. 
 Single parents are useful since they can be presented as the undesereving poor, people who are disadvantaged only through their own wilful behaviour. That is why the image of the pregnant teenager is so potent. And some girls do get pregnant to jump the housing queue. But they are very much in the minority. The vast majority of single parents being housed ar older women who have been divorced. Suddenly, perhaps, not so undeserving. In fact, such women are often in the unfortunate position of receiving non-existent or inadequate maintenance. Depriving the woman of social security benefits would hardly address the central moral issue; it would seek to attack the effect while ignoring the cause. For the issue that needs attention is not the single parent and whether the state should sever her financial lifeline; the issue is divorce.
 Divorce is, quite simply, getting out of hand. Britain now has the highest divorce rate in Europe, and we're galloping up to the US rate too. At the same time, there's increasing evidence that the misery is causes to the warring marital partners as well as to the children has been underestimated. A study published last year by two researchers at Bristol Univeristy, Gwynn Davis and Mervyn Murch, revealed that a substantial proportion of divorced men and women wished they had stayed married to their former partners. Even among those who had remarried, 37 per cent of the men and 21 per cent of the women wished they had remained with their previous spouses.
 The evidence about the children is even more disturbing to those who may fondly imagine that our allegedly liberal attitudes have created a more benign environment. Research published last year by Ms Ann Mitchell of Edinburgh University found that nearly half the children she interviewed thought their parents' divorce was only temporary; five years after the divorce, one child out of six longed for the parents to be reconciled, even when one or both of them had remarried. Ms Mitchell concluded that children were more distressed by the break-up of the marriage than parents realised, and that most children would prefer to continue living with both of them, despite the marital discord.
 Parents who are unhappy with each other often justify their decision to divorce on the grounds that their children would be made even unhappier if their parents persevered with a dead or destructive relationship. This sounds like the worst form of dishonest self-justification in the light of the findings in Second Chances, a book by American researchers Judith Wallerstein and Sandra Blakeslee, which demonstrates that to a child the divorce of its parents is akin to a bereavement with traumatic and lasting ill effects. All the children interviewed would have preferred their parents to stay together; most still hoped for a reconciliation, even five years later; three out of five felt rejected by at least one parent, 'sensing they were a piece of psychological baggage left over from a regretted journey'; more than ten years later they were vulnerable and anxious about their own relationships.
 The authors comment that children don't see divorce as a second chance; they feel their childhood has been lost forever, and almost half became worried, under-achieving, self-deprecating and sometimes angry adults.
 We have surely to seek ways of minimising this damage and distress from which spring so many social ills. The radical right think the way to do it is by making divorce more difficult; a recent pamphlet by the Social Affairs Unit implies that the sole reason for the huge leap in divorce is our liberal divorce law. Accordingly its author, George Brown, is scathing about proposals by the Law Commission to remove the notion of fault from divorce, thus appearing to make it even easier. In fact, this is a simplistic and unhelpful diagnosis. As the Law Commission points out, all kinds of social and cultural shifts have fuelled the rate of marriage breakdown, which is growing even in countries where divorce is prohibited.
 Once the marriage has really broken down, the current divorce procedure which encourages argument and acrimony can only deepen distress. But the Law Commission's proposals, which would entail a divorce process taking about a year, would probably help reduce the divorce rate. For there is evidence that the present legal aid procedures, under which divorcing couples get only a limited amount of a solicitor's time, actually help rush the process through. The couple gets divorced at breakneck speed and only then starts to realise the effect on the children or the descent into poverty. Time is necessary; and so are conciliation and counselling. If more unhappy couples were counselled over time, then not only would the distress of separation be lessened for all concerned; all the evidence is that a significant proportion of those marriages could be saved.
 If the Government were to start talking about a national conciliation scheme and a far higher priority for marriage guidance, then one might begin to take ministers' protestations about family life and parental responsibility a little more seriously.

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April 22, 1989

Green Front: A small start for big changes - Changing patterns of rural life, changing priorities in education are keeping the village school under pressure

BYLINE: By DAVID GOW

LENGTH: 1298 words

 
 In the old days, not really that long ago, the teacher lived 'above the shop' and the school closed every now and again for acorn-picking and gathering rosehips. Every child's name was written in elaborate copper-plate on a bound blue volume and several recurred as generation after generation spent their childhood and early adolescence here.
 Nowadays, village schools, even those along muddy lanes deep in the heart of Constable country, have to grapple with multi-cultural education, an ageing population, demanding parents who have recently bought up a local farm but commute to London and a Government that is engineering convulsive change in social and economic relations as well as education.
 The old school in Stratford St Mary, Suffolk, now houses a computing firm while the first house you see by the river, on entering the village, is an expensive restaurant (set luncheon menu Pounds 15) with BMWs and Vauxhall Carltons jamming the carpark. The five pubs are deserted except by a small passing trade and Main Street is empty. Posters on the wall advertise a coffee morning for Armenia. 
 The new school, built only four years ago, is as smart and squeaky clean as the neighbouring executive houses, neo-Georgian, with white sutters and double garages, American-style gardens and paths in front. In it you find all the problems and tensions, excitement and noise, talent and achievement, you might expect but, too, the heightened dilemma faced by 'progressive' teachers in a small community.
 Village schools have lived constantly under the threat of erosion and closure but now the pressures are of an altogether tougher nature. Ruth Eccles, deputy head (that is, second of two full-time teachers) at Bentley, says wryly: 'Mrs Thatcher's policy of selling council homes and the rise in house prices are going to doom us.'
 The school lies to the side of 70 acres of woodland, with a 100 foot drop at the rear rising to a council estate where houses are being sold the second time around at around Pounds 80,000. 'We're going from a younger village to one where retired people are moving in; lots of elderly people from London,' says Ruth. 'You can't be a first-time buyer here with prices at those levels.'
 The school has 49 children but only one 'rising five' joined at the start of the year. 'If ever I see a Volvo going past with four babies in it, I feel a baby-snatcher,' jokes David Leney, Bentley's new head (and the only other teacher). The school came under review when a previous head left but has survived.
 At Stratford St Mary Terry Stendall is the very model of a modern head, open, thoughtful, progressive, but under severe stress. The day before we visited the governors had met to discuss sex education. One is the local Baptist minister who declared that he would insist from his pulpit that sex must come with marriage but realised he had no right to impose this view on others ..
 The result, as in other areas of the school's curriculum, is a constant compromise: recognising the parents' demand for traditional values but leaving teachers free to answer questions in an honest manner which opens the children up to experiences more common in the inner city. A village school cannot live unless it takes its parents with it, much more so than the urban comprehensive paying lip-service to such notions of community.
 'The staff and myself have to be very sensitive to different views. At the one extreme we have people who arrive with CND stickers on their cars and at the other we have strong supporters of the Government. I think it would be silly to pretend there are not differences. We set out with the view we are one school,' Terry declares seriously. (The 86 children are encouraged to wear uniform and do).
 Suffolk insists that both schools adopt and enact multi-cultural policies. Neither school has a black face in it though Stratford did an exchange with a predominantly Asian school in Leicester. Terry insists that this is right and proper because 'children from this priveleged background can end up as employers making decisions about people from different racial origins and countries so I think it's imporant the question should be raised and discussed even at primary level.'
 Just as he needs to convince parents of the need for this, so he has to bend the curriculum to meet pressures from parents that their children learn the basics - writing, spelling, reciting tables. David Leney agrees. His school is re-evaluating its reading scheme and thinking of abandoning it but he recognises that if the staff handle it badly it could be putting across an ethos that would make the village throw up its hands in horror.
 The links between school and community are close and estranged at the same time. Most of the staff live their own lives, often up to 20 miles away, where they can escape the ever-present scrutiny. Yet they play a pivotal role, especially the heads, using the schools as a community resource, encouraging nonworking mothers to help out or take courses on the school's computers, giving the village (and the surrounding ones which form their catchment area) a sense of social cohesion.
 It might be something as simple as putting on the school panto in the village hall (at Bentley they have little choice as the main school room houses the TV and video, piano, workshops, and accommodates physical education lessons as well as ordinary lessons). 'An elderly woman came up to me and said how much she'd enjoyed it as she had sung 70 years ago in the school's production of The Pied Piper of Hamelin.'
 Or a group of parents deciding that the children deserved better than to walk almost a mile to the nearest playing fields (which would mean carrying equipment with them) so they commissioned plans, wielded shovels and wheelbarrows, and built a new playground at the back.
 But the economic and demographic changes mean that the experience of people like Muriel, the school secretary, is becoming rarer. 'I've been here 24 years. I was a pupil here. So was my father, he's in the blue book .. When I was here you stayed until you left school at 14 .. I started off as the cleaner and secretary, then I dropped cleaning and became a dinner lady, and then I dropped that. Now there's only teacher and head left and I'll have done it all.'
 What's more, the Government's reforms and those of the local education authority have to be met. Both heads have to teach but are being driven into ever-stronger management roles: like fitting Mr Baker's new curriculum into their carefully-drafted timetable which relies heavily on staff working with different age-groups in the same room and pupils working, sometimes alone, on different subjects, as well as on part-time help and peripatetic teachers.
 'Two teachers, unless they are renaissance man and woman, are not going to be able to have expertise in the full range of the curriculum,' says David Leney, pointing to the core of a village school's dilemma. If he really carried out Mr Baker's diktat he'd be in the school every day of the week. 'I can name you four curriculum innovations which I could tackle now. You can't do that with two teachers unless you're prepared to sit up all night and I'm not.'
 Carol Faiers, a parent governor and part-time helper, is positive and enthusiastic. 'It meant a lot of heart-searching in terms of standards and achievement when we decided on the school. But up to the aged of 11 we can cope with that because it gives them such a good grounding. Perhaps they can build up a broader range of experiences at a later date,' she adds cautiously. Here, as at Stratford's St Mary's, close contact between staff and pupils and between school and parents outweighs all the disadvantages.

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April 22, 1989

Deng's decade of decline / A test of the mood of the crowds in Beijing's Tiananmen Square who are clamouring for change in China

BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER

LENGTH: 1098 words

 
 The size of the crowds assembling last night in Tiananmen Square before today's cremation of former party leader Hu Yaobang suggests that China is about to experience one of the political upheavals which have marked its history every 10 years since 1949.
 After the founding of the Communist state in 1949, the disastrous Great Leap Forward in 1959, and the peak of the Cultural Revolution in 1969, it was another 10 years before Deng Xiaoping lauched China down the road of reform.
 History rarely runs according to such neat timetables - however they are calculated - but whatever happens over the next few weeks, a political reckoning is long overdue in China. For 10 years Deng with the other old men who have led the party for over half a century have introduced profound changes but have left the political system practically untouched. 
 The party cannot continue to run a burgeoning free market economy with a Stalinist political system. Nor brush aside its responisiblity for the Cultural Revolution and the backwardness of much of the country.
 'Seventy years after the May 4 movement, our country is still poverty-stricken and ruled by wolves' said a public letter read out by students from Tianjin. Chinese students have traditionally served as a catalyst for change since 1919 when they were beaten by police demonstrating in Tiananmen Square for demanding western science and democracy. They played a key role in the Thirties, rallying they country against Japanese imperialism, took the lead during the Cultural Revolution, played a part in 1976 when the Gang Of Four fell, and last showed their power in 1986, when student demonstrations were used by his opponents to bring about Mr Hu's downfall.
 Although the students who have been protesting since Mr Hu died of a heart attack last Saturday are as disorganised and muddled as they were three years ago there is enough dissatisfaction on every level of society to make this an explosive moment.
 Mr Hu, the man they are now venerating and whose death has become a long-awaited pretext for revolt, is a symbol of failure. Backed by his lifelong ally and mentor, Deng Xiaoping, he had thought in 1986 to push through the political reforms which Mr Deng had promised in 1980. Mr Hu had also tried to pension off the old guard in the provinces and the army. But when students demonstrated in his support, and social unrest followed the economic confusion created by the last round of reforms in late 1984, the conservatives united to bring him down.
 Nothing has gone right for Deng since then. His own authority has steadily diminished since he failed to stand by Mr Hu, his succession plan is in ruins and reform has come to a stop. 'If Deng had retired five years ago, as he had promised, we would still love him but now we hate him. He is blocking change,' a student on Tiananmen Square said yesterday.
 The little bottles which were hung around the square during the 1976 demonstrations to show support for Mr Deng, whose given name, Xiaoping, can mean little bottle, have been ritually smashed on university campuses.
 The anger and cynicism is astonishing. Mr Deng's leadership has, after all, overseen the fastest rise in living standards this century, but confidence in the government is at its lowest ebb for more than a decade. An inflation rate of 36 per cent has hit many people badly. The peasants are angry over low grain prices. The army is running short of funds and has turned to profiteering. The education and medical care systems have been run down and the earnings of the intelligentsia keep falling against those of workers and traders. Corruption and greed have warped the entire society. Almost nothing can be bought or negotiated honestly. Public anger is directed against party officials who can manipulate supplies form the state sector to speculate on the free market. It is especially directed against the children of senior officials, including Mr Deng's and partly leader Zhao Ziyang's who can peddle their influence but remain immune from prosecution.
 Since Mr Hu fell two years ago the party has swung wildly from attempting to push ahead with new price reforms to the currrent attempt to return to central planning. Premier Li Peng's 'readjustment' policies are already seen as a mistake. Consumer production keeps growing but vital industries, such as energy, transportation and raw materials, are declining. Energy shortages have caused many factories to close and the policies designed to favour the state sector over the freebooting rural industries are creating a recession in the countryside where most people live.
 All this is dangerous enough. But the example of the political reforms in the Soviet Union, Poland and Hungary, are another powerful factor. 'If the Soviets can have direct elections why can't we?' many students ask. The party has ruled out such democratic reforms as inappropriate for China but the students believe the only way to control corruption is through public supervision.
 'We want a system of checks and balances, a free press, a proper legal system and a government that listens to the people,' students told me. 'We want to limit the power of the bureaucracy and a system of dictatorship which allows one man to say we will now earn everything from the East or everything from the West. We need a better education system so people will understand democracy and why we need it. We want to end the feudal society which tolerates dictatorship and autocracy,' they argued.
 Many admitted they had little hope the government would now bow to their wishes but said the demonstrations would serve to educate the masses.
 The regional unrest that has torn apart the Soviet Union under Mr Gorbachev is hardly encouraging even for those within the leadership who would like to follow his example. Without strong central control China, with a population nearly four times as big, could become ungovernable. It is a political rule learned in China over several millennia.
 But as Mr Deng enters his 85th year amid evidence that the political career of party leader Zhao Ziyang, his natural successor, is already over, the fierce political struggle must be about to climax. Neither diplomats nor students have any idea which leaders could now emerge to replace Mr Deng or the others. Nor how the economic reforms can continue without price rises which will stoke further social unrest. Yet it is clear that the message of the demonstrations is that powerful support exists in favour of faster political and economic change.

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April 22, 1989

Weekend Money: UK part-timers less equal than others / A look at the record of European countries on employment rights for part-timers

BYLINE: By MIKE GEORGE

LENGTH: 716 words

 
 The European Commissioner for Social Affairs, Ms Vasso Papandreou, called for a pan-European code of practice on pregnancy and maternity rights and better childcare provision at a recent TUC Women's Conference.
 Unlike many other countries in the EC, and elsewhere, both employment rights and welfare benefits in this country vary considerably, depending on your hours of work, length of service, and rate of pay. Those on low pay and those working part-time have significantly fewer rights and lower entitlements to benefits than others.
 In most other European countries, including Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece and Netherlands, Norway, Spain and Sweden, part-timers have the same rights as full-timers. In West Germany, manual workers on less than 10 hours a week have no sick pay entitlement for six weeks, but are equal in all other respects. Only Ireland and Italy appear to discriminate against part-timers. 
 Britain's attitude appears strange, to say the least; especially as this country's current and future success supposedly depends on a more flexible work force and ministers are currently trying to encourage married women, and older people, to re-enter the labour market, as the supply of teenagers declines.
 The Budget eased the restrictions on earnings for pensioners and reduced the National Insurance 'poverty traps' somewhat, but did not attempt to tackle other continuing inequalities of net income and rights which are so often barriers to obtaining decent employment.
 A great deal could be done financially to encourage more flexibility and re-entry. For, quite apart from the continuation of very high marginal tax rates for poorer families, the system of rights and benefits for those in work can penalise the very people supposedly in demand.
 The following checklist illustrates this point; almost all the employment 'rights' below can have financial consequences.
 Available to all employees are:
 Rights against discrimination on grounds of sex or race; rights regarding health and safety; the right to joint and be active in a union; the right to time off for ante-natal visits.
 Low-Earners may lose out under the following 'rights' which are related to earnings and/or National Insurance contribution records. Loss of rights to full or partial benefit usually affects those not making NI contributions on earnings of Pounds 41 or less a week:
 Unemployment benefit; statutory sick pay; sickness benefit; invalidity benefit; widow's payment; widow's allowance; widowed mother's allowance; widow's pension; statutory maternity pay; maternity allowance; retirement pension(s).
 The other major point of discrimination affects people whose normal weekly hours are between eight and 16; those working less than 8 hours are entitled to none of the following rights. Unless otherwise stated, the period of continuous service needed for 'under 16 hours' workers to gain these rights is five years.
 The equivalent periods for those working over 16 hours a week are:
 Right to an itemised pay statement - on or before first wage payment; protection against unfair dismissal - after two years; written reasons for dismissal - after six months; redundancy pay, and rights - after two years; minimum period of notice - after one month; statement of terms and conditions of employment - after 13 weeks; guaranteed pay, if laid off - after one month; medical suspension pay - after one month; time off for trade union duties - immediately.
 A few other rights and benefits, apart from these main ones, generally fall into the same framework. People on fixed-term contracts are also liable to lose rights and benefits, especially if the contract is for less than three months.
 It is still unclear whether 1992's 'harmonisation' in Europe will affect the rights of part-time and low-paid workers in this country. And there is quite a political tussle ahead for Vasso Papandreou over whether her 'Social Charter,' which includes these employment rights, can be effectively hitched to the single European market process in Brussels.
 Not the least of her concerns is the British government's objections to any 'levelling up' in the so-called Social Dimension of Europe: a great many people must be hoping that she succeeds.

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April 26, 1989

Health Guardian: Stopwatch on caring - Patient care is more than just treating ailments, it involves spending time and sympathy on discovering the underlying distress. Proposals in the White Paper and GP contract make some doctors worry that they just won't have the time

BYLINE: By JUDY SADGROVE

LENGTH: 1078 words

 
 Susan had a skin complaint which had bothered her on and off since adolescence. There seemed to be no effective treatment for the crop of angry boils that she suffered from time to time. One day she decided to consult her new GP. The doctor had a look and then encouraged Susan, aged 34, to talk about her life in general.
 It transpired that Susan was deeply frustrated by seven years in a dead-end job and a series of unsatisfying relationships with married men. After 40 minutes, Susan emerged from the consulting room strengthened by her GP's sympathy and determined to tackle her real problems. 
 Janet Millar is a GP in the London borough of Hackney. She is well aware that the patient's presenting complaint, such as Susan's boils, is frequently not the real reason for attending. Dr Millar says that when she does not feel under pressure, she can listen carefully and 'penetrate the layers of reality' of the patient's complaint so as to understand the underlying distress. But this, she emphasises, takes time. At the moment, when she is busy, she invites people in need of counselling to return for a protracted appointment.
 This is standard practice. It has been estimated that up to 30 per cent of patients consulting a GP have an underlying psychosocial problem although they present with a specific physical condition. They often turn up at a time of stress, when they have come to discuss far more than their physical health.
 One of the things worrying Dr Millar about the proposals of the White Paper and the new GP contract is that any increase in the number of her patients (an elightened administration in Hackney encourages smaller lists) to maintain income via fees per head will mean less time to listen to the patient. She doesn't think that she will change the way she practises medicine, but she does think that she will suffer financially as a result.
 Janet Millar chose to become a GP because she believed in the healing relationship between doctor and patient. This is likely to be eroded by the accent on mass screening and immunisation, which will not only cut listening time but also shift the emphasis on to crudely measurable indices of health. The person will be pared down to his or her basic physical functioning.
 Dr Millar also draws attention to her elderly patients, three or four of whom turn up every morning. They won't learn how to use the season ticket because what they want farm more than their repeat prescriptions is the opportunity to talk.
 Dr Eleanor Clarke, a GP in comfortable Chorleywood, agrees. She characterises the need to talk as the 'While I'm here, doctor' pheonomenon. Some patients, like Susan, proffer a specific complaint, going on to inquire whether it might be caused by stress - the stress of caring for an elderly relative at home, say. Others enter the consulting room and burst into tears, sobbing that they can't cope, that their child is being bullied, that their marriage is breaking up and that, by the way, they also have a bad back.
 Dr Clarke is concerned about the financial pressure to try to increase list size and the disincentive to take on extra medical staff, because of the proposed changes in the basic practice allowance. This will mean less time for patients and will discriminate against part-time women doctors, often preferred by female patients.
 Why do people turn to the GP? Dr Paul Julian, who also practices in Hackney, is convinced that in this secular age the doctor's experience of death, disease and distress is unique. Knowledge of the dark side of life prompts people to trust their GP with all sorts of shameful disclosures. According to Dr Julian, the new emphasis on prevention is a cop-out. 'Anyone can carry out screening,' he says, 'but only a doctor has the training and experience to deal with disease and, above all, help people come to terms with it.' Other doctors who support prevention might disagree.
 People's unquestioning trust in the GP will be eroded, Julian predicts, by competitiveness in the NHS - founded on the spirit of co-operation. He describes elderly patients lost in the new split between health and social services and reports patients already saying to him: 'You won't want to deal with me. I cost too much.'
 Dr Dipak Kalra, another inner-city GP, uses the following case to illustrate how financial constraints on prescribing and referral practice will create an 'explosion of mistrust' between doctor and patient, and the growth of defensive medicine as practised within the US free market economy:
 Michael had had a headache for days. Fearful that he had a brain tumour, he went to his GP, who reassured him that cancer was unlikely and a brain scan or referral to a neurologist unneccessary. In the future, Michael might see his doctor as a tight bastard, unwilling to shell out for a scan. And his GP, fearing litigation in the event of Michael developing cancer, might decide to send him for anxiety-provoking tests.
 Presently, patients trust their doctor to act in their best interest and save money only where appropriate. But the concept of the cheap doctor anxious not to overspend raises anxieties about inferior treatment. Tranquillisers, for instance, cost less than anti-depressants or a course of psychotherapy. Likewise, admision for surgery might be delayed so that the patient is sent to the cheapest hospital, rather than to the best hospital, the nearest one or the one with the shortest waiting list.
 Professor Andy Haines, professor of primary health care at London's University College, points out that 70 per cent of the population consult their GP once a year (women and children more frequently) and 90 per cent every five years. The average length of patient consultation stands at around eight minutes.
 He predicts that longer lists (where they occur), the inevitable concentration on activities that maintain income, such as trying to achieve screening and immunisation targets (where possible), tests on new patients and all the new administration of the practice income and expenditure is likely to affect the quality of time spent with patients.
 Additionally the changes in general practice combined with those proposed for the hospital sector will lead to greater fragmentation of health care and make it particularly difficult to look after vulnerable groups, such as the elderly and the mentally ill, who require close co-ordination of care.

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April 26, 1989

The Day in Politics: Clarke berates the BMA for 'scurrilous' leaflet - NHS shake-up

BYLINE: By NIKKI KNEWSTUB

LENGTH: 438 words

 
 The Health Secretary, Mr Kenneth Clarke, rounded on the British Medical Association yesterday for the campaign it is orchestrating against his National Health Service white paper and plans for GPs' contracts.
 During lively health questions in the Commons, Mr Clarke said the new contracts would encourage new services for patients. The BMA's leaflet outlining its opposition, which it has distributed to GPs, was 'scurrilous', he said. 
 Several Tory backbenchers asked questions about the care of the elderly under the new contracts, saying they had received frightened calls from elderly constituents who had been told by the GPs that they would not be able to be treated when the new contracts came.
 Mr Clarke said: 'The contract is designed to improve services to the elderly. It is scandalous nonsense to claim any elderly patient is threatened by it.'
 'I can only assume that the action of doctors is influenced by the information put out from Tavistock Square (the BMA headquarters).' The leaflet 'contains scurrilous nonsense. It is a long time since I have encountered a trade union that is prepared to spend millions of pounds of its members' money on spreading untruths.'
 Ms Harriet Harman, the shadow health spokesman, said patient care would suffer because of cash incentives to the doctors to take on more patients.
 Mr Clarke said: 'Arguments about waiting lists are a complete red herring. Doctors will enhance their incomes by taking on new services and reaching a new performance targets.'
 Mr Robert Adley (C. Christchurch) said Mr Clarke should demand an apology from the BMA for the 'distortions with which they are trying to frighten patients.'
 Mr Clarke replied: 'It is most unfortunate that in the course of negotiating this contract, some doctors have gone out of their way to cause needless alarm to patients. There are no threats to patients arising out of it.'
 Later, during Prime Minister's question time, Mrs Thatcher endorsed a condemnation of doctors by Mr Tim Smith (C. Beaconsfield), who accused them of using patients as a 'political battering ram' over the reforms.
 He said they had 'used' patients in general and frightened elderly and vulnerable patients about the proposed reforms. 'Some doctors have behaved in a most irresponsible manner.'
 Mrs Thatcher said she 'wholly' agreed with Mr Smith. The Government's aim was to improve the service.
 'The objective of the NHS white paper is to give better health care and greater choice and produce greater satisfaction to those working in the health service who respond successfully to local needs.'

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The Guardian (London)

April 26, 1989

Parliamentary Sketch: Overweight health minister ignores doctors' orders

BYLINE: By ANDREW RAWNSLEY

LENGTH: 561 words

 
 Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, told MPs that over the coming month he would be seeing 'hundreds and thousands of doctors.'
 Oh dear. Everybody already knew that Mr Clarke's condition was serious, but few of us had realised it was quite this bad. Worse still, all of the doctors the minister sees appear to be giving him the same black diagnosis. He is far too over-weight with dogma and hopelessly addicted to privatising the health service. 
 It has already led to a nasty rash of bad publicity and loss of opinion poll. Mr Clarke's only chance, according to the British Mecical Association, is to give up his plans for the NHS before it is too late.
 Unfortunately, Mr Clarke is resisting treatment. Over and over again yesterday he insisted that there was nothing wrong with him.
 But, if anything, his condition was actually deteriorating before our eyes. For, minutes into his appearance at the despatch box, Mr Clarke came out in a terrible hot flush of rhetoric about the BMA leaflets warning that elderly patients would suffer because of the Government's proposals.
 'The leaflet contains scurrlous nonsense,' Mr Clarke raged. 'Alarmist ..absurd .. scandalous ..untruths.' It was a very severe attack. It took Mr Clarke some minutes to recover. Ron Leighton, the Labour MP for Newham North East, tried to refer the minister to some consultants. Mr Leighton had 'conducted a poll of all the doctors in my consituency.' Forty0seven of the 50 doctors polled, 94 per cent of the sample, oppossed the Government's proposals.
 Mr Clarke preferred the results of his own poll of a representative sample of one Health Secretary. One hundred per cent of him supported his proposals. Mr Clarke, who enjoys his food, is a fairly large sample of opinion, but not perhaps an altogeether representative one.
 All the same, his attack on the BMA did seem to catch the mood of Tory backbenchers. To a man and woman they thought that all the Government needed to cure its difficulties over the NHS proposals was a dose of hot adjectives about the doctors. Dame Jill Knight fumed about 'misinformation and lying attacks' by the BMA. Robert Adley preferred 'mindless barrage of propaganda'. A near-hysterical Robert Jones fulminated against 'this outrageous campaign of frightening little old ladies.'
 Certainly one old lady appears to have been at least a little frightened by the doctors. For in the subsequent question time Mrs Thatcher went out of her way to adopt a slightly softer, more conciliatory line towards the doctors, certainly rather more so than Mr Clarke or her backbenchers. She was wearing to fashion-conscious colleagues, Gunmetal Grey with a hint of Caring Pink. And thought there was plenty of the grey in her remarks about the doctors, there was also an un-characteristic hint of the pink.
 We were back with a more familiar Mrs Thatcher when the subject turned to her row with Chancellor Kohl over the modernisation of Nato's nuclear artillery in West Germany.
 The Prime Minister was again on the offensive against the Germans. She announced that she will personally be leading an attack into German territory at the weekend to drop huge amounts of her opinions on Herr Kohl.
 Yes, I know we were supposed to have stopped fighting them more than 40 years ago, but it is too late to tell the old girl now.

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The Guardian (London)

April 28, 1989

Law Guardian: Home-made misery - The abuse of elderly people in residential homes was exposed in a TV documentary last year. Today a report on the first 96 cases to come before the Residential Homes Tribunal is published

BYLINE: By SARAH HARMAN

LENGTH: 1096 words

 
 Five years ago, amid growing concern about the standards of care in private residential homes, Parliament passed the Registered Homes Act. Four years ago the Registered Homes Tribunal which was set up to adjudicate in disputes between the home owners and the new registration authorities (local councils and health authorities) began work.
 What has happened since? Our study of the first 96 cases to come before the Tribunal shows indecisive and inefficient registration authorities, wide variations in the standards applied by councils, insufficient powers for the authorities to impose specific conditions on dubious proprietors, inconsistent rulings by the Tribunal on whether poor standards of care is sufficient for disqualification, and a reversal of Parliamentary intent so that the burden of proof now rests not on potential proprietors but on the registration authorities to prove inadequate standards.
 The Act requires homes caring for more than four residents to be registered and gives the registration authority power to refuse registration, cancel registration or impose certain conditions upon registration. 
 At the same time as the Act came into force, a working party sponsored by the DHSS and convened by the Centre for Policy on Ageing, published a Code of Practice, Home Life, which was intended to assist registration authorities in carrying out their duties under the Act. Many involved in the care of elderly and disabled people wre concerned because the Act is not particularly detailed and they would have liked to have seen the Code of Practice given the force of law.
 The sheer scale of the responsibility on registration authorities to ensure good standards in private residential care is enormous. The numbers of people cared for in residential homes in the private and voluntary sector is simply staggering. The Government itself, through Income Support, was in May 1988 paying for some 140,000 residents to be cared for in the private sector. The amount paid to these homes is now nearly Pounds 900 million per year - which represents an increase in public funding of 8,780 per cent since 1979 and is equivalent of 28 per cent of total local social service expenditure.
 The cases show that some people in residential care homes have been subject to the most appalling physical and emotional abuse. Residents have been verbally abused to make them sign over cash benefits to proprietors, bound with cord, left on commodes for hours on end, called foul names, left to lie in linen soiled with excreta and sodden with urine by way of punishment, neglected to the extent that some have suffered severe injury in falls, and been placed in overcrowded, 'institutional' type accommodation. Many home-owners have turned out to have serious criminal convictions for such matters as deception and assault, and some, although without a criminal past themselves, have made close business associations with the most undesirable people.
 The Act empowers the registration authority to cancel or refuse registration where an owner is not a 'fit person' to run a home. Unfortunately, the Act gives no guidance as to what constitutes a 'fit person' and the Tribunal, lacking clear guidance, has made some inconsistent and unsatisfactory decisions.
 Poor standards of care and inadequate levels of staffing ought to be sufficient to indicate that an owner is not a 'fit person'. However, the Tribunal has not adjudicated consistently on this point and has allowed homes to continue where registration authorities have tried to close them because standards of care have been little short of appallilng. In a recent case in which the Tribunal found there had been many early shortcomings, it allowed the owners to continue to see if they could do any better.
 The Code of Guidance emphasises the importance of all residents in private and voluntary care being allowed privacy, autonomy and dignity. Residential homes should be as like a resident's own home and as uninstitutional as possible. The Code requires that every resident, unless there are special circumstances, should have the opportunity to have their own private room. Unfortunately, some registration authorities have not given as much weight to this as others.
 Because the Code of Guidance does not have the force of law and because the Act does not give registration authorities the powers they need, many efforts made by authorities to close homes have been unsuccessful and residents continue to live in circumstances far from satisfactory.
 When the Act was first passed, some registration authorities were under the impression that inherent in the legislation was a power to insist on certain conditions being met if a home was to continue running. At various times, registration authorities have, for instance, insisted that particular undesirable persons had no involvement in the home, have insisted that safety precautions be installed and required any other steps they though necessary to safeguard the interersts of the residents. However, the High Court in adjudicating on cases referred to them on appeal have made it clear that the powers of registration authorities in imposing conditions on the running of the home are extremely limited to such matters as conditions controlling the age, sex or categories of persons who may be admitted to the home.
 Similarly, the early decisions recorded indicate that the Tribunal was u9nder the impression that if it allowed a borderline appeal, it could make the continued running of the home subject to certain conditions. Again, the High court has considered this point and had taken the view that the Tribunal, like the registration authority, is restricted under the Act to imposing only the most basic conditions relating not to the way that the home is run, but to the type of resident who may be admitted.
 Mr Justice Roche in a recent appeal judgment in the High Court has stated that the 'primary duty' of a registration authority is to register a home, the burden of proof being on the authority to prove that standards are not adequate rather than on the home-owner to show that he or she can run a good home. Since it was clearly the intention of Parliament when passing the Act to ensure good care for those in residential homes, this is a particularly unfortunate interpretation.
 Parliament must act swiftly to amend the Act and give Home Life, the Code of Guidance, the force of law.
 No Place Like Home by Harriet Harman MP and Sarah Harman, published by NALGO, price Pounds 1.50.

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April 29, 1989

Diary: Strudel at Bloom's in the Spring

BYLINE: By JOHN BYRNE

LENGTH: 1064 words

 
 To Aldgate and Bloom's, just a couple of doors up from the Whitechapel Gallery where the miraculous Joan Miro is at play, for a chinwag with the pencil-thin Peter Fluck of Spitting Image. Invariably forget how tall he and long-time partner, Roger Law, are. Seven feet ten, at a guess. Also forget that London always a good ten degrees warmer than Wormit. Shirt sleeves in April. Whatever next? The restaurant is busy, lots of coming and going. An elderly waiter in immaculate white jacket greets us at the door and shows us briskly to our table. Chopped liver and a restorative glass of beetroot borscht for me, something-I-don't-quite-catch and chips for my companion. The elderly waiter disappears in a crackle of starch.
 Peter and I mourn the passing of so many old-style eateries up and down the country where one might dine well for ninepence and have one's boots polished whilst waiting for the fish course. 
 The elderly waiter is back in a trice, an ice-cream scoop of chopped liver and the something-I-didn't-quite-catch and chips laid before us. Something else, gentlemen .. a pudding, something sweet .. the strudel, perhaps? Our waiter hovers, pencil poised. I am touched at his solicitude. I order something that isn't the strudel but it's the strudel I get. Some coffee? Tea?
 It is explained to me that the waiters in Bloom's pay for the customers' orders out of their own pockets and are reimbursed only when said customers stump up at the end of their snack/lunch/dinner/whatever. No risk to proprietor. Hence the hovering. What a perfectly ingenious system. But what anxiety for the poor waiters. There is a visible relaxation of the trapezoids when my host scribbles out a cheque at luncheon's end. There must surely be a wider application for this obviously successful, of somewhat medieval, arrangement of Mr Bloom's. Or perhaps it is enough that one doesn't have to ask for the bill twice.
 Back to Plumbers Row, E1, where I am introduced to the extraordinary Mrs Thatcher. I marvel at her body language, the way she moves, the casual shrug of the shoulders under the pinstripe suit. I am assured by Peter Fluck that her eyeballs are glued in a fixed position but can't help feeling that her gaze follows me around the room. Decidedly spooky. I marvel at the sheer brilliance of the technology, the work of engineering genius, Jim Hennequin, whose patented air-bag-computer-allied 'aminatronics' system is an obvious world beater. It does the heart good to know that not only will he and Spitting Image make us thrill and laugh but that the disabled will derive enormous benefit from the team's pioneering work. Computer whizz-toddler, Steve, lets me have a peek inside the box of electronic vermicelli he's lobotomising. Wondrous. Arise, Sir Jim. Arise, Sir Peter.
 Slow crawl from E1 via Fleet Street to the Strand by taxicab. Message at hotel. Mad dash across river to Olivier where hot-ticket Hamlet about to go up. Stalls, Row C, Aisle 4. Sprint upstairs. A minute in hand. Ask lighting guy inside auditorium which way? He points. I follow his finger. The houselights dim. I look down at the floor. Who can recite the alphabet backwards in the dark? A surge of dry ice from the onstage trap. Hamlet's Father's ghost walks. 'Scuse me, 'scuse me .. sorry, beg your pardon. People are very patient. I make it to my seat and peel off several layers of wool. Quite forget that London theatres are invariably a good 20 degrees, etc.
 Lots of young women in audience come to see Daniel Day-Lewis's Prince. And who can blame them? He's terrific. What courage, what conviction. I believe him totally when he tells Laertes how he loved Ophelia. And what an Ophelia! Stella Gonet, whom I haven't seen since she played Bernadette in The Slab Boys Trilogy at the Court, has to be the most affecting Ophelia of recent times. Her 'madness' is both chilling and heart-rending. Such bravery and intelligence in our younger actors. Bravo!
 To Joe Allen's in Covent Garden till the wee small hours. Do they still send round flowers to all first-night West End casts, I wonder? Bless you, Joe. Delicious lemon sole. Just as lively an atmosphere as in New York branch but less customer traffic between the tables and no TV show-reviews. A haven. Unlike NY where you stumble down the steps at curtain-down for your five-alarm chille and there you are .. or, rather, there's your baby .. being torn limb form limb and devoured raw by some no-neck bimbo on live television. And everybody's watching.
 So, when do we get a Joe Allen's in Glasgow? Mind you, they'd have to stay open a bit later than two in the morning when things are just starting to hum along Sauchiehall Street. For all I know there already is one in Glasgow, I'm never up that late myself. And so to bed
 Get up late. Well, latish. No, definitely late. The day flashes in. To the Queen's in Shaftesbury Avenue for the 6 o'clock matinee of Alan Bennett's Single Spies. Twenty minutes in before I twig it's Prunella Scales as Coral Browne in first of two-play bill. She is uncanny as HMQ in second play, A Question of Attribution. Author himself brilliant as Anthony Blunt, distant yet sharp; a perfect miniature, the tempera never once over-egged. Beautifully directed by Simon Callow who also appears as Guy Burgess in Play One and a Kelvinside-accented Special Branch man in Play Two. Am especially impressed that his accent, a touch heightened, remains consistent throughout. Have duly placed a small tick against his Spotlight entry. A thoroughly enriching evening at the theatre. I recall with great pleasure seeing Forty Years On at Apollo 20 years ago. Particularly enjoy the way in which Bennett interweaves art history and covert lives in Blunt play into seamless raiment with crewel-work decoration at its centre. Again, bravo! Out into the night air and long stroll through Covent Garden maze to car park with me navigating.
 Barely time to pick up baggage and grab a Chinese before hurtling towards Euston and overnight Motorail. Busman's holiday on the whole but nonetheless bracing for that. Who says the West End is dead? Oops, just noticed that Single Spies is National Theatre transfer. Ah, well. And so to Fife.
 John Byrne has just completed a three-part series on Glencoe for BBC television and has also written a six-part drama for BBC tv in Glasgow.

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April 29, 1989

Ex-offenders 'allowed to run nursing homes'

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 446 words

 
 Convicted criminals have been declared fit to run private homes for the elderly and disabled against the advice of local authorities, according to a report published yesterday.
 In one case, a woman convicted of stealing more than Pounds 1,000 from a home where she had worked was allowed to run a home in Wiltshire and handle its residents' financial affairs, the report says.
 The ruling was made by the Registered Homes Tribunal, which hears appeals against decisions by local authorities responsible for registering nursing and rest homes. 
 The tribunal has heard about 100 cases since its inceptionn in 1985.
 The report, by Ms Harriet Harman, the Labour health spokeswoman, and her sister, Ms Sarah Harman, a Kent solicitor, sets out 96 cases and criticises decisions by the tribunal and the legal framework in which it works.
 Ms Harriet Harman said: 'These cases show a scandalous situation where some elderly people, some people who are mentally ill or mentally disabled, are the victims of cruelty, greed, incompetence or neglect.'
 The number of private homes for elderly and disabled people accounts for 45 per cent of all nursing and rest-home accommodation. The social security bill for people in residential care has grown from Pounds 10 million in 1979 to about Pounds 1 billion today.
 The report, No Place Like Home, published by Nalgo, the local government union, says this represents a bottomless pit of public subsidy for private homes which are too often badly run and poorly policed.
 'There is evidence of abuse, binding residents with cord, misuse of drugs, fraud, fire hazard, lack of hygiene, and a sorry tale of bruised and miserable residents. And yet the cases in the report represent only the tip of the iceberg,' it says.
 The Harmans plan to draft a parliamentary bill which would tighten the law concerning private homes. They want to make serious criminal convictions an automatic disqualification, require applicants to disclose all convictions, and bar anyone who has one home de-registered from running another.
 Dr Paddy Carr, general secretary of the Registered Nursing Home Association, said he accepted there were sub-standard homes and sympathised with the view that people with criminal records should not be placed in charge of vulnerable residents.
 'Where the report talks about improving quality, we would fully support it. The problem is that it goes over the top when the issue is really all about the poor standard of inspection by many health authorities and local authorities.'
 No Place Like Home; Local Government Section, Nalgo, 1 Mabledon Place, London WC1H 9AJ; Pounds 1.50 plus p&p.

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May 1, 1989

Agenda: A touch of Utopia - Socialist Utopianism still flourishes in the New Britain

BYLINE: By HILARY WAINWRIGHT and BOB HOLMAN

LENGTH: 1351 words

 
 A new performance of socialism will be stealing the limelight this May Day. It comes from the Ginger Rogers-Fred Astaire tendency. Come on, you're thinking, it may be true that socialists nowadays have to lurk in camouflage but what on earth do two dancers of the Thirties and Forties have to do with May Day in the Eighties?
 Quite simply, they were, like Charlie Parker in modern jazz or the best players on the cricket field, virtuosos of improvisation on the basis of a resilient structure. And the only kind of socialism which has survived the last 10 years with integrity and confidence is a vision of mprovisaton based on a structure. To put it another way, it is a vision which projects a foundation of public wealth and democratic institutions on which human individuality can be universally expressed.
 A remarkable film is to be shown on Channel 4 tonight in which different angles on this view are presented, through the portraits of 11 socialists, ranging from Jack Jones improvising to build the pensioners movement to Marsha Marshall struggling to maintain the framework of a community in the pit village of Darfield Main. Included are the sacked workers from the Silent Night furniture company who, rather than go alone into the jungle of the labour market, formed a co-operative which now thrives on the custom of local residents. 
 Running through their political choreography is the idea of socialism as a foundation of economic and political equality on which people will step out to create diverse and unpredictable relations.
 Improvisation upon a structure means the pensioners' sheltered homes and community facilities in Southwark which the elderly residents themselves partly manage. It means the GLC funded Westway Launderette in Notting Hill, fought for and run by local women seeking conviviality and pleasure as well as clean clothes.
 It embraces the care and dignity which patients and staff contribute and gain at NHS health centres like the Gill Street Centre, Limehouse; the solidarity and commitment of campaigns within the black community with A. Sivandanan of the Institute of Race Relations describes and the mutual self education which Marsha Marshall from the mining village of Darfield Main found in Women Against Pit Closures.
 These projects, precarious in Mrs Thatcher's Britian, sing of a wider, but underestimated, vision. Underestimated because it has been marginalised in the East by a socialism crunched and crippled into monolithic structures and in the West, by a socialism flattened into pragmatism - improvisation without a structure. It needs to be affirmed against the false prophets who have arisen out of the crises of these socialisms past.
 First, it should be asserted, against the prophets of the New Right who hypocritically deny that structures exist in a capitalist society, in Mrs Thatcher's words that 'society does not exist, only individuals' - thereby making socialism appear as the sinister imposition of structure on previously free individuals. Even casual descriptions of Thatcher's Britain point to the working of structures. In Mark Carlin's film tonight, Jack Jones refers to the deaths from hypothermia amongst old people. Such deaths cannot be explained by the individual behaviour of each pensioner who died. Forget Edwina Currie's diagnosis: they died not because they failed to knit woolly hats but because their pensions were too low and their rents too high to afford the heating they needed; this in turn is because their labour was no longer valued on the market.
 Similarly Dr David Widgery describes how 70 per cent of the ailments of his East End patients are caused primarily by social deprivation and not individual pathology. As structures are revealed to constrain and sometimes determine individual lives, the question ceases to be that of the individual versus social structures and becomes that of which structures will meet the needs and realise the capacities of every individual.
 At the other end of the spectrum are those who deny individuality; who see individual needs as static and given, to be met from above with benevolence or contempt. As these assumptions have been blown apart by the stroppy insistence of groups whose needs could not be anticipated and neatly categorised, some of the advocates of this approach, whether in its Communist or its Social Democratic version, have retreated into a muddled individualism.
 Some have given up the shaping of alternative social frameworks or foundations entirely, as if out of guilt, or perhaps a sense of revenge, for a God that failed. Some have ended up welcoming Mrs Thatcher's revolution because she's destroyed the structures about which they now feel so ashamed but for which, at the time, they had no alternative and little criticism.
 This is where the Ginger Rogers tendency can hold its head up high on the May Day of Thatcherism's tenth anniversary - not to crow but to show the direction for a new political decade.
 The political tradition which advocates an egalitarian economic foundation for the fluidity of popular participation includes the people - like David Widgery, Sheila Rowbotham, Bob Rowthorn and Sivanadan on tonight's film - who from the early 70s were already critical of the welfare state and existing forms of public ownership. Not from the standpoint of the market but as the result of a commitment to democratic control by workers, users and the community.
 That's not to say they had the answers or could spell out the precise character of such a fuzzy goal. But in books and pamphlets written from experience of working both in and against the state; in critical magazines produced locally and by minorities in different unions; and through the initiatives of the women's movement - as well as of far-sighted shop stewards like those at Lucas Aerospace - they warned of the impending demise of a socialism that blocked off the improvised processes of popular power. Against the tradition of power concentrated in a centralised state, they pressed forward proposals for the popular management of public resources, in practice, though rarely in theory - which in part explains how easily their ideas are overlooked. They kept hold of both sides of a tense dialectic; the need for wealth to be publicly owned on the one hand; on the other, the need not only for open, accountable government but for democratic self management of all the institutions of daily life.
 The film 'Utopias' updates this tradition presenting its responses to old problems in new forms: the problem, for instance, of how to organise un-unionised workers this time in the form of office and technical workers working for the new finance sector in Docklands or casual, part-time women workers in shops and private services. Or its tentative answers to new problems arising from the left's control over limited local resources: the problem for instance of with whom in a community should a local council share its increasingly sparse resources, and how the decisions are to be made.
 The big underlying problem is that in Britain this tradition is strikingly separate from party politics, and therefore with a media whose political coverage is dominated by the lobby, rarely gains full expression, let alone access to power. 'Utopias' is trying to find ways of expressing a politics which officially does not exist.
 In some European countries, Germany in particular the Green Party has provided a voice but the British Green Party has been too concerned to differentiate itself from socialism - portrayed as a monolith - to provide a satisfactory political focus.
 Still, the achievement of improvisation upon a structure has never been easy, in any sphere; after all, intense agony, strain and sheer hard work, lay behind the apparently spontaneous and fluid harmony of Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers.
 Utopias will be shown on C4 tonight at 10.45pm. A longer version of this article will appear in the May/June issue of Interlink, available (Pounds 1.10p) from 9 Poland Street, London W1.

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The Guardian (London)

May 1, 1989

Consumers to be given legal teeth and a voice in Cabinet

LENGTH: 377 words

 
 A Minister of Cabinet rank at the head of a new Department of Consumer Affairs would be appointed by a Labour government to give the public power over the quality of their lives and to protect them from unscrupulous producers, a draft report of the consumer and the community policy review group states.
 The report, prepared under the joint leadership of Mr David Blunkett, a member of the national executive, and the party's education spokesman, Mr Jack Straw, says the priority of the new department, to be shadowed by a parliamentary select committee, would be a review of Britain's 30-year-old consumer protection law.
 Its aim would be to give consumers truthful and comprehensive information about products, to give them legal protection when firms go bankrupt, and to establish in law a duty to trade fairly and safely. 
 A Foods Standards Agency would be set up to monitor the quality of food and its production, while new funding to the National Consumer Council and other groups would give consumers powers to take class actions for compensation.
 In addition, a system of no-fault compensation woudl be introduced covering medicine, transport accidents, infected food and unsafe products, and advertisers would be required to publish corrective advertising where the original had been proved inaccurate.
 The public and private utilities, such as gas and electricity, would have to draw up customer service contracts specifying the service to be expected and the redress available. Disconnections without a court order would be made illegal, and outlawed altogether where young children or elderly people were concerned.
 Consumers would also be entitled to elect a consumer interest member on the board of the utilities, and to elect the management committee of a regional watchdog for each utility under the control of a new National Utility Consumer Council. An Office of Regulation for each utility would meanwhile oversee the strategy, pricing and investment and deal with any complaints which had implications for large numbers of consumers.
 The report also says savers should have more control over how their money is invested, and proposed a new class of director accountable to savers rather than shareholders.

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The Guardian (London)

May 2, 1989

Pledge to launch drive on violence

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 311 words

 
 Northumbria police have confirmed they will go ahead today with the launch of a long-planned campaign against violent crime.
 A spokeman for the force said yesterday that the Monkseaton shooting had reinforced the need for the six-month initiative, which will include the extra use of special constables, a policy of seeking remands in custody in all cases involving violence, and disrorderly behaviour in pubs. 
 During the campaign, which the force's chief constable, Sir Stanley Bailey, acknowledges will lead to an apparent rise in crime, police will give extra consideration to pursuing prosecutions when victims are unwilling to take further action, and will encourage timid people through publicity to report attacks.
 Crime patterns over recent years will also be re-examined to identify when and where violence is most common.
 The campaign is also concerned to put violence in perspective.
 As the force believes 'fear can be just as damaging to our lives as crime itself', leaflets will point out that only 3 to 4 per cent of all recorded crime involve violence.
 'Many categories, such as attacks on the elderly, are much less widespread than people think,' said the spokesman. Last year, over-60s in the force area had a 1-in-4,048 chance of being attacked, compared with 1-in-35 for men in their 20s.
 'Last year also showed that 32 per cent of serious assaults and 22 per cent of other assaults reported, were between spouses or couples,'
 However, Northumbria has seen an increase in most categories of violent crime in recent years, although the successful detection rate has also been high. The homicide category, for example, rose 64.6 oer cent last year, to 130 crimes, with all but one being successfully detected. Most such crimes were threats to murder which were not carried out, and all of which were detected.

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The Guardian (London)

May 6, 1989

Weekend Money (Cashpoints): Loan offers for the elderly

BYLINE: By MARGARET HUGHES

LENGTH: 136 words

 
 Two more building societies are offering elderly home owners personal loans secured against their homes. The Cheltenham & Gloucester's 60 Plus Loan allows homeowners to raise interest-only lonas up to 25 per cent of the value of their hosue. Borrowers do not make any repayments as long as the loan balance is less than 75 per cent of the value of the house. if it exceeds this figure they will have to start making repayments, otherwise the debt is settled by the future sale of the property. Interest at a current APR of 13.9 is rolled up and added to the loan. The minimum advance is Pounds 2,000.
 Both schemes put borrowers who need smaller amounts at a disadvantage as the survey and legal fees are the same for larger loans. On a typical Pounds 75,000 house these could amount to Pounds 250.

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The Guardian (London)

May 9, 1989

Health 490 million pounds underfunded

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 226 words

 
 Health authorities in England are being underfunded this year by at least Pounds 490 million, and cumulative underfunding has reached more than Pounds 3 billion, the National Association of Health Authorities claims today.
 The figures have been produced before a debate in the Commons on Thursday on the Government's health changes. The association says the white paper on the changes makes virtually no reference to underfunding.
 Mr Philip Hunt, the association's director, said: 'It is vital for the Government to recognise and understand this history of financial pressures on health authorities if the reforms proposed by the white paper are to be successful for the benefit of patients.'
 The underfunding calculations, said to have been made on the same basis as comparable estimates by the Commons social services committee, contrast actual spending with national target spending totals.
 These include amounts necessary to meet the growing numbers of elderly people, the higher costs of advances in medical technology, and the extra costs of some government policies such as community care.
 The estimated underfunding of Pounds 490 million in 1989-90 is based on an inflation rate of 7 per cent.
 No allowance is made for the bill facing authorities for the higher pay grades being won on appeal by thousands of nurses.

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May 10, 1989

Health Guardian: Shelf-life or death - The fears and facts of food irradiation

BYLINE: By JUDY SADGROVE

LENGTH: 628 words

 
 Food irradiation has been banned in Britain since 1967. It is permitted in 36 countries, including the US and France, Belgium, Netherlands, Spain, Italy and Luxemburg. Six other EC nations forbid it but if Britain and another change over, irradiated food will be sold throughout Europe. 
 Irradiation is not popular. In a 1987 opinion poll 93 per cent of respondents were opposed to the ban being lifted and 85 per cent said they would not buy irradiated food. Tesco, Marks and Spencer and the Co-op have said that they will not stock it. Yet the Government is determined to introduce it.
 Are consumers merely suspicious of a new method of preserving food? Or are misgivings about exposing food to by-products of the nuclear industry well founded? What does irradiation do?
 Food is exposed to a source of low energy ionising radiation (Cobalt 60 and Caesium 137). Low dosed below 1 kilo Gray (kGY) inhibit the sprouting of potatoes and onions, delay the ripening of fruit and kill pests in grains and spices. Medium doses (1-10 kGy) reduce yeasts, moulds and bacteria. Higher doses sterilise food.
 As the chemical changes and their biological effects are invisible, it is impossible to discern fresh from irradiated food - without a label. A marketable test is essential. Strawberries, for instance, which normally rot within a few days, remain fresh after irradiation for three weeks. Prolonging shelf-life has advantages for producers and facilitates global transportation. But has quality been altered?
 There are variable losses of vitamins, claimed by proponents to be no greater than those of cooking. Irradiation damages most vitamins, particularly A, B1, folic acid, E and K, destroying 5 to 15 per cent in different foods. Vegetables lose vitamin C during irradiation, through prolonged storage, and then in the saucepan.
 This loss could affect groups with marginal intakes, including the elderly and children who eat chips, cola and chocolate. Irradiated grains stored for three months lose nearly three times the amount of vitamin B1 and E as non-irradiated grains, and further depletion occurs after longer storage. Such losses could affect the nutrititional status of people in the Third World. The London Food Commission has highlighted animal studies which suggest that vitamin supplementation is required to maintain health on an irradiated diet. And chromosomal defects have been found in malnourished children fed freshly irradiated wheat.
 There is concern about the proliferation in irradiated food of free radicals, thought to be involved in ageing and in the development of cancer. They are caused by the oxidation of fats, a process initiated by irradiation, which cannot therefore be used for fatty foods (irradiated red meat has an unpleasant 'wet dog' flavour). But it can be used on chicken. Irradiation would kill of the salmonella riddling British chickens without having to tackle the problem at source.
 The World Health Organisation has approved irradiation to date, presumably because it kills the pests and microorganisims that spoil food and cause diseases, such as salmonellosis, toxoplasmosis and campylobacteriosis. But the British Medical Association has pointed out that although it reduces the bacteria, it leaves behind the toxins that make people ill.
 Fears have been expressed that it could be used fraudulently to camouflage contaminated food. Prawns have been refused by British port authorities and then accepted after clean-up ('Dutching') in the Netherlands. It is also not clear whether irradiation would prevent listeriosis (dangerous in pregnant women) and there are worries that it might, by killing off competitive yeasts and moulds encourage the emergence of deadly botulism.

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May 10, 1989

Guardian Tomorrows: Fine words that could widen the great divide - The idea of flexible retirement has at last caught the Government's imagination, but, its policies could actually reduce choice for the elderly and increase the gulf between rich and poor

BYLINE: By ALAN WALKER

LENGTH: 1537 words

 
 It seems that no idea is more irresistible than one shoe time has come and which also has the support of the Prime Minister. Thus it was with a mixture of surprise and foreboding that I read recently that both Margaret Thatcher and her Secretary of State for Employment have criticised fixed age retirement as 'anachronistic'. The idea that appears to have caught the imagination of senior government ministers is that of greater flexibility in retirement between the ages of 60 and 70.
 My surprise was caused by the fact that policies I and others have been advocating for more than a decade had, apparently, been accepted in the highest government circles. Yet when my colleague, Frank Laczko, and I first put forward the concept of a 'decade of retirement' to a Select Committee on Social Services inquiry on the age of retirement in 1982, it was rejected in favour of the DHSS proposal for a common retirement age of 63 (though this was itself subsequently rejected by the Government). What explains this turnaround in the space of seven years? 
 Back in 1982, unemployment was high and rising rapidly. At that time everyone, it seemed, was jumping on the early retirement bandwagon. The degree of political consensus on this policy was remarkable, with public figures as diverse as Arthur Scargill, Norman Tebbitt, Jim Prior and Lord McCarthy, as well as the TUC, CBI and DHSS, all nodding approvingly in the direction of earlier retirement.
 The Government itself was actively using the Job Release Scheme to encourage older workers to take early retirement. Between 1979 and 1986 the labour force participation rate of men aged 60-64 fell from 73 per cent to 5 per cent while the rate for those aged 55-59 fell from 91 per cent to 80 per cent.
 Seven years later, demographic pressures coupled with economic ideology have forced a change of mind. The numbers of elderly people, particularly very elderly, are rising (an increase of 1.5 million people aged 65 and over by 2021) and the numbers of young people entering the labour market are falling (by 1.2 million over the next 10 years).
 These changes have alredy prompted government action to reduce the public cost of pensions and what is perceived as the 'burden' they represent to the young. Despite the substantial pensions cuts already made - the change in the uprating index from earnings to prices alone has reduced the pension of a married couple by more than Pounds 17 per week - and the modest projected future costs of pensions (7.6 per cent of GDP in 2010, compared with 17.3 per cent in France and 22.4 per cent in Italy), further measures are deemed necessary. This explains my sense of foreboding.
 The Government sees greater flexibility in retirement as a means of encouraging more older workers to stay on in their jobs and so reduce the cost of public pensions: a policy of upward flexibility. The danger with this strategy, however, is that some people who need or want to retire may be pressurised into staying on. Furthermore, genuine choice about deferring retirement is likely to be confined to only a few jobs unless legislation is introduced to outlaw age discrimination by employers.
 The Social Services Committee recognised this problem in 1982: 'fine talk about flexibility is not enough. It must be translated into the language of employment protection.' But this is an interventionist path the Government will be reluctant to go down. If it does not do so the policy of greater flexibility is likely to widen the gulf between Britain's two nations of affluent and poor elderly people as the former are able to exercise more choice and the latter are forced into retirement or early retirement.
 In contrast, the package we put to the Social Services Committee was designed to promote real choice for older workers and to ensure that those suffering from ill-health were able to withdraw from the labour market without being penalised.
 There are six components to the package. First, following the US example, the ending of mandatory retirement before the age of 70 and, if there is further support from older people, the abolition of age-barrier retirement altogether. Second, the introduction of flexible retirement between the ages of 60 and 70 for both men and women. Third, the introduction of a partial pension scheme to give older people the opportunity to combine part-time employment with a reduced pension. Such a scheme has worked well in Sweden for more than 12 years, providing employers, trade unions and older workers with an attractive alternative to early retirement and redundancy and easing the transition towards full retirement. Partial pensioners report being more rested and take-up of the scheme has been hight. Fears were expressed initially, chiefly by employers, about the difficulty of finding sufficient part-time jobs. But with employers keen to reduce their workforces and with most partial pensioners remaining in their old jobs, these fears proved unfounded.
 There is a risk, however, that a policy of flexible retirement could be transformed into one of early retirement through the customary acceptance of a lower age-barrier by employers and trade unions. This was partly the experience in Sweden following the introduction of its partial pension scheme in 1976. Flexibility is already built into the British social security system, which allows for deferred retirement, but the force of legislation is necessary to encourage employers and trade union negotiators to be flexible. Thus, fourthly, anti-age discrimination legislation, similar to that passed in the US, is required to protect older workers from redundancy and to counteract discrimination in recruitment.
 fifth, it is important to recognise that the main reason for taking early retirement is ill-helath and, therefore, a disability pension scheme (including a partial pension) is an integral part of this flexible retirement package. The final component is an increase in state pension, to ensure that those who want to retire do not have to live on poverty level incomes.
 Although the Social Services Committee rejected this package as a whole, considerable sympathy was expressed for parts of it. In line with evidence from the DHSS, CBI, and TUC the Committee dismissed the lowering of male retirement age to 60 on the grounds of cost, but recommended greater flexibility in retirement and sex equality in retirement ages.
 The Committee accepted the DHSS proposal, which was supported by the CBI, for a common retirement age of 63, a low-cost compromise which, on its own, would have strengthened the trend towards early retirement among men while denying women the right to a full pension at 60. To help prevent this they suggested employment protection up to the age of 65.
 The Committee supported the principle of phased retirement, as did all of the main parties giving evidence, but the only practical suggestion they made was for an exploration of the potential of job-sharing as a mechanism for partial retirement. While expressing 'sympathy' with the desire fo those approaching retirement age to retire gradually, a partial pension scheme was not regarded as feasible. However this option was not explored fully and no detailed costings were carried out.
 The Government did not act on the politically sensitive recommendation for flexibility around a common age of 63 and it continued to encourage early retirement.
 By selecting only one component from the package outlined her, without suggesting any commitment to equalising pension ages at 60, the Government has indicated that it is interested primarily in upward 'flexibility', from 60 for women and from 65 for men.
 Therefore we are witnessing the start of a new phase in the fluctuating fortunes of older workers that has seen them being used, over the course of this century, as a reserve army of labour, dependent on the supply of younger people and political concern about the socalled burden of pensions.
 We have seen the beginnings of a government propaganda campaign to persuade older people to prolong their working lives. However, it will not be easy to reverse the trend towards early retirement that has become so entrenched over the alst decade, encouraged by government policy. It will be especially difficulty to change the ageist attitudes of employers and recrutiment agencies without positive action to curb discrimination. Moreover, the approach the Government is taking is not likely to lead to the sort of flexibility that older workers are looking for.
 On the positive side, though, a government campaign to promote the 1990s as the 'decade of the senior citizen' offers the labour Party a golden opportunity to propose a policy aimed at promoting genuine flexibility in retirement, with the financial security of enhanced full and partial state pensions, and thereby provide millions of older people with a clear political choice. In fact, Neil Kinnock has already argued in favour of a flexible decade of retirement, sex equality in pension ages at 60, training for older people and part-time employment.
 Alan Walker is Professor of Social Policy, Sheffield University.

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The Guardian (London)

May 10, 1989

A union battle Tories may lose: The fight for political survival north of the border

BYLINE: By PETER HETHERINGTON

LENGTH: 1180 words

 
 Among the feudal acres on the north bank of the Tweed, within sight and sound of England, Donald Moffat knows that the old Union has rarely been under great strain.
 Until recently it would have been unthinkable to contemplate a crumbling Tory vote around Coldstream, family seat of Lord Home of the Hirsel. Rulers and the ruled, whether squires or servants of the former prime minister, voted Tory out of duty or deference.
 Then came Donald Moffat, former farm worker and longstanding Scottish Nationalist, who briefly served Lord Home as a beater during the grouse season. Five weeks ago he gained the local regional council seat from the Tories in a byelection caused by the retirement of John Askew, the elderly major who represented the area for over 50 years. 
 Mr Moffat says locals in the ruling party were shocked and 'quite annoyed'. But instead of blaming poor organisation, he says they would look elsewhere.
 'This was one of the weakest areas for the SNP, but Mrs Thatcher has changed all that. She's our greatest asset. People see her as an English nationalist representing only the South-east and they can't identify with her'.
 The Tory candidate, Mr James Boyle, a retired RAF parachute instructor, acknowledges that the new SNP councillor had a far superior organisation. His complaint echoes around Scotland. 'If more Tories got off their backsides I could have easily won - the Nationalists had a good team - but I don't think I should say any more. People in the party know my views.'
 But Berwickshire is not exceptional. With uncharacteristic frankness, senior Tories acknowledge that their organisation in much of Scotland is in a mess. Talk to the odd minister, party officials and - most of all - beleaguered activists fighting for their political life in a hostile nation and the message is the same. Many believe that the Unionist ground is slipping away fast - a fear reinforced by a weekend MORI survey in The Scotsman. It showed that Scots are now seriously questioning their economic and political ties with England.
 Not surprisingly, senior Tories acknowledge that independence is no longer 'inconceivable'. Some polls show majority support for the SNP's new strategy of 'independence within Europe'.
 In an attempt to thwart the Nats, the North Tayside MP, Mr Bill Walker, is leading fellow right-wingers from north and south of the border in calling for a referendum to present voters with the stark choice of 'separatism or unionism'. The hierarchy opposes such a step because it is not confident of victory in what could develop into a vote on Thatcherism.
 Today, Scottish Conservatives gather in Perth to hear speeches from the Prime Minister and six cabinet colleagues. As of now they remain unconvinced by the Government's apparent strategy - more Thatcherism and resolute unionsim - as a means of regaining lost ground in a nation which has decisively rejected the lady and her works. Tory support is stuck at around 20 per cent and shows no sign of recovery.
 But for ministers and some officials the target is not so much the Prime Minister - although a few confide she is becoming a liability - but the party machine in Edinburgh, described by one minister as 'abysmal'. They tend to blame the messenger, not the message, and complain that a much-vaunted re-organisation after the last election, when Tories lost 11 of their 21 Scots MPs, has failed to lift morale.
 'Unless there's some quick action to revive the grassroots, it's highly unlikely they can get out of this pit,' complains a former official.
 Such concern, of course, raises another question - namely that once-loyal Tories are lying low because they dislike both the message and the prime ministerial messenger. In the words of one of several critical motions to the conference - but not selected for debate - the party has to project a 'stronger Scottish identity and develop a more relevant Scottish message'.
 But will it? Can it, with Mrs Thatcher so opposed to any constitutional change? Those close to the Prime Minister say she is genuinely puzzled by continuing Scots hostility. Mr Andrew Thomson, her former agent in Finchley, who recently retired to the Scottish borders, points to a dilemma which haunts some Tories. 'Margaret has broken so many records now that to win the next election and be faced with a constitutional crisis would make her very unhappy and miserable. I think she is concerned.'
 Mr Thompson, a Glaswegian, who says he is devoted to the Prime Minister, argues that critical Scots Tories are simply making the Government an excuse for poor organisation. 'They are failing to get their act together and blaming it on Thatcherism'. And criticise they do. Last year Lord Goold, the Scottish party chairman, felt it necessary to tell the faithful that he was fed up with fellow Tories blaming 'that woman' for the party's ills.
 Some now detect the emergence of an ideological split between Michael Forsyth, the right-wing Scottish Education and Health Minister - a Thatcher favourite - and a pragmatic new team taking over the leadership of the Scottish Conservative and Unionist Association (SCUA), which represents the constituencies.
 A liberalish Glasgow lawyer and academic, Professor Ross Harper, recently won the SCUA presidency after forcing a rare election. His friends are now pushing for Harper to become party chairman (a prime ministerial appointment) in succession to Lord Goold, thereby combining both posts. The chairman oversees party organisation.
 Harper concedes that time is not on his side. He wants to reorganise branch structure, take a 'battle bus' to constituencies to convince closet Tories that conservatism is worth fighting for, and launch an efficiency audit of local Tory associations. They will have to show they are up to the job, 'and if not we'll take over'.
 Meanwhile, the tireless Forsyth has been making waves at the 9,000-strong Scottish Office, which oversees domestic government north of the border. He is clearly frustrated by endless delays in pushing through plans for a new corporate image, prepared by an advertising agency. The aim is to raise the Government's profile, and make Scots aware that they already enjoy considerable administrative devolution.
 For the time being, many Scots Tories - unlike their English counterparts - are hoping for a Labour revival. They desperately want Labour to retain Glasgow Central in the forthcoming byelection, since Labour is still a unionist party, after all, tenuous though the label may be to many activists. The resurgent, and increasingly belligerent nationalists - ahead of the Tories in the polls - are the real enemy.
 But if the SNP bandwagon gains further momentum in the run-up to the next election, some senior Tories are convinced that the party will have to change constitutional course - whatever Mrs Thatcher might say.
 'If there was an upsurge something would have to be done,' one senior office bearer confided. 'After all, there'd be pressure from the Palace downwards.'

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The Guardian (London)

May 10, 1989

The Day in Politics: Medical tax relief 'blank cheque subsidy' to old - Finance Bill

BYLINE: By PAUL NETTLETON

LENGTH: 339 words

 
 Tax relief for the elderly on private medical insurance was condemned yesterday by Mr Gordon Brown, Labour's Treasury spokesman, as 'an unjustifiable subsidy of incalculable cost.'
 He was speaking as MPs started scrutiny in committee on the floor of the Commons of the Budget proposals contained in the Finance Bill.
 Mr Brown called for the scheme to be postponed until after the next general election, a proposal scorned by Mr John Major, Chief Secretary to the Treasury. 
 Mr Major said Mr Brown's suggestion assumed that Labour would win and then kill off a relief which many elderly people welcomed.
 Mr Brown said the Government was proposing 'an open-ended subsidy in which commercial medicine receives a signed cheque and effectively writes the sum upon it'.
 Arguing that NGS administrative costs were lower than those of the private medical insurance companies, Mr Brown said: 'This Government wants to support the private sector not because it is efficient, but simply because it is the private sector.'
 He quoted a survey published yesterday by the National Association of Health Authorities, which claims a Pounds 3 billion underfunding of the NHS since 1980, including some Pounds 490 million this year. But he said the only question the Prime Minister asked was what help could be given to the private sector.
 For the Democrats, Mr Alan Beith said the proposal was 'part of the route to a two-tier health service.' He did not object to people choosing to provide for themselves, but saw no reason for the taxpayer to subsidise that choice.
 Mr Brown pressed Mr Major to say whether Mr Norman Lamont, Financial Secretary to the Treasury, had been correct in a written answer that half the Pounds 40 million relief would go to the 5 per cent of pensioners who were top-rate taxpayers.
 Mr Major said the Inland Revenue estimated that more than 80 per cent would go to basic rate taxpayers or non-taxpayers.
 Pressed again to answer, Mr Major said: 'I do not expect that to be the case.'

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The Guardian (London)

May 10, 1989

Spotting the pasta gap in Belgium

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 416 words

 
 The boring Belgian, the chauvinist French, the Italian household full of bambini and grannies, and other cherished stereotypes are vindicated in a survey published today.
 The British don't worry about repaying their debts, the Italians all want to buy a new Italian car and a motor bike, and German wives are the most dominant, according to European Lifestyle, an attempt to nail down the European consumer in 1,000 pages for guidance of the European producer as 1992 approaches.
 The research director of Mintel Publications, Mr Frank Fletcher, contributed a few new prejudices of his own. 
 The survey describes Germany as 'an ageing matriarchy' and suggests that the combination of falling numbers in employment and falling birth and marriage rates with an increasing population of single elderly women may spell the end of the economic miracle.
 Mr Fletcher amplified: 'After killing the gentlemen off, the ladies are living on the proceeds of our very hard working lives.'
 The survey showed, to a thicket of raised eyebrows at the press launch, that Spain and Italy were the most sympathetic to low-alcohol drinks, and Britain and Belgium the least.
 The survey indicated several openings for entrepreneurs, he said. On the face of it, the most glaringly obvious is selling Italian food to the Belgians. Italian is the foreign food most liked in all the other countries surveyed - Britain, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Spain, and West Germany.
 Germany, Mr Fletcher says with brutal frankness, has 'hideous cuisine' which nobody else likes. But Belgium is unique: in every other country a majority of the natives like their own dishes. In Belgium, only 37 per cent admitted to liking native food.
 Spain is the exception to almost all the other European statistics: it has a surfeit of young males, has had a slight fall in personal prosperity, and has the highest official unemployment rate, 20 per cent.
 Mr Fletcher believes that, as with the italian figures, this masks a massive black economy, since consumer spending figures don't match this picture of gloom.
 Together with Italy, Spain has the highest proportion (14 per cent) of people with second holiday homes. Mr Fletcher thought this might be a reflection of tending to live in very large families and needing to get away from them.
 The survey utilised both published statistics and interviews with over 7,000 adults in the seven countries.
 European Lifestyle; Mintel; Pounds 5.

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The Guardian (London)

May 10, 1989

500,000 old people 'at risk of abuse': Relatives coping at home lack support, say doctors

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 552 words

 
 Up to 500,000 of the rapidly growing number of elderly, highly dependent people in the UK may be at risk of physical or mental abuse - often by members of their own family - according to a report today.
 The report, drawn up by the British Geriatrics Society which represents 1,500 doctors who specialise in care of the elderly, concludes that this type of abuse cuts across social barriers and is 'closer to home' than many might admit.
 The doctors are holding a one-day conference in London today to draw up a plan to combaat the problem. 
 The doctors are holding a one-day conference in London today to draw up a plan to combat the problem.
 Dr Elizabeth Hocking, consultant physician in geriatric medicine at St Margaret's Hospital, Swindon, says in the report that abuse was typified by the case of an unmarried daughter who was looking after her mother.
 'Elizabeth was a sensible woman. She had severe rheumatoid arthritis and diabetes and needed lifting on and off the commode. The unmarried daughter left her own flat to sleep on the sofa in the living room of her mother's wardened flat .. Elizabeth refused to go to hospital. The daughter did not get help from other relatives. At last she counted the number of times she had been called in 24 hours to lift her mother on to the commode: 17 times.
 'One day, when the home nurse visited, she found the daughter tightening the towel around her mother's neck.'
 The report stresses that 'careers' have no specific training in caring or nursing 'yet they have to peerform the duties of a nurse 24 hours a day, week in, week out, often single-handed.'
 Carers in the home lack proper support, while in hospitals and residential homes under-staffing often causes carers to abuse.
 In another case, an elderly woman, being cared for by her son and h is family, suffered from a squint, deafness, partial paralysis on one side, and fluctuating attention.
 Eventually she admitted the cause of the bruising on her back to the sister at the day hospital which she attended. 'The children had to get to school, the son to work and she 'took ages' on the toilet. She was helped off .. pushed to one side, walked over, and eventually kicked out of the way.'
 Later, after further falls, the health visitor found her in 'a wet bed, the window open 'because of the smell' despite snow outside. There was not heating. The bloodstained pillow had not been changed since the visitor's previous visit two months before.
 'She was just under 60 years old, but as no one else would admit her, she entered a geriatric unit.'
 The classic victim of abuse, the report concludes, is a 75 year old woman, likely to be in-ccontinent, lonely, and living at home with an adult child.
 Dr Stephen Webster, consultant geriatrician at Adden-brooke's Hospital in Cambridge, and public information officer for the society, said yesterday that it was planned to draw up an 'at risk' register for the elderly.
 He stressed that often those caring for dependent spouses were pensioners themselves, adding: 'Often the abuse is carried out by very caring people, who are at the end of their tether due to lack of support.' for carers.
 Abuse of Elderly People, Pounds 2 from the British Geriatrics Society, 1 St Andrew Place, London NW1 4LB.

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The Guardian (London)

May 12, 1989

Legionnaires' disease blamed for four deaths at council home

LENGTH: 179 words

 
 Four elderly residents of a council-run home who died last month are believed to have been victims of a rare strain of legionnaires' disease.
 A total of 30 people at Greville House home for the elderly at Richmond, Surrey, were affected by the outbreak between April 7 and 29. 
 A rare organism of legionella bacterium was discovered in the home's water system.
 Dr John Williamson, head of community medicine and medical officer for environmental health, said yesterday that all further admissions to the home had been cancelled while tests were carried out.
 All those who died were frail and elderly and with one exception had serious conditions other than chest infections.
 Nine staff were also said to have suffered from mild symptoms.
 Dr Williamson said: 'We treated the outbreak as legionnaires' disease although there is no evidence to confirm it yet.
 'The bacteria were discovered in the water system and we have killed them off.
 'There is absolutely no danger to the public since it was confined to the home's domestic system.'

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The Guardian (London)

May 12, 1989

Pensioners lose by block on EEC

LENGTH: 254 words

 
  
    BY JOHN PALMER
 BRUSSELS - Labour yesterday seized on what it regards as a political blunder by Mrs Thatcher in blocking cut-price travel and other benefits for British pensioners on holdiay in EEC countries.
 Mrs Ann Taylor, a member of the Labour front bench, described Britain's decision to veto its pensioners getting the same concessions as others in the EEC as 'truly astonishing' during the run-up to the European elections next month. 
 The EEC commission is recommending cards guaranteeing over-60s concessionary travel fares and cut-price tickets for theatres, exhibition and other cultural attractions.
 Mrs Taylor pledged in Brussels that the next Labour government would reverse the Tory decision. She gave a similar pledge if the Government goes ahead with its threatened veto of the EEC Lingua programme, which is designed to improve foreign language teaching in primary and secondary schools.
 Labour MEPs believe that whatever the support for Mrs Thatcher's stand in defence of 'national sovereignty' over European legislation voters will not support blocking schemes to help children learn languages or give pensioners privileges.
 Opinion polls have warned Conservative leaders that Mrs Thatcher's anti-EC campaign could lead to Tory voters abstaining in next month's European elections. Mrs Barbara Castle, who is retiring as a Labour MEP, has been pressing for the pensioner scheme for three years. She said voters should make the issue a key part of the campaign.

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The Guardian (London)

May 16, 1989

Tuesday Women: Seeking out the carers - One 90-year-old woman looks after her husband, who is 101 / These are the kind of people a new campaign is trying to reach

BYLINE: By MICHHELE HANSON

LENGTH: 1490 words

 
 Put your elderly relatives into residential care in this country and you commit them to a hell smelling of urine, parolled by cruel matrons and filled only by people 'too poor, too mad or too unloved ot be anywhere else'. At least that's what it was like a century ago and that is what many ofus, deep down, still expect.
 'The workhouse casts its long shadow still,' says Jill Pitkeathley, Director of the Carers' national Associaiton. 'The idea that it's better to be in your own home than in any kind of residential care is deeply rooted in our national consciousness and governments have ridden on the back of that for 20 years, taking us down the community care road for reasons which I believe are rooted in history and economics, not logic.'
 In reality, home care is rarely a pleasan toption. It isn't all kind Mr Wemmicks looking after smiling Aged Ps who sit, cleanly and obediently eating toasted muffins by the fire in their own little castle. 'The kind of fantisies people have about caring always amazes me,' says Jill Pitkeathley. 'They somehow expect that the father they've never got on with and thought was an awkward old devil will become a sweet and grateful old man. Caring for him now will make up for the bad relationship of the past. Of course it doesn't happen like that. It gets a whole lot worse.' 
 It's often very difficult to cope with the change of role - with the mother who wiped your bottom when you were a child, with the husband who used to sign all the cheques and make all the decisions. An dno one has a chance to prepare themselves for caring. It either happens suddenly or creeps up on them insidiously, starting with Friday night visits, then meals at weekends, then fulltime.
 'there's no time to think: 'I'm going to be a carer; what do I need to do this job?' They don't see it as a job, just part of being a daughter, sister of wife, which makes problems for an organisation like ours. First we've got to get through that barrier. People must recognise themselves as carers.' Only then can they be provided with the support, advice and help tha thtey need and deserve.
 Accroding to the Government's own figures (from an anonymous survey) there are around 6 million carers in the UK, saving the country between Pounds 15 and Pounds 24 billion a year. One year ago the Association of Carers (AOC) and the National Council for Carers and their Elderly Dependents (NCCED) merged to become the CNA and, to celebrate its first birthday, CNA is launching an appeal to find these hidden carers.
 They seem to need finding, liek the lady in Yorkshire, aged 90, who cares for her husband, aged 101 and doubly incontinent. She's done this for 30 years; her GP has visited every month but no one has ever told her about Attendance Allowance or any other help she could get. 'She only rang us because she had tennis elbow and couldn't lift him any more.' She may be older than most carers in their 70s and 80s are commonplace, typically looking after a spouse.
 Then there's the blind lady in her 80s, main carer for her sister with Alzheimer's disease, the child of nine lookin after a mother with multiple sclerosis and a vast range of people in he middle of this age span. There are rewards to caring - sometimes backhanded ones like the feeling that you're doing your duty - but, whatever their age or situation, all carers suffer a central core of problems.
 Their lives are all, in some way, restricted by caring. They are very isolated and cannot easily leave the house. 'Two thirds receive no help whatsover from anyone, not a neighbour, friend or relative and if granny tends to take her clothes off in the living room, throws her food about and sicks up at the table, even the family aren't going to want to be there.'
 They have financial problems. aTCaring is costly and allowances are totally inadequate. Carers are usually poor, have to give up their jobs and chances of promotion or work only part-time. 'When did you last hear of a Granny creche at work? And there are far more in the carer category than there are women with young children.' People are carers for love, duty or a complex mixture of both. They do not think that this role gives them a right to some benefit and so they don't ask for any. Even when they do ask, they don't always get anything. When a benefit like Invlid Care Allowance is hedged around with difficulti4s for claimants, you wonder whether he difficulties ar epart of Government policy.
 Alongside the practicla problems, there are the emotional ones (58 per cent of all carers have a physical or mental problem as a direct result of caring). 'GHuilt is the over-riding carer's emotion,' says Jill Pitkeathley. 'Above all they feel guilty. Whatever they do it isn't enough. It's important to realise that caring takes place within a relationship but in two respects caring is unlike other relationships. There's no reciprocity and there's very little negotiation, partly because the cared for person may be demented and unable to negotiate and partly because the carer gave up negotiating rights early on for the sake of a quiet life. It's much easier to go when Mother calls.
 'The nature and quality of that relationship begins at a early stage in your life, not when caring begins. You've got a lot of unfinished business in that relationship and services given to carers need to be sensitive to that.'
 One woman, when pressed by a consultant to take her father home, was more than usually upset. She eventuallyr evealed to CNA that her fathe rhad sexually abused her as a child. She had not been able to tell the consultant. 'She isn't the first or the last of htose and she would hav ehad to set his catheter. That's what carers are expected to do and it all ties up with expectations of women. There are male carers, 2 1/2 million of them, but the really heavy end of caring is still women, because society expects it of them and they expect it of themselves. It's their duty.' In fact it's very like a job of the worst sort - no pension, very poorly paid, no holiday entitlement, no fringe benefits, no friendships. ALlowances are stopped the instant the cared-for person dies. A carer isn't even allowed the dignity of mourning. They're sent straight 'from the graveside to the job-centre.'
 But they want so little, says Pitkeathley, 'not 24-hour cover, not ten holidays a year, not even increased allowances - just recognition and understanding of what they're doing'. If doctors knew what benbefits existed and could say: 'Are you getting so-and-so, he or she has identified the person as a carer, given a name to what they're doing and so given them 'permission' to claim entitlements.'
 Carers are not the most militant of people. 'They lvoe the person they're looking after, they're wornm out, some are angry, the vast majority are not. CNA lobbies on their behalf. We put them in touch with people who can help. We're an information and advice service but we only hav eone office. We need them all over the country and workers in all areas. We in London can't tell someone in Wigan what's available to her there.' Workers and offices cost money but are becoming more vital.
 'The situation is going to deteriorate, with the closure of hospitals, rate capping, lack of services and provison and more people living longer. We have the highesst elderly population in Europe and a smaller working population to look after them.
 'Poll tax is tax on caring. It's an example of the gap between what the Government says it wants to do and what it's doing. Poll tax will have to be paid on elderly parents living in your home, but not if they're in care. If you leave your home and go and look after Mum and stay in herhome for six months, you're liable to poll tax in both places. There's also a conflict between getting women back to work and wanting them to stay at home and look after relatives. I've never worked at a time when there is so much division between people making the policy and the people providing the services.'
 Community Care is chronically underfunded and still noone's direct responsibility. As the Griffiths report suggested, it is 'everybody's distant relative and nobody's baby,' but the Government is still procrastinating. It is able to do so because the carers pick up the tab. If a District Nurse is cut the need doesn't go away. More carers do more work for nothing. And it isn't just someone else's problem. One person in five between 45 and 64 is a carer, seven on every full double-decker bus. Next week it could be you.
 Donations and information: Carers' National Association, 29 Chilworth Mews, London W2 3RG.
 It's My Duty Isn't It? by Jill Pitkeathley, Souvenir Press, HB Pounds 12.95, PB Pounds 7.95.
 Who Cares? A series of six programmes for people caring for relatives at home. BBC-2 TV May 11-June 15. Repeated on BBC-1, Sundays, May 28-July 16.

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The Guardian (London)

May 17, 1989

Electricians launch seven-point charter to protect older workers

BYLINE: By SIMON BEAVIS

LENGTH: 172 words

 
 Companies discriminating against older workers would be committing an offence under a seven-point cahrter adopted yesterday by the Electrical, Electronic, Telecommunications, and Plumbing Union to combat the 'demographic timebomb'.
 The charter, adopted after a successful motion from the executive at the union's conference in Jersey, would also forbid mention of age limits in job advertising. 
 It notes that there will be fewer school-leavers in the 1990s and more need for the skills of older people, women, and ethnic minority workers, and says companies should provide initial and follow-up training, particulary for older employees.
 The charter wants the state retirement pension at 60 for both men and woman and advocates a combined tax and benefit system to narrow the gap between state and occupational pensions.
 The Government should set up a committee of inquiry into the needs of older workers and give priority to social services like publicly-funded health care, public transport, and housing.

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The Guardian (London)

May 18, 1989

Ethiopian army rebellion shifts towards Eritrea

BYLINE: By LINDSEY HILSUM

LENGTH: 534 words

DATELINE: NAIROBI

 
 Fresh fighting broke out in the Ethiopian capital yesterday and soldiers in the north appeared to be joining leaders of the coup attempt, prompting President Mengistu Haile Mariam to cut short a state visit to East Germany and return home.
 Despite government claims that the coup was spoiled, fighting continued in Addis Ababa yesterday. In Asmara, the capital of the northern province of Eritrea which is the base for 150,000 government forces, rebel troops last night took over the radio station. 
 Calling themselves the Eritrean Revolutionary Forces and Popular Police Forces they broadcast a statement condemning President Mengistu and his strategy in the war against separatist rebels in the province.
 The statement said: Mengistu has forcibly torn teenagers away from their families and youths from their brides and sent them to the northern warfront, leaving many widows and elderly people without support.'
 On Tuesday evening, Ethiopian government radio had broadcast a statement, saying that a coup attempt led by several generals had failed.
 However, one Western diplomat described the situation in the capital as 'still fluid'. 'I could not say for certain that the coup attempts are over.'
 Yesterday morning, the radio announced that two conspirators, an army Chief of Staff Major-General Merid Negusie, and the head of the air force, Major-General Amha Desta, had been killed.
 Both men are long serving senior officers, previously seen as close allies of President Mengistu. About eight other generals were reported to have been arrested yesterday afternoon.
 In the early morning yesterday, diplomats reported hearing a loud exchange of fire at an important army base in the south-west of the city.
 'Artillery and shelling made the houses shake,' said one.
 Sporadic gunfire continued around the centre of Addis Ababa throughout the morning, and the only vehicles on the streets were driven by the military. Government radio advised people to remain at home.
 A witness said that a large infantry detachment arrived at the Defence Ministry in the morning. 'A few soldiers went in, and loud sustained gunfire started up and continued for five minutes. We think it was the sound of executions,' the eyewitness said.
 On Tuesday, sources in Addis Ababa monitored a radio broadcast from Asmara that announced the police and army's 'wholehearted support for the overthrow of dictator Mengistu Haile Mariam'.
 Despite the Eritrean rebel officer broadcast, government radio claimed yesterday evening they had the support of troops in Asmara and the other main stronghold of Keren.
 Previous reports suggest that these trooops, who are in the front line of the battle against the secessionist rebels of the Eritrean People's Liberation Front, are disillusioned with President Mengistu's leadership in the 27-year war.
 The EPLF claims that the army in Asmara gave President Mengistu an ultimatum before he left for East Germany.
 They are said to have demanded that the president bring an end to the war, and establish a transitional government. The EPLF said it had joined forces with what it described as the 'Ethiopia Free Soldiers Movement'.

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The Guardian (London)

May 19, 1989

China in Crisis: In the eye of the storm

LENGTH: 431 words

 
 Deng Xiaoping: The man who took on the Gang of Four while Mao was sinking was china's favourite leader when he launched the post-Mao reform. Twice a Time magazine cover-hero, he was also admired by Western government for putting the economy first.
 Mr Deng opened China to the West, and the Sino-Soviet summit should have completed his triumph in normalising relations with both superpowers. 
 Mr Deng had a stormy relationship as Mao Zedong's secretary-general in the 1960s. Described during the revolution as 'short, chunky and physically tough,' the recent behaviour of Mr Deng, now 84, has much in common with the old chairman. He also appears to share Mao's belief that a bit of blood-shedding may do not harm. He has swept most of the old men out of the way in the name of 'rejuvenation.' Tragically, many consider, he left himself on the throne.
 The landlord's son was brought to Beijing by Mr Deng Xiaoping 10 years ago. with his Western suits and easy smile, Mr Zhao Ziyang's economic skills complemented the late Mr Hu Yaobang's political talent.
 But two years ago, the conservative backlash left Mr Zhao in Mr Hu's vulnerable job as party secretary-general. Foreign diplomats still praised him, but Mr Zhao had only lukewarm support form frustrated reformers at home.
 He staked everything on his plan to open the Chinese eastern seaboard to foreign trade and investment. But his super-economic zone on Hainan island has become notorious for corruption and concessions to the Japanese.
 Mr Zhao seemed to have stabilised the situation two weeks ago, but he ducked student demands for genuine dialogue, and kept silent when the first hunger strikers appeared on Tiananmen Square.
 Li Peng: It helps to be the adopted son of Premier Zhou Enlai. And there was applause in the Soviet embassy two yeas ago when the 59-year-old Mr Li Pneg - educated in the Soviet Union - took over from Mr Zhaio Ziyang as Premier.
 The Chinese public has instantly identified with the students' derisive cry of 'Come out, Li Peng.' Mr Li only joined the party Central Committee in 1982 and the Politburo in 1985.
 At the National People's congress last month, Mr Li called on the whole nation to 'practise thrift and live a plain life'.
 Such statements from one of the leaders who features on the students' nepotism blacklist are universally regarded as 'empty words.'
 Mr Li's personality appears even more colourless by comparison with his 'father', the late Premier Zhou Enlai, whose picture was being carried by the protesters yesterday in Tiananmen Square.

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The Guardian (London)

May 20, 1989

Leading Article: The force will still be with them

LENGTH: 596 words

 
 The sending in of troops to Beijing yesterday was the revenge of old men who have been humilitated by a nation of young people. As the lights were turned off yesterday in Tiananmen Square it became sadly clear that Mr Deng Xiaoping has chosen the sterile option. The built-in majority of party orthodoxy has forced Secretary-general Mr Zhao Ziyang into apparent political impotence. The lukewarm Premier Li Peng has warned of stern action to prevent 'anarchy.' The students recognise the authentic voice of repression and are on the retreat. The flags and the smiles were starting to be furled overnight.
 But it is not a safe option any longer for Mr Deng. He has compounded his grave mistake of two years ago, when the late Mr Hu Yaobang was forced by conservative elders to resign. Then at least Mr Zhao still had the political muscle to revive national morale and promise better things. Mr Li commands no respect in any section of society and can revive nothing except the spirits of a few tired bureaucrats. There is absolutely no guarantee that the flags will not unfurl again in six days, or six weeks, or perhaps in October to greet the 40th anniversary of the revolution. And at any time it could turn into a more deadly military option, without even any guarantee that the armed forces will remain united. 
 It is the rule rather than the exception that politicians, east and west, muff the chance for the imaginative leap which changes the world. (The exception has just left China, pondering on what he saw.) For Mr Deng, it was the leap into a well-earned retirement which he had already imposed on the other revolutionary veterans. For Mr Li, it would have been to walk down the steps of the Great Hall of the People and join the students two or even three weeks ago. Mr Zhao has also muffed his chance to outflank those who have been eroding his position for the past year by clearly identifying with the students' demands for dialogue and democracy. Tactically he remains stronger than the late Mr Hu two years ago. Morally he has probably forfeited what was already a dwindling public reputation.
 This is not the ebb and flow of Chinese politics which leaves the shore dirtier but much the same. This time the tide of popular assertion has washed to the brink of the vermilion walls behind which the new emperors occupy the pavilions of the old. No previous movement has politicised so many people, from workers to journalists. Neber before have students and intellectuals joined forces in protest. Overseas Chinese (and some Chinese officials abroad) have identified with the new spirit of patriotic endeavour to cleanse the nation of corruption and bureaucratic rule. The authorities from now on will jump at every hint of protest on the overcrowded streets of urban China, knowing how quickly it could escalate not into good-humoured student demonstration but into real 'anarchy.'
 The gap between the swift pace of economic reform and the sluggishness of political reform remains the central contradiction in China for the 1990s. Mr Li Peng must be casting around for gestures which will promise some progress in the future. He has four months to reshape the national modd before National Day, and the task is probably beyond him. Mr Deng could still wait for the pavements of Tiananmen Square to be scrubbed clean, and then resign for 'health reasons.' (Those who saw him on television this week will regard this as an entirely convincing excuse.) For even if there is a vacation of sorts, both men know the students will be back.

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The Guardian (London)

May 20, 1989

Care workers in private nursing homes 'exploited'

BYLINE: By MARTYN HALSALL, Northern Industrial Correspondent

LENGTH: 415 words

 
 People like Karen are already vitally important members of an exploired workforce, as demand escalates for care of the elderly. By 2021 the number of people over 80 is expected to rise by 750,000. Karen is in her early thirties, maried with three children. She earned Pounds 2.20 an hour for 33 hours a week - 11 at night - working as a care assistant in an old people's home. She received the same pay when working overtime and nothing when on holiday. 
 'I know I'm stupid; I know we're exploited,' she said. 'The two owners (of the home) are married and their husbands have got jobs .. But I still want another job working with old peolple. It's what I want to do.'
 Karen is typical in an industry which trades on the most exploitative aspects of female employment, said Maggie Hunt, whose investigation into pay and conditions of care workers in private old people's homes was published this week.
 The most damaging assumption is the myth that the mainly female workforce is working, for pocket money, said Ms hunt, a project worker with the West Yorkshire Low Pay Unit.
 She hopes her study might bring together representatives from all those involved in the care of the elderly and disabled, to fill the gap where a comprehensive policy ought to be.
 She found that three-quarters of the unqualified care workers examined earned Pounds 2 an hour or less. Rates started at Pounds 1.20 and the best were well below Pounds 3.
 'There is no legal minimum for this kind of work,' Ms Hunt said. Low pay was accompanied by a high level of responsibility and stress.
 The owners of the home in West Yorkshire, interviewed as part of the study, claimed they were also being treated unfairly. Costs were rising while government benefit payments, which made up a large proportion of the owners' income, were being cut in real terms. Average costs rose between three and four times the amount of benefit increases between 1986 and 1988, according to one study.
 Mr Barry Hartley, a Kirklees delegate to the National Federation of Registered Residential Care Home Associations, said worrying signs of 'money-grabbing' home owners and managers were emerging within a mammoth growth of private care.
 He called for good codes of practice and sensible guidelines and for those who flouted them to be refused the right to operate.
 The Cost of Caring, by Maggie Hunt, Pounds 3 from West Yorkshire Low Pay Unit, Field Hill Centre, Batley Field Hill, Batley WF17, 0BQ.

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The Guardian (London)

May 20, 1989

Nepal's defiant democrats fight for power: The political task of the much persecuted Congress Party

BYLINE: By DEREK BROWN

LENGTH: 966 words

 
 In a cramped rented house near the Royal Palace in Kathmandu, where all power lies, a group of elderly men meet daily to talk of democracy.
 This is the headquarters of the Nepal Congress Party, the biggest faction of a splintered, persecuted, but defiant opposition to the personal rule of King Birendra.
 'Our demand is for a national government, and that means a government which includes us. We do not hide our greed for office,' says the party's president, Mr Krishna Prasad Bhattarai. 
 The last time Congress held power was in the early 1960s, during King Mahendra's brief flirtation with multi-party democracy. The present King Birendra, who came to the throne in 1972, has continued to exercise personal rule behind the 'democratic' cloak of the panchayat system in which local and national assemblies are elected on a non-party basis.
 In 1979, the King was compelled by student riots to announce a referendum on the system. The poll, held almost exactly ten years ago, became a 'King versus politicians' issue and the deeply conservative Nepalese voted for the status quo by 55 to 45 per cent.
 King Birendra is not an absolute monarch in a tyrannical sense. There is a prime minister and a cabinet, answerable to the rashtriya panchayat, or national assembly. But he has the last word on every issue of moment and represents the country in summit meetings.
 A senior government official acknowledges that the King's word is paramount. But he insists: 'He wants to develop the system of government in such a way that the world will say, 'here is a genuine democracy'.'
 The official says the aim would be to guarantee its citizens 'all the rights you have in Western democracies' but not turn them into 'the pawns of political parties in the way you see in some developing countries.'
 The path to democracy has been, to say the least, rocky. The Congress leaders say that 10,000 people have been imprisoned in the past 20 years and 1,000 murdered or killed in demonstrations.
 The party headquarters is thronged with supporters, all of whom, according to the leaders, have spent time in jail. Mr Bhattarai, a former speaker of parliament, served 14 years.
 Since the referundum, there has been less repression. The Congress leaders, most of them veterans of the last elected government, are allowed to meet openly in their Kathmandu headquarters. But they must not hold public meetings, display flags or posters, or enrol members.
 In spite of the restrictions, the party's general secretary, Mr Girija Prasad Koirala, claims 50,000 active members and at least 200,000 supporters. Like the other senior Congressmen, he believes the country's economic crisis could give the party it sbest chance of forcing reform and regaining power.
 'Without the development of democracy, economic development is not possible. We have said so all along, and now it is being proved. The crisis demonstrates the failure of this government,' he said.
 Specifically, the party blames the government for Nepal's overwhelming economic dependance on India, for failing to encourage indigenous production and for a lack of new markets for exports and new sources of imports.
 Those failures have been cruelly exposed, say critics of the government, by the partial trade embargo imposed by India since March 23.
 But the opposition has a major problem in exploiting the crisis. As loyal Nepalese, they do not want to divide the nation at a time of crisis. And in the case of Congress Party members, they must not fuel the widespread impression that they are 'pro-Indian'.
 The party's links with India (which is, of course, also ruled by a Congress Party) go back to the early 1950s when, with Delhi's help, it overthrew the reactionary Rana clan of hereditary prime ministers, to restore King Tribhuvan, grandfather of the present ruler.
 'We are neither pro- nor anti-India,' says Mr Koirala. 'Similarly we are neithr pro- nor anti-China. We have fought for 30 years to restore democracy, so naturally we feel some affinity for democratic India. We basically are pro-Nepal.'
 What of the suggestion, widespread among government supporters, that the opposition parties are being exploited by Delhi as a means of destabilising Nepal?
 'It isn't India which is the destabilising factor,' says Mr Koirala. 'It is the system itself which is not stable.'
 The government, studded with members of the royal family and the still-powerful Rana clan, apparently sees little direct threat from Congress. As officials point out, the party is run by old men but supported mainly by young ones.
 The age gap, the lack of governing experience, the association with India and the concentration of Congress Party organisation in the cities, all work to its disadvantage in mobilising the largely rural, conservative Nepalese society.
 One senior official admits, though, that the economic crisis could be damaging: 'So long as it remains an issue of Nepalese sovereignty, I think it will strengthen the system, by uniting the people behind the present leadership. But people have short memories and if the situation gets much worse, with long queues for all kinds of things, then there could be problems.'
 So far, His Majesty's opposition, battered and hounded over the years by His Majesty's supporters, has remained remarkably loyal. The Congress leadership, vilified by its enemies as the pawn of a foreign power, is horrified by any imputation of republicanism.
 'The King must stay,' Mr Bhattarai says firmly. 'Every country must have a head of state. And we are confident that he will come to see our cause is just. The problem now is he is surrounded by sycophants and the kind of reactionaries we overthrew in 1951. In that sense we have come full circle.'

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The Guardian (London)

May 22, 1989

Liberals ill prepared to break conservative mould

BYLINE: By JOHN GITTINGS

LENGTH: 615 words

DATELINE: BEIJING

 
 As the struggle between the old guard of the Communist Party and the vanguard of the Chinese people hangs in the balance, are there new leaders waiting quietly for the opportunity to give China, and the party, a new chance?
 One of China's most famous intellectuals campaigning for democracy takes a gloomy view. 'In the party they are nearly all conservatives,' he says. 'The system tames their aspirations.' If there is hope, for him it lies only at the base of the mass party membership. 
 Another radical scholar is more optimistic: 'Who succeeds the old men is not the question today. There are plenty of good people in the party. Our job is to get rid of (senior leader) Deng and then we'll see.'
 But no one can easily name those who might emerge from the chaos and reconstruct some respect and hope for the Communist Party.
 At the power apex of the politburo's five-man standing committee, the only man with a liberal reputation is Mr Hu Qili, who has fatally compromised himself by voting against the proposal by the Secretary-General, Mr Zhao Ziyang, to compromise with the students.
 Less than four years ago, the senior leader, Mr Deng Xiaoping, was congratulated for 'rejuvenating' the party. A 'third tier' of leaders was established who were in their 30s to 50s, and were supposed to be capable of breaking new ground.
 Yet the weakness of this age group is that it had been formed in the politically conformist decades of the 1950s and 1960s. The most famous of them is the ex-carpenter, Mayor Li Ruihuan of Tianjin, who later joined the politburo and two years ago was even considered for the job of Premier Li Peng. The last conservative backlash in 1987 had already led to a reconcentration of power in the first and second tiers of ageing leadership in the politburo and its standing committee. No members of the party's 'rejuvenated' secretariat has spoken out in the present crisis.
 Another unwelcome result of 'rejuvenation' was that too often the new blood was related to the veteran leaders who had supposedly stepped down. New faces, like the Beijing Deputy Mayor, Mr Chen Yuan (son of a former foreign minister) and the head of the overseas Chinese office, Mr Liao Hui (who took over from his father) have featured on the students' nepotism blacklist.
 The vocal advocates of reform are found, not in the central party hierarchy, but to one side of it, among the intelligentsia recruited to staff the government's new research institutes and thinktanks.
 Their vocal arguments in the mid 1980s led to the 1987 crackdown and enforced resignation of Mr Hu Yaobang who had acted as their patron.
 Today they look - though with less enthusiasm - on Mr Hu's successor, Mr Zhao Ziyang as their only hope in the leadership, if he can regain power.
 Support by Chinese journalists for the democracy movement - more than 1,000 have demonstrated - poses, perhaps, a more deadly threat to the conservatives. Although this weekend the press was again cowed, the journalists must sometime fight back against censorship, having tasted a week of freedom of expression.
 Some of the most visible conservative targets in the 1980s have been journalists. They include the ex-editor of the People's Daily, Mr Wang Ruoshui, and the specialist in expose reportage, Mr Liu Binyan.
 If the conservatives last card of martial law fails, an entirely new set of leaders is unlikely to be waiting prepared in the wings. Democracy activists will probably have to settle for the less than full-hearted patronage of Mr Zhao Ziyang and the 'third tier.' The only alternative would be a more direct challenge to the party's 40 years of dictatorship.

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The Guardian (London)

May 22, 1989

Tax incentives would help to cut cost of elderly, says think-tank

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 307 words

 
 Tax incentives should be introduced to encourage people to provide for thier independet care in old age and so reduce the financial burden on the state, a report from the rightwing Adam Smith Institute recommends today.
 The report also proposes measures to make it easier for elderly homeowners to release capital tied up in their properties, and the creation of an agency - which it says could be privatised - to vet people's elegibility for state beneift support in residential care. 
 It says social workers, like family doctors, would still recommend people for residential care, and those considered eligible by the suggested agency - which would take the final decision against standard criteria - would then be free to go to a home of their choice.
 The proposals, which the institute says reflect 'internal market' principles already being introduced in education and the health service, have been fed into the Government's protracted review of policy on community care.
 Following the publication last year of the Griffiths Report, which suggested that local government should take a leading role in community care, ministers are now being urged by the National Association of Health Authorites to bring the review to a conclusion. It says authorities cannot judge the implications of government changes in acute health care until they know what is to happen to care of the elderly, mentally ill and mentally handicapped.
 Age Concern has meanwhile written to the Prime Minister with a call for the Griffiths Report to be implemented in full, without further delay.
 Today's Adam Smith proposals are, however, likely to appeal to senior ministers who are known to be reluctant to give full responsibility to local government.
 Extending Care: Adam Smith Institute, PO Box 316, London SW1P 3DJ; Pounds 10.

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The Guardian (London)

May 22, 1989

Nurses backed on disclosing cruelty

BYLINE: By MARTYN HALSALL

LENGTH: 294 words

 
 Nurses who disclose the increasing abuse and neglect of old people should be given full legal and personal support by the National Union of Public Employees, delegates said yesterday.
 They called on the union, the fifth largest with 600,000 members, to back unconditionally any nurse who 'blows the whistle.' 
 Nupe should also highlight cases where reports of incidents or neglect had been whitewashed, delegates decided in Scarborough.
 They called for a nationwide system to investigate complaints covering the NHS social services, private and charitable sectors. Britian needed nationally recognised training for all nurses and carers to identify the many abuses of elderly people, the conference agreed.
 Ms Anne Broad (Isle of Wight), proposing the motion, said nurses had been restrained from reporting abuse by fear of intimidation or persecution. 'Sadly, this sometimes comes from their own colleagues.'
 She called for spot checks on old people's homes. 'Cruel and despicable deeds are taking place out there. We must and can stop them.'
 The union's general secretary, Mr Rodney Bickerstaffe, said government policies 'have sent people to their deaths. We've had 20,000 women dying in the last 10 years through cervical cancer and their lives could have been saved.'
 But the conference rejected a motion calling for a pay campaign, including preparation for all-out industrial action, after leadership opposition.
 The proposer, Ms Lyn Martin, a nurse representing Staffordshire hospitals, said low pay was the most important issue facing members, who were among the worst paid in the country. She said many members faced poverty. In local government, many members had to rely on overtime or second jobs to make ends meet.

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The Guardian (London)

May 22, 1989

UK News In Brief: Women die in fire

LENGTH: 23 words

 
 Two elderly women died in a fire at a holiday home at Seahouses, Northumberland, yesterday. Their husbands and a son escaped.

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The Guardian (London)

May 23, 1989

Futures (Introns): Skeleton key

LENGTH: 295 words

 
 Our bones store as much as 95 per cent of the lead in our bodies and it has always been assumed that this toxic element was locked up tight in the bony matrix and was therefore harmless. Recent research is shaking such comforting thoughts and showing that, in the long term, bone lead may be a potent poison in the elderly, and especially in post-menopausal women. 
 Different bone types store lead for different time periods. Researchers at the University of Lund Hospital in Sweden have shown that the half-life of lead in spongy bone (for example, vertebrae) is less than five years, while in dense bone such as the thigh, the lead may be held for anything from 10 to 20 years. In women, however, pregnancy, lactation and the menopause, all result in substantial bone attrition with a resulting release of lead into the blood stream. The problem is exacerbated in childless women as the body is given no opportunity to dispose of its accumulated lead. This lead is then carried into late middle age when the menopause invariably produces rapid bone loss. Severe cases (osteoporosis) can result in blood lead levels up to 22 per cent higher than in pre-menopausal women. Experiments with rats by Deborah Cory-Slechta of the University of Rochester (NY) School of Medicine, have shown that much of the lead released from bone accumulates in soft tissues like the brain, kidney and liver. Ellen Silbergold, a toxicologist with the Environmental Defence Fund, believes that low-level accumulation of lead during the first half of life may be released 'in potentially toxic amounts' during osteoporosis. So, childless, post-menopausal women may be particularly at risk at precisely the time that their physiological condition makes them vulnerable. KL.

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The Guardian (London)

May 23, 1989

Ministers clash over hiving off community care for the elderly

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE, Westminster Correspondent

LENGTH: 592 words

 
 Ministers at the Department of Health are at loggerheads with right-wing theorists and their supporters in government on how far to privatise local government activities in looking after the elderly, mentally ill and handicapped.
 The issue has divided the National Health Service Cabinet review committee.
 Alternative proposals diminishing the role of local government have been put by separate right-wing groups to the committee. 
 The proposals have met a cold reception from Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, and his deputy, Mr David Mellor, who want local government to retain an important stake.
 At the heart of the row is how to handle the report from Sir Roy Griffiths, which ministers have had for more than a year, on co-ordinating community care by transferring most of the responsibility from health authorities to social services.
 Ministers have to take a decision on the report by July so that community care can fit into the new system for the NHS under legislation being drawn up for the next parliamentary session.
 The most extreme option, supported by ministers outside the Department of Health, involves a proposal agreeing to local councils taking over responsibility for community care while taking away their duty to provide it.
 This would mean introducing controversial legislation ending the statutory right for county councils and metropolitan districts to provide community care.
 It would force councils to sell off old people's homes, and homes for the mentally ill and handicapped, either to their managers or the private sector.
 Supporters, who include Mr Nicholas Ridley, the Environment Secretary, argue that the idea would fit in with Sir Roy's argument that local authorities have the expertise in this area but at the same time should move from 'providers' to 'enablers' in line with Government's moves on housing and other local services.
 Mrs Thatcher is thought to be impressed.
 She has personally backed the first 'opting out' of schools for the mentally handicapped from local authority control which starts next year under the Scottish education bill going through Parliament.
 Detractors say the idea is politically daft since it would start a row with county councils, some of which have only just returned to Conservative control in this month's election.
 The alternative plan has been launched by the Adam Smith institute, the right-wing think tank, in proposals published on Monday.
 These have been circulated privately in advance via the No 10 policy unit to Mrs Thatcher's Cabinet committee. The institute does not want local government to take over responsibility for the funding of community care.
 Instead, after the initial assessment of a person by a GP and social worker it wants an Independent Assessment Board to take over responsibility for funding, with a direct line to a minister.
 The institute wants an internal market set up, with local authority, charitable and private sector homes competing for elderly, mentally ill and handicapped people, who would be grant assisted.
 Health ministers, however, are known to be very wary of either scheme after the political furore over the current NHS review.
 Ministers are particularly disparaging of the Adam Smith Institute, which they believe is having a disproportionate influence on policy-making.
 They are tabling proposals for a more pragmatic restructuring, arguing that local authorities should assume responsibility but should not be stripped of their powers to provide.

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The Guardian (London)

May 25, 1989

China's scion of the revolution falls from grace

BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER

LENGTH: 809 words

DATELINE: BEIJING

 
 Posters up all over Beijing University yesteray showed a middle-aged man with hush puppy features dressed as a Nazi general.
 This was Premier Li Peng. Students and most other citizens in the capital are baying for his blood after he signed the order to impose martial law on Saturday.
 Instead of a bloody blot on China's history, the event has become a fiasco. Despite some tense moments, the city is far from the 'anarchy' Mr Li was describing on Firday. Instead it was a far more polite and safer place than it has been for years. 
 It is hard to see how even a scion of the revolution can survive this humiliating and shameful loss of face but the party leadership is still locked in a power struggle and many were frightened of the outcome yesterday.
 Despite his placid features and low-key presence, Mr Li has been determined to take a tough line since he succeeded Mr Zhao Ziyang two years ago following the downfall of the liberal former general-secretary Hu Yaobang. It was Hu's death six weeks ago which triggered the recent unrest.
 In March, Mr Li resorted to the gun again to impose martial law on Lhasa. This is still in effect following several months of unrest by Tibetan lamas and townspeople.
 A firm advocate of central contorl, he was chosen as premier as a concession to the elderly conservative veterans whose influence is still immensely strong despite Hu's attempts to ease them out of their posts.
 Ironically, the students are pilloring a man who has the highest education of any Chinese leader this century and the only prime minister with a degree. Even his much lamented step-father and predecessor, Zhou Enlai, never attended university although he did go abroad on a study scholarship to France.
 Mr Li earned few credits when he headed the State Education Commission and presided over the abysmal decline of China's education system, and the student demonstrations in 1986.
 He then ordered that entrance qualifications should stress ideological commitment over academic abilities.
 In other respects, his career has been unremarkable. The scanty official biography released by the Communist Party highlights no achievements which would seem to qualify him for the third highest post in the Communist hierarchy.
 Until that is, it touches on family background. Mr Li is the son of a famous martyr. His father, Li Shuoxun, was one the party's earliest members who took part in the heroic but ill-conceived Nanchang uprising in 1927 and was killed in Hainan Island by the Kuomintang when his son was three years old.
 After his mother's death in 1939, he was adopted by Premier Zhou and at 17 went to study at the party's first technical college at Yenan.
 A year before the founding of the People's Republic of China he was among the elite sent to study in Moscow where he stayed for seven years earning an engineering degree at the Moscow Power Institute.
 By a strange coincidence, Mr Li was a contemporary of Mikhail Gorbachev in Moscow although the two never met.
 Mr Li had denied that his Moscow years have made him pro-Soviet or pro-central planning but he has emerged as the technocrat par excellence.
 A dour organisation man with no charisma and little political flair, he spent many years in the power industry, escaping persecution during the Cultural Revolution by virtue of his connections with Zhou.
 Most Chinese believe that his rise is solely attributable to his background which has inspired confidence in the revolutionary veterans. He has no credentials with the People's Liberation Army and has sought to make his mark by backing unsuccessfully the rapid expansion of China's infant nuclear power industry and the construction of the world's large dam at the Three Gorges on the Yangtse River.
 Mr Li has been adopted as the protege of the cautious reformers as economist Chen Yun who stresses the leading role of state-owned industry and believes that the economy should be restricted in a bird cage of central planning.
 In his two years as premier, Mr Li has made little effort to change his image. During the two press conferences he has held, he resolutely refused to answer controversial questions, giving nothing away about his background, his personal views or policies but confined himself to parroting party documents.
 He gives every impression of a humourless man out of touch with the masses, verging on the disdain one might expect from a member of China's communist aristocracy. The only hobbies that he admits to are reading and learning English.
 Western diplomats maintain that he has sharp brain and an impressive grasp of technical details and on foreign tours shows an enthusiasm for visitng factories and power stations.
 Only his knowledge of engineering political power, will save him now from suffering total ignominy.

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May 25, 1989

Convicted sing of facing death for no fault 'but the colour of our skins'

BYLINE: By DAVID BERESFORD

LENGTH: 763 words

DATELINE: UPINGTON

 
 The greatest film director, intent on bringing tears to an audience, could hardly have staged it better.
 At 8.40 yesterday morning, the iron gates at the back of the court building in the small town of Upington swung open. Snarling Alsatians, leashed back by their police handlers, surrounded the yellow prison van as it drove in, the vehicle rocking to the stamp of feet and deep, melodious voices which are forever South Africa.
 The steel door at the back of the van swung open and the volume of the Xhosa song doubled: 'We are going to fight for the freedom of our land.' One by one, the 26 on trial clambered down, still singing, some of them carrying empty lunch boxes and spare clothes. 
 They disappeared from sight, then re-emerged coming up the stairwell into the court, to be met by more policemen, with long rubber batons and 9mm pistols strapped to their waists. A new song began: 'We are being punished here for the colour of our skins; the fault is God's for colouring us black.'
 In the gallery, mothers, fathers, brothers and sisters, 'township mamas' with cheerful faces and dignified old men in carefully pressed sports jackets, waved at the 26 and then, caught up by the rhythm of the singing, began silently dancing among the wooden benches.
 The court rose as Mr Justice Basson stalked in, a bespectacled and ageing Rupert Bear with long white hair. He sat and the court fell silent as, with bland voice, he resumed the business of sending people to their deaths.
 By the end of yesterday's proceedings, he had already found no grounds for extenuation for 10 of the 25 convicted of murder, a finding which implies mandatory death sentences. The 26th defendant has been convicted of attempted murder.
 About 10,000 people live in the black township of Paballello outside the white town of Upington. The unemployment rate runs at about 31 per cent and of those employed, 92.4 per cent earn less than Pounds 100 a month.
 There was some trouble in the local high school early in 1985, students boycotting classes over the standard of teaching. A student organisation was formed and in November 1985, the youths pushed the older generation into calling a public meeting to discuss broader community issues.
 The meeting, in the local community hall, went off peacefully, but afterwards police fired teargas at groups of youths who had allegedly thrown stones at them.
 Amid rising tension, a second community meeting was called three days later.
 About 3,000 residents gathered on a local football field on November 13. Riot police dispersed them with teargas.
 What followed was an incident tragically familiar to South Africans at the time. Some 300 members of the infuriated crowd fleeing the soccer ground turned on the home of a particularly hated policeman, Lucas 'Jetta' Sethwala.
 The policeman opened fire on them with a shotgun, wounding a child. He then fled, was tackled and hit over the head twice with his own gun, one of the blows killing him. His body was set alight with petrol.
 The ensuing trial has been strikingly similar to the world famous case of the Sharpeville Six, with one distinction: in Upington the actual killer was identified in the person of Justice Bekebeke, aged 28, a male nurse who was found to have struck the fatal blows.
 But they were all convicted, as in the Sharpeville case under 'common purpose', that controversial doctrine imported from English law. The presence of the 'actual' killer in the Upington case made the grounds for the other convictions even more startling.
 Twenty-one were found guilty of murder for throwing stones at the policeman's house, the judge in effect claiming that they were taking part in a conspiracy to drive the policeman out and to his death.
 A woman was convicted of murder for shouting that she had seen the policeman in his house, a labourer was deemed guilty for attacking the body.
 A striking aspect of the Upington case is the confidence the accused appear to have in the legal system. They have shown bitter contempt towards Mr Justice Basson; as the findings of 'no extenuation' were handed down this week, the 25 convicted of murder ostentatiously shook hands in sarcastic congratulations.
 But when I spoke to them yesterday, they were confident of the final outcome. 'We've got faith in the appeal,' said the man who struck those fatal blows, Justice Bekebeke.
 It is a faith which needs to be rewarded. The lives of the accused may be in the balance, but it is the South African judiciary which is now on trial.

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The Guardian (London)

May 27, 1989

Pensioners turned to robbery to pay 115,000 pound mortgage

LENGTH: 215 words

 
 Two pensioners turned to armed robbery because they were overwhelmed by debt, the Old Bailey was told yesterday.
 Herbert Butler, aged 65, and his Greek-born wife Eleni, 60, confronted amazed staff at the Abbey National building society in Hayes, Middlesex, wearing wigs and balaclavas on new year's eve, the court heard. 
 'Because the elderly couple wer not typical of armed robbers, the cashier only realised they were holding guns when she asked if she could be of assistance,' said Mr Kenneth Macrae, prosecuting.
 She told Butler: 'Don't be silly,' but handed over Pounds 2,500 in cash when she saw a gun.
 The grandparents carried two, one real and one imitation. They were arrested at traffic lights soon afterwards.
 The court heard their monthly mortgage and endowment payments were over Pounds 1,400, while Butler's pension was Pounds 27 a month. They owed Pounds 115,000 on a six-bedroom house in Acton, West London. Butler, a former soldier, told police: 'The bailiffs were round before Christmas. We needed the money to pay the mortgage.'
 Judge Raymond Dean adjourned the case until next month for reports. The couple admitted robbery and possessing firearms. Charges of robbing an off-licence at gunpoint, which they denied, were left on the file.

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The Guardian (London)

May 29, 1989

China leaders fear loss of party support

BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER and JOHN GITTINGS

LENGTH: 594 words

DATELINE: BEIJING

 
 China's Communist Party leadership has been unable to rely on the support of many of its 40 million members in the Current political crisis, the Chinese President, Mr Yang Shangkun, told a meeting of senior military officials in a secret speech detailing the conflict between Mr Deng Xiaoping and his would-be successor, Mr Zhao Ziyang.
 The speech lifts a veil from the intrigues of the past month, revealing that Mr Deng alone signed the martial law order which Mr Zhao, the party's general secretary, had refused to endorse, pleading ill-health. Some had queried the legality of Mr Deng acting alone, the President said. 
 According to President Yang, Mr Deng said that 'of all the many mistakes in my life, the worst was to employ Zhao and Hu Yaobang (the reformist former leader whose death sparked the demonstrations).'
 The speech paints a picture of a clique of crotchety old men who saw the democracy demands in terms of a challenge to their power by Zhao, a man 'whom we had built up'. 'If we fall from power, the Chinese People's Republic will collapse. Then there will be a restoration of capitalism,' President Yang warned, speaking for himself and six other octogenarian veterans.
 The implicit admission that many party members stood back from the struggle casts doubts on Mr Deng's ability to carry through, in the long run, a purge of Zhao supporters.
 The Supreme People's Court called yesterday for 'severe punishment of the 'chief culprits' responsible for disrupting public order'. The veteran leader, Mr Li Xiannian, said the main cause of the 'complicated and grave situation' lies with 'some individuals in the leadership of the party', the first public admission of the power struggle.
 Although many intellectuals now fear for their safety, the reaction of some officials attending political meetings to anounce the party's new line has been boredom and derision.
 'I just had to laugh at the folly of these old men peddling the same nonsense when I came out of the meeting,' one middle-ranking official said.
 Copies of the highly confidential speech by President Yang, who addressed an enlarged meeting of the party's Central Military Commission last Wednesday, were being publicly distributed in Tiananmen Square yesterday.
 Students held a relatively subdued demonstration of about 25,000 in the square and said that, despite the immediate failure to win their aims, they had scored a moral victory.
 The students are now planning a 'long-term campaign'. Some intend to hold a ceremony tomorrow when the sit-in will be formally abandoned, set up a nationwide autonomous student union and turn April 27, the day the movement started, into a national holiday.
 The government continued to broadcast messages of support for the martial law declaration, including from Mr Wan Li, Chairman of the National People's Congress.
 Mr Wan had tried to convene an emergency meeting of the congress in a bid to dismiss the Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng. 'The imposition of martial law is in keeping with and safeguarding the constitution and it is absolutely necessary to resolutely stop turbulences and rapidly restore order,' he said.
 But he also appealed for the 'patriotic enthusiasm' of the students and masses to be protected and said students who have voiced 'extremist opinions' should not be punished.
 He still appears to be manouevring for room and hinted that a meeting of the NPC's standing committee scheduled for June 20 would be delayed unless there was 'an atmosphere of unity and stability'.

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The Guardian (London)

May 30, 1989

Mr Clean puts Brazil's old men to flight

BYLINE: By JAN ROCHA

LENGTH: 698 words

DATELINE: SAO PAULO

 
 A tall, good-looking young man in a navy blue suit is confounding the experts and giving Brazil's veteran presidential candidates sleepless nights.
 Mr Fernando Collor, aged 39 and governor of the third smallest state, Alagoas, has streaked ahead in the opinion polls. He is how clear favourite to win the November presidential elections, the first in 29 years.
 Mr Collor, karate black belt, is mobbed like a pop star wherever he goes. He has captured the public imagination as the 'new face', Brazil's Mr Clean, promising public morality and an end to the corruption associated with the government of President Jose Sarney. 
 His credentials are his consistent anti-Sarney stance) he was the only governor to oppose an extension of the president's term) and his well-publicised fight against the privileges of the Marajas, the super-salaried high functionaries of the civil service.
 Son and grandson of politicians, he began his own poilitical career under the wing of the military regime. He was federal deputy and then mayor of the Alagoas capital, Maceio, representing the tame official Democratic Social Party (PDS). Like many others he changed sides as the regime came to an end.
 Now he describes himself as a progressive, closer to the Workers' Party (PT) candidate, Mr Luis Inacio da Silva ('Lula'), than anyone else.
 According to Mr Collor 'morality belongs neither to right nor left. Society is divided into conformists and reformists. I am a Christian reformist.'
 For veteran candidates like Mr Ulisses Guimaraes, aged 72, president of the majority Brazilian Democratic Movement Party, Mr Janio Quadros, also 72, former president of Brazil and ex-Mayor of Sao Paulo, and Mr Leonel Brizola, aged 67, pesident of the Democratic Labour Party ex-governor of Rio, who have waited over 20 years for the chance to run for president, the Collor avalanche spells disaster.
 In contrast to the glamorous Mr Collor they appear jaded, leftovers from times which most of Brazil's 80 million voters do not remember.
 Even last year's election novelty, the Workers Party, which seemed set on a triumphant upward trend when it won Sao Paulo and other cities in municipal elections, has lost appeal as PT mayors struggle with the harsh reality of bankrupt cities.
 The PT is now involved in government, and the mood of the elctorate is definitely anti-government and anti-politician.
 Although the left derides Mr Collor as a rightwing wolf in sheep's clothing, he has infuriated some of the military by calling the head of the national intelligence agency, General Ivan Mendes, 'a little general'.
 Politicians are hastily abandoning their own parties and joining the tiny National Reconstruction Party created as a bandwagon for the Collor campaign. The vagueness of his programme of 'moralism, capitalism, privatisation, modernisation and social justice' suits everyone.
 The other powerful virtue of the young candidate is that he puts paid to the threat of what is known as 'the monster Brizlula', a potential victory of either leftwinger - Mr Brizola or Lula - made possible by the new two-tier voting system.
 The possibility of a leftwing victory, in the absence of any effective conservative or even moderate candidate, had already led to a spate of bomb attacks. One, ascribed to the hardline right, destroyed a monument to three strikers shot dead by the army last November.
 But there are still six months togo. Brazilian voters are notoriously volatile, and a chaotic economic situation could change the scene.
 Monthly inflation will be back in double figures for June because prices have been freed after a partial freeze and strikes have achieved some substantial wage rises. The only weapon left for a discredited and isolated government near the end of its term is a stop-go policy of freeze and unfreeze, each shorter than the last.
 President Sarney, famous for his indecision, has presided over three currency changes, five central bank presidents, and enough ministers to fill two double-decker buses.
 Businessmen, farmers and overseas investors long for economic stability and planning for more than a week at a time.

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The Guardian (London)

June 1, 1989

Obituary of Claude Pepper: Saviour of Roosevelt

BYLINE: By ALEX BRUMMER

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 To a recent generation of Americans, Congressman Claude Pepper (Democrat, Florida) was an eloquent and effective leader of the elderly who retained enough passion in his octogenarian years to crusade against repeated Republican attempts to curtail the social security (old age pension system).
 The intensity he brought to this thorny and at times unpopular issue, at a time of crushing US budgetary problems, was typical of a turbulent political life in which this son of the Confederacy worked alongside and against nine Presidents from Roosevelt to Bush.
 Pepper, who briefly campaigned for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1948, first entered the national political scene in the 1936 election when he captured a Florida Senate seat running as a Roosevelt Democrat from the South. In his maiden speech to the Senate delivered in his native Alabama drawl, he elegantly rejected calls from within his own Democratic Party for a cut in costly New Deal government spending. 'If I knew anything then,' Congressman Pepper recalled in 1981, 'I knew the South needed help, and Roosevelt was our only chance to get it.' 
 He quickly became Roosevelt's most assiduous supporter on Capitol Hill and was an early advocate of Social Security, the minimum wage law, national health insurance and other social programes which eventually were to become part of America's post-war social safety net. In 1940, at the age of 40, Pepper made his first appearance on the cover of Time magazine under a caption which read: 'A Florida fighting cock will be a White House weathervane.'
 Both Pepper and Roosevelt sailed to victory in 1940 and the Senator quickly became the Democrats most outspoken advocate of rearmament in the face of the Nazi threat. In 1940 he proposed conscription, angering his more isolationist colleagues who reviled him as a traitor and a warmonger and resorted to hanging him in effigy on the grounds of the Capitol. A year later it was Pepper who introduced legislation to support lend-lease to the European allies, a bill which columnist and political adviser Walter Lippmann helped to draft.
 Despite his support of then unpopular causes he managed re-election by a relatively narrow 10,000 margin in 1944. After the war Pepper briefly enjoyed great stature in Europe for his efforts on lend-lease and travelled to Europe to meet with Churchill, Stalin and Eisenhower. he argued forcefully, but to little avail, that the Soviet Union should receive aid under the Marshall Plan because of its staunch defence against the Fascists.
 But his flirtation with Moscow and perceived left-wing leanings - including a proposal that the atom bomb be unilaterally abolished - were never forgiven by his political enemies who with the help of the Du Pont dynasty, Ambassador Joseph Kennedy and a range of commercial interests found a candidate George Smathers to run against him from the right. The Senator was besmirched as a Communist and labelled 'Red Pepper' by the coterie of enemies from within the Democratic Party and fell from grace in 1950. More than four decades later his opponent Mr Smathers acknowledged 'a vicious campaign, a smear campaign of guilt by innuendo.' Pepper lost the election, the first victim of an emergent McCarthyism. It was not until 1962 that he re-entered Congress to begin a second career as representative of a polyglot Miami district and a national constituency of the elderly.
 Claude Pepper was born in Chambers County, Alabama the son of a veteran of the Confederate forces in the civil war. In his first campaign for the Senate Pepper would tell voters: 'I was born and reared on a farm in the east Alabama, went to a one teacher country school where I usually walked or rode a horse and for lunch ate from a tin bucket.' From this inauspicious beginning Pepper worked his way through the university of Alabama as a miner shovelling coal on the dawn shift but still finding time to become college president. In the summer of 1921 he travelled North to Harvard, equipped with Dollars 100 in his pocket and two suits. 'If that was the greatest law school in the United States I wanted to go,' Pepper would later recall. Armed with his Harvard law degree he went on to teach at the University of Arkansas where William Fulbright was among his most illustrous pupils.
 Claude Pepper, born September 8, 1900; died May 30.

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June 1, 1989

Eyewitness: Canvassing Steel back on the two Davids show

BYLINE: By MARTIN KETTLE

LENGTH: 420 words

DATELINE: FABRIANO

 
 If proof was ever needed of the length to which a modern politician will go to get himself on television, then David Steel provided it in Central Italy yesterday.
 There was nothing he wouldn't do for the cameras. Pose by another statue or in a picturesque doorway? Of course. Get soaked walking across Florence to provide a better location? No trouble. Shake hands with this group of old men playing bocce in the park in Gubbio? His pleasure. When he handed out sandwiches at lunchtime to hungry hacks it seemed a recognition of respective roles, rather than evidence that the former Liberal leader is a nice guy. 
 Mr Steel is back in Italy for the third time in a month campaigning in the European parliamentary constituency for which he has been nominated by an alliance - unfortunate word - of three Italian centre parties. On Tuesday he was in Rome, yesterday Florence and Ancona. If it's Thursday today, then it will be Rome again. He will return for two days before polling here on June 18.
 His campaign consists of short press conferences, meetings, and gruelling bus journeys. Mr Steel is no stranger to electioneering by bus, of course. His 'battlebus' has been a prominent part of the last three general elections. In Italy, though, everything is more decorous. No constant churning out of press releases here. Just a cigar and a look at the scenery before the next engagement. In a bus driven by probably the only Iralian never to have broken a speed limit there isn't much choice.
 The formal business in Florence yesterday was a press conference. But the real purpose, in the eyes of British, press and of Mr Steel was to get the candidate filmed in front of a recognisably Florentine background. Steel was astonishingly willing to march through Florence in rain to stand beneath the more famous David in town, Michelangelo's statue in the Piazza della Signoria.
 A dash back to the bus and it was off again over the green hills to Gubbio in Umbria, and more photo opportunities. A talk with an old man driving his van through a medieval gateway. A handshake for a bunch of regulars, all Communists, playing cards in the Santa Lucia bar. A chat with a cabinetmaker eating a lunchtime sandwich (till his dog snatched it from him). And an introduction to the elderly afternoon bocce players. 'If you get elected, come and play with us again,' one of them suggested. 'I could get to like this,' reflected Steel and he headed back to the bus and the next stage of his journey to Ancona.

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June 1, 1989

On a wind and a prayer: How the locals are feeling the chill of protest from China

BYLINE: By SIMON WINCHESTER

LENGTH: 1695 words

DATELINE: HONG KONG

 
 Bowen Road, a pedestrians-only country lane that winds round one of the middle contours of Victoria Peak, shaded by old forests and loud with the rush of waterfalls, is a little like the esplanade in Eastbourne - a place where Hong Kong island's elderly can come for their morning constitutionals, for a little harmless gossip, for a genial passing of the time of day.
 But yesterday at dawn Bowen Road was unusually crowded, with unfamiliar faces, all Chinese. Something quite inexplicable to most Western imaginations was clearly Up.
 A number of little stalls had opened under awnings of red-and-blue canvas, and schoolgirls, their faces lit by hissing Coleman lanterns, were busy selling oranges and incense sticks and wads of fake money made of bright red tissue paper. Venerable old ladies dressed in smartly pressed samfoos were lighting small pyres by the roadside, which flickered in the half-light of the tropic morning. They then set to a-bowing before the flames with expressions of manic intentness. 
 A gaggle of equally old men who normally populate Bowen Road in a state of trance-like concentration, performing the glacier-slow ballet of Tai chi chuan, were likewise in prayer, kneeling before smouldering piles of incense, and placing piles of fruit, or bottles of rice wines, or setting fire to the banknotes, in obeisance to the unseen gods who run the daily lives of the Chinese masses.
 Just another feast day on the feast-filled Chinese lunar calendar, probably - a day, unmarked in Western diaries, when people would rise before dawn to implore their ancestors or the fishing gods or moneylenders or snakes or fortunetellers to visit good luck and long life on them, and perhaps a safe bet on a rank outsider in the nine o'clock at the Happy Valley races ..
 Or were the prayers for something more than that? This past fortnight has been a time of exceptional nervousness for an already jumpy Hong Kong, and one can well imagine people - especially the old people, those who fled from China after the Maoist revolution and thus have good reason to feel a certain queasiness - restoring to prayer to restore some equilibrium to their lives. They would have been bewildered, this Bowen Road gerontocracy, to see some of the sights of the past few days.
 Each afternoon, for example, the skies over Central and Causeway Bay and Wanchai have been filled to the mutterings of helicopter rotors. Police choppers, normally never seen over so politically placid a city, have been hovering, their TV cameras unblinkingly focused downwards, over vast demonstrations and marches, 'expressions of solidarity' and Cantonese pop music concerts, which have been suddenly organised to give moral support to the students of Tiananmen Square.
 The huge upwelling of sound which old hands here call the 'Hong Kong symphony' - the immense roar of pneumatic drills and stonecrushers which can be heard all the way up the mountainside as Hong Kong tears herself apart and rebuilds herself - has been replaced this past few days on Bowen Road with an upwelling roar of student protest, anger and puzzlement. A city that had found it difficult to muster a quorum to protest the gravest injustice has been in the last week in the grip of the mob - though a superbly behaved mob, like convent children on their Sunday walk.
 'I was almost in tears when I saw them on Sunday,' said an Australian who has lived here for the past 20 years, and has never seen such a thing before. 'I never believed the local people could never feel so strongly about anything, except making money.'
 Two views are now popularly expressed hereabouts. There are those who are saying that the political climate of this colony will now never be the same again - that Hong Kong's citizenry, goaded and shamed by the bravery and steadfastness of their brothers up in China, have suddenly attained what was supposed to be a eternally unattainable political maturity, and are now likely to take charge (from the pusillanimous and perfidious British) of their own destiny.
 On the other hand, there are those who say that matters are now going to become extraordinarily grave for Hong Kong, and the seismic events in Beijing have ruined for ever such trust and confidence as existed in the colony (which wasn't much at the best of times), and that the flood of those who want to get out is now going to become a cross between a stampede and a tidal wave, with the slow death of Hong Kong as the obvious corollary.
 The real consequence, of course, will be a combination of, or a compromise between, these two extremes. Sober analysis of what has happened in China is probably more easily available here than anywhere else in the world, given the level of experience, especially among the old guard of the Hong Kong civil service. And already the outlines of this analysis is beginning to trickle down into the popular (ie, the middle-class Chinese) Hong Kong view, via the multiplicity of Chinese newspapers, most of which take keen and responsible interest in reading the runes. (Unlike the main English-language paper, Murdoch-owned, which has applied standard hysterics to its coverage.)
 A view currently gaining ground, enunciated by a senior Hong Kong bureaucrat-cum-sinologist at the height of the Beijing troubles last week, goes: 'You first have to recognise who those Tienanmen Square students were. They came from five or six universities, and thus from 13 or 14 main Beijing high schools, where virtually all the children are from the families of senior cadres or from the upper ranks of the military. There was absolutely no possibility that there would have been a confrontation between the soldiers and the students - would grandfathers have ordered shots fired at their granddaughters? Improbable, at best.
 'Then you have to recognise that these students, part of what has to be admitted is a very real Chinese aristocracy (one writer today refers to 'one of the most elaborate and pertinacious class systems in the world' that exists in modern China), want a variety of things. They don't all want what you and I regard as 'democracy'. Some of them held up posters of Mao. If life was hellish under Mao, as the Westerners seem to think the students are saying, then why do that?
 'Next you have to wonder what the majority of the Chinese people in the countryside want. This protest movement has been urban, aristocratic, organised by students who have studies overseas and, to the government's naive surprise and dismay, have come back home wanting change. But do the peasants want change? The 900 millions beyond Beijing and Shanghai and Wuhan and Canton? They've kept pretty mute, have they not?
 'All that has really been highlighted by the protest is that the Beijing government has been naive, inflexible and corrupt. Not that its ideological message has been wrong, or actually unpopular. Just wrongly interpreted, and poorly applied.
 'The course the Chinese government has to follow now is fairly clear. It has still to cleave to its basic principles of socialism. It has to clean up its act, halt the nepotism and so forth. It has to be more aware of the likely impact of the open door. And it has to be firm.
 'This suggests that one man is likely to be installed - probably a soldier-figure, a man who seems to stand tall for China as China, and is untainted, and obviously professional and correct. That will happen within the year and matters will get back to normal. There's no suggestion of a pressure-cooker of discontent in China that needs to be clamped down. To believe that is to be utterly foolish.'
 Such is the message that the more sensible leader-writers in the Chinese press are beginning to convey to the more sensible readers (who are not necessarily the same as those who, in their tens of thousands, many wearing Giordano-designed 'Democracy' T-shirts, listened tearfully to local popu stars who performed got up as Angela Davis or in the hastily-assembled uniforms of the Weather Underground). And the message is beginning to get across.
 'Me leave? No, not yet,' said Eddie Chang, a middle-aged hotel worker who would be an obvious candidate for a oneway trip to Vancouver for a Canadian passport. 'I have this feeling things are going to work out in China now. This Beijing business will shake up the government there. They'll always be conservative Communists maybe, but more flexible, and more determined to be honourable. That will be all right for Hong Kong, I think. I'll keep my fingers crossed.'
 Maria Tam, a local legislator, said much the same today. 'It would be wrong to think that just because the conservatives have won the day in Beijing that all is ruined in Hong Kong. A sensible conservative government up there is probably a good thing for us. Better than chaos, that's for sure.'
 There are some signs of acute unease, however. After a month in which a small trickle of Hong Kong firms have announced their departure for the more stable political climate of Bermuda, one of the giant firms still here has found that its ability to borrow a much-needed Pounds 300 millions has suddenly evaporated.
 Hopewell Holdings, whose boss Gordon Wu hitherto has been one of the most vocal supporters of the coming handover of the territory, will now have to look elsewhere for the money to finance a new motorway between Hong Kong and Canton, as well as a vast new hotel, to be the tallest building in Asia. Nervous investors - underwritten by the Hongkong and Shanghai Bank - pulled out yesterday, saying they were worried by events in China. And as a former chairman of the Hongkong Bank, Michael Sandberg, once said: 'If the Hong Kong people lose faith in themselves, then that's the moment to get worried.'
 One small sign, from which it is probably not wise to draw too many conclusions. Otherwise, for the moment, Hong Kong is in an oddly sober, introspective mood - drawing breath, talking it all in, regarding it with uncharacteristic seriousness and, like the old men and women up on on Bowen Road at dawn, realising that much is at stake, doing some serious praying.

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June 1, 1989

Leading Article: Curbing the power of a great potentate

LENGTH: 595 words

 
 Boris Yeltsin is a working class Russian politician with a deserved reputation for plain speaking. Yesterday in the Soviet parliament he said that Mikhail Gorbachev has amassed enormous powers and could easily become a dictator. Gorbachev's supporters, East and West, would do well to ponder this uncomfortable truth.
 Under the revised Soviet constitution, Mr Gorbachev is Chairman of the Supreme Soviet and thus President of the Soviet Union, as well as General Secretary of the Party and head of the National Defence Council. It is he who nominates the prime minister and the vice-president, he who lays down the main lines of domestic and foreign policy, and he who signs international treaties. 
 The growth of Mr Gorbachev's formal powers has been paralleled by a great increase in his personal influence over all three of the major Soviet agencies of control - the party, the army, and the internal security services. After the expulsion of Yeltsin, the retirement of Gromyko, and the demotion of Ligachev, there is now no one in the Politburo who can challenge him in the name of the whole party. Most of the elderly marshals who spoke for the armed forces inside the top party bodies are also gone, replaced by younger officers whose role is seen as strictly professional, and the new head of the KGB no longer has a seat in the Politburo.
 Mr Gorbachev has stopped short of purging the party of all its conservatives. That may have been, initially, because he was not sure whether such a purge would be succesful. But at least as far back as last summer's special party conference it was clear that he had grasped the political usefulness of occupying the middle ground. Some conservatives are to be allowed to remain because they allow Mr Gorbachev to assume the role of arbiter, playing off hardliners against reformers and radicals, a tactic which further enhances his dominance.
 It might be argued that Mr Gorbachev has nevertheless brought into existence a new kind of Soviet parliament with genuine legislative functions which in itself constitutes a very real check on his powers. This, after all, is the very body in which Mr Yeltsin is permitted to level his charges against his former mentor. But 86 per cent of the members of the People's Congress, and a higher proportion of the smaller Supreme Soviet which will be the real day to day parliament, are members of the Communist Party operating under the rule of democratic centralism. The way these members vote and the legislation they initiate is decided in caucus outside the chamber by the Party leadership - in other words, and here we come full circle, by Mikhail Gorbachev and his associates. As Mr Yeltsin puts it, 'the democratisation of the Party is lagging behind the democratisation of society.'
 The Supreme Soviet does have the theoretical right to dismiss the president. But again, democratic centralism means that such a vote could not take place unless Mr Gorbachev had utterly lost control of the party. If it did, it would be the climax of a coup rather than the operation of a constitutional mechanism. He is indeed already a dictator, a denevolent dictator who believes in certain freedoms, but a dictator, nonetheless.
 All of us, East and West alike, have concurred in this, because the magnitude of the changes Mikhail Gorbachev is trying to bring about seems to demand that, for a time, one man has to have such extraordinary powers. But it is also true that the final test of Mr Gorbachev's reforms may well be whether or not he can reform himself.

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June 1, 1989

Deng rumour sparks job struggle

BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER

LENGTH: 732 words

DATELINE: BEIJING

 
 Rumours that Mr Deng Xiaoping is in poor health are being taken seriously by diplomats in Beijing, and some believe his contemporaries have now joined the succession struggle.
 Mr Deng has not been seen or heard of since he met the Soviet leader, Mr Mikhail Gorbachev, a fortnight ago. Soviet sources said that he appeared to have been drugged before the meeting and had difficulty focusing his thoughts.
 Chinese sources claim that Mr Deng has already suffered from two minor strokes and hass been in hospital recently. Several sources alleged that he relies on an oxygen mask. 
 Rumours that Mr Deng is at death's door are a perennial feature of Beijing, but he will be 85 in August and some Western diplomats believe the question of his health is now influencing the current power struggle.
 The political crisis has undermined Mr Deng's standing and at the same time a number of octogenarian veterans have taken a prominent role.
 'The party elders are now demanding a greater share of political power and are vying to succeed him,' a Western diplomat said.
 Among the candidates are President Yang Shangkun, aged 82, who is in robust health and announced the martial law declaration on May 19. Another is his predecessor, Mr Li Xianian, aged 80, a hardliner whho made a veiled criticism of Mr Deng in his speech in favour of martial law last weekend.
 The influential bur rarely seen Mr Chun Yun, the 83-year-old economist who is thought to have clashed with Mr Deng over the pace and scope of the economic reforms, joins the list.
 The most openly critical veteran is Mr Peng Zhen, aged 86, who was Mr Deng's deputy and Mayor of Beijing until Mr Deng betrayed him at the start of the Cultural Revolution in order to protect himself.
 Mr Peng was tardily rehabilitated after the Cultural Revolution and has since been frustrated in his ambitions to be elected to highest party body, the politburo standing committee.
 In his speech on Monday, he praised the motives of the students and observed that China 'must aim for the rule of law, not the rule of personality' and that 'everybody is equal before the law'.
 This is being interpreted as a swipe against Mr Deng for gathering too much power and flaunting the constitution.
 A political compromise is being hammeered out to allow Mr Deng to convene a meeting of the Central Committee within the next five days, according to sources. Under the agreement, Mr Zhao Ziyang would be dismissed as the party's general secretary but the charges of being a 'traitor and counter-revolutionary' would be dropped.
 Mr Wan Li, the head of China's parliament, the National People's Congress, returned to Beijing yesterday after he cut short his trip to Washington for health reasons and then flew to Shanghai late last week.
 Some observers suspect that in return for concessions over Mr Zhao's dismissal, Mr Wan may have agreed to persuade the NPC to accept the martial law order.
 The government's offensive against the students continued yesterday with grotesque counter-demonstrations organised in two suburbs of the capital.
 In the Daxing County 3,000 demonstrators, including schoolchildren, were paid to march with banners and listen to speeches in support of the government. Effigies of Professor Fang Lizhi, China's most famous dissident, and another of a 'conspirator' were burnt. A speaker said that because of Mr Fang the peasants had been unable to sell their water melons.
 'Peasants plant rice, they don't nurture defeatist manure', 'Down with anyone who opposes martial law, socialism and Deng Xiaoping', 'Big rally against chaos' were the slogans.
 Most of the participants said they were 'against chaos' but others were plainly embarrassed to be asked. One finally admitted that he had just been told to attend and had no idea what it was about.
 In the capital, several large hotels hung long banners proclaiming their allegiance to the party's four principles, the open door policy and their oppositions to bourgeois liberalisation, the party's code word for Western political ideas.
 Money is pouring in from overseas supporters for pro-democracy students, but the protesters face problems in converting foreign currency. Chinese citizens, whose monthly income averages Pounds 34 in cities, have contributed more than Pounds 1,700 since May 13, according to a student leader.

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June 1, 1989

Woman saved in dog mauling

BYLINE: By PAUL HOYLAND

LENGTH: 212 words

 
 An elderly woman yesterday described how she had to be rescued by three men from a Rottweiler that killed her Yorkshire terrier.
 Mrs Nelly Williams, aged 75, was dragged along the ground by the Rottweiler, which bit her arms and hands as she tried to protect her dog in Braunstone Park, Leicester. She said: 'The dog's owner came running to me when I was shouting for help. He tried to get it off me. A park attendant also came down and he had to help as well. In all, three men tried to get the dog off me. I was screaming for help and I was terrified.'
 The Rottweiler was put down yesterday. 'People should not have those dogs,' said Mrs Williams. 'The rest of them should be put to sleep.'
 Also yesterday, a policeman successfully appealed to Worcester Crown Court against a magistrate's order that his Rottweiler should be destroyed. In separate incidents the dog had attacked a neighbour and a golden retriever while on exercise with other Rottweilers owned by the police constable, Mr Gordon Brindley.
 Mr Greville Janner, Labour MP for Leicester West, said yesterday he would table Commons questions to the Home Secretary demanding legislation to put various breeds of dogs, including Rottweilers, into the same legal category as wild animals.

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June 3, 1989

Baby 'poorly' after cot attack by Rottweiler

BYLINE: By SUSAN TIRBUTT

LENGTH: 272 words

 
 A six-month boy was very poorly in Birmingham Children's Hospital last night after being savaged by a Rottweiler in his cot.
 The attack came on the same day that the Environment Secretary, Mr Nicholas Ridley, refused to introduce a national dog register to control ownership of dangerous breeds, as recommended by the RSPCA. 
 Mr Ridley said: 'People should not take responsibility for dogs of this kind unless they can look after them properly and keep them under control.' Dogs were already legally required to carry identification tags. 'So far there has been no difficulty in identifying the owners of the Rottweiler dogs involved in attacks.'
 Mr Ridley refused to list Rottweilers and other dangerous dogs under the Dangerous Wild Animals Act, saying it was not designed to deal with pets.
 The RSPCA called for a national compulsory dog registration scheme policed by dog wardens following recent attacks on children and old people by Rottweilers.
 Yesterday the baby, Andrew Little, was attacked while he was staying with his grandparents who owned a two-year-old Rottweiler.
 Mr Robert Naylor, East Birmingham hospital general manager, said the grandparents found Andrew in a pool of blood in his cot early yesterday. Andrew underwent emergency surgery for cuts and bites.
 The Midland Rottweiler Club criticised the child's grandparents for leaving him alone with a Rottweiler. 'The high-pitched squeal of a youngster triggers off some instinct in the dog which makes it attack. One should never forget that Rottweilers hunt in packs and eat meat - they will pick on the weak, ailing and old.'

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June 3, 1989

Weekend Money: Retirement home developers try to ease worries

BYLINE: By DAVID LAWSON

LENGTH: 706 words

 
 Nagging doubts hanging over retirement housing, since a burst of criticism last year when service charges appeared to be rising faster than expected, have prompted leading operators to introduce schemes aimed at easing those fears.
 The need for this has gained greater urgency lately with the collapse of the property market; buyers are proving hard to find as the elderly become locked into long housing chains, so anything that deters potential purchasers has come in for reappraisal.
 The House Builders Federation has warned off novice developers from this minefield and is set to launch tough rules which insist that buyers are given full financial details without hidden charges.
 The big fear for pensioners is that, while their incomes are fixed, charges for services such as wardens, gardeners, repairs, heat and light will drift upwards over the years. Financial groups have mined a rich vein of business among ordinary home owners by helping them tap the increasing value of their property to meet this burden, and such methods are now migrating into sheltered housing. 
 Anglian Secure Homes, Britain's second largest developer, has teamed up with the Sussex County Building Society and CGA Financial Services (the former Country Gentlemen's Association) to produce what amounts to a deferred payments scheme to cover service charges for buyers over 60. The Sussex will take over payments for the rest of the owner's life or time in a sheltered home, then recover the total cost on death or resale from the price of the property.
 It will not do this for nothing, of course. The money is lent at 1.25 per cent above the society's basic rate, which can add up to a significant amount over the years as the loan increases. But Peter Edmonson, chairman of Anglia, says this must be set against the peace of mind from never having to worry about service charges again, while potential increases in property values should easily cover the outstanding debt.
 The scheme is an alternative to the sort of equity-sharing offered by Anglia's larger competitor, McCarthy & Stone, and some building societies. McCarthy is tackling the crisis of confidence by proposing to extend indefinitely its current two-year limitation on service charges in exchange for a 2 per cent share of a property. For 5 per cent, payments would be frozen at current levels.
 The Anglia approach means owners or their beneficiaries do not sacrifice part of the profits on resale, but this has to be weighed against the swelling debt which must eventually be repaid. Any advantage depends on the relative performance of interest rates, property prices and inflation in service charges over the life of the loan.
 Things work out perfectly in Anglia's illustration of an Pounds 80,000 home with an annual service charge of Pounds 1,000 rising by 8 per cent a year if property prices are assumed to rise by an average 10 per cent annually over 20 years. The home would by then be worth more than Pounds 538,000 and the loan some Pounds 190,000 - less than 15 per cent of the total - based on the current 14.9 per cent interest rate charged by the Sussex. As an added bonus, the residual debt can be set against inheritance tax, which Colin Studd of the CGA estimates will cut some 40 per cent of the burden for many beneficiaries.
 But the figures are not so appealing on an average 5 per cent annual rise in property prices, which would leave the home worth only Pounds 212,000 in 20 years. Payments would have been discontinued long before then and the burden switched back to the owner, as loans will never be allowed to rise above three-quarters of the value of a home.
 The Anglia and its partners do not believe things will get anywhere near this bleak, based on what has happened in the last two decades. Property prices have risen by an average of more than 13 per cent a year and mortgage interest rates averaged less than 11 per cent since 1969. Some experts feel the property bubble has burst and history will not repeat itself. On the other hand, the population is ageing and only a relatively small number of retirement homes are being built, so this type of housing could perform much better than everything else.

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June 3, 1989

Weekend Money: Holiday risk business - Cover for old, sick or disabled people

BYLINE: By MIKE GEORGE

LENGTH: 1356 words

 
 The small print on holiday insurance policies can be crucially important for the elderly and people suffering from some disability or chronic medical condition.
 Many policies seem to regard anyone aged over 65 as automatically constituting a medical risk, regardless of their actual health, and others exclude people suffering from some kind of disability but who are otherwise perfectly healthy.
 Nevertheless, a substantial proportion of the more than 14 million people of pensionable age, and of the 6 12 million people with disabilities in this country do take holidays abroad. It is thought about two million people over 65 go abroad on holiday each year. But though insurers admit that in some ways, such as the care of luggage and belongings, older people are more careful and make fewer claims than others, many policies either refuse to cover them at all or charge double premiums. 
 Travel agents and tour operators can usually offer reasonably cheap comprehensive policies; the ABTA-endorsed Travel Guard policies, for example, can offer families Pounds 2 million worth of medical expenses cover, delayed or missed departure compensation of up to Pounds 1,000, and personal accident cover of Pounds 20,000, for Pounds 33.50 a fortnight in Europe. But policies like these may not include adequate medical cover for people with a disability.
 Many application or proposal forms do not have space for questions and answers about health, and this may make it hard for people with a chronic illness or recurring condition to obtain adequate cover. The Insurance Ombudsman Bureau has highlighted this problem, and has also criticised the industry for failing to make clear the exclusion clauses or limits of cover which may apply to elderly or unwell people.
 Many so-called policies are in fact just summaries, squeezed on to the end of a glossy brochure, and most crucial exclusion clauses are in tiny print. So if you are in any doubt, or need better information, you should contact the insurers or underwriters directly, who are generally willing to discuss your condition and needs in detail. This should not automatically mean paying a higher premium, as you are helping to define the risks; indeed, most people with a disability or existing medical conditon are more likely to know about health risks and how to avoid them than so-called healthy people.
 The AA, for example, says that it may ask you a great deal about your medical conditions and needs, and then either accept you at the standard rate or not at all. Its 5-Star personal insurance policy, available with the 5-Star motoring holiday policy, costs Pounds 14.20 per person in Europe and includes Pounds 1,000 cancellation cover and medical costs including compensation of Pounds 20 a day for every day you have to spend in hospital: there is no age limit.
 On the other hand, their needs may be more specialised. If you may need access to a kidney dyalisis or heart unit, for example, you should contact the medical counsellor at the embassy of the country you are intending to visit to find out where they are; alternatively, the particular country's 'desk' at the Foreign Office may give advice. Then tell the insurance company, so that swift transport can be insured should the need arise. As many use special assistance companies to arrange this, such as Mondial or Europ Assistance, it is worth contacting them direct to see what insurance cover they can arrange for you themselves. Europ Assistance, for example, arranged for a three-year-old, who suffered from several congenital conditions, to be put on a ventilator and flown by air ambulance back from the US, and the Pounds 46,000 cost was fully covered by insurance.
 Basically, if you think you may have any special needs you should tell the insurers about these 'material facts', even if the application form does not specifically cover them. You still cannot assume that everything will be all right as there are near-universal exclusion clauses. If you travel against your doctor's advice, any medical assistance claim is likely to be nullified. If you are pregnant and expect to give birth within eight weeks you will not be covered, and if you are an in-patient or on a waiting list you will find it difficult to get holiday insurance; so much may depend on the nature of your complaint.
 People who are terminally ill could face difficulties too, though as with other conditions you should be able to get reasonable cover if your doctor agrees that a holiday will not be medically detrimental.
 Many people find it easier, and sometimes cheaper, to arrange holidays and insurance through more specialist organisations. The Holiday Care Service will provide information for elderly or disabled people, Age Concern produces fact sheets on holidays for older people, often with insurance included, and the Royal Association for Disability and Rehabilitation (RADAR) has holiday guides including a fact sheet on holiday insurance cover which suggests several specialist brokers and insurance companies.
 Tour operators such as Saga Holidays will arrange both a holiday and appropriate insurance for older people; one of Saga's off-season apartment holidays in Portugal for 28 nights costs Pounds 229, and that includes insurance giving cover of Pounds 1 million for medical and related expenses. And organisations such as the Winged Fellowship Trust cater for people with fairly severe disabilities. Your Citizens Advice Bureau should also be able to put you in touch with these specialists.
 Several insurance companies specialise in additional insurance cover such as the provision of a replacement wheelchair, or make available a multilingual team in Britain which can liaise with local doctors abroad; the Traveller's Medical Service, for instance, can provide travel and hotel expenses for a friend, relative or qualified nurse to come abroad to help you if necessary.
 Campbell Irvine Ltd have just launched a personal travel insurance scheme for physically disabled people. This includes the provision of a companion if you are separated from your original relative or companion, cover for an alternative flight if the original carrier will not take you because you are in a wheelchair, or for alternative accommodation if the hotel is not wheelchair accessible.
 Other specialists, such as the Impaired Life Insurance Bureau, will provide 'bespoke' policies. Disabled drivers can get cover for a motoring holiday through the Disabled Drivers' Bureau though you should be a member of their association first.
 For a great many people though it is simply important know that the scope and quality of cover of more general policies are adequate and effective by careful checking of exclusion clauses. Beware, for example, of a common catch-all clause which excludes people suffering from a mental illness or disorder, often including anxiety or depression.
 Though some, like the National Westminster's Travel Protector Insurance, view this as discriminatory and specifically avoid this exclusion, in a number of unfortunate cases people's holidays have had to be cancelled because of the onset of a neurosis, and insurers have sought to reject consequent claims.
 As it is particularly hard for a disabled or unwell person to argue a claim with insurers, avoiding problems in the first place is important. Regardless of what insurance you take out, it is always advisable to take with you two Department of Health brochures; SA40 'Before You Go,' and SA41 'While You're Away'. The first contains form E111 which will ensure that you are treated as if you are a national in most European countries if you have a medical problem, though this may still mean paying as not all countries run a free health service. The second provides details of what to do in each country if you do have a problem. Both are available from travel agents and libraries.
 ABTA: 01 637 2444. Age Concern: 01 640 5431. The Disabled Drivers Association: 0508 841449. The Holiday Care Service: 0293 774535. Impaired Life Insurance Bureau: 0753 25064. RADAR: 01 637 5400.

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June 3, 1989

Sakharov faces angry jeers

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE

LENGTH: 446 words

DATELINE: MOSCOW

 
 President Gorbachev and the entire presidium of the new Congress of People's Deputies rose to their feet in a thundering ovation yesterday as an Afghan veteran denounced the former dissident, Dr Andrei Sakharov, for allegations he had made about Soviet atrocities in Afghanistan.
 In one of the most emotional moments of an already turbulent Congress, Mr Sergei Chervonopisky, who lost both legs in the war, raised comments which Dr Sakharov first made in a Canadian newspaper interview. He claimed to have evidence that Soviet troops fired from helicopters on their own wounded, or surrounded men to avoid them falling into Mojahedin hands. 
 'The essence and aims of the irresponsible accusations by deputy Sakharov are not clear. We are outraged by his irresponsible and provocative assertions,' he said. Deputies stood to applaud. As the elderly physicist and human rights campaigner came to the podium to defend himself, deputies jeered.
 'I deeply respect the Soviet army and Soviet soldiers,' he responded as the live broadcast on national television showed furious army officers shouting at him.
 'I never insulted the heroic Soviet soldiers who served there, but the war itself, which was a criminal adventure and a huge crime by our country, which cost the lives of almost one million Afghans. It was a war of annihilation, a terrible sin.'
 Marshal Sergei Akhromeyev, the respected former chief of staff, said there was never an order for Soviet troops to fire on their own men. 'All this is a lie and Academician Sakharov will not be able to find any documents to confirm his lie,' he said flatly.
 A woman deputy from Uzbekistan broke down in tears as she said, 'Comrade Academician, with just one step you have cancelled all your actitivies. You have insulted the entire army, the entire nation, all our war dead. I express our common disgust to you.'
 A man who lost his 23-year-old son in Afghanistan, rushed to the podium to defend the Soviet army. Colonel Valery Ochirov, commander of an air force regiment which served in Afghanistan, called Dr Sakharov's claims slander. Even in the gravest conditions, helicopter crews flew out to pick up wounded.
 Another veteran said more helicopter pilots died in the war than infantry because they risked their lives rescuing the wounded.
 Dr Sakharov claimed that he was still receiving new evidence to back his assertions, though he gave no details nor explained his sources.
 Apparently deciding that attack was his best form of defence, he reminded the congress that he had been sent into internal exile by the late President Brezhnev precisely because of his opposition to the war.

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June 5, 1989

Leading Article: They must not get away with it

LENGTH: 737 words

 
 It is, for all who watch and wonder about the Communist world, the ultimate obscenity. Worse even than Hungary or Czechoslovakia or Afghanistan; for there the tanks and troops were alien invaders, rolling across borders in the fashion through time immemorial of big powers knocking little powers into line. But in China it is the People's Army turned against the people: shooting them indiscriminately in Tiananmen Square, on the streets, on their doorsteps; crushing them beneath the tracks of the tanks; sweeping them from sight in a sea of bloodshed. A bankrupt, desperate, geriatric government; an edifice of ideology and aspiration flaking and toppling before our eyes. 
 At such a moment the noraml calculations of political analysis - can Li last? is Deng peripheralised? - fall from the board. We have been confronted, this week-end, by one of the great punctuation marks of twentieth century history. No-one in the largest nation in the world will ever forget the first week of June in Beijing; and the whole world is enmeshed in these events. In Chinese terms, a surge of desire for greater freedoms - not democracy as we know it, but an opening of society, a spirit of glasnost - has posed ultimate questions to a group of old men; and, ultimately, at whatever cost, they have moved to stamp it out. There was a chance, only a handful of days ago, that a more liberal strain of thinking within the Chinese Communist Party could, by its success in the backroom struggle for power, have harnessed the yearning for glasnost. But the old men won.
 It matters hugely what happens next. If the politicians who ordered a manifestly stricken army into action survive, if they can still the cities and choke information to the distant countryside, if they can get away with it, then a second set of great questions will dominate debate. Are the manifest death throes of the Communist monoliths manageable? Can they be predicted and relied on? Could Tiananmen Square come to Red Square and savagely end a period of burgeoning hope?
 The point is a starkly simple one. We, sitting comfortably in the West, assume that a spark in the individual human condition - a spark called freedom - must, in the end, make a bonfire of the system that seeks to snuff it out. We assumed, from the peripatetic Nixon on, that China - by its own, complex lights - could gradually evolve into a nation which had made its peace with liberty; that the business culture, the Americans with cheque books, would inevitably bring some form of democracy in their wake. How else could the British sign away Hong Kong and millions of its citizens to the old enemy to the north? Beijing, surely, needed and would nurture Hong Kong's wealth.
 Tell that, this bloody, awful morning, to the marines. The human beings who walk the streets of Hong Kong can no longer be thought of as pawns, signed away and forgotten. And meanwhile, patrolling the Berlin wall, looking East, we must suck our thumbs. Gorbachev has put glasnost ahead of perestroika. His people have increasing freedom to demand a better life but not yet the system to provide it; the reverse of Deng's approach China. How frail is the Soviet spark?
 There is comfort on dwelling on the different roads towards capitalism. The Soviet people - because glasnost came first - may have acquired a patina of sophistication that the students of Beijing, seeking to destroy a regime by peaceful but utterly confrontational protest, lacked. The Soviet Union, driven on from the top, is seeking to devolve power, to provoke argument, to manage change. The pensioners of the Chinese establishment had, long since, run out of ideas. You have a different generation and a different impetus. But still: there is the conundrum of desperation, of men, backed the wall by a tide of events.
 As the rest of the world, therefore, moves today beyond statements of shock and horror, there is a common interest never hitherto perceived. They must not get away with it. In the eyes of the West, because of the spark. And in the eyes of those who watch from Moscow, too, because the nightmare of Deng is theirs as well. We all, at root, know that the Chinese march towards liberty must be resumed. We must see the old men, constitutionally and not in further chaos, defeated and removed. We have a duty, to the Chinese people, to make a thunderous voice of revulsion insistently heard.

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June 6, 1989

Pensioners have more money under the Tories, says Moore

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 194 words

 
 Pensioners are no longer badly off, Mr John Moore, the Social Security Secretary, said yesterday.
 'For most people, retirement is now a time to look forward to with confidence,' he told a conference on sheltered housing in London. 'By 1986, pensioners' net average incomes from all sources had grown by 23 per cent more than prices since 1979 - twice as fast as the income of the population as a whole. It is simply no longer true that being a pensioner tends to mean being badly off.'
 Mr Moore's claim follows his recent assertion that poverty was disappearing from Britain.
 Pensioners' groups last night challenged his statement. They said two out of three retired people depended on state benefits.
 Mr Moore admitted that some elderly people needed state help. They had 'not shared as much' in increased prosperity, he told the conference organised by Help the Aged.
 Ms Sally Greengross, director of Age Concern, said later: 'While we welcome the greater prosperity that is enjoyed by some elderly people . this does not extend to the two-thirds of pensioners who still depend on state benefits for 80 per cent of their income.'

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June 7, 1989

Anglia hit by housing slump

BYLINE: By ROSEMARY COLLINS

LENGTH: 212 words

 
 Anglia Secure Homes is finding that selling sheltered housing to the elderly is not a recession-proof activity.
 Prospective buyers are unable to sell their own homes because of the slump in the housing market, last year's reservations are being cancelled, and in the six months to the end of March only 187 ASH units were sold. 
 There are 360 unsold retirement homes still on the books.
 'There appears to be no meaningful resistance to our product or pricing policies', says Peter Edmondson, Anglia's chairman. 'The problem is that our purchasers are experiencing considerable difficulty in organising the sale of theri own property.'
 The company has introduced loan schemes to help people, mostly single, elderly women, who wish to move but cannot and remains confident about the medium to long term future. 'Demogrphic and social economic data point to the specialist retirement market maintaining its growth profile when the re-adjustment in the housing market has taken place', said Mr Edmondson.
 The market takes a shorter view, and Anglia's shares fell 21p to 212p on yesterday's news that pre-tax profits rose in the six months to March by only Pounds 360,000 to Pounds 2.76 million on turnover 14 per cent down at Pounds 15.26 million.

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June 8, 1989

Thursday Women (Rockers): Age old problem - Knowing when to call it a day wasn't part of the Sixties' vocabulary

BYLINE: By JANE ELLISON

LENGTH: 1230 words

 
 The bride looked radiant in white, lilac and green satin. There were three bridesmaids bearing bouquets and a page. Father Thaddeus Birchard had a message for the congregration. He had studied the horoscope of the groom (a Scorpio). 'Listen to this,' he told him and 170 of his closest friends. 'You will be happier when a loved one agrees to an exciting idea.'
 The loved one, of course, is Mandy, 19-year-old child bride of ageing Rolling Stone bass player, Bill Wyman, who has boasted all over the tabloids of 'bedding' more than 1,000 girls. Old enough to be her father at 52 (indeed his 28-year-old son Stephen was best man) Bill had made a special effort for his wedding, with fleshly hennaed hair and blue suede shoes. His friends did their best to give him a good send off. Here was Elton John, Eric Clapton, Georgie Fame and all the Stones, including Keith Richards - a sight to frighten the horses and cause little children to burst into tears. 
 Bill had obliged the world's media with privileged invitations. Watchin on television the procession of ageing rock stars strutting up to pat him on the back, I turned to my companions with a derisive comment on the horrific appearance of all these haggard old men, grinning away for the cameras like gargoyles. But I was rudely silenced. Far from recoiling in disgust, my companions were gazing reverently at Ronnie and Keith and Charlie; a tender smile played about their lips. 'Don't they look great,' someone whispered. 'Look there's Mick. Isn't Keith incredible?' Someone else wiped a tear from his eye. We sat, for a few minutes, in silence.
 It was a bleak illustration of the generation gap. As someone who 'came into' the music scene in the early Seventies, I had difficulty even then joining in the rapturous worship of Dylan, Lennon and the Stones. But look at them today. Age has indeed withered them. It is a miracle of science that many of them are still alive. to the post-Sixties people they are merely a collection of raddled old men, prancing about in pathetic imitations of their former selves. But to those who were young in the Sixties, they will never grow old. Stupefying as it is to the rest of us, to their Sixties fans they are still legendary, they are still the stuff of which heroes are made.
 What would the Stones do at 40? It was a question which perplexed and baffled their fans, especially when it became clear that (with the exception of poor Brian Jones, lost along the way) they were all actually going to reach this great mid-life turning point. Would they symbolically renounce their guitars? Would they go into stock-broking or personal management like the tiny Adam Faith? Would they go mad and live in gloomy isolation in the 'mansions' they all immediately bought when they became rich and famous?
 They did none of these things. They simply went on making records. Mick has done a couple of solo albums; Keith made his own solo debut last year. Having crossed the great divide, they can now do what they like. Unthinkable though it might seem, there is presumably no reason why the Stones should not continue to make records into their sixties and seventies.
 The Stones are not the only rock stars clinging to eternal youth. Many others, too, are engaged in the undignified struggle. Bob Dylan, 48 years old, plays Wembley today in the first of three concerts here this month. Most of the audience will be as old as he is, turning up to sit in hushed silence and pay homage to the Master, described by this paper as the 'singing Messiah'. Paul McCartney, rich beyond the imagination, could retire with a sumptuous pension, yet still goes on churning out his pretty tunes. His new album, Flowers in the Dirt, has just come out to enthusiastic reviews.
 Jerry Garcia, laid-back West-coast guru of the Grateful Dead, has brought his group out of retirement with In the Dark. Jerry is now portly (to put it kindly) and grey haired, but prints beside his grandfatherly portrait the following epigram: 'Every silver lining's got/a tough of grey/I will get by/I will survive.'
 Other elderly survivors include Lou Reed of the Velvet Underground, Leonard Cohen, Brian Wilson, former Beach Boy, Eric Clapton, ex-wild man of Cream. Even lesser men don't know when to call it a day. Cliff Richard is into his second century of hit singles. One unfortunate by-product of the Hillsborough tragedy has been the return of the much-decayed Gerry Marsden still reworking his ghastly You'll Never Walk Alone.
 Why do these middle-aged, unlovely performers still inspire such devotion in a world where rock was once only for the beautiful people? Perhaps it is partly to do with the fact that they are still here at all. Anyone who has lived on the outer edge of experience for any length of time, does acquire a certain heroic status simply from having survived. The ones with a real taste for danger, of course, like Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin or Jim Morrison, the famous trouser-splitting Rimbaud enthusiast of The Doors, are no longer here to make their 100th single and live only in their fans' devoted memories.
 But the Stones are no strangers to excess. Which of them do you thinks looks worst today? The grey-haired, staring-eyed Charlie Watts - 'I wish Bill all the best but I've never said this would be a good match.' Or what about Jagger: 'We just flew in from France for this and we're very tired.' Although he now espouses a life of jogging, health foods and cricket at Lords, Mick's face seems to be made of corrugated plastic covered by Max Factor waterproof pancake.
 But there is no doubt that Keith 'I wouldn't have missed this for the world' looks the most alarming. Substances of all known varieties have passed through his system. Back in 1981 Keith was admitting to his interviewer, Victor Bockris, that there was a 'fairly high fatality rate' in rock and roll. Bockris wondered if Keith was worried that drink and drugs might finally get him? He wasn't. 'Well, I mean if they haven't done it by now, no. I mean, 'cos it must be fairly obvious to everybody now that they've 'ad a go with trying.' It is fairly obvious. Keith has made no contribution to his own survival and yet here he is, still grooving, still practising rock and roll.
 Perhaps the secret of their survival is that all those Sixties people adamantly refuse to let them grow old. After all, none of them ever expected to reach 30 themselves, let alone middle-age. 'Hope I die before I get old,' sang Roger Daltrey of the Who (now the star of an American Express commercial).
 You can see the point, but few of the Sixties people actually felt like calling it a day when they reached that fateful fourth decade. Unfairly, life did not arrange for them to vanish softly and suddenly away. They persisted, grew fat, bald and boring. They became accountants and chartered surveyors, librarians, bus conductors, just like everyone else. But their ideals have not been quite extinguished. Though they are all now the wrong side of 40, they still cherish those fantasies of dropping out, getting themselves free and feeling groovey. The sight of the Stone refusing to go out quietly, is their inspiration. If Mick and Keith can still do it, maybe there is still some small hope left for the rest before the old age pension claims them. Perhpas a Mandy awaits them somewhere.

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June 8, 1989

Ground policing 'envy of others'

BYLINE: By GARETH PARRY

LENGTH: 462 words

 
 The policing system at Hillsborough was the envy of other forces and policing on the day of the cup semi-final had been magnificent, Sergeant John Morgan told the disaster inquiry at Sheffield yesterday.
 'Sheffield is not Bungletown,' he said. Some of the inspectors and sergeants on duty were veterans of big police operations such as inner city riots and strikes and the media criticism had been an insult to their professional integrity.' 
 Sergeant Morgan told Mr William Woodward, counsel for the south Yorkshire police, that the huge crowd of late-comers rushing the turnstiles had not been unpoliceable.
 'No. If there had been 20 PSUs (public support units) in riot gear then it would have been sorted. But we were not approaching the match as a riot.'
 He agreed with Mr Andrew Collins, QC, counsel to the inquiry, that ticketless fans had somehow orchestrated the crush outside. Leppings Lane in order to force their way in - as suggested by one officer earlier.
 But the sergeant, who was the first officer to force his way down into the terraces where the deaths occurred, added that the Liverpool fans had been painted whiter than white. 'That is certainly not the case.'
 PC Stephen Fry, one of 10 Merseyside mounted officers on duty at the ground, had said earlier that the crowd had ignored his appeals to back off and continued to push against his horse. 'It was becoming a determined effort to get in at any cost. They were begining to lose their reason, I think.'
 Another mounted officer from Merseyside, Sergeant Phillip Smith, veteran of 300 soccer matches involving Liverpool supporters, said that he had never seen fans so hostile or drinking so much in the streets before a game. He added: 'I never saw anyone who was leglessly drunk.'
 Three hours before the kickoff, and the death by crushing of 95 people, fans were drunk in the streets around the stadium. As thousands arrived late and without tickets the mood became angry as police vainly attempted to hold them back from the turnstiles where the disastrous crush was generated.
 PC Frank Grunnill, who has spent 20 years policing Liverpool's Kop, said he feared that his horse might panic and injure someone as the crowd pressed around him lifting the animal off his feet 'like a piece of soap being squeezed.
 'A horse always likes to feel sound, whether its standing on your foot or on the ground,' he said, adding that he finally managed to ease his mount out of the crowd.
 PCW Alison Tagg, said the crowd pinned her against a wall. 'Older men turned up at the turnstile. They were so drunk they could hardly stand up.' PCW Tagg, who was slightly injured, said that she gave a 12-year old boy cardiac massage and he recovered.
 The hearing continues.

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June 9, 1989

Vauxhall Byelection: Democrats come out fighting

BYLINE: By DAVID SHARROCK

LENGTH: 561 words

 
 Mike Tuffrey, the Social and Liberal Democrats' candidate, yesterday christened himself 'the man they tried to gag', after receiving a writ from Labour's candidate Kate Hoey.
 The Democrats have been running a pugilistic campaign, prompting the writ from Ms Hoey about a leaflet claiming she blocked a public inquiry into the death of a baby in council care. It has inevitably brought 'smear' accusations from Labour, and last week the Health Secretary, Mr Kenneth Clarke, said he thought it an unsuitable issue for a byelection. 
 Mr Tuffrey has been hammering away at Ms Hoey's record as a Labour councillor for the best part of two weeks. His minder, the Democrat MP, Mr Simon Hughes, said the fact that Labour had opted for a writ instead of an injunction preventing distribution of the leaflet, which has reached 42,000 homes in Vauxhall, showed lack of confidence over the matter.
 Mr Tuffrey added that he would look back on the day he received the writ as the day he won Vauxhall. 'This attempt to gag us will rebound upon them. People will recognise that we are hitting home on the Labour record.'
 He has not felt the need to concentrate his fire on the Conservative challenger, Mr Mike Keegan, with the same intensity. 'By Sunday night I had seen fewer than a dozen Tory posters throughout the entire constituency - and not a single one on a council estate.' On the Wyvil Estate, Mr Tuffrey scored a minor coup on film.
 An elderly gentleman, who emerged from his maisonette blinking in the television lights, said sorry, but he would vote Conservative. Mr Tuffrey spent nearly five minutes pointing out the records of Conservative central and Labour local governments before the man said: 'All right, you've probably convinced me,' and retreated.
 But Mr Tuffrey's entourage appears to lack the hard-edged thoroughness of the other two main parties' machines. Doors are missed and he is allowed to stand and ramble.
 Last week, on the Aveline Estate, a helper idly watched one of the very few residents at home slip away while Mr Tuffrey posed for a photograph. When asked why he had made no effort to canvass her, he removed a cigar from his mouth and replied: 'Who, me?'
 He is also handicapped by lack of recognition. At every encounter he must explain: 'I'm from the Social and Liberal Democrats, that's the old SDP and the Liberals,' which is about as succinct as it can be put. Even then, confusion still swam in many eyes.
 One pensioner told Mr Tuffrey he had always voted for his party. Asked by reporters afterwards he replied: 'That's right, I've always voted Labour.'
 Back on the Wyvil Estate, Mr Tuffrey was being taken through the litany of Lambeth council complaints. A Mrs Harvey wanted to show him her new flat, which she has been trying to move into since March after two years in B&Bs. Furniture was heaped in one room while cracked windows and holes in walls and ceilings awaited repair. Mr Tuffrey sympathised and promised to look into her case if he was elected.
 Mrs Lilian Hurley, secretary of the Wyvil Estate tenants' association for the past 10 years, described life in Vauxhall as having gone 'from bad to worse'.
 She was not won over by Mr Tuffrey's byelection slogan, People Matter Most. 'I may not even vote, for all the good they do you. Politicians are all the same, aren't they?'

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June 10, 1989

Weekend Money: When life is a stretch just above the breadline - Is poverty a thing of the past?

BYLINE: By MIKE GEORGE

LENGTH: 1116 words

 
 The Social Security Secretary, John Moore, has argued in recent weeks that poverty 'in the old absolute sense of hunger and want' has been wiped out in Britain. Yet many of the elderly, sick, single parents and unemployed eke out a living precariously close to the breadline.
 Nearly 10 million people are receiving state retirement pension. Catherine Hind, who lives in Brighton, is a widow and a pensioner. Her weekly income is Pounds 52.17p, a mixture of retirement pension and income support, plus Pounds 3.5 a week from her late husband's occupational pension. She has Pounds 55.67 a week, and health problems make her unable to supplement this by working. She lives on her own in a flat, bought with the aid of a small mortgage. Catherine is getting all her social security entitlements, so how far does Pounds 55.67 stretch? 
 Mortgage repayments, plus the compulsory 20 per cent of rates that everyone now has to pay take Pounds 11 a week. Water, gas and electricity bills cost Pounds 9.70 a week, household insurance takes Pounds 2, a TV licence costs Pounds 1.30 a week (she lives on her own and doesn't regard her TV as a luxury), she also has to put aside Pounds 2 a week for ground rent and basic maintenance.  She has a phone, which to her is a necessity, and this costs Pounds 4 a week.
 So, her basic outgoings run to Pounds 30 a week, leaving just Pounds 25.67 to pay for food, household items, clothes, shoes, bus fares, the hairdresser, and something for Christmas and birthday presents, not to mention an occasional holiday.
 She does manage to live on Pounds 25.67 a week, but has to be very careful. Two weeks ago, for example, she had to have part fo a burner unit replaced on her cooker, British Gas gave her a small concession, but even so the bill was Pounds 25.87 - more than a whole week's disposal income. And over the past year new social security rules meant that she had no increase in income support, even though she had to start paying 20 per cent of rates, and her mortgage repayments increased.
 Catherine is in no way untypical of the millions of single pensioners in this country. But younger people, too, don't always have it good. In a family with a single wage-earner, say a man on average male earnings, if he became unemployed the family income could drop from about Pounds 185 (his take-home pay), to just the Pounds 56.10 a week obtainable from unemployment benefit. If he became sick, and like many others wasn't covered by a generous occupational sick pay scheme, family income could drop to the Dollars :52.10 available under statutory sick pay. Depending on family circumstances it might be possible to get a little more via income support, but even so the scale of loss is substantial.
 A couple with one small child would normally get no more than Pounds 73.05 a week from income support. If Catherine Hind can only just manage on her Pounds 55.67 a week, the problems compound for two adults and a child to manage on just Pounds 17.38 more. Income support is the major plank of the social security system.
 Then again social security isn't only for those made unemployed, or for people who are sick. Carol Parker from Barnet is a lone parent with a small child (there are over a million children in families in this situation).
 She has to rely on child benefit income support, and housing benefit for her income at present. Child benefit is Pounds 12.45 a week for lone parents, housing benefit pays her rent, and 80 per cent of her rates, and her income support top-up is nearly Pounds 45 a week.
 Out of this, her rates, water bills, gas, electricity and phone bills take Pounds 15 a week. She rents a TV, and regularly puts away Pounds 13 a month for the rental and licence bills. Carol finds the cheapest way to get clothes, shoes, etc., is to pay through a mail order company, which takes Pounds 10 a month. This leaves her with about Pounds 15 a week for food and household materials, and Pounds 14.60 a week for any other expenses, including bus fares, or items for the home.
 Like most other people relying on social security, she can seldom get credit, so buying larger items is a big problem. It took Carol four years to save up enough for a settee and a front room carpet.
 To put Catherine and Carol's finances in perspective, the government's Family Expenditure Survey shows that the median average household income is over Pounds 195 a week; Pounds 38.64 is spent on food, the average spent on cars and other transport is Pounds 28 a week, and gas and electricity bills are Pounds 10.45. The average disposable income for a couple is Pounds 206.59. So in relative terms, people on income support, unemployment benefit, statutory sick pay and the like are receiving something like a third of the income of the so-called average family in Britain. The difference between spending Pounds 15 a week on food and household items (for two people), and the Pounds 53 plus spent by an average two-person household is immense in terms of quality and quantity.
 The much-publicised Family Credit scheme, which helps out families who are earning but on low pay, does not necessarily bring these poorer families anywhere near to average levels of income. For example, a couple with a 12-year-old child and take-home pay of Pounds 85 a week would get Family Credit of Pounds 25.36, bringing their weekly income up to Pounds 110.36, which is just over half of the average household income. This is a means-tested benefit (like income support), and take-up is consequently low, although several million people are in a low paid job - there are 2 1/2 million people covered by the remaining Wage Councils, with rates of Pounds 2 an hour or less being commonplace.
 The main social security payments do appear low. Unemployment benefit is just Pounds 34.70 a week, rising to Pounds 56.10 for an adult dependant, with no extra money available if you have children. Income support pays a single claimant Pounds 34.90 a week, but it's reduced to Pounds 27.40 if you're under 25, and just Pounds 20.80 if you're under 18. And in real terms unemployment benefit levels have increased by only 0.7 to 0.8 per cent since 1979, with retirement pensions up by just 0.6 per cent.
 If the security security system is just a basic safety net, consider 19-year-old Daniel Evans. He suddenly became ill with kidney failure; he hadn't had the chance to work and build up his National Insurance record, so now has to live on just Pounds 28.40 a week from income support. His disability creates many additional costs for him, but the system is unable to cope with this reality. The safety net does almost nothing for Daniel.

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June 10, 1989

Weekend Money (Cashpoints): Home income

LENGTH: 128 words

 
 Derbyshire building society this week launched a home income plan, Harvester, where a variable-interest loan is raised against the home to buy an annuity, aimed at homeowners aged 70 or over. The minimum loan is Pounds 15,050, on the current interest rate is 13.25 per cent. The Society has also introduced Liberator, an quity release mortgage where the interest due is rolled up and added to the loan and the debt is settled from the proceeds of the eventual sale of the house. Loans, from Pounds 15,050 up to 30 per cent of the value of the property, are currently charged at 14.5 per cent.
 Age Concern has updated its booklet. Using Your Home as Capital, which advises elderly homeowners on how to liberate the cash tied up in their property.

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June 12, 1989

Doubts on how long before Deng goes to join Chairman Mao: Back to the past as Beijing watchers again start studying the name-lists

BYLINE: By JOHN GITTINGS

LENGTH: 910 words

DATELINE: BEIJING

 
 It was back to close study of the Chinese leadership name-lists this weekend, when Mr Deng Xiaoping reappeared with his team - minus one or two crucial people.
 It ws all so reminiscent of the years when Chairman Mao's rare meetings with foreign visitors were carefully analysed to see whether he was still in control of his faculties.
 Mr Deng had a terrible twitch at the side of his mouth, and repeated himself three times trying to express his gratitude for the army's intervention against the 'counter-revolutionary rebellion.
 Then the speech was taken over by the announcer, who did not stammer at all. 
 It is also like old times when people just cannot agree on whether it is remarkable that Mr Deng can make any sort of speech - and must therefore still be in control - or whether it was a pathetic performance perhaps designed to warn the Chinese people that it will not be too long before Mr Deng, like Chairman Mao, goes to 'meet Marx'.
 With a full array of proud military uniforms in the audience, Mr Deng certainly seemed anxious to assure them that they had done tremendously well.
 Our army is worthy as the People's Army and the iron Great Wall of the state,' he assured them.
 Is this appeasement of an army whose mystifying maneouvres of the past week must indicate a very significant increase of political power? It may be, but we are still hearing the authentic Deng, who since 1980 has insisted that the People's Democratic Dictatorship (a classic Maoist concept now 40 years old) must be defended by the full weight of the state apparatus?
 The fact remains that nothing that has been done in the past week goes beyond what is licensed by Mao's and Deng's belief that the state is entitled to use every means at its disposal to deal with 'counter-revolutionaries.'
 The name-list accompanying the meeting on Friday contains some clues as to where the power-struggling is heading. The most significant feature was that the party elders were no longer given an honorary mention ahead of Mr Deng's team.
 Though now depleted by the absence of the party secretary-general, Mr Zhao Ziyang, the Politburo's Standing Committee was up in front.
 The three surviving members - the Prime Minister, Mr Li Peng, Mr Qiao Shi, Mr Yao Yilin - were now ahead of ex-President Li Xiannian and the elderly advisers, Mr Peng Zhen and Mr Bo Yibo.
 The determination of mr Deng and his team, backed by President Yang Shangkun, to use force against the people may, in the narrow circle where power is apportioned, now give them the upper hand over those with more conscience.
 We must wait to see whether the aged military marshals who three weeks ago assured the students that the army was not directed against them will now be obliged to express support for Mr Deng's 'important speech'.
 Mr Deng also called on the Communist Party to 'think over the future as well as the past with a sober mind'.
 Although at first sight this looks like a veiled apology, it is more likely to indicate another familiar theme from the past: a sober head is needed to spot and prevent those counter-revolutionaries who would destroy the Socialist state and the leadership of the Communist Party.
 The evidence from the provinces suggests that, despite the formal messages of support to Mr Deng, many local governments will seek to put distance between themselves and Beijing's punitive behaviour.
 The senior party figures in both Shanghai and Tianjin have been seeking to defuse the demonstrations with promises of careful examination of where the party has gone wrong.
 Meanwhile, in Beijning the source of government authority is even narrower than usual, with two out of the five standing committee seats (Mr Zhao and the wavering Mr Hu Qili) effectively vacant.
 The most likely successor to Mr Zhao as secretary-general is still the security chief, Mr Xiao Shi, who used Radio Beijing last week to make his bid public with a message of support addressed with emphasis to 'Mr Qiao and the standing committee'.
 According to one worst-possible-case rumour, Mr Hu's place could be taken by the ex-general President Yang, who is generally credited with authorising the army's counter-kill tactics a week ago.
 Mr Li's appearance last week, with a fascistic sweep of his arm, implies that he at least regards himself as the ultimate boss. Few believe that he is.
 Those looking for continuity find some comfort in Mr Deng's reassertion of the principles of reform and the open door.
 So he did, yet in the end he has shown himself unable to cope with the assault on traditional political values encouraged by his policies.
 The demotion of the Vice-Premier, Mr Wan Li, from fourth to eighth place is noted without surprise.
 Two weeks ago enormous hopes were being placed upon Mr Wan's return to convene the standing committee of the official National People's Congress and (presumably) sack Mr Li Peng. This now appears as an irrelevant legalism.
 It is not even clear whether the party's own standing committee has met since its internal split a month ago which precipitated this crisis.
 Meanwhile, some recall that Mao once called Deng an able person whom one could never trust. Around Beijing yesterday that was quite a popular verdict, with the rider that nothing will really change until he dies.
 Who would have thought, said one citizen in the street, that the old man had so much life in him?

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June 13, 1989

Tuesday Women: There's nothing to fear but fear itself - The victims of crime in the home

BYLINE: By SALLY HUGHES

LENGTH: 1216 words

 
 Mrs Thatcher had us all worried about crime, back in 1979. That was one of the reasons for the election of a Conservative government. The Tories would restore law and order. Frightened, insecure people thought that tough punishments and more police would turn back the rising tide of crime.
 Since then a lot of money has been spent: on rocketing police pay, community police, riot police, short sharp shock and other tough sentences. Much of this has led to the depressingly uniform conclusion (long recognised by researchers) that more policing does not necessarily reduce crime and that punitive deterrents don't deter. So then there was a belated flurry of Prime Minister-led crime prevention. It's hard to tell whether neighbourhood watch and better locks and bolts are really working across the board but the concept of home-as-for-tress has certainly caught on, sometimes with disastrous results.
 Out on the streets there's less confidence. The resort to private patrolling and the uncritical welcome accorded to the Guardian Angels is an indicator of immense fears. In response we are now told that those fears are unfounded. Michael Grade has been recruited by the Home Office to help persuade us that the crime wave on which many a Conservatie candidate has coasted to victory is a mere swell, an illusion fostered by the media. 
 We have, it seems, nothing to fear but fear itself. Elderly ladies are not routinely beaten up by drug-crazed hoodlums, young mothers are rarely raped at knifepoint by insane strangers. And all that net-curtain twitching and new ironmongering may have paid off in the form of a small dip in the burglary rate. Which is an enormous fudge of what is really going on. It's women who are being told not to be sissy and afraid. And it's women who really suffer from crime and well-founded fear of crime.
 We don't cause it, provoke it, do it or enforce the laws against it, except in a very small minority of cases. Yet most of the policy-making and money-spending on crime prevention and control is done without reference to us. When I wrote a publication on voluntary sector crime prevention I was impressed by the fact that outside the mainstream of lock-fitting schems, youth work and the like, the things that women are struggling to establish, like after-dark transport and a safer public environment are ignored or underfunded. And in spite of some improvements in law enforcement, the submerged iceberg of domestic violence is scarcely regarded, outside feminist circles, as a suitable case for remedy.
 Women's relationship to crime is rooted not so much in their femininity as their economic status. Yes, there are misconceptions about crime. As the Home Secretary says, the vast majority of crimes are committed against property rather than people. But here you bump into another myth, less clearly explained. Affluent suburban homes are not the main targets for burglary. Your chances of being burgled are much higher if you live on a council estate or in older, rented inner-city property.
 The same goes for most crime. Women, young and old and often poor, are concentrated in this type of housing. At least three million elderly women live alone (far more than men of the same age group) occupying a disproportionate amount of council and rund-down privately rented property. More than half of divorced and separated women heads of household, 44 per cent of widows and 31 per cent of single women are council tenants, against an average of 28 per cent all heads of households. Single women predominate in the private rented sector.
 Poor areas suffer more in every way. Even their 'non-violent' crimes inflict enormus pain on victims. Graffiti, rubbish-dumping, vandalism, personal and racist abuse and harassment, often physically harmless and carried out by children, make life a misery for the vulnerable.
 Few women trapped in poverty and bad housing own or drive cars compared with the rest of the population. This lack of security crosses class boundaries. One in ten women over 70 holds a driving licence (half of their male contemporaries do). A greater proportion of younger women drive but they are less likely than men of the same age to drive, own a car or to have primary use of the family vehicle. But while motor thefts figure in the statistics and official concern, there is little record of the fear and exposure of those without the security of a car. Some of the most horrific, if unusal, attacks on women occur on public transport or on the streets while they are making essential journeys.
 The great outdoors has become a no-go area for women, particularly after dark and in urban areas. A recent television documentary found that nine out of ten women surveyed were afraid to go out at night. Rather than taking other measures to improve safety on the streets the police force has always favoured this voluntary curfew, urging women in times of specific threat, such as during the series of Yorkshire ripper murders, to stay at home. Now the Home Office would like us to be reassured that it is mostly young men (free and unafraid) who suffer violence. That takes no account of the lesser things - theft, harassment and the generally hostile atmosphere of street life after dark which many fear almost as much as physical assault.
 Physical improvements to the environment have been hit by the cuts in local authority spending during the 1980s. Further privatisation of public housing and open scace will retard progress even more. Collective responsibilities have been supplanted by a private market for the protection of property belonging to the affluent and the commercial sector. The Home Office still dithers over widespread improvements in street lighting, event hough existing research, not to mention common sense, shows that it works.
 In any case, women are not necessarly safe in their own homes. However remote the chances of being attacked or murdered on the street, they are greatly compounded at home. Sandra Horley has claimed on this page that 'woman abuse' accounts for 25 per cent of all recorded crime and various estimates put murder of women by their partners at between 20 and 30 per cent of all homicides (four-fifths of 'domestic' murder). The Home Office itself unwittingly pointed up the contradictions of its own platitudes when it announced in February that a third of rapes were committed by rerlatives or partners and a further third by acquaintances. So much less to fear than rape by a stranger in a back alley?
 Violent domestic crime is one of the few areas which seems to benefit from tougher law enforcement. But the long-term prognosis is bound up with women's economic dependency. Sexual crimes have more to do with power and control than sexuality. And women cannot escape the threat without the ability to set up independent homes for themselves and their children.
 Much of the impact of crime on women is invisible. Recognising it and putting it right would mean that those who benefit from the women's ghetto - chiefly government, employers and consumers who rely on their cheap or free labour - would have to pay for better living standards and a safer public environment. They might also face a more equal spread of the threat of crime.

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June 13, 1989

European Elections: Tories accused on pensions 'misery' - Britain trying to avoid parity with Europe, says Cook

BYLINE: By MARTIN LINTON

LENGTH: 616 words

 
 Labour yesterday accused the Government of providing the lowest pensions in the European Economic Community and trying to block progress on the social charter which would force Britain to increase pensions and other benefits.
 Mr Robin Cook, Labour's health spokesman, used EEC figures to show that Britain's basic state pension was only 46 per cent of average industrial pay against 79 per cent in France, 81 per cent in Italy, 82 per cent in Germany and 93 per cent in Netherlands.
 He told the party's European press conference: 'Mrs Thatcher describes this as 'socialism through the back door'. I welcome her candid admission that socialism is about adequate pensions and that if Britain wants adequate pensions its electors must vote Labour. 
 'They are anxious to block this proposal because they know they cannot compete with the rest of Europe on the provision of pensions which are lower in Britain than in any other country.'
 Mr Cook said that Labour would increase the basic state pension immediately by Pounds 5 or Pounds 8 a week and would uprate it annually in line with earnings rather than prices with a bonus for people over the age of 75. A Labour government would also provide more flexible retirement for men and women so that they could retire at 60, continue working until 70 or combine part-time retirement with part-time work.
 Mr Cook said Labour would phase out standing charges for fuel, review cold weather payments, restore free eye and dental tests, offer a Pounds 600 advance for funeral costs and guarantee concessionary fares on all public transport.
Mrs Barbara Castle, the former leader of Labour's MEPs, said that pensioners were treated more shabbily in Britain than any other European Community country and the social charter would help to lift them out of misery.
 She accused the Government of blocking community proposals for a Euro-pass for all retired people which would entitle them to the same concessions on travel, museums and entertainments enjoyed by elderly people in the country in which they were travelling.
 Voting at 16 is among the new policies proposed by the Democrats in a new 'white paper' on civil rights and liberties which will go to the party's Brighton conference in September.
 They also propose that full British citizenship should be conferred on all British Dependent Territories' Citizens, which would give 3.25 million people in Hong Kong entitled to British passports an automatic right of abode in Britain.
 The document would make discrimination against homosexuals and lesbians illegal, make it an offence to incite hatred on grounds of sexual orientation and introduce a common age of consent for heterosexuals and homosexuals.
 It would also make the Metropolitan Police accountable to an elected police authority in London, enact a bill of rights, restore trade union rights at GCHQ in Cheltenham and introduce a statutory Press Council and right ot reply.
 The white paper, launched at the Democrats' European election press conference yesterday was drawn up by a policy review team including Mrs Shirley Williams and the former Liberal chairmen, Mr Richard Holme and Mr Des Wilson.
 The chairman of the working group, Mr Tim Clement-Jones, said: 'The last six months has seen the curtailment of many vital civil liberties: the right to silence in Northern Ireland, the Sinn Fein broadcasting ban, the imposition of a life-long duty of confidentiality on security service officers, the denial of a public interest defence in the Official Secrets Act, the rights of officials to gather poll-tax information and introduction of legalised burglary under the Security Service Act.'

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June 13, 1989

Cash threat to future havens for elderly

BYLINE: By ALAN DUNN

LENGTH: 153 words

 
 The only complete Georgian square left in Liverpool has been restored at a cost of Pounds 1.5 million by the local housing trust for use as sheltered housing for the elderly.
 To mark the completion of Friendship House, in Falkner Square, Toxteth, 24 winning works from an anti-racist art exhibition will be displayed in the corridors of the 1830s terrace of nine houses, now converted into 31 flats for people from Chinese, Afro-Caribbean, and Muslim communities, many of them former seamen who settled in Liverpool. 
 Finance came from the Housing Corporation, plus Pounds 150,000 from the EEC and Pounds 20,000 from English Heritage, but such schemes are threatened by the 1988 Housing Act, which forces housing associations to seek private financing to supplement reduced corporation grants. Private money may not be forthcoming for areas such as Toxteth, where risks are high and capital values low.

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June 14, 1989

Young Guardian: Rogues who are giving folk a good name - In Glasgow, people are deserting Kylie for ceilidhs, the new faces of folk

BYLINE: By DENIS CAMPBELL

LENGTH: 576 words

 
 If you thought folk music was all about grinning men with beards and beer bellies, singing the praises of whisky and Co. Kerry, think again.
 Up in Glasgow, A Parcel Of Rogues - four teenage veterans of the flute, fiddle, tin whistle and bodhran - are revitalising the most misunderstood music around. Their irresistible tunes, jigs and reels are starting to win some of today's Kylie and Jason-fixated generation over to music most thought was reserved for their aunties and uncles. 
 'The problem with folk music is its 'old' image,' says classically-trained flute and fiddle-player, Kevin McCarthy, who's 18. 'Young people think it's played by old men in old men's pubs and you don't go there because it's boring. It's meant to be music your mum or dad buys. We want to get away from that.'
 'At school, even among my pals, if I said I was playing in a folk group they'd say my group was crap before they'd even heard the music because they're not willing to listen,' chips in fiddler and tin whistle player, John McCusker, the youngest Rogue at 15 and a part-time student at Glasgow's prestigious Royal Academy of Music.
 Bodhran player, Francis McDonald, who's also 18, cringes in agreement. 'I get embarrassed sometimes, saying I play in a folk group because you can see people imagining you wearing a kilt and eating haggis. What turns them off is the image.'
 But A Parcel Of Rogues aren't too discouraged. They believe that many people's prejudices disappear when they actually hear their music and realise just how tuneful it is. 'You might be busking in Glasgow and a couple of your pals pass by. You know for a fact they don't buy Chieftains' records but they still say 'Oh that's really good,' they appreciate it,' says singer Pat Murphy, another 18-year-old, who wanted to be a professional footballer before the Rogues got together.
 A Parcel Of Rogues formed three years ago when they were all pupils at Holy Cross High School in Hamilton, Lanarkshire. 'We're going into folk music with a younger mind,' explains Kevin. 'Too many folk bands simply copy what's gone before and do their version of well-known tunes. That way music gets left in a rut. We're trying to update it by mixing it with more modern stuff as well, like a bit of jazz.'
 That the Rogues prefer to play Some Hae Meat, a 'new folk' song about Third World famine, to numbers like The Wild Rover shows that their horizons extend far beyond the traditional and their refreshing, innovative approach to folk has already earned them TV appearances, radio sessions and critical acclaim north of the border. They release their first record on a Scottish folk label in the autumn.
 With their emphasis on traditional instruments like the bodhran (a handheld Irish drum), the Rogues are encouraged by the recent success of acoustic-based performers like Tracy Chapman, Tanita Tikaram and Enya. 'The fact that they've broken through shows that people are more openminded than ever,' says Francis. With more and more trendy young people in Glasgow starting to go to ceilidhs rather than 'proper' nightclubs, musical tastes are definitely changing.
 John tells me about a session the Rogues did lately for Glasgow's Radio Clyde. 'The DJ announced us by saying 'Listen to the music, it's great. They're not what you expect folk musicians to look like.' What do you expect folk musicians to look like - Aran jumpers?'
 Not any longer, thank goodness.

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June 15, 1989

Thursday Women (Open Space): Hang on in there, babe (2)

BYLINE: From PETER FRANCIS-MULLINS

LENGTH: 75 words

 
 Suppose a man submitted to Guardian Women the converse of Jane Ellison's piece last week - a hatchet job on some middle-aged women who failed, in his view, to act their age. Suppose he sneered at lined faces and post-maternal figures. Terms like 'sagging' and 'menopausal' would doubtless appear. He might even call them raddled old women. How long would it take his manuscript to hit the bin?
 Peter Francis-Mullins
 London SE22.

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June 15, 1989

Meat research centre to close

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE and TOM SHARRATT

LENGTH: 170 words

 
 A leading meat research laboratory at Bristol is to be closed with the loss of more than 120 scientists' jobs, the Government announced yesterday amid protests from MPs over the latest food poisoning outbreak.
 Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, apologised for misleading MPs after denying on Tuesday that any research on botulism took place at the Institute of Food Research which will close next year. 
 Clostridium botulinum toxin type B has been found in a can of hazelnut puree made by Young's Fruits, of Folkestone, the firm thought to be linked with the current outbreak of botulism poisoning in Northwest England and North Wales, the Department of Health confirmed. The toxin may have been formed because of a processing fault.
 The number of suspected cases rose to 20 yesterday with the admission of two elderly women to hospital at Blackpool. The women, aged 72 and 74 were said to be stable. A 21-year-old man from Newton-le-Willows has been admitted to Walton Hospital at Liverpool.

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June 16, 1989

The Day in Politics: Retirement age choice would ensure equality

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE, Westminster Correspondent

LENGTH: 333 words

 
 Men and women should be able to choose when to retire between the agest of 60 and 70, with full pensions paid to both sexes at the age of 63, an influential House of Lords Select Committee recommends today.
 The proposals, which would cost taxpayers an additional Pounds 700 million a year, follow an investigation into how Britain should implement an EEC draft directive demanding equal treatment on social security for men and women.
 The directive is being negotiated between Britain and its European partners with the aim of introducing equal rights for social security claimants and pensioners during the next decade. 
 The House of Lords committee considered a common retirement age at 60 at a cost of Pounds 3 billion or raising it to 65 for women, saving taxpayers Pounds 500 million a year. It opted for a compromise solution of a choice with pensions paid at 63.
 To protect women's existing pension rates, the peers suggest that a ten year transitional period, allowing women to retire on full pension at 60 after the changes would be implemented.
 Peers warn that the growing number of elderly people will need to work longer in the next century because of labour market shortages. Present trends show a sharp decline in the number of men working beyond 60 - from 82.0 per cent in 1971 to 54.6 per cent in 1987.
 The committee calls for an end to discrimination in widow's benefits. Widows and widowers should receive equal payments, even if the level of benefits has to be scaled down, it says.
 But peers reject proposals under the EEC directive for child benefit to be paid either to the father or mother. This will complicate procedures for paying the benefit, they say, and Britain should be allowed to keep its own system.
 Peers also want the directive to include equal treatment for part-time workers.
 Equal Treatment for Men and Women in Pensions and other Benefits. House of Lords Select Committee on the European Communities. HMSOI Pounds 13.90.

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June 16, 1989

Important day for people who count

BYLINE: By ERLEND CLOUSTON

LENGTH: 552 words

 
 PC 5138 was slumped, jacketless and perspiring, on a bench in the gymnasium of Linden Street primary school, Denton. He was keeping a sharp eye on the eight polling booths huddled nervously in the middle fo the cool parquet. If he blinked he was liable to miss the spectacle of the great British public exercising its democratic right to send someone it has never met to a place it doesn't care much for. 
 In 1984 a miserable 30 per cent of Greater Manchester East Euro-constituents turned out for an election that packed Labour 'oceanologist' Glyn Ford off to Strasbourg. Yesterday party activists, sizzling in the little shade thrown off by Linden Street's sleek modern design, were hopeful that the people might put on a better show this time.
 'I would say it is looking brighter than the local elections at least,' said Margaret Burns, clad in scarlet T-shirt and coral toe-nail varnish and crouched on a grey plastic chair borrowed from class three.
 As proof, Mrs Bramah was produced. Her 22-year-old son Tony had insisted on voting for Labour at 7.05 am, just three hours before he had his tonsils whipped out at Manchester Royal Infirmary. By 11.00 however voters were still shamelessly turning up at the rate of only one every three minutes.
 Ms Burns and her colleague Joe ('I'm not from round here, but I'm a union man.') were employed in 'number-snatching'. 'We see sho's voted and who hasn't. Maybe in the evening we'll go round knocking on doors.' They were allowed to desert their posts in the afternoon to hand out red balloons in Denton market.
 The Conservatives had a number snatcher out as well. Twelve-year-old Carol White glared out of a blue, padded chair. 'I'm not really political,' she admitted, adjusting her Lager Lout T-shirt. 'The woman across the road asked me if I wanted to do it. They pay Pounds 5 and your dinner and your tea.' The Labour team looked slightly superior. 'We don't use children if we can help it,' whispered Margaret. 'They usually start-messing about, especially if there's two of them.'
 The weather was definitely in the oceanologist's favour. Denton, an ancient community subsumed by eastern Manchester, used to be the hat-making centre of the universe because its extraordinarily foul climate preserved felt longer.
 'Terrible conditions, they were,' said Joe, filling in the lengthy time between number snatches. 'All their hands were shrivelled with arthritis from working in steam and water.'
 By early afternoon Labour cars were disgorging old age pensioners by the ton. Of Tory, Democrat and the Green machines there was no sign.
 'They're not fighting for our votes any more,' complained three Conservative Deltonians alighting from an electric blue Honda saloon. Fred and Gwen had picked up Elsie of their own accord. 'Otherwise it would have been a vote wasted, wouldn't it?'
 None of the Labour voters appeared interested in Euro-issues. Crosses were put against Mr Ford's name 'to get rid of HER' or 'because my husband was Labour.' Nobody had been converted by campaign literature or a meeting.
 PC 5138 was taking it all very seriously, however. Had any of Denton's elderly electorate been giving him any trouble inside? 'I am not allowed to tell you,' he said, gravely. Democracy had its limits, after all.

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June 17, 1989

Diary: Ambushed in streets of the sneaky pun

BYLINE: By JULIAN BARNES

LENGTH: 1225 words

 
 Yesterday two pensioners were sentenced for an armed raid last December on an Abbey National office in Hayes, Middlesex. It was one of those comic-pathetic cases where real danger (a loaded Walther automatic) vies with real incompetence (looking up bare-faced at the security camera). What snagged by attention, though, was not so much the babbling drama as the address of the elderly couple: Goldsmith Avenue, Acton W3. They can't live there, I thought. That's where I used to live; that's were I spent the first 10 years of my life. What the hell's happened to Acton?
 I hadn't been back in 30 years to the half-dozen streets where my childhood was played out: a mixture of apathy and superstition. Now I have myself a professional reason to return. I have a novel out this week, and am disguising anxiety by fretting about the next book instead. It's a toss-up, I think, between the Obsessive Love novel and the London novel - unless it turns out that one fits inside the other, as with those recipes where you stuff a duck into a goose and cook them together. But where to begin with London? Well, why not where I began, arriving in my Moses basket from Leicester aged x weeks. 
 The problem with looking back isn't so much sentimentality as reverse sentimentality: making it all as clogs-and-blacking-factory as you can. In my memories I have pictured Acton as a place of narrow streets and mean houses where the darkness was bituminous, the municipal pig-bins out of Dante, the street dangers Bronxian. In fact, the only moment of deep fear I can locate in my first 10 years came when a boy called Kelly stepped out from behind a tree in Goldsmith Avenue, stuck something into the small of my back, and snarled: 'Don't move or I'll plug you.'
 I was terrified for several elastic minutes before he let me go. As I fled, I looked back and saw that he was holding in his hand a three-pin 15-amp electric plug. My first introduction not just to fear, but also to wordplay. No wonder I distrust puns as cheap, sneaky things.
 The walk from Acton main line revealed bursts of gentrification: carriage lamps, entryphones, ruched blinds like baggy knickers, and Neighbourhood Watch badges (in my day all we had in the windows were Job Done stickers to deter Scouts). But Goldsmith Avenue itself seemed less tampered with, less skip-happy. It also didn't confirm my recollections: the street was wider, lighter, greener, the houses were more handsome. I hadn't lived in a mean semi after all, but in one half of a sturdy Edwardian red-brick villa. I approached number 55 warily, alert for an ambush of memories.
 The front garden had been concreted into a car-stand; the door had been stripped and now sported an antique letter-box saying LETTERS (were postmen very thick; what else might they put through the flap?). I half-expected to be disbelieved - 'Another burglar, Mum' - and to my surprise I was allowed to look around. That piece of leaded window by the lounge door, which I'd smashed by throwing a shoe at my brother, was now reeded glass; but the pretty fret-worked banisters and the patterned tile floor were still intact. I hopefully inspected the room in which I'd first slept, and recognised the period '55' in coloured glass above the front door; but in 20 minutes nothing stirred. I felt more like a house-buyer than a revenant.
 The Polish lady who lives there told me the OAP gangsters had run a bed-and-breakfast a few doors away, causing a lot of late-night minicab traffic; their arrest had restored quiet to the street. Her small son Mark, who now sleeps in my bedroom waved me goodbye with the TV channel-changer. 'When I lived here we didn't have television,' I told him pompously. 'We had to go over the road to watch the Coronation'.
 I left Goldsmith Avenue and turned along Shakespeare Road, crossing Milton Road, Cowper Road, Myrtle Road, and Spencer Road (I think Myrtle is the odd one out). I walked this poetic way to school every day: the tuck shop is now the Shakespeare Superstore (Grocerty and off Licence). Did any sly literary imprinting take place? It's possible. After all, in another part of Acton in the Fifties the infant Peter Ackroyd was clutching his teddy; or, more likely, precociously mugging up the works of Chatterton. Together we form the Acton school of fiction.
 I walked around for a bit then escaped with a certain relief: no forgotten monsters had emerged.
 Doubtless I have concreted over bits of my infancy as our front garden has been concreted over; but if the best you can hope for from childhood is to escape without too much damage, perhaps the same also goes for your memories of childhood. So no wires were tripped and the London novel didn't get a useful bump-start; now we're back on Obsessive Love. In general, though, beginning a novel isn't difficult; at least, compared to finishing a novel, isn't difficult; at least, compared to publishing a novel.
 It's not so much fear of bad reviews, but something wider and more nugatory: fear of being exposed, fingered, pinned down; fear of getting caught out in some piercing manner. Still, I reflect, as I await publication day, it's only a book; and I console myself with an example of Getting Caught Out in a much more final and spectacular way.
 Simon Schama's enthralling Citizens includes the story of Condorcet, one of the many stirrers of the French Revolution who were later engulfed by it. In 1794 he escaped from house-arrest in Paris and walked to Clamart where, feeling hungry, he went into an inn and caarefully ordered a modest, sansculottish omelett. 'How many eggs?' asked the patronne, to which the philosopher and marquis, unfamiliar with such culinary cross-examination, replied: 'A dozen.' Whereupon he was promptly rearrested; he died in his cell, possibly from poison. Now that's what I call Getting Caught Out.
 The final paragraph of a Diary is habitually reserved for an old buffer's grouse. The ne plus ultra of this tradition was Anthony Howard's grave complaint in the New Statesman Diary some years ago that single-edged razor blades had become unobtainable in this country. His protest had little effect chez Gillette, I'm afraid; though it did mean that any Statesman employee who went to the States was expected to return with several dozen packets of blades to coddle the editor's cheek.
 My own buffer's grouse is about the televising of cricket. This season has brought the introduction of double-ended coverage, an Australian perversion which means that you are always given the shot from behind the bowler's arm. The batsman's vision of approaching menace is therefore sactificed; worse, viewers lose the important sense of watching the match from a particular spot in the ground.
 So that's TV cricket ruined. And soon the radio ball-by-ball commentary is to be discontinued. And in any case,you can't find when the cricket is on the TV and radio any more after the most insulting pro-advertiser, anti-consumer redesign of the Radio Times in world history. Which means that in future if you want to experience cricket, you'll jolly well have to go along to a game in person and actually sit there. In which case, perhaps all's for the best after all.
 Julian Barnes's novel, A History of the world in 10 1/2 Chapters, published by Jonathan Cape, June 22.

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June 19, 1989

Eyewitness: Liberty's torch lifts in defiance and mourning

LENGTH: 825 words

 
  
   By ED VULLIAMY
 HONG KONG - It was one of Hong Kong's most emotionally charged moments of proximity to the rebellion and subsequent state barbarism to the north, in China.
 A monumental replica of the Statue of Liberty, modelled on the one smashed in Tiananmen Square, yesterday raised her torch again. This time it was across Hong Kong Harbour, looking north towards the frontier and Beijing, on a stretch of green in Victoria Park bordered by towering offices, banks and blocks.
 Grandiose in glistening white plaster, her gaze classically confident, she rose high above the thousands who had converged through the bustle of Sunday shopping for a rally to mark her unveiling. 
 They sat under an impenitent sun in the humid heat. It was a family day out; they took photographs of each other with Freedom's torch as a backdrop, they played a bit of badminton or mah jong by the refreshment tent, then they gathered under the monument.
 They were mainly young, but in the shade of the tropical trees the elderly sat, also in black armbands, drinking sugarcane juice from cartons, or Coke through straws.
 The students in the field wore the Benettonised gear that Hong Kong's youth cherises - splattered with T-shirts showing the face of Chai Ling, the 23-year-old Bejing underground leader. Their elders under the trees wore naked, wrinkled chests and tradition straw hats, and perhaps carried little tropical birds with them in ornate cages.
 The talk in Hong Kong this week has been of anxiety, of 1997 and of obsure body-swering by the British government. But yesterday, all that was submerged beneath a curious bittersweet mix of mourning and defiance directed at, and for consumption in, Beijing rather than Whitehall.
 A speaker said that a hundred lived for every student who died, and that this statue now stood for the one that had fallen.
 At a cue from the speaker's platform and a single, all-too-familiar chord from the PA system, the crowd rose and moved forward like a foller-coaster. The chord was the opening of the Song For Freedom. It has been ubiquitous in Hong Kong this weekend - whistled by shoeshine boys and waitress at the dim sum tables in sweaty back street.
 The anthem was written and first peerformed by a Band-Aid-style umbrella of Hong Kong rock and pop stars. It was exported north, where it was eagerly adopted in Tiananmen Square before the massacre.
 'Love, love the people; Fight, fight for freedom,' it goes. Yesterday, they pushed their hands into the air with the peace/victory sign raised, and coached grandparents and little children as they sang along.
 The sound rose, past the statue's gaze and the hugh dragonflies which hovered, catching the merciful breeze blowing north across the harbour.
 The song was born four weeks ago when almost every rock entertainer across the Pacific edge came to Hong Kong to join 300,000 people for a stadium concert in solidarity with the students occupying Tiananmen Square.
 The concert organiser was Hong Kong's leading (radical, although highly successful) film producer, Johnny Shum. He has not touched movies for four weeks, preferring to become an important though clandestine bridge between the Hong kong movement and the revolution on the mainland.
 Johnny, who was in Beijing until the day before the massacre, talked about the statue the night before its unveiling over a few drinks in a few clubs.
 'It is a statue of freedom and it is the statue of our movement. It got mixed up with the American Statue of Liberty, which is not what they wanted at all. this is a statue of freedom for the Chinese people, and for all people.'
 As they dispersed yesterday, a second rally organised by leftwing students began. It attracted about 800.
 Copies of the Internationale were distributed and a man in a black T-shirt with a clenched fist on it explained some amendments made in Tiananmen Square. 'The Internationale unites the human race' has become 'The Internationale is for democracy freedom and equality'.
 'These ae ideas which came from the French Revolution, but under the capitalism that followed there was still oppression,' he told the cheering crowd. 'Then they came again in communism, but still there is oppression again.'
 The crowd stood silent through a chilling theatrical re-enactment of the massacre in Beijing, complete with screams, a drumroll and the laughter of soldiers as they covered bodies in red satin.
 One speaker said people in Hong Kong should fight for the right of abode in Britain. Another denounced him, saying: 'We are Chinese and we must stay and fight them here.'
 Harry and Mabel Chan, who work in an export company and a jewellery shop respectively, had sauntered over. 'It is so different now,' said Harry. 'Maybe there is now some hope for China, so we should stay with them until they win. But maybe there is now no hope in China, and so we should go.'

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June 20, 1989

Ageing peasant generals await next challenge from children of reform: Beijing returns to customary surliness and lies which have become survival skills these past 40 years

BYLINE: By JASPER BECKER

LENGTH: 1079 words

 
 Beijing is back to what it was. The evasive lies, the cagey suspicion with which everyone answers the phone, or the surly sloth with which work is done once again betray the suppressed anger of a resentful and alienated people.
 'We don't need to show you the new regulations. I have told you what they are,' an official at the customs office said last week when I asked for written evidence of taxes totalling Pounds 20,000 on the import of a nine-year-old car. 
 The anti-corruption campaign of a few months ago has been forgotten and cadres are feastiing each other in expensive restuarants again.
 But the heroism and humanity that people in Beijing showed in the weeks leading up to June 3, when they shook off their fear, showed how wrong it was to assume, as I did when I first arrived here four years ago, that Beijingers are simply an unpleasant lot
 Now the pervasive fear is there again and the walls, physical and mental, which the Chinese learn to erect to protect themselves against their arbitrary and callous masters.
 The rift between the rulers and the ruled has been exposed in a way not seen for 40 years, and while people are back at work, little work is being done.
 'Why should I take you there if you don't know the address?' snarled a taxi driver the other day. 'Everyone is on a sort of go slow, as a protest. Why should we work?' another explained later.
 The stream of nauseating propaganda since June 3 has added few new facts to events behind the bloodbath, but it does suggest that Mr Deng Xiaoping and the other octogenarians are genuinely worried about the threat of 'bourgeois liberalism'.
 What passes for a bourgeoisie in China has for the first time led an effective challange to the power of the largely peasant generals who conquered China 40 years ago.
 The students had demanded the right to question the authority of a group of old men who have never been called to account for their mistakes.
 Ten years of reforms produced in China the beginnings of a middle class of professionals, intellectuals, well-to-do peasants, private entreprenuers, and the post-Cultural Revolution generation who saw what was happening outside China and wanted the same.
 They are a drop in the ocean of China's vast population and found in and around the main cities where they are exposed to foreign influences and enjoy growing material independence.
 Faced with their challange, China's gerontocracy feels that only their children can be trusted to succeed them, and it was no coincidence that President Yang Shangkun's nephew led the bloody assault on Tiananmen and it was planned by his brother.
 The treat posed by this new class is not just to the leaders but to their followers in the party and bureaucracy who run the inefficient, and often corrupt, state sector.
 The reforms which Mr Zhao Ziyang wanted to push forward - bankruptcy laws, stocks and shares, labour and capital markets, a civil service appointed not by personal recommendation but through exams - posed a direct threat to the vested interests of this bureaucracy.
 Many were already losing out in the competition for raw materials between the state and non-state industries and would only do worse in the future.
 The economic competition also made many of these staterun corporations accountable for the first time, forced to explain why a silk factory in Shanghai had to close while another collectively run in the countryside was thriving.
 The bands of motorcycles which zoomed around Beijing at the height of the student demonstrations and the photocopiers and fax machines at the disposal of the protesters bears witness to the new and independent wealth of some sections of the population.
 The wealth of the private and collective sector has begun to buy political influence, too, and there have been heated debates within the party as to whether millionaires ought to be allowed to join the party.
 Last year, Mr Zhao had begun introducing multi-candidate elections for posts such as deputy provincial governor or mayor, which naturally alienated many of the losers.
 A degree, however limited, of economic and political competition and the concern to root out corruption, requires a freer press. This was particularly regarded with fear by the party's old guard and their hangers-on used to acting in secrecy and without question.
 Not only could their decisions and the corruption that permeates the party to open to scrutiny but some embarrassing questions could be asked about the past.
 The history of much of the party's 40 years in power remains taboo, and many of the octogenerians now back in power have blood on their hands going back many years. All of them are guilty of failing to prevent the Great Leap Forward which cost upwards of 20 million lives or the Cultural Revolution to mention only the most obvious 'mistakes'.
 As long as these men remain alive, China will not be ready to re-evaluate its past in the way that Hungary or the Soviet Union are doing now.
 The party's leadership remains accountable only to itself. By design or accident, they can still rely on the obedience of the majority of Chinese, semi-literate peasants cut off from the rest of the world and steeped in a tradition of unquestioning loyalty to the state.
 Most peasants are likely to accept the government's version of the events in Beijing and Maoism has taught them to be distrustful of intellectuals.
 Even by Third World standards. China's record in education is appalling and the reforms have done little to reverse that. The democratic reforms in South Korea, with a similar autocratic political heritage, were propelled by the huge 'middle class' which had sprung up as a result of a massive investment in education.
 Many Chinese intellectuals argue that even if the economic crisis worsened sufficiently to provoke a peasant uprising, it would only lead to another form of dictatorship, just like the Communist Party it would replace.
 The support the educated urbanites need to successfully change China's political culture will come only with an education system that enables more than a small minority to think for themselves. In the meantime, China's intelligentsia will continue to be the victim of purges and campaigns as they have been for four decades.
 Award-winning television reporter Kate Adie, aged 43, flew home from China yesterday to become the BBC's chief news correspondent.

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June 21, 1989

Young Guardian (Outloud): Deep in Soviet personal space

BYLINE: By BENJAMIN STEELE

LENGTH: 332 words

 
 Soviet families seem to have a very strong life together. My friends say they have too much. They spend a great deal of time in close contact since no Soviet family has its own house. Instead they live in flats which are usually small. 
 Many people have grandparents living with them. Because of the severe winters and because even in summer there is less to do outside in the evening they stay at home a lot.
 My best friend, Borril, lives with his parents and brother in a two room flat. Both his parents work; his mother is a lecturer at Moscow University and his father is a skilled worker in a nearby factory. His mother is usually at home when he gets back from school and his father gets home at about 5 o'clock.
 Because of this close environment adolescence can be very difficult. Another friend of mine, Vadim, spends most of his time on the streets drinking. He says that the nicest time of the day is very early in the morning before anybody else is up.
 The school programme does not allow for many family days because there is school even on Saturday. But there are a lot of holidays, like Soviet Army Day or International Woman's Day when the parks are full of families. On these days the few remaining old men parade around displaying their war medals while the old women look on.
 Most old women live with their grown-up children because of the shortage of flats and because they are expected to move in if their husbands have died. These old ladies are an integral part of the Soviet Union. They keep the country going during winter when they are out in force clearing the streets of snow and grit.
 They all live through Stalin and have had a terrible life. Just three months ago an old lady jumped out of a fourth floor window of the building directly opposite my school in an attempt to commit suicide. Amazingly she survived unhurt. The miserable pension they receive is only 60 roubles, or Pounds 50 a month, so most of them are forced to work.

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June 21, 1989

Young Guardian (Input): Rock's living death legends

BYLINE: By SEAN FRENCH

LENGTH: 708 words

 
 It is sad that one of the first disconcerting signs of growing old is when policemen start looking younger than you do. However, a far more comforting aspect of my life as I've grown older has been that the top rock stars have never started looking younger than me. They are as many years older today as they've ever been.
 Back in 1974, when I was exactly half the age I am now, who were the top names in the rock world? Pink Floyd were playing in large stadiums. Genesis, David Bowie and Brian Ferry were beginning to make names for themselves. Tom Waits and Bruce Springsteen had just produced their first albums. 
 Other more established names were Steve Winwood (who had just gone solo), Randy Newman and Van Morrison. Of the older generation, Eric Clapton and Bob Dylan were emerging from years of seclusion. The Who and The Rolling Stones were undertaking massive world tours while people ironically quoted Pete Townshend's line about hoping he died before he got old.
 Paul McCartney was struggling to establish himself with his new group Wings and escape from the shadow of the Beatles. Meanwhile, Cliff Richard was soldiering on and on.
 So what has changed? In the last couple of weeks Cliff Richard has celebrated his millionth single, or whatever it is. Paul McCartney has released a new album in which, according to who you read, he is either a) finally escaping from the Beatles' spell or b) finally recapturing the Beatles magic (delete where applicable). The Who have just set off on yet another reunion tour of the United States, for which they will earn a rumoured Pounds 10 million.
 The punk revolution has come and gone, virtually as if it had never happened, while the aged rockers that it was designed to replace are still firmly in place. The normal journalistic cliche would be to talk about eternal youth but eternal youth was scarcely the appropriate term to describe the wrinklies who were spied tottering down the aisle to celebrate the wedding of Bill Wyman and Mandy Smith the other week. They looked more like poorly preserved first world war veterans than rebels and rock legends.
 Some, like Van Morrison and Randy Newman, have remained creative. But most of them - The Rolling Stones, The Who, McCartney, Dylan - haven't recorded a single song in the last decade that has added a jot to their reputations. Instead, they are resuscitated every couple of years and trundled out on to the road to perform their ever more ancient greatest hits. A form of music that was invented as a form of youthful rebellion has now become dominated by a collection of rich middle-aged men.
 A lot of this has to do with the crass conservatism of the record industry. But much of it is simply related to demography (the science of populations). The explosive growth of the pop industry in the sixties happened because of the baby boom in the optimistic post-war years in England and the United States. In the years around 1950 there were simply far more babies born and this extra-large cohort exercised huge cultural influence as it grew older because of its buying power.
 In its early teens it liked the Beatles, in its late teens flower power, in its twenties its tastes mellowed. Now it's in middle age and it's into nostalgia. The baby boomers are buying compact discs of the music they used to like when they were younger. In fact it could be argued that it was only conceivable for a medium as expensive as the compact disc to be invented once the baby boomers had become middle-aged and prosperous.
 Furthermore the baby boomers have now grown up and occupied the Establishment, which is yet another reason why it's virtually impossible to switch on the TV without seeing an interview with Paul McCartney or Pete Townshend.
 The baby boomers are one of the most spoiled generations in human history. Through their economic clout they've been able to foist their own taste on everyone else and as a result we'll probably all live to see Roger Daltrey and Mick Jagger hobbling around the world's stages on walking frames.
 Pete Townshend didn't die before he got and it looks like we're going to have to wait for his generation to get old and die before other generations can get a look in.

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June 21, 1989

Special Report on Social Services in London (1): Chronic case of a hole in the heart - The staff shortage crisis hitting London's social services

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE

LENGTH: 1260 words

 
 Social Services in London seem to be in permanent crisis. Offices are closed to the public, cases go unallocated to social workers and residential homes are kept going by expensive temporary agency staff. As one survey put it, quoting a hardpressed director of social services in one of the 32 London boroughs, services in the capital have been giving the appearance of imploding.
 The essential problem is staff shortage. Although problems are by no means unique to London, the boroughs in general do face an unparalleled combination of high vacancy rates and high turnover.
 A study published last week found that the vacancy rate for 'field', or non-residential, social workers was running at 16.4 per cent in Greater London and that 20.1 per cent left jobs in the course of a year. David Jones, an assistant director of social services in Haringey, north London, says: 'Our services are very much geared to respond to crises and the heavy, dramatic, statutory end of the work. That unfortunately means that some other client groups, particularly those with physical disabilities and elderly people, get even less priority than they tend to normally in a social services department.' 
 The recent focus has been on child abuse work. Last year, at the height of the Cleveland affair, a report by the Government's Social Services Inspectorate identified more than 600 London children who were registered as at risk of abuse or having been abused, but who could not be allocated to a social worker. Only 14 boroughs were found to have no unallocated cases; in the others the proportion unallocated ran as high as one in three. The inspectorate concluded: 'Where there are large numbers of such cases with very limited oversight, they must represent situations of considerable risk to the children involved.'
 If the picture has been this bad in respect of child abuse, what price the rest of the social services workload? Overall, the inspectorate said, those boroughs unable to keep abreast of demand had no fewer than 4,630 unallocated cases of all kinds. Small wonder that a more recent study commissioned for Nalgo, the main trade union for social services staff, found that workers in London were feeling a backlash.
 The study, carried out by researchers at Southampton University, looked at conditions in six representative social services departments in Britain, including one London borough. None was named. Compared to the average, London workers reported suffering high levels of stress, physical violence, threats and abuse. Yet the study also suggested that conditions in the borough were above average in many respects, notably training, supervision and facilities.
 Moreover, it is clear that the 'London effect' is not as bad as it was a year or two ago and, then as now, is worse in some boroughs than others. Mervyn Eastman, deputy social services director in Enfield, north London, says: 'We have had difficulties, but I would not say we have had major problems compared to other boroughs. Social workers do cover for each other quite well, so in terms of crisis work, dealing with emergencies, we do cope. It's the longterm, more developmental work which we are not able to get a handle on.'
 Even so, Enfield does share London-wide shortages of some specialist staff, such as mental health workers and occupational therapists - in short supply nationally and chronically so in some parts of the capital.
 Last week's study, by the Association of Directors of Social Services (ADSS) and the Local Authorities Conditions of Service Advisory Board, calculated a vacancy rate of 21.1 per cent for full-time occupational therapists in Greater London. Their turnover rate was put at 23.3 per cent. In Hammersmith and Fulham there is a 30 per cent vacancy rate for occupational therapists, or rehabilitation officers, who visit elderly and disabled people in their homes to assess their case needs or help with exercises.
 Hammersmith's deputy director of social services, Simon White, says: 'It's an essential part of community care and ensures that people are not relapsing into bedridden dependency at home. As long as we have these shortages, it just means longer waiting lists.'
 A previous ADSS survey, carried out exclusively in London and published last year, identified five ways in which staff shortages were affecting service delivery:
 Closures, emergency-only duty systems, slower responses, unallocated cases. The ADSS said: 'As a means of limiting demand, these strategies undoubtedly work. Serious concern must be expressed, however, that this is a very crude method that leaves the potential for cases of serious risk .. not being handled.'
 Higher caseloads of higher-priority cases. The association said: 'This cannot go unchecked, however, before this tends to the remaining workforce being put under intolerable stress, increasing the likelihood of errors and, importantly, of staff leaving - thus creating a vicious downward spiral.'
 Reduced supervision, with social workers having to act above their grade. This, the ADSS warned, increased potential for errors in unsupervised work, heightened stress among staff and left gaps in the routine caseloads of social workers acting above their grade.
 Frozen places in residential homes and temporary closures. 'Apart from being an effective use of scarce resources, this is delaying service to . the most dependent and frail in our society,' the association warned.
 Use of temporary agency staff. This is often the only way to keep residential homes open but, the ADSS said, it is a cause of poor care standards and inefficient in expenditure terms.
 Although charges vary, an agency worker costs a borough about 20 per cent more than a staff member. But the cost in respect of quality of care is incalculable. Mr White, dealing with 20-25 per cent vacancy rates among residential workers in Hammersmith, says: 'In residential work, continuity of staff is very important in making these institutions feel more like home. If there is always a different person coming in every night, the personal relationship between the staff and residents is not there in the same way and the outcome is not really satisfactory.'
 The premium costs of agency staff have aggravated financial problems in boroughs which have been rate-capped. In Haringey - which has vacancy rates of 35 per cent among residential staff, 30 per cent among occupational therapists and 19 per cent among field social workers - spending cuts have recently included the scrapping of the social services department's separate recruitment advertising budget. Advertisements are now paid for out of the salaries budget.
 Mr Jones, at Haringey, says that while the picture is slowly improving - thanks, in part, to moves by Haringey, in common with other boroughs, to offer higher basic pay rates to social workers - nobody can really gauge the full effects of the continuing shortages. 'Take today. I was involved in somebody's application for a telephone. In a case like that, when staff are not available to take a lot of details, the assumption tends to be made that it's not that urgent or that the person has a network of support.
 'We then have absolutely no idea whether it's a crisis situation unless other agencies or people who know the ropes tell us it is a crisis, or there is a crisis just round the corner. Those that don't know how to work the system are simply not able to articulate their needs and, I am afraid, they suffer as a consequence.'

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June 21, 1989

The Day in Politics in Brief

LENGTH: 452 words

 
 Labour was defeated in an attempt to impose on the Scottish Secretary a statutory duty not to discriminate in favour of schools which opt out of local education authority control. The move by Mr Dennis Canavan (Lab. Falkirk W) was lost by 266 votes to 193 (Government majority 73) at report stage of the Self Governing Schools (Scotland) Bill. Mr Canavan believed that if parents saw extra funds being channelled to schools which opted out it would have a 'snowball effect' on applications for self-governing status. 
 * * *
 The Prime Minister has decided that three items of ivory and silver jewellery she received as gifts during her visit to Zimbabwe earlier this year should be retained by Customs and Excise in view of the ban on ivory imports announced on June 9.
 * * *
 Water workers will be offered free shares worth around Pounds 70 at the privatisation offer price, plus about Pounds 2 worth of shares for every year of service, Mr Michael Howard, the water minister, announced. They will also be offered two free shares up to a maximum value of Pounds 400 for each one bought at the full offer price, and a 10 per cent discount on up to Pounds 2,350 worth of additional shares. Employees will be given priority in applications for further shares up to a Pounds 12,000 limit.
 * * *
 A Bill to make dog owners contribute to the cost of cleaning parks and pavements was given a first reading in the Commons. Mrs Theresa Gorman (C. Billericay) said dog owners should have to give details of their dogs on poll tax registration forms.
 * * *
 Emergency shutdown valves must be fitted on pipelines rising to offshore oil and gas platforms under regulations laid before Parliament by the Energy Secretary, Mr Cecil Parkinson, as part of the Government's response to the Piper Alpha disaster.
 * * *
 The Licensing (Amendment) Bill allowing clubs to serve alcohol on Sundays during the same hours as pubs was given an unopposed third reading in the Lords and now goes to the Commons.
 * * * TODAY IN PARLIAMENT
 House of Commons: Trade and Industry questions; debate on Opposition motion 'food safety, research and the nation's health'; Local Government Bill, third reading; motions on Scottish Social Security and Community Charges regulations.
 House of Lords: Debate on problems facing the government and people of Hong Kong; debate on improving child care facilities, the care of the elderly and steps to enable more women to join the workforce.

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June 22, 1989

Leading Article: Back off the burner

LENGTH: 548 words

 
 Not all organisational problems are like Rubik's cube. Some do not have a perfect solution. There is no perfect solution, as Sir Roy Griffiths told ministers, to the crucial gaps in the network of different services provided for the elderly, mentally ill and mentally handicapped, but Sir Roy's report came with the best answer: major responsibility must rest with local social service departments. This was too much for a Prime Minister pathologically opposed to giving local councils more reponsibility. Undaunted by the waste exposed by the Audit Commission in the Pounds 6 billion services, she has spent the 15 months since the Griffiths report was published searching for some alternative answer. For 15 months all changes to community care have been blocked. The deadlock meant even the Government's white paper on the health service could not refer to the issue because yeat another ministerial review had been set up to examine the problem. Tina, however. Belatedly, Mrs Thatcher has accepted Griffiths. The green light was given this week by a Cabinet committee she chairs. 
 Full details aren't available yet, but at last work can start on substituting concrete policies for political rhetoric. Community care has been debated for 30 years but it remains under-developed, unco-ordinated and under-funded. Responsibility is divided between multiple agencies - health authorities, housing departments, social services, private residential homes and voluntary organisations. Unintentional policies have often had a bigger impact than the intentional. The social security system's open-ended commitment to people in residential homes has seen the subsidy to private homes rise from Pounds 18 million to almost Pounds 1,000 million in less than a decade. Meanwhile, intentional policies, like the 35,000 reduction in the number of NHS beds for the mentally ill, mentally handicapped and elderly, have not been matched by a commensurate increase in community facilities. The number of extra day care places has only increased by 9,000.
 Now Griffiths can be given a chance. Social service departments will be expected to draw up plans for their areas. Around 1.5 million people already receive some form of help; but these numbers will leap in the next decade as the numbers over 85 increase by 50 per cent. The main idea is not to turn councils into monopoly providers but, instead, to encourage councils to purchase the most cost-effective care for clients from competing suppliers in the private, voluntary and public sectors. All three forms of residential care would be placed on an equal footing with no public finance available - as it is at present - without 'an assesment of need.' Thus there should be more incentive to keep people in their homes, supported by domiciliary services, instead of in more expensive but less human institutional care.
 None of this, presumably, was opposed by the Prime Minister. It was the other parts of Griffiths, equally vital, which will have made her jib. It will be important to see they are in the package too: the recognition that local networks cannot be managed from Whitehall but must be left to local managers; and the even more urgent need to ensure there are adequate resources to match the new responsibilities.

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June 24, 1989

Weekend Money: Grey market grows in home loans - It's easier now for older people to get mortgages

BYLINE: By NICHOLAS COLE

LENGTH: 883 words

 
 The single, self-employed woman aged 55 spoke with the bitter certainty of one labouring under the delusion not dispelled by hype about the new-rich older generation: 'I'd never get a mortgage at my time of life'.
 She was surprised to discover that borrowing to buy her first home could actually become easier after entering the 'lean and slippered' sixth age.
 It's a common misconception among older people that they can't get a mortgage; they are almost apologetic about asking', says Nationwide Anglia which, like most major building societies, offers interest-only mortgages to would-be borrowers aged 60 and over.
 Under such schemes, the borrower pays only the interest on a loan, at rates identical with those of ordinary repayment mortgages; the capital debt is repaid by choice during the term or on death through sale of the property asset. 
 The borrower will probably be offered up to 75 per cent of the property's value, and may be expected to take out insurance to protect the mortgage.
 Over-55s form the smallest proportion of the first-time buyers' market - under 10 per cent of all borrowers, according to the Building Societies Association.
 The Halifax building society, whose interest-only scheme operates under the 'Retirement Home Plan' banner, has about 150,000 borrowers aged over 55 - around 7 per cent of its total roll. Between 70,000 and 80,000 of them are first-time customers for the society but some may have had previous mortages elsewhere.
 While the trend generally is, as the society says, away from age discrimination and towards 'mortgages to suit all needs', policy and practice vary between societies. The common features, as indicated by Abbey National, are lenders' readiness to consider each applicant on merit, insistence that property offered as security is sound, also that borrowers 'demonstrate their ability to pay'.
 Abbey's own guidelines on interest-only mortgages allow branch managers to consider a wide range of risks, including council tenants exercising their right to buy flats in some prefabricated tower blocks.
 An independent test of the two largest societies' flexibility produced instant agreement in principle to lend. 'Twenty-five thousand? Perfectly okay', Abbey told the researcher, a semi-retired professional woman aged 60 who is separated from her husband, living on Pounds 7,000 a year before tax (including a company pension, which societies regard as excellent security) and genuinely thinking about moving from her lease-hold flat to a small freehold house. The Pounds 25,000 would just enable her to do this.
 The Halifax was willing to advance Pounds 20,000 - 'they said it would have been more if my income was higher' - and added that the mortgage would have to be re-negotiated after 10 years. Their calculations indicate that her monthly commitment would amount to about Pounds 168, including term assurance at Pounds 11.89.
 Mortgages starting when you are in your 70s and extending - on paper - for a 40-year term, are not uncommon; most lenders, however, are keen to avoid, and to be seen avoiding, 'fast-buck business', says the Bradford & Bingley, which is 'seriously considering' introducing its own interest-only mortgage product.
 Their aversion to exploiting elderly people in frail health and on reduced income is coupled with concern about 'roll-up' schemes that land the borrower with an interest payment demand for, say Pounds 1,000 in one lump sum after a so-called interest holiday.
 No reputable lender will object to participation by another family member, or to the borrower's solicitor being appraised of every step - and may well encourage this.
 Like building societies, banks operate borrowing schemes which use the equity in a property not covered by the mortgage; but they do not, so far, customarily offer home loans to older people.
 Indeed, they are unlikely to lend where the mortgage term would end after retirement at 60 or 65. 'I wouldn't like to say we never do it: it's much more a case of a personal approach rather than a scheme approach', says National Westminster. Midlands's age limit on such a term is 70.
 The Trustee Savings Bank has an interest-only plan 'on the drawing-board'; this could well be similar to its Equity Release account, which essentially provides a secured revolving overdraft.
 Mature borrowers represent 'a better bet' than the youth market, the TSB adds. It is not alone in such thinking. They are bigger savers, have fewer commitments, and their disposable incomes are rising nationally; over-55s, who will form more than a quarter of the population by 2000, already enjoy spending power estimated at over Pounds 25 billion a year.
 One sign of the trend is the interest-only, flexible repayment mortgage for borrowers over 50 launched by Yorkshire building society in April; it is based on a limit of three times' actual or likely annual retirement income, and charged at the society's base rate.
 This brings into its scope not only senior citizens but all those individuals who may previously have had cause to regard themselves as hopeless cases - notably early retirers, one-parent families, and divorce survivors - able at last to contemplate accommodation more ample than a small rented flat.

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June 27, 1989

The Day In Politics: Response soon to Griffiths report - Labour attacks delay over inquiry into care services

BYLINE: By NIKKI KNEWSTUB

LENGTH: 597 words

 
 THE long-awaited government response to the Griffiths report on community care services will be announced within a fortnight, Mr Roger Freeman, the junior Health Minister, told the Commons yesterday.
 He was speaking at the start of a Labour-initiated debate on care in the community. Mr Robin Cook, the shadow health and social security secretary, opening the debate, criticised the delay in dealing with the report, which was published in March last year. 
 Mr Freeman, standing in for Mr John Moore, Social Security Secretary, who was in Strasbourg, pledged results of the wide-ranging Whitehall study of the inquiry led by Sir Roy Griffiths, the Government's adviser on the health service, will be published soon and debated in the Commons before the summer break.
 During the debate, Mr Nicholas Winterton (C. Macclesfield) warned about the sale for redevelopment of large Victorian pyschiatric hospitals after the dispersal of inmates into the community.
 He said: 'I personally believe there is a permanent need for long-stay hospitals for many mentally-ill people, particularly those suffering with schizophrenia. I think it is a tragedy that for purely economic reasons some sites are being closed and redeveloped.'
 Those discharged into the community were often inadequately cared for, and hundreds ended up in prison 'or sleeping in cardboard boxes on our streets'.
 Mr Cook also said MPs could see for themselves people sleeping rough 'near here.'
 Mr Cook said that from 1979-86, 28,500 long-stay patients had been discharged into the community from mental hospitals, but only 2,230 extra places had been provided in day centres.
 Mr Cook accused ministers of behaving like 'paralysed rabbits' in the face of the Griffiths' proposals and claimed that the Government had delayed its reply because of implications that more reponsibility and cash must go to councils.
 He said: 'Local authorities are the largest single providers of residential care. They have the experience and the where-with-all.'
 Mr Freeman justified the time taken on the complicated nature of the proposals, involving many different Whitehall departments. He said: 'There has been a considerable amount of time given to considering the implications of the Griffiths' report ..It's very complicated to work through the implications of what Sir Roy Griffiths said. But it's important to get the analysis correct rather than rush it.'
 Mr Freeman said the Government wanted to help the elderly stay in their own homes as long as possible for their dignity and independence. Sir Roy Griffiths had not been asked to consider levels of resources, but how it was decided who should be cared for in the community, who should decide, and who should pay.
 He emphasised that before a mental hospital shut, care facilities had to be set up in the community. But he conceded that the provision of care at home was not uniformly adequate 'and some authorities have discharged patients from mental hospitals without making sure there was adequate care'.
 Mr Ronnie Fearn, for the Democrats, said: 'It is an absolute disgrace that so many vulnerable people should be left without the support services they so desperately need and, in some cases, such as mental health patients discharged into the community, without even a roof over their heads.'
 A Labour motion accusing ministers of failing to expand community care services to match the closure of mental hospitals and the growth of the elderly population was rejected by 281 votes to 197 (Government majority 84).

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June 28, 1989

Parliamentary Sketch: Timid Ridley lets through six from hooligan attack

BYLINE: By ANDREW RAWNSLEY

LENGTH: 566 words

 
 DAVID Evans, the Conservative backbencher and chairman of Luton Town Football Club, told the House that many old people in his constituency quaked with fear whenever football supporters were about.
 Certainly one elderly gentleman, called Nicholas Ridley, looked absolutely scared stiff as MPs prepared to debate his Football Supporters Bill. This was the moment the Environment Secretary had been dreading. The moment when he would finally have to produce some arguments for the Government's football identity scheme. He sat on the frontbench with the Sports Minister, Colin Moynihan. For months they had been menaced by soccer fans clearly bent on taking them and their scheme apart. The most aggressive, Dr John Cunningham, Labour's Environment spokesman, had brought nearly his whole gang with him for the debate. And, just as Mr Ridley feared, they were about to give him a terrible beating. 
 Almost as soon as he rose to the despatch box, the Environment Secretary was menaced with Opposition cries of 'Nonsense!', 'Rubbish!' and 'Send him off!', the traditional tribal chants when they scent a minister in trouble.
 The Environment Secretary would have fared a little less badly if he had once managed to convey the impression that he had ever actually been to a soccer match. The truth is that probably the last London club he visited was Pratt's.
 But it was with the rules governing the operation of the scheme that he got into really supreme difficulties. Children will be exempted from carrying identity cards to get into grounds. Pensioners, on the other hand, will not. Try as he might, Mr Ridley could convince no-one of the menace of OAPs, even OAPs supporting Millwall or West Ham, attacking each other or the police with walking sticks and zimmers.
 Dr Cunningham then rose to deliver the most relentlessly, mercilessly destructive assault on a minister in this parliament. He began with a popular soccer song which might have been dedicated to Mr Ridley. 'Football crazy, football mad. It's football that's robbed him of the little sense he had.'
 Then Dr Cunningham began shooting question after question past the Environment Secretary. Why was the Bill not being delayed until after the Hillsborough disaster inquiry had reported? Mr Ridley stayed silent. 1:0.
 Why had he claimed that the clubs now supported the scheme, when they did not? Mr Ridley stayed silent. 2:0.
 Why were women not excluded from carrying the cards? Mr Ridley stayed silent. (Presumably because of the other well-known menace of transvestite soccer hooligans.) 3:0.
 Why were the police still opposed to the scheme? Mr Ridley stayed silent. 4:0 Why were English fans included in the scheme, but Scots excluded? Mr Ridley stayed silent. 5:0.
 'What will happen at an England-Scotland match at Wembley?' asked Dr Cunningham. Still silence from Mr Ridley.
 In calculated exasperation, Dr Cunningham turned on him: 'If the Secretary of State has got an answer, I'll gladly give way.' Mr Ridley, silent as ever, showed no sign of having any answers at all. Labour erupted in jeering. Suddenly Mr Ridley shifted on the frontbench, as if to get up. 'It lives! It lives!' they cried. But his response was just to point at Mr Moynihan. That was not just a poor answer, but a ridiculously short one. Everybody laughed.
 Final score. John Cunningham: 6. Nicholas Ridley: 0.

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The Guardian (London)

June 29, 1989

Arts: And pigs might fly - Sprocket holes replace bullet holes as the ultimate threat at Southfork - Television

BYLINE: By NANCY BANKS-SMITH

LENGTH: 802 words

 
 THE good news is that the worst film in the history of the motion picture industry, 'JR Is A Pig, So There!', is not to go on public release. Sue Ellen Ewing, who used to fall down in gutters a good deal, you remember, has recently triumphed as a tycoon. First she was very big in knickers, then she bought a film studio. 'JR Is A Pig, So There!' is a searing expose of life at Southfork in which she accuses JR of sleeping with tramps. And I must say I'm surprised. I didn't know they had tramps in Texas.
 The bad news is that she might release it any day. 'If I hear you are coming after me, or if you cross me for any reason, or if I get up on the wrong side of the bed one morning, then I'll release the movie and you, JR, will be the laughing stock of Texas.' And, snarling enigmatically, she flounced off. 
 This is the last of the present series of Dallas (BBC1), but it's not a cliff hanger in the grand old tradition which invariably has one of the Ewings, perforated in several places, forgiving their enemies - always a lengthy procedure - in a private room at Dallas Memorial Hospital. The script, I see, was written by the producers and producers do tend to take films and their release more seriously than the rest of us.
 Ian McShane, proposing to Sue Ellen, had to say as fervently as the line allowed 'We'll form our own production company,' and she replied: 'I'll get back to you soon.' You do feel that Lewis and Lakin, the producer/writers, have not been into much wooing recently.
 Mark you, we are not as young as we were. The afternoon re-run of an earlier Dallas reminds you what a lot of hair they had in those days. You can't go around perforating elderly gentlemen indefinitely.
 Nevertheless I have a fondness for the old folk based on the feeling that, for all their big talk, they are not really very well off. The way none of them can afford a house of their own, Miss Ellie's simple sacks, Lucy's sadly stunted growth, Sue Ellen's terrible dingey tin earings. 'Hurrah, they're back!' cried the secretaries at Ewing Oil as JR and Bobby return from Russia. And they threw two small paper streamers.
 IT HAS strengthened me in my decision not to become a commando. My lasting recollection of How To Make A Royal Marines Officer: part 1 (BBC1) will be poor old Michael Jackman on Dartmoor in November shuddering with such a delicate, dreadful, trembling motion that you could have tuned a piano with him. 'Keep still, sir, keep still,' ordered Sergeant Mick Eccles, a Falklands veteran. Jackman heard but the shivering was deaf.
 This was, I think, after they had swung across a lake naked, pushing their kit in front of them. ('It's not cold at all, sir. It's freezing.') The sleet came down like a whip. The faces of the young men taking the officers' training course looked blue, leaden and deathly, like figures on a war memorial. Jackman, the only black man in the group, was on detachment from Barbados and from the beginning the cold had laid its bony finger on him.
 He had taken, like all the rest, the mockery about his clothes: 'Mr Jackson, that shirt is something else. It is a corker. What does this tie mean? Is that the Barbadian Beach Boys' Club, you know?' Dean rolled in mud at five o'clock in the morning with the others as some sort of initiation rite. ('The sort of beauty treatment society ladies pay through the nose for,' said Ian Wooldridge, narrating. He knows better than that).
 He had been ordered to shave. 'I don't shave, actually, sergeant.'
 'What do you use, sir, a delapitory cream?'
 'Pardon, sergeant?'
 'There's a hair. You will shave in future sir.'
 When his deep frozen fingers could no longer feel, the others helped him with his buckles but he left the course, heartbroken, as one in three will.
 Deprived of every civilised comfort, they fell back on the instincts of our eternal ancestors, the apes. 'It's very like Hamadryad baboons playing with each other,' said one. 'Picking nits out of each other's backs and, in the same way baboons go in troops, we move in troops. What a marvellous analogy.' His fellow baboons whooped their amusement.
 It was remarkably like public schools. The stress on the right sort of clothes. ('Look for a new sports jacket. Properly tailored. With vents.') And cleanliness. ('Wash your hair every day, under your arms, your crotch and your feet. Now, we'll have a demo from Mr James.') Clean but not sweet. ('Imperial Leather is perfumed. Start using perfumed soap and you smell like a posy, sir, and you can be smelled for miles.') And abominable food. ('Mutton. Place contents in a quarter of a pint of water and boil. And boil. Add oxtail soup.') It probably helps if you have been to a public school in a very cold place. Though, as we know, not necessarily.

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June 29, 1989

Eyewitness: Sweet Thames flows softly through the Pimms

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 537 words

 
 THE elderly Oxford couple was perfectly rigged out for Royal Henley: waxed cotton jackets, oiled yarn sweaters, cords, green wellies, picnic in a plastic carrier bag.
 It wouldn't have got them into the Leander club or the Stewards' Enclosure, but they were stumping down the muddy towpath away from the nasty wind and nasty tempers whipping around the lunch queues in the Stewards' ('You said we needn't bother to come early'). And Leander (the same but with pink tableclothes). 
 'Oh Lord, it's like queueing for the ski-lifts,' said a disgusted female voice three places behind the man who left in horror after finding he was standing in line for an exhibition, not a drink.
 Actually the exhibition, celebrating 150 years of Henley Royal Regatta, was very educational. The queue was full of elderly bladers poring over the yellow photographs looking for themselves. The exhibits proved that in 150 years little has changed - not the rain, not the excruciating silliness of the hats, not the oarsmen's aloof contempt for the charabanc middle classes coming to eat and drink, not even the hospitality tents.
 The contemporary painting proves that in 1891 the river must have been entirely invisible from the towpath behind a wall of two-storey houseboats groaning with Victorian corporate guests. In the foreground a skiff carrying a Pears Soap banner had plonked itself under the artist's nose.
 Back on the towpath past the tents where, lit by chandeliers, the corporate guests, backs to the river, were watching Wimbledon on television, the price of Pimms fell steadily.
 By the time the last champagne tents came into view, some of the towpath brigade felt a shade underdressed.
 Mr Tony Conner 'Hats for the Gentry' was happy to be of service. Boaters Pounds 10, panamas Pounds 12, plain blue or naff Henley Regatta souvenir ribbons. 'Bad day for straws' he said gloomily. 'Wet and blowy, more of a day for felts.' But didn't the gentry, well, arrive ready-hatted? 'You'd be surprised' said Mr Conner darkly. 'They see one then it gets infectious.'
 Unhatted, un-Pimmed, the Putney Rowing Club was marching to the starting line.
 Due to circumstances beyond their control ('We just weren't fast enough': former vice-captain Dick Malt) Putney is not actually in the water at this Henley, though they beat NxW-Mt bank in the qualifiers. Dick Malt, Simon Maxwell and Doug Parnham almost fell into the river at the happy memory of NatWest hitting the bank and smashing their blades.
 Some Cockney stalwarts set out a week ago rowing up to Henley and camping on the banks. Messrs Malt, Maxwell and Parnham, an archaeologist, a computer programmer and a women's rowing trainer respectively, crewed a car instead, a much more perilous journey on a rail strike day.
 The undoubted highlight of a magnificent day was still to come: University College Galway, Ireland, average weight 11st 13lb, over Cherwell Boat Club, average weight 13st 1lb, by a length.
 Mr Parnham (average weight about 14) gazed towards the bridge just visible through the rain one mile 550 wet cold yards away. 'Awesome when you think you've got to get all the way down there,' he said with a sigh of admiration.

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The Guardian (London)

July 1, 1989

Weekend Money: Builders' code sets out service charges for sheltered housing

BYLINE: By BEN LAURANCE

LENGTH: 351 words

 
 HOUSEBUILDERS providing sheltered accommodation for the elderly this week unveiled a new code of conduct. It sets out information which managers of sheltered housing schemes must give to residents about service charges; and developers will be required to give purchasers information about their rights and liabilities when they buy a new property.
 But the code applies only to new developments and does not cover the 32,000 elderly people who have bought sheltered accommodation since 1977. Also there is as yet no full ombudsman service to resolve wrangles between managers and residents in sheltered accommodation: disputes over charges still have to go to court. 
 The code gives rules on disclosure of accounts, so residents know how management fees are spent and where the money contributed to sinking funds for repairs ends up. But the code offers no guidance on how management fees should be set in the first place.
 There have been several widely publicised complaints about service charges from residents in some sheltered housing schemes run by the country's largest developer McCarthy&Stone. And the Guardian reported last year on a dispute at an Anglia Secure Homes development where the manager admitted the company was providing fewer services than its lease specified but said that it could meet its obligations only if there was a huge increase in charges.
 Mr Michael Jack, the Conservative MP, who helped draw up the code, says more than 50 MPs have had complaints from constituents about their sheltered accommodation. 'This voluntary and effective action has avoided the need for legislation but if the industry does not fully respond to the challenges .. legislation may follow.'
 The new code is being brought within the House-Builders Federation's Buildmark warranty scheme.
 It says the buyer of a sheltered housing unit must be given information on his or her legal rights, a summary of any lease spelling out ground rent, charges and services, information on any residents association, regular accounts, projected budgets and details of warden cover.

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The Guardian (London)

July 1, 1989

Property: The wrinklies turn inland - Despite soaring prices, Spain is still attractive to elderly British buyers

BYLINE: By LARRY ELLIOTT

LENGTH: 755 words

 
 WITH the UK property market on its knees and the pound sagging against the peseta, it's little surprise to find that some of the glitter has gone out of the Spanish scene as well.
 However, the fundamentals of the market still look good, as a glance at Europe's demographic trends shows.
 In 20 years time Europe will have 50 million people of retirement age, many of them with the cash to buy a place in the sun. Estimates suggest they will generate a demand for 50,000 homes per year between now and the year 2010. 
 In addition, since most people buying in Spain tend to be middle-aged or elderly, and have paid off the lion's share or all of their mortgage, the effects of high UK interest rates are mitigated. The target audience for Spain is not the yuppies with their massive mortgages but the wrinklies with their minuscule home loans and big assets.
 A more likely reason for the Spanish slowdown is that couples planning to retire to one of the Costas are finding it hard to shift their homes in the UK.
 There is also evidence that people defer buying property when the economic outlook looks unfavourable. With inflation at 8 per cent and rising, interest rates double what they were a year ago and the pound kicked around on the foreign exchanges, the psychological conditions for buying abroad are all wrong.
 Prices have also soared in Spain over the past few years. The pressure of demand has had a marked effect, and costs have spurted substantially. Builders - and most of the UK household names have now diversified into Spain - say prices High rise . the costs of buying a place in the sun have soared have increased by 30 percent over the past year. The days when it was possible to pick up a two or three bedroom villa for less than Pounds 10,000 are a thing of the past.
 Now a decent property on the coast can cost Pounds 100,000 or more, which is worth remembering when deciding whether to pay for the villa or the 'free flight' offered by some firms.
 The smart money is moving away from higher-priced areas like the Costa del Sol. Attention has now focused on the fact that there is more to Spain than a coastal band, and buying a farmhouse 20 km inland is cheaper, quieter and far better value for money.
 The coast is, or course, the main hunting ground for the timeshare industry. So many stories circulate about the hard-sell tactics of some unscrupulous outfits that it is difficult to believe that people can still be parted with large sums of cash. But, apparently, they can be.
 After taking limited steps to clamp down on estate agents, the Government is expecting the Office of Fair Trading to come up with a new code of practice for timeshare operators, a move which is welcomed by the Timeshare Developers Association, the respectable face of the industry.
 The TDA has a list of 13 points which should be checked before entering an agreement, ranging from invitations to visit to cancellation periods, maintenance fees, exchange facilities and resale.
 If a firm is a TDA member, it will offer a cooling-off period of at least five days after buyers have signed up for them to change their minds.
 Many people are also daunted by the complications involved in the Spanish legal system and the differences in mortgaging a property. The UK financial institutions have not been slow in spotting this potentially huge market, and many now offer a comprehensive service.
 The National Westminster announced last week that its Spanish subsidiary, Banco NatWest March, was now offering a full mortgage service to UK residents.
 BNWM will offer up to 70 per cent finance in pesetas, sterling or a variety of other currencies up to 15 years. Interest rates are set half-yearly and are linked to Eurocurrency market rates.
 The Spanish legal system is also different to the UK, with no direct equivalent of the solicitor. The hiring of an independent lawyer - or Abogado - to handle the purchase is desirable, with the NatWest willing to recommend one.
 A good Abogado will sort out problems over taxes, which vary between 10 and 15 percent of the value of the property. In the past, Spain has been seen as something of a tax haven, but that reputation is fading fast now that the authorities have started to get tough with offenders. Be warned.
 TDA: 01-821-8845. Copies of 'Buying Timeshare You Can Trust', free from 23 Buckingham Gate, London SW1E 6LB. NatWest's European Business Section, 11 Old Broad Street, London EC2 1BB. Tel: 01 920 5975/5288.

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July 1, 1989

Motoring (Helpline): A round trip goes full circle

LENGTH: 235 words

 
 I VOLUNTEERED through the WRVS to deliver library books to five housebound elderly ladies; this involved a six-mile round trip every three weeks. I checked with my insurers, Sun Alliance, that I was covered by the normal social and domestic policy. I was then asked for a further Pounds 12 premium to cover business use. I have declined to pay, so there is now one fewer volunteer for community work.
 I, too, have checked with Sun Alliance. It seems your policy has been taken out through Automobile Association Insurance Services, and that you asked it for advice. Confusion arose between AAIS and Sun Alliance, the former having made a judgment without consulting the latter. Sun Alliance tells me that if there is no payment, voluntary work is covered by the normal domestic policy; that you should not have been asked for extra premium, although this is not necessarily the case with other companies.
 ENTHUSIASM for owning and maintaining classic cars has grown to the extent that Mid-Warwickshire College of Further Education, at Leamington Spa, is offering Pounds 45 Saturday-to-Sunday courses in car restoration. If there is sufficient demand, mid-week courses will be arranged during August.
 The basic course covers investigation and preparation of the areas to be restored, practical demonstrations, and actual restoration. Contact Richard Adams or Enid Barnes on 0926 311711.

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The Guardian (London)

July 3, 1989

Walking sticks that go 'walkies' add to 1,000 pounds a week health bill

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 219 words

 
 SAVAGE health cuts in Worcester are being aimed at hearth rugs and runner-bean stakes. Worcester district health authority has found that its care in the community programme has been extended to DIY. 
 Health authority beds have patched fences, walking sticks have been spotted in vegetable plots smothered in runner beans, and bed hoists have been seen raising engines from cars. Sheepskins have moved from beneath the bedridden elderly to pride of place in front of fireplaces.
 Equipment is haemorrhaging at a cost of Pounds 1,000 a week. Officials calculate that a quarter of their Pounds 56,000 of home-care equipment goes over the garden fence each year.
 Dr Neil Phillips, manager of the community services programme, said that problems - such as wooden equipment being sawn up into book cases - often arose when elderly patients died at home.
 'We think it is claimed by relatives as part of the spoils of the estate because they do not realise it belongs to us. It is a mammoth task trying to keep track of the property we loan out.'
 A week-long amnesty has been launched, in cooperation with the BBC Hereford and Worcester radio station. Anyone sitting comfortably with their feet on an ethical dilemma is invited to phone in. A plain white van will come around and take it away.

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The Guardian (London)

July 4, 1989

Education Guardian: Graduates go to waste - Firms which don't make the most of graduates

BYLINE: By AUDREY SEGAL

LENGTH: 871 words

 
 FOR GRADUATE job hunters, 1989 is the best since vintage 1979, confirms Brian Putt, of the Graduate Careers Services' Central Service Unit. It's the third year that graduate recruiters have failed to hit their targets. Government is offering financial carrots for higher education to take on more students - but candidates facing top-up loans may get a different message. Will recruiters get the graduates they think they will need in 1995?
 A higher proportion of 18-year-olds (plus mature students) must be attracted to degree courses though applicants won't fall in line with the overall drop in the age group. Even so, there will be fiercer competition among institutions for students and between them and employers for young recruits. 
 The A-level entry grade war is about to break out, with polytechnic departments teaching basic engineering disciplines likely to be the first to lose out to universities. Leeds Polytechnic director Christopher Price predicts that poly engineering courses will only survive if they meet a specialist demand.
 But no one knows what the actual shortfall of graduates will be in the 1990s. Demand for graduates from non-traditional sectors - retailing, leisure and travel, even the print industry - is still rising. But evidence also suggests employers waste the graduates they recruit. Helen Price, head of management development at Price Waterhouse and chairman of the Association of Graduate Recruiters (AGR), believes at least 20 per cent of young graduates may be wrongly or underemployed.
 Then, even though the number of 16 to 24-year-olds falls by 1.2 million between 1987 and 1995, the total work force will actually rise by nearly a million. Employers are being told to make more use of (older) women, ethnic minorities, and of course the growing numbers of spritely senior citizens.
 Helen Perkins says the answer to shortages is for employers to make better use of the talent they already have, to be certain they are recruiting for real needs, and not to oversell opportunities and undermanage raw graduates. Some 40 per cent of graduates currently leave their first employer within 3 to 5 years so savings can be made here.
 These strategies could ease demand for new graduates. But recruiting methods still have to change. Helen Perkins says the problems have already had some positive effects as some of the better recruiters venture beyond their traditional hunting grounds and find top talent in supposedly lower-league universities and polytechnics.
 Jim Fox, Yorkshire Bank's Controller (personnel), endorses her message that recruiters, schools and parents should be more aware of the teaching quality in polytechnics. He's financially backing Sheffield City Polytechnic's accountancy and financial studies department, on its track record in preparing students for professional qualifications.
 Sponsorship - 'topping up' student grants and guaranteeing successful graduates a job - looks like a good strategy for catching 'em early but green 17-year-olds are quite different people when they graduate four or five years later and they can't be legally held to the earlier commitment.
 Jim Fox is to sponsor six students a year with work experience, on Sheffield Polytechnic's new financial services degree course. But he admits it will be 'a challenge to make the bank attractive enough to make them want to come and work here.'
 It's hard to sell sponsorships to 17-year-olds who want to put off choosing a career. Under 20 per cent now decide on their careers before going into higher education. Marks & Spencer, also going into sponsorship for the first time, is offering cash (plus job on graduation) for just the final year, and only after students have had a year's work experience with them.
 There's no sign yet, anyway, of any massive increase in the number of firms offering sponsorships - amongst AGR members it was up only 5 per cent, to 90 organisations, in 1988. Numbers of sponsored students, though, have risen more (by 23 per cent) but for engineers it's still a problem finding them - the shortages are such that one major firm can fill only a third of their sponsorships.
 The M&S model, especially as it is open to students whatever they study, may look much more attractive once loans are a real factor.
 Recruiters are sure to come up with attractive financial packages - average first salaries are about to break the Pounds 10,000 barrier - which could take account of loans. But no one expects much-hyped benefits like 'golden hellos' to figure - killed off by the Crash of 1987 (under 2 per cent of AGR members offered them in 1988). Most recuiters say graduates are more interested in job satisfaction and career prospects than over-inflated salaries and benefits.
 One as-yet little-discussed problem is the potentially damaging competition between higher education and employers for 18-year-olds, although the Engineering Employers Federation (for example) is telling members not to risk graduate supply by competing for bright A-level students.
 Christopher Price foresees extensive development of more courses on which students will be work-based and study for degree on release from their job.

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The Guardian (London)

July 6, 1989

Cities and wedlock are out in fast-growing population: The latest Regional Trends survey

BYLINE: By OWEN BOWCOTT

LENGTH: 466 words

 
 AS A nation, we are moving out of cities, bringing up more children out of wedlock, and speeding up our population growth rate, according to the Regional Trends survey published today.
 The annual 160-page report produced by the Central Statistical Office provides, in the authors' modest words, 'snapshots of Britain' broken down by region and by subject.
 Its extensive columns of figures, collected by government departments and compiled by the CSO's statisticians, chronicle the contemporary evolution of society through such indicators as Aids, refrigerator ownership, and household radiation levels. 
 There were 56,930,200 of us in mid-1987, a rise of 0.3 per cent on the previous year and nearly 4 million more than in 1961.
 By the year 2001, the Government estimates there will be nearly 59 million people in the 242,494 square miles of Britain.
 The population of East Anglia has been growing fastest, in contrast to falls in Scotland, the North, Yorkshire and Humberside and the North-west where there have been fewer job opportunities.
 Births outside marriage continued to increase. In Lambeth, south London, they accounted for nearly half (463 per 1,000) live births. The national proportion nearly doubled from 1981 to 1987 when it reached 23 per cent.
 The growth of the elderly section of the population continued. More than 18 per cent were over pensionable age in 1987. In the South-west the proportion was more than 21 per cent.
 Southend-on-Sea, Essex, has the largest proportion of pensioners (24.8 per cent) and of those aged over 75 (10 per cent).
 Although the housing stock increased by 5 per cent in the six years to 1987, 117,000 people were accepted as homeless in the last year of that period. More than half of local authority lettings in Greater London went to homeless people.
 The less well off had their hopes blighted further by the rise in property prices, calculated to have averaged 80 per cent nationally between 1981 and 1987. In London, the figure was 100 per cent, in Northern Ireland 46 per cent.
 The cheapest homes were in the North where in 1987 the average price paid by people with mortgages from building societies was Pounds 27,300. The overall number of people living in urban districts declined by 0.9 per cent in the five years to 1987 and apart from London and parts of Manchester, the trend is expected to continue.
 The statistics confirm the extent of many recently established trends. The number of self-employed rose to nearly 3 million last year, nearly 10 per cent of the workforce. The North had the lowest proportion of self-employed.
 Industrial disputes increased in 1987 with 3 1/2 million lost days compared with fewer than 2 million in 1986.
 Regional Trends 24, HMSO, Pounds 19.50

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July 7, 1989

BMA annual conference: Doctors demand stop on mental hospital closures

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 421 words

 
 CLOSURE of mental hospitals should be halted until adequate alternative care is available in the community, the annual conference of the British Medical Association said yesterday.
 Dr Michael Harris, a consultant psychiatrist from Nottingham, told the conference: 'What started as a well-intentioned move to bring mental handicap and mental health services into the 20th century has been hijacked by those people who see savings to be made by the closure of the large Victorian asylums.'
 The Government is under intense pressure to order at least a temporary suspension of the mental hospital closure programme when it makes its long-delayed announcement on community care policy this month. 
 Figures published by the Department of Health this week show that in mental illness alone, about 35,000 long-stay patients were discharged from hospital between 1977 and 1987, but only 4,000 extra residential places were created in the community.
 The BMA still backs the community care policy in principle, but believes that care for mentally ill, mentally handicapped, and elderly people is inadequate.
 Although the Government had created the initial pressure for closures, it was the health authorities themselves which were now keen to raise cash by selling off lucrative development sites. But there were costs to be met.
 'Community care properly done is undoubtedly more expensive than institutional care, so any savings are going to be at the expense of a proper service,' Dr Harris said.
 Dr Patrick Bennett, from Surrey, said the state of community care was a national scandal, blighting not only the inner cities but also areas like his own.
 'We don't have many of the problems of the denizens of the cardboard cities sleeping under the arches of London's Victorian railway stations. We don't have any of the seedy seaside boarding houses filled by cynical social services departments with not the drop-outs of society, but the throw-outs of society.
 'But we do have our quota of psychotics who have reneged on treatment and who literally terrorise their parents and upset whole neighbourhoods.'
 The conference went on to deplore the Government's delay in responding to the Griffiths report on community care, published in March last year, which advocates fundamental changes, including giving local authorities a leading role in arranging care.
 Dr John Callander, from Lothian, said standards of care throughout the country were deteriorating in the absence of a coherent policy.

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The Guardian (London)

July 8, 1989

Weekend Money: Poll Tax - All you wanted to know!

BYLINE: By MALCOLM DEAN

LENGTH: 1157 words

 
 REGISTRATION is only the start. Now that you have filled in your local council's registration form for the poll tax, what happens? First, do not forget to return it. As it says on the form: failure to do so makes you liable for a fine of Pounds 50.
 The first community charge bills will not arrive until next April. Local councils have not set the tax because they do not know how much subsidy they will be getting from central government. What they have complained about is a shortfall in government aid to finance the cost of setting up the new system. The local authority associations estimate they still need another Pounds 200million otherwise they will be forced to increase the community charge or cut their services. 
 What is known is the list of people exempted from the tax, the qualifications for rebate, student arrangements, second home charges and rebates. About 40 million people will be required to pay the tax although up to 10million will be eligible for some rebates.
 Exemptions. People who will not have to pay the poll tax include:
 Children still at school who are under 19 and for whom child benefit is still payable;
 People who are seriously mentally handicapped (either from birth or through accident or injury). Formal confirmation from a doctor of the mental impairment must be sent by the parent or guardian;
 Adults whose main or only home is an NHS hospital (This will include people who have given up their home, or intend to do so, to live in hospital and also anyone detained under the Mental Health Acts.);
 Adults whose main or only home is a nursing home, residential care home or hostel where they receive a substantial level of care;
 Adults working as volunteer care workers - like Community Service Volunteers who live with and provide care to elderly or disabled people in return for board, lodging and pocket money;
 Monks and nuns who will be automatically exempt provided they have no income or capital of their own, do not draw state benefits, and are involved in prayer, contemplation, the relief of suffering or education;
 People in prison unless they have been imprisoned for not paying a fine or the community charge;
 People staying in night shelters or short-stay hostels, although the residential staff of such hostels are not exempt;
 Foreign diplomats and foreign service personnel.
 Students. All students will be required to pay 20 per cent of the charge to the council where they live during term time. Students may be asked for a certificate from their college, polytechnic or university confirming their status as a fulltime student (defined as at least 21 hours of tuition for 24 weeks of the year).
 There is no rebate on the reduced charge for students. All students - including overseas students - will have to pay the 20 per cent. Part-time students must pay the full community charge subject to the rebates and exemptions listed below.
 Student nurses who are part of project 2000 (or on academic courses at university or polytechnic) will only have to pay 20 per cent. All other student nurses - which is the vast majority - who receive pay as well as training will have to pay the full charge subject to the rebates to which they may be entitled.
 Second Home Owners. The poll tax or, to give it its full name, the 'personal community charge' has to be paid to the council where your main home is situated. A second charge, known as a 'standard community charge', applies to second homes. This can be up to twice as high as the personal community charge for the particular area. There will be no rebate scheme for the charges on second homes. (There is no charge for second homes occupied by tenants because the tenants will be charged the personal community charge.) Registration officers will decide which is a person's main home. There is an appeal system. People who are buying a new home have a three month charge-free period to cover situations in which they temporarily own two. Councils have discretion to extend this period if necessary.
 Rebates. An estimated 10 million will be eligible for some rebate. If you claim income support (the old supplementary benefit) you should be sent a rebate claim form by the Department of Social Security in the autumn. You should fill it in and return it to the DSS.
 If you are on housing benefit your council should get in touch with you in the autumn. Your housing benefit claim can be treated as a claim for a rebate. If you do not get either income support or housing benefit, you need to apply to your local council for a rebate claim form.
 If you are married, claims can be made by either the husband or wife. This is also the case if you are unmarried but living as man and wife. Either partner can fill in the form. You will usually get half the joint rebate each. Normally rebates will be taken off the community charge bill. You will then pay the reduced amount. The bill can be paid in 10 instalments.
 Unlike the old rate rebate schemes, the poll tax will have a maximum rebate of 80 per cent. Everybody, with the exception of the exemptions, will have to pay at least 20 per cent of the charge no matter how poor they are. Social security benefits will be increased to take this into account but there will be large numbers of winners and losers because the increase will be flat-rated.
 You can apply for a rebate at any time - with your registration form, in the autumn when the DSS should send out rebate claim forms or next March when the first bills arrive. Do not delay beyond next March. Rebates may not be backdated.
 The rebates will all work on the same formula. It has three elements: the size of your savings (under Pounds 3,000 will be ignored; income on savings of between Pounds 3,000 and Pounds 8,000 will be taken into account; over Pounds 8,000 makes a person ineligible); the level of income (people with low incomes who are not receiving housing benefit or income support should ask their local councils for a rebate claim form); and a needs assessment (which will depend on whether the person is single, looking after children or a disabled person).
 There will be local review boards to deal with disputes about rebates.
 The Appeal System. You cannot appeal against the level of community charge. That is fixed by local councils. The appeal system will deal with disputes over registration (wrongful inclusion, disputed designations over who is responsible for filling out the forms), student status and second homes.
 The initial appeal must be in writing to the Registration Officer, who must reply within two months. If they do not accept your arguments then you can appeal to a Valuation and Community Charge tribunal.
 Appeals to the tribunal must be in writing but are dealt with either on the basis of written evidence or, if you prefer, at a hearing where you can appear in person or be represented by a friend.

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July 8, 1989

Clarke to sound retreat over community care

BYLINE: By DAVID HENCKE, Westminster Correspondent

LENGTH: 452 words

 
 THE Government's climbdown over its attempt to prevent local government from taking over community care is to be announced by Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, to MPs on Wednesday.
 A cabinet committee chaired by the Prime Minister meets on Monday to hear the final draft of the Government's long delayed response to the Griffiths report on community care of the elderly, handicapped and mentally ill.
 Barring last-minute objections from other ministers on the cabinet economic committee, government business managers have pencilled in a Commons announcement by Mr Clarke on Wednesday. 
 It will be the second climbdown by the Government in a matter of days on a controversial issue, coming as it will only a week after Lord Mackay, the Chancellor, rowed back on his radical changes for the legal profession.
 In contrast to the clashes over the National Health Service proposals, ministers are hoping that the pragmatism shown by their response will mean a warm welcome for the community care plan. They are under enormous pressure to avoid a further dispute in the NHS.
 Mr Clarke will announce, as predicted in the Guardian on June 21, that local councils rather than a new statutory board, will take over from health authorities management responsibility for community care from health authorities.
 The decision marks a victory for the pragmatists who supported Sir Roy Griffiths, the Sainsbury supermarket chief, over his original plan. It will amount to a defeat for the Prime Minister, and rightwing theorist groups like the Adam Smith Institute and the No Turning Back group of MPs.
 In the last two weeks rightwing groups have lost even further ground following arguments in the cabinet committee over the future role for local authorities. Mr Nicholas Ridley, the Environment Secretary, has been defeated over plans to take away the powers of county councils and metropolitan districts to run old people's homes and homes for the handicapped and mentally ill. He will have to be satisfied with more incentives to encourage voluntary organisations to run homes.
 Proposals from Mr John Moore, the Social Security Secretary, to curb spending on the elderly have also not been incorporated in the response.
 Instead, he has accepted that spending on social security, like the funding of local authorities for their new role, will have to be negotiated with the Treasury during the current spending round.
 The Government's response to Griffiths is expected to be vague in the section on resources. Ministers have not yet agreed on the level of social security spending or the extra money to be spent on community care through poll tax support from the Government.

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The Guardian (London)

July 12, 1989

Nalgo claims 90 per cent on strike

BYLINE: By SIMON BEAVIS, Labour Correspondent

LENGTH: 459 words

 
 THE SECOND half of a two-day strike by the local government officers' union, Nalgo, is expected to disrupt council services today with a three-day stoppage in store for next week.
 There is no prospect of negotiations between the union and employers to resolve the dispute over pay and changes to national agreements.
 The strike yesterday and today, which followed a one-day stoppage last week, is part of a three-week programme of escalating action. Three 24-hour stoppages are planned for Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday next week. 
 Nalgo said up to 90 per cent of the 500,000 officers took action, disrupting many facilities including social services, nurseries, day care centres, libraries, housing and rates departments.
 But the employers' body, the Local Authorities Conditions of Service Advisory Board, which represents 500 councils, said support was down to 10 per cent in other areas. There was a slight decline in support compared with last week.
 The dispute is over a 7 per cent pay offer - which the employers say they cannot raise - and plans to alter national grading, overtime and unsocial hours payment structures.
 Although the current national pay structure is to be maintained, the employers want authorities to be given greater local flexibility in fixing pay grades. The union says this threatens national bargaining.
 Talks broke down last week after only 10 minutes. The employers are not planning a meeting to discuss the dispute for more than 10 days and the chances of early negotiations are slim. Nalgo has warned that a ballot on all-out action might be called if there is no progress.
 The union also said 12 councils including Shropshire, Gloucester, Reading and Tory-controlled Warwickshire had expressed support for its case. It detected a division among employers. But a spokesman for Warwickshire said the council supported changes to national grading agreements.
 Nalgo wants national agreements left unchanged and has claimed a 12 per cent pay rise or Pounds 1,200, whichever is greater.
 Several other unions representing 1 million local authority manual workers will next week present their pay claim.
 Mr John Daley, Nalgo general secretary, said the high turnout for yesterday's strike reflected the anger of Nalgo members at the employers' refusal to negotiate sensibly. 'We call on employers to start negotiations with us again otherwise more disruption to the public will continue.'
 This week's action was expected to close one in five libraries. It severely disrupted leisure centres, refuse sites and reduced the number of civilian police staff and traffic wardens outside London. But emergency services and meals-on-wheels for elderly people were being maintained.

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The Guardian (London)

July 12, 1989

Carers 'rely on dependants'

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 326 words

 
 THE INCOME of people who care for elderly and disabled relatives is so low that they often live off the social security benefit of their dependants, a study for the Department of Social Security shows.
 Ms Caroline Glendinning, who made the study while a research fellow at York University, called yesterday for increased benefit rates for carers and for a non-means tested carer's costs allowance. Carers also needed opportunities for part-time work, flexi-time employment, and job sharing. 
 There are an estimated six million carers. The number of people aged over 80 is projected to triple by 2025.
 Ms Glendinning told the Social Policy Association's annual conference in Bath that she had studied a sample of 30 carers looking after 29 dependent adults, all reliant on benefit.
 Two carers, a brother and sister, shared the care of their father. Of the other 28, 23 were looking after their mothers. All but four dependants were over 60 and 13 were over 80.
 Employment opportunities of the carers were found to be severely restricted: of the 13 looking after a dependant single-handedly, 11 had no earnings and were reliant upon social security, none of them receiving more than the former supplementary benefit rate. In between a third and a half of these households, the dependant's benefit was subsidising the carer because it was paid at the higher, disability, rate. The effect was that the carer had returned to financial dependency on a parent.
 'This renewed financial dependency in their 30s, 40s and 50s was considerably more precarious than the financial dependency of childhood, because the maintenance of their current standard of living depended upon someone whose health - and survival even - was far from certain,' Ms Glendinning said.
 In the 16 households with three adults, including the dependant, there was not the same degree of hardship. But there was a subsidy, usually from carer to dependant.

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The Guardian (London)

July 13, 1989

Outbreak of listeria halts pate sales

BYLINE: By JAMES ERLICHMAN, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

LENGTH: 290 words

 
 PREGNANT women and other vulnerable people were warned yesterday to stop eating all types of pate after high levels of listeria were found in supermarket tests on some Belgian brands.
 The Department of Health said some people now suffering from listeriosis believe they ate pate before becoming ill. A woman who has just given birth to an infected child believes she also ate contaminated pate during pregnancy.
 The outbreak was first discovered in Taff-Ely in Wales, but contaminated pate has since been found in Bristol and Leeds. The Public Health Laboratory Service has been ordered to conduct a nationwide survey.
 Pregnant women, their foetuses, the elderly and people with lowered immune systems are most prone to the infection.
 The first infected pate was a Matteson brand found in a Gateway supermarket by environmental health officers investigating a food poisoning complaint. Gateway's Van der Rousen brand was also implicated, and the store said yesterday that it was removing all pate from its 800 stores. Matteson, part of the Unilever group, said it had suspended supplies of imported pates.
 Professor Richard Lacey, the Leeds University microbiologist critical of government food policy, said: 'This appears to be the latest failure of the cook-chill method which really must be abandoned.'
 The Department of Health said it had alerted the EC and Belgian authorities, but contamination of domestic pates has not been ruled out. 'Pate is an excellent medium to grow bugs in and we must assume that if some brands are contaminated, then others could be as well,' said the spokeswoman.
 The major supermarkets, said they were withdrawing from sale all pates which come from Sanpareil in Belgium.

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The Guardian (London)

July 13, 1989

Councils win role on care of the elderly

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 534 words

 
 RESPONSIBILITY for care of the rapidly growing number of elderly people is to be given to local authorities after the Government yesterday belatedly announced it would implement the thrust of the Griffiths report on community care.
 Almost 16 months after the report was published, Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, declared: 'We have concluded that the best way forward will be to build on local authorities' existing responsibilities.'
 The announcement ended protracted wrangling among ministers over the report by Sir Roy Griffiths, the Prime Minister's special adviser on the health service. Mrs Thatcher and others were reluctant to increase local authorities' powers until every other avenue had been explored and rejected. 
 The decision, which applies also to mentally ill and mentally handicapped people, was generally welcomed by critics who had warned that the Government's indecision was blighting community care developments and harming those in need of support.
 However, Mr Clarke made no commitment on extra funds.
 Mr John Rea Price, chairman of the Community Care Now! pressure group, said: 'There is a real danger that without resources, responsibility for community care cannot be discharged properly.'
 Under the new system, to come into effect in April 1991, local authority social services departments will arrange assessments of people's care needs and organise provision in their own homes or in residential or nursing homes.
 The key financial change will affect the Pounds 1 billion a year social security bill for income support payments to people in private or voluntary homes. These payments, of up to Pounds 223 a week, have been regarded by ministers as a 'peverse incentive' for elderly and disabled people to be recommended for residential care.
 Although people now in care will be unaffected, central funding for those assessed after 1991 will go to social services departments, instead of being channelled through social security. Rates have not been specified.
 For the mentally ill, this care grant will go first to district health authorities which will spend it with social services.
 Local authorities will be discouraged from expanding their own residential homes as they will get no grant for people they place in council homes.
 Mr Clarke said: 'It is not necessary for local authorities to provide all this service directly and they should make maximum possible use of the voluntary and commercial sectors so as to widen individuals' room for choice, increase the flexibility of services and stimulate innovation.'
 Further details of the plans will be published in a white paper in the autumn. Yesterday's outline statement suggested ministers had rejected Sir Roy's recommendations that funds given to local authorities be earmarked or ring-fenced, a practice disliked by the Treasury, and that the Government take a central role in planning and monitoring care.
 In announcing that Mr David Mellor, the Health Minister, would take responsibility for community care, the Government side-stepped Sir Roy's proposal that a minister be appointed with a specific brief.
 Politics, page 6; Leader comment, page 22

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The Guardian (London)

July 13, 1989

Public spending freeze wins cabinet backing

BYLINE: By CHRISTOPHER HUHNE and ALAN TRAVIS

LENGTH: 695 words

 
 TREASURY plans to further reduce the share of national income going in public spending won cabinet approval yesterday.
 The decision highlights the Government's determination to tighten economic policy and bring inflation under control.
 Ministers indicated that the Government's hope, according to unpublished Treasury forecasts, was to reduce inflation to six per cent by the end of the year and four per cent by June.
 Although the Cabinet's statement was similar to last year's formula, the reality is likely to be a cumulative and sharpening squeeze on spending. Ministers are being asked to hold to similar cash totals, despite the rise in inflation. 
 The statement released after the cabinet meeting yesterday said ministers had agreed 'that the objective should be to maintain the downward trend in the ratio of public spending excluding privatisation proceeds to gross domestic product and to hold as close as possible to existing plans.'
 The ratio has fallen much more sharply than expected as inflation and growth have increased national income so the base from which the reduction will start is substantially lower than planned. The form of words allows no catch-up in the next few years to compensate for the drop in spending in real terms in both 1987/88 and 1988/89.
 The Chancellor, Mr Nigel Lawson, warned ministers that existing policies aimed at restraining private demand must not be undermined by imprudent public spending.
 The Treasury, expecting a tough spending round, has left itself with an escape hatch if certain ministers prove recalcitrant because it is changing the definition of the planning total of public spending this year.
 But in practice, such muddying of the waters is unlikely to prove necessary as ministers were said yesterday to be united in their determination to arrest rising inflation and tackle a record balance of payments deficit.
 Discussions between the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, Mr John Major, and spending ministers will take place over the summer. Officials say a star chamber - a special cabinet committee to adjudicate disagreements between the Treasury and the departments - will be convened if difficulties cannot be resolved.
 More than Pounds 10 billion of bids for extra spending over previously agreed plans have been received against a background of dissatisfaction with infrastructure, lobbying from the National Health Service, and the effect of rising inflation on social security spending.
 The social security budget is likely to be at least Pounds 1.5 billion over because of higher than expected inflation, the Pounds 375 million cost of abolition of the pensioners' earnings rule which allows them to keep state pensions whatever their earnings, and an additional Pounds 200 million for older pensioners.
 The rise in retail prices was expected to be only 5.5 per cent over the year to September, but it could easily reach 7.5 per cent or more. Each 1 percentage point increase in the annual rate adds Pounds 455 million to public spending.
 The roads white paper in May also committed the Government to more spending when resources permitted, but this is clearly going to be one of the hotly contested areas.
 Yesterday's decisions also send out a signal that the Government is unlikely to be pushed into generous concessions by the rash of public sector disputes.
 The Government's desire to reduce inflation is being used to explain to Tory backbenchers the need for a clamp on public spending despite the large budget surplus.
 Labour's Treasury spokesman, Mr Gordon Brown, said last night that holding the public spending target to Pounds 179.4 billion meant reducing services.
 'When ministers say public spending will face a difficult year they mean they are planning for reductions in services with more congestion on our railways, less investment in our environment, and more neglect of our hospitals, schools and vital services.'
 Mr Brown said that parents, patients, commuters and communities would all pay the price for the Chancellor's economic mistakes with deterioriating public services.
 Baker seeks more cash, page 5

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The Guardian (London)

July 13, 1989

Leading Article: At last, the right caring conclusion

LENGTH: 574 words

 
 ULTIMATELY, there was no alternative. Roy rules OK. Try as she might, the Prime Minister has been unable to find any better option for the reform of community care than the model produced by her special health adviser, Sir Roy Griffiths, 15 long months ago. His solution won the support of all the main agencies, except the agent in Downing Street who could not stomach the idea of giving local councils more responsibility. Hence her special review of a problem which had already been reviewed by Griffiths, the Commons Select Committee on Social Services and the Audit Commission. But the conclusion was still the same; Roy was right: the only logical way of closing the gaps in services for the elderly, disabled and mentally infirm is to make local social service departments the chief co-ordinators. Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, announced the decision yesterday - and can take a bow. 
 Theoretically, there were two other options. A new community care service could have been set up; but this would only have created more gaps for clients to fall through. Health authorities could have been given the co-ordinating role; but they have enough troubles already digesting the Government's NHS reforms and, in any case, would have been an odd choice as the main need of many clients is practical (cleaning, shopping, being dressed) rather than medical.
 Instead, there will be a single budget, under the control of local councils, to cover the cost of community care. The present perverse incentive to get people into private residential homes - so that social security pays the cost - will be removed. Existing claims will be maintained, but the Government has committed itself to transferring the resources, which would otherwise have been spent on social security payments, to local councils. This is a large sum. It has grown from Pounds 10 million in 1979 to Pounds 1,000 million today. Existing commitments will mean only a gradual transfer (plus allowance for projected growth) but the principle is important. It will mean the public purse will only finance residential care for those who really need it. Local councils will have more flexibility to develop their domiciliary services so that elderly people can stay in their own homes longer. There will be even more discretion than Griffiths planned because the budget will not be 'ear-marked.'
 Local councils will be both providers and enablers. They already provide 150,000 residential places. They will now take over responsibility for financing the majority of the 150,000 places in the private sector. Financial incentives will ensure future growth in the voluntary and private sectors. To maintain unified standards, a national inspectorate was needed; but responsibility for the moment will remain with local councils. This is bound to lead to further complaints from the private homes of double standards. The abuse in Southwark council's home for the elderly was just as bad as the neglect in the Kent private homes exposed by Yorkshire Television. For once, HMG can be accused of giving local councils too long a rein.
 The main thrust, however, is right, even though a final verdict should be withheld until the precise financial details are known. What is missing is any commitment to the informal carers - the relatives, neighbours and friends who in bruising reality carry the main community care burden. Next stop: a carers' charter. .

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The Guardian (London)

July 13, 1989

International News In Brief: Bonn party aims at over-60s

BYLINE: By ANNA TOMFORDE in Bonn

LENGTH: 74 words

 
 A new political party for West Germany's older generation, the Greys, was born yesterday, promising to fight for pensioners' rights and greater social acceptance of the increasing numbers of over-sixties.
 At the founding congress in Munich, the party announced that it would stand in next year's general election. It would reserve 50 per cent of its seats for representatives of organisations fighting for the rights of older people.

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The Guardian (London)

July 15, 1989

Learners: Equality shifts into third gear - Women are driving hard into that male preserve of motoring

BYLINE: By I FRAMPTON GLEED

LENGTH: 634 words

 
 AT LAST the truth about women drivers is emerging. It is not that they are necessarily better, or worse, or safer, or slower, or scatty, or preoccupied, or even different.
 It is simply that they are there. More and more of them are there. And there will be more. 
 The distaff boom is pretty well documented across the whole spectrum, of course. Professional chroniclers tell us that in the last 35 years or so the proportion of women in the population between 15 and 59 went up from 43 to 66 per cent; that over the same period married women in employment soared from 21 to 61 per cent; that by the mid 1990s four out of five new jobs will be taken by women; and that by the year 2000 working women will outnumber working men in Britain.
 Female progress has been most marked in the professions. One in four of the nation's self-employed are now women, 44 per cent of all first class degrees are awarded to women graduates, and almost half the newly qualified doctors and solicitors are women. The number of women entering accountancy has doubled in the course of the 1980s.
 All this plus the easy-buy boom and a galloping national prosperity which has thrust second and third cars into every self-respecting household even where wives slave loyally over sinks between taking the children to school and bringing them back.
 At the last ILEA count 78,000 children in London's 10 central boroughs were getting to and from schools by private car, making no small contribution to the capital's peak-hour problems).
 Little wonder therefore that the motor car, that essence of freedom and mobility and symbol of personal success, is fast becoming as much the preserve of women as of men.
 More men may now hold driving licences - 17.1 million as opposed to 10.7 million women - but the number of women holders increased by 50 per cent between 1973 and 1980, and more than 2.7 million women own cars, spending more than Pounds 1,000 million a year on their motoring.
 And if these figures send a shiver down the corridors of male privilege, there are much chillier ones to come.
 Look at the learners. For every three men waiting to qualify behind the wheel there are five women. Of the 4.8 million learner drivers currently holding provisional licences, 1.8 million are men and 2.8 million are women.
 Among the young, for whom driving is a natural aspiration, there are almost as many girls as boys - and from 21 years of age onwards it is females who line up in the greater numbers, right up to the age of 70.
 Even among the septuagenarians who are trying to obtain, retain or recover their licences, there are as many women as men.
 What does it all add up to? Raw statistics are always dangerous, and there are no figures on the fall-off of licence-holders. But since women L-drivers are now passing the test at virtually the same rate as men, and since the pass rate is around 50 per cent, it is a simple calculation that 1.4 million new female drivers and 900,000 new male drivers are joining the already seething cohorts on the roads every year, though of course relatively few of them - mercifully - become immediate car owners.
 IF THIS proportion is maintained, let alone if the trend to women steepens, as many women as men will hold licences to drive in Britain in 2003 and the total number of licence-holders will - given natural wastage among motoring's senior citizens - have ascended to somewhere around 50 million.
 Whether the car population will have been allowed to keep pace is another matter, of course, but I can imagine that somewhere along the way the vexed question of a licence to own a car could become rather more important than a licence to drive one.
 And the men will undoubtedly be saying that it is the fault of women drivers.

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The Guardian (London)

July 18, 1989

'Half families in inner-city area' hit by serious crime

BYLINE: By JOHN CARVEL, Home Affairs Editor

LENGTH: 465 words

 
 HALF THE households in inner cities has in the past year either been burgled or had an offence committed against a member of the family, according to a research report published today at the British criminology conference in Bristol.
 Dr Jock Young, head of the Middlesex Polytechnic Centre for Criminology, said that, in contrast to his findings, Home Office figures masked the seriousness of inner-city crime by presenting a 'blancmange' of national statistics.
 He called for an independent body to evaluate police performance, with agreed standards, 'to end the practice of a public body creating its own performance indicators and the unseemly free-for-all which accompanies the interpretation of the annual crime statistics.' 
 Dr Young chose to focus his survey on Hammersmith and Fulham in London as being a relatively wealthy inner-city area which would not be expected to have an exceptional crime record. But he found half the households had experienced serious crime last year, and two in five women imposed a virtual curfew on themselves because they were afraid to go out alone after dark. The problem of crime was seen as second only to unemployment.
 Dr Young said the government-favoured Neighbourhood Watch scheme was a failure. 'The average citizen in Hammersmith and Fulham sees a burglary once in every 42 years. Their lace curtains would tear and their eyeballs ache before they saw a break-in,' he said.
 He argued that public enthusiasm for the scheme should be channelled into preventing environmental dumping or pollution and street harassment.
 He was also sceptical about the value of government enthusiasm for 'target hardening' of property with locks and security devices; in principle it was a good idea, but in practice it cost more than it saved.
 'The cost of target hardening your own house is to make your neighbours more vulnerable. The cost of making an inner-city school more vandal-proof has become greater than the cost of vandalism. The cost of a successful concierge system in a typical London borough is in excess of Pounds 200 million. We are creating safe houses for old people which effectively cut them off from day-to-day contact with the outside world.'
 Fear of crime was causing more people to own dogs, 'but dog noise and mess are now seen by an extraordinary 73 per cent of people as the major nuisance of their area.'
 While Dr Young found people were very dissatisfied with the police's performance in clearing up the crimes that most disturbed them, there was also general dissatisfaction with services in the inner city.
 As well as calling for a true record of crime in order to fight it, Dr Young recommended more anti-crime education in schools, since most crime was committed by adolescent males.

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July 19, 1989

Greys set to shake up West German political scene

BYLINE: By ANNA TOMFORDE in Wuppertal

LENGTH: 693 words

 
 WEST Germany, which has Europe's youngest pensioners and oldest students, now has a rebellious Grey Party claiming that 'old is beautiful' and calling for a greater say for the over-60s.
 The leader of the new party, Mrs Trude Unruh, aged 64, says she has decided that remaining quiet is 'no good.' Clubs for old people should be turned into 'centres for political education and agitation.'
 Mrs Unruh (her name in English means 'restless') spent just more than two years sitting as a Green in the Bundestag. But she says the Greens used her to attract pensioners' votes without rewarding the Greys with promised constituencies. 
 Equipped with a cloth cap and megaphone, she is ready to take on the established political parties in next year's general election. She will campaign for a guaranteed minimum state pension of up to DM1,500 a month (Pounds 500), and pledges to put an end to 'old people being totally at the mercy of the system and the welfare mafia.'
 As far as possible, the Greys want to do without homes for the old, care institutions or psychiatric establishments. Old people should have a free choice of residence, where their freedom would be maintained and the necessary level of care provided.
 'We want to lead autonomous lives, and move away from the concept that old people must be manageable,' she said at the party's spacious headquarters in Wuppertal, which is also a 'cultural centre' for pensioners.
 Among her aims is to lure old people away from the growing attraction of the new, extreme-right, Republican Party.
 She is fully aware that to realise their ambition, the Greys, with 30,000 members and 170 regional centres throughout West Germany, need to win parliamentary seats, so as to be able to push through legal changes to the social welfare system.
 An opinion poll published yesterday said the party would muster 6.5 per cent of the vote in a general election, which would give it representation in the Bundestag.
 The Green Party has regretted the loss of its 'Grey branch' and said it was a pity the environmentalists had failed 'to integrate the old rebels.' A much stronger response has come from Chancellor Kohl's ruling Christian Democrats, who are steadily losing votes and who have recently set up a Pensioners Association which the CDU claims has 60,000 members.
 The government's Family Minister with responsibility for the old, Professor Ursula Lehr, has warned against an 'intensified struggle between the generations.'
 By the end of this century, 40 per cent of West Germans will be over 60. At present they number 12 million.
 'We need cooperation and not polarisation,' Professor Lehr said. Both the economy and society had to face the enormous challenge of adjusting to the demographic changes caused by a drastic fall in birthrates, she said.
 But she added that a minimum pension would not solve the problems linked to aging. 'The Greys have opted for the wrong path.'
 At present, some 90 per cent of the two million West Germans who need care are looked after by their families, and 600,000 people live in homes. But staffing problems in hospitals and in the care sector have reached alarming proportions, and reports of 'scandalous conditions' in old people's homes make headlines almost every week.
 The anger of those involved in caring for the old has recently been fuelled by a decision of a Mannheim court which, in response to a complaint from residents in a small town in Baden-Wuerttemberg, ruled that old people's homes should not be situated in 'high-quality residential areas.'
 The plaintiffs argued that they were 'disturbed at night by the sound of ambulances and occasional screams from home inmates.'
 It was high time, Mrs Unruh said, that those in power in Bonn realised that West Germany was fast becoming a society hostile not only to children, but also to the aged.
 She said her proposals for greater integration of the old and reduced dependence on the state welfare system had exposed the serious gap between private care provided by the family and the official welfare system in hospitals, homes and other institutions.

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July 20, 1989

Private health insurers welcome tax relief plans for pensioners

BYLINE: By MARGARET HUGHES, Personal Finance Editor

LENGTH: 210 words

 
 THE Government yesterday announced details of the types of medical treatment covered by private health insurance schemes which, for those aged 60 and over, will be eligible for tax relief from April 6, 1990 - even when the premiums are paid by someone else.
 The two major insurers - BUPA and PPP - welcomed the move which makes most treatments covered by their schemes eligible for tax relief. It includes transport to and from treatment, as well as speech therapy and chiropody.
 But there is disappointment the Government has not ammended its ruling on cash benefits which limits the payment to Pounds 5 a night and will exclude many schemes aimed specifically at the elderly.
 These relatively low cost schemes are designed as adjuncts to NHS treatment, giving subscribers access to private health only when an NHS bed is not available within six weeks.
 Where patients do receive NHS treatment the plans play cash benefits of up to Pounds 25 a night. These schemes will now have to be ammended if they are to become eligible for tax relief.
 At present only 5 per cent of the over 60s have medical insurance cover but the Government hopes that tax relief on premiums will increase the take up and so reduce pressure on the NHS.

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July 21, 1989

Obituary of Kazimierz Sabbat: Some Polish exits and entrances

BYLINE: By W L W

LENGTH: 699 words

 
 KAZIMIERZ Sabbat, fifth President of the Polish Government in Exile, died in London on Wednesday just as General Jaruzelski was reluctantly accepting, by one vote, the presidency of the Polish Government in Warsaw.
 It seems a dark coincidence worthy of the pen of one of those Polish expressionists like Gombrowicz or Tadeusz Konwicki, but there was poignancy as well as irony in it. Like most of the old men who still meet in the Cabinet room of the house in Eaton Place, where yesterday the red and white flag was flying at half mast, Sabbat lately had at last become convinced that he would now one day be able to return to the land he had not seen since he escaped across the frontier as a young cadet officer in 1939.
 He had just returned from America where he had been giving seminars in comparative politics to the graduate students of his friend Professor Edward Rozek at the University of Colorado. 'Now it seems within eyesight', he told a reporter from the local newspaper a couple of weeks ago. 'I would not say six months or six years, but for the first time it seems possible.' Before leaving London he had run a high temperature which failed to respond to antibiotics, but he had insisted on making the trip. 
 He was 76, and had succeeded to the Presidency three years ago on the retirement of Count Edward Raczynski (the Polish ambassador to the Court of St James from 1934 to 1945). Before that, he had been for ten years Prime Minister of the Council of Ministers in London, not so much a shadow cabinet as a cabinet of political ghosts whose dogged persistence over nearly half a century and apparent constitutional legitimacy once more haunts the Warsaw government deriving its legitimacy chiefly from the Realpolitik of Yalta.
 Kazimierz Sabbat was of more modest bourgeois family than some other political colleagues like Count Ludwik Lubienski, the former adjutant of General Anders, who yesterday mourned his friend's intelligence, good temper, and ability to get on with all sorts of people in politically delicate situations.
 After law studies at the University of Warsaw, and his escape to Hungary after the Nazi occupation, Sabbat served with General Maczek's armoured brigade in France before the collapse, and then was seconded to the General Staff in London.
 After the war he started a small sports' good manufacturing business. At school and university he had been active in the scout movement. Now he persuaded the world Scout movement to accept the membership of the Polish scouting movement outside Poland which he represented as International Commissioner. From 1960 to 1986 he was chairman of the Independents' grouping in the Polish National Council (a Sejm, or parliament in exile), and played a significant part in the talks in the early Seventies which finally reconciled the opposing factions in Polish emigre politics.
 His death comes at a time when the government in exile, recognised by most of the Polish communities in Europe and North and South America (and, London claims, emotionally still by many Poles at home), begins to be seen once more as a fact and not a figment of Polish politics.
 In an interview in America earlier this month, Sabbat said that if the Communist Party were to lose power, he would return, but not as a leader. His mission, he said, would be to return the constitution to Warsaw 'when the first freely elected goverment meets.'
 What would actually be returned would be the original Presidential seal, the old crimson flag with the Polish eagle from the Presidential Palace in prewar Warsaw that hangs now at the head of the staircase in Eaton Place, and the document of 1935 amending the constitution which provided for the government's continuation should the country be overrun. By this instrument, the President of that continuing government, which Eaton Place sees itself to be, is required to nominate his successor Ryszard Kaczorowski sworn in just before midnight on the night of Sabbat's death, has already placed the name of his successor in a sealed envelope.
 Kazimierz Aleksander Sabbat, born Bieliny, Kielce Province, February 17, 1913; died London, July 19, 1989.

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July 21, 1989

Books (Poetry): Review of 'Available for Dreams' By Roy Fuller

BYLINE: By CAROL ANN DUFFY

LENGTH: 407 words

 
 Available For Dreams, by Roy Fuller (Collins Harvill Pounds 11)
 IN THE seventy-fifth sonnet of this lovely book, Roy Fuller asks 'How did an old man's daily doings seem/Even remotely apt for poetry?' Available For Dreams has much in common with the recent, and forthcoming, collections of the irrepressible Gavin Ewart; being written, as Ewart put it, from 'the last ten years of a life'. Poets in their seventies appear to experience a kind of second adolescence in relation to the Muse, bounding roguishly across to it with a drink in each hand and life in the old doggerel yet: I shouldn't object too much to dropping dead Were I then versing, moderately boozed.
 Fuller's new collection consists entirely of varying approaches to the sonnet form, all of which exhibit skill, wit and intelligence. We begin in his kitchen, where the poet birdwatches; nips in to replenish the drinks while listening to the jazz of Sidney Bechet, or Rachmaninov's 'cherished songs'; or potters about between the Elizabeth David and the oven. We are very much in a life here, and in this sense Available For Dreams rewards most when it is read straight through, like a diary. The poet is feeling such an intense, though double-edged pleasure in the ordinariness of being alive that he can't scrub a muddy potato from Egypt without taking imaginative leaps far beyond the kitchen sink. 
 Did in past ages associations bring A deeper sense from every household thing; And those who threw out broken pots from Troy Imagine they'd tell of tragedy and joy?
 Fuller orders this book into seven sections of subject. Poems about the changing seasons, about times past, old friends, the arts, suburban England, are all suffused with a common-sense awareness that time is running out. The emotional tone is restrained, perhaps held in check too long by the intellect; but such diffidence works positively, making a poem like The Elderly Husband particularly effective. ('What gods can possibly/ Exist to whom thanks must be breathed for this?') Part Seven, The Cancer Hospital, concludes the collection and deals largely with the illness of the poet's wife, a presence who figures offstage in many of the previous poems. It is more than 'remotely apt' to this erudite, humane book that one reads with pleasure these lines: Although when I receive at length the news That you're to live I find another cause For living, and realise I needed one.

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July 22, 1989

Weekend Money: Paying at the double

LENGTH: 342 words

 
 A NUMBER of elderly people, particularly widows and widowers, will apparently have to pay the community charge twice - in the form of the personal and standard charge. The standard charge can, of course, be twice the amount of the personal charge.
 This problem affects mainly old people who retain ownership of their home but, as a result of declining health or extended convalescence, have become de facto residents in a relative's or friend's house. 
 For example, a widow in her eighties who went to live at her daughter's house in the same local authority when she came out of hospital three years ago, has remained there and has been registered as a resident on the community charge inquiry form. She has been told that she will have to pay the personal community charge at her daughter's address and the standard charge for her own flat. (At present she pays one set of rates - for the flat - which is used occasionally by a visiting relative.) The oddity of the situation is that family residential care of an elderly relative apparently puts the elderly person in the category of the undeserving rich with two homes.
 Whereas in reality an elderly person in poor health is probably retaining an unoccupied home simply to retain and store their possessions, to draw on them as needed and, of course, the psychological benefit of ownership. There is too the practical advantage if the relative's accommodating household dissolves and the elderly person returns to his or her own home with the support of some care and assistance.
 But, on available information, such a person may have to pay up to three times the personal community charge - ie the personal charge plus the, perhaps, doubled amount of the standard community charge.
 The number of people affected by this problem may not be enormous but it must at the least run into thousands - perhaps tens of thousands. Undoubtedly some families will take such cases to appeal, where the issue will be whether there should be exceptions to the unoccupied house rule.

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July 22, 1989

Engel's Angle: Old friends who had to leave the party early

BYLINE: By MATTHEW ENGEL

LENGTH: 741 words

 
 THE OPEN barely seems to have started, has barely taken any shape, yet already it is time for people to push off home. There were narrow escapes for Woosie, Sandy and Ben Crenshaw (though surely another year slips by). But it is so long, Larry Nelson, Fuzzy Zoeller and Jeff Sluman - major winners all. And au revoir Nick Price, the nearly man of '88, to the local boy Sam Torrance, to Brian Barnes and his shorts, and to Jim Noon, the man whose great-grandfather David Brown won the Open in 1886 (pity, there was a headline in Noon and Troon).
 Farewell Peter Baker, Barry Lane and Paul Broadhurst, rising Brits; to Steve Jones, rising American; to Jerome O'Shea, the Ealing upholsterer; to Rodger Davis, who had a terrible tournament; to nice Andy Bean. 
 Goodbye to the three former champions, Player, Jacklin and Weiskopf, who pottered round together like Compo, Foggy and Clegg. And goodbye - much more emphatically - to Arnold Palmer: 82 shots on Thursday, 82 again yesterday, symmetrical golf but disastrous. The man who effectively started the modern Open Championship, simply by travelling across to play in it, had finished the two days 156th and last.
 Old footballers go off and manage Fourth Division clubs and then grow older fast. Old cricketers go into the radio box and slag off young cricketers. There is something delightful about the way old golfers just keep playing golf. Palmer is exempt from qualifying for the Open until his 65th birthday, in 1994. The question is whether he wants to go on playing like this.
 'I couldn't be rational about my feelings right now,' Palmer said, shaking his head. 'I played so poorly. I'm upset.' Now any analyst of the game could have told him why this might happen: his swing was all unbalanced, all wrong - the right heel in the address position and his top hand in the follow through, or something. But they first told him that 35 years, 90-odd tournament wins and several billion dollars ago. And, anyway, even now it was not his driving that let him down: it was the silly little stuff. 'Thirty-six holes and he never holed one putt,' sighed his caddie, Tip Anderson.
 Arnie's Army of followers has now dwindled to a mere platoon. But there was a mellow warmth in the applause as he walked down the 18th (scrambling out of the rough) that only Nicklaus could match. And, though the kids ignored him as he walked off, the old men jostled for his autograph.
 Anderson has his own ideas about retirement. Next year the Open is at St Andrews, his own home town and the venue when Palmer first arrived 30 years ago to begin restoring a slightly dilapidated championship to its present magnificence. He wants to talk his boss into playing just one more. But then in 1991 it is Birkdale after that and he won there . so who knows?
 The one man whom everyone expected to disappear quickly refused to do so. Wayne Stephens, the traditional Thursday nobody, is still right up the leader board on Saturday morning, and revelling in his Warholian moment of fame.
 Stephens got a 72 yesterday - solid pars at the start and finish, a few adventures in the middle - but he handled everything with aplomb: not just the golf shots but the questions too, and the gracious raise of the sponsors' visor as he took the unfamiliar cheers. He loved it all: seeing himself on telly, his landlady crying with joy when he arrived back home on Thursday night, his friends ringing up, his name all over the papers.
 What Stephens did not know was how unpopular he was with all the media. Nothing personal. But the last thing any journalist wanted after a long opening day was some bloke who hardly rates a line in the reference books bursting through the field just before deadline. 'I don't want to go home,' said an American journo wearily. 'I don't want to have a beer. I don't want dinner. I just want to go and interview Wayne Stephens.'
 It turned out that Stephens was a grand interviewee and, just maybe, a more substantial golfer than people imagined. As he strides on to the tee again this morning, he will be able to enjoy the thrill of the tournament that Palmer rebuilt. The great man can still get a kick out of that, too.
 'One of the things on my mind when I first came here was to get international golf revived,' Palmer said. 'And I must say it's exceeded my fondest thoughts. That gives me pleasure.' Even on days like these? 'Even on days like these.'

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July 24, 1989

Agenda: The threat to community care - Government proposals for community care may only further fragment the NHS unless new laws come with new safeguards

BYLINE: By TREVOR CLAY

LENGTH: 1259 words

 
 THE Government has finally announced its decisions on Sir Roy Griffiths' report on Community Care. At least a major area of doubt and uncertainty has been removed but I feel that the Government's proposals will further fragment the NHS, fail to take into account all the developments since Sir Roy first reported and most importantly will not help the most vulnerable in our society.
 I was able to share these concerns with a number of Conservative MPs last week several of whom showed their unease about the idea of hiving off responsibility for community care on to local authority social services departments.
 There are also, no doubt, a number of opposition MPs who, whilst not wishing to decry local government, may have nagging doubts about whether local councils can cope with the scale of the responsibility they are being asked to shoulder.
 By accepting most of Sir Roy Griffiths' analysis and proposals, the Government has set up a mechanism whereby it can absolve itself of responsibility for the care of elderly people and people with mental handicap or mental illness. One of Sir Roy's proposals which was not accepted was the appointment of a Minister for Community Care. This confirms the view that the major concern is simply to delegate what many believe should be a prime government responsibility. 
 Local authorities are at present implementing the community charge, changes to housing legislation and, in London, setting up education departments to take over from the ILEA. Many are already overburdened and many social workers are overstretched. And these problems are worse in areas of highest deprivation where vulnerable groups need the very highest standards of community care.
 The strength and reliability of the National Health Service lies in the comprehensive nature of the range of services it provides and that it is a National Health Service. British people can expect the NHS to provide fair and equal treatment from Dundee to Dartmouth. NHS levels of skill and expertise have been spread fairly evenly throughout the country, largely due to the fact that in reality there is a single employer.
 Local government, by its very nature, will make provision of community care uneven. Community care will now be in the same bracket: it will be dependent on the priority given to it by local politicians as they assess the many calls upon their resources.
 Implementation of the Griffiths' proposals could well coincide with the establishment of the first self-governing hospital trusts. Thus at a time when there could be major changes in the organisation of hospital, community care will be in the melting pot too. No one can predict with certainty the effects of the Government's proposals for change in hospitals and in the way general practitioners work and liaise with other health care professionals. Whatever the inadequacy of the present system I can see ways in which a seamless robe of care between the general practitioners, hospital and community is working and can be improved. All of this is to be overthrown for an untried and untested regime, with increased uncertainties and, I believe, fragmented provision.
 I am also concerned that in all the debates about the future of care in the community there has been a failure to identify the needs of the growing number of elderly people who will require intensive nursing care. There will be a dramatic increase in the number of people aged over 75 who will be frail and dependent and who will need looking after. There has been little attempt to cost the care for such people in the community, although the impression given is that it will be the cheaper option. Effective community care for dependent people requires resources and it requires planning. The Government proposals provide a planning framework and the funding mechanisms are to be stream-lined, but there is silence about any commitment to provide sufficient resources to meet society's needs.
 The real challenge, which the Government has failed to address, is to provide a comprehensive system of community care invoving all forms of enterprise currently engaged in health and social care provision. The uncomfortable reality is that the private sector and voluntary sector, policed by local authorities will not, even with the best of intentions, be able to deliver care on the scale that is required. The private sector is subject to commercial pressures and we have seen many private residential care and nursing homes go under because they have been subject to the vagaries of fluctuating interest rates. At the same time there has been a rapid growth in the number of private homes, making the job of local authorities to police the homes even more difficult. The public sector can, and should, play a leading role in extending and developing community care provision. The public sector has given us one of the most effective health services in the world. It should not be left merely to step in when the private and voluntary sector cannot cope.
 There was a general assumption last week that there was no alternative to accepting Griffiths' proposals. However if Ministers and civil servants had sat down and thought carefully about a co-ordinated health policy then we could have had a genuine alternative to the mish-mash of policies we have at present. Instead, by the autumn, the Government will have produced two White Papers, neither of which, either independently or together, provides a coherent strategy for Britain's future health care.
 The fragmentation which the RCN predicts will result from the Government's plans for health care in this country is symbolised by the lack of co-ordination of their proposals in the White Paper 'Working for Patients' and the Griffiths report. The RCN has long advocated that District Health Authorities and Family Practitioner Committees should be merged, and that regional health authorities should be abolished. This would have allowed the establishment of a primary health care team answerable to the merged authority, involving doctors, nurses and social workers, which could have led to an integrated community care system.
 This is not a plea for the self-interest of nurses but it is a plea to make maximum use of the variety of expertise currently available within the NHS and social services departments. The system I am suggesting would provide a forum to enable maximum input from the professionals and authorities involved to assess the needs of clients in these vulnerable groups. The system proposed by Sir Roy Griffiths still divides resources between two authorities and will not overcome the problems identified by the multi-disciplinary team where there will be variable and complementary needs between social and health care.
 If, however, the Government insists on pressing ahead with its proposals for community care in their present form we must ensure that standards and provision of care are as uniform as possible. The very minimum required to do this will be:
 a nationally trained inspectorate to look at health and social care delivered by both the private and public sectors
 a defined budget for community care
 national standards set for both the private and public sectors
 a Minister for Community Care to argue for adequate resources to maintain standards
 Without these safeguards I fear that adequate community care will never be a reality in this country.
 Trevor Clay is general secretary of the Royal College of Nursing of the United Kingdom.

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July 25, 1989

Company Briefing: Housing slump hits McCarthy

LENGTH: 283 words

 
 Housing slump hits McCarthy Frozen house-selling chains in the south of England have knocked the stuffing out of many builders' shares, but McCarthy & Stone, the pioneer in retirement homes for the elderly, has suffered as much or worse than any other, with the exception of Kentish Property, the docklands apartments developer that has already indicated it is having difficulty in meeting its financial obligations.
 McCarthy's spread, ranging from nursing home development and administration to second home construction in France, provides some protection, but, as a builder of new housing almost entirely for buyers who need to sell their existing homes, it has a short-term problem that necessitates some cutbacks. 
 McCarthy says its building program exceeded targets in the north, but the shortfall in the south is 'drastic'. Some minor branch closures and lower employment of architects hardly impinged much on outgoings running at over Pounds 100 million annually and interest charges up by over 80 per cent to Pounds 5.6million in the first half of this year.
 But even if selling prices have to be reduced sharply below the recent average of Pounds 60,000, the market will recover.
 The company believes it will be sooner for it than in housing generally, because of the pent-up demand for suitable accommodation for the elderly.
 The shares only managed a recovery of a few pence to 172p, after last week's 61p slump. The financial year ends next month and the May warning that last year's Pounds 34million surplus would be difficult to repeat, in spite of the further rise in the first half, has clearly been left behind by events and the market, or lack of it.

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July 27, 1989

Alerts called for as 'smog' levels rise

BYLINE: By JAMES ERLICHMAN, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

LENGTH: 437 words

 
 AIR POLLUTION is putting the health of one in five people at risk, but the Government refuses to issue alerts or set tougher controls, a report by the environment group, Friends of the Earth, claimed yesterday.
 And as 'smog' levels have risen dramatically in the heatwave, three charities caring for the elderly and other vulnerable groups yesterday backed the FoE report.
 According to the London Scientific Service, a monitoring body, levels of ozone - which irritates the lungs - exceeded World Health Organisation guidelines at the weekend. Breaches of the guidelines for sulphur dioxide, nitrogen dioxide, oil particulates and carbon monoxide have also been recorded. 
 But the Department of the Environment yesterday denied any complacency or threat to public health. It said that Britain adhered strictly to European Community directives controlling three pollutants - sulphur dioxide, oil particulates and nitrogen dioxide.
 The department went on: 'We would issue pollution alerts if necessary, but the occasions when the guidelines are breached are neither frequent nor severe,' adding that recent ozone levels posed 'no serious health risk'.
 Ms Fiona Weir, for FoE, said that EC guidelines were lax, and failed to cover either carbon monoxide or low-atmosphere ozone, which is a health hazard. She added that the Government's prime monitoring site in central London is down an alley in Victoria where pollution would be lower than in a busy street.
 Infants, the elderly and those with heart and chest complaints are most vulnerable to the effects of air pollution, and FoE said studies showed 20 per cent of the population fall into these risk categories.
 Britain had refused to adopt the WHO guidelines, which are much stricter than the EC's and cover all the major pollutants. The United States, Japan, Switzerland, and Holland had all adopted even tougher rules.
 Dr John Rees, for the British Lung Foundation, backed the demand for immediate information on pollution and measures to cut excessive levels. Frequent pollution alerts are published or broadcast in the US, Japan, West Germany, Holland, France, Sweden, and Denmark.
 Professor Desmond Julian, of the British Heart Foundation, said heart patients were particularly sensitive to air pollution, and their risk of death increases 'when there is an increase in the level of pollutants'.
 Mr Mervyn Kohler, for Help the Aged, said the elderly are the largest group at risk, and they deserved 'smog' alert warnings.
 Air Pollution and Health; Friends of the Earth, 26-28 Underwood Street, London N1 7JQ; Pounds 5.

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July 31, 1989

Golf: Charles puts on a winning grip

BYLINE: By DONALD STEWART

LENGTH: 442 words

 
 BOB CHARLES romped away to win the Volvo Seniors British Open from Billy Casper at Turnberry yesterday - using a putter with a grip that will soon be declared illegal.
 'I only discovered recently that the putter grip I have been using for the past 30 years does not conform to regulations. It will have to go at the end of the year. I will be very sorry to lose it,' said Charles, whose win yesterday earned him a Pounds 25,000 first prize. 
 Putter grips that bulge at the top and are moulded to fit the hands have been banned by the US Golf Association. The ban will also apply in Britain.
 Nevertheless, the putter served the 1963 Open champion well yesterday. He needed only 29 putts in a round of 66 that shot him to a seven-stroke win over the former US Open champion Casper, who had begun the day two strokes in front.
 The American stretched his lead to three when the left-handed Charles bogeyed the 2nd hole, but there was a dramatic turnaround at the 5th and 6th holes.
 Casper double bogeyed each of them, having to take a penalty drop from a sandpit at the 5th and then requiring three putts after bunkering his tee shot at the short 6th.
 Charles took full advantage by holing a 25ft putt at the 5th for his second straight birdie, and this five-stroke swing in two holes altered the complexion of the battle.
 Casper was now struggling and heading for the same runner-up position he occupied last year. Charles put the final stamp on his success at the 15th and 16th holes where there was a four-stroke swing to the New Zealander.
 The American dropped three shots here and Charles picked up another birdie.
 As though to emphasise his authority, the tall Kiwi birdied the 17th with a 12ft putt and very nearly holed a sand-wedge for an eagle at the last.
 Kyle Burton, a director of golf at the Indian Wells club in California, came within two shots of matching his 64 years, his four-under-par 66 containing not one bogey.
 But at 292, 12 over par for the tournament, he was well out of the running for the Pounds 2,000 cheque available to the leading player aged over 60.
 That went for the second straight year to Christy O'Connor, who fired a final 68 to finish four over for the 72 holes and in seventh place behind Charles.
 The Ryder Cup veteran had a fascinating battle with his playing partner, Arnold Palmer, who still has an army of faithful fans.
 Both men gave their gallery something to cheer about near the end, Palmer finishing with an eagle and a birdie for a 70 and a total of 286, and O'Connor stealing a two-stroke march on him with a birdie at the 17th in his round of 68.

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July 31, 1989

Salmonella outbreak passes 300

BYLINE: By Staff Reporter

LENGTH: 372 words

 
 THE number of people affected by salmonella in Chester and North Wales last night passed the 300 mark amid investigations into a possible link with a fresh outbreak in the North-east.
 The Clwyd Health Authority stated that 152 suspected cases had been reported in North Wales, with 106 confirmed.
 In Chester, there are 202 confirmed cases. 
 Scientists from the Communicable Diseases Surveillance Centre were last night checking for links between those outbreaks and another in Northumberland and around Consett, County Durham, where at least 45 people have been affected.
 The Department of Health said a further 19 people were suspected to be suffering from salmonella in the outbreak in the North-east.
 It has been disclosed that all the victims in the North-east had attended one of three functions in the area.
 'We are investigating the possibility that all three were supplied with cooked meat by one supplier,' said a spokesman for the research centre, in Colindale, north London.
 Scientists were analysing the type of salmonella in the North-east outbreak to identify whether it is the same type as the one in the earlier outbreaks.
 The spokesman added: 'We will not know until later today or tomorrow whether there is a link.
 'We have no evidence that it was the same meat suppliers as in the outbreak in the North-west. It could be a dead end investigation, but we have to follow it through.'
 The outbreak in the North-west, in which two elderly people have died, has been traced to cooked meats prepared by the Flint butchers Joss Williams and Son, and distributed by them and another Flint company, Ascot Cooked Meats.
 A Clwyd Health Authority spokesman said that after the public alerts about suspect cooked meats, it was hoped the number of cases would decrease.
 He added that five patients were in hospital in North Wales, and the condition of one elderly man continued to cause concern.
 In addition, experts were investigating four patients at the Llwesty Hospital for the elderly in Holywell, who could prove to be victims of the outbreak. 'They are being tested, and new admissions to their ward have been stopped, but none is seriously ill,' said the spokesman.

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The Guardian (London)

July 31, 1989

Call for cuts in tranquilliser prescriptions

BYLINE: By PAUL MYERS

LENGTH: 145 words

 
 THE prescription of some tranquillisers for treating anxiety and insomnia should be reduced, the Association of Community Health Councils for England and Wales says in a report today.
 More than 25 million prescriptions are issued each year for benzodiazepines which reduce anxiety and help offset insomnia, it says. 
 These tranquillisers can have side effects, including double vision, poor memory, and mental confusion, and are prescribed long after they are most effective, the report says.
 With an estimated three million chronic users the report calls for measures to reduce benzodiazepine dependency. It wants repeat prescriptions reduced.
 The elderly and women aged between 25-35 and 45-54, have been pinpointed as the main users. In some cases elderly users have become very confused and loss of physical co-ordination has led to falls.

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August 1, 1989

Tuesday Women: The incredible ageing woman - To find out how the old were treated, a young New Yorker disguised herself as an elderly woman and tramped the streets in cities across America. She discovered some disturbing and frightening attitudes

BYLINE: By LUCIE YOUNG

LENGTH: 1745 words

 
 IN AN amazing three-year experiment, Pat Moore, a young product designer, lived as an elderly woman on the streets of New York. As 'Old Pat' she roamed around trying to find out what it was like to be old. During the controversial experiment, Pat, now 36, was shortchanged by shopkeepers, verbally abused when she got in the way and assaulted and left for dead by a gang of youths out for drugs money. Police pleaded with her to give up her double life.
 Finally, after the attack, Pat Moore collapsed from nervous and physical exhaustion and was forced to give up her experiment. But she considered the attack a minor event. Overall, it was overshadowed by feelings of loneliness and frustration as she found those who treated 'Young Pat' so well were condescending, aggressive and only too willing to take Old Pat for a ride. 
 Pat Moore's experiment in disguise - which she started at the age of 26 - developed initially out of her work. She is one of a handful of young and brilliant women working in product design. She trained under the Fifties guru of good taste, Raymond Loewy - the man behind the first Greyhound bus, the Nabisco logo and packaging of the Frigidaire fridge. Products for everyday and for everyone. Or almost. Pat Moore became increasingly aware that one group in society was being excluded: 'There is ageism in design. The belief that you don't have to tackle the elderly as consumers.' Even her own work fell short. She had designed an interior for a public vehicle which her own grandfather would find difficult to use.
 Pat Moore was aware that no company would cater to the needs of the older client out of altruism, so she persuaded Loewy that to ignore the elderly was financially shortsighted. This was not a difficult task considering that those over the age of 50 control more than Pounds 160 billion - more than half of America's discretionary income. Loewy in turn encouraged her to study gerontology at Columbia University. But here she could only read and talk about the elderly. The young Pat Moore wanted hands-on experiences.
 By going into disguise, she had intended to find out hard architectural, design and engineering data. She would test out various products and find out exactly where they fell short. But soon her strict design aims were lost in the welter of new and shocking experience.
 One of the most alarming discoveries was the difference in attitude the same people had to the Old and Young Pat. Typically, a shop assistant in aManhattan stationery store ignored the old Pat. He barked at her when she asked if he sold typewriter ribbons and when she genuinely misheard his question about what kind of typewriter she owned, he yelled out her mistake to humiliate her.
 To ensure she wasn't encountering people on off-days, Pat would return to the same store the next day as her young self, with shoulder length blond hair, young tanned skin and often the same cheap print dress as the Old Pat - not that anyone ever noticed. In the stationery shop the next day, the exchange followed the exact same format, right down to her making the same mistake. This time, however, it elicited laughter and a jovial response. The young Pat left distraught and dazed. Irascible behaviour became almost a Pavlovian response to her 'aged' appearance.
 Verbal abuse was upsetting, but she also had to watch out for people taking physical advantage. Being shortchanged and being physically out manoeuvred in a queue were commonplace. 'At the beginning, it was all I could do to stop myself from ripping off my wig and giving them as very unladylike piece of my mind,' she says. She didn't, of course. And as time wore on, she found herself becoming more and more submissive. 'I became so intimidated by the attitude of others, by the fact that they would be exasperated with me. I started to move aside to let people pass and began to say to myself, after all, old ladies have plenty of time, don't they?'
 Moore was to discover later that the elderly's submissive behaviour is a classic block to gerontologist's work: 'A lot of the researchers find the elderly have been lying to them. Telling them what they think they want to hear and not the truth. They don't want to be any trouble. They are frightened that if they tell the truth about what they have been eating and doing, they will be locked away.'
 But to ensure that her own ill-treatment was not just a bi-product of New York, Old Pat travelled to 116 American cities. She looked for differences in attitude between small and large towns, between different nationalities. She found none. The only small difference came with religion. 'I don't want to sound like Shirley Maclaine,' she says. 'And I don't care what religion a person is, but if he or she has some kind of faith in a being outside themselves, it makes them less narcissistic - more trusting.'
 During the experiment, she withdrew to a large extent from her contemporaries and family. As she empathised more and more with Old Pat she found new friends among the elderly. She 'came out' to a discreet circle of elderly women. They took her shopping, advised her on what situations to try out and what to avoid. As far as the disguise was concerned though, the clothes were the easy part.
 With the help of friend Barbara Kelly, a make up artist for NBC, accustomed to pre-ageing stars like Dustin Hoffman and Angela Lansbury - they built up a latex mask. It proved laborious to put on and take off. It involved chemicals such as ammonia which nightly made her skin itch and burn and within a short time gave her benign facial cysts - which still periodically have to be burnt off. But, with the help of a little powder, a custom made wig and glasses she could sit among her colleagues at Columbia University and not one of them discovered who she really was.
 To simulate as many of the sensory conditions of the ageing as possible was as important to her as the facial ageing. She put high density 'steelworkers' wax in her ears to impair her hearing and dabs of baby oil in her eyes to cloud her vision. For her body, she developed a wrap that stopped her standing upright and even gave her a slight dowager's hump: 'Just thinking about the weight of the wrap now gives me backache,' she says.
 Small splints of balsa wood placed at the back of each knee restricted her flexion and a tight tube of material around both thighs stopped her separating her legs too widely orwalking too fast. She taped her fingers to simulate arthritic hands and the gloves on top both concealed the tape and further ensured she could bend her fingers only with difficulty.
 The two features which risked giving her away were her voice and her bright white teeth. A paste of crayon and oil stained her teeth and an actor friend advised her that a paste of salt and water held at the back of the throat repeatedly for several minutes ensured a rasping voice for the next six hours.
 Despite the success of the disguise, Pat Moore continually felt guilty that she could change back to being Young Pat. 'I was always painfully aware the disguise was just a shell for me.' To her surprise, however, when she voiced this guilt to her elderly friends, they confirmed the feeling. They too felt they were in a shell - young minds trapped behind old faces.
 This discovery was a turning point for her. It confirmed her in the growing knowledge that the elderly weren't handicapped by their own physical disabilities so much as by the attitudes and psychological barriers set up by others: 'Part of the problem is our own fear of morality,' she says. 'We try to ignore or hide the evidence of our growing old.' A fear of ageing is even built into the English language. We ask, 'How old are you?' Whereas other languages ask, 'How many years?' or, 'What age?'
 The only way to overcome such fears is by restoring confidence that old age can mean independence, competence and pleasure. Pat Moore, with her training as a product designer, was ideally placed to make the everyday environment a better place for the elderly - and indeed for everyone. After giving up her disguise, she set up her own firm, Moore Associates, to design goods which would help the least able members of society - whether old or young or temporarily sick and disabled - and which would also have practical advantages for everyone.
 The products didn't have to be big and costly. One of her most successful designs was for a new soap powder box. In place of the impenetrable 'pierce and open' cardboard triangle of old, she designed a re-sealable plastic flap. Perfect sense - for everybody. Other projects include laser distance sensors to make car parking a simple aural or visual task, rather than a contortionist feat. And a pill box which automatically registers how many pills have been removed and when they were removed. This is the kind of device that women on the pill would find invaluable. In all, Pat Moore and her team have developed more than 100 products and plans are afoot for many more. 'We are currently working on a large transport system,' she says. But the details are under wraps until its launch next year.
 Advertisers must take the blame for a lot of the attitudinal problems in society, says Pat Moore. 'Advertising treats the young as the only consumers and it shows invariably that mythic creature the perfect user, when in reality we all go through periods of lessened ability - when we are young, or sick.' She will only be happy when advertising reflects the view that 'there are no elderly, only people older than ourselves and there are no disabled, only differently abled people'.
 One of her greatest successes is not in design at all, but in the mixing together of the elderly and pre-teen children in schools. 'It is really combining the child daycare centres with the senior citizens' centres. So instead of the old folks being wheeled out each day to the tune of, 'Okay gals, let's make another ashtray,' the pre-teens and the grandparents make things together.'
 This joint teaching experience should help long term attitudes to the elderly. Meeting a six-year-old boy on the beach who chatted to her as a friend and an equal is one of 'Old Pat's' fondest memories. The child responded to her naturally and without hesitation, because he didn't know any better.
 Pat Moore, Moore & Associates, 280 Chestnut Ridge Road, Montvale NJ07645 USA tel; 201 391 3110.

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The Guardian (London)

August 2, 1989

Greek killers get 500 years

BYLINE: By HELENA SMITH in Athens

LENGTH: 311 words

 
 THE end of Greece's most sensational murder trial this century saw Christos Papadopoulos, a former Socialist mayor, smile broadly yesterday when he was given eight death sentences and 150 years in prison for master-minding the killing of eight elderly people to inherit their wealth.
 The high court decision to sentence Papadopoulos and his 25 accomplices, dubbed the League of Murderers, to a total of 500 years in jail followed three months of court proceedings and broke all judicial records. 
 The public was kept spellbound throughout the trial by a series of chilling tales that depicted him and his league of lawyers, doctors and policemen winning the confidence of lonely, elderly people, forcing them to sign blank pieces of paper and killing them after they had forged their wills.
 They gained more than three billion drachmas (Pounds 11.5 million) over a seven year period.
 The gang was uncovered when the brother of one of its victims, the shipowner, Charalambos Typaldos, suspected the circumstances of his brother's death and employed a private detective to look into it.
 Two months later the private investigator traced Papadopoulos and other gang members to an isolated farm house whose elderly owners were about to be murdered.
 Of the group's eight victims only one, Efrosini Fragoulaki, was not killed by suffocation. Instead, the court heard how the leader of the gang bludgeoned the 67-year-old woman before burying her alive. Other victims included a blind lottery ticket seller and Papadopoulos's mother-in-law.
 In his defence last week, Papadopoulos, who was mayor of a working class Athens district from 1982 to 1984, denied the charges levelled at him, preferring to liken himself to a latter day Robin Hood who 'stole from the rich to give to the poor.'
 The death sentence was abolished in Greece in 1972.

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August 2, 1989

Guardian Tomorrows: When care takes over from career - The emotional trap of a growing number of unsung heroes

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE

LENGTH: 971 words

DATELINE: ROSALIND Walsh was once something in the City

 
 a senior secretary/PA earning good money and perks such as private health insurance and a 3 per cent mortgage scheme. Seven years ago, she quit to look after her mother.
 'The doctor said: 'You can take her home now'. No negotiation. No training. That was it. Just devastating.' 
 Rosalind is one of Britain's six million carers. Largely unsung and wholly unrewarded, they bear the principal burden of tending to the needs of the elderly and disabled. Community care may be in for a shake-up but life for these community carers is going to continue much as before.
 As Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, acknowledged in his policy statement last month: 'The great bulk of community care will continue to be provided by family, friends and neighbours .. I admire the dedicated and self-sacrificing way in which so many members of the public take on serious obligations to help care for elderly or disabled relatives and friends.'
 What the minister did not say, however, is that many more members of the public will find themselves taking on these serious obligations as the elderly population burgeons over the next few years. Many more Rosalind Walshes will be expected to give up their jobs to look after mother - and father. Today, the 2.3 million women over the age of 75 outnumber men of the same age by 2:1; in 40 years, official estimates suggest, there will be 2 million men over 75 and the equivalent ratio will have shrunk to 3:2.
 Employers, now belatedly fretting over demographic trends among school-leavers, have yet to wake up to the longer-term but potentially more serious implications of the ageing nation.
 The full impact of the falling number of young entrants to the labour force will be felt in the mid-1990s. From 1992 to 1994, the Department of Employment predicts, the male workforce will actually be cut as the number of men retiring exceeds the number leaving school and college. Thereafter, however, the problem will ease for 25 years or so as a reflection of the recovery of birth rates in the late 1970s.
 A cursory glance at DoE projections might suggest there is no cause for alarm: the population over 65 is put at 8.7 million today, 19.6 per cent of the total over 16, and is expected by 2000 to rise to less than 9 million, or 19.9 per cent. What this conceals is that the growth will be in the more elderly, aged over 75, who number 3.5 million now and are projected to be 4 million by 2000. During the same period, pensioners under 75 (including women aged 60-65) are expected to fall from 5.9 million to 5.5 million. Most significantly, the number of over-85s, the most frail and dependent, is anticipated to grow from 700,000 now to 1 million by 2000.
 Liz Bargh, head of the Industrial Society's Pepperell Unit, which campaigns for equal opportunities at work, says: 'In the mid-1990s, just at the lowest point in the number of people entering the labour market, the elderly population will be rising fairly rapidly and presenting a problem that very few of us are going to escape.'
 Rosalind Walsh is already caught. Her sisters and brothers were married, heavily mortgaged or living overseas when their mother became ill. Rosalind, single and then 31, felt she had no alternative but to move back to her mother's council house in Romford, Essex, to provide the necessary round-the-clock care.
 'I have had no support whatsoever, apart from my GP. I knew nothing about social security, having never been out of work, and had to work it all out for myself. The first four years were the worst.'
 As an unmarried daughter, Rosalind fits the popular image of the carer. The General Household Survey of carers, published last year, found that no fewer than 29 per cent of single women aged 45-64 were carers in 1985. So, too, were 24 per cent of married women in the same age bracket.
 Melanie Henwood, a policy analyst with the King's Fund research institute, says it is a cruel irony that women will increasingly be expected to become carers between the ages of 35 and 54 - when having raised children, if any, they might wish to resume a career.
 'With more women in the labour market with higher education and career experience, the willingness to throw it all away is going to diminish,' says Ms Henwood. And with a trend to smaller families and a divorce rate of one in three marriages, and rising, the career-care clash is going to become more acute.
 Liz Bargh thinks little will happen until employers stumble across the problem in the mid-1990s, just as they have recently stumbled across the vanishing school-leaver. For the time being, the focus will remain on child care policies to encourage young mothers back to the workforce to plug gaps.
 Put bluntly, caring for the elderly is not likely to win as much sympathy from employers as does having babies. It is not as attractive, can last for a very long time and has no off-the-shelf solutions like workplace creches.
 Jill Pitkeathley, director of the Carers' National Association, says the need is for a range of measures including special leave for carers, flexible hours to suit, support groups and, if approached sensitively, day centres for the elderly with hours to fit local employment patterns.
 'The most important thing is that somebody recognises how appallingly difficult it is to try to balance a job with caring for a sometimes very awkward elderly or disabled relative, and how appallingly difficult it is to get back into the workforce once you have taken time off for a period of care.'
 Rosalind Walsh, committed to caring indefinitely, meanwhile prays for a cash grant which would enable her to take on part-time professional help while she embarked upon a new career. 'If I had say Pounds 80 to Pounds 100 a week I could employ somebody to be me.'

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August 2, 1989

Guardian Tomorrows: The wanderings of Walter ..and a daughter's dilemma - The difficulties which can follow when the cash runs out and the elderly are forced to keep moving

BYLINE: By ANNE MCHARDY

LENGTH: 678 words

 
 WALTER was an ordinary, steady family man. He served in the trenches in the first world war, then spent 40 years working as an accountant with a firm in Leyland and bringing up his two children.
 Two years after he retired his wife died of a heart attack while they were visiting his daughter in Surrey. He had been born in the south of England and didn't fancy going back north alone. He found a small flat to be near his daughter and his two grandsons. 
 Nearly 20 years later, when he was becoming less able to look after himself, he moved into sheltered accommodation, still near his daughter. Her two sons, now grown up, were still at home, so he couldn't live with her; in any case the sheltered home allowed him to keep his independence.
 Six years later he had a slight stroke. He deteriorated to the point where he needed full-time nursing, and the sheltered accomodation couldn't cope. His daughter says that it just happened one step at a time. The staff and doctors at the sheltered accommodation said he needed more help than they could provide. His daughter and her husband were still not in a position to give him a home; neither was her brother, who was himself seriously ill.
 The people in charge knew of a 'nice little rest home'. It was Pounds 180 a week, but he had savings of less than Pounds 3,000, so the Department of Social Security would help. He duly moved and settled in happily.
 In the nursing home the nurses were kindness itself. They even found a way around the fact that he would light a cigarette and forget it. They would make time to sit him in their staff room to smoke.
 Eighteen months later the home, which had been run by an owner-matron, was taken over. For the first year all was well, but then the fees went up Pounds 4 a day, Pounds 28 a week. There were three rises in quick succession, and the DSS would not meet the increases. His daughter, whose husband had now retired, couldn't afford to meet it herself. She was put it touch with charities which were willing to help, but only up to a point. As each charity reached its limit she was passed on until she had five helping. The final rise was more than the charities were prepared to pay.
 Walter's savings had drained away, making up the weekly shortfall between the DSS money and the nursing home costs. His daughter and her husband in any case had moved from Surrey to West Sussex when they retired. They had been travelling to visit him. It seemed sensible to move him nearer to them. They found a home in West Sussex and put him on the waiting list. That was in September last year. In December a place became vacant and he moved. Seven weeks later he was dead.
 He was 92 and his health had been failing. The first home had not been equipped to deal with him once he became doubly incontinent and he could no longer communicate much.
 His daughter wonders if the move hastened his death. 'One of the last things he managed to say to me was that he was very happy in the new home, so he did seem to be aware of the change. But I do know, from talking to doctors and people who work with the elderly, that it is not advisable to move people,' she says.
 Four of the nurses from the home he had been forced to leave went to his funeral, and his daughter has nothing but praise for them. 'It was all friendly; the only problem was myself and the new owner, with me saying we could not afford to increase, and him saying he was very sorry, but there was nothing he could do.
 'I don't know whether the increase might not even have been because they knew he was getting worse and the owner wanted me to make the decision to move him. They didn't have the staff to provide the nursing he needed.'
 Walter's daughter can see the problem from both sides. She couldn't have coped with the 24-hour care her father needed and recognises that providing professional care must be expensive. She does, however, feel that there ought to be some proper scrutiny of nursing home accounts, to make sure that they are not making excess profits.

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The Guardian (London)

August 2, 1989

Guardian Tomorrows: At the end of the line - The elderly - Britain's burgeoning burden? / A look at the problems of caring for the old and the infirm

BYLINE: By JAY SIVELL

LENGTH: 1749 words

 
 'YOU CAN be born on the NHS in a hospital, live all your life in a council house and when you get a bit infirm they'll perhaps find some council Part III accommodation, the equivalent to a rest home. But when you've got beyond the facilities of the rest home you are out on your ear.'
 Mrs Barbara Batchelor manages a tiny Citizens Advice Bureau in Haselmere, Surrey, at the sharp end of the buck-passing between the overstretched social services and health authorities. Her staff of volunteers has had to become adept at finding benevolent funds.
 'There is no state provision. People at that stage of their life, suddenly more frail and vulnerable than they have ever been, are on their own, expected to cope and expected to go private,' she says. 
 It is estimated that nearly a quarter of those aged over 85 live in nursing homes or other care. Many need help washing, dressing, eating and going to the toilet. But care costs.
 State support for the chronically sick is at present about Pounds 190 a week, rising to Pounds 235 for terminal cases. Yet each patient costs a nursing home between Pounds 220 in the Midlands and North, and Pounds 280 in London, according to Peter Stanniland, of the management consultants Nursing and Care Associates, who surveyed the audited accounts of 120 homes around the UK.
 Staff wages make up to 75 per cent of the total - against about 10 per cent for food, heat and drugs - and proprietors' pay is not included.
 Mr Stanniland is a Conservative, chairman of the party's Axbridge branch in Somerset, but he is not pleased with the Government's response last month to recommendations by Sir Roy Griffiths that responsibility for the elderly be handed to local authorities. Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke's figures are 'up the pole', he says. 'They say they will maintain spending, but at current levels spending is approximately 25 per cent below actual cost.'
 Under the new system, to come into force in April 1991, local social services departments will assess people's needs and tailor care provision to them. Central funding, at present Pounds 1 billion a year, will go direct to the social services, but no rates have been specified.
 'It is shuffling the responsibility from Mr Clarke to the local authorities so that he can say 'Well, I gave them responsibility but they did not do the job'. The fact is, he is not planning to give them the money, either,' says Mr Stanniland.
 'It has got to the stage when the chronically sick need people to fight on their behalf.'
 The burden of paying for the very old is falling increasingly on the 'children', often themselves retired. 'We had one appeal from a woman whose elderly mother was in hospital after a fall,' says Mrs Batchelor. 'The daughter, who was a pensioner herself, was told the mother could not go back home and she would have to find a nursing home for her. So she did. And the sole help from the social services was: 'If you cannot finance it, take out a bank loan.'
 And what if one half of an elderly couple needs a nursing home? The other may still be living in the family home, with bills to pay there. Even including pension, the present state support can leave a shortfall of up to Pounds 100 a week.
 Already octogenarians are being shunted into cheaper rooms when the money runs out by families who can neither provide 24-hour care nor find the fees. The upheaval can be fatal.
 Even for pensioners with homes to sell the arithmetic is grim. 'You are talking about Pounds 15,000 a year going on fees. So how long does it take to run through even a Pounds 90,000 house? Five or six years? And the fees go up. Not many people have savings to cope with their old age at these figures,' says Mrs Batchelor.
 Charities are facing a flood of heartbreaking letters. 'I had one recently from an old gentleman of 80 whose wife was in a nursing home. He had a shortfall of about Pounds 90 a week to find. He had no idea where to turn and was trying to get himself a part-time job,' says Sheila Cooper of BEN, the Motor and Allied Trades Benevolent Fund. 'Obviously, we helped. But the trouble is that charities are being pushed to the wall; we are being squeezed dry.
 'The level of income support is totally inadequate and the Government must look again, because what will they do if the charities say we simply cannot pick up the bill any more? Where will they put the people we are currently supporting?'
 Charities are being hit twice; many have their own homes but are also paying the shortfall for increasing numbers of people in private care homes.
 Voluntary organisations, caring for some 50,000 people, 'teeter on the brink of financial collapse' because benefit levels do not cover costs, according to a survey by the National Council for Voluntary Organisations. It found some charities were facing shortfalls of more than Pounds 1 million and that two thirds of homes for the elderly could not cover their expenses from what residents were paying. Corners were being cut; homes were closing.
 The Registered Nursing Home Association agrees that bankruptcies are rising. 'There's an enormous changeover at the moment. We've noticed a lot of selling and buying. Bigger groups. Court Cavendish have just paid Pounds 30 million for half of Gables, of Ladbroke,' says RNHA chairwoman Tinia Galletly. 'Nobody's knocking the large groups, but that's not going to help the person on DSS support because they won't be taking that type of clientele.'
 The association claims private homes save the Government Pounds 2.9 billion a year, an eighth of the NHS budget, by keeping income-supported patients out of hospital beds. 'A bad winter could cause a crisis,' says Mrs Galletly.
 Private homes reckon to lose Pounds 50 a resident a week. Yet in Britain's three NHS nursing homes - which unlike private ones have no mortgages to pay off - Mrs Galletly reckons costs are over Pounds 260. 'Why should our patients cost less to care for than NHS ones?'
 She, too, spends a lot of time trying to find charities, but that is because families are not always supportive. 'Profit is not a dirty word. We are not the baddies. In fact I think we are the goodies because we are doing a service to the community which the health service for whatever reason isn't.
 'In Brighton alone we've got more beds than the hospital. The health service would collapse if we all said no.'
 More and more the welfare services themselves are appealing to the charities to help keep people in private homes. 'Most of our cases are referred by statutory authorities, including GPs, district nurses, hospital social workers and the social service,' says BEN's director, Geoffrey Atkinson. 'Once they are successful, they come back.'
 Charities are having to set limits, too: some restrict aid to Pounds 10 a week or will not assist anyone anyone under 90, and more and more are banding together to support each resident. Others do not contribute to the shortfall until capital is down to Pounds 1,000, 'leaving people enough to bury themselves,' says Ms Cooper.
 In the last three years the charities have had to set a table of 'fair' rates - up to 50 per cent higher than the Government's limits. And if private homes ask too much they refuse to pay, says Mr Atkinson.
 Britain has about 250,000 charities and benevolent funds, ranging from pawnbrokers to stockbrokers, and the figure is growing by 3,000 a year. BEN, one of the top 100, for which Mr Atkinson estimates one in ten of the population is eligible, has quadrupled over 11 years.
 'We are having to grow. Ten years ago this charity had a turnover of Pounds 600,000; last year it was Pounds 4.7 million. We have got to continue expanding and growing to meet what we foresee as an absolute boom in demand.'
 The charity movement has had to toughen up, he says. 'The wonderful, bumbling amateurism' has made way for more aggressive fund-raising and tighter management.
 Up to now a lot of charities have not had to build in profit margins nor allow for capital outlay, which meant many could keep within the Government's limits. Now they are having to build. 'Last year we broke even overall; the residential side was down Pounds 530,000, but because we are a very aggressive fund-raising organisation we managed to make up the shortfall. The figures for the first six months of this year are Pounds 320,000 - we are not likely even to break even this year. We are seriously worried.
 'The smaller private operator will find it increasingly difficult to fill his home up with people who can afford to pay the fees, not just when they go in but until they need to leave. So one would expect to see those disappearing.' What you've got, he says, is a 'truly Thatcherite marketplace situation', and smaller operators will close.
 In response to lobbying, Peter Lloyd, the then social security minister, told the Commons last week: 'The level of charges in the homes is a matter between the residents and the owners to agree, based on the services provided.'
 Ministers review income support, fees and costs each autumn. 'They consider they are at a realistic level,' said a spokeswoman for the Department of Social Security.
 Mr Stanniland disagrees. He does not believe the DSS listens to the voluntary groups and homeowners and he doubts extra money will be forthcoming when the Griffiths proposals become a White Paper in the autumn. It is time to shout, he says, for the ones who cannot shout for themselves.
 Mr Atkinson agrees: 'The Government can get away with under-catering for the old because we as a society do not like our old people. Some think-tank recently referred to them as spongers on the state. The people who battled their way through two wars for us and actually laid the foundations of our current economic success are now scroungers?'
 We operate, he says, a sort of apartheid system of care: income support for a disabled young person is Pounds 235 a week - Pounds 45 more than for an old one. 'You are establishing that there is a rate for providing nursing care, then saying we must give 30 per cent less care. Where do you make 30 per cent cuts? Food? Heat? Light? That if nothing else illustrates the attitude we as a society have.'
 'It is not just enough to lean on government,' says Mr Atkinson. 'A huge education job is needed on society as a whole. There are going to be a lot more old people, and we are going to be among them ..'

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August 3, 1989

Ice cream survey finds listeria peril

BYLINE: By JAMES ERLICHMAN, Consumer Affairs Correspondent

LENGTH: 274 words

 
 NEARLY half of the ice cream bought during a survey contained unacceptably high levels of bacteria, including listeria and other food poisoning organisms, the Consumers' Association said yesterday.
 Soft ice creams bought from vans showed most contamination, followed by scoop hard ice creams. 
 A total of 47 ice creams bought in London and Yorkshire were tested, of which 21 failed to meet acceptable hygiene standards, according to the survey results published today in Which?, the association's journal.
 Two contained listeria, the food poisoning organism which thrives in low temperatures and can be fatal, especially to babies and elderly people.
 One scoop sample contained listeria and E. coli, the bacterium associated with faecal contamination. All five samples of hard, wrapped ice cream passed the bacteria tests.
 None of the samples taken came from supermarkets.
 The Food Safety Advisory Centre, set up by the main retailers after the salmonella in eggs affair, said supermarket brands of ice cream had been found to be free of listeria.
 Blame was laid on poor handling by van operators and other outlets which failed to clean their machines daily, contaminated ice cream with hamburger and other meats, and failed to keep utensils clean.
 The infective dose of listeria is not yet known. Sixteen samples had bacteria counts exceeding 50,000 per gram, the limit commonly held to be unacceptable. Seven exceeded one million.
 'Large numbers of bacteria may not cause more than a stomach ache at most, but they are a sign that ice cream hasn't been handled carefully enough,' the association said.

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August 7, 1989

A Country Diary

BYLINE: By MARK COCKER

LENGTH: 360 words

 
 NORTH RONALDSAY: This four-mile-long island, the most northerly of the Orkney Archipelago, is a remote spot. It is as far from London as Marseilles, and feels as different to the English capital as the Cote d'Azure. Its community of about 90 crofters speaks a lyrical dialect, distinct even from that of the other islands. To hear a conversation between two elderly men is to listen to a different language. A person feeling low and listless, for example, is described as 'fleepsie'; the 
 English word 'mean' seems a lifeless thing when compared with the island equivalent - 'scrunty'. Running the 20 kilometres of its shoreline is a continuous wall that keeps at bay the island's unique breed of sheep. Related to the Soay sheep of St Kilda, these are curious, small, short-tailed creatures with disproportionately long spindly legs. Denied the island's relatively fertile interior, they live almost entirely on kelp seaweed, which results in a dark and highly-flavoured meat. Previously a major source of protein when the island's human population was five times what it is today, the 5,000-strong herd has become something of a problem, stretching the workforce to the limit in the next few weeks. For autumn is the time for punding, when the islanders attempt to herd, pen and shear their portion of the flock. At present, however, these attractive animals wander freely, following shoreline tracks that they may well have used for 5,000 years. It takes longer to identify the other factors that create the island's special atmosphere, since they consist of absences - absence of artificial noise, artificial light, and, even way after the solstice, an absence of true darkness. This Celtic magic, unfortunately, is not enough to prevent a slow ebbing away of the human population. Nor does it disguise a looming ecological crisis, as an excess of fishing vessels literally hoovers up from the surrounding sea its populations of sand eels for fishmeal. Unless the trend is reversed, these measures, by removing the basis of this marine ecosystem, could bring about a catastrophic decline in the seabird populations of the Scottish isles.

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August 8, 1989

Futures (Daedalus): When it's sauce for the gander

BYLINE: By DAVID JONES

LENGTH: 523 words

 
 THE relationship between the sexes is very asymmetric. A woman can accept a lover with relatively little instinctive fervour - a fact long exploited by the oldest profession. A man, however, needs to demonstrate unequivocal biological interest. Often this is lacking; hence the centuries-old search for a true aphrodisiac. Hence also the male obsession with achievement in such damaging activities as war, technology, and politics, which (at least according to some psychologists) all ultimately derive from erection anxiety. Now Daedalus has the answer. 
 He recalls the intriguing fact that the basic mechanism of male sexual excitement is relaxation. The muscles around the local arteries must relax to let the blood in and erect the penis. Nerve poisons which relax such muscles can cause erection, as well as other more unpleasant symptoms.
 Now recently a well-known nerve poison, botulinum toxin, has been used to suppress muscle spasms. This deadly bacterial toxin can occur in undercooked meat; it featured in a recent food-poisoning scare.
 It paralyses its victims by preventing their muscles responding to their nerves. But injected in an extremely small dose, it merely weakens the muscle's response to nervous stimuli. In the muscles of the face, for example, it can abolish distressing tics and spasms without preventing normal voluntary smiling. It degrades extremely slowly: a single injection can work for as long as four months.
 So Daedalus is seeking volunteers for a study of botulinum toxin as a local aphrodisiac. A carefully measured locally injected dose should subtly weaken the contractile power of the penile arteries. For four months afterwards, erection should be much easier to achieve and maintained, perhaps almost automatic; and the treatment can easily be repeated.
 Elderly gentlemen facing the decline of their virility, unhappy husbands fighting to maintain troubled marriages, Casanovas unnerved by scornful feminists, all would welcome this novel biochemical assistance. A great blow would be struck for sexual equality: for neither party to a liaison would now need to have much real interest. And a novel and appealing cure would possibly open up for warmongers, technomaniacs, and politicians.
 But Daedalus goes further. Botulinum inhibits the nerves and paralyses the muscles; but other toxins, like dendrotoxin snake venom, work the other way. They switch the nerves permanently on and drive the muscles into steady contraction. So an injected 'anti-aphrodisiac' should also be possible. Based on dendrotoxin, it will reinforce the contraction of the penile arteries and abolish erection for months at a time.
 Unlike the current drastically feminising hormone treatments, this neat local sex inhibitor will be perfectly controllable, reversible, and without psychological side effects.
 Eager customers for the new treatment will include monks seeking to defeat temptation, sexual offenders anxious to curb their criminal tendencies, and persons wishing to demonstrate their long-term purity - such as candidates for high political office in Japan and the US.

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August 9, 1989

Arts: Canvases after Camden - A show which follows an artists' long and fruitful journey from his painterly roots in north London

BYLINE: By TIM HILTON

LENGTH: 1213 words

 
 IN A conversation with Freddie Gore one might discuss theology, the early history of lawn tennis, his Hell's Angels acquaintances ('rather an elderly chapter'), Soho past and present, art world politics and the correct dating of Florentine altar pieces. He is the most surprising of Royal academicians, though one of the oldest of their number.
 An authoritative manner mixes with relish for the unusual. Patrician by nature, Frederick Gore RA occasionally looks like a statue of himself, chiselled by some third century Roman sculptor. The next second there's a chuckle, and the face changes: the senator suddenly becomes a clever, disobedient youth.
 He is the son of the painter Spencer Gore, the central figure of the Camden Town group. A great-uncle was Charles Gore, successively Bishop of Worcester, Birmingham and Oxford, the editor of that famous 1889 collection of essays in liberal theology, Lux Mundi. 
 So when Freddie Gore writes to the Times in defence of the Bishop of Durham, Mrs Thatcher should know that he invokes a significant Anglican tradition. His attitudes to painting are similarly deep-rooted. To this day, Gore the younger talks of Sickert, Gilman, Ginner, Bevan - even of Whistler and Degas - as his immediate forebears.
 Gore is sometimes called the last of the Camden Town painters. It's an inaccurate description, as his large exhibition at the Royal Acadamy now shows. There are of course points in common. Gore shares their love of French art of the last decades of the nineteenth century. His palette - at first sight - seems to be heightened in a Camden Town manner.
 He believes that painting begins with observation, and preliminary drawings from the motif often help his decisions on canvas. He has a penchant for theatical subjects, and paintings like the 1942 Snow in Charlotte Street are obviously within the Camden Town catchment area.
 This is binding inheritance, however. Gore has a lot of background but still seems to be a child of the Sixties. In ways that are hard to define, his paintings seem to belong to a quite recent avant-garde. When he talks of Picasso, 'that dreadful fellow who has ruined all our lives!' he sounds like a buffer, one of the very old men of Burlington House. In the next breath, though, he praises Jackson Pollock, who 'liberated me from concern with what kind of painting I did.'
 When was this liberation? Probably at the end of the Fifties, when Pollock's painting astounded progressive British artists. No point in trying to find the exact moment in Gore's life, for the Royal Academy show, though it has pictures old and new, has not been devised as a retrospective. Instead, we find an exhibition that emphasises a personality. This is Gore's own celebration; and a show that tiptoes through influences and periods is not his idea of a party.
 Freddie's knowledge of parties came after he had left Lancing (head boy, of course) and was reading Greats at Oxford. There was a lady friend at the Clarendon Hotel. More decisively, Oxford offered the Ruskin School of Drawing, conducted in those days by Albert Rutherston, Spencer Gore's best friend.
 Gore the younger skipped lectures to draw at the Ruskin every morning: lunch times were spent drinking sherry with the avuncular Albert.
 Oxford and Freddie had soon had enough of each other. The Slade took him, and in this way he became a professional artist. Gore is of the generation whose painters had their first exhibitions just before the war and who had to start over again in the late Forties.
 He had some ambitions to become a mural painter, as the two panels, Silenus and Peasant Dance show. They are derivative in a way that is not really Gore-like. It does not suit him to be acquiescent to a respected model. He likes to force a painting to work because he himself is painting it.
 Hence the untraditional waywardness of quite a number - if not the majority - of the paintings now in the Royal Academy (and hence, perhaps, the reason why his paintings don't much enter public collections: you'll look in vain for a Gore the Younger in the Tate.) And here is the importance of the easel to Gore. Paint with a mural scope at the back of your mind and you'll end up with public balance. Even Pollock found this. Working at the easel, though, it's possible to push at corners and passages until they are yours, not the public's.
 Gore, an open-air painter of Greek and Provencal landscapes, thinks that artists should be strong and fit. Recollections of athleticism are entirely Corinthian. Freddie talks a lot about the county coaches, the half-mile and the public school championships at the old Stamford Bridge track.
 Limber strength in a painter, I gathered, has two main purposes. It helps him to dance all night, but also enables the artist to take easel, canvases and paint box to distant and hot places.
 Gore takes all this equipment, by bus or bicycle, to some remote spot. Then he humps it all through the country until he finds a site for his picture. He likes to paint landscapes in places where he feels that danger lurks. The emotional charge of a wall of a dozen Greek paintings is very odd, anyway, unlike any other British landscape I can think of.
 The tension must have been established by Gore's experiences in Crete in the latter stages of the war. There is a related edginess in the roomful of Provencal scenes, mostly from the Eighties, that hold this queer and emotional show together.
 Strangely, perhaps, Gore's love of Russian dancing finds no place in his work, though there are many paintings of his family, home surroundings and other interests. Russian dancing is a passion, and maybe it cannot be represented in paint without loss of passion.
 Everyone gasps when they first see Freddie in Cossak costume, leaping to enormous heights, swirling, cymballing and thudding - but landing on the stage as though it were a trampoline, then soaring off to lead his Balalaika Dance Group through ever more complex and strenuous routines.
 How does he manage it, in his seventies? Practice. And how does it fit in with the scholarly Academician, whose book on the National Gallery's della Francesca Baptism includes such sentences as 'Of great interest to all the Neoplatonists of Piero's day and to many good churchmen before them, who had approved it, was the Doctrine of the Pagan Vestiges of the Trinity ..'
 Well, why not be interested in dancing as well as in the fathers of the church? And interested in Norman Wisdom and Ian Dury for that matter, the subjects of two energetic paintings. Both music-hall types, one notes, so perhaps the pictures can be regarded as part of the Camden Town tradition.
 Fifteen pictures, on the whole the largest ones in the show, are of street scenes in New York. These are all recent: Gore had not been to America before 1980. You can't easily set up an easel in Manhattan's streets, or not the ones where the action is, so Gore has based most of these pictures on photographs.
 The resulting pictures have an air of experiment but at the same time are quite uninhibited. Only Gore could have painted them, but nobody could have anticipated that this is what he would paint next.
 Royal Academy, until 10 September.

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August 9, 1989

Commentary: Down and out in Brussels and London

BYLINE: By JOHN PALMER

LENGTH: 1235 words

 
 IF THE Government really wants to de-rail the 'European social dimension' bandwagon, it may have to restrict access to continental holidays. There can be little doubt that the increasing familiarity with everyday living in most of our European Community neighbours, made possible by modern tourism, is seditiously eroding traditional British views of comparative standards of living.
 The Government may suggest that the quality of public services is frequently higher in the United Kingdom than elsewhere in the Community, but the facts - or rather popular perception of the facts - suggests otherwise. A number of admittedly chance conversations with holiday makers in several European countries in recent weeks confirms an impression of growing discontent with conditions at home. 
 It is also increasingly common to meet tourists returning from Britain genuinely shocked at how run-down some of our public services have become. British friends holidaying in Italy, for example, have been embarrassed by tales of dirty and unswept streets in Wimbledon during the tennis fortnight.
 The French and Spanish, often at the receiving end of unfavourable comment 40 years ago for the unsavoury state of some of their public toilets, confess surprise at the appalling standards of comparable facilities in British high streets, trains and public houses. A well-nigh universal complaint heard from European visitors to London and other British cities is the quality of rail and bus services by comparison with other European centres.
 British holiday makers frequently have the opportunity to compare medical and hospital services. Although simple comparisons are misleading, even modestly sized Belgian, Dutch, French, West German and, increasingly, Italian hospitals appear better equipped and more generously staffed than at home.
 Hearsay evidence from the growing army of British workers who come to the Continent is equally unflattering about British schools.
 Senior citizens are also more aware of how better off their contemporaries are in some EC countries. The fact that the Dutch provide free annual holidays for their pensioners and even economically poor Ireland finds it possible to give free radio and TV licences to their elderly folk has not gone unnoticed.
 It would be ridiculous to suggest that all comparisons with the rest of the European Community cast Britain into a bad light. Conditions in Greece and Portugal are clearly inferior by almost any yardstick and for all the striking advances made by Italy and Spain in recent years there are social groups who live in worse conditions than the most disadvantaged in Britain.
 That said, the increasingly common experience of more and more British people is that British standards are close to, if not in all instances at the bottom of, the comparative league table. It is this which gives the whole issue of a 'social Europe' such political resonance.
 If it was just a question of some interfering or power-hungry 'Socialist' Eurocrats in Brussels agitating for higher common social standards in the Community, Mrs Thatcher could rest easy. But too many British voters have seen too much for themselves to buy that simplistic message any longer. They may not like the Brussels Euro-machine, nor feel much sympathy for evangelical Europeanisers, but they are aware of the extent to which Britain is becoming a kind of third world enclave in Western Europe.
 Ironically this awareness is almost certainly most firmly rooted among the better travelled middle class who either holiday or live in Europe. But the growing numbers of skilled and semi-skilled craftsmen and women who now work, particularly in Holland and West Germany, are also able to bring wider horizons and different expectations to the European political debate All in all this must be counted as good news from the Labour Party's managers who have abandoned traditional anti-Common Marketry for an increasingly enthusiastic but ill-defined enthusiasm for the European dimension. Labour's campaign for a full-blooded European social dimension - and not merely the Commission's very milk and water promise to raise minimum standards for health, safety and other rights - is likely to cut increasingly with the electoral grain in the next few years.
 But Labour's leaders show not the remotest indication of understanding where this logic must take them. During his visit to the European Parliament in Strasbourg last month, Mr Kinnock made great play of Labour's support for a far bigger European Community commitment to tackling economic and social inequality, and he rightly identified the lack of such a commitment as a long-term threat to the viability of the 1992 single European market.
 Labour front-benchers have also stressed the need for a massively greater European budget to make possible large-scale economic transfers from the richer to the poorer regions of the Community if moves to European economic and monetary union are to have the remotest prospect of success. The more the Labour Party edges towards support for full British membership of the European Monetary System, the more urgent will become the need for common fiscal, expenditure and social policies in the EC.
 But it is precisely at this point that the logic of the Labour front bench begins to give way. For at the same time as they are urging higher common economic and social standards - and berating Britain's ever more obvious backwardness - they are attempting to preserve as much as possible of the traditional sovereignty of the British state.
 The two objectives are in hopeless contradiction. Mrs Thatcher's vision of a purely free market Europe is consistent with a minimalist European Community in which the national state enjoys an unchanged political prerogative. Labour's vision of a social and economically more interventionist Europe demands a radically new political settlement. This requires the UK nation state to cede power over both policy and spending both upwards to the European institutions and downwards to the regions.
 There is more than enough in all of this to occupy a goodly proportion of the Labour Party conference in six weeks' time. Indeed this is why Mr Ken Coates - one of the new intake of leftist pro-Europeans who won seats in the June elections - has tried to persuade Walworth Road to devote a whole day to the subject in Brighton.
 He is unlikely to succeed. Perhaps the Labour leaders fear that the European debate could move the party further and faster in the new direction than they want. They may also be worried that the European debate could provide a backdoor for the Left to reopen a number of controversial questions such as nuclear weapons, industrial democracy, public ownership, trans-national economic planning and a post-Cold War strategy of non-alignment between East and West which they want kept off the agenda.
 Whatever the reason, the practical conclusions being drawn from Labour's European re-think open up precious little space between Mr Kinnock and Mrs Thatcher. This is territory which in the past might have been exploited by the centre parties. Today it must look inviting to the Greens, who cannot fail to see that their European co-thinkers have enjoyed their great success when they challenged the drift to the concensus centre by the continental social democratic parties.

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August 10, 1989

Old to dominate health future

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 339 words

 
 THE growing number of people over 65 may account for as much as 58 per cent of UK expenditure on health care by 2015, according to estimates by the Geneva-based International Labour Organisation.
 At present, the ILO calculates, the 65-plus age group is responsible for a little over 41 per cent of UK health spending. The projected increase reflects both the rising number of elderly people and the belief that they take a greater share of any rise in total expenditure. 
 The figures, just published in a Europe-wide ILO survey of population trends, show why the Government is anxious to exert more control over health spending through the health service reforms and the Griffiths community care shake-up.
 However, the survey suggests that the UK will by no means feel the worst effects of the ageing European population. While the number of people over 80 is projected to rise by 479,000 or 28 per cent in the UK between 1985 and 2025, this increase is, after France, proportionally the second lowest of any of the 12 European Community states.
 The 80-plus population of Portugal is projected to rise by 115 per cent and of Spain by 104 per cent, while Italy is expected to have to deal with an extra 967,000 in the age group and West Germany 904,000.
 The ILO says that the UK will be able to cushion the economic effect of the ageing population by continuing to cut unemployment. If the dole queues remained as long as they were in 1985 (13.1 per cent), the ratio of people over 60 to those aged 20-59 would increase 23.2 per cent by 2025. If unemployment was eradicated, this dependency ratio would actually fall by 16.7 per cent.
 Research in France showed that, between 1970 and 1980, the elderly took a sharply rising share of expenditure. On this basis, the ILO projects a rise to a 58 per cent share in the UK by 2015, matching the European average.
 From Pyramid to Pillar - Population Change and Social Security in Europe; ILO, Vincent House, Vincent Square, London SW1P 2NB; Pounds 12.10

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August 14, 1989

Leading Article: Septuagenarian dog in the laager

LENGTH: 606 words

 
 UNCERTAINTY about the immediate prospects of three septuagenarians overshadows South Africa as it approaches another important political watershed. Nelson Mandela, 71, is still a prisoner but may be freed before Christmas. By then his release may well have lost the epoch-making significance hitherto routinely ascribed to it. Oliver Tambo, also 71, his friend and fellow-leader of the African National Congress, is in a British hospital after a stroke. This could portend a change of direction by the ANC, which seems to have shelved its armed struggle and to have lost its way over future strategy. P. W. Botha, 73, has recovered from his own stroke in January sufficiently to reassert his crumbling presidential authority in a manner calculated to cause maximum embarrassment to his ruling National Party. Mr Botha's farcical intervention in the plans of his would-be heir might just be the last straw for the NP, struggling to hang on to power after 41 years. Mr F. W. de Klerk, his personal prestige enhanced by a high-profile visit to Mrs Thatcher, was all set to collect another important certificate of respectability in the form of a meeting with President Kenneth Kaunda of Zambia. This encounter, it was confidently announced in Pretoria, had the blessing of President Botha. The value of anything blessed by Mr Botha is a moot point, but does not arise on this occasion because he vehemently asserted that he was totally opposed to the assignation. Mr de Klerk promptly hijacked the cabinet by inviting it to his home and persuading it to join him in a united confrontation with the skulking ogre today, like the one which demanded Mr Botha's retirement and anointed Mr de Klerk. It was a smart piece of damage-limitation, but it may still not be enough.
 Mr Botha is supposed to retire, if not gracefully at least finally, after the parliamentary election on September 6, to which the black majority has not been invited. Quite a lot was done inside and outside South Africa to give Mr de Klerk a fair wind for a smooth takeover and an immediate return to 'reform' as once reluctantly espoused and happily ditched by Mr Botha. The assumption on which all this preparation has been based is that the NP will win the white poll against the double challenge from the left and, more threateningly, from the ultra-right which has clearly bounced back from a lull. It is just possible that even the decades of gerrymandering since 1948 may not now guarantee the NP the absolute majority in the white chamber upon which everything, from electing the president to white domination, directly depends under a blatantly manipulative constitution. If there is such an upset the blame will belong to Mr Botha, who has done more than anyone in his 11 years as leader to diminish the party with which he has been associated for half a century.
 Mr Botha still has all the trappings of an office with truly formidable powers which have proved themselves, in the hands of an incumbent without imagination, incapable of stabilising South Africa. He clearly wishes to go on exercising them to the bitter end. Unfortunately his party managers have given him enough time to extract maximum mileage from his chosen new role of dog in the laager. It is a singularly bitter irony that at this delicate moment in South African affairs the ANC should also be in thrall to a gerontocracy of its own. There is a tremendous moral victory waiting to be won by the side which is the first to emerge from self-inflicted paralysis in a fit state to take the initiative. Those who prefer to bet on calculated risks should bide their time.

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August 15, 1989

Diary

BYLINE: By ANDREW MONCUR

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 WELL, buffing up the public image of Westminster City Council (prop. Lady Porter) is a demanding task. I mean, just think of having to explain in bright tones the sale of those cemeteries for 15p. They're now appointing a new head of public relations and publicity - the seventh, I would guess, since Shirley P took office in 1983. This time round the city is having to pay a 'recruitment and retention bonus' of Pounds 3,500 to gain a PR person used to explaining away entire government policies. Liz Drummond, who takes over the Westminster job in early October, is a former chief information officer at the Department of Education. She has been head-hunted from the Institute of Chartered Accountants, where her salary, all in, was Pounds 36,000 plus private medical cover. Even taking into account the car that goes with the job, Westminster's pay package amounted to a trifling Pounds 33,174. Hence the thumping bonus. A leading PR executive, Philip Cream, comments: 'Personally, old boy, I sometimes confuse my salary and my fax number. That's off the record, of course.' 
 A TINY hint that the government, in line with its general approach to health, is about to lay hold of some decent old bodies and give them a thorough shaking. Specifically, those responsible for nurse and midwife training. It comes in the form of a news release rushed out by Michael Forsyth, Health Minister at the Scottish Office. Odd. National changes being announced from Edinburgh? Whoops. A touch over-eager, he's jumped the gun by a week.
 THANK you, Toby Jessel, for the good news about the poll tax, delivered in a really positive, upbeat way to a 74-year-old retired baker and his wife. The Twickenham Tory MP's advice to the elderly worried about the extra expense, seems to amount to this: you can always save money by dropping dead. Witness the letter he has sent to Edward and Pat Quirk, quoted in the Richmond and Twickenham Times. The couple had pointed out that their poll tax bill will exceed their present rates by Pounds 200. Mr Jessel's reply: some households with two adults may pay more. 'However, there is one delicate point that I cannot avoid mentioning. As, alas, we all have to die some time, then when one partner goes only one community charge will be paid instead of two.' Helpful, eh?
 MEANWHILE, the London borough of Barnet has had to pay Pounds 2,000-odd and frame an apology to Jeffrey Archer, the great story-teller, in order to avoid a legal action. This little local difficulty arose from an item on the agenda which - to general surprise - came up for debate at the council meeting at the end of last month. Mrs Kitty Lyons, a Labour member, had put down a motion which was expected to languish in those parts of the agenda councillors do not normally reach. This sought to condemn a local school for inviting Mr Archer to do the honours on its prize-day; made not-so-fragrant references to events in his career; and instructed schools not to use this sort of 'specimen' for the purpose again. The Tory leader, Leslie Pym, then asked for the order of business to be changed to bring the item up for debate. 'I had hoped that the Labour councillor would say she wished to withdraw it,' he explained yesterday. She didn't. Enter m'learned friends. Barnet has now agreed to pay Mr Archer's legal fees and to review its standing orders, touching on motions whose wording could be legally contested.
 TIME for a dip into the Margaret Thatcher World History Book, compiled by diary readers. 'Slave trade: an excellent example of private enterprise training the workers without jobs for the jobs without workers' (Harpreet Kohli); 'Boston Tea Party: frustrated at their chronic inability to make a decent cup of tea, crazed colonists threw chests of the stuff into Boston harbour' (Tim McCullen); 'Land Enclosure Acts: the first signs of a Green policy' (Ted Sheppard).
 THIS is far-fetched enough to shape up as an opera. A Japanese party visits Glyndebourne and, by all accounts, leaves picnic beside lake. Unfortunately, it contains raw fish. They return to find it surrounded by ducks. In a fit of passion, one of them (tenor, probably) hurls defiled plastic bag over ha-ha and into fields. Next thing you know there's a cow blundering about with bag over head (contralto). Gardener (bass) flies to rescue. Exit cow, chorus of ducks, Japanese, etc.

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August 15, 1989

UK News in Brief: Chase crash

LENGTH: 35 words

 
 Three elderly women suffered bruising and shock when their car overturned in Streatham, south-west London, after colliding with a stolen car being chased by police. Two youths aged 16 were arrested.

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August 21, 1989

Agenda: The death of patience / A day in the life of an ambulanceman

BYLINE: By JON HONEYSETT

LENGTH: 1838 words

 
 Saturday, May 27, was just an average day in ambulanceman Jon Honeysett's life - a serious road accident, a woman dying of cancer, routine domestic violence and the frustrations of dealing with the NHS. He logs his shift and argues that the galling lack of breaks reflects a deeper breakdown in the service
 I CLOCK ON with my colleague, a 52-year-old ambulancewoman, at 15.00 to start an eight-hour shift. At 15.15, Control send us to admit a man to hospital with a bleed from his urinary tract. In bright sunlight, we pull up outside a neat bungalow, then make our way in through the already open front door. Inside, the man is visible, still seated on the toilet, with a catheter from his penis to a plastic bag, strapped to his left thigh, full of blood. The quickest of appraisals and the same procedure used a thousand times before - the reassurance, the portable lifting chair, blanket and incontinence pad, a deft movement lifting him on to the chair and within one minute he is sitting up comfortably on the ambulance stretcher, with his grateful wife as escort. 
 Conversation is a form of therapy: he tells me he had been captured at Calais in 1940, as von Rundstedt's panzers swept around the British Expeditionary Force, and had spent the second world war in a POW camp in Silesia, before being liberated by 'Red Army women on horseback, toting sub-machine guns'. The nine miles to hospital are reeled off as quickly as the heavy traffic will allow. At 15.55 we admit him to his ward bed - no luxury of porters to take the patient from us - and are 'green', the code for being ready for further duties. Control had an inter-hospital transfer ready for us.
 This particular hospital has a maternity unit 200 yards away, but because of some blunder in the planning department there is no tunnel or walkway connecting the two buildings, so all 'sitting-case' and stretcher patients travelling between them are dependent on ambulance transport. At 16.05, we lift the pregnant women into our ambulance, escorted by a nurse who is irritated by the delay over such a ludicrously short distance. Regulations forbid her to push the patient in a wheelchair from point A to point B, even though it would take only three minutes.
 After wheeling the women up to her ward, we are 'green' at 16.15. Control promptly orders us to a large geriatric hospital more than eight miles to the east of the city to admit an elderly woman suffering from a bowel obstruction and dehydration.
 At 16.35 we enter the old building and lift the elderly woman on to the American-designed FW stretcher. We are away within a few minutes. No talking therapy here - just a vacant stare from the patient. At the main hospital we wheel her up to the ward and hand her over to the waiting nurses.
 Green again at 17.05 and Control asks us to return to base. We are pleased: we appreciate meals at reasonable times and can now look forward to tea at 18.00. Our hopes are quickly dashed, however, because just a mile short of base, Control are back on the radio. A multi-vehicle pile-up on one of the main roads from London to the West Country has meant ambulance units from stations north of us being moved up for cover and we are ordered to attend a traffic accident 999 call outside our normal operating area.
 Switching on our blue lights, headlights and siren, we drive across the periphery of the city and travel out along narrow country lanes to reach the scene of the accident at 17.35, 15 minutes after we were alerted. A policeman and three passers-by are clustered around two people lying by the roadside. An upturned motor-cycle lies just beyond them. The patients are a man and his 12-year-old son, knocked from their machine by a car. The young lad has a nasty gash on his lower right leg and his father has a shoulder injury.
 NORMALLY, such an incident would warrant two ambulances, since both patients require stretchers, but we know it is pointless requesting back-up - there is none. Making up the 'sitting-side' stretcher, we gently lift both father and son aboard and set off for the nearest casualty hospital, in the centre of the county, having first found out the extent of their injuries and dressed the injured limbs.
 We arrive at 18.00 and the casualty unit doors swing open. Again there are no porters to assist us. The staff nurse is busy preparing for the first of the casualties from the major accident Control had mentioned earlier and there is momentary confusion as she mistakes us for a crew dealing with that incident. Seconds later, with a police motorcycle as escort, the expected ambulance pulls in, but not before our two patients have been unloaded, wheeled in and transferred to the hospital stretchers.
 It is now 18.20, more than five hours since we last ate or drank anything, and the hospital canteen is closed. Carrying food on ambulances is forbidden because of hygiene reasons and so we were pleased to be told to return to base by Control.
 When we arrive at our station, 29 miles away from the emergency call, our F-registered, three-litre Ford ambulance needs refuelling. The fuel gauge is never allowed to drop below half, and 56 miles have been covered since 15.15, when it was three-quarters full.
 At 19.00, we finally sit down to eat: the tea has been poured and little more than a sandwich eaten when the red phone blares out a 999 call from a woman whose arm has been badly cut in an argument with her boyfriend.
 The milk of human kindness is apt to turn sour at times such as now, especially with this type of call. The woman is a slovenly, overweight, 18-year-old, living in a five-storey block of council flats, where the surrounds and stairwell are encrusted in filth, litter and graffiti. The woman's arm has been lacerated deeply; it appears that she deliberately pushed it through a broken window to 'spite' a leering 'drongoid' specimen of a boyfriend seen hanging about on the concrete landing outside.
 We dress the injury, walk her down to the ambulance (leaving an unattended ambulance in urban areas risks theft and damage from the usual groups of youths who congregate, sometimes jeering, at any incident) and by 19.40 the woman has been booked into the crowded casualty unit.
 WITH NO break in sight, control send us out into the country, 10 miles away, to a bungalow where a cancer sufferer who was visiting a friend had collapsed earlier in the afternoon. Her condition is so advanced that the care sister covering her case requires us to take her back to her flat in the city. We eventually find the address and, with difficulty, carry the heavy patient up the narrow path on our portable chair and into the ambulance. I administer oxygen to assist the woman's breathing rate and we drive off with her into the twilight. At 20.55, we find the suburban flat, lift her up the steep flight of stairs and put her into bed. She is still virtually unconscious, but her relatives are waiting for the GP to arrange admission to a nearby hospice.
 With control's permission we return through the suburbs to the station, arriving at 21.10. Surely now we would have our break. When the red phone blares out again, we do not even grimace - there is no clause in our contract of employment which specifies a half-hour meal break within the eight-hour shift, nor do civil servants in the Department of Health seem concerned that few ambulance personnel live to retire at 65 in normal health. The patients we convey are too ill (and often too inarticulate) to complain to the Secretary of State for Health on our behalf; the district health authorities are composed of people who have no working experience of ambulance duties; and because of the undemocratic structure of the NHS, there are few ways in which questions of staff shortages, stress and violence we encounter can be constructively discussed.
 Our 999 call is to yet another elderly woman, who has collapsed. We ensure she is made comfortable and telephone the patient's own GP. He arrives quickly and by 22.25 we have transporated the woman 11 miles from her home to the main hospital, wheeled her up to the ward and placed her on the ward's own stretcher. The GP had phoned ahead to arrange this, in order to bypass the tedious routine of admission via casualty.
 We arrive back at our station at 22.45, by now very tired. At 22.53, with only seven minutes of our shift left, we have to respond, automaton-like, to yet another 999 call. A member of the public has reported 'someone lying in the gutter' in a suburb some three miles west of us. Wheeling out of the station, we 'timecheck' five minutes later; and discover that the someone has crawled up the drive of his house and into a conservatory at the rear. Using our powerful torch we see an elderly man inside locking the door to prevent our entry. He is wearing only a shirt and underpants, from which hang a mixture of diarrhoea and blood. We radio Control to advise the police to effect an entry.
 Ten minutes later, the police arrive and manage to get the old man to open the front door. The sergeant and constable quickly move in and persuade him to accept hospital treatment. Just afterwards, our night crew arrive and put him in their ambulance. Control 'stand us down' and we arrive back at base at 23.45.
 I clean up, drive home and crawl into bed at half past midnight. Due on duty next morning for the 07.00 to 15.00 shift, I had telephoned Control to say I would not be starting that shift until 08.00 - we are entitled to a clear eight hours between turns of duty. The first hour of that next morning's duty will be 'single-manned' unless one of the night crew can be persuaded to continue from 07.00 to 08.00.
 Am I being mean-spirited and callous, or am I burnt out? People reading this would probably say all three, but unless they have working knowledge of the ambulance service they cannot understand why staff are so dispirited. The service is very small: only 19,000 staff in the UK, compared with 39,000 in fire brigades and 110,000 in police forces. My gross pay, after 15 years' service, is Pounds 10,093 per annum, with no perks. A fireman with similar experience would receive more than Pounds 12,000 a year, a policeman more than Pounds 15,000 per year plus housing allowance, free prescription charges and free public transport passes.
 I cannot retire until I am 65 (if I live that long), nor is there the funding to take me off accident and emergency duties and put me on to less arduous day shifts without a massive loss of pay (Pounds 50 per week). Indeed, these day duties are increasingly being handed over to private companies who employ staff with no medical knowledge, unproven driving skills and, above all, no sense of community responsibility. Remember these facts when you next have to wait for an ambulance.
 Jon Honeysett is an ambulanceman at the Hightown Station in Southampton. He is 47, has worked for the ambulance service for 15 years and is a NUPE shop steward.

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The Guardian (London)

August 23, 1989

Health: Driven crazy - What the future may hold for non-car users - Britain's dying breed

BYLINE: By ADRIAN DAVIS

LENGTH: 609 words

 
 TRAVEL by car is less safe per mile travelled than all forms of public transport - boats, planes, trains and buses. Yet we are becom- ing increasingly reliant on the car.
 Mobility is becoming so important and cars pose such a threat to other, more vulnerable road users, particularly elderly and young pedestrians and cyclists, that many people who might prefer to walk or pedal have succumbed to driving. The Department of Transport claims that more and more elderly people, women and ethnic minorities are joining the motorists' ranks. 
 Over the next 35 years, according to the Department, traffic levels may increase by as much as two and a half times present levels. Growth on such a scale will almost inevitably result in more deaths and injuries and the further intimidation of non-motorised travellers. But instead of seeing road safety as a public health problem, the Department of Health seems to be leaving accident prevention to the Department of Transport, which is currently consulting on proposals to improve pedestrian safety.
 Last year 5,041 were killed on the roads, of whom 39 per cent were pedestrians and cyclists, and 95,000 more casualties occupied hospital beds. In 1987 out of 311,473 road traffic casualties, 1,703 pedestrians died as a result of their injuries. The number of minor injuries sustained can only be guessed at since a vast proportion never get reported.
 A survey by the Transport and Road Research Laboratory 10 years ago found that pedestrian accident victims stayed in hospital longer on average than vehicle occupants. The most common type of injuries are to the head and legs, followed by arms, chest and pelvis.
 Young and elderly pedestrians feature disproportionately in road traffic accidents and there is also a steep social class gradient with regard to children hit by cars. Road accidents are the commonest cause of death in school-aged children, and children from social class V are over seven times more likely to be killed by a car than children from social class I. This class differential arises from where children live and play, and also from the fact that parents from higher social classes are more likely to own a car and to ferry their offspring around in it.
 According to the Parliamentary Advisory Council for Transport Safety (Pacts), the cost of pedestrian casualties is estimated at over Pounds 1 billion. Mrs Jeanne Breen, Pacts coordinator, reports that 95 per cent of casualties occur in urban and residential areas, where there is strong justification for safety and traffic flow to be balanced more effectively.
 Although 80 per cent of journeys under one mile are made on foot, walking half a mile to the shops is seen as unimportant in terms of road planning. As Dr Mayer Hillman of the Policy Studies Institute points out, the National Travel Survey is used to recognise changing trends in motorised travel. Road safety for pedestrians takes second place.
 What does the projected growth in traffic volume mean for the public health? It means that life for those who cannot afford a car will become increasingly unbearable as streets become more congested and polluted. Surveys already suggest that less than one-fifth of all children take enough exercise to maintain or improve health and the only exercise many adults take is walking to and from work and the shops.
 But as more roads carve up the community and more of us are forced into the motor car, we will soon require pedestrian sanctuaries for exercise purposes - to which we will doubtless have to drive.
 Adrian Davis is London Road Safety Co-ordinator of Friends of the Earth.

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The Guardian (London)

August 24, 1989

Eyewitness: Freedom chain marks an old captivity

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE in Vilnius

LENGTH: 871 words

 
 PUNCTUALLY at seven o'clock a million and a half people stepped into the road and held hands. The human chain stretching almost 450 miles from the Lithuanian capital, Vilnius, to the Estonian capital, Tallinn, was the Baltic civil rights movement's way of commemorating the signing of the Nazi-Soviet non-aggression pact 50 years ago yesterday.
 It must have been one of the longest chains the world has ever seen. At least in the section I watched just outside Vilnius, everything seemed to go with extraordinary efficiency. People had been told where to stand, according to the places where they worked. 
 'My institute has been given the motorway from the 194km mark to the 198km one,' a woman electronics specialist explained as she strode past with her family on the shoulder of the road. Four lanes of cars drove up both sides of the motorway trying to reach their designated spots in time.
 Although the Lithuanian Communist Party was not an official participant in the mass event, state radio broadcast a live commentary on how the demonstration was building up.
 At 6.50pm it announced every gap had been plugged and the chain was ready. Thousands of people carried the Lithuanian national flag, its red, green, and yellow colours draped with black ribbon to mourn the Nazi-Soviet protocols which put the Baltic republics under Soviet control.
 A few lit candles and placed them on the ground. Many wore black. Those with radios turned up the volume so that the sound of a choir singing patriotic songs outside the national cathedral could be heard up and down the impressive line.
 The road from Vilnius to Riga goes almost directly north. The organisers had decided the protesters should face West and turn their backs to Moscow. But in truth this was a safety measure rather than a political gesture. People had driven up the right side of the road and it was thought safer that while they waited along the grass verge they should face the traffic.
 Among the older people the feeling of anger over the pact was almost entirely directed at the Russians. Feliksas Bartaska, a retired chauffeur aged 67, did not see the Russian troops when they arrived in 1940. But he well remembers their return at the end of the war.
 'Liberation?' he told us. 'Only a small number of people welcomed them. Everyone was afraid of the Communists. They took so many people away the first time they came.'
 Aldona Vytkauskas, who was a farm girl of 12 at the time, recalled how surprised her family was to see the Russian troops in 1940, 'so thin and with such skinny horses. You couldn't be afraid of people like that.'
 An assortment of small political parties held a rally in the park above Vilnius.
 There were militants wearing lapel buttons showing the hammer and sickle and the swastika side by side. Some 2,000 supporters gathered to hear them, then joined the protest.
 Police stopped the traffic as a man carrying a banner in English, saying 'Stop Communism in Lithuania' walked by. Two years ago such a sight would have been impossible. It was not that the man in blue could not read English. The banners in Lithuanian were stronger.
 Soviet television put a brave face on the human chain in its main news programme last night. 'It was not a separatist demonstration but a sign of faith in justice, democracy, and human progress - the agenda of perestroika,' a commentator said.
 In Moscow, the authorities used force to contain a demonstration organised by the radical Democratic Union. Men in uniform attacked demonstrators, ripping signs from their hands and pummelling them to the ground.
 Some 13,000 people took part in two demonstrations in the south-western republic of Moldavia, which was also absorbed into the Soviet Union the year after the pact.
 In Vilnius, outside the headquarters of the mass-based Popular Front, known as Sajudis, which organised the human chain with its counterparts in Estonia and Latvia, a poster depicted Hitler marrying a heavy-set woman in a white dress with a remarkable likeness to Stalin.
 That poster apart, Sajudis' line is low key, skilful, and clearly more popular. Its spokesmen called for independence, but not yet secession. A rally they held in Vilnius the night before the demonstration brought out some 40,000 people.
 But there are strains inside Sajudis as a morning meeting of their parliament of roughly 200 members showed yesterday. Radicals wanted to amend a declaration calling for Lithuanian independence so that it would say unequivocally 'outside the Soviet Union.' Sajudis's chairman, Vytautas Landsbergis, (who sits in the new Supreme Soviet in Moscow) argued against this. He wanted Lithuania's relations with the rest of the Soviet Union to be based in future on the original treaty of 1920 between Lenin's Soviet Russia and Lithuania. That, of course, was between two sovereign states. His phrasing was adopted. It was more diplomatic and therein lay the difference.
 Of such are the subtleties in Baltic politics made.
 As one man put it to a West German reporter beside me: 'The Berlin Wall is made of brick and concrete. Our wall is stronger. Why? Because it's invisible.'
 Leader comment, page 20

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The Guardian (London)

August 25, 1989

Records: Sealed with a disc - Keith Richards bridles at the suggestion that rock is a young man's game / Spruced up, rifts with Mick Jagger all forgotten, he and the Stones are back in the studio and on the road

BYLINE: By ADAM SWEETING

LENGTH: 2073 words

 
 THE first track on the new Rolling Stones album, Steel Wheels, is called Sad Sad Sad and it has been forged in Keith Richards' image. It opens with a declamatory salvo of gale-force chords, as if Richards has flung down a chain-mailed gauntlet and is daring you to pick it up. Then he whips his squad of old codgers into line behind an iron wall of guitars.
 Even Mick Jagger has stopped nimbying about for the first time in a decade. His voice sounds confident and sneery, with no trace of his farcical reggae pastiche, his absurd honky-cat funk voice or his preposterous Nashville yowl. He may even be paying attention.
 Steel Wheels is no Exile On Main Street, although it's not far short of a Some Girls. It's futile to come searching for the insurrectionary clamour of Street Fighting Man or the 12-litre strut of Brown Sugar. But tracks such as Rock And A Hard Place and the single, Mixed Emotions, jab you in the ribs and remind you where they're coming from while Blinded By Love finds the Stones throttling back into their wistful, countryish mode. 
 'They're all variations on a theme,' Keith Richards explains. 'Sometimes you're totally unconscious that it's a variation on a theme or riff you've done before until after it's finished and other times you do it deliberately, you wanna let them know this is the Stones. You want it to echo back.'
 It's logical to assume Richards is in charge but he puts it down to organic effort. 'I guess I do a little bandleading now and again but I always feel I'm working for Charlie Watts, basically. Then Charlie always felt it was Ian Stewart's band anyway, and we were just custodians of it.'
 Age has withered them, certainly. Bill Wyman is more than 50 and the Stones have sired 13 children among them. Four of these are Keith's, with his oldest, Marlon, now 20. Somewhat to his surprise, Richards finds he has been happily married to Patti Hansen for six years.
 Yet this battered old troupe have been able to muster a rowdiness and vigour which is invariably processed out of the modern recording studio. Still, I suggested to Richards that the Stones should have stayed in retirement and could be viewed as a bunch of elderly gentlemen cashing in on their past. He found the suggestion mildly offensive.
 'I think that's a really shallow attitude,' he said. 'The fact is that nobody knows whether you can take this music any further because it's not been there yet. If anybody can find out it's the Stones, which is why I find the idea even more fascinating.
 'People only think of it as juvenile or young music because in its present form, known as rock 'n' roll, it's 30-odd years old. I would find it far worse to chicken out and not find out whether this thing can grow up. I don't see why you can't have very mature rock 'n' roll, that can still relate to young people as well as your own generation. That's what we're trying to do - at least, what I'm trying to do. What else would I do, you know?'
 Richards emits the kind of chuckle which suggests a starting-handle being vigorously cranked on a freezing morning. He is slumped at a table in a bar in Barnes, just across the road from Olympic Studios where he and Jagger have been applying the finishing touches to Steel Wheels ('Put the fairy-dust on the bastard,' drawls Keith). As he works his way through an afternoon of interviews, his diligent publicist relays amber liquid in shot-glasses from bar to table. 'Bless you, Bernard,' gasps Keith gratefully, taking a gulp and chasing it down with a mouthful of cigarette smoke. 
 The legend of Keith Richards has at its centre a man of awesome physical and psychological resilience. The way posterity will remember it, he has walked unscathed through the hell of Altamont, been able to survive tours which involve no sleep and extraordinary quantities of stimulants and successfully faced down the entire British legal system. Heroin addiction couldn't finish him off, either.
 In person, Keith cuts a slight, crumpled figure. As he talks, his hands flutter in front of him in slow motion, as if drawing out some piece of information from his large but erratically indexed memory banks. His voice is a curiously theatrical mix of Delta bluesman, south London lout and debauched aristocrat, somewhat at odds with the two-fisted man of action which appears to be Keith's image of himself. He's had fights with Ron Wood, for instance, and tells how he considered punching Chuck Berry during the filming of Hail! Hail! Rock 'n' Roll. Not that the cantankerous Berry wasn't asking for it.
 Yet, after 25 years in the eye of the storm, Richards has reached a plateau of imperturbable calm. The deep lines in his face imply a stoic acquisitiion of wisdom. By contrast, the younger Keith resembled the skull ring which adorns his third finger, right hand.
 A less self-contained character would have succumbed to the notoriety, or the drugs. 'I was just glad to get that monkey off my back,' Keith reflects, of his heroin years. 'I enjoyed not having to spend 90 per cent of my time with that being the main thing in life. Getting it, and how to hide it, and whether it was any good or whether it was strychnine. All those junkie problems that we used to have.
 'Also I found that it's really not that difficult to stop. I ain't saying it's pleasant but I do find that the things I see in the media are a little heavy-handed. You don't need six years of counselling to get over it. You need three days of climbing walls and then you're clean, and then it's up to you.
 'Of course, you go back out and the only people you know are junkies and dealers. But when guys were trying to turn me on, get me back in the trap, I used to get off on watching the disappointment on their faces that they couldn't get me any more.
 'ALSO, there was no way I could get arrested any more. One more time and it was bye-bye. I couldn't do that to my kids and family and I couldn't do it to my band. I'm more hooked on the Stones than ever I was on that shit.'
 While Mick Jagger has tried, embarrassingly, to behave like a man 20 years younger, Richards has maintained an Olympian detachment, casting a sceptical eye over Jagger's aerobic antics and maintaining his faith in the Stones. He is unswayed by sentimentality and Good Causes - 'Don't trust 'em, don't know where the money goes' - and assumes that humanitarian gestures by the Rolling Stones would be greeted with hoots of derision.
 'I'd want to know an awful lot about it before I'd want to get involved. I think yeah, they shouldn't cut down the forests in the Amazon, I need air for my kids to breathe. I think they should plug up those holes in the ozone layer as soon as possible. I agree with all of that but whether these shows actually do much to help, I dunno.'
 'I HAVE always thought there was still a lot more in the Stones and this year's proving it,' Keith is saying. 'There're a lot of interesting things we could do without having to sit on nostalgia, which I don't think anybody in the Stones could bear to do. It would be cringeing, to do a Beach Boys and just go around playing Brown Sugar. As long as there are new things - and I think there are - it's a very interesting band to work with, especially when they're all clicking together.'
 He attributes the band's relative vitality to the fact that, for once, at least some of the musicians had been keeping their hands in during their time apart. Ron Wood toured with Bo Diddley and played with a Swedish blues band. Jagger made a solo album called Primitive Cool, which Keith thought was insufferable twaddle, and toured in Japan for oodles of yen.
 Richards himself teamed up with Steve Jordan, Ivan Neville and others and knocked out an album called Talk Is Cheap which, despite a few abrasive guitar riffs, was scarcely the album we'd been anticipating for the last 20 years. He'd toured with it, too, assembling a band called the Ex-Pensive Winos and by all accounts enjoying himself on the road as much as he could ever remember doing.
 'The consistency of working does wonders for your playing, for ideas, the continuity of it,' Keith slurs. 'When Mick and I began working together in February, I said to my old lady, 'Look, I'm going off to Barbados to write songs with Mick for a couple of weeks. So I'll either see you in two weeks or two days.' He pauses for a rattle of laughter, as his cigarette dangles precariously over his drink.
 'And we found it incredibly easy to work by ourselves, without any outside influences to worry about. The Stones have been together for a long time and it is to a certain point an organisation. All organisations go through this eventually, where people feel they have to take sides, then you have to take a stance. I'm talking about Mick and myself. You're obliged to defend other people's so-called honour instead of just sitting in a room together and saying, 'Look, we've got to get rid of this problem.' It became impossible.'
 Where Stones albums routinely took years to finish, Steel Wheels has been hammered together in a fleeting six months, from initial songwriting to final mix. No doubt the planned American tour, booked to start at the beginning of September, was a spur to getting the job done. Most significantly, though, the album found Jagger and Richards working in harness again. When they made the Dirty Work album, for example, Jagger's presence in the studio was virtually undetectable.
 Naturally, the revitalised Stones will only be visible as dots on the horizon. Richards admits he can't feel really happy playing in stadiums and domes when he's only recently experienced the delights of playing to theatre-sized audiences with his own band.
 'Playing in the open air to the elements is like a Test Match - has it rained overnight? What's the pitch like? Will we get any lift off the ball today? You can have the biggest and the best sound system in the world but with a crosswind across the stage, some guy three miles down the road who's just got off work and wants to sleep gets the best sound in the world.'
 SO WHY do it? Richards advances the familiar argument that with demand being what it is for the Stones, the stadium shows are the only solution.
 'If there's that many people want to see you, what are you gonna do? You can't just play for yourself. It's something more than music, it's tribal. There are far deeper things involved than a new Stones record or a new Who record. It's a sort of drive, a necessity, to come together, if there's anything halfway decent to provide some background music. It's like a feeling of security and you don't have to make any decisions. Maybe it's the pressures of society that have made that even more necessary.'
 Or the pressures of marketing and bullshit. As long as people are desperate for tickets, or think they are, the megashows will go on. Yet Richards expresses scepticism about The Who's current comeback tour, especially regarding Pete Townshend's acoustically dampened cubicle at one side of the stage, to which the veteran chordsmith can retire while session men play his guitar parts.
 'It has to be a bit suffocating in there, I would have thought,' Keith ponders. 'It's a bit Spinal Tap, innit? I can imagine what the incentive really is to do it, and good luck.'
 You mean money?
 'Something like that, maybe, you know. I don't know if I could handle that - 'Excuse me, I must go into my booth.' It's intriguing, Peter. Ha!'
 But aren't the Stones doing the same thing?
 'Well, we shall not be in pods. The stage will be different, we'll just be trying to put on a good show and play well at the same time.'
 Surely you can't hope to recapture the glory days?
 'We were there at a point where everything was almost an innovation and now it's a much bigger business. But I wouldn't consider it glory days as such. Those years were nothing to do with bands or music, those years that we were doing that, there was quite a ferment going on in society. It sort of coincided.
 'But to me as a musician, I certainly look forward to putting on some good shows and still being able to surprise a few people, including myself. I'm not trying to recapture my youth, anyway. I'm more interested in finding out what I can do with the rest of my life.'
 Steel Wheels is released by CBS on September 1. The single Mixed Emotions is out on Monday.

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The Guardian (London)

August 25, 1989

An offer that Merthyr's miners could not refuse: British Coal's golden handshake for the closure of another South Wales pit has created a legacy of bitterness

BYLINE: By PAUL HOYLAND

LENGTH: 833 words

 
 THE dozen men laughing and shouting as they posed for a group photograph outside the Gordon Lennox Conservative Club yesterday looked like members of a works syndicate who had come up on the football pools.
 Each clutched a sheath of papers detailing their various rewards for agreeing to the closure of mid-Glamorgan's Merthyr Vale colliery. Those with long service get up to Pounds 35,000.
 The older men could not resist the golden handshake, but many felt betrayed by British Coal's abandoning the oldest pit in Wales, snatching 526 jobs from a community that has never recovered from the Aberfan disaster in which 116 children were engulfed in a sliding slurry tip 23 years ago. 
 Young miners bitterly complain of the 'blackmail' that obliged them to vote for closure to safeguard the redundancy terms for those who had spent a lifetime at the pit, which was sunk in 1873.
 British Coal would have withdrawn the lump sums if the men had not agreed to the closure by tomorrow.
 The result of the ballot, in which the shutdown was accepted by a large majority, came as 125 job losses, with the threat of more to come, were announced at Merthyr Tydfil's biggest employer - the Hoover washing machine factory, three miles along the road. The combined jobs blow sent shivers down the valley.
 For the old man walking his dog through Aberfan, history was repeating itself. 'I can remember when there were three pits just one mile from here, but they closed them down,' said Mr Leslie Jones, aged 67, a former miner who worked at Hoover for 40 years.
 'I feel sorry for the youngsters that are in this valley and dependent on Merthyr Vale colliery. Where are they going to go?
 'Most of the people down here work at Hoover's, but they're making people redundant. The small factories they're putting up in the valley aren't taking on more than 25 to 30 people.
 'Merthyr has been going downhill for donkey's years. We're dependent on rebates in rates because people are on low incomes.'
 Mr Jones recalls every moment of the Aberfan disaster but, like most of the locals, he prefers not to talk about it.
 There is the same sort of reticence at the Aberfan Social and Democratic Club, where an electrician spoke quietly of the problems that killed the Merthyr Vale colliery.
 'They weren't getting the coal up,' he said.' They opened one face and went 15 yards and the weight came on the face and they couldn't move.'
 Miners' leaders insisted, however, they had not been given a chance to save the pit, which British Coal said had lost almost Pounds 2 million this year and Pounds 7 million last year.
 Mr Leighton Owen, aged 40, a lodge representative, will receive Pounds 21,224 after 14 years' service. He was almost speechless with anger.
 'It's chickenfeed, and I voted to fight on,' he said. 'The board have shown total contempt for men who have busted their guts over the past couple of years with exceptionally bad conditions.
 'We could have come into profitability in the very near future, but they have put a gun to the men's heads. Men have been offered up to Pounds 35,000, but if the vote had been to fight the closure those poor buggers would have been turned out with Pounds 5,000 instead. It's disgusting. We've given our all to this industry and now they have shit on us.'
 Some felt that defeat in the miners' strike was the root cause of the sweeping pit closures in South Wales over the past four years. 'That woman Maggie Thatcher set out her stall after the miners' strike,' said Mr Owen. 'There will be no coal industry in South Wales in less than four years because the board are butchers with Thatcher as their henchman.'
 One young miner spoke angrily on the dilemma he and many others had found themselves in. 'My uncle, who is 38 and has been down the pit since he was 16, was going to lose Pounds 20,000 if we voted to fight on,' said Mr Leighton Jones, aged 24. 'That was in the back of my mind. And he would have had it in his mind that by voting for closure he would cost me my job. I've got nearly Pounds 3,000 for eight years' work. That's rubbish.'
 British Coal has promised other jobs for those who wish to transfer, but as there are only six pits left in the coalfield, that promise may prove difficult to honour.
 Miners such as Mr Russell Barnard, aged 30, are happy to take the money and leave. 'The morale hasn't been very good and I'd get Pounds 8,200,' he said. 'This is what I've always wanted. I'll get a job with private contractors.'
 But Mr Peter Evans, the lodge treasurer, who has been offered Pounds 23,351, is equally determined not to leave the industry.
 'I'm going to transfer to Deep Navigation colliery,' he said. 'I firmly believe that the redundancy terms will increase in line with the European Community and that by next year a new scheme will come in.
 'British Coal's blackmail tactics are only designed to save them money and give the men a lot of heartache. I'm staying.'

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August 26, 1989

Leader faces double opposition

BYLINE: By MICHAEL SIMMONS in Warsaw

LENGTH: 637 words

 
 THE minimal honeymoon of Poland's new Prime Minister, Mr Tadeusz Mazowiecki, ended yesterday, almost as soon as it had begun.
 Confronting the biggest in-tray in Europe in his Warsaw office, he could be forgiven for thinking that he now faces much passive as well as active opposition.
 The active opposition, expressed by just four Communists in the parliament on Thursday, will at first be restrained.
 It knows that whoever accepted the job of Prime Minister of Poland is, in the recent words of one deputy, a kamikaze specialist bent on self defeat to save the country. 
 Mr Mieczyslaw Rakowski, the party leader, is said to be bitter still about how Poles have failed to understand his reform programme and turned against him personally.
 But passive opposition is something quite different. In its most clearly recognisable but not totally definable form, it is to be found in the inertia of many Poles, a refusal to believe in work and a need to be unscrupulous to survive.
 Old age pensioners literally fight each other at 9.15 every morning, having queued for some hours to get into an old established but poorly supplied sweet shop on the Warsaw Uprising Square. It looks degrading, and is, but the sweets in many cases are only being bought to be sold again at artifically inflated prices.
 Across the road from where these fights take place are some of the offices of the State Planning Commission, a body of questionable usefulness in these days of reform and gradually being stripped of its centralist powers.
 In the factories, thousands of workers at any given time are idle - because raw materials are not forthcoming or cannot be afforded, because spare parts cannot be obtained for essential repairs, or because, all too often, the habit of work has been virtually lost.
 One of Mr Mazowiecki's special pleas from the outset has been that he wants Poles to support him by showing that they really can be motivated to work.
 The general in charge of the economy before Solidarity came along was Piotr Jaroscewick. He and his mentor, Mr Edward Gierek, the party leader, took the party into a morass of self interest, corruption and perpetual latent crisis.
 It was this administration which took the country recklessly into debt. It had started with good will in the West and borrowing was easy; now that debt is nearly Dollars 40 billion and almost unrepayable. Interest payments are supposed to be nearly Dollars 3 billion a year but it has not worked out.
 Roughly two-thirds of the total is owed to Western governments and one-third to Western commercial banks.
 At political management level, there are the two enormous obstacles to progress represented by the system of nomenklatura and the media.
 In a Warsaw suburb, a small factory is producing machine tools. It used to be run, under the Communist-led government, by a Communist Party appointee - a member of the nomenklatura promoted purely on political merit.
 Today it is run by the same person as his company: he fixed things so that he could lease the land - formerly state property - for a nominal sum.
 In the media as elsewhere, the nomenklatura is also strong.
 Finally there are the security forces. Now being investigated by a Parliamentary Commission looking at the Interior Ministry, Mr Mazowiecki needs to be speaking the same language as the forces of law and order.
 Solidarity has strong views on such people, and it became ominously clear in a north Warsaw suburb the other day that they also have specific views about Solidarity.
 A dozen or so people became engaged in a drunken brawl in a busy shopping area, and a concerned passer-by rang the police. The duty officer heard the complaint and said: 'Why don't you get Solidarity to deal with it?' and slammed down the phone.

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August 29, 1989

Tuesday Women: The sharing of sorrow - A Tiananmen Square eye-witness finds images indelibly etched on the mind

BYLINE: By RUTH CHERRINGTON

LENGTH: 839 words

 
 TEARS welled up inside me as I listened to a radio programme about American Vietnam War veterans. Their recounting of years of emotional turmoil touched my own vein of sorrow suddenly and deeply. I recognised the symptoms of unexpressed grief.
 It is not that I had experienced the sustained degree of horror and brutality they had both witnessed and committed. What I went through was relatively short-lived and should have been, perhaps, easier to come to terms with. 
 My own trauma was to witness a small part of the Beijing massacre at the beginning of June, when an unknown number of young people were killed by the troops of the old men struggling to maintain their own political lives. The scenes of that tragic night will no doubt remain for the rest of my life although the shock and horror have passed.
 It's over now. My bruises healed quickly but the repercussions are a long time in being felt. It is the disturbing aftermath of such experiences, described so vividly by those Vietnam veterans, which triggered my tears and pain.
 The recurring sights and sounds of the early hours of June 4 are not easy to live with but are not the only problem. I got out safe and sound but those I saw shot did not and I can't forget them. As with the former soldiers, the memories tend to interfere with the peaceful normality of life back home which is no longer so 'normal'.
 All my senses and emotions were roused that night before being brutally bombarded, as were the Chinese students and those who sought to help them. That is where the continuing problem lies. How do people come to terms with such a burden of anger and grief?
 The Vietnam veterans talked of withdrawing from the company of those who had waited patiently for their return. Isolation. I recognise this as a phase in the 'post-massacre syndrome' as I call it. I feel that a gulf now exists between myself and those who care about me, put there by myself, not them. I seem to be thinking too often: 'I was there, you weren't'.
 It becomes increasingly difficult to talk about the massacre, but since my life as a political writer was so closely associated with China's fortunes, I can hardly discuss anything else. I don't wish to dwell on the issue and subject my friends to the same conversation over and over again. It's better, therefore, to withdraw, retreat, stay away from people. 'They'll understand, it's better all round,' I tell myself.
 Some of the Vietnam veterans talked of isolation and running away both in literal and symbolic terms. Taking to the hills or to drugs were not uncommon strategies for dealing with feelings of social incapacity. I just try to keep myself to myself and be busy.
 But, all alone, how can I grieve for the dead? Mourning is usually a very social ritual when those who share the loss can share the burden of grief. Unexpressed sorrow can be destructive if it does not find an outlet. I'm a foreigner to the Chinese but I want to mourn for those I saw dying and for the great loss that China suffered that night.
 I think of the mothers who still wait for their son or daughter to return from the capital, not knowing whether they are dead, in prison or in hiding. Their grief also, perhaps, has been put to one side, their mourning postponed until there is news of their children.
 Without a body the mourning ritual cannot begin, the necessary release of sorrow is put off indefinitely.
 But I realise I cannot postpone the inevitable grief without suffering some sort of psychological damage. There is no body for me to cry over, no funeral service to attend, just the vivid pictures in my mind's eye of those young people. These images tear at my heart and spirit, just as the dead haunted the Vietnam vets. I don't want to forget the brave students and workers who died for their ideals but I must be able to carry on my life, in acceptable co-existence.
 I have to avoid the drawn-out route of those pitiable American soldiers. Being men and heroes, they were not expected to cry but carry on where they left off. Some found this impossible. I find it difficult. Another solution must be found before I give up on people or they give up on me.
 Recognising the need to grieve goes some of the way to overcoming the emotional impasse. I must share the sorrow with those who feel the same. I cannot return to Beijing and be with Chinese friends there, so I seek them out elsewhere. Those who were fortunate enough to be out of the country still feel the anguish and horror of the killings. I must be with them even if I have to travel a long way.
 I want to cry without self-consciousness, without embarrassment and to tell my story again. In doing so, maybe the isolation will be ended and the pain of that night eased. Then I can pick up the pieces and gain some inspiration and strength from the students' sacrifice. To share the grief with Chinese friends who will now be exiles may be the key to helping myself and showing proper respect for the dead of Beijing.

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August 31, 1989

Virginia exhibits its black record

BYLINE: By MARK TRAN in Richmond, Virginia

LENGTH: 535 words

 
 THE former capital of the Confederacy clings resolutely to its Civil War glory. A drive down stately Monument Avenue takes you past statues of the South's heroes: Jeb Stuart, Robert E Lee and Stonewall Jackson.
 An attempt to close down the palatial United Daughters of the Confederacy building and evict the last nine elderly ladies was roundly rejected by the courts. 
 But Richmond, established by English settlers on the James River in 1637 and now Virginia's capital, is coming to terms with the obverse of that romantic past - the city's treatment of its blacks.
 The effort is being spearheaded by the Valentine Museum, in Court End - once Richmond's most fashionable district and now dominated by the Medical College of Virginia complex, only a few blocks away from the Museum of the Confederacy.
 The Valentine, under the leadership of its director, Mr Frank Jewell, and a young staff, has embarked on a project to reinterpret the city's history through a series of exhibitions called New Nation, New City.
 Given the tenor of the city, where only a black entertainer, Bojangles, has been honoured by a statue, the effort constitutes an overdue exercise in historical revisionism.
 Currently on show is the fourth in the Valentine's series, Jim Crow: Racism and Reaction in the New South. Before the Civil War, Jim Crow was a minstrel character who epitomised the happy slave.
 As race relations changed in the aftermath of emancipation, Jim Crow became synonymous with legally and socially condoned segregation and racism in the South from the Reconstruction period after the Civil War until 1940.
 The exhibition portrays the efforts of white supremacists to demean blacks through specious scientific theories, and black attempts to achieve full political rights until the Virginia Constitution of 1902.
 That put paid to black gains since the Civil War by using requirements of property tax, literacy and Confederate credentials to reduce the number of black voters from 6,427 to 760.
 The show goes on to look at white intimidation of blacks through organisations such as the Ku Klux Klan as Richmond evolved into a segregated city.
 'It's remarkable the show exists at all,' said the Valentine historian, Ms Marie Tyler-McGraw. 'It's not something many museums, if any Southern ones at all, would have scheduled.'
 Exhibits include books which strive for scientific proof of black inferiority. A work by JC Nott and GR Gliddon is typical, containing a white man's profile, followed by a black man's, followed by a monkey's.
 Blacks are not only represented as victims. The show depicts black responses to racism which presage the debate between Malcom X and Martin Luther King.
 John Mitchell, the editor of the Richmond Planet, was the most outspoken and militant defender of black rights at the turn of the century, and led a boycott of the segregated streetcar system. Successful black middle-class women such as Lillian Payne and Maggie Walker led predominantly female efforts at inter-racial civic co-operation.
 If the show has a fault, it is that it tends to be wordy. Many exhibits are documents or extracts from documents lacking visual impact.

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September 1, 1989

Israel mourns at a bleak shrine in Jerusalem's hills: How the victims of the holocaust remember their terrible history

BYLINE: By IAN BLACK

LENGTH: 641 words

DATELINE: YAD Vashem

 
 Israel's holocaust memorial - is a bleak place. From afar, the low grey concrete buildings on a Jerusalem hillside look like one of the Nazi death camps whose victims they commemorate. A tall stone column pierces the sky like a smokestack.
 Memorial services and ceremonies are a common occurrence; they are the reason the Heroes and Martyrs Remembrance Authority exists. Yesterday was different. The 50th anniversary of the outbreak of the second world war aroused memories that are still piercingly sharp. For in Israel, the past is not yet another country. 
 The veterans come every year, leaning on walking sticks, forearms bearing their faded blue camp numbers, chests bedecked with the medals of the armies in which they served. Their Hebrew is heavily accented. Polish, Russian and Yiddish are their mother tongues.
 'I always attend,' says Zvi Vilk, who fought as a partisan and went with the Red Army to Berlin before emigrating to Israel in 1957. 'But this year many more of us are here. Each of us has his own terrible history.'
 Mr Vilk, aged 72, proudly wears the copper-badged green beret of the Organisation of Disabled Soldiers and Partisans of the War against the Nazis. Others are in the stiff blue caps of the World Organisation of Former Jewish Combatants, Partisans and Camp Inmates.
 The very names of these associations are an inventory of a terrible century. Six million Jews - a third of the entire people - died in the second world war. Israel, in Zionist ideology, rose from their ashes, took in those who remained and vowed that such a disaster would never happen again.
 Yad Vashem is a monument to pain, but there is heroism as well. At the end of the tree-lined Avenue of the Righteous Gentiles - planted to honour non-Jews who helped Jews hide or escape - is a little wooden boat used to smuggle holocaust survivors past the British naval blockade of Palestine.
 In a country where the younger, native-born generation can be cynical about past horrors, the ritual of remembrance is long-practised and finely honed. A legless, wheelchair-bound veteran lights the eternal flame, a trumpet sounds and the speeches begin.
 Snatches of history echo through the hot, windless air. Names like Molotov and Ribbentrop, terms like appeasement, ghettoes, gas chambers and crematoria sound alien in the setting of gnarled olive trees and terraced hillsides.
 Anti-semitism, racism, intolerance and neo-Nazism require vigilance, the speakers warn. Someone quotes the stirring lines by Avraham Shlonsky, the Israeli poet: 'I have vowed a vow to remember it all. To remember, and to forget nothing.'
 Suntanned, chiselled faces of old men and women stare ahead. A little girl whispers a translation to her grandfather in halting Yiddish. 'Eli, Eli,' the haunting anthem by Hannah Szenes, the Hungarian woman who left Palestine to parachute to her death behind German lines, brings tears to many eyes.
 'I will always remember those years,' says Aharon Katushnik, who lost his entire family to the Nazis in Lithuania and survived a hard war with the Red Army to tell the tale. 'Now, when I hear that song, I want to cry. It hurts.'
 Yitzhak Rabin, the Israeli Defence Minister and the man responsible for handling the bitter conflicts of the present, mounts the podium. 'The world is pulling down barriers and limiting military force,' he says. 'Totalitarianism is creaking under the weight of democracy.
 'Our duty to the coming generations is to create a safe haven for the Jewish people. But it is also our duty to explore all options for peace. When the world celebrated its great victory over the Nazis, we collected our dead. We are a people that dwells alone, even if some are sympathetic to us. We can trust only ourselves. No one will give us their help and we will not seek it.'

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September 2, 1989

Time Off: Paradise under an English sky - The pleasures of a day out among the deck-chairs and slot machines of Clacton-on-Sea

BYLINE: By ADAM SWEETING

LENGTH: 720 words

 
 THERE IS a rather far-fetched theory that the English seaside resort is enjoying an upswing in its fortunes. The notoriously xenophobic English punter (the story goes), sick of being trapped in squalid airport lounges with vomiting oiks and fed up with the 'foreign muck' served in the Algarve or the Peloponnese, is coming back to the new-look English coast.
 Could Clacton-on-Sea claim to be paradise rebuilt? At least you will be comparatively safe swimming off its 'Euro Award Clean Beach', unlike, for instance, Southend, where you take your life in your hands if you go near the water. Butlins and Pontins, those erstwhile Colditzes of British leisure, have been replaced by self-catering, self-contained resort complexes like Highfield Holiday Park, with pool, sports facilities, disco and gym. 
 Even the draconian Boarding House Landlady of popular legend has succumbed to market forces to the extent that keys are offered to guests staying out later than 9pm. Basil Fawlty would not be welcome under this streamlined new regime. La Dolce Vita has come to the Essex Riviera.
 It was warm when I dropped in on Clacton, the sun breaking through the mid-afternoon cloud. A crowd gathered on the beach as the temperature climbed. A light aircraft, joyriding from the local airstrip, wobbled out over the pier and back. Picturesque barges ploughed up the coast towards Felixstowe or Lowestoft as a handful of elderly ladies played bingo in the arcades just off the seafront, squinting hard through horn-rims under tight silver curls.
 I met some sun-seekers down on the prom. 'A day's enough, innit?' observed one girl, swinging pale legs over the concrete parapet. She'd driven out to Clacton from London that morning, with her boyfriend. Why Clacton? 'I used to come 'ere when I was little,' said her boyfriend. 'I wouldn't want to stay here, mind.' They'd been to Austria a couple of weeks earlier. Neither thought the night-life was worth waiting for. 'It's all old-time dancing and old fogies,' the girl reckoned.
 I WANDERED off past the ranks of deck chairs, sagging under the weight of comatose people holding ice-creams and the Daily Mail.
 Things happen in slow-motion here, as you would expect in a town crammed with senior citizens. I pottered out to Holland-on-Sea, a residential suburb favoured by retired couples seeking shelter from the storms of life. My aunt use to live here, among the identi cal brick-and-tile bungalows, terrifying silence, and elderly motorists trying to park Allegros. You could get arrested for not loitering.
 Still, Holland is like Manhattan compared to Jaywick, on the south-western flank of the town. You reach it by driving past the housing development where Butlins used to be, by the Martello towers.
 'There's a waiting list for those houses,' the lady at the Waverley Hall Hotel confided. 'I think yuppies from London are buying them.' Jaywick resembles a derelict desert town in the aftermath of a biological war. The chemist has been closed for eight years. The streets, with names like Sea Flowers Way or Sea Glebe Way, are lined with cowering rows of sad, weather-beaten bungalows. You can't even see the ocean behind the sea-wall, so it's as if Jaywick has been shoved to the edge of a void and abandoned. Appropriately, there's a pub called The Never Say Die.
 BACK AMONG the comforting semi-bustle of Clacton proper, the hoteliers say business was looking up this year, though much of it would inevitably be coach parties of pensioners from the North. One hotelier revealed that the average English family still likes a traditional breakfast complete with fried bread, while his recent guests have included 'a few foreigners from Harwich'.
 There was a feeling that while the town is clean and well-kept, the council hasn't put much thought, or money, into providing the kind of facilities which could form the basis of an aggressive marketing effort by local business types. 'What is there for the younger people?' demanded one hotel manageress. 'Only bloody slot-machines.'
 Antibes it isn't, and, as one elderly couple from Preston put it, 'the name puts you off, like Blackpool'. But it's the studied lack of style that gives Clacton whatever charm it possesses. There's no danger of Nouvelle Cuisine poisoning here.

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September 7, 1989

Drug gives hope for older breast cancer patients

BYLINE: By AILEEN BALLANTYNE, Medical Correspondent

LENGTH: 459 words

 
 WOMEN who develop breast cancer at the age of 70 and over are likely to do just as well without surgery if they are given a simple drug treatment, doctors at King's College School of Medicine in London announced yesterday.
 Mr Michael Baum, the college's professor of surgery, said 400 breast cancer patients aged 70 and over volunteered for a study in which half were treated by mastectomy or lumpectomy and half were treated only with the drug, tamoxifen.
 After five years, the survival rate in both groups was the same. Tamoxifen is regularly used for breast cancer patients to prevent remaining cancer cells from being stimulated by the hormone oestrogen. 
 Unlike chemotherapy, tamoxifen has few side effects and is taken daily by thousands of women. Breast cancer affects one in 12 women in Britain.
 Professor Baum told the Fifth European Conference on Clinical Oncology in London that 15 per cent of patients who had tamoxifen only had a complete remission from the disease.
 Twenty per cent had a partial remission and for half of those on tamoxifen, the tumour remained about the same size. Some still had to have surgery but this could be delayed if, for example, the patient was too ill for surgery initially. The delay seemed to cause little harm in most cases.
 Only about 5 per cent of the tamoxifen users had to have surgery in the first three months.
 Mr Baum said there were no plans to carry out similar studies on younger women. 'We have only had the courage to test this in women over the age of 70. We would be worried about taking the risk when we already have a preventive treatment.' He stressed that the findings were important for older women who developed breast cancer and hid the fact from their friends, family and doctor because they feared surgery.
 'Women should be counselled about the options and reminded that untreated breast cancer is extremely unpleasant. It ulcerates, it bleeds, and it stinks,' he said.
 In a separate study, doctors at Birmingham Children's Hospital have found that in Dudley in the West Midlands, children are developing a rare form of childhood cancer almost five times more frequently than the national average.
 The form of solid tumour cancer, which often affects the ovaries or testes, occurs in two in every million children every year but in Dudley the incidence has gone up to the equivalent of nearly 10 in a million between 1971 and 1984.
 Doctors believe this may be a result of industrial carcinogens and point out that the area is noted for metal processing industries.
 Dr Michael Stevens, consultant paediatric oncologist at the hospital, stressed the need for further studies into the significance of local industry in childhood cancer.

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September 8, 1989

Commentary: Battle for the high ground of citizenship

BYLINE: By MELANIE PHILLIPS

LENGTH: 1024 words

 
 IN ONE week, we've seen the two faces of British youth. On Wednesday night we saw the ugly reflection of football hooliganism in Stockholm. A few days previously, the Prince of Wales stepped through the looking glass to offer an alternative image of a caring and concerned younger generation when he revealed his initiative to set up a volunteer community army of up to 100,000 young people to work alongside the professional caring services.
 Time was when such an idea would have been dismissed as an off-the-wall utopian dream. It would have been reviled either as a device for papering over the cracks in the welfare state or for depriving workers of real paid jobs. But this week the suggestion has received a respectful, even warm reception from both left and right. 
 The proposals came jointly from the royal charity, the Prince's Trust, and the Speaker's Commission on Citizenship, an all-party group of MPs, union leaders and educationists. The idea is to give everyone aged between 16 and 25 the chance to spend three months on full-time projects, anything from helping old people to working in homes for the handicapped to reclaiming derelict land.
 Although the Government has been careful to distance itself from the proposals - presumably because they will invariably involve spending money - it seems that cautious approval has been gained across a political spectrum stretching from Douglas Hurd, the Home Secretary, and Nicholas Scott, the Social Security Minister, through the TUC General Secretary Norman Willis to Labour MP David Blunkett and the former Ilea Leader and now secretary to the Commission, Frances Morrell. Moreover, public opinion polls indicate that young people are extremely keen to get stuck in to some community caring. The volunteer, it seems, has come in from the cold. As the Prince commented, when he floated the idea in the past, all it received was a raspberry. So what's changed?
 The first thing that's changed is public awareness of the ominous demographic trends which indicate that the number of people needing some kind of care is leaping ahead of the numbers in paid employment to look after them. We've seen it this term in education, with the frantic scramble by schools to plug the gaps in the classrooms by hiring teachers from abroad.
 Trends indicate that by the end of the century probably half the population will be composed of children, retired or handicapped people, all of whom will need some degree of looking after. By then, the number of people aged over 85 will have gone up by half as much again, while advances in medical science mean that all the time people who would previously have died from their handicaps are surviving to require ever more specialised care.
 The realisation has taken hold that unless official services are supplemented by some kind of informal caring networks, the welfare system will simply grind to a halt. Other countries, after all, have a more realistic attitude towards volunteers. The proportion of young people doing community work in Britain is one of the smallest in the European Community. In part, this is because other countries tend to use this work as the alternative to military service; nevertheless, in countries such as West Germany the welfare services would simply collapse without it under the sheer volume of caring to be done.
 The trouble with the present British Government's approach is that although it makes noises in this direction, it doesn't back up the rhetoric with the money needed to make it work. After all, the original intention was to apply poll tax to volunteers, and although an exemption was eventually wrung out of the Government the change of heart has not yet actually found its way into the small print of the proposed legislation. So the commitment is half-hearted, as no doubt will be the response to the royal initiative.
 But there is another, deeper reason for the change in public perception. The battle is on for the moral high ground of citizenship. This concept was floated on to the contemporary political stage by Douglas Hurd as his response to the apparently rising tide of soccer hooliganism and lager loutishness that threatened to besmirch the reputation of his office and bring into disrepute the Tory rhetorical commitment to law and order.
 Thus the active citizen was born, the new moral soldier who would not sit back passively and wait for the state to act against crime or produce a welfare system, but who would join Neighbourhood Watch and commit his company to funding programmes to keep young people out of prison while looking after his ancient and disabled mother (or, more probably, getting his wife to look after her).
 Behind this concept of citizenship lurked the anxiety that the Government was stained not merely with an uncaring image but that it was directly responsible for fostering a climate that exalted selfishness and materialism and the cult of the individual. This is why Mr Hurd's initiative drew such a robust and indignant response from Labour's David Blunkett, who claimed citizenship as the historic platform for socialism.
 Now here is Mr Blunkett welcoming Prince Charles's initiative in that same spirit, saying that it will encourage unselfishness rather than promoting the cult of looking after Number One. Yet those on the left of politics have until now been extremely suspicious of encouraging volunteers on the grounds that these roles are properly the responsibility of the state.
 The consensus that appears to be emerging on this issue is reminiscent of the issue of environment, on which left and right similarly appear to be finding some common ground. The political camps come together in the shared apocalyptic view that the structures of civilised society are about to suffer some catastrophic fracture unless everyone wakes up to the dangers, that we're all about to pay an awful price for rampant materialism and unchecked selfishness.
 Similarly, those who once wouldn't have been seen dead in the company of volunteers now fear that they will be seen dead precisely because they are not.

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September 8, 1989

Elderly patients 'were stripped and force-fed in sister's ward'

LENGTH: 224 words

 
 A HOSPITAL sister ran a geriatric ward for three years where force-feeding, stripping and tying patients to chairs was commonplace, it was alleged at a disciplinary committee yesterday.
 Sister Mary Rutter, aged 48, who has been a qualified nurse for 27 years, denied 28 allegations of misconduct at Stanfield Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent between November, 1983, and August, 1986. 
 The UK Central Council for Nursing committee was told that she left patients sobbing, 'without dignity and naked' in wash areas where cleaners kept their mops and brooms; that 80-year-old women were punished unless they ate all their food; and that laxatives were used so much that 'normal bowel movement' was lost. Patients were kept from using the toilet when they wished.
 The allegations came to light in March, 1986, when staff nurse Valerie Noble complained about patient care, said Miss Katrina Wingfield, for the council.
 The allegations of misconduct included claims that 'she caused the foot of a patient to be strapped to a wheel chair; caused the leg of a patient to be tied to a chair, that she was aggressive to patients and that she left a patient naked in a sluice for a wash causing stress.'
 She was also accused of 'refusing to allow a patient suffering from cystisis to go to the toilet.'
 The hearing continues.

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September 9, 1989

Roy Hattersley's Endpiece Column: The foolish focus of snap misjudgments

BYLINE: By ROY HATTERSLEY

LENGTH: 973 words

 
 LAST WEEK'S description of my visit to Edinburgh's Canongate Tolbooth was a disgrace to serious journalism. I intentionally omitted a report on an incident which, by all the criteria of objective reporting, should have been included. At the beginning of my tour of the museum that tells 'the people's story' I took part in another round of the contest in which I have competed for years. It amounts to hand-to-hand combat with press photographers and it is based on the question 'How much of an idiot is he prepared to look in order to get his picture into the paper?'
 I was introduced to the game when Secretary of State for Prices and Consumer Protection. In those days, I made a lot of public visits to shops and markets where cameramen would entreat me to hold either a very large cucumber or two melons. Sometimes politicians are confronted by more subtle opponents. The Economist once printed a staged tableaux (almost vivante) of the Gang of Four playing cricket in preparation for their party conference. Shirley Williams was keeping wicket in batting gloves. The moral is obvious. Never hold or wear anything offered to you by a press photographer. 
 Hats are a particular temptation. I have stood outside fire stations all over Britain, tipping, lifting and waving my section leader's hat to imaginary firemen on imaginary fire engines. The result has always been absurd. There is also a terrible danger in arm movements. 'Point,' says one photographer. 'Over here,' says another. The result is a picture in which you are pointing left but looking right. I always hope that charitable newspaper readers regard such photographs as proof that I am cross-eyed rather than demented.
 A similar problem arises with hand-shakes. Professional photographers can catch a football in mid flight as it flashes between boot and goal, but it takes them agonising minutes to capture the Lord Mayor's welcome or the Chairman's congratulations. As a result, I have spent much of my life publicly holding hands with elderly men - and doing so with my elbow bent in order to ensure that we are both immortalised in the same small picture. I find it impossible to prolong a look of gratitude when the object of my sudden affection is so close that I can feel his breath on my neck. Local papers all over the country have pictures of me recoiling from civic dignitaries.
 In Edinburgh the problem was different. The Canongate Tolbooth illustrates the people's story with life-size waxworks which wear the clothes, perform the tasks and appear to listen to the music of earlier times. Inevitably, I was required to insinuate myself into the perfectly contented family gatherings and interrupt the various heroic workman at their noble toil. The whole thing started amiably enough with me making sure that I was the first person present to suggest a 'Which is the dummy?' caption. Then the photographers proposed that I examined a towel which a polystyrene inter-war housewife was hanging on her genuine 1930s clothes line. I announced that it was still damp enough to iron and moved into the Eighties.
 The way we live now was represented by a multi-racial group of very small people who demonstrated their harmony and friendship by standing very close together. Had I posed in front of them, the whole yardfull of neighbours would have been totally obscured. I was, therefore, required to edge between father and daughter. You are hoping to read that I flattened half the family and was subsequently arrested by a waxwork policeman. No such thing occurred. Nor would it have mattered.
 No politician has ever been pilloried for being clumsy. You can fall in the sea and still become the leader of the Labour Party. Stumbling down aircraft steps did not prevent Ronald Reagan's re-election. It is acts of intentional idiocy which are damaging - for example, sitting on a table in an imitation of a garden gnome to demonstrate what a really foolish photograph would look like. I did it and the picture appeared in the Independent the next day.
 My problem with the Edinburgh family was that I behaved not badly but too well. I treated it as if its members lived and breathed. Taking up my position was particularly difficult. I was determined not to cause offence to the daughter of the house by rubbing against her. Once in position I did not know what to do with my hands. By the time the flash-bulbs exploded I was leaning drunkenly to the right with my left hand nonchalantly on my hip. I expected the waxwork head of the household to announce: 'We don't want any of your sort round here.' I left the exhibition by tramcar - by which time Pygmalion had nothing on me. I treated every one of the dummies as if it were alive. It was probably the genuine tramcar seat which finally pushed me over the edge. I swung the back over on its hinges to ensure that I could face forward when we left the terminus clanging in the opposite direction. Then I saw the conductress staring at me with the loathing I recall from the days when I ran down the centre aisle swinging all the seats from facing forward to facing back. I swear to you that the Scotsman published a photograph of me apologising to a lump of plastic for not having the right change.
 It is not only photographs that have the capacity to humiliate politicians. In Edinburgh I was interviewed by a gentleman who expressed interest in my appearances on Question Time and being caricatured on Spitting Image. I gave my well-rehearsed answers. Somehow, they became confused within his notebook. My relationship with Robin Day was, in consequence, revealed in a new light: 'I'm projected as the old bumbler .. I'm the bumbler who comes to your house on Christmas Day to mend the fuse and blows it.' Serves me right for having all those silly photographs taken.

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September 9, 1989

Forced feeding denied

LENGTH: 338 words

 
 A HOSPITAL sister charged with mistreating elderly patients yesterday denied she had forced them to eat food they did not want, but said she felt they should have a 'balanced diet'.
 Sister Mary Rutter, aged 48 and a qualified nurse for 27 years, was appearing before a disciplinary committee of the Central Council for Nursing. She is facing 28 counts of misconduct at Stanfield Hospital in Stoke-on-Trent between November 1983 and August 1986. 
 The committee had heard evidence that she threatened to send patients on to the veranda as punishment.
 But Ms Rutter said that she only put patients on the veranda, a covered activity hall beside the ward, for ward cleaning. She also denied that patients were refused permission to go to the toilet when they wished. There were set toilet times, though, she said.
 Patients could also have an afternoon nap and go to bed when they wanted to. 'I don't think anyone should threaten old ladies; no one would gain by it,' she said A witness, Mrs Vera Hopwood, told the hearing that a paralysed patient who needed a lot of help was left crying 'please Lord help me, please move my head,' but Ms Rutter just told her to shut up.
 Mrs Hopwood said that crying patients forced to go onto a veranda by Ms Rutter would 'hug and kiss her' in gratitude when they were put back on the wards. One patient who wet herself because she was forced to wait two hours before she was allowed to go to the toilet by Ms Rutter was called a 'dirty madam' by the sister. 'She was crying and humiliated,' added Mrs Hopwood.
 Mrs Kathleen Cooper, who started to nurse at Stanfield at the same time as Ms Rutter, said a patient who was sweating and very ill was 'dragged out of bed in the morning and forced to sit in a chair.'
 Ms Rutter claimed there was nothing wrong with her and she was seeking attention, the council heard.
 Mrs Cooper said the patient was 'most uncomfortable and abused until she died three weeks later.'
 The case has been adjourned until October 17.

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September 11, 1989

Chinese reformers say leaders will fall: Massacre ended hopes of progress, Zhao men argue

BYLINE: By LARRY JAGAN

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 THE Beijing massacre of June 4 abruptly killed China's chances of economic reform, two leading advisers to the disgraced party boss, Mr Zhao Ziyang, said in London yesterday.
 The leadership 'completely overturned the accomplishments of the last decade and cannot hope to continue to cling to power for very much longer,' Mr Wan Runnan said.
 Mr Wan, a guest of the Democrats and attending their Brighton party conference, added that China needed the plurality of political parties that Britain has.
 Mr Wan and Mr Chen Yizi are also rallying support for the inaugural meeting of the Front for a Democratic China, to be held in Paris later this month. Both were prominent members of China's loosely organised reform movement. 
 The government crackdown was to be expected, argued Mr Wan, because for years the party bureacrats had feared economic reforms. 'The market mechanisms that the reforms sought to introduce threatened their vested interests. And when reformers, in 1987, began demanding the separation of party and state functions, their political privileges were being directly challenged.'
 Although Mr Deng Xiaoping might still believe in economic reform, said Mr Chen, it is the veteran party hardliners, Mr Chen Yun and Mr Yao Yilin, who have taken control of the economy and are pushing the country back towards a centrally planned economy. This is the price Mr Deng had to pay for the octogenarians' support in crushing the students.
 Both Mr Wan and Mr Chen were at the centre of the struggles within the party about economic reforms in recent years. Mr Chen headed Mr Zhao Ziyang's influential think-tank and had been actively involved in the implementation of the agricultural reforms since 1979.
 They believe that Mr Zhao is under house arrest near the party headquarters of Zhonganhai in central Beijing. Mr Zhao remains unrepentant, arguing that he made no mistakes and that the student movement was patriotic.
 Mr Zhao's successful rival, Premier Li Peng, is thought to be seeking not only to have Mr Zhao put on trial but to secure his execution.
 Until the events of June forced Mr Wan, aged 42, to flee the country, he was a successful entrepreneur who personally benefited from economic liberalisation. His Stone Corporation, employing 900 highly skilled electronics workers, was the country's biggest electronics producer.
 'Being an entrepreneur is not an apolitical activity,' he insisted, 'since economic reform cannot be isolated from political reform.'
 Creating new businesses in China, he said, also created a new model for China's future. After 10 years of economic reform, it became obvious that individual property ownership was needed to revitalise the economy.
 Mr Chen and Mr Wan, leading members of the organising committee for the new Front for a Democratic China, outlined the four demands which unite all those who will attend the congress: an end to totalitarian government, the reinstatement of human rights, the establishment of property rights and the restoration of a genuinely democratic republic of China.
 'We do not want to destroy the Communist Party,' said Mr Wan, 'but we can no longer tolerate a situation where it is the only party. It is now evident that political reform from inside the party is impossible. Eventually we will be organisationally operational in China, but under the current government restrictions, it is impossible openly to communicate with our sympathisers inside.'
 Solidarity has been an inspiration to the Chinese movement, they agreed, and China needed a Polish solution. The front was not a party but a political movement committed to non-violent action.
 Mr Wan's Stone Corporation became a model factory, producing most of China's word processors, and the country's biggest export earner. It exported electronics equipment throughout the world, even opening up branches outside China. Mr Wan was labelled a model worker and appeared on national television on May Day this year.
 Now he is one of the party's biggest critics and one of the Chinese Government's most wanted men. He embodies the government's worst fears that economic reformers are inevitably political reformers.
 More than 200 delegates from all over the world - China, Europe, the US, Hong Kong, Canada, Australia, Japan and even Taiwan - will attend the front's opening congress in Paris.

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September 12, 1989

Tuesday Women: Bulletin

BYLINE: By PAULINE WILLIS

LENGTH: 503 words

 
 EVENTS
 Whither Women's Organisations?
 Tonight Jane Grant, the director of the newly formed National Alliance of Women's Organisations (NAWO) will be speaking at an open meeting organised by the Fawcett Society (01 587 1287) about the past, present and future in the history of women's organisations. 6.30pm at the University Women's Club, 2 Audley Square, London W1. Pounds 5 at the door (including a drink on arrival). 
 The Directory Group American women of all ages who live here by choice or because of their spouse, temporarily or permanently, are invited to the annual September social of the Directory Group, which is an association of American professional women abroad offering support and monthly meetings on all subjects. 4 pm on September 17 at the Royal Free Hospital Recreation Club, Fleet Road, London NW3. Contact Eve Hersov on 01 794 7162 for more information.
 25 Years Of Brook An open meeting on September 20 will be held to celebrate 25 years of Brook Advisory Centres. Amongst other speakers, Angela Willans, editor of Woman's Own problem page for 25 years, will be talking on a quarter of a century of problem page letters and new educational materials will be on display. 5.30 refreshments. 6.30-8 pm. National Children's Bureau, 8 Wakley Street, London EC1. 01 708 1390 for details.
 The Hen House This women's holiday and study centre in a beautiful part of Lincolnshire is holding a four-day residential course for those working with, treating, or just close to those suffering from anorexia and related conditions. From the evening of September 27 to lunch on October 1. Pounds 150 plus VAT full board. Ring 0472 840278.
 PUBLICATIONS
 Common Murder Val McDermid (The Women's Press, Pounds 4.95) Intrepid Glasgow journalist and sleuth Lindsay Gordon, heroine of the author's Report For Murder, appears again in this crime novel which takes place against the background of what is obviously meant to be Greenham Common where a murder of a prominent member of the ratepayers' association has taken place. Good mystery with some feminist philosophising thrown in.
 To Make Ends Meet ed by Jo Stanley (Older Women's Project, Pounds 2) More than a score of women, all over 60 and from many different backgrounds, have written here a short account of their working lives in paid employment often giving graphic details and perspectives which never appear in history books. Older Women's Project, established in 1985 and part of Pensioners Link, promotes and publicises the importance of older women and goes from strength to strength with its plans and activities. (01 278 5501).
 PS
 The Maypole Fund gives small grants (up to Pounds 500) to individual women/women's groups with new, imaginative ideas and projects designed to further world peace with justice, nuclear disarmament and international links between women for these purposes. Send sae plus one page saying why you need the money to Box 25, 136 Kingsland High Street, London E8 2NS by September 15.

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September 13, 1989

Homes for old to be sold

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 397 words

 
 DEMOCRAT and Conservative councillors have allied behind a plan to sell off all 22 old people's homes run by Wirral District Council on Merseyside.
 The move, which is subject to a vote of the full council on September 26, is expected to be similarly matched by other local authorities in anticipation of the Government's community care reforms.
 More than 300 people attended a stormy meeting of the council's social services committee on Monday night, which agreed the sell-off. 
 No one party has overall control of the council, and Labour members oppose the sale.
 Mr John Thornton, a Democrat social services spokesman on the council, told the meeting that only two of the authority's homes met the standards which it required of the private sector.
 'The quality of care provided by our staff is excellent. However, in the majority of cases the state of the buildings themselves is deplorable,' he said.
 'In many of our homes residents have to share bedrooms - up to eight per room in some cases; there is a backlog of repairs; and furniture and fittings are often old and shabby. We have not even been able to keep up with fire regulation requirements.'
 The homes would be sold to a non profit-making group, such as a housing association or charity, which would also take their 850 residents. The Pounds 6.7 million a year saved would go to develop community services for the elderly.
 A report to the meeting by Mr David Rickard, Wirral's social services director, warned that the community care reforms would present a 'much more difficult scenario' if a decision were not taken now.
 Under the reforms, local authorities will have to meet the full cost of care in their own homes, but only a proportion of the cost for people they place in private or voluntary-sector homes.
 Ministers expect many councils to sell their homes so that they become purchasers of care, rather than providers.
 Mr Keith Rimmer, Wirral's Labour social services spokesman, told the meeting that the experience gained by the council in more than 30 years of caring for the elderly could not be matched: 'The Tories and Democrats must learn that most people in Wirral believe it is their responsibility to look after the needs of our elderly through the rates.'
 A petition against the plan, with more than 12,000 signatures, was presented to the meeting.

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September 16, 1989

Weekend Money: Builders' spark a chain reaction to tempt buyers

BYLINE: By DAVID LAWSON and NICK PANDYA

LENGTH: 691 words

 
 HOUSEBUILDERS nervous about the way their profits are drifting into oblivion as homes stand empty are coming up with increasingly clever ways of tempting first-buyers back into the market.
 Berkeley Homes specialises in up-market mansions and rarely sees a first-buyer. McCarthy&Stone produces retirement property for last rather than first purchasers. But they recognise that life is tough at the bottom of the housing ladder and if first-timers don't buy, the ones above can't sell and move upwards to mansions and sheltered housing. So both companies have decided to pass some largesse down the chains. 
 Berkeley has added new meaning to the term 'traveller cheque' by offering a pay-back cash bonus which travels hand-to-hand from top-level purchaser down to first-buyer. It may offer, say, Pounds 10,000 to a prospective purchaser of a Pounds 200,000 home. This might seem a minor incentive but the bonus swells in significance when passed to the next link in the chain, because the house being sold to help finance the Berkeley purchase will be valued at, say, Pounds 150,000.
 The further down it goes, the bigger the incentive appears relative to the house price, until it reaches the first-buyer who can suddenly achieve a price of perhaps Pounds 85,000 rather than Pounds 95,000. In effect, the chain of sellers has reduced prices by Pounds 10,000 each and all achieved a sale.
 They could do this for themselves - in fact, the market is starting to move again in some areas as prices settle. But there will always be someone in the chain too greedy or too hard-up to cut their price without some incentive, and the chain reaction breaks down. Berkeley's Homelink scheme could also give slowcoaches a kick because the subsidy cheque is valid for only 12 weeks.
 McCarthy&Stone has suffered badly from the housing slowdown as its buyers are usually at the end of long chains. But at the cheaper end of its sheltered housing market are elderly people with homes to sell which would suit first-buyers, particularly in the provinces. So the builder has promised to pay Pounds 200 a month for two years to anyone able to free-up one of its prospective customers. This is most likely to benefit first-buyers as the scheme applies only to those without their own home to sell.
 Marketing director Kevin Holland believes this is a better bet for a buyer than taking on one of the many deferred-interest mortgages available, as the subsidy would not be added to the eventual cost of a loan.
 Barratts Developments' Mastermove package is a series of inducements to housebuyers which include a Deposit Savings Scheme, where the builder will contribute Pounds 25 for every Pounds 100 saved to buy a Barratts house. Under the terms of Parternership mortgages, buyers with 5 per cent deposit pay interest on 75 per cent of the house value for the first four years.
 These housebuilders are joined by the mortgage lenders in their attempts to jump start the stalled housing market.
 The Woolwich Building Society is the latest big lender to offer a fixed-interest home loan. The interest rate for an endowment or a pension-linked mortgage is set at 12.50 per cent for two years.
 Among such schemes introduced by smaller rivals, West Cumbria has the best deal at 12.25 per cent fixed for two years. Leeds Permanent and Cheshunt are offering home loans at 12.75 per cent fixed for three and two years, respectively. For those looking to reduce their monthly payments, the Cheshunt also has a deferred-interest option at 10 per cent for the first two years. The Heart of England has come to the aid of first-buyers who have saved at least 5 per cent of the value of the house by softening its lending criterion.
 The society will advance Pounds 46,250 to first-time borrowers on a joint income of Pounds 14,500. The mortgage repayments are based on an interest rate of 12 per cent for the first five years. The repayments go up by 7 per cent each year to avoid the hefty rise in the sixth year of the mortgage when prevailing interest rates apply. Unpaid interest is added to the total debt at the end of the term.

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September 16, 1989

Old face 'dark hours of neglect'

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 528 words

 
 URGENT action must be taken to improve community services for the rapidly growing numbers of frail and confused elderly people, an official report said yesterday.
 The report by the Government's Social Services Inspectorate warns of 'major challenges' posed by mental disorders among the over-80s and criticises the standard of many of the services for those continuing to live at home.
 It quotes the case of one woman, mildly mentally disordered and physically disabled, whose curtains were closed at 1.15 pm every day by her part-time care assistant and who was then left alone in the dark until 8.30 am the next day. 
 It also cites the case of a 'very distressed' woman who asked how she could launder her mentally disordered mother's disposable incontinence pads because she could not get a proper supply of fresh ones.
 The report says: 'Many carers continue in circumstances which appear to the outsider to be quite intolerable.'
 Publication of the report came yesterday afternoon in a low-key statement by Mr Roger Freeman, the junior health minister responsible for mental health policy.
 A separate inspectorate report on services for mentally ill people was also released, concluding that developments there were 'patchy'.
 Mr Freeman said the two reports reinforced the Government's plans to develop community care along the lines of the Griffiths report, which recommended that local authorities should be given a central role in the planning and commissioning of services.
 However, the reports will be seized on by groups arguing that the Griffiths recommendations can only be implemented successfully if the Government makes a big cash investment in services.
 Mr Mervyn Kohler, public affairs manager of Help the Aged, said last night: 'These people can be catered for in their own homes, but they need services much more attuned to their specific needs.'
 These included 'feeding, incontinence, cleaning themselves, cleaning their homes, and also some guidance on how to conduct themselves in society.'
 Population projections suggest that the number of over-85s will double between 1981 and 2001, with as many as one in five affected by dementia.
 The report, based on assessment of 172 elderly people in six local authorities, says that more than half of them lived alone. More than a third of the sample were found to be receiving services worth less than Pounds 25 a week, equivalent to less than seven hours' home help or two to three hours' plus one day's attendance at a day centre.
 The report says: 'There is urgent need for extended and flexible services, with emphasis on supervised meals, help with putting to bed and getting up, ensuring warmth and night sitting. Without increased input from statutory services and greater involvement of the community, the least able among us will continue to be neglected for long dark hours on end.'
 Other problems identified in the report include shortages of day centres, transport to and from centres, confusion of roles between local and health authorities, availability of laundry and bathing services, and anxieties over personal financial affairs.

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September 16, 1989

New York Diary: A race up the avenues

BYLINE: By W. J. WEATHERBY

LENGTH: 548 words

 
 AVETERAN Harlem resident described David Dinkins's victory this week as 'the greatest event since Joe Louis knocked out Max Schmeling'. He seemed to think Dinkins had already become the first black mayor of New York city and was disappointed to learn he was only halfway there.
 Admittedly in winning the Democratic Party's nomination, Dinkins knocked Mayor Koch, who wanted a record fourth term, out of the race. But from now until November he has to match wits with the Republicans' candidate, Rudolph Giuliani, the former Federal Prosecutor who made a name winning court cases against the Mafia. 
 Because there are more Democrats in New York then Republicans, Dinkins is theoretically the favourite, but whereas being black helped him in the Democratic primary it may not help him enough in the election. In the primary he won almost all the black votes, half the Hispanic votes and about 30 per cent of the white votes. A lot of white Democrats voted against Koch as much as for Dinkins. In the election many of them may vote for Giuliani because they don't want a black mayor.
 Dinkins is well aware of the scare factor and is masterly at conveying a calm, elder statesman image. He is the opposite of the black militants who haunt white middle class nightmares. Many of his beliefs are radical, but he expresses himself so mildly that not even the most paranoid New Yorkers could be upset.
 Early on it was Giuliani who appeared to be the militant, crusading against evil and threatening to overturn much of the Big Apple to get at its rotten side. His almost fanatical intensity, exaggerated by TV, frightened some undecided voters. It is noticeable that since the paternal Dinkins became his opponent, he has worked hard on a more relaxed image, even dancing at old people's centres with boyish gusto.
 Both candidates have promised to keep race out of the campaign, but in practice that is impossible in a violent, multi-racial city. One of Dinkins's problems will be his black militant supporters who could scare away some white voters. Giuliani may have a similar problem with his far-right, conservative backers, who could drive more liberal Republicans into Dinkins's camp.
 The recent racial incident in Bensonhurst, Brooklyn, in which a black teenager was killed by a white group, undoubtedly helped to swing white votes to Dinkins. An incident close to election day in which the situation was reversed could win the election for Giuliani.
 Running this huge, fabulously wealthy city is a prize worth having and already the campaign is becoming more bitterly personal. Dinkins, in his inimitable paternal way, has branded Giuliano as a Ronald Reagan throwback, and Giuliani has attacked Dinkins as one of the old Koch team. Dinkins has promised to bring harmony to this multi-racial city, Giuliani has promised to clean up its corruption. Elder statesman black figure versus right-wing white crusader - these are the roles they are likely to play until November.
 Giuliani is a familiar figure because New York has had many anti-corruption candidates. It is Dinkins who is the challenge. New York seems to be in the mood for change, and Giuliani must be worried when he remembers several major American cities have already elected black mayors.

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September 18, 1989

Terms of reference: A haunting sight - the hollow men of a New Age old age

BYLINE: By GEOFFREY TAYLOR

LENGTH: 963 words

 
 PERSONAL observation, though it still awaits statistical support, suggests there are many more old people in the North of England than in the South. Moreover the old people in the North are younger, healthier and better off than their southern counterparts. They may also, I don't know, be sadder.
 You have only to stand in the main street of one of the smaller Yorkshire towns (and I believe the same is true in Lancashire) to be aware of this relatively new phenomenon. Droves of men with short grey hair, most wearing loud cardigans and many in yachting caps, no matter how far we might be from the sea, wander up and down the street from 10am to 4.15pm. The women are built to less uniform specifications but there can be no mistaking them once they are seen. 
 The droves of both sexes look in shop windows but do not, generally speaking, enter shops because they already have all the consumer goods they can use. They do, however, transfer money from one building society to another. A more detailed study is needed to say for sure how they arrive and depart. Undoubtedly some come by coach and some come in their own cars. But others, I suspect, appear and disappear like images on a screen, except that they are three-dimensional and owe their apparent embodiment to physical processes not yet fully understood.
 They do not, as far as one can see, come with any purpose other than the purely existential one of being there. Since nothing comparable to this has happened in the history of the human race, it is surprising that none of the universities has, to the best of my knowledge, carried out an investigation.
 To bring some academic discipline to bear on the subject one would presumably start by dividing elderly persons into those with a purpose in going on living and those without. The people I am talking about - the marauding bands of pavement obstructors, shop window monopolisers and normal urban activity preventers - are all in the latter category.
 A commercial traveller with whom I was discussing this unexpected aspect of late 20th century Britain agreed that in his experience of North Country towns there were indeed more middle-aged old people about, most of them moneyed. He also had useful additional data.
 In the course of his job he calls at several of the new wooden chalet sites which are growing up in parts of Yorkshire. The owners of these sites have to apply for planning permission for their chalets. It is invariably refused on the grounds that the chalets don't have adequate gas and electricity supplies, drainage and roads, or that they are a visual eyesore, or that their occupants are liable to place too heavy a burden on the local health and social security services.
 However, the applicants have found that if they pester long enough they will eventually succeed, because planning authorities are composed of individuals, and are we all totally certain of the rightness of our judgments? Do we not waver in the face of incessant demands?
 Anyway, my friend the commercial traveller has occasion to visit these sites. Originally the chalets provided holiday homes but now they are in permanent occupation. He discovered one reason why. A number of the occupants had recently sold their homes in the South-east of England and moved North. They had bought their chalets for less than one-tenth of the price they had received for their brick-and-mortar houses, and by prudent financial management were able to live off the interest on the remainder.
 That would certainly account for the relatively young age of some of the North's elderly and economically inactive population, but it could not account for the sheer numbers of people involved. Again one is forced into the suspicion that not all these people have objective reality and that some are emanations from a transcendental psyche. Come to think of it, I have never had physical contact with them and cannot offer any evidence (except that of sight, which can be notoriously misleading) for their corporeal existence.
 Eliot foresaw the phenomenon more than half a century ago: We are the hollow men / We are the stuffed men .. / Our dried voices, when we whisper together / Are quiet and meaningless as wind in dry grass / Or rats' feet over broken glass in our dry cellar.
 Or put another way, they are people from the Book of Ecclesiastes who did not bethink themselves in the days of their youth and for whom, in their age, 'the grinders cease because they are few, and those that look out of the window be darkened .. And the grasshopper shall be a burden, and desire shall fail, because man goeth to his long home and the mourners go about the streets'.
 In the North of England the sound of the grinding is low (though that of the check-out till has never been more lively) and they are mourners, these people who go about the streets of our North Country towns, whose desire has failed and for whom the grasshopper, at least metaphorically, has become a burden. Their pitcher has been broken at the fountain and their wheel broken at the cistern. They are the hollow men: 'Shape without form, shade without colour, paralysed force, gesture without motion.'
 So I don't know what they are doing or what they portend, the existential ones, drifting up and down the High Street, climbing in and out of their coaches, appearing and disappearing at the pull of a mad scientist's lever.
 Are they forerunners of a new social class? Do they offer a vision of the future? For I suspect their fate will come to us all in time. We shall have to hide away and never dare to go out, for fear of the obloquy of the young, of the gilded ones for whom the years have yet to draw nigh when they shall say, I have no pleasure in them.

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September 18, 1989

Eyewitness: Tide of Ukraine marchers demand religious rights

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE in Lvov

LENGTH: 770 words

 
 MORE than 100,000 Ukrainians took over the centre of Lvov yesterday in the biggest Catholic gathering ever held in the Soviet Union.
 For eight hours, the streets of the western Ukrainian capital were swept by a tide of hymn-singing people calling for the legalisation of the Uniat Catholic Church, closed by Stalin.
 'We want President Gorbachev to legalise our church when he meets the Pope in two months' time,' Mr Ivan Gel, the head of the Initiative Group for the Defence of Believers' Rights, said. He read out two telegrams, to the Pope and to Mr Gorbachev, calling for all bans on the church to be lifted. 
 The controversy is a stumbling block to the normalisation of Soviet-Vatican relations, which will be discussed by the two men in Rome in November. If the meeting, the first between a Soviet President and the Pope, is successful, the pontiff may visit the Soviet Union as early as next year.
 The Uniats are the largest 'catacomb' church in the world. Until earlier this year their priests celebrated mass in private homes or forest clearings. If caught, they were often sentenced to long prison terms. The atmosphere eased this spring, as priests and congregations became bolder, and the authorities less repressive.
 Nevertheless, the Lvov authorities only agreed to permit yesterday's procession at the end of last week. The Communist mayor, Mr Bogdan Kotyk, threatened to resign unless the hardline party leadership in Kiev authorised the gathering.
 Scarcely a dozen police accompanied the marchers as they wound through the streets. Women in floral headscarves wept as the parish banners of about 20 underground congregations were carried along with the blue and yellow flags of the pre-revolutionary Ukrainian Republic.
 The fiesta of national and religious revival began in a park in the upper part of the old town. Lvov escaped from the war almost undamaged, and its skyline is still marked by the baroque spires and domes.
 Priests set up a makeshift altar under chestnut trees. Elderly people dominated the crowd, the men in neat dark suits, the women wearing scarves.
 Many remembered the day - 50 years ago yesterday - when Soviet troops entered Lvov, then under Polish rule. Their arrival was one of the disastrous consequences of the secret protocols to the Soviet-Nazi non-aggression pact.
 A neatly dressed lady beside me explained what had happened after the Soviet troops arrived. 'At first we thought they might bring benefits, like free education - before we had to pay. But things were very different. My father was a pharmacist. He was taken away and executed. I don't know why. Maybe he was politically active. I was only 16 at the time.'
 The Nazis came two years later. 'People welcomed them at first,' she went on. 'At least they ended Stalin's rule. The Nazi occupation was not what we wanted, but things became easier.'
 After the war she was in the Ukrainian National Organisation. She was arrested in 1947 and spent 14 years in camps in Kazakhstan and Siberia. 'When I came back, I was not allowed to live in Lvov,' she said through tears.
 Until her retirement, she worked as an economist. 'Gorbachev has done a lot for us. We hope he will legalise our church. Without hope, you cannot live. Look how many people are here. I think it must happen now.'
 Mr Gel, the organiser of the procession, was in prison from 1969 to 1987. Yesterday he walked through the town like the king for a day, urging people through a loudhailer to stay calm. The renaissance of the Ukrainian Catholic Church is a personal triumph for this burly man with a grey beard, who wore a traditional embroidered shirt under his suit.
 Along the pavement, hundreds watched in silence as the banners went by. It was not the quiet of hostility or mere curiosity. The procession was meant to be religious rather than political, and without applause. Ukrainian onlookers were almost universally in favour of legalising the church.
 The Uniats are sometimes known as Greek Catholics, or Catholics of the Eastern Rites. They worship in the Orthodox style, and their churches have the ornately carved screens, separating the nave from the sanctuary.
 But they came under the authority of Rome in 1596. Stalin put them under the Russian Orthodox Church in the hope of breaking the strong link between nationalism and religion, as he Sovietised his newly-conquered western Ukraine.
 The Russian Orthodox hierarchy continues to maintain that the Uniat tradition has no validity and Mr Gorbachev will have to persuade the Orthodox Patriarch to give up his control.

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September 19, 1989

Eyewitness: Devotees try to repay a Mother's love

BYLINE: By DEREK BROWN in Calcutta

LENGTH: 732 words

 
 SHE is a Nobel prizewinner, a household name, an inspiration. Here in the house for the dying, she is simply Mother.
 'Welcome to Mother's first love,' says one of the crisp white signs in Nirmal Hriday. It means pure heart and is the first of about 350 houses of care and devotion which have sprung from the love of Mother Teresa for the poor of the earth. 
 Beyond the sign are three lines of low metal charpoys, or string mattresses, where 50 men are being healed or eased with dignity in their last struggle with a brutal life.
 In another high, clean and spartan room lie 60 women, some in the last stages of emaciation, who are about to escape the cares and indignities of the world.
 Most of the men are labourers or rickshaw pullers, in the last big city where humans are required to be beasts of burden.
 After a few years of hauling their fellow beings, they are old men, diseased and spent. Many get tuberculosis, and when they are vomiting blood and can no longer work, they come to Mother's house to die.
 In fact, as many as half of the patients pull through, with basic medicines, simple care, and the awesome, all embracing love of the sisters and their volunteer helpers. Then they return to the horrors and evil humours of the city's underside.
 Now Mother herself, who has always understood the power of death, lies in the intensive care section of a nursing home in Alipur, in Calcutta's affluent south side. Since September 5, her sisters and her countless devoted admirers have prayed for her, and distinguished doctors have striven to maintain the heart that has inspired so many.
 Yesterday, the news was good: Mother's temperature was down again, almost to normal. But the prayers go on. 'The sisters here are praying day and night in shifts,' said Andy Wimmer. 'We know Mother is 79 and very exhausted after working for 40 years or more.'
 Andy is a Bavarian, 'a banker and computer man'. He is 35, and looks 10 years younger, with a fresh enthusiasm which seems to infect all those who work with Mother. Andy first came here in 1985, as a curious traveller. He has come back every year, for at least half the year, and now hopes to stay on for a couple of years more.
 In the space of half an hour, he could be seen chatting to journalists, taking medicines to the patients, shaving them, bringing them comfort. He found time to explain the work of the house to two girls who arrived with a tourist map and a lot of questions. They put away their map, put on aprons, and went to work in the women's ward.
 Many people, not all young, drift by to help, maybe for only a day. The rich come too: Jerry Brown, the former governor of California, did three weeks of uncomplaining drudgery. So too did an anonymous businessman, who as his last task donated an Aids clinic.
 This is an essential part, and a slightly worrying one, of Mother's work, said Andy. 'She is one of the greatest personalities of this century .. She is not only the mother of the poor; she attracts rich people too.
 'She goes to see presidents, kings, prime ministers all over the world. She is a very charismatic figure and everyone wants to see her. If another sister was to take over maybe there would be problems,' he said.
 Of course, the Order which Mother Teresa founded will continue. In little more than 30 years, it has sprung from the crawling bustees of Calcutta to embrace the world. It is a multi-million dollar movement, drawing tribute from the conscience of the well to do to the best-known Albanian in the world.
 None of this formidable organisation is apparent at the headquarters in Lower Circular Road, Calcutta. There, behind gaunt cement walls, there is a simple courtyard resounding with prayer, with the supplications of the poor, and the mundane sounds of a community in touch with life.
 Novices in white, with smiles to knock you sideways, patter around in instant welcome. Sister Priscilla, an Indian lady of more formidable aspect, her face etched with anxiety for Mother, greets yet more journalists with a sigh. 'We are all so busy.'
 Then, in an open room on an upper floor, the sisters sing their devotions. The Ave Maria, in English, is an ethereal counterpoint to the toiling, broiling city outside. In its eye-stinging sweetness, it seems the perfect praise of God, of human compassion, and of a Mother's love.

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September 20, 1989

Third Person: Credit lines

BYLINE: By HELEN CHAPPELL

LENGTH: 689 words

 
 DEREK and Marie's new pawnbroker's shop is a reassuring symphony of subdued lighting, soft carpets and twinkling glass cabinets. No wizened old men wearing fingerless gloves squat in shadowy corners, rubbing their hands with glee. Derek and Marie are in their forties and look thoroughly modern and businesslike.
 In spite of their up-market image, both can remember the times when poverty and desperation were the pawnbroker's stock-in trade. 'When my uncle started a shop in the Fifties,' says Derek, 'he'd still get mothers in to pawn the old man's best suit so the family could eat that week. Even though it's completely changed now, the old ones still have a prejudice about us.' 
 What a new generation of affluent northerners has discovered, though, according to Marie, is that popping the odd watch or dress ring is a quick, easy line of credit. Especially if the faceless ones have already cut up your credit card and put you on a blacklist. 'Most people who come to us are not really hard up,' she says. 'They may just need some cash for an extra holiday or new set of car tyres. There's no stigma about it at all.'
 Nor should customers feel bashful if their mortgage payments are pinching or they need a few quid to pay off the VAT man. 'There are some people we feel sorry for,' insists Marie, 'because we're not hard-nosed people. Some of our customers are trying to pay for private health care for a problem that's come up suddenly and they can't wait.'
 And why should they? How can you put a price on someone's peace of mind? Instead of existential anxiety, it seems, the 1989 consumer will cast a gimlet eye over his or her disposable assets and make straight for the three golden balls (nowadays just a discreet notice). Derek or Marie will take their Rolex oyster (or whatever) in their experienced hands, fondle it lovingly and offer a realistic price. If it's a deal, the cash is handed over along with a ticket redeemable within the following six months.
 If the item is not redeemed, the shop will sell it by auction. If it is - and nearly everything is - then a 5 per cent interest fee is payable. 'It's a business like any other,' says Derek. 'We're very tightly controlled by the Consumer Credit Act.'
 His biggest bugbear is lost redemption tickets. There are very strict rules about the procedure he has to follow, including issuing a special form which must be signed by a solicitor or magistrate. Anyone careless enough not only to exceed their credit limit but also to lose their pawn ticket is a royal pain. Of course, royal pains come in all shapes and sizes. Not a day passes but Derek and Marie experience a 'character' who enters their shop with some crazy story or another. Marie recalls the drink-sodden young couple who had spent a small fortune on 12 pairs of shoes at a luxury shopping mall, sobered up and decided they needed an injection of funds to bale them out. They had tried to raise some cash on a paste necklace inherited from a grandparent and worth precisely nothing. 'When I told them that, they called me every name under the sun,' says Marie. 'It was very unpleasant.'
 Diplomatic skills were called for too when an old man staggered in with a vast cardboard box stuffed with old Lonnie Donnegan albums and yellowing copies of Man and Woman magazine which he believed to be priceless. 'We sent him off to a car boot sale,' says Derek.
 Not so easy to dislodge was the trio of young lads who wanted to offload an extremely suspicious-sounding consignment of video recorders and personal stereo sets. Derek was adamant in insisting that he was not the person they were looking for but by then the boys were spoiling for a fight. Only the sight of the family dog (a mastiff) sent them packing.
 'People can be very stupid with money,' says Marie, 'but it's not my job to moralise. They have to find a way to solve their own problems. What we do is a sort of social service, but that doesn't mean we are a branch of the DHSS.' And, in any case, Derek and Marie have their new upmarket image to protect. Business is business and charity begins at home.

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September 20, 1989

Guardian Society: Agenda: More care for the carers - Government policy is to castigate 'welfare dependency' and to promote notions of consumerism. But who knows what help people need?

BYLINE: By TESSA JOWELL

LENGTH: 857 words

 
 'EVERY night I put off the moment when I draw the curtains because whenever I do I feel as if I am the last person left on earth.' This is Mr Adcock, 78, whose 82-year-old wife has Alzheimer's disease. She is incontinent, sleeps fitfully by day and is awake for most of the night.
 They have been married for 52 years: she no longer knows his name. Slight and frail, he suffered a minor stroke two years ago but for the last four has cared for his wife while the dementia has steadily dismantled her personality. 
 There is nothing particularly unusual about the Adcocks. Mr Adcock is one of five million people whose efforts make it possible for their disabled and elderly relatives to live at home rather than in institutions.
 Social policy jargon defines Mr Adcock as an 'informal carer.' Not much by way of beneficial recognition accompanies the title. But his ungrudging devotion to his wife's needs is seized upon as a validation of government policy which seeks to reinstate family values, castigates welfare dependency, and promotes consumerism as the essence of the new individualism in social care.
 Yet social services make generalised assumptions about the needs of people like the Adcocks with little or no regard for their preferences.
 It is inconceivable that Marks & Spencer, for instance, would undertake a major re-vamping of any aspect of its retail services without extensive market research and analysis: if the customers do not like the service they get, they will go elsewhere.
 The freedom of the market is non-existent to most of the people who seek to supplement their own caring resources from local authority and local services: they use these services precisely because they cannot exercise the conventional freedom of choice which consumers in the marketplace enjoy.
 Increasingly, service providers are beginning to realise that the people who actually use their services are a rich source of practical information and advice which can be tapped to guide the better use of existing resources - both people and money. This is more than mere consumerism, market-style. And it highlights some of the raw pain which users experience daily for the public service organisations which have until now given off a powerful whiff of indifference to the actual object of their apparent concern.
 It takes time, patience and a commitment to change, rather than a lot of money, to translate the vast range of individual experiences into service changes that are recognisable to the people who use them. My own work in developing consumer-led community care for Birmingham City Council has demonstrated how collaboration with both carers and people with a disability presents rich opportunities for a new partnership between those who use the services and those who provide them.
 Far from discovering that service-users hold unrealistically high expectations, we found that they tended to range from the minimal to the highly surrealistic, and that information about existing services in ordinary language rather than jargon would certainly make what is available much more accessible to the intended recipients.
 We also discovered that many carers regard what is provided for them by local authority services as marginal. Carers cope largely through their own resources. While service providers talk crisply about 'packages of care' for each of their 'clients', people with disabilities and their carers are invariably looking for friendship and a human touch and see the provision of services as a way out of their isolation as much as the delivery of a defined commodity.
 Above all, the people who use community care services are sensitive to the quality and image of the services they receive. By and large, carers are looking after their relatives extremely well and would rather forego desperately- needed respite for themselves than see their relatives confined to a day centre or residential home where the care on offer is evidently inferior to that being provided at home.
 What is needed is the re-direction of already existing services in small, practical ways to make them relevant and helpful to particular individuals.
 Take the mother of four children, one of whom is mentally handicapped. The local authority delivers her handicapped daughter back from a day centre at exactly the time she has to collect her other children from school half-a-mile away. This means she has to arrange for a friend to be at the house when the bus arrives with her daughter. Re-rota the bus and the problem is solved at no cost.
 Local authority provision is a badly directed mish-mash whose ineffectiveness frustrates or dispirits the provider and often demeans the beneficiary. The solution in local authorities is to listen to the customer. If they fail to do so, no- one else is waiting to pick up the business of providing help and support to Mr Adcock without regard to the profit to be made from doing so.
 Tessa Jowell is Director of City of Birmingham Community Care Special Action Project and Visiting Senior Research Fellow at the Policy Studies Institute, London.

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The Guardian (London)

September 21, 1989

Alzheimer skin test hope

BYLINE: By NIGEL WILLIAMS, Science Correspondent

LENGTH: 304 words

 
 NEW research suggests that a simple skin test could soon be used to diagnose Alzheimer's dementia, and that the disease may result from a defective protein circulating in the blood.
 The disease, estimated to affect one in 20 people over 65, is a progressive dementia. Distinctive 'plaques' of a protein called amyloid A4 are found in the brains of patients, but Dr Dennis Selkoe and colleagues at Harvard Medical School and Brigham Women's Hospital in Boston, report today in the journal Nature that deposits of the same protein can occur in the skin, intestines, and blood vessels of some Alzheimer's patients. 
 'A reliable diagnosis would be a tremendous breakthrough,' said Dr Ray Baker of Merck, Sharpe and Dohme neuroscience research laboratories in Harlow, Essex, yesterday. 'The possibility of drug treatments within five years or so will be helped enormously by accurate diagnosis, particularly if this can be done at an early stage,' he added.
 In the US study, eight out of 11 Alzheimer's patients had the abnormal protein at sites outside the brain, whereas only three of 26 elderly people without the disease were positive for the test. 'The tendency is to distinguish the Alzheimer's patients,' said Dr Selkoe, 'but it is not yet clear-cut in this small sample. We need a much larger study.'
 Work on the cause and possible treatments of the disease have focused on the brain, but, Dr Selkoe believes, 'our results suggest it is coming from the blood vessels'.
 A reliable skin test will need to reflect the amount of the protein fragments in brain plaques. Some encouragement comes from a rare inherited disease in Iceland, where a correlation has been found between amounts of a different defective amyloid protein in skin and in the brain, but a test could take two years to develop.

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September 22, 1989

Weather may have caused New York crash

BYLINE: By MARY BRASIER in New York and Reuter in Paris

LENGTH: 506 words

 
 A MECHANICAL failure or appalling weather conditions at the time of take-off are the most likely causes of the crash at New York's La Guardia airport on Wednesday night, in which two people died and 45 were seriously injured.
 The USAir flight to Charlotte North Carolina, with 64 people aboard, skidded off the end of the runway into New York's East River after the pilot attempted to abort the take-off at the last minute.
 The plane, a Boeing 737-400, broke up as it sank into 20 feet of water with its nose resting on the end of a pier. Passengers climbed to safety on the wings which were partially submerged. The two who died, both elderly women, were found in the buckled centre cabin of the plane. 
 Rescue workers said the casualty toll would have been higher if part of the plane had not been left resting on dry ground. Some passengers were trapped inside for more than an hour .
 Torrential rain, high winds and low cloud combined to produce adverse conditions for planes taking off from La Guardia, which is the city's airport for domestic flights.
 Flight 5050 had already been delayed for more than three hours and it was nearly midnight when it was cleared for take-off.
 Passengers reported yesterday that the plane appeared to be having trouble early on as it taxied for take-off, with the pilot unable to increase power. They said the rear engine and brakes were slammed on to stop the plane but it shot past the end of the runway and spun round in a skid which broke off the tail section of the plane.
 One possiblity being investigated by National Transportation Safety executives at the site of the crash yesterday was that winds on the runway and last-minute wind shear had forced the pilot to abort the flight. An engine or hydraulic failure could be another cause of the decision to abort.
 The Charlotte flight is the first accident involving a 737-400 aircraft since the crash of a British Midland Airways flight in Britain earlier this year when the flight crew shut down what they believed was a faulty engine. An aviation expert yesterday described the engine of the 737-400 as the cutting edge of technology and said it had encountered some problems.
 Meanwhile, military search teams have found one of the two flight recorders of the French DC-10 airliner which exploded over Niger, killing all 170 people aboard.
 The discovery could give investigators the first clues to the cause of Tuesday's explosion high over the Sahara desert.
 The French airline, UTA, believes the crash was caused by a bomb on board. Two calls were made, apparently by the pro-Iranian Lebanese extremist group, Islamic Jihad (Holy War), claiming responsibility. However, the French Government has treated the claims with scepticism.
 Investigators searched the wreckage amid shifting sand and in temperatures of 113 degrees Fahrenheit. Speed in the search was said to be critical since sand could cover the wreckage and remains in a few days. It was the third crash of a DC-10 in two months.

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September 22, 1989

Haggis economy comes under fire: An SNP plan for a budget to challenge Whitehall

BYLINE: By PETER HETHERINGTON

LENGTH: 543 words

 
 THE Scottish National Party yesterday agreed a notional budget to produce more jobs, relieve poverty, and reform taxation, after hearing that such a budget was crucial to prevent Scotland from becoming a 'haggis and heather economy'.
 The 'Salmond budget', largely the work of Mr Alex Salmond, MP for Banff and Buchan, provided the most fundamental challenge to the 282-year-old Act of Union which merged Scotland with England, delegates to the SNP's annual conference in Dunoon, Strathclyde, were told.
 Nationalists realise the economic debate will become the centrepiece of the next general election campaign. The Conservatives and the Scottish CBI will warn that independence, or more limited self-government, will threaten jobs and drive business out of Scotland. 
 Mr Salmond, one of the SNP's four MPs and a former economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland, believes a Scottish Exchequer, boosted by oil revenues, would have more freedom of manoeuvre, since it would not be 'boxed in by the inflationary pressures of the South-east of England'.
 He advocates a 'medium-term regeneration strategy' embracing a research and development programme aimed at universities and companies, and a development action fund for industrial projects and road and rail improvements.
 Retirement pensions, social security benefits, and health care budgets would be increased and a cold-climate allowance provided for the elderly. The poll tax would be replaced by a local income tax.
 Although the total cost of the budget in its first year would be almost Pounds 1.7 billion - bringing a 12 per cent increase in gross domestic product - Mr Salmond told delegates the plan was not pie in the sky, 'but pie on earth'.
 'The task facing us is to demonstrate that constitutional change can significantly enhance Scotland's economic performance; that a free Scotland can free Scots,' he said.
 Mr Alex Neil, another SNP economist, said the budget, aiming at full employment, contrasted sharply with Labour's 'neo-Thatcherism'. He said: 'The economics of the union mean more deprivation, more unemployment, more poverty, and more depopulation and emigration from Scotland, so we would end up as a haggis and heather economy.'
 Meanwhile, differences have emerged between Scottish and Welsh nationalists over co-operation with other parties in the run-up to the next general election.
 The leaders of the SNP have rejected suggestions from Plaid Cymru that it should consider pacts with the Greens or the Democrats. Plaid Cymru is keen to enter such arrangements to push the case for a federal Europe and a common environmental programme.
 Mr Dafydd Elis Thomas, president of Plaid Cymru, told SNP delegates he would be attending the Green Party's conference at Wolverhampton, and his party had invited the Welsh Greens to its annual conference.
 Last week he attended the Democrats' conference at Brighton to suggest that 'all of us who wanted a federal Europe of 100 flags' should co-operate, he said.
 But the SNP remains determined to pursue its independent course. Earlier this year, it withdrew from a cross-party constitutional convention drawing up a home-rule package to present to the government.
 Greens' conference; page 6

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September 25, 1989

Schoolteacher contests abuse charge after spanking pupil

BYLINE: By MARK TRAN in Washington

LENGTH: 189 words

 
 A FLORIDA headmaster has been designated a 'perpetrator' of child abuse for spanking a pupil too hard.
 Last May, Mr Gerald Winsett, of Tampa, gave a 13-year-old boy a whacking, as he was entitled to do under Florida law, which allows corporal punishment. 
 But the state's health department believes he overstepped the mark: it says a whacking which leaves a bruise that stays visible after 24 hours is excessive.
 As a result, Mr Winsett has been designated a 'perpetrator' on the state's Child Abuse Registry - a confidential list used for state-required screenings of child-care workers on which over 70 school employees have been listed this year as confirmed abusers.
 Mr Winsett, who has been in education for 24 years and is the headmaster of Stambaugh middle school, in Auburndale, has gone to court to have his name removed from the registry. Under Florida state law a confirmed child abuser is disqualified from working with the elderly, the disabled, in day-care centres, or in jobs that deal with adoption, but schools are also affected.
 Florida's teachers have closed ranks around Mr Winsett.

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September 27, 1989

Commentary: The queues to escape from a better life

BYLINE: By JONATHAN STEELE

LENGTH: 1186 words

 
 LEV HAS never had it so good in Moscow. Since Gorbachev came in, things have looked up enormously. For one thing, ordinary people can get licences to operate a small business. So Lev gave up his job at an institute, and started to use his battered Zhiguli as a taxi. The licence costs him 60 roubles a month, which is less than he earns in an average day. Another change is that he can talk freely, say what he thinks and become friendly with foreigners without any fear.
 But all this is not enough, Lev says, presenting me with a paradox. He has decided to emigrate. Along with all the other improvements, the prospects for Jews to leave the Soviet Union are also better than ever. He is leaving while the door remains open. This summer he, his wife and their baby went to southern Russia where his elderly parents live. The family conference discussed and debated for many hours, and then decided they would go. 'My parents have had very tough lives. I want to be able to give them some comfort in their old age,' he explained. 
 Lev has always been something of an internationalist. He is an enthusiast for Esperanto. He believes that an 'international lingua franca' will encourage human contact. But the daily queueing, the slog for food and basic necessities, and the hours at the wheel give him little time. 'In spite of all the changes here, it's hard to have any broader ideas, or entertain any notions of improving the world when you're trying to feed a perpetually hungry family.'
 Twice a day Lev stops his taxi beside the US embassy and registers his name on the unofficial list of those who want to leave. Most are Armenians or Jews, but there is an increasing number of Russians. As with so many aspects of life here, money talks. Just to get inside the embassy there are two queues. The 'live' queue consists of people living in Moscow. For every hundred people on the list there is a self-appointed marshal who maintains the roll-call. If you do not turn up every morning and evening, they ruthlessly strike you off.
 The 'live' queue has about a thousand names. The last man on it will get inside the embassy in about five months' time. There he will hand in his application and discuss his case with a consular official. (Because of the pressure of work the Americans then take 10 months to clear it.) The 'dead' queue, which has some 13,000 names, is made up of people from outside Moscow. They come up to Moscow, give in their names but only come back when the marshals phone them and tell them their time is near. It is a lucrative business for the marshals. The live queue is hard to manipulate since everyone in the street is watching like a hawk. The 'dead' list is another matter. It is padded with non-existent names, so if you slip the marshal the right tip, he can put you high up the queue.
 Sometimes fights break out between the 'dead' and 'live' queue people. There is an unofficial pact that every day 40 dead and 10 live get into the embassy. But there is always suspicion of queue-jumping. Last week a joyful Lev announced that he had moved from 567 on the live queue to 219. A friend on 219 got impatient and paid a marshal 500 roubles to go to the top of the dead queue. Lev took his place.
 He is still nagged with doubts about the decision to emigrate. Presumably they will pursue him to the airport, and long after he arrives in the United States. 'You're a journalist. You're doing something serious. You're telling people in Britain what's going on here,' Lev told me the other day. 'Maybe you think that leaving here now is escapism. I feel that too. That's what has held me back for so long.' The advent of glasnost has broken the old certainties and caused a psychological and intellectual crisis for Lev and his friends. 'You may not believe it, but in Brezhnev's time people still had more faith in the system. The ideological pressure from the propaganda machine had its effect. We knew less then, both about this country and the outside world.'
 Another impulse to go is fear of instability. Pessimism has always been a strong element in Russian life. Many Russian Jews suffer from a double dose. He says there were rumours of imminent anti-Semitic pogroms a few weeks ago. His wife's parents were so worried that they came to stay the night. Lev finds it hard to explain what prompts such fears. 'It's not that I think Russians will suddenly turn on the Jews as scapegoats. But there's a climate of instability everywhere - the violence in Fergana, in Uzbekistan, Sumgait and the Caucasus. Will it spread? Who knows?'
 In cooler moments, he accepts that perestroika is irreversible. 'I don't think Tiananmen Square could happen here. The political reforms have gone too far. The Congress of People's Deputies is a safety valve. For 70 years this country was moving towards something unknown. Perhaps now we are moving towards normal standards of civilisation and a better standard of living. I believe the capitalist and socialist systems will converge, although our government has rejected this for years.'
 Just in case it does not happen, Lev wants to watch developments in the Soviet Union from the tranquillity he hopes to find in the US. Over there he is likely to run across people in the professional Moscow-watching community who are less well-disposed towards the Soviet Union and even more pessimistic. Doomsday speculation has a long pedigree in the US, fed partly by Cold War stereotypes and partly by the fact that many of the watchers are themselves long-time emigres who need the subconscious reinforcement of feeling they made the right choice.
 Squeezed between these camps, those of us who feel that reform in the Soviet Union will muddle its way forward without major violence or repression are in an exposed minority. We can take comfort from some crumbs. US Sovietologists failed to predict Gorbachev or that change would come so far so fast. Why should one believe their speculations now? Surely it is better to analyse in detail the kaleidoscope of changes going on today than indulge in glib long-range predictions.
 In Russia pessimism has a long and justified pedigree. All but a handful of Russians have been powerless spectators all their lives. Under Gorbachev the perspective has changed; a pluralistic society is emerging but the fact of powerlessness still remains uppermost for most people. Hence the anxiety which Lev and his family feel. Around them they see rising crime. The television shows pictures of apparently pervasive ethnic violence. There is loose talk of a Russian backlash, and even civil war. Meanwhile, the ruling apparatus is still in charge. Why should people who have never seen political conflict resolved by peaceful and democratic means believe it can ever happen?
 Westerners have no such alibi. We know it can. Every day that perestroika lasts gives more and more Soviet citizens a taste of power, a sense of making a contribution to a society in flux. Which is why I continue to argue with Lev that things will gradually improve. But I don't blame him for leaving.

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The Guardian (London)

September 28, 1989

Thursday People: Banned writer finds comfort in Joy of Sex

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 411 words

 
 IRELAND'S vigilant book censors made a sad mistake when they banned Alex Comfort's Joy of Sex from their shores more than 14 years ago. Now that they have relented - in a decision announced this week by the grand-sounding Censorship of Publications Appeal Board - their countrymen will find it easier to get to know an engaging man.
 Many of them are already good friends of the doctor, author and poet whose reputation has been hopelessly skewed by the enormous success of Joy of Sex, just one of a whole shelf of Comfort books. 
 The bulk of Dr Comfort's medical career has been devoted to the elderly. He is a respected novelist. And then there are the molluscs.
 Browsing through the land snail collection of Dublin's National Museum, off-duty book censors can hardly have realised the small, delicately-shelled creatures are the gift of the same Dr Comfort, the banned writer.
 Collecting has taken him to Nepal and beyond. But frequent visits to Ireland led to a large sample of Irish snails in his personal collection. Many were rare and not in Dublin's cabinets. Would the museum like his, he asked?
 They jumped at the offer and the molluscs (hermaphrodite, incidentally, so perhaps deprived of the Joy of Sex) duly crossed the water.
 Now 69 and with his most recent book examining quantum physics (look out, Prof Hawking), Dr Comfort is undisturbed by his lop-sided public image.
 Do elderly patients on his NHS locums step back when the nurse introduces him?
 'They'd be more likely to step forward,' he suggests.
 For next week he lectures at Charing Cross hospital on 'Sexual problems in later life'.
 He began in medicine as a paediatrician, after schooldays at Highgate and student life at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he showed plenty of evidence of the all-rounder he was to become: scholarships in classics and natural sciences preceded a medical scholarship to the London hospital.
 The golden promise coincided with the outbreak of the second world war, but Dr Comfort was a conscientious objector. He was assigned to medical work, and soon came his first visit and lasting fondness for Ireland.
 Comfort became a devotee of Yeats and corresponded famously in the Irish Times with Flann O'Brien.
 He is happy the board has now removed its funny hat with bells on. The Irish will benefit from the latest edition of the book, updated to take account of Aids and medical developments in the sexual field.

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September 28, 1989

Scarborough Sketch: The Doctor mans the balustrades

BYLINE: By MAEV KENNEDY

LENGTH: 551 words

 
 IT WAS jaw-jaw and war-war. A hundred delegates turned to their nearest reporter and beseeched them to use the headline: 'We will fight them on the beaches'.
 'Ah don't you love these open-air religious revivals', cried one. It was the hour for heroes. Tony Linforth-Hall, who had already wrapped his tweed jacket around a conference organiser shivering in a little black dress, manhandled a loudspeaker on to the stone balustrade. 
 There was only one doubter who feared that the BBC cameras might still be inside the bomb-scared Spa Hall gleefully filming rows of empty seats.
 The platform party fell in on the steps. John Cartwright, sans galoshes, sans overcoat, stood above the Doctor looking noble. Rosie Barnes stood below, good-as-gold hair ruffled by the wind, cheeks flushed pink, eyes blazing as she gazed out to sea, a Britannia figurehead come to life.
 And the Doctor! One tanned hand rested on the balustrade when it wasn't needed to sweep the most charismatic forelock back from the most vote-catching widow's peak in British politics, all of the terraced gardens rising above him as he pledged to clean up the earth, all of the bay before him as he urged the faithful to look beyond Poland and Hungary to the Soviet Union. Well ..
 'The cartoonists had the idea that the party would be meeting in a telephone box - some telephone box, some party!'
 Elderly women on their way to lunch in the Clock Cafe with their poodles and scotties, paused to listen, stayed enthralled, and there wasn't a yap out of any of them.
 'There is no humiliation in speaking the truth.' They were ready to face that, particularly those who'd been at the review the previous night and heard the sneak preview of the Doctor's address to the 21st century SDP conference: 'We will fight six seats in the next election if we can borrow Pounds 5 from each member to lend to David Sainsbury.'
 But it wasn't that truth. It was the other one - that unless everyone else falls into step with the Doctor in his Kinder Gentler Coalition, Mrs Thatcher will be re-elected.
 'Let me sketch out for you what the alternative government could look like ..'
 He didn't even pencil in Paddy Ashdown, but he was very nice about the Greens, and very very nice about Labour. He was even prepared to treat Neil Kinnock as an equal. 'Neil Kinnock wouldn't get his way on every occasion. David Owen wouldn't get his way on every occasion either. Might be very good for him too.'
 They cheered for everything. They cheered for hedges and teachers and Poland. When he told them 'There are trains and buses to be caught, coaches to be er .. mounted, and cars to be driven' every breast swelled with martial ardour.
 'We must go out from Scarborough and explain, explain, and explain again,' cried the Doctor. Hugh Gaitskell never managed such a battle cry, but then he never had such a backdrop.
 Since they were already standing they just cheered so much louder that a flock of birds rose up in alarm from the Italian gardens up the cliffs.
 John Cartwright got the last word. 'That was the speech they couldn't stop to the party they couldn't kill,' he said, and looked very pleased with himself, as well he might.
 SDP conference, page 6; Leader comment, page 22; 'Poll pact vital', page 24

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The Guardian (London)

September 29, 1989

Company News in Brief: US problems hit Saga

LENGTH: 175 words

 
 Saga, the holiday firm for the elderly, saw pre-tax profits fall 4.4 per cent to Pounds 1.18 million in the six months to the end of July. But the problems were not those of other UK tour operators, hit this year by a slump in demand for foreign packages. 
 Saga's tour bookings in the UK rose by 3 per cent over the period and the chairman, Roger de Haan, says that his elderly customers are mostly sheltered from economic factors such as high interest rates: 'They have paid off their mortgages years ago and their children are grown up.'
 The problems came in the US, where Saga had a 'disappointing' six months, resulting in an overall loss which Mr Haan will not quantify.
 The UK still accounts for 60 per cent of Saga's turnover of Pounds 49.2 million in the half-year, and here bookings for domestic holidays held steady at last year's level, while long-haul holidays and cruise bookings rose sharply.
 Saga pensioners now travel to Malawi to trace the footsteps of the missionaries, or go trekking in Nepal or Iceland.

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The Guardian (London)

October 2, 1989

Sixty charged after rampage in Blackpool

LENGTH: 176 words

 
 ABOUT 60 soccer fans will appear in court in Blackpool today charged with public order offences, criminal damage, and burglary after a weekend of violence in the resort.
 Birmingham City supporters went on the rampage before and after their team's defeat in a Third Division match against Blackpool. 
 'Two hundred fans arrived without tickets and there were 3,000 in the town causing all manner of problems, terrorising elderly women and children,' said Chief Superintendent Kenneth McKay, head of Blackpool police.
 Police in riot gear were called to the Bloomfield Road ground after ticketless fans tried to force their way in. During the second half, police moved onto the terraces to part fighting fans.
 Trouble started on Friday when seven arrests were made.
 A jeweller's shop was the target of smash-and-grab raids. A woman assistant was injured.
 The Football Association will today launch an inquiry into the crowd trouble. Last season it made Birmingham City's away matches all-ticket after trouble at Crystal Palace.

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October 4, 1989

Some People: Frantic about books - Paul Minet

LENGTH: 1566 words

 
 Paul Minet, the Huguenot terrible of the old book trade, publishes later this week Late Booking, his own first book. He earns a catalogue entry by writing racily about a human sub-species that really needs a zoo to itself; by owning up about money (his own or others') in a trade that prices financial discretion above an 1865 Alice in Wonderland; and by not being William Rees-Mogg of Sotheran and Rome and Propriety and Other Newspapers. (Try visualising the ennobled Mogg knee-deep in a garageful of dampish books, or fighting a lost or Liberal cause, or dedicating his book to two wives, past and present.) Paul's own Frantic Press, located in Frant in Kent near Rochester whither he recently moved his full fathom shelves of books, could do with a Pedantic editor and proof-reader. But he has been a Wodehouse-worshipping friend of ordinary book collectors who cannot undertake the shortest journey without a book, 'not rare books, or finely bound books, or good investments - just books.' 
 IN THE course of my private buying of all books, I have met many interesting people in houses ranging from hovels in South London to suites in Kensington Palace. I remember once getting a phone call to go over to Bethnal Green to look at what was described as 'a flat full of books.' The list of tenants had been vandalised, there were no lights in the lifts and there was a caretakers' strike in progress. I hung around a bit and eventually found a woman who turned out to be the wife of the tenant, although she didn't say so. We travelled up in pitch blackness, my guide muttering to herself, and stepped out on to an open walkway some twenty storeys above the street. I suffer from vertigo, so I cringed against the wall and bolted through the door my guide opened. Her husband, an elderly man in grubby clothes, showed me heaps of books piled against the walls, under tables and lining the passages.
 'I used to be a barber at the House of Commons,' he explained. 'I knew all sorts of people there. I've always been interested in books. When I retired I sold my house for Pounds 20,000 and invested the money. She didn't want to come here, but I needed the money for my books and my investments and this was all the council offered us. She can't stand heights. See those marks on the walls - she stabs them when I'm not here. I expect she'll end up in some sort of home. I go out looking round all the market stalls in the East End ..'
 I mumbled that the books weren't quite what I wanted and made a determined move towards the front door. Outside, I tumbled into the lift, which stopped at various points on its downward descent to let male passengers into the blackness. As we got out at the bottom, a murderous-looking young man informed me that most of the women in the block now walked down the stairs, since the lifts weren't considered safe. I found myself sympathising with them. I discovered later that I wasn't the first bookseller to have been in the place. The ex-barber liked the company of booksellers. Nobody ever bought anything.
 Another telephone call and another cavernous, ill-painted and graffiti-covered block of concrete, with the usual galleries open to the biting wind. Fortunately, the flat I wanted was on the ground floor off the Gray's Inn Road. A voice asked me weakly who I was and grudgingly let me in. Its owner was a surprise, an elderly, handsome man with a goatee beard, well spoken but obviously very weak. He led me through a gloomy passage to a tiny sitting-room furnished with some rather fine 1930s furniture and some Globe Wernicke bookcases, those ones with the glass doors that open upwards.
 He lay back in his armchair and closed his eyes. He told me of his two wives, his theatregoing, his reading, his life and his hopelessness. He had been a Lloyds broker and it turned out that, years ago he had known my uncle John and knew also of my father. I poured him a stiff drink and he told me to look at the books. He had had two strokes and he said that he had a son who was coming to arrange for him to move to a home and the flat to be cleared.
 There were about 1,000 books, all virtually mint in dust wrappers, in paper bags. The vast bulk had been bought between 1942 and 1960, just long enough ago to make their condition quite exceptional. Many of the titles from the period of paper rationing between 1943 and 1951 were new to me and must have been most unusual in that condition. I never knew quite why he collected them, but he had certainly lost interest in them. From an habitue of Covent Garden, a discriminating reader and 'City gent' he had pottered down to this dingy council flat. Among the printed matter were heaps of theatre programmes, and about four hundred long-playing classical records from the late 1950s and early 1960s, all hardly played. I bought the records for myself and also two fine art nouveau vases. I hope the Pounds 1,800 I gave for the books helped make their owner's remaining days or weeks more cheerful, but I doubt it. The last I saw of him was a weak wave from his armchair: 'Time for me to go', he said sadly.
 At the end of 1978 I was called out to look at the remaining books at Bridgefoot, Martin Secker's splendid old mansion in Buckinghamshire. Secker had recently died in his nineties, a legend in his lifetime. He has lived out his last years in almost total blindness in a stable flat after passing the main house on to his children. His blindness did not prevent him from conducting a voluminous correspondence with both publishers and booksellers. His main collection went to Tulsa University, which specialises in literature of the nineties. George Sims, the first edition dealer, had also combed the place fairly thoroughly.
 There was a fair amount left, however, concentrated mainly in some rather damp garages and an old tack room behind them. In order to keep the damp off the lower shelves, Secker had fallen into the habit of creosoting the shelves, but he had not bothered to remove the books first, so there was a sticky black line across the lower spine of many of them. It was a fascinating collection - imperfect 'returns' from before the war, sample copies of late printings of books from Grant Richards, Martin Secker, Secker and Warburg, the Unicorn Press and the Richards Press and ephemera from over seventy years of publishing. I don't think there was a great deal of profit in it, but there was a great deal of fun.
 On another memorable day (in 1982), I found myself concluding a modest deal in a famous stately home in Hampshire which I could remember paying to see inside as a boy. Night was coming on around five o'clock and I had to drive hard back to London to view a load of books in an icy terrace house in Tottenham, North London, on the way. The local vicar was pottering about, clearing odd bits of furniture, for he had been left the residue of the contents for the benefit of his play-group. The late Miss Jiggle sounded, from what he said, to have been a genial person with a passion for travelling. As well as the background reading to fifty years of travel, her books reflected a very wide range of interests. I felt that I would much prefer to have had tea with Miss Jiggle herself than to be clearing her remaining books on one of the coldest nights of the year. The vicar told me the house had been 'charmed' out of her on her deathbed for only Pounds 7,000 by a repair man, thereby cheating the church of the house and leaving the almost worthless furniture instead. I have a feeling that churches in Tottenham cannot afford that kind of disappointment.
 A more rewarding private call was to a large vicarage in Blackheath, where I was greeted by some pleasant young people whose father had recently died. The house was a late Victorian one, half hidden by trees, and the interior seemed little changed with the years. The vicar had, I gathered, been very high church and his congregation had dwindled with the years. He had been rather a fine organist and the house contained two or three small organs, one rather old, with a selection of good books on the subject. The reception rooms downstairs contained a fairly general selection of his own books, but the upstairs was crammed with heaps of remains from twenty years of jumble sale bookstalls - there must have been several thousand. I think we took about three van loads of books out of the place in the end, plus an attractive bust of Dante I bought for myself, not to mention several bookcases. The house itself was to be demolished: a block of flats would cover its site and that of its vast, neglected garden.
 As often happens, I built up a picture of that vicar which made me regret never meeting him. He was a renegade American from Farmington. His rambling and neglected vicarage, his virtuosity with the organ and his alienation from his parishoners, his two Rolls-Royces of ancient vintage and his pile of catalogues from every major exhibition in London for many years aroused in me a curiosity which I had not, of course, any means of assuaging.
 It is only by turning over someone's house that you learn the questions: but you can't do that until they have gone beyond the possibility of answering them.
 From Late Booking: My First Twenty-Five Years in the Secondhand Book Trade (Frantic Press, Old Knowle, Frant, Kent, TN3 9EJ) at Pounds 12.

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October 5, 1989

Labour at Brighton: Kinnock ally lined up for the hot seat

BYLINE: By MICHAEL WHITE

LENGTH: 457 words

 
 MR Kinnock put another piece of his election campaign jigsaw into place last night when a conference session of the Labour NEC agreed that his close ally, Mr Tom Sawyer, should be put in line to be Labour's chairman in the crucial 1990-91 session.
 Mr Sawyer is the deputy general secretary of Nupe, the public service union, but, more importantly, the Labour leader's principal union ally in pushing through the two-year policy review which is being ratified this week. He is committed to the further changes in party structure and strategy which the leadership wants. Under seniority rules the vice chairmanship in the coming year could have gone either to Mr Sawyer or Mr John Evans, the Labour backbencher who was once parliamentary private secretary to Mr Michael Foot. 
 Tomorrow Mr Dennis Skinner, one of the few leftwingers not reconciled to the new strategy, hands over the chair to Miss Jo Richardson. Mr Sawyer will either be chairman in election year itself or in the last Labour conference before the election.
 Media tycoon Mr Robert Maxwell appeared briefly on the sixth floor balcony of the Grand Hotel in Brighton last night as journalists sacked on his Pergamon publishing company protested in the driveway below. Twenty-three members of the NUJ are seeking reinstatement after they were sacked following a one-day official strike in May. Last night they were asking MPs attending a reception held by Mr Maxwell to lobby him on their behalf.
 Mr Brian Sedgemore MP was escorted from the hotel by police at the request of the hotel management after he tried to deliver a petition to Mr Maxwell signed by more than 500 Labour conference delegates.
 The Labour Party has increased its membership by 42,000 so far this year, the first signs that its mass membership campaign has been having an impact. The party released figures showing that 25,000 members had been recruited centrally and that further 17,000 had been recruited by the constituencies. Most of the new members have not come from Labour Party affiliated unions, but instead from the white collar union Nalgo, the National Union of Teachers, the Association of University Teachers and the National Association of Schoolmasters.
 Conference applauded two pensioners from the Wirral, Cheshire, who were helping to organise opposition to the 'privatisation' of 22 local authority old people's homes in their area.
 TODAY'S BUSINESS Conclusion of debate on care in the community; debates on health, local government and poll tax; policy review report on democracy for the individual and the community; debates on constitutional reform, rights in a democracy, law and criminal justice, funding for political parties, and Northern Ireland.

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October 5, 1989

Labour fears privatised home helps

BYLINE: By MARTIN LINTON

LENGTH: 543 words

 
 THE Government yesterday did not disown a document leaked to the Labour health spokesman, Ms Harriet Harman, which suggests that the use of private firms to provide meals on wheels, home helps and domestic care for the elderly will be encouraged.
 The document, apparently an early draft of the forthcoming white paper on community care, talks of the promotion of a 'flourishing independent sector', and the entry of private providers into the 'domiciliary care market'.
 Ms Harman described it as the privatisation of the home help service. She said that although there was no hint of how the Government hoped to achieve it, 'clearly it is not going to be voluntary'. 
 The Government was already using cash limits to force local authorities to make increasing use of private old people's homes and it could force them to use private home helps in the same way.
 Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, issued a statement saying it was not true local authorities would be forced to use private firms to deliver home care to old people.
 'They will make their own, voluntary or private provision according to which they judge the best way of providing the best quality service,' he said.
 His statement was the first unambiguous indication that he wants private firms to enter the sensitive area of domiciliary help - until now the preserve of local authorities and voluntary non-profit organisations such as the WRVS.
 Mr Clarke claimed to have made this clear in July when he gave the Government's long-awaited reply to the Griffiths report on community care. Close examination of his speech reveals he did talk about making more use of the commercial sector, but this was taken to refer to the rapid growth of private sector old people's homes, not to home helps and meals on wheels.
 Ms Harman outlined three ways in which the Government could ensure that local authorities had to use private firms for domiciliary services without making it a legal obligation.
 They could revive the experimental scheme in Northern Ireland where elderly people were given a social security grant to pay for a private home help or meals on wheels service, or they could oblige local authorities to contract out their home help services or pay outside organisations to provide them through community care grants.
 Whichever way, the local authorities would have to monitor the service and safeguard standards in a private care industry which was already attracting its share of cowboys. It would be difficult to check that private home helps were paying daily visits and doing the job properly when many of their clients were confused and forgetful.
 When the Government accepted the Griffiths report in July, it had put responsibility for community care firmly on local authorities, but now it was emerging that they would only be 'the policemen, not the providers,' she said.
 Mrs Judith Carter, national officer of the Confederation of Hedalth Service Employees, said: 'Home helps, care attendants, meals-on-wheels, are the vital link for housebound old people with the outside world. Cowboy private firms would reduce these essential services to costed mechanistic tasks which would not begin to meet the needs of service users.'

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The Guardian (London)

October 6, 1989

Labour at Brighton (Health): Pledge to abolish eye test charges and restore all hospitals to NHS Health

BYLINE: By PAUL HOYLAND

LENGTH: 474 words

 
 THE shadow Health Secretary, Mr Robin Cook, yesterday pledged a Labour government to restore free eye tests. On current trends, four million people would not go for an eye test this year because of the Government's introduction of charges, he said. Some were putting their sight at risk. 
 'Labour will abolish the charges,' said Mr Cook. 'We will restore that vital preventative service and we will make it free again.'
 Mr Cook also pledged to make sure the National Health Service was run by people who were committed to the public health service. There would be no tax handouts to the private medical sector, and any hospital that had opted out would be brought back into NHS control as a first priority.
 He condemned the Government's proposals for the health service. 'That white paper is not about reforming the NHS, it's about commercialising the NHS,' he said. 'The moment you apply a hospital to trade for every penny, from that moment it is not what services are most needed, it is what services can we make most money out of.'
 There were only two references to elderly people in the white paper, and both referred to tax relief for their private medical care. Mr Cook contrasted that with the experience of one woman who had been told by a hospital that they could not spare her mother a clean incontinent pad until next Tuesday.
 'There will be no room on our NHS policy board for three big businessmen, each clutching his own private medical insurance cover,' he said.
 'I don't believe Kenneth (Clarke) can get the best out of the health service when every time he opens his mouth to speak about the people of the health service he speaks of them with contempt. Today he has been describing the doctors as absurd. Last month he described the ambulancemen as ludicrous. They are all wrong, it is just him, Kenneth Clarke, who has got the right answer.'
 The health secretary wanted to hand over power to local people, and Mr Cook challenged him to hold local ballots on whether hospitals should opt out of the NHS.
 Last month the director of estates in the NHS had told a conference there was a potential 'goldmine' in selling hospital sites and premises, but they were not his to dispose of in a closing-down sale of the NHS, Mr Cook said.
 A nursing assistant, Ms Ann Denman, said members of her union, Ze, would hold ballots on whether hospitals should opt out if Mr Clarke refused to do so.
 Mr Cyril Taylor, of the Socialist Health Association, told delegates: 'Market forces are totally incompatible with the health workers' ethic of providing what is needed and what is best for the patient.'
 A junior hospital doctor, Ms Ruth Gilbert, added: 'I haven't trained in the NHS for the last 12 years to become an accountant where services are tailored to make profit and not to serve needs.'

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October 6, 1989

Batons and water cannon drive back railway rioters

BYLINE: By MICHAEL FARR in Bonn and agencies in East Berlin

LENGTH: 440 words

 
 POLICE using batons and water cannon drove back thousands of demonstrators shouting 'We want to leave', as trains passed through Dresden station on Wednesday night carrying refugees from Prague to West Germany.
 Witnesses said several people were injured and arrests made. Protesters ripped up cobblestones and hurled them at police, smashed windows, and set fire to at least one car. 
 Church sources said that one East German was run over in Dresden by a train and lost his legs. Ambulances wailed through the streets of the city on the River Elbe.
 East Berlin paid heavily for its insistence that the refugees travel briefly through East Germany territory on their journey from the Czechoslovak capital to the West.
 Earlier, according to some estimates, more than 10,000 people gathered around the station and in the appropriately named Prager Strasse (Prague Street) waiting for the special trains.
 They sang the Internationale and shouted: 'Gorbachev. Gorbachev'.
 The Soviet President, whose reforms have inspired young East Germans but been resisted by their ageing leaders, was due to arrive in East Berlin today for the 40th anniversary celebratiKo #!e Communist German state.
 The festivities opened in East Berlin with a nocturnal military tattoo, held at the same time that police were deployed in force to drive people back in Dresden and elsewhere along the train route.
 The three-hour riot ended around midnight after a small group lobbed cobblestones. Police flailing rubber truncheons and carrying shields drove the crowd away from the station and dispersed them with water cannon.
 The casualty toll was not known. Nor was it known whether anyone had been detained.
 Eyewitnesses said the crowd consisted mainly of young people, but some older people also took part.
 Sources said that many wanted to express their frustration at the absence of reforms in East Germany like those in Hungary, Poland, and the Soviet Union.
 Police action to clear and seal off the track to prevent people jumping on to the trains - as some had successfully done when the first refugee trains passed through at the weekend - resulted in long delays to the eight trains from Prague.
 'This is the first riot we've had yet,' a diplomat said. Another said: 'I think the people are increasingly seeing the Gorbachev visit as their opportunity.
 'First we had Leipzig and now we have Dresden. Who knows what will happen in Berlin?'
 On Monday well over 10,000 East Germans marched through Leipzig, calling for political change and the legalisation of the main independent reform group, New Forum.

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October 6, 1989

Eyewitness: Little response as Honecker makes wreath-laying round

BYLINE: By MICHAEL SIMMONS in East Berlin

LENGTH: 416 words

 
 ERICH Honecker, the dapper 77-year-old on whom so many thousands of young East Germans are turning their backs, was on public duty in Berlin yesterday with people he knew he could trust.
 Slightly slower in his movements as a result of his recent illness, but still neat, he was among the military top brass, senior policemen, as well as members of the Socialist Unity Party he has led since 1971.
 The crowds which turned out to see him in brilliant sunshine, were surprisingly sparse. He is not as popular as he once was. It was a day for wreath-laying. At breakfast time it was in the suburbs at the main memorial for dead Communists, and then at Treptow Park where the remains of some of the thousands of casualties of the Red Army, which liberated Berlin in 1945, are buried. 
 By the time other Germans were snatching a coffee break, the little man and his chosen entourage were in Unter den Linden at the Neue Wache (the new guard house) in the heart of the old Prussian capital.
 This building, like many of East Germany's veteran Communists, is bullet and shell-scarred and it saw some of the most intense fighting of the last hours of the second world war.
 Inside, an eternal flame burns in memory of two unknown Germans. One was a resistance fighter, many of whom were Mr Honecker's comrades in arms before being shot by the Gestapo. Some were executed not far from this spot even as the Russians closed in on the innermost core of Hitler's so-called 'citadel'.
 The little man, his white hair ruffling in a gentle breeze, was flanked by his similarly aged Prime Minister, Mr Willi Stoph, and his elderly Politburo colleague, Mr Horst Sindermann.
 The group was preceded into the guard house by soldiers bearing sweet-smelling wreaths, mainly of red carnations and followed by rank and file party loyalists.
 Afterwards, a large band played, to which the marchers, jackbooted and employing high rigid steps, strutted past.
 For Mr Honecker and those close to him the war has been in many senses their raison d'etre as national leaders. Unfortunately for Mr Honecker, the war theme cuts little ice with the average East German. After the march past, the old people, suddenly isolated, waited for their official cars - Mr Honecker for a Citroen limousine and the other veterans for Volvos.
 Mr Honecker waved to the lines of people two or three deep at the most, who were watching it all from the other side of Unter den Linden. Almost nobody waved back.

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October 9, 1989

Poll tax shift to aid Conservative marginals

BYLINE: By ALAN TRAVIS, Political Correspondent

LENGTH: 495 words

 
 MINISTERS hope to avert the threatened Tory backbench rebellion over the poll tax when they announce concessions on the 'safety net' proposals at the Conservative Party conference on Wednesday.
 It is expected that the Local Government minister, Mr David Hunt, will meet demands for Pounds 650 million Treasury cash to cushion the impact of the safety net in marginal Tory seats by unveiling a package financed jointly by the Treasury and by all local authorities.
 The safety net is intended to ease hardship in poorer districts over the first three years of the tax and has angered Tory backbenchers because they see their voters subsidising 'profligate' authorities. 
 The Cabinet is also believed to have considered a more generous rebate scheme for the poorest and extra help for those who live in homes with low rateable values.
 While these concessions will help environment ministers face the Tory conference this week their civil servants have caused consternation in the Lords by tabling 144 pages of amendments to the Housing and Local Government Bill for consideration over the next three days.
 The book of amendments is almost as thick as the bill and provides further evidence that the Government timetable is so overloaded that it will probably delay the Queen's Speech from November 8 until November 22.
 A Labour environment spokesman, Lord McIntosh of Haringey, said last night: 'A Government with any self-respect and control over its civil servants would tell them to go to hell. You cannot at this late stage of a major bill try to remedy practically all the mistakes you have made in the last four years.'
 Among the hundreds of new clauses and additions are several time bombs which could spark Tory backbench revolts.
 They include proposals to remove protection from business rate increases of 50-100 per cent a year from companies which move premises after next March. Those companies which stay put will be able to enjoy a 20 per cent ceiling on any annual business rate rises imposed as a result of the radical reform of the business rating system next April. But legislation to sell off sheltered housing for the elderly to residents, and to raise council house rents sharply to link them with prices paid by tenants who have bought their council homes, are potential trouble points for the Government.
 Mr Hunt will try to meet Tory concern on Wednesday by announcing new exemptions from the poll tax for the sufferers of Alzheimer's disease and for older pupils who stay on at school. But the disclosure yesterday that MPs will be exempt from paying poll tax on their second homes will not help the presentation problems.
 As the table shows, the attempt in July to recast the safety net still left the constituents of practically all cabinet ministers having to paying substantial contributions to the safety net. The compromise should cushion the impact on these Tory areas.
 Patten recants, page 3

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October 9, 1989

Media: Now no sex please, we're on the telly - Lorra laffs, or Saturday night cringe? / Blind Date

BYLINE: By MELANIE MCFADYEAN

LENGTH: 1170 words

 
 IN THE first of the new series of Blind Date Cilla wished a couple a 'lorra lorra luck' in Cyprus, 'birth place of Aphrodite, whoever she was.'
 Perhaps it's the deliberate absence of the Aphrodite touch that makes Blind Date such a bizarrely sanitised and anodyne experience. Cilla added that she was looking for the first engagement.
 'When we cast the show,' says producer Kevin Roast, 'we make the mix as wide as possible, perhaps it's a bit foolish and that's why we haven't got a romance yet.'
 Roast's team of researchers go around the country canvassing for daters. 'We put posters in big stores, and it gets round that we're coming to town.' They see everyone who has returned application forms, enclosing a photograph and personal details from height to hobbies to phobias. Roast claims looks don't come into it. The reason the plain and dumpy don't get on the show is because, 'people who appear are extrovert and performance-literate,' or as Zoe McIntyre, LWT press officer, comments: 'They're all too vain to go on less than glamorous.' 
 Lonely hearts are 'weeded out, it would be cruel to put them on the show because it is not very likely statistically that you might meet the person of your dreams,' says Roast.
 Roast selects the final contestants. 'It's a show about kids having fun, although we do use the oldies. I predominantly choose 20-22 year olds because that's when most people aremost interested in dating. They enjoy the date most; older people are more pernickety.'
 Perhaps it has something to do with advertising, although Roast says he is independent of marketing pressures. But advertisers are chasing the 16-24s. Although 12-14 million people watch Blind Date on average, and the programme has the highest ratings of any apart from the soaps, 36 per cent of the audience is 55 and over, while only 11 per cent are 16-24.
 The cost of the show remains a trade secret, but Roast said with a smile: 'It's a shareholders' delight.' For the contestants there is no fee. They compete to appear, it's their choice to be the objects of fun, voyeurism and embarrassment. A genuinely touching moment is almost as rare as a white fly. Their reward is 15 minutes of fame and a chaperoned blind date. Tacky though Blind Date is, it isn't trash TV in the American sense; nobody gets weird or wild, or breaks Cilla's nose. And upfront sexuality is not encouraged. 'They can be saucy and cheeky but you wouldn't want the show to be raunchy.'
 Winners are chaperoned during their dates and stay in separate hotels. Roast says no dater has yet revealed any steamy intimacies, he wouldn't put it in the show if they did. 'It's a blind date, not a honeymoon. You mustn't confuse TV with real life. And I'm not very interested in whether they're bonking or not.'
 Roast may not be very interested but 12 million viewers probably are. He disagrees. 'What viewers want to know the next week is whether they were right about how the picker picked.'
 But what is Blind Date about if not love and sex? 'It's a spectator sport, you can sit at home and play matchmaker. It's a game show, it's meant as fun and entertainment, it's meant to make you laugh.' But where is the line between laughing and squirming?
 For him Blind Date is more about romance than sex. 'Karen and Allan were very romantic,' he says happily. Karen was wearing a dress that perched perilously on her bosoms in a visual display of sexual innuendo as she and Alan gazed at each other and Cilla glowed with pleasure.
 A couple of weeks ago, as Cilla gave her blessing to a prizewinning couple, she wondered if next week we would find out whether the earth moved or not. Earth moving in this context is not something done while building motorways, as we well know. Allusions to sex come thick and fast but they're safe, British and banal.
 'It's pretty squeaky clean really,'says Roast,'but that's happened naturally, it's not policy.'
 And to preserve Blind Date's cleanliness, contestants aren't allowed to tell their backstage stories to the tabloids. It's partly to protect them, says Roast. They aren't familiar with the wiles and lures of the media. 'We have an obligation to look after them as well as we can.'
 And to make sure they don't kiss and tell, when contestants sign up, they undertake not to discuss the show with 'any other person, or company' including the media. Roast doesn't like backstage revelations, 'I don't want to know how Superman flies, it destroys the illusion, the show has a bit of mystique and that's good.'
 What about the mystique when it comes to the unspontaneous and trite questions and answers given by contestants? Contestants are asked to come up with a dozen questions of which Roast picks three. Some are streamlined to extract more than a 'yes' or 'no' answer. Are they fixed? 'That's a hoary old chestnut. It's preposterous to expect people with no TV experience to come on with no preparation,' so there are rehearsals with Equity stand-ins. But rather than manipulating the 'pickers and pickees' , says Roast, 'it is more a case of nannying and reassuring.'
 And why does it seem there is an absence of people of other races apart from WASP? 'This show isn't social work. We find that with those groups, although we actively try to contact them, they're not very interested in appearing on TV, it's not part of their cultural day-to-day life.'
 And there has never been a gay Blind Date. Roast says, 'I don't think that would be appropriate for a game show on a Saturday night at 7.30. Blind Date is a heterosexual show, I'm trying to make the best entertainment I can with the best mix of people I can; people who will enjoy themselves on TV. I'm not sure whether gays would enjoy themselves or not. It's not something we've thought about. It doesn't interest me so I suppose as long as I'm producing it, it won't happen. I'm not anti-gay, but you have to think about the audience. We're looking at a prime-time entertainment show where you have to get maximum ratings, it's meant as popular entertainment and that's where I pitch it.
 'Your contestants are your assets, your most precious commodity. My discomfort would be in making them pawns, playing games with them.' Who then is playing games with whom? Twelve million viewers, eight contestants, Cilla Black and the production team? It's a uniquely contradictory and questionable late 20th century phenomenon.
 The new touch in this series, the video camera following daters, might lessen the mystique - it certainly threatens the schmaltz. A couple videoed recently in Hong Kong couldn't even muster the usual sucrose coyness. They looked bored. Still, it's all part of the naughty-vicious fun in the tradition of Blind Date standard insults: 'I'd put his moustache in a gro-bag,' 'The lunch was very, very good. It was a pity I had to share it with him ', 'She was slim and small, which was an advantage. That was about her only advantage.' All part of the spectator sport really.

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October 12, 1989

Mild winter helps reduce death rate

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 282 words

 
 LAST winter's mild weather contributed to the lowest number of deaths for 22 years, according to figures released by the Office of Population Censuses and Surveys In the first three months of this year, 149,446 deaths were recorded - 6 per cent fewer than the same period in 1988, and the lowest for the quarter since 1967.
 A breakdown by age shows reductions occurred typically, but not exclusively, among the elderly - indicating that the mild conditions were partly responsible. 
 However, medical experts believe improvements in diet and health education may have helped, particularly the greater awareness of the dangers of hypothermia.
 The statistics show 65,700 people aged 65-74, and 168,700 aged 75-84 died in the first three months of 1989. These figures are down by 6 and 5 per cent on the first quarter of 1988; 5 and 3 per cent on the first quarter of 1987; and 13 and 16 per cent on the first quarter of 1986.
 Compared with 1988, deaths among men of all ages from bronchitis fell by 14 per cent, and from pneumonia by 11 per cent. Among women, deaths from accidental falls were down by 7 per cent. Across both sexes, suicides were down by 20 per cent.
 Professor Peter Millard, a specialist in geriatric medicine at St George's hospital, south London, said elderly people were especially vulnerable to falls in severe winter weather; and those with heart conditions often suffered attacks clearing snow.
 He said the general rule is the lower the temperature, the higher the death rate. But he added: 'It's probable that the mild weather, the absence of a flu epidemic and the greater stress on health education all combined to produce this result.'

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October 12, 1989

Conservatives at Blackpool: Terminally ill will get attendance allowance - Benefits

BYLINE: By ANDREW CULF

LENGTH: 350 words

 
 TERMINALLY ill patients are to qualify for attendance allowance, the Social Security Secretary, Mr Tony Newton, announced yesterday.
 He told the conference that the extension of the allowance would 'do more to help the terminally ill, their families, and others such as hospices which do so much dedicated work caring for people who are dying'.
 Later he said it was hoped that the change, partly a response to vigorous pressure from hospices, would be implemented within months. 
 During the conference debate on pensions, Mr Sid Cordle (Sheffield) described the retirement pension as totally inadequate. Huge poverty gaps had been left.
 Wing Commander Derek Martin (Wessex) called for the pensions of the 50,000 remaining second world war widows to be uprated. They received about half the pension of those widowed after 1973, he said.
 In his speech Mr Newton said pensioners' net incomes had increased by as much every year under the Tories as they had in all five years combined under Labour.
 The abolition of the pensioners' earnings rule had benefited 400,000 people, and special benefit increases for the least well-off pensioners aged over 75, or disabled, had helped 2.5 million of the most needy.
 He accused Labour of trying to beguile pensioners and benefit claimants with 'multi-billion pound promises' they could not keep. 'What we promise, we will deliver.'
 The recent abolition of the earnings rule, which had stopped old-age pensioners from claiming a pension if they carried on working, and rises in benefits for the least well-off pensioners showed that commitment.
 'These are not a couple of gimmicks to give me something to say. They are part of a consistent development of policy to meet the needs of this increasingly important section of our society.'
 The Government was fully committed to the basic state pension but wanted to boost the number of retired people with extra income.
 TODAY'S BUSINESS: Debates on Farming and Food, Defence, Economic Policy and Taxation, EC and Overseas Affairs, Transport, Drugs and Sunday Trading.

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October 17, 1989

S African rightwing warns of backlash: State newspapers demand restraint from ex-prisoners

BYLINE: By WILLIAM MACLEAN in Johannesburg

LENGTH: 493 words

 
 FEARS of a white backlash grew in South Africa yesterday after jailed black nationalists freed at the weekend resumed political activity and vowed to fight on against apartheid.
 The Conservative Party the main white opposition to President FW de Klerk's National Party said the release of the eight top political prisoners risked bringing chaos and eventual black Marxist rule to the country.
 Pro-government white newspapers warned the eight elderly men against political militancy, saying it would hinder Nelson Mandela's release and delay reform. 
 Most of the eight spent the day relaxing with friends and family, but the former African National Congress secretary-general, Mr Walter Sisulu, aged 77, held meetings at his home near Johannesburg.
 'He never stops. He went to bed late last night and this morning he was the first up to start working,' a friend said.
 Mr Sisulu and the other activists held a news conference within hours of their release, calling for redoubled efforts to end apartheid and white minority rule.
 The eight, seven of them leading ANC members with an eighth from the Pan Africanist Congress splinter group, have never renounced the use of violence in the anti-apartheid struggle.
 The pro-government Citizen newspaper said continued black protests following the release of the eight men on Sunday after long prison terms could provoke a backlash from minority whites.
 It added: 'White counter-action to black rallies, marches and acts of defiance will become a growing threat, especially when the internal ANC misuses its new-found freedom to act openly.'
 The Afrikaans-language Beeld said the eight would be sorely tempted to play a militant political role.
 'We would seriously plead with them to resist those petitionings .. If there is to be reconciliation it must come from both sides.'
 The neo-Nazi Afrikaner Resistance Movement, which wants a whites-only state, is considering suing the government for the releases under anti-Communist legislation.
 Mr De Klerk says black domestic reaction to the release will determine when Mr Mandela, South Africa's longest serving political prisoner, is freed.
 His release would signal that Pretoria is ready for talks with the ANC on easing 40 years of apartheid and giving voteless blacks a role in government.
 The ex-prisoners' news conference was the ANC's first in South Africa since the organisation was banned in 1960. In another sign that the organisation is emerging from the shadows, statements with the ANC letterhead were issued to news organisations in South Africa on Monday for the first time in years.
 The state-run South African Broadcasting Corporation said the ANC's concept of armed struggle 'belongs to a past political era.'
 'Participation in the negotiation process must be comprehensive, involving authentic leaders of constituencies across the political spectrum, from left to right,' it said.- Reuter.

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October 20, 1989

Health: Self-Help

LENGTH: 154 words

 
 (An alphabetical directory of self-help groups) Alzheimer's Scotland, 33 Castle Street, Edinburgh EH2 3DN. Tel: 031-225 1453.
 Aims: To provide support to those caring for dementia sufferers by offering them the chance to share their experiences with other carers. 
 Association for Postnatal Illness, 7 Gowan Avenue, Fulham, London SW6 6RH. Tel: 01-731 4867.
 Aims: To provide support through a nationwide network of women who have suffered and recovered. Free information pack. Send SAE.
 Association for Spina Bifida and Hydrocephalus, 22 Upper Woburn Place, London WC1H OEP. Tel: 01-388 1382.
 Aims: To provide information, advisory and welfare services and practical assistance.
 Association of Carers (Renamed Carers National Association), 29 Chilworth Mews, London W2 3RG. Tel: 01-724 7776.
 Aims: To give information and support to carers looking after the elderly or disabled at home.

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October 21, 1989

Pressure grows on pension age

BYLINE: By DEBBIE HARRISON

LENGTH: 288 words

 
 PRESSURE on the Government to equalise state pension ages intensifies today as the Campaign For Equal State Pension Ages holds it first national conference at the Quaker International Centre, 1 Byng Place, London, WC1, from 10.30am to 5.30pm.
 The state pension age in Britain is 60 for women and 65 for men. Even if a man retires early he cannot claim his state pension until he is 65; a discriminatory practice that can cost him thousands of pounds in lost income.
 CESPA's aim is for equality in the treatment of men and women in pension schemes, in particular the state pension scheme, which it believes should be available without penalty at age 60.
 The organisation, formed in 1986, says other benefits and concessions for older citizens, such as reduced rates on buses and free prescriptions, are dependent on entitlement to the state pension.
 The EC is likely to force the Government to to pay pensions at 60 within the next 10 years.
 From the Government's point of view this issue is a political hot potato. On coming to power it revealed a firm commitment to reduce the burden on the state of providing pensions.
 So, it is likely to resist stubbornly the reduction in the male pension age to 60 since this would impose a further burden on resources. Yet to raise the female pension age to 65 would prove extremely unpopular and politically dangerous in the run-up to the next general election.
 While the Government prevaricates, so too will most company pension schemes which still maintain unequal pension ages, despite the legal requirements to provide equal retirement ages for equal jobs.
 For information write to Cespa, 36 Orchard Coombe, Whitchurch Hill, Reading, RG8 7QL.

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October 24, 1989

Tuesday People: Seeking out the guilty Nazis - Thomas Hetherington

BYLINE: By DENNIS BARKER

LENGTH: 401 words

 
 THE retired Director of Public Prosecutions, Sir Thomas Hetherington, is an amiable man who appears to believe in openness and goodwill. His amiability stops with certainty when it comes to Nazi war criminals, even after half a century.
 The thought that some of the men and women who eagerly murdered and tortured Jews and others in the second world war could now be frail, in poor health and might cut misleadingly pathetic figures in the dock does not make him reluctant to bring them to court. 
 Sir Thomas, whose report on war criminals now living in the United Kingdom was a lynchpin of yesterday's London conference on prosecuting them, is 63 and was just too young to take part in the second world war or to witness any of the Nazi death camps at the time.
 After Rugby school and Christ Church, Oxford, he became a barrister and went to the legal department of the Ministry of Pensions and National Insurance the following year. By 1975 he was deputy Treasury Solicitor.
 Two years later he was made Director of Public Prosecutions and bombarded with easy decisions (like dodging the lady who wanted him to prosecute London Zoo for not putting knickers on its monkeys) and with extremely sensitive ones, like authorising the prosecution of Mr Jeremy Thorpe, the former Liberal Party leader, and asking the media not to name a Colonel B in a security court case after his real name had been mentioned in the Commons.
 Sir Thomas (known as Tony because he could not pronounce Thomas as a baby) focused on four certainly prosecutable alleged war criminals now living in Britain - the fourth died the same day Sir Thomas was in the Ukraine checking him out.
 'There is a realistic prospect of conviction if the witnesses can be brought before a court in one way or another - it would be best if it were personally but, if not, then by satellite.'
 Since he was appointed to the war crimes inquiry last year he has travelled to Australia, Canada, Israel, Germany, the United States and Moscow (four times). 'I must have seen 30 to 40 officials and 40 to 50 potential witnesses.
 'If anyone says these war criminals are now pathetic old people I would say the final decision whether they should be prosecuted or not would be taken in England by the DPP, and that is one of the factors he takes into account. The state of health of the potential defendants does not worry me.'

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October 25, 1989

Victorian school to help children master the past

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 305 words

 
 CLASSROOM forays into the Victorian past have become so popular in West Yorkshire that a 19th century school is to be uprooted and rebuilt at Bradford industrial museum.
 Stone by stone, the disused village school at Burley Woodhead, on the edge of Ilkley Moor, will be moved next year to a cobbled street outside the museum, 10 miles away. 
 Apart from visits by schoolchildren, the building may develop a medical use. Mr Eugene Nicholson, who conducts lessons in the museum's present Victorian classroom dressed in frock coat and steel-rimmed glasses, is discussing visits by elderly people suffering from degenerative conditions like Alzheimer's disease.
 'It may be that returning to a school similar to those of their childhood could trigger something in the memory,' he said.
 Records from Bradford education department allow the present mock school, one of 15 in Britain, to operate a range of time-travelling, from the 1870s to the eve of the first world war.
 Authenticity includes the use of a 19th century teachers' trick to impress school inspectors with a class's keenness and high standards.
 When visitors call, every hand shoots up in response to Mr Nicholson's questions. By a prior conspiracy between him and the children only those using their right hand know the correct answer.
 The rebuilt Burley Woodhead school, complete with its yard and antique outside lavatories, will give room for military PE sessions for boys and embroidery classes for girls. The museum also hopes to offer a whole day session, with children at school in the morning and - like their predecessors - working in the museum's woollen mill in the afternoon.
 The verdict of class five from Tickhill Estfeld first and middle school, Doncaster, who visited the museum this week, was unanimously 'brilliant.'

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October 25, 1989

Church urged to cast net wider

BYLINE: By WALTER SCHWARZ, Religious Affairs Correspondent

LENGTH: 283 words

 
 BISHOPS and vicars should seek out potential priests among engineers, writers, doctors, farmers, mechanics and other groups, a Church of England report says today.
 The report, Call to Order, by The Advisory Council for the Church's Ministry, highlights the expected shortage of priests as older men retire. 
 It suggests professional people could work full-time or part-time in the Church. The move would be a departure from the tradition of people answering 'a call' to the priesthood - 'a somewhat haphazard method,' according to the report.
 Young black Anglicans should be 'targeted' as candidates for ordination and women should be encouraged to become deacons.
 The secretary to the group which produced the report, the Reverend Charles Richardson, said yesterday: 'If women were allowed to be priests tomorrow, many of these problems would go away.'
 Mr Richardson, Vocations Adviser at the Church of England's headquarters, said the Church should improve stipends and training to encourage people to give up professional careers. Lay volunteers could take over parish work, especially in inner cities.
 Ordinary churchgoers should help spot potential priests or lay assistants, says the report. It concludes: 'If we are to take seriously the belief that the church is a community of called and gifted persons, we may expect to see new forms of representative ministry continuing to emerge, which the Church will have to decide whether officially and formally to adopt.'
 The report, by a working party chaired by the Very Reverend Peter Baelz, the retired Dean of Durham, will be considered in dioceses.
 Call to Order, Church House, London SW1P 3NZ. Pounds 2.

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October 26, 1989

Arts: A stage further - A staid Yorkshire spa taking an adventurous line in drama

BYLINE: By MARTIN WAINWRIGHT

LENGTH: 1023 words

 
 HARROGATE is an easy place for the highbrow to guy, with its elderly ladies commuting sedately between Betty's tearooms, the Valley Gardens and the shops in Parliament Street. Its supreme cultural moment remains the rediscovery of Agatha Christie in the Old Swan hotel in 1926, after her breakdown and famous disappearance.
 But the town has started to earn a different sort of dramatic reputation since 1987, when its repertory theatre came back to life after an agonising year in the dark. Audience walkouts, bad language, gay and vasectomy plays, and now, opening today, A Man with Connections, the contemporary Soviet two-hander previously performed only at the Royal Court and the Traverse. What is going on in the quiet, respectable North Yorkshire spa? 
 Part of the plasterwork frieze in the Victorian theatre lobby gives a clue. Two sprightly young bas-relief figures tease a third, bearded and ancient, above the explanatory heading: Fun and Frolic Mocking Time. The Harrogate Theatre is having a high old time in the hands of a young board of managers and an artistic director with flair and a gift for constructing eye-catching seasons.
 'I've frequently found myself reading a script and thinking: that's a bit dodgy for Harrogate,' says Andrew Manley, 44 and now in his fourth year of heading the theatre's productions. 'But then I start analysing why it might be dodgy, and I find that so interesting that I decide: well, let's do it. Perhaps the audience may find the process interesting too.'
 To start with, they didn't appear to. Normal Heart, the gay play, did under 40 per cent business in the first season after the year's closure; and that was in spite of several highly-publicised walkouts. But jollity and quality, like the domestic Prime Ministerial saga Anyone for Denis? and Wilde's The Ideal Husband set in modern, insider-dealing times, balanced the box office. The season was the best financially for 20 years.
 It came most strikingly in the rep's regional premiere of Serious Money, Caryl Churchill's sometimes foul-mouthed onslaught on the City. There were more walkouts but business was well up. 'These challenging plays may never do so well, but if you keep on doing them, they'll do better,' says Mr Manley. 'Gradually you build an audience for less well-known, serious material.'
 The critics, nationally as well as locally, were won over rather more rapidly than 'gradually', with standards praised by the Financial Times as well as the Yorkshire Evening Press. Such laurels helped to counter any suggestion of bumptious young people thumbing their noses for the sake of it at a staid town which kept them in work.
 The year's closure was also handy. Mr Manley started at Harrogate only a year before the crisis, too late to be linked to the sleepy artistic policies which had helped to bring it about. (Lord Rees-Mogg sliced its Arts Council grant and left it with Pounds 90,000 to pay off.) Instead, Mr Manley was endlessly featured in 'Save Our Theatre' initiatives, rallying local patriotism from thousands who had seldom gone near the place. He had no previous connection with Harrogate - the son of a Birmingham sheet-metal worker, his CV ran from the Central School of Drama in London to the Touch Theatre in Milford Haven. But the campaign won him acceptance.
 Reconstituted, with the debt paid off, the theatre earns 60 per cent of its roughly Pounds 530,000 costs, with the balance from Yorkshire Arts, North Yorkshire and Harrogate Council.
 In turn, Mr Manley likes the town. His children are at local schools and due to be goblins in this year's Harrogate Theatre pantomime, Mother Goose. The annual pantomimes themselves are another important source of local approval. Written by Mr Manley and his actress wife Jennifer Granville, they are militantly traditional.
 These comfortable strengths, and the physical cosiness of the theatre, plush seats and only 476 of them, are seen by the 40 rep staff as a reassuring setting for the fireworks in their annual programme. 'I know newspapers can't resist phrases like 'storming out' when people leave,' says Mr Manley, who directs 90 per cent of the theatre's output. 'But it isn't really like that here.'
 He proved the point by skulking outside the theatre to monitor the angry Serious Money exit one Saturday night. 'Only one couple came out,' he says. 'I thought: this can't be right. So I went up to the bar, and there were about half-a-dozen others who weren't going back in to the play. But they were quite happy finishing their ice creams and chatting.
 This may have been a regional determination to salvage a pre-paid evening out; but the theatre's administrator, Stella Morrell, has only ever had one letter asking for a ticket refund. That was from someone who hated last year's David Mamet adaptation of The Cherry Orchard, which the Guardian described as 'first class, world class theatre.' Ms Morrell politely sent him the clipping and got the tart reply: 'The Guardian - well, really!'
 Harrogate, though, is not wholly the Daily Telegraph-land of its image. There are anti-vandal patrols in the Valley Gardens. More positively, lively Southern refugees are colonising the Dales to the north and west.
 Plays like A Man With Connections attract plenty of their theatregoers from Leeds and Bradford.
 The theatre's board, which includes the playwright Ken Blakeson, whose Excess Baggage got the BBC into trouble, is meanwhile 'young, vigorous and out there pitching for us all the time,' in Mr Manley's words. Its meetings are lively and critical, which he welcomes too.
 For the future, with houses now averaging 74 per cent, Mr Manley extends this concept into approving murmurs about the value of 'the Chinese concept of continuous revolution.' A distinctively Harrogate revolution, though. After A Man With Connections, the company is putting on Denise Deegan's subversive schoolgirl hoot Daisy Pulls It Off. Harrogate Ladies College has booked the entire theatre for an evening.
 Fresh approach .. director Andrew Manley is winning audiencesPHOTOGRAPH: ASADOUR GUZELIAN

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October 26, 1989

Warning on social reform

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 300 words

 
 MANY social services departments are unprepared for the changes they will have to make under the Government's community care reforms, the Audit Commission says today.
 The new policies, including progress on care in the community and giving senior social workers budgets, could cause great problems for mentally handicapped people unless departments act quickly. 
 A commission survey of 50 departments found that only Kent and East Sussex had the kind of management and budgetary system that will be necessary by 1991. The commission says the changes, particularly senior social workers' taking responsibility for a budget, will come as a shock to staff and councillors. If they do not adapt quickly, the system 'will simply not work'.
 The Government is about to publish a white paper setting out plans for social services departments to take a lead role in arranging community care for mentally handicapped, mentally ill and elderly people.
 The commission supports the move, but its survey paints a picture of unreadiness among social services departments, and slow progress in working with health authorities to transfer 124,000 mentally handicapped people from long-stay hospitals to the community.
 Only 40 per cent of departments had reached agreement with health authorities on joint strategies, and even in those cases 'achievement has been slow and getting slower'.
 One problem has been the negotiation of 'dowries' from health authorities to social services for people transferred from hospitals. Mr Howard Davies, Audit Commission controller, said the typical Pounds 12,000 a year dowry contrasted with actual costs of Pounds 20,000-Pounds 30,000 for an adult in a group home.
 Developing Community Care for Adults with a Mental Handicap: HMSO; Pounds 4.25.

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October 26, 1989

Patient home care urged

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 332 words

 
 THE HEALTH service could save more than Pounds 100 million a year by treating some patients at home instead of in hospital, a report today suggests.
 Hospital-at-home services not only save money in the long term, but also are popular with patients and staff and can release hospital beds for more urgent cases, according to the report by the King's Fund Centre, a health research unit.
 Although such services are minimal in Britain, the report predicts a surge of interest when the Government's health and community care reforms are implemented. 
 Its author, Mr David Taylor, said: 'If there were a drug which was not only preferred by patients but which could reduce the need for hospital beds, improve rehabilitation and increase staff satisfaction, it would have been vigorously marketed.'
 Interest in hospital-at-home services was aroused in the 1970s, and a scheme began in Peterborough in 1978.
 In 1988-89 it cared for 320 patients as an alternative to hospital admission or as an aid to early discharge in cases needing more than conventional district nursing.
 The scheme involves a minimum of two home visits a day. Patients with hip fractures stay in hospital for eight days on average and are then cared for at home for nine days, compared with up to 22 days of conventional hospital treatment.
 The report argues that the system could easily be extended to knee replacement patients, elderly people with disabilities or chronic health problems, stroke victims, Aids victims, and mental health cases.
 However, Mr Taylor gave a warning that hospital-at-home was expensive to set up, compared with simply opening extra hospital beds. But the coming reforms, including a requirement for hospitals to count capital costs in their charges to health authorities, would make it more attractive to health managers, he said.
 Hospital at Home: the Coming Revolution; King's Fund Centre Communication Unit, 126 Albert Street, London NW1 7NF; Pounds 1.

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The Guardian (London)

October 26, 1989

Aid deal offered to offset freeze on child benefit

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE and ALAN TRAVIS

LENGTH: 722 words

 
 THE Government last night appeared to have made a net saving by freezing child benefit for a third year and spending only some of the cash on measures to help poorer pensioners, families on low incomes, the long-term sick and disabled.
 Mr Tony Newton, the Social Security Secretary, confirmed in the Commons that child benefit would remain at Pounds 7.25 per child, the rate set in 1987, until at least April 1991.
 Announcing the annual uprating of pensions and benefits for next April, he unveiled instead what was called a 20-point plan to help the three groups 'whose priority is, I believe, recognised in all parts of the House'.
 Mr Newton was repeatedly challenged to acknowledge that he had fought for child benefit to be uprated, but had been defeated by the Treasury. 
 He said only that in deciding not to uprate the non-means tested benefit 'I have taken account of the fact that an increase in child benefit does nothing for the least well-off.'
 Freezing child benefit saves about Pounds 250 million. According to Mr Newton, the special measures announced yesterday will cost Pounds 100 million for disabled people, Pounds 75 million for families and Pounds 115 million for the elderly; a total of Pounds 290 million.
 However, a more objective total would be Pounds 190 million because Pounds 100 million of the cash going to the elderly is for routine uprating of the income support limits for people in residential care.
 At a press conference, Mr Newton conceded: 'It could be argued that we would have made some changes to the residential care and nursing home limits anyway, but the fact is there is no definite commitment to do so, the position is they have to be reviewed each year and it is money which has to be found.'
 Owners of care homes will, even so, be angry that the limits are to increase by less than inflation. The basic residential home limit for elderly residents rises by Pounds 10 or 7.1 per cent to Pounds 150, while the rate for very dependent elderly people goes up by Pounds 10 or 6.5 per cent to Pounds 165. Many home owners say they are already subsidising residents on social security.
 Most other benefits and pensions rise by the September inflation rate of 7.6 per cent or, in the case of income-related benefits, by 5.2 per cent, equivalent to the inflation rate less housing costs.
 The general uprating will add Pounds 2.5 billion to government expenditure and, as Mr Newton pointed out, the overall bill will be running at more than Pounds 1 billion a week for the first time.
 Under the additional 20-point plan, low-income families will be helped by higher increases in family credit and income support rates. Lone parents will get bigger rises in housing and community charge benefits and will be able to earn Pounds 25 a week, rather than Pounds 15 as now, without losing benefit.
 Most help is being channelled to disabled people. Measures include higher rises in existing benefits, a new income support payment of Pounds 10 a week for informal carers already receiving invalid care allowances, and extension of the mobility allowance to 3,000 deaf-blind people.
 Mr Newton described these steps as an interim response to the Government's review of disability benefits, with further proposals likely this year.
 The Disability Alliance umbrella group called the concessions 'a drop in the ocean of need'.
 The Child Poverty Action Group, which calculated that child benefit had been eroded by Pounds 1.35 over three years, called on the Government to come clean on its plans so that a proper debate could be held.
 Rebel Conservative MPs indicated their intention to vote against the child benefit decision when the Commons is asked to approve the regulations implementing the benefits package next month.
 Sir Ian Gilmour, the former minister and MP for Chesham and Amersham, said: 'The fact that this is the third year running that the Government has made this mean and wrong-headed decision to freeze child benefit can only mean that the Government believes couples with children have no greater expenses than couples without children, or single people.'
 Last year 16 Conservatives voted against the Government and a similar number abstained, bringing the Government's majority to below 50.
 Day in politics, page 6

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The Guardian (London)

October 26, 1989

The Day in Politics: Lords inflict two-pronged defeat on Government - Housing Bill

LENGTH: 473 words

 
 THE Government was last night defeated twice as the Lords voted for amendments to the Local Government and Housing Bill.
 There were Opposition cheers as a cross-bench amendment to the Local Government and Housing Bill, preventing subsidised rural housing, intended for the low paid, from being sold on the open market, was carried by 111 to 38, a majority of 73.
 Lord Stanley of Alderley (C) launched the amendment. 
 It was also backed by former the Conservative Cabinet Minister, Lord Prior.
 The Government's part-ownership scheme will allow housing associations to build starter-homes on land where planning permission would not normally be granted.
 Young people and low earners will be able to buy a part-share in the homes, but the amendment prevents them from selling on the open market.
 Instead, when they move on they will have to sell back to the housing association, so that their home can be passed on to others in similar circumstances.
 Lord Stanley, moving the report stage amendment, said: 'The Government scheme, good though it is on intention, just will not work.
 'Under the Government scheme, the occupier has the right to sell on the open market, so losing the house for a new person if the housing association doesn't purchase within four weeks of being invited to.'
 He added: 'We need to prevent yuppie second home-owners from living in a low-cost, part-owned home in a beautiful village.'
 The Bishop of Worcester, the Rt Rev Philip Goodrich, said: 'There has been a flight from the countryside.
 'People cannot find low-cost housing and have to commute from the town to the country.'
 Lord Dean of Beswick, for the Opposition, welcomed the change.
 But Lord Hesketh, for the Government, argued that the right to home-ownership was paramount. 'The proposal is that shared owners in rural areas should not be able to staircase to full ownership of their properties.
 'Housing associations can impose an arbitrary ceiling on the amount that they should own. The right to home ownership is a fundamental plank to the Government's housing policy.'
 He said that early this year the Government announced measures to prevent homes under shared ownership passing on to the open market in areas where need was particularly great.
 Later, the Government was defeated again when an Opposition amendment curbing the right-to-buy for council homes suitable for the elderly and disabled was carried by 94 to 36, majority 58.
 The change limits the right-to-buy to homes completed before the date the bill comes into effect.
 Lord Hesketh, unsuccessfully resisting the amendment, said elderly people wished to have the same rights as everyone else.
 Government business managers must now decide whether to seek to reverse the votes when the measure returns to the Commons.

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The Guardian (London)

October 31, 1989

Barlow Clowes brokers received secret payments, court told

BYLINE: By Financial Staff

LENGTH: 759 words

 
 BROKERS who channelled tens of millions of pounds of elderly people's savings into the now collapsed Barlow Clowes investment funds were yesterday accused of receiving secret commissions paid into Swiss bank accounts.
 One third of the Pounds 140 million which savers put into the Gibraltar-based Barlow Clowes International fund was invested through Investment and Pensions Advisory Service (IPAS), a partnership run from Addlestone, Surrey and a sister organisation, IPAS Ltd, based in the West End of London, the High Court was told.
 Mr David Gray and Mr David Myers, both of whom were partners in IPAS and directors of IPAS Ltd, are accused of concealing the true levels of commissions they received for introducing investors to Barlow Clowes.
 Mr Philip Heslop, QC, representing the Securities and Investments Board, said the brokers were involved in business transactions which were 'wholly inconsistent' with their position as independent financial advisers. 
 Mr Heslop said concern that assets were not being properly dealt with mounted after two 'astonishing' incidents involving Mr Gray.
 On a business trip, Mr Gray 'lost' a briefcase containing half a million Swiss francs - almost Pounds 200,000.
 He also lent AusDollars 200,000 (about Pounds 100,000) in cash to a businessman in Australia - but failed to trace him again after leaving a note he had made of his number in a telephone box.
 'This must raise extraordinary doubts as to the man's probity,' Mr Heslop continued.
 Mr Gray and Mr Myers were accused by Mr Heslop of falsely telling Fimbra, the watchdog which oversees financial brokers, that their commission on Barlow Clowes investments was only one per cent plus a further 0.5 per cent for annual renewals.
 A significant proportion of the commissions properly payable to IPAS Ltd had been diverted by Mr Gray and Mr Myers into Swiss bank accounts held for their personal benefit, said Mr Heslop.
 He was asking Mr Justice Mervyn Davies for compulsory winding-up orders against IPAS and IPAS Ltd. Nearly 4,700 clients of the two firms, most of them elderly, put an average of Pounds 10,000 each into Barlow Clowes' Gibraltar-based scheme.
 The IPAS businesses also introduced another Pounds 18 million to Barlow Clowes Gilt Managers, a UK-managed fund. Both Barlow Clowes companies collapsed last year.
 Mr Heslop said that it now appeared that the majority of Barlow Clowes investors were facing 'a substantial shortfall'.
 Recommendations made by IPAS and IPAS Ltd to invest in Barlow Clowes companies 'were influenced wholly or in part by secret commissions' paid by those companies into the Swiss bank accounts controlled by Mr Gray and Mr Myers.
 Although Mr Gray and Mr Myers held out their businesses as 'independent' financial intermediaries, the connection between them and Barlow Clowes was so close that they 'were unable or unwilling to distinguish between the best interests of their investor clients - many of whom were elderly and unsophisticated in financial matters - and those of Barlow Clowes'.
 The 'closeness' was apparent in the secret commissions, the manner in which Mr Gray and Mr Myers helped devise new Barlow Clowes 'products' and the various joint ventures they were in the process of setting up with company chief Mr Peter Clowes.
 Mr Heslop said the IPAS companies continued to recommend investment long after Mr Gray and Mr Myers had learnt that there were reasons for suspecting that such investments were risky.
 Money paid over to Barlow Clowes for investment ostensibly in gilt-edged securities was, in fact, being put into speculative investments.
 Funds invested in the Barlow Clowes companies appeared not to have gone as intended into the purchase of gilts, but into a range of corporate and other enterprises associated with the directors of those companies.
 Fimbra suspended both IPAS businesses in June last year and investigations were begun into their affairs three months later.
 Mr Heslop said the winding-up petitions were now not opposed by the IPAS businesses.
 Both Mr Gray and Mr Myers, who were not represented in court, accepted their businesses were insolvent, but blamed the proceedings taken against them for that position and 'vigorously denied' the allegations of malpractice.
 Both believed they had been 'badly served' by the Department of Trade and Fimbra, who had had serious misgivings about Barlow Clowes but had taken no steps to warn them until it was too late.
 The hearing will continue today.

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The Guardian (London)

October 31, 1989

The Day in Politics: Concern for plight of Old Maggie in the street of fear / Sketch

BYLINE: By ANDREW RAWNSLEY

LENGTH: 556 words

 
 MANY women are increasingly scared of travelling about Britain, the House of Commons heard yesterday during Question Time to the transport ministers. Some elderly women were so frightened of being violently attacked, MPs were told, that they locked themselves indoors.
 Certainly one old lady, a pensioner from Finchley, has not been seen outdoors for some time. She has been violently attacked on several occasions in the last few days. 
 Time was that Old Maggie, as she was known, would potter out and about all over the country, giving her views on everything and everybody.
 But yesterday she was nowhere to be seen. She had bolted herself in at home in No 10 and pulled across the chains. She had not been out all day, confirmed the No 10 press office.
 Perhaps, with advancing years, Old Maggie was just finding things were a bit too much for her nowadays, having some difficulty keeping her wits about her, getting a bit forgetful. After all, only the other day she lost an entire Chancellor of the Exchequer.
 More likely it was the terrible climate of fear on the streets of Britain which had caused her to lock herself indoors. The terrible fear that she might lose her job as Prime Minister.
 The weekend newspapers were full of the terror. Opinion polls said that she was the most unpopular Prime Minister since records began - even when using polling samples carefully excluding members of the Cabinet.
 All weekend she had been pursued by marauding gangs of Opposition politicians, newspaper reporters, TV interviewers and alienated Cabinet colleagues. She had taken a terrible beating. It might be fatal. So, at least, many hoped.
 At lunchtime she was due to see some close colleagues, including Cranley Onslow, the chairman of the Tory 1922 committee, and some other senior Tory backbenchers, and some close enemies, including Sir Geoffrey Howe.
 The policemen at the top of Downing Street were not, as is customary, allowing reporters to go down Downing Street to stand outside No 10.
 'I'm sorry, but you can't go down there today, sir,' said one of the constables, manning the gate. So she was unable to see visitors? It was even more serious than we had thought.
 Over in the House of Commons, MPs were trying to concentrate on other subjects, like women's safety on public transport. But it was a thinly-attended, distracted House.
 Ms Diane Abbott, the Labour MP for Hackney North and Stoke Newington, told the transport ministers at Question Time that fear of attack meant many women would not use London's Underground.
 She told the ministers: 'Many women in my constituency are frightened to use Finsbury Park tube station at night.'
 The junior minister at the despatch box, Michael Portillo began his reply with the words: 'I had reason to go to Finsbury Park station recently.' It was not clear whether he was offering this as a reassurance - or an explanation - for the fears of Ms Abbott's women constituents.
 Whatever, Ms Abbott was not satisfied. She insisted: 'The situation about women's fears has got worse.'
 This grammatical lapse was excusable. For one thing, Ms Abbott had an educationally deprived upbringing - she went to Cambridge.
 For another thing, she, like everybody else, was still distracted by the worsening situtation of one woman.

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The Guardian (London)

November 1, 1989

Society: Private hopes versus public fears

BYLINE: By ALAN DUNN

LENGTH: 795 words

 
 RESIDENTS, relatives and staff at three of Wirral's 22 homes for the elderly were united last week in a desire to stay under the umbrella of the local council. And they were annoyed at being left out of the planning by others of their future.
 At Mapleholme, in Bidston, which had a Pounds 800,000 facelift two years ago and has a bar and social room used by residents from other council homes, resident Ernest Camden said: 'What they are planning is an unknown quantity. I would like things to stay as they are. I cannot see private people doing it for love and I don't trust that. Once they've got the homes they will have a free hand to do what they want.' 
 Mrs Linda Andrews, a care assistant, said: 'It's the uncertainty of it all. We are being told different things by different people and we don't know what is ahead. When you work for the council and are content in your job, you never think you will be looking for other things.'
 Care staff were already looking for other work, so uncertain were they of the future, said Mrs Valerie Rayner, a care assistant. 'Our conditions are good and we are quite happy and the residents are all wonderfully looked after. We have patiently built relationships with people moved here from Chester mental hospital, and we are concerned that any change of staff could knock them right back.'
 At Meadowcroft, Bromborough, Mrs Florence Corris purred over the cleanliness, food and care. 'There is no need for change. No one could run this home better. Many people here need a lot of care and patience and they get both from the staff, who often have trying situations but never bat an eyelid.'
 Mrs Lilian Houghton, who married fellow-resident, Bill, in August, said she didn't think they would get the same standards under private ownership 'because they couldn't afford the same amount of staff. They would cut down on staff immediately. We have no worries here and complete freedom, and I don't want to be transferred. I want to stop just as we are.'
 Mrs Eileen Murphy, a domestic, said that the staff were worried about the future for the confused and infirm. 'Anchor are reported as saying that they want to convert homes to provide single rooms with en suite facilities. That sounds fine, but 75 per cent of our residents have senile dementia, and to leave them with their own bathing facilities is positively hazardous. And in altering the property they could halve the accommodation. No one in the private sector wants the severely confused, who need 24-hour care, so where will they go? I fear we will end with a workhouse situation.'
 Mr Elfed Morgan, officer in charge, said that everyone in the home had total security for life. 'If they run out of money they are still safe and you cannot say that for the private sector. Here they have their own pocket money, but they don't under private. The council are presenting only one option.'
 Relatives of residents at Meadowcroft have formed an action committee to oppose any transfer. Mrs Edith Priest, whose sister Ruth is in the home, says: 'At the moment everyone is happy and settled with a caring staff who understand individual problems. But we cannot get any written guarantees over the future if the homes are privatised. They say nothing will be done to the detriment of residents, but who decides what is detrimental? If they say my sister will be better elsewhere, who decides? As they are dealing with people's lives it should be only proper for relatives to be party to any arrangements.
 'We want to be clear what is happening to them. There should be a clear, guaranteed package offering the status quo, and we want the detail of what is to happen before it happens. After all, we are fighting for our relatives and our own future.'
 Rosewarne, at Bidston, a wood-panelled old mansion, is regarded as the worst of the 22 homes for modern facilities. But Mrs Florence Hatton is totally content. 'Private homes are not in contact with each other as we are. We have six homes near here and we exchange visits and social evenings.
 'Yesterday we had a day on a barge to Chester. That is what we are fighting for - our freedom. You won't find the private sector doing that. The staff here will do anything for you. This is affecting our families. We are like a lot of sheep waiting to see who will pay the most, and they are not thinking of us.'
 Mrs Esme Williams distrusted talk of possible future benefits in a switch of ownership. 'They are just like political candidates offering everything before the vote. Once they are in anything can be changed.'
 Mrs Eileen Peters was quietly convinced. 'I would prefer it to stay just as it is now. There's no particular reason - I just prefer it. We are all very happy.'

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November 1, 1989

Society: Private hopes versus public fears A controversial plan by

BYLINE: By ALAN DUNN

LENGTH: 1273 words

 
 Wirral Council to sell off all its homes for the elderly, and finds an implacably hostile response to the scheme among the residents and staff of the homes, who are furious at the lack of consultation
 THE Social Security Minister, Mr Nicholas Scott, will tomorrow be drawn into a controversial plan by the politically hung Wirral Council to become the first in Britain to transfer all its 22 homes for the elderly en bloc to a new owner, possibly a major housing association.
 Scott will meet Wirral council leaders and Frank Field, Labour MP for Birkenhead. They are seeking, among other things, funding guarantees for a scheme which anticipates the Government's White Paper on community care, due out later this month, but could also put Wirral at the head of the queue of councils looking to sell all their homes, partly to make revenue savings to reduce the impact of the poll tax in England and Wales next year.
 Mr Field, who like Labour members of the council, opposes the scheme, will also be pushing his alternative plan for Wirral to set up its own housing trust to take over the homes. The council would have a 20 per cent stake and the major voice in policy, while transferring most of the running costs to government and safeguarding jobs. 
 Both schemes are among a number all councils are considering as government pressure grows for more local authority community care to be switched to the private or voluntary sectors, leaving councils as enablers rather than providers. Some have already sold all their homes in parcels, but Wirral's plan retains the unity and structure of its homes under a new umbrella while releasing revenue funding for other community care.
 The transfer of the homes, possibly to Britain's largest housing association providing care for the elderly, Anchor, was proposed by the minority group of 10 Liberal Democrats and backed by the 24 Tories. It follows an analysis by the council's director of social services, David Rickard, of the Government's response to the Griffiths Report on community care.
 In the response, Health Secretary Kenneth Clarke said that councils should make the maximum use of the voluntary, not-for-profit and commercial outlets. And from 1991 he will increase pressure on councils to do so by changing the financial rules. These will make councils, through a new community care budget, continue to pay the whole cost of care in their own homes, but only a proportion of the cost in non-public homes, with the rest being paid by the Government.
 At present a private home resident on state pension pays about Pounds 35 of the pension and qualifies for up to about Pounds 150 a week in income support from the Department of Social Security, a cost borne by the taxpayer. In public homes the cost, after a similar deduction from the pension, is wholly borne by the ratepayer.
 From 1991 it is believed that while public financing will stay the same, private homes will be entitled to a government boarding allowance of, say, Pounds 60 a week, with the local authority making up the difference. The details of what will be paid will not be known until the White Paper comes out, but Mr Rickard says that the method will increase the financial squeeze on local authorities, in their role as enablers, to persuade potential clients to go private.
 Sixty per cent of the 850 residents of limited means in Wirral council homes would qualify for DSS grants if transferred to the non-public sector, he says, bringing more money to the Wirral economy as a whole. Already those in private homes can retain at least Pounds 3,000 capital in applying for a grant, but the limit for council tenants is Pounds 1,200 before they start to contribute extra.
 Mr Clarke also said that the success of a community care package depended on adequate services being on offer. Mr Rickard told his council that its services were inadequate and that one way to find the money to improve them was to explore disposing of its elderly people's homes. This would release about Pounds 6.5 million of revenue now spent on the homes.
 Some of the money would be used towards the Pounds 5 million refurbishment needed in the homes, only two of which might pass the council's own standards if they were private. Labour claims, however, that much of it would be used to keep the poll tax low, while the Liberals and Conservatives say that an extra 200 staff could be employed in other services.
 Rickard argues that government constraints on borrowing for capital spending mean the council already faces a continual struggle to maintain the homes, one of many priorities. There is no such artificial constraint in the non-public sector, only the willingness of a bank to loan. And a housing association could attract capital from the Housing Corporation. 'All we are doing is pointing out what government intentions are,' he says. 'If it doesn't intend us to run the homes, then any money saved should be put into domiciliary services.'
 The local government union, Nalgo, with 30 home officers in charge and thousands of members in other council departments, is holding a ballot on non-co-operation, including refusal to handle work linked to a transfer.
 'The haste gives great cause for concern,' says Derek Jenkins, Wirral Nalgo branch secretary. 'We know, for instance, that council homes are getting the type of client the private homes won't take - the confused amd less able. And there has been no nursing home provision for patients from the geriatric wards being closed at hospitals. We see no safeguards, no reference to union consultation, and no mention of the need for extra resources as demand for care grows from an ageing population.'
 Meanwhile, Anchor isn't totally sure it wants to become involved if it cannot improve standards. Ken Wray, regional director, says: 'Wirral has 22 care homes for the elderly. Anchor also has 22, with another 49 in development, all considerably better equipped than Wirral's. There is no point in getting involved if we cannot achieve anything. At the moment only two of Wirral's homes might achieve registration standards. If they were private, Wirral would have to tell them to achieve the standards or close. But if all we can do is get to registration standards I am not too sure we would want to take them on. Our standards are way above registration demands, appropriate for the last years of the century.'
 He denies claims that Anchor has no experience of multi-care homes and has no staff training. 'We have 850 residents in our housing-with-care, with 1,700 places at another 49 homes being developed.'
 Anchor, with 2,500 staff, was not anti-union, he said. It has a staff association with negotiating rights and staff can join the association or a union.
 He could not give a commitment to keep all the homes open. 'We haven't seen them yet and if it proved to be physically impossible to get them up to registration standards, Wirral would tell us to close them.'
 Part of Anchor's strategy would be to have its own nursing homes as well on the Wirral, to complement residential care. 'We would hope to be involved in developing a wider strategy for elderly people,' says Mr Wray. 'We are not looking just to run the homes in isolation. We would be looking to use them in a full role for non-residents, too. We would want to continue day care and expand it, and staff would also work in the community to help people in their own homes.
 'We would offer respite care, and develop as a resource for all Wirral, reaching out to help others in the community. It is a fascinating challenge.'

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The Guardian (London)

November 1, 1989

Clowes advisers 'lacked morality'

BYLINE: By Financial Staff

LENGTH: 294 words

DATELINE: THE financial advisers who channelled Pounds 65 million

 
 largely belonging to retired and elderly people - into Barlow Clowes were yesterday accused in the High Court of 'a total lack of independence and commercial morality'.
 It was alleged that Investment and Pensions Advisory Services and IPAS, both largely controlled by David Gray, had persuaded vulnerable people to invest in Barlow Clowes while Mr Gray was 'hand in glove' with its chief executive, Peter Clowes. 
 The accusations came from Jeremy Orme, enforcement director of the Securities and Investments Board, on the second day of the hearing into a petition to wind up IPAS.
 In an affidavit read to the court, Mr Orme said evidence demonstrated Mr Gray was manifestly unfit to carry out investment business for vulnerable people.
 He claimed Mr Gray and Mr Clowes had embarked on joint ventures and, contrary to Mr Gray's assertion that he never had social contact with Mr Clowes, it appeared they met frequently.
 Mr Gray had visited Mr Clowes's luxury yacht and there was 'a disturbing degree of intimacy between Mr Gray and Mr Clowes' which should have been disclosed to clients.
 Investors had not been told of an offshore commission payment to IPAS of more than Pounds 500,000 from Barlow Clowes, it was alleged.
 Mr Gray and his partner David Myers have 'vigorously denied' the accusations made by SIB. They accept a winding-up of IPAS only on the grounds of insolvency rather than alleged malpractice.
 It was claimed in court that the running costs of IPAS's so-called Gemini product were paid by Barlow Clowes and IPAS acted as a 'front'.
 The hearing continues.
 The firms IPAS and IPAS Ltd have no connection with Independent Professional Advisors Services of Finchley, North London, which is still trading.

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The Guardian (London)

November 2, 1989

The Day in Politics: Smooth passage for housing bill

LENGTH: 105 words

 
 THE Local Government and Housing Bill was given an unopposed third reading in the Lords last night. It now returns to the Commons.
 Its smooth passage reflected the Government's willingness to accept report stage changes giving the right to buy to elderly people, except those living in sheltered homes.
 Lord Hesketh, the Junior Environment Minister, said the Government was prepared to table further changes which restore its jurisdiction over sheltered housing after accepting Opposition amendments to this end. He said the right to buy should be given to disabled people in houses suitable for pensioners.

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The Guardian (London)

November 3, 1989

The Day in Politics (Points of Order): Lawson's biggest indiscretion

BYLINE: By IAN AITKEN

LENGTH: 717 words

 
 IT'S claimed that the thing which shook Mrs Thatcher most about Nigel Lawson's statement in the Commons on Tuesday wasn't the stuff about icebergs or mad professors but the bit about privatising the Bank of England. The fact that he had even discussed the matter with her had been classified as ultra-top secret, your-eyes-only, burn-before-reading, etc.
 For the fact that the idea had been raised at such a high level was totally unknown to Robin Leigh-Pemberton, the Governor of the Bank, and to his colleagues in Threadneedle Street. It must have startled them. 
 It's a fair guess, though, that Mr Leigh-Pemberton would have been delighted to benefit from this ultimate manifestation of the Adam Smith spirit. Getting successive chancellors off their backs has been the ambition of generations of governors, and the oddest feature of the episode is that it should have been Mrs Thatcher who dished it on sound democratic principles.
 The episode recalls the period when the Wilson government was being buffeted by what were colloquially known at the time as the Gnomes of Zurich. Mr Michael Foot, still a backbench gadfly in those days, made a number of ironical suggestions for demonstrating the financial rectitude of the Labour government. They included horsewhipping a couple of old age pensioners up Whitehall for the benefit of Swiss television, or getting ministers to tear down the hospitals with their bare hands.
 But Mr Foot's ultimate proposal was at least as radical as Mr Lawson's. He suggested that maybe the time had come for the Labour government at last to nationalise the Bank of England.
 ONE of the most surprising features of the election for the 18 places on the Shadow Cabinet is the role still played by the Bennite Campaign Group. Though it is a busted flush in policy terms, it continues to wield a baleful influence over PLP elections by virtue of the 40-odd hard left votes it still commands.
 The most obvious victim of this phenomenon was Martin O'Neill, the party's official defence spokesman. He narrowly failed to secure an elected seat in the shadow cabinet, even though his crucially important portfolio demands a key place on the Opposition front bench.
 Mr O'Neill is a Tribunite soft-leftie. His willingness to go along with the Kinnock line on nuclear weapons ensured that he didn't get the Campaign Group vote this week, and he doesn't seem to have got much of the rightwing vote either. Margaret Beckett, on the other hand, got Bennite support - and so did Ann Clwyd, who was on the Campaign Group slate.
 Some MPs now wonder whether enough of the PLP is serious about winning the next election. They ask what kind of a party would refuse to elect its Shadow Defence Secretary to its top policy-making body, but is ready to elect someone who got herself sacked from the front bench team for defying the party's new defence policy - ie Ms Clwyd?
 THE Campaign Group, on the other hand, certainly is serious about winning internal party elections. Its members are even required to show their filled-out ballot papers to each other, so that there can be no clandestine backsliding. It's a moot point whether this is glasnost, or just old-fashioned democratic centralism.
 On the other hand, the sheer dishonesty of some MPs about the way they exercise their secret ballot is legendary. One Scottish MP recently decided not to run after doing badly in the previous two shadow cabinet elections. His name was not even on the ballot paper, yet he was assured by half a dozen solicitous colleagues that they had voted for him.
 LIKE the Greeks, Old Etonians usually have a word for it; the trouble is that it's often an entirely different word from everyone else's. Being an old boy of Windsor Comprehensive isn't just a way of life, it's a language.
 So when Tim Renton (Eton and Magdalen) was overheard telling Douglas Hurd (Eton and Trinity) that moving from the Home Office to be Chief Whip was 'like being elected President of Pop without having been in the Library', no one had the faintest idea what he was talking about. Points of Order is advised that the Eton library isn't really a library, but a club of senior boys. Pop is a club of even more senior boys. Being president of it is therefore very grand indeed.

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November 6, 1989

Media: Countering the cult of youth - A new TV show aimed at older viewers

BYLINE: By VAL SAMPSON

LENGTH: 631 words

 
 THE VOICE of experience is set to counter the callow whine of youth, according to one producer of Primetime, a new weekly afternoon magazine programme aimed at older viewers.
 'Primetime is a reaction to Def II and all that's been done for young people,' says Miriam O'Callaghan, who will also present the half-hour show starting this Wednesday alongside veteran broadcaster David Jacobs. 'The cult of youth has been pushed too far by the BBC.'
 The corporation responded with unusual speed to criticism about the lack of programmes aimed specifically at older viewers made during See For Yourself, a report on how the licence fee is spent, broadcast in January. 
 Anthony Cherry, then producer of David Jacobs' Radio Two show, approached BBC Director-General Michael Checkland with the idea for Primetime. Within a month he had agreed finance for it.
 Cherry says: 'We wanted a show which would cater for the kind of people we were already entertaining on Radio Two. We knew the audience was there but they did not have much representation, particularly in terms of music, on television.'
 Primetime's two musical slots each week, therefore, will be devoted to artists like Cole Porter, Jerome Kern and George Gershwin.
 Presenter David Jacobs, 63, has clear ideas about the thrust of the programme. 'We are not going to direct it at the old, infirm and lonely. While there are many of these, there are also an enormous number of people who are active and play a huge part in the community. They are interested in leisure activities, fashion and sex. Our remit is wide. Even though we may discuss the subject of death - and why not? - I still see the show as having an air of glamour about it.'
 The research, according to Anthony Cherry, indicated potential viewers want a programme that acknowledges the past but is not overwhelmingly nostalgic. 'Everybody has become aware that the elderly are the fastest growing section of the population. They make up a political force. Many are fed up with being ignored.'
 The dilemma facing any programme aimed at predominantly older viewers is catering satisfactorily for the huge range of income levels, interests and attitudes which make up that audience.
 Channel Four, which pioneered programming for older people seven years ago with the weekly magazine programme, Years Ahead, changed format this autumn in response to the difficulties of meeting a mix of requirements in one programme.
 Says Bob Towler, Commissioning Editor for Educational and Religious Programmes: 'The main problem is the sheer variability of the audience. If you do something of interest to people who have a background in trade unionism, you immediately alienate all those people in the CBI.'
 Channel Four has retained the news section of Years Ahead, rechristened Senior Service, which is a weekly 15-minute campaigning slot and advice shop. It is followed by Gold, the first of a number of documentaries profiling achievers over 60.
 ITV, so far, has remained reluctant to devote an entire programme to an older audience, possibly conscious that advertisers feel too much of the network attracts older, poorer audiences anyway.
 Getting On, produced by Central TV, was axed 18 months ago and there are no plans for a new series. Granada's This Morning will reintroduce Not Born Yesterday, a weekly eight-minute slot in the daytime magazine show, after Christmas. In the last series it tackled subjects such as making a will, face lifts and euthanasia.
 A spokesman for the ITV Association commented: 'As the audience ages ITV will have to look to respond accordingly. But in the future if franchises are auctioned off to the highest bidder only the well-off, professional elderly will have programmes made for them.'

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November 9, 1989

Books: Undead reckoning / Review of new fiction

BYLINE: By JUDY COOKE

LENGTH: 803 words

 
 Natural History, by Juan Perucho (Secker & Warburg, Pounds 12.95)
 Within The Ribbons, by Frank Manley (Barrie & Jenkins, Pounds 12.95)
 Good Intentions, by Joy Fielding (Macdonald, Pounds 12.95)
 Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All, by Allan Garganus (Faber, Pounds 12.99)
 NATURAL History is a picaresque novel by the Catalan writer Juan Perucho, the first of his books to be published outside Spain but not, I hope, the last. Set in the 1830s, it is a witty yarn about a young nobleman, Antoni de Montpalau, who gets bitten by an enthusiasm for botany and zoology.
 One of his formative experiences takes place in a botanical garden in Barcelona where he observes a carnivorous tree 'whose foliage was exceptionally dense and luxuriant' devouring a pack of sewer rats. His scientific curiosity is further stimulated by rumours of a vampire and he sets out to pursue the beast in a spirit of objective curiosity. An Index of Proper Names helps the less scientific reader to understand such technicalities as: 'Flying reptile, the: Survivor of prehistoric times. Talked like a parrot. Slow and dreamy, it frightened dogs.' 
 The story is a delightful spoof which never gets out of hand. The possibilities of danger and horror are jealously guarded so that the hero's journey across Spain is recounted in an atmosphere of genuine suspense. The vampire leaves a trail of victims, exploiting the fact that his country is ravaged by civil war. Even General Calabra, a King's man, succumbs to the two-fanged attack and he is on the side the vampire favours. Eventually the dreadful creature is driven to confess. He is an undead nobleman of the thirteenth century, 'the sadly declasse Onofre de Dip,' capable of transmogrifying into an elephant or an ant but now, at the end of his career, driven to assume the identity of a right wing military leader. 'Given that I needed some disguise, I chose one . . . in keeping with my authoritarian and absolutist beliefs.'
 Frank Manley's stories are concerned with the delusions that age and isolation can effect. His characters are mainly elderly people in the American rural South like Daisy Feed in the title story Within The Ribbons, a fearful woman left alone after her mother's death who gatecrashes a wedding and frantically tries to find significance in every detail.
 Most of the stories begin in confusion and end in violence although this is sometimes presented as a kind of release, a vision of God. There is an overwhelming insistence on spiritual poverty, racism, self-destruction. I could hardly press on through.
 Good Intentions is an easier read but only for those so addicted to new fiction that, should the real stuff be in short supply, anything in a dust jacket will do. It's a sort of buddy novel, since social worker Lynn, deserted after 14 years of marriage, consults a woman lawyer, Renee, who then takes the whole case history to realise that she herself is being done over by her psychiatrist husband Philip and his odious daughter. 'You turned yourself into a chocolate-guzzling mess.' That's what he says to her. And he's been screwing her sister. They interact in Florida.
 Allan Gurganus's Oldest Living Confederate Widow Tells All is an extraordinary achievement, not least, in being 700 pages long and consistently well written. It is an historical novel, paying conscious tribute to Gone With The Wind but aiming higher than romance. A first person narrative, it tells the story of the American South through the lives of two formidable people, Captain William Marsden who marched off with the Confederates when he was a mere boy and his wife Lucy, a Southern belle with a difference, whose marriage at the age of 15 to the then 51-year-old veteran proves as tempestuous and ever-changing as the war and its consequences.
 Marsden's closest friend is shot almost immediately, giving him an early motive for revenge. His return home is horrific: he finds his mother more dead than alive from the burns she sustained when their plantation house, The Lilacs, was destroyed and then abandoned by the newly freed slaves. But it is a slave woman, Castalia, who nurses her back to health and gives the Captain the strength to rebuild his family fortunes. By the time Lucy enters as a young bride the scene is set for a classic confrontation, slightly reminiscent of Rebecca but with a far more complex resolution.
 If there is a meaningful distinction to be made between genre fiction and literary fiction, then this novel (Garganus's first) transcends it. Subtle and persuasive in its interpretation of historical fact, it is boldly imaginative as a portrait of a society torn apart and slowly reaffirming its identity. And at Pounds 12.99 it's one of the few hardbacks to be anywhere reasonably priced.

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November 9, 1989

Books: A throng at twilight / Review of two new studies on age

BYLINE: By RONALD BLYTHE

LENGTH: 977 words

 
 History of Old Age From Antiquity to the Renaissance, by Georges Minois, translated by Sarah Hanbury Tenison (Polity Press, Pounds 29.50)
 A Fresh Map of Life: The Emergence of the Third Age, by Peter
 Laslett (Weidenfeld andNicolson, Pounds 16.95)
 THESE studies are presented as correctives to what the writers, one old, one young, have found to be persistently erroneous conclusions. We retire into a hinterland of cliches. The fact that they don't fit seems not to threaten their use. Georges Minois sifts through 5,000 years of written attitudes to reveal that, more or less, we go on saying the same things about getting old now as we did when the pharaohs reigned, whilst Peter Laslett continues his crusade for a fresh and positive redefinition. With the disturbing realisation that nearly all of us are going to live long after 60, the year which for centuries qualified us as 'old,' there could be no better preparation than a wary glance at these two complementary books, if only for ammunition to fight-off the many ghastly 'caring,' commercial and other agencies which are now feeding on old age with a vengeance. Cruelly mocked in the past, it is insulted in a different way now. 
 Minois trawls the classics and his finds are much what might be expected. Socially tolerable - even admirable - old age is that of man contemplating God, or confessing the tricks of his trade to his descendant. Poets from Horace to Shakespeare display a brilliant pitilessness in their tirades about ugly old people. Something not nearly enough appreciated now is the misery lifted from old age by hygiene, dentistry and spectacles. The aged used to present a shocking sight - and smell. The not so old knew no way of not becoming like them.
 Minois gives a wide, dark view of the sufferings caused to the old by their ugliness. In earlier times there was no middle-age. One was young and then one was old. To the Church, breakdowns such as Shakespeare's 'seven ages' were meaningless. The most fascinating chapters of Minois' book are those dealing with old age during the Medieval period when no Christian was any age at all according to the Church. He analyses the strange conflict between the liturgical calendar - 'a vast enterprise aimed at abolishing time through a cyclical and mystical process' - and the tragically real and unavoidable encounters with time made by the individual. He also writes about a world without retirement.
 Statistics are hard to come by. Countless people played, toiled and died who did not know their age. or ourselves one word about them. Perhaps this absolute anonymity towards the investigator is what Simone de Beauvoir is referring to when she said that it was impossible to write a history of old age. But Georges Minois has made a far more detailed and enlightening stab at it than most. On the whole it was regarded as a calamity which set the individual outside or beyond what the non-old thought of as desirable activities, and people dreaded it. The ferocity with which it was attacked in the theatre is evidence of society's fear of it. It had to be unnatural.
 'The situation of old people expresses the ambiguity of the human condition more fully than do the other ages of life. Living in this world, they are already felt not to belong to it.'
 Peter Laslett, of course, will have none of this. He insists that we rid ourselves once and for all of the platitudes and categorisations of centuries, and take a sensible look at the over-sixties in the 1980s. Do they have anything at all to do with, for example, Cicero's much quoted 'sententious lucubrations' or indeed with their own parents' concept of getting-on? Very little, that is until they become over-eighties, and then, perhaps, quite a lot. He lists the 14 fears of the old; number one is death. In his now famous role as a past-sixties' postivist and enemy of the unpleasant stereotyping of the old, Laslett crusades against the incipent deathliness which so often accompanies retirement. It is then that we leave the age of earning and saving, and enter upon that of personal fulfilment - the Third Age. A Fourth may follow, and this will certainly be that of decrepitude and death. So here is his honest and cheerful realignment of all our days. 'Our situation is inescapably, irremediably new. It calls for creation.'
 The blight of the Third Age is torpor, the giving-in to the running down of things. It is nonsense to believe that one could still be suffering from tiredness due to the war or hard times early on. It is a waste of one's potential for a special kind of happiness to succumb to telly and vapid tripperism around anything open to the public. It is often unwise to emigrate to the south coast. Laslett says much about what he calls mass indolence, both of the unemployed and the old, the shapeless months, the degredation of the spirit. He is fierce regarding the under-funding of cultural institutions and suggests that Third Agers would be just the people to run libraries, galleries and museums after 5 pm.
 Some of the rights he demands for them are rather odd, such as having their own special public swimming-pool hours so that the more youthful do not see their bodies. Ideally, the Two, or Seven or Four Ages of Men, according to whether one lives in the 12th, 16th or 20th century, should be lived in full view of humanity. Third Age theories and education (U3A) are revolutionising our later years but care must be taken to see that they do not gradually create a club. Laslett is a vigorous explainer of what we ought to do with our new long lives, and touches on such intriguing matters as that contradiction which we all feel about our own personal calendar and biological clocks. Why don't they tell the same time? Is it really our birthdays which should tell us our age.
 OVERNIGHT FILE

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November 9, 1989

Ambulance crews angrily stand by to be employed as 'the last resort': A bitter mood among suspended workers prepared to carry on

BYLINE: By ANDREW CULF

LENGTH: 586 words

 
 THREE ambulance crews from Fulham, west London, dealt with emergencies yesterday after the 999 calls were put through to them.
 After taking their patients to hospital, the six ambulancemen involved were all suspended without pay for refusing to work normally.
 They joined the rest of their colleagues - most of whom had already been suspended - in the rest room of Europe's largest ambulance station, where they were watching a video of A Bridge Too Far. 
 The choice of film seemed appropriate on the day the simmering dispute boiled over with growing frustration and bitterness among the staff, many of whom attended the Clapham rail disaster and are veterans of dealing with the aftermath of IRA bomb blasts.
 Outside the station fluttered a banner with the plaintive message: 'We are not on strike'. Inside, crews expressed their willingness to answer emergency calls, and despite being suspended, said they had no intention of going home.
 Evidence of their commitment to the 999 service came as three separate emergency calls were received at Fulham, and crews responded to two road accidents and a medical collapse.
 Mr Alan Thomas, who has been in the service for 28 years, took a motorcyclist with leg injuries to Charing Cross Hospital after an accident in Kensington.
 'The call came through in the normal way, and we dealt with it as we normally would,' he said.
 'Several minutes after we returned, my station officer called me into his office and warned me that as I was not working by London Ambulance Service guidelines I would be stood down without pay.'
 He added: 'They seemed to be using us as a last resort. It seems they could not find anyone else to answer the call, so they came to us.'
 Mr Charles Sawyer, an ambulanceman for five years, was also suspended on his return from taking an elderly woman to hospital following a crash in Chelsea. 'I told them I was prepared to answer emergencies for no pay, and I'm staying on until the end of my shift.'
 Mr Bob White, acting shop steward, said that there was no animosity towards the police or St John Ambulance, who were handling calls. 'We have even offered to go out with the police in their cars to help.'
 There would be no antagonism towards troops, who would simply be acting under orders.
 He described the offer of 6.5 per cent as insulting, and denounced management's inclusion of London weighting artifically to boost the offer to 9.3 per cent in the capital. The union just wanted arbitration.
 Mrs Elaine Wake said that her 18-year-old brother takes home Pounds 205 a week working in a supermarket. After five years' service, she clears Pounds 515 a month.
 'Will Kenneth Clarke tell my five-year-old daughter why she will not get a bike or a doll's house for Christmas? Let us hope it is Mr Clarke who needs an ambulance that has been stood down.'
 The scale of opposition to the Health Secretary became clear as staff crowded round the lunchtime TV news. When Mr Clarke was interviewed, his answers were greeted with cries of outrage. One ambulanceman summed up the mood as he muttered: 'Absolute rubbish.'
 Ambulance staff broke off a protest march yesterday in an unsuccessful attempt to save an elderly man who collapsed in the street. Workers from stations in Hackney, east London, were marching across Waterloo Bridge when the incident occurred.
 The man was put in a police car for the short journey to St Thomas's Hospital, where further attempts to revive him failed.

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November 10, 1989

East German Crisis: End of Wall signals new era in world

BYLINE: By MICHAEL SIMMONS

LENGTH: 679 words

 
 WHATEVER comes of the intense arguments for and against the re-unification of Germany, the post-war order as we have known it for nearly 45 years has certainly changed out of all recognition.
 The Berlin Wall was the cruellest of all blows to a defeated Germany, the highest price its people had to pay for the atrocities of Hitler. It was built for sound economic and political reasons from the East German point of view, but it caused more anguish to Germans on both sides than any amount of stringent demands for compensation or de-Nazification.
 Mr Egon Krenz, the new East German leader, was just eight years old when the second world war ended. His predecessor, Mr Erich Honecker, now in his late seventies, spent 10 years in a Nazi prison. He supervised the building of the Wall and - taking into account what we have learned of the man in the past few weeks - he probably did it with some conviction that he was doing the right thing. 
 After it went up in 1961, it was rationalised by speech makers and justified by policy makers but never rejoiced over. Mr Walter Ulbricht, then the East German leader, conceded he did not 'enjoy' being surrounded by barbed wire. The then Soviet leader, Mr Nikita Khrushchev, was later reported to have said he thought it 'ugly' and 'a defect'.
 Mr Krenz by opening the frontiers his predecessors held so dear, has flown in the face of the notion that he was Mr Honecker's protege. He has also demolished some of the most important justifications that the German Democratic Republic presented to the world for its existence.
 The crossing points beween East and West Germany - particularly in East Berlin at the Friedrichstrasse railway station and at Checkpoint Charlie - presented some of the most wretchedly depressing sights in central Europe in the late 20th century.
 Old age pensioners, queueing interminably with carrier bags full of goodies, were scrutinised, cross-examined and often searched by uniformed bureacrats carrying out their masters' bidding, trying to prove that these crossing points were international frontiers, that the two Germanies - as Mr Honecker said when he was in the Federal Republic two years ago - were as incompatible as fire and water.
 Though the German frontier has run resolutely along the whole length of the border of the two states, it was always at its most symbolic along the line where it divided Berlin.
 Here, in the heart of the old capital, well over 50 East Germans have been shot dead trying to cross to the West and at least twice that number have been injured. More than 3,000 people are said to have been arested making the attempt.
 On the East German side, the Wall was not discussed but it was rigorously controlled. There are hundreds of watch towers and guard dog runs, ditches deep enough to swallow tanks and patrol cars as far as the eye can see. The familiar 9foot concrete structure stretches for nearly 30 miles across the city and for 70 miles around its perimeter.
 Houses and churches have been demolished to make way for it and roads and railway lines blocked.
 In 1986, at the Wall's 25th anniversary, Western leaders denounced it and demanded that it should come down. Mr Gorbachev kept quiet, but Mr Honecker, belligerent to the very end, celebrated with a parade and had a commemorative postage stamp, showing smiling militiamen, printed.
 Today's demonstrators have obviously not been satisified to have got rid of Mr Honecker personally.
 They have insistently demanded reform, they have specifically demanded the freedom to travel.
 Mr Krenz has made his most important gesture so far to appease Germans who have been hurt by the frontier.
 The separation of the two Germanies has de facto been brought to an end and there is now new ammunition for both sides to use in the re-unification debate.
 He has also re-opened the debate on the viability of the East German economy with or without the Wall. And he has challenged his own leadership to find new arguments in support of the legitimacy of the GDR.

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November 14, 1989

French novelist 'squeezed out' by Nazi row

BYLINE: By PAUL WEBSTER in Paris

LENGTH: 235 words

 
 THE Goncourt prize committee, which will announce France's top book award next week, met without the novelist, Michel Tournier, at the weekend, in an apparent reaction to his suggestion that old people should be annihilated rather than abortion encouraged.
 Mr Tournier, whose Le Roi des Aulnes is one of the world's most translated books, yesterday denied that he had been squeezed out of the 10-member committee, which is headed by the novelist, Herve Bazin, aged 78. 
 But Mr Tournier's absence from the committee and a weekend bookfair in Brive, central France, added to the controversy. Although considered the country's leading candidate for the Nobel Prize, his pile of books went unsold at Brive.
 Mr Tournier, whose close friendship with President Franois Mitterrand has added an extra complication to the affair, told an American magazine that he considered abortionists as the 'sons and grandsons of the monsters of Auschwitz.'
 The novelist, aged 65, said that when French demographers complained that there were too many old people and too few babies it was the fault of abortionists.
 'Instead of killing 200,000 babies a year, they should kill 200,000 old people,' he added.
 Mr Tournier denied that he was being excluded from the Goncourt committee, where most members are of pensionable age, and condemned the 'lies, stupidity and hate' that had followed his statement.

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November 14, 1989

Arts: Arsenic And Old Lace - Derby

BYLINE: By ROBIN THORNBER

LENGTH: 359 words

 
 PROGRAMMING a regional rep is not like running the Royal Court. For a start, most of them have more seats and a smaller catchment area. And audiences are, well, more conservative with a small c.
 So when Annie Castledine moved from being a freelance director-and, for my taste, one of the best in this country in terms of richness and depth-to running her own building in Derby, she had to make some adjustments. Like bringing the audience with her. 
 In a spirit of listening and being responsive to her board and box office which I find wholly admirable, she has gone back to get them with Joseph Kesselring's 1941 comedy thriller-a play which has been done to death by the amateurs but maybe deserves a decent revival.
 Arsenic And Old Lace is, in my opinion, a fairly ramshackle and empty old potboiler that's probably best forgotten but audiences do seem to like it. Rather than deny this demand, I could go along with offering them a superb production.
 We hadn't quite achieved this by the preview that I saw. It was worthy, smart, even interesting in parts but it didn't really bring the creaky old monster to vibrant life. Annie Castledine would have done a better job on a new play that she really believed in.
 This is supposed to offer starring roles for two mature actresses as the old ladies in Brooklyn comfort, poisoning passing old men as a favour. In fact Miriam Karlin and Muriel Barker were virtually wasted in their cliched character parts.
 The show was stolen by Christopher Wilkinson as their psychopathic, Boris Karloff-look-alike nephew, extracting every ounce of both horror and comedy in a superbly physical performance. Such calculated hamming is what the show's about-but not quite such an over-the-top performance as Gwynn Beech's playing of his brother.
 Steven Richardson's fine, angled setting didn't really make sense-why was this opulent house so bare?-but it didn't seem to matter. The comments I overheard on the way out were on the lines of 'Haven't seen such a good show for years'. I just hope they'll come back for a worthwhile text.
 Derby Playhouse (0332 363275) until December 2.

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November 15, 1989

Social Fund hit by further freeze

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 468 words

 
 WELFARE agencies reacted angrily last night after it emerged that the Government is virtually to freeze the Social Fund for the second year running.
 They said the decision to increase the fund by less than 1 per cent in 1990-91 was a recipe for severe hardship and destitution among people lacking basic necessities.
 The Department of Social Security said the fund remained adequate to meet 'greatest need'. It said there was no evidence that high-priority claimants were being rejected. 
 The fund was introduced in April 1988 in place of the former social security system of single payments or grants for people lacking the money to buy essential items such as clothes, beds, chairs and cookers.
 Under the new system, claimants such as people leaving long-stay hospitals or prison, or elderly or disabled people needing special help, can apply to the fund for discretionary community care grants. Most claimants can only apply for repayable 'budgeting' or 'crisis' loans.
 In 1988-89, the Government allocated Pounds 60 million for grants and Pounds 143 million for loans and, after demand was slow to pick up, totals were frozen for 1989-90. The 1990-91 allocations were not announced at the time of the general benefits uprating last month. Mr Tony Newton, the Social Security Secretary, has revealed in answer to a parliamentary question that the limits will be Pounds 61 million for grants and Pounds 144 million for loans.
 Ms Carey Oppenheim, acting director of the Child Poverty Action Group, said the total of Pounds 205 million ought to be Pounds 231 million if the budget was uprated by inflation.
 She said: 'It's shocking that the Government is effectively freezing the Social Fund a second time. These claimants are already being refused grants for basic necessities which the Government recognises as priorities. This runs entirely counter to government claims to be targeting resources on the poorest.'
 Mr Gary Craig, a research fellow at Bradford University who specialises in the Social Fund, said the 1989-90 budget was already under enormous pressure and being kept on course only by benefit offices increasing the proportion of applications they refused.
 For grants, refusal rates were running at 56 per cent compared with 49 per cent in 1988-89; for budgeting loans, refusals were 46 per cent compared with 39 per cent. Some offices had hit such trouble that Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, had by September been rejecting 77 per cent of grant applications.
 'What's the point of a system of last resort when you are telling eight or nine out of 10 people: 'Sorry, there's no money for you',' Mr Craig said.
 The DSS said there was 'no reason to believe that the budget available will be insufficient to meet high priority needs this year or next'.

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The Guardian (London)

November 16, 1989

Councils 'duped' over care policy

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 269 words

 
 LOCAL authorities are being duped into thinking that plans to be published today will give them a decisive role in the organisation of community care, Mr Robin Cook, the shadow health secretary, said yesterday.
 In reality, he claimed, the white paper on care of the elderly, disabled and mentally ill would be a thinly-veiled strategy for privatisation of existing services. 
 'You can forget the rhetoric about local authorities being the lead agencies in community care and letting local people have flexibility on these services,' Mr Cook said. 'The white paper threatens more central direction to strip local authorities of the services they provide to their old people and their disabled people.'
 Mr Cook said he had seen late drafts of the white paper to be unveiled by Mr Kenneth Clarke, the Health Secretary, and was in no doubt that the thrust was to promote privatisation.
 Local authorities would be required to report regularly on their use of private sector residential homes for elderly and disabled clients. There was also the 'implication' in the white paper that home help services should be put out to tender.
 'I cannot think of a provision which is more vital to keep in the public sector. I warn Kenneth Clarke now that it will be easier to privatise the nuclear industry than the home help service,' said Mr Cook.
 In addition, the white paper would require local authorities to charge clients the full economic cost of care services. Although people on social security would be protected, millions of others with incomes just above benefit levels would be hit hard.

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November 17, 1989

Outdoor cold 'is main risk to old'

BYLINE: By SAFFRON DAVIES and JOHN ILLMAN

LENGTH: 134 words

 
 THE picture of elderly people dying in cold weather by slowly freezing at home - hypothermia - is misleading, according to a report today in The Lancet medical journal.
 Being outdoors in a cold snap, for example waiting in a bus queue, and suffering a stroke or heart attack is much more likely to kill the elderly. 
 A team led by Professor Bill Keatinge, of The London Hospital Medical College, found that sudden exposure to moderate cold for as little as 30 minutes can promote blood clotting and possibly trigger an attack.
 Professor Keatinge warns: 'Though dramatic, hypothermia actually accounts for just a small proportion of winter deaths. Stroke and heart attacks are the biggest killers; it looks as though even short outdoor excursions in cold weather are mainly to blame.'

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November 17, 1989

2 billion pound role for private sector

BYLINE: By ANDREW CULF

LENGTH: 410 words

 
 THE role of the private sector in health care consists mainly of nursing homes and residential homes, a market worth more than Pounds 2 billion a year, says Mr William Laing, a health care consultant. By comparison the market for home care - about Pounds 20 million - was 'small fry'.
 There are three categories of people in residential or nursing homes: those who pay the full amount, those who receive topped-up income support, and those only getting income support. 'Those on income support have access to nothing more than shared rooms in the cheapest accommodation in the private sector,' Mr Laing said. 
 With some 9,000 residential homes for the elderly and 3,000 nursing homes, this part of the private sector is already well established. Growth in private provision of home helps and care attendants is likely to be much slower, according to Ms Lucianne Sawyer, chairman of the newly-formed UK Home Care Association.
 'The profit margins are minute,' she said. 'If you are to provide services at a price which the average consumer can pay and not exploit carers, it is very difficult to make a go of it.'
 She was concerned that people in the middle ground, who did not qualify for Independent Living Fund money, could fall through the net.
 There would be a real danger of corner-cutting and slipping standards if local authorities were forced to opt out, or accept lowest bids for services.
 A more optimistic picture was painted by Mrs Pamela Boyce, general manager of Independent Home Care and Nursing Service's Woodford Green branch.
 The company provides home helps, nursing auxiliaries, meals cooked in the home, and qualified nursing for the terminally ill. At Pounds 6.90 an hour the cost is high, but Mrs Boyce stressed the quality of care and the nursing back-up. 'The private sector will carry on growing and become more important.'
 In the voluntary sector, Crossroads Care provides more than one million care hours in the home for the disabled and mentally handicapped each year, reaching 12,000 families. Its director, Mr Ian Croft, says there are another 7,000 families on its waiting list.
 'There are quite a number of private agencies operating community care. What we want to see is more options for more care.
 'Some people will use resources to buy in services, but I believe the voluntary sector has a great deal to offer. Given the right resources we could expand and extend our services.'

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November 17, 1989

White Paper charts switch to private care: Ministers back strategy to place burden on the voluntary and commercial rather than the public sector

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE

LENGTH: 856 words

 
 THE heavy emphasis that ministers are placing on future delivery of care services by private and voluntary sectors, rather than by local authorities, is revealed in the white paper, Caring for People, published yesterday.
 It does not propose any overt privatisation of services for elderly, disabled, and mentally ill people. In fact, it says the Government 'has decided against extending compulsory competitive tendering to social care services'. But there can be no doubt that local authorities will come under great pressure to make use of the private and voluntary sectors when social services departments assume a leading role in arranging and purchasing care in April 1991. 
 A key paragraph of the white paper says: 'The statutory sector will continue to play an important role in backing up, developing and monitoring private and voluntary care facilities, and providing services where this remains the best way of meeting care needs.'
 Where people are considered to need residential care, the white paper says, social services 'will be expected to make maximum possible use of independent providers'. It adds: 'No local authority should deprive those people assessed as needing residential care of the opportunity to enter an independently run home meeting the required standards of care.'
 Although local authorities are expected to retain the ability to offer all services, when private and voluntary sectors cannot, it is implied that this is likely to be for people with 'high levels of dependency or particularly challenging patterns of behaviour'.
 Local authorities will anyway have a strong financial incentive to use private and voluntary sector homes. Where they place people in authority homes they will, as now, have to meet the full cost. Where they place them in independent homes, they will meet the cost but take a portion of the resident's social security benefit.
 The paper says: 'All authorities will need to review the extent to which they need to maintain homes of their own in these circumstances. Some rationalisation is likely to be required.'
 Services for people cared for at home will also be increasingly provided by the private and voluntary sectors. The paper acknowledges that non-statutory domiciliary, day care and respite care services are not as well developed as are residential services. This is the likely reason for not enforcing competitive tendering.
 However, it is stressed that the Government will be looking particularly at how local authorities encourage independent providers in the non-residential care field, making 'greater use of service specifications, agency agreements and contracts.'
 Such scrutiny will come in the checking of local authorities' proposed three-year community care plans, updated annually. Ministers will have powers to intervene 'to stimulate improvements'.
 The white paper fleshes out the statement in July in which ministers accepted the broad thrust of the Griffiths report on community care and, in particular, agreed to local authorities taking a leading role.
 It rehearses the pressing reasons for action to co-ordinate care: a projected increase in the number of people aged over 85 from 695,000 in 1986 to almost 1.15 million in 2001; an expectation that there will be 900,000 severely disabled adults living in the community by 2001; and an official estimate that 6 million people are acting as informal carers for others, 1.4 million of them doing so more than 20 hours a week.
 Practical support for carers is given as a key objective of the proposed changes, which will apply broadly equally in England, Wales and Scotland. But the white paper recognises that the needs of some people are best suited to residential care and that others, 'in particular elderly and seriously mentally ill people and some people with serious mental handicaps together with other illnesses or disabilities', can best be helped in hospitals.
 This leads on to the controversial issue of the rundown of long-stay mental hospitals and the alleged dumping of patients in the community without adequate support.
 The white paper admits there are 'legitimate concerns that in some places hospital beds have been closed before better, alternative facilities were fully in place'. It restates the assurances given in July that no further mental hospital closure will be approved until it can be demonstrated that proper community services exist.
 Significantly, referring to the role of health authorities in assessing local needs, the possibility is raised of some areas needing more hospital provision.
 The white paper leaves uncertainties about community care funding. There will be a single budget covering care costs for all people receiving residential or domestic care.
 Those admitted to residential homes after 1991 will no longer get special social security rates, now costing the Government more than Pounds 1 billion a year. Instead, they will be entitled to standard benefit plus a 'care' element of the former rates.
 Caring for People - Community Care in the Next Decade and Beyond; HMSO; Pounds 8.10

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November 18, 1989

Out to Lunch: Why not in front of the children?

BYLINE: By MATTHEW FORT

LENGTH: 660 words

 
 FAMILIES welcome, said the sign outside the modest pub near Ulverston in the Lake District. Keen anticipation. We had the family. We had the welcome. In we trooped: Lois (six months), Edward (20 months),
 Ellie (four years), Lawrence (seven), Hugh (seven) and George (eight). Then there were Tom and Linda and Johnny and Mary and Lindsay and myself as the minders - a largish party, but undeniably a family. 
 We made our way to the saloon bar and settled in. A young couple were brooding over each other at one table and an elderly gentleman was brooding over his paper at another. And that was it. The joint wasn't exactly jumping. Our small tribe comfortably took over what was left. There was the sound of laughter from the next bar.
 'OK, who wants what?' produced the usual babble of responses which, after five minutes' vociferous debate, boiled down to chips and Coca-Colas all round for the children and beer for the adults. Different crisps for different children but crisps nevertheless.
 The landlord appeared and took the order.
 'That'll be eleven pounds and sixty pence, please,' he said. 'And,' he coughed nervously and glanced towards our placid flock, 'can you please keep the noise down?'
 'Oh yes,' we said placidly, 'Definitely.'
 I wasn't quite sure what he meant. The brood were making no more noise than your average extended family unit, a bit of chatter, a bit of attention-seeking, but it wasn't the French Revolution out there. But the landlord's remark rather took the edge off our festive mood.
 'Not so loud, Hugh'- 'There's no need to shout, Lawrence' - 'They are cheese and onion, Ellie', became the order of the day. The couple in the corner went on brooding. The elderly gent continued to peruse his paper.
 It was when we ordered another round of drinks and nibbles that the landlord, a mild-looking man, issued his edict.
 'I'm afraid I must insist you keep those children quieter. We can't have noise like that in here.' I pointed out that there was a greater volume coming from the piped-music speakers than from our crowd. He was not impressed. The mothers began to look for alternative accommodation outside. The sun had vanished. Two elderly ladies came in. The landlord apologised for the noise and the children.
 'Oh no,' said one, 'we like babies and children.'
 'It's all right madam, they're just going outside.'
 I lost my temper.
 I like my pint or three in the quiet like anyone. But, ye gods, what do people expect? That children should lie quietly curled up underneath our chairs like dogs? Families talk. Families argue. Families make noise. That's what families do. To expect them to do otherwise is to misunderstand the nature of families.
 But there is something more deeply-rooted at work here, something peculiarly English. We don't actually know what to do with our children in public. There is precious little place for them in most pubs or clubs or restaurants. They are excluded from most forms of public entertainment that isn't expressly designed for them.
 This is nonsense. It doesn't happen in France or Italy or Spain, Belgium or America - civilised countries. These countries have exuberant eating and drinking cultures. Yes, it has something to do with a culinary tradition. But it also has something to do with the fact that each generation is properly schooled in those traditions by being exposed to them from an early age. Families eat and drink together in public as well as in private. So children feel at home in restaurants.
 No wonder we have such a paucity of decent eating places in Britain. Small wonder that pubs are struggling. They thrash around, trying to get out of the quagmire of their own making. They become theme palaces. Conversation is blitzed by fancy sound systems. Desperately they lurch from marketing gimmick to marketing gimmick. But there is no place for simple human values, no place for families with children.

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November 21, 1989

Engel's Angle: Billiards - Still the kid brother in the eyes of Joe's public

BYLINE: By MATTHEW ENGEL

LENGTH: 1256 words

 
 EARLY next month, an elderly gent will set out from his home in North Wales and drive slowly to Leeds to take part in the British Open Billiards Championship, get knocked out - more than likely - in the first qualifying round, collect his Pounds 150 and drive home again.
 So what? The competitor's name is Fred Davis, and his appearance at Leeds will mark his 60th year as a professional billiards and snooker player. It is a record that may never be beaten in any sport, ever.
 He is 76 now. In 1929 Fred started earning his living in his father's billiard halls. Since then it is not just his own career which has had ups and downs: the twin games he mastered have had the most extraordinary peaks and troughs. Very few people now even know the rudiments of billiards; it has become almost as outdated as pinochle or ruff. Yet every maiden aunt in England knows that black follows pink as surely as night follows day. And Steve Davis, Fred's namesake, is more recognisable than any footballer. 
 Only one snooker player has ever achieved greater standing, and that was Fred's older brother. Joe Davis died in 1978 after five decades in which he was almost synonymous with the sport: undefeated world champion, unbeaten in a non-handicap match by anyone until Fred himself did it. It is only really since Joe's death that Fred has acquired his own special status: as snooker's smiling, twinkling elder statesman.
 He is every bit as avuncular in the flesh as he looks on the telly. Twenty years after the first of two bad heart attacks, he is in excellent nick, living with his daughters on a farm near Denbigh with a practice table where the turkey run used to be. He still likes to enter the competitions to keep in touch. Only the arthritis in his left leg lets him down - he can no longer stand with his old solidity. His eyesight and his skill remain undimmed.
 Fred is one of only two men to become world billiards and snooker champion. But the other was Joe. The overriding factor in Fred's sporting life has not been his own remarkable ability, nor his even more remarkable durability - but the fact that he was Joe's brother. The full effect of this would probably have to be sorted out by a psychiatrist; since I have rarely met anyone less in need of psychiatric help, there is no point.
 But Fred's version of their relationship is a fascinating one, and not at all what I expected. He is thoughtful on the subject but not entirely without bitterness. Joe Davis was world snooker champion every year from 1927 to 1946, when he stopped entering. He was 12 years old and already amateur billiards champion of Chesterfield when Fred was born. By the time Fred was conscious of anything, Joe was rapidly becoming a national celebrity and their father was giving up the pub he ran and taking over billiard halls.
 Fred says his brother neither taught nor encouraged him. 'The first recollection I have that Joe even knew I existed was when I was knocking the balls about and he said: 'Wipe that bloody grin off your face.' 'Joe could never understand me smiling. We were complete opposites in that way. He was as black as thunder when anything went wrong. I would laugh it off. It was a tough business to be in and if truth be known he didn't want me to do it. He was a complex character and he wasn't always easy to know.
 'Without wishing it to sound harsh, Joe was only interested in Joe. Apart from his great ability, he had a great PR sense. I realised there was no way I could turn public opinion and make people think of me as better than him. It made my attitude very strange. I played without any great interest.'
 Fred struggled in his early days as a professional until he realised that his eyesight was the problem and an optician made him a pair of swivel-lens glasses, then a great novelty. One can see that a man as intense as Joe might have resented the presence of a less able, less caring kid brother.
 'Joe would always say he practised eight hours a day. It was never seven and it was never nine. I never took it as the literal truth. It can't have done him any good. Even as a teenager I was mentally tired after an hour.
 'What Joe had was presence. He would walk in there like King Kong and most of the players would be terrified. In my early days I was the same. But strangely enough I always felt I could beat him.'
 And in the end he did. Joe had retired as undefeated world champion in 1946. The next year Fred lost unexpectedly to Walter Donaldson. But in 1948 he was world champion so when a challenge match was mooted, there was no way Joe could insist on giving him a start. They played at the old Thurston's Hall in Leicester Square, and Fred won. Even so, no one believed it. 'As far as the public were concerned, he must have let me win. They didn't know Joe. He wasn't like that.'
 Fred was champion every year bar two between 1948 and 1956. It was the wrong time. At first snooker had been only a novelty game, a diversion. What mattered were the great billiards contests, played out over a week or a fortnight like timeless Tests. Then, in the 1930s, the top players perfected the nursery cannon, which enabled them to perpetuate breaks to infinity. The game simply expired of boredom.
 Snooker then flourished briefly. But just when Fred became champion, it began to be knocked senseless by television. Fred knew the game was up the night he was giving one of his 10-guinea-a-night exhibitions at a club and only six people turned up. And anyway, people hardly noticed him. 'Right from the start I realised there was no place for me in the public mind. Because of Joe. If he was on the BBC they introduced him as world champion and Joe never contradicted them.'
 Fred just shrugged. His late wife ran a 100-bed hotel in Llandudno so there was always money coming in. And anyway his rule was never to touch his cue from April to September. He was still around when TV acquired colour. Someone thought of Pot Black ..and the rest you know.
 In those later days the brothers became much closer, perhaps because they were no longer a threat to each other. Joe was watching Fred's tense semi-final in the 1978 world championship against Perrie Mans when he was taken ill; he died a few weeks later.
 Two years later Fred appeared on Frank Keating's TV programme Maestro and predicted the name of the next world champion: his name too would be Davis. 'I played Steve when he was 20 or so. I had great admiration for him even then. All the modern players are tremendous potters. The difference is that he can play billiards. He can manipulate the cue-ball. With most of the others, it's all crash, bang, wallop. If it doesn't go in and they come up against someone like Steve they'll get slaughtered.'
 So I asked the obvious question: Joe v Steve. 'No comparison. When Steve played Dennis Taylor he won the first eight frames and lost. That couldn't have happened to Joe. No one ever gave him eight frames and beat him.'
 Fred still reckons he could have beaten anyone. But to most of snooker he will be only the third-best Davis. In his professional longevity, though, no one can touch him. Sixty years is an incomparable record, and his old cue has been with him all the way.
 'I know if I give the game up or if I have to give it up, there is only one way from then on. You have to keep doing what you do to make life interesting. But I'm probably the last player you would have expected to keep going. You see, I was never an enthusiast.'

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November 23, 1989

Thursday Women: Gift of the gab - Katie Campbell talks talk

BYLINE: By KATIE CAMPBELL

LENGTH: 823 words

 
 GOSSIP. I love it. Unashamedly, unrepentingly. Most people do, though few will admit it these days. To gossip: to natter, to prattle, to chatter, to tittle-tattle, to jabber, to jaw. As far back as 700 BC Hesiod was wary of it: 'Gossip is mischievous, light and easy to raise, but grievous to bear and hard to get rid of.' In other words, mud sticks
 But gossip hasn't always had such bad press. Even Oscar Wilde called it charming - granted he was one of history's great gossipers, but he was an even greater gossipee. It has often been noted that while barbarians fight with hatchets, civilised men fight with gossip. Well, frankly, I'd rather have a little mud than a hatchet thrown at my back. And gossip needn't be malevolent; my Little Oxford Dictionary defines it simply as 'informal talk, esp about persons.' In any case, when someone gossips well they are called a wit or a conversationalist; only those who gossip badly are tarred with the appellation 'Gossip'. 
 Good gossip must have an esential core of truth to it, and a dose of compassion, concern or at least good humour attached; it is bad gossip that has no basis in fact, that is driven obviously and primarily by maliciousness. That sort of gossip certainly should be condemned; that is the sort Hesiod warned against. But even he went on to say that gossip has 'a kind of divinity'. And Seneca seven hundred years later spoke of 'that most knowing of persons - (the) gossip'.
 The word gossip itself actually means 'God's kin'. Originally it was a term of respect denoting a godparent - as Queen Elizabeth I was the gossip at the baptism of her godson James VI, or indicating friends with a common spiritual bond. Following the peasant habit of referring to any elder as 'Mother/Father' or 'Grandmother/Grandfather', the word was also applied to any gathering of older folk. It was only when it began to be associated exclusively with women that gossip began its slippery slide into the gutter. From denoting women friends or gossips, the word came to denote the speech of gossips. And so it acquired its contemporary, pejorative connotation of idle chatter.
 There is a theory that gossip is a form of speech particular to women - to women, old people, servants and slaves. In other words, to the powerless. But while Daisy and Rose were gossiping in the downstairs pantry, does anybody really doubt what Lord Bellamy was doing upstairs in the drawing room? Discussing affairs of state - no doubt. The sort of affairs that lose elections and topple governments. Not philosophy, not theology, but - you guessed it - gossip.
 A psychiatrist friend of mine recently returned from an international conference in Athens. When I asked him what those eminent shrinks did with themselves in the evenings he explained that they gathered in the hotel bar. 'And what did you all talk about?'
 'Shop-talk: who's getting ahead, and how, and why; who's feuding with whom; who's working with whom; who's screwing with whom.'
 'Oh, you mean gossip.'
 'No!' he protested, indignantly. 'We were talking shop; it was shop-talk, not gossip.'
 When Lawson resigned the pundits gathered, and mused, and offered up their conjectures and reflections, and it was called Political Speculation. When women gather to do the same, it is called gossip.
 When academics delve into someone's life it is called Biography; when therapists posit theories on human behaviour it is called Psychology; when sociologists ruminate on society it is called Sociology. When women ponder on an individual, emotion or social phenomenon, it is called Gossip.
 So what exactly is gossip - this thing that is so reviled and condemned? Gossip is Speculation. About human affairs, about human motives, actions and desires. As women are largely responsible for the emotional wellbeing of society, it is hardly surprising that the shop-talk of women is gossip.
 Gossip is Old Wives' Tales. Women's wisdom has long been feared: Old Women, Witches, Sibyls, Seers. Those who scorn or censure women's talk diminish women. Or seek to.
 Gossip is Stories. Stories provide entertainment, but also instruction. The best, most satisfying gossip is like the best, most satisfying art; it is cathartic. Through gossip we learn from other people's lives without undergoing the pain or danger of their experiences.
 In short, gossip is a chronicle of humanity. As Ogden Nash put it, 'Another good thing about gossip is that it is within everybody's reach/And it is much more interesting than any other form of speech ..'
 Imagine if Colette or Jane Austen or Dorothy Parker or Chaucer or Shakespeare or Marcel Proust had lived in a world without gossip! Their works would be skeletal; their insights would be meagre and mean. You can keep your philosophers speculating on language or your theologians speculating on God, I'll speculate on the human heart - gossip's good enough for me.

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November 23, 1989

The Day in Politics: Labour launches winter campaign

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE

LENGTH: 227 words

 
 LABOUR published six main amendments to the bill which they said would form the basis of the party's 'winter campaign to save the NHS', writes David Brindle.
 Mr Robin Cook, shadow Health Secretary, said: 'We could not have chosen a better issue to put centre stage for the first televised session of Parliament.' 
 One amendment would make any hospital opt-out plan subject to a ballot of local people.
 A second would give patients a guaranteed right of access to the hospital of their choice, and general practitioners a right to refer patients to the consultant of their choice.
 A third would give GPs an explicit right to prescribe the drugs their patients need without any cash limit, while a fourth would specify that all contracts for care must protect quality, not just promote cost competition.
 The remaining two amendments apply to the community care plans.
 One would 'ring-fence' or protect the grants to be given to local authorities so they could not be used for other purposes; the other would give elderly and disabled people in local authority residential homes the same social security rights as those in private or voluntary sector homes.
 This last amendment would have the effect of removing the deterrent which local authorities will face if they place people in their own homes and have to meet the full cost.

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November 25, 1989

Football: Shakers stirring things up in the Third - Bury coming alive at last and reaching out for promotion

BYLINE: By CYNTHIA BATEMAN

LENGTH: 735 words

 
 WHEN Stockport turned up at Bury a few years ago with three players and their manager adrift - in the snow, as it happened - they still managed to win. They would not find it so easy now. Three points today against Crewe, and Bury could go top of the fiercely contested Third Division, ahead of the two Bristol teams.
 A celebration is being planned at a posh Manchester hotel, but this shindig has nothing to do with the Shakers' lofty position in the table. Tickets for the annual dinner-dance are Pounds 25 a head, and Bury need the money. No matter how well the team performed in the past, it made barely a jot of difference to the attendance figure. 
 But this season, playing success combined with enterprise off the pitch has resulted in gates in the first quarter starting off - where previously they have peaked - at around 3,300. Still a low figure for a ground that once held 39,000, and can now accommodate only 8,000, but Bury are pleased.
 The boost has come largely from the sale of Pounds 10 season tickets to youngsters and old-age pensioners. Bury's chairman Terry Robinson says: 'It won't do us much good in cash in the short term. But we hope in the long term that the youngsters will grow up into supporters. In recent years we feel we may have lost two generations.'
 Bury has always been proud of its family atmosphere, the club always a part of the town and stiffly resistant to a move by a previous chairman to change its name to North Manchester. The Shakers would not leave Gigg Lane, with its reputation for one of the finest pitches in the land.
 'Bury's ground is the most attractive in the North-west,' wrote Simon Inglis in Football Grounds of England and Wales. Yet Gigg Lane has a Cemetery End, which no doubt has led to countless Dead But Not Buryed headlines.
 But Bury has never been a soccer hotbed like its Lancashire neighbours. It has never produced a legend, a Nat or a Stan or a Tom, although Neville Southall and Colin Bell began their careers at Gigg Lane, and the club had a reputation for producing good players: Terry McDermott, Danny Wilson.
 The Boltons and Burnleys 'have a residue of perhaps 10,000 fans who start to come back when their team is doing well. We have no such support. Our gates are half what they were 10 years ago,' says Hugh Eaves, Bury's latest source of income.
 Eaves holds 149,000 of Bury's 200,000 shares and has put Pounds 300,000 into the club in the past four years. He is Bury born but London based, a member of the Stock Exchange with interests in 'venture capital'.
 Eaves says: 'This season there is a self-belief and, if you talk to any of the players, they are expecting promotion. I think we have the best opportunity this season that we have had for a long time, with a new management team and new players.'
 Bury had never laid out more than Pounds 15,000 on a player until this year, when suddenly their spending topped a quarter of a million. Swansea's beanpole central-defender Alan Knil broke the record, costing Pounds 95,000. Chris Withe, from Notts County, and Tony Cunningham, the former Manchester City and Blackpool forward, each cost Pounds 40,000.
 They were prepared to pay Pounds 250,000 for Crystal Palace's forward John Salako, but the player did not fancy the move.
 The physio Wilf McGuinness, a former Manchester United manager, says Bury have the strongest squad in the 10 seasons he has been there. It is a mix of home-grown players brought through from YTS trainees who have picked the skills of the veterans Sammy McIlroy and Kenny Clements and are just beginning to fulfil their promise. The most striking is the 22-year-old David Lee, a quicksilver ball player.
 Sam Ellis, who took over as manager in the summer after leaving Blackpool, refuses to be drawn on the subject of promotion ..or much else, come to that. It is all too soon.
 Bury's heady days were nearly 100 years ago when they shook the First Division. But it is 30 years since they were in the Second. They won the FA Cup twice in their early years, beating Southampton 4-0 in 1900 and Derby 6-0 in 1903, still a Cup final record.
 But even that led to tears a few years ago. Bury's only permanent prize of any note was the ball from that match. But they loaned it for an exhibition and, when the organisers went bust, Bury's ball went to appease the creditors ..and nobody ever gave it back.

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November 27, 1989

UK News in Brief: Fears for elderly

LENGTH: 34 words

 
 Elderly and vulnerable patients may be 'pushed to one side' if National Health Service reforms go ahead, says the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, which plans a day of protest on Thursday.

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November 28, 1989

Racing: Ascot jump into evening racing

BYLINE: By KEN OLIVER

LENGTH: 224 words

 
 ASCOT is to stage its first evening meeting for 25 years next May 1 and the all-sponsored card will be the richest ever evening National Hunt fixture, writes Ken Oliver
 With no financial support from the Horserace Betting Levy Board, the Charterhouse Mercantile Group are bringing together six sponsors, who will support the meeting not only with prize money but also by making a substanial contribution towards Ascot's cost in opening the racecourse for this additional fixture.
 Four of the six races already have sponsors and negotiations for the remaining two are in hand. The sponsors' total contribution is Pounds 54,000, with Pounds 28,000 in prize money and the rest going towards expenses for staging the meeting, which will start at 5.30pm.
 Senior citizens will be allowed into Tattersalls at half-price, Pounds 3, while a Members' badge will cost the usual Pounds 10, but will be valid for the next day's afternoon flat meeting which features the Victoria Cup.
 The evening will not be short of entertainment for there will be a band and also a group of strolling minstrels.
 Piers Bengough, the Queen's representative, said: 'The Ascot executive are delighted to have been granted this evening fixture, as additional meetings are hard to come by. We are hoping that it will become a permanent fixture.'

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November 28, 1989

Tuesday Women: Prime numbers - Why cosmetic manufacturers are at last putting age before beauty

BYLINE: By PENNY RICH

LENGTH: 1175 words

 
 WE ARE getting older. Already one out of five people in the UK is over 60, and in 20 years' time this will have risen to one in four. As we enter the 1990s, 60 per cent of women will have celebrated their 30th birthday, and no matter how many offspring we produce by the turn of the century, it won't stop the decline in the annual birthrate.
 This means that manufacturers of all consumer goods will have a new market to woo, and they will have to change the way they try to sell their products. The most radical changes will be in the cosmetic industry, because they also have to change the very products they sell to us. For the first time ever, they must also reconcile beauty and old age. In an industry in which models were once not allowed to smile in advertisements, in case they showed a laughter line, the dilemma is how to show the cracks yet still imply that beauty products turn back the clock. 
 Barbara Attenborough, who as Creative Adviser to Boots has helped make all their cosmetic brands UK best sellers, has been working on this problem for some time. Several years ago, Boots predicted that 17 cosmetics, its leading youth brand, would be 25 per cent down in sales by 1992 due to a lack of teenage purchasers. So last year they launched 2000, a range of skincare products specially formulated for older women, with a complementary range of cosmetics individually mixed to match customer's needs. Within two months it had claimed 0.5 per cent of the market and has gone on to be even more successful.
 According to Attenborough, however, this initial strategic about-face is just the tip of the iceberg. 'The cosmetic industry as a whole is currently formulating products that work for the older woman,' she says. 'As you age, too much make-up only makes you look older, so we will see less make-up more cleverly applied. Tomorrow's cosmetic counters will display fewer high fashion shades and more wearable colours - browns and beiges - in all the standard ranges. Eyeshadows won't have pearl or glitter in them, because they exaggerate the contours of looser, older skin. Lip and eye products will be matt and moisturising, to balance the dryness of mature complexions, and lipsticks will adhere better, so they stay on longer and don't bleed into the fine lines around the mouth.'
 The other change looming for the industry will be to make 'treatment' products, because older women don't just want products that look good: they want products that do good. Lancome, at the premium end of the market, have been leading the research in this area for some time. According to UK PR Cassandra Duncan, the new priority is to make products that work against the signs of ageing. 'Already every good skincare product contains anti-ageing ingredients that screen out harmful UV rays, fight free radicals which cause wrinkles, and put as much moisture back into the skin as possible,' she says. 'The next step is super hydration, to make the skin's moisture content as high as possible, using powerful ingredients in light, gel-like textures which penetrate easily. We are perfecting foundations with treatment properties, but also with very light textures so they are not heavy and ageing on skin. All mascaras will contain ingredients such as keratin, to condition eyelashes.'
 But eventually may not be soon enough for most of us. The latest figures prove that already the majority of cosmetic users are showing on their faces the first signs of age. In the year ending June 1989, women over 35 purchased 58 per cent of all skincare products and 47 per cent of all make-up sold in the UK. And to keep selling to them, it is more than just product formulations that the industry must change. The basic design of the twist-up lipstick hasn't been altered since Guerlain invented it in 1910. But according to Attenborough, new product packaging is the next vital thing to tempt the new majority market.
 'Quality packaging has always been more important to the older woman than to teenagers,' she says, 'because they pay more for products and expect luxury in return.' But the entire industry will now have to make products that are more sophisticated as well as looking more glamorous. Compacts will become slimmer and micro-thin, with built-in one-dose applicators, less plastic and more glass. They have to have a 21st century feel and be sleek, tiny, hi-tech, beautiful and modern.
 Yet there is one area of the UK cosmetic industry still firmly entrenched in this decade - up until now, no company has dared to sell products to the older market by advertising make-up worn with wrinkles. And no glossy magazine has been brave enough to put an older celebrity on its cover without serious retouching to the photograph first. In America, however, where there are already more people over the age of 40 than under it, the media have confronted the new market head on. Six years ago, Lancome signed on the oldest house model in the business for their worldwide advertising campaign - Isabella Rossellini, now 36 and a mother, is still with them. Last year Revlon used Audrey Hepburn, aged 60, in its long-running series of American advertisements featuring 'the most unforgettable women in the world'. Their latest ad has Frank Sinatra, aged 74, with his fourth wife Barbara. And the biggest success story in American publishing is Lear's, a magazine 'for the woman who wasn't born yesterday', launched last year. The average age of its readers is 49, the editorial photographs show real women looking their age -and advertisers are lining up to book space in it.
 In the UK, advertising is lagging behind and wrinkles simply don't feature. Marion Kelly, Director General of the Cosmetic, Perfumery and Toiletries Association, believes this is because the beauty business is about selling dreams, rather than reality. 'The dilemma facing the industry now is not to exclude older purchasers by showing products advertised on teenagers, nor to lose the younger market by showing products on older women,' she says. 'The current compromise is by using ageless models - womenin their prime. We'll have to see slightly older faces in the next five years. But not real wrinklies, because people don't want to be wrinkled so why would they buy a product advertised on a wrinkled face? It contradicts the message of any beauty ad, which is that wrinkles are to be avoided with good skincare.'
 But if the cosmetic industry is going to change to sell to the new ageing, majority market, then the consumer herself will have to change first. Once enough of us have real wrinkles, perhaps we will learn to admire them as the signs of a life well lived. Barbara Attenborough, who has just turned 60, thinks that women now look more glamorous as they age. 'The odd wrinkle no longer means that you should become invisible or retire. I think we may yet see attractive, grey-haired, wrinkled models. It will take one company to do it. But it will be the bravest, best and cleverest thing any advertiser has ever done.'

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December 2, 1989

Money (Cashpoints): Warning for elderly

LENGTH: 87 words

 
 ELDERLY homeowners considering raising cash from the value of their house are warned that they could be made homeless if they take out an unsuitable plan in a new booklet launched by Cecil Hinton of Hinton & Wild.
 He is worried by home income plans which roll up the interest or link the loan to an investment bond.
 Free copies of the booklet - Raising Income or Capital From Your Home? - Some Important Questions You Should Ask - is available from Hinton & Wild Ltd, Freepost, Surbiton, Surrey KT6 7BR.

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December 4, 1989

Arts: Out of the valleys of despond - Keith Baxter's travels with his play

BYLINE: By KEITH BAXTER

LENGTH: 775 words

 
 AN ELDERLY man with halitosis leaned towards me. We were in a tavern in Greenwich Village. 'My home is in New Jersey, but my heart is stuck in Pontypool.' His voice was low and every breath a razor. 'In this very room,' he said, knocking back a vodka stinger, 'Dylan Thomas drank himself to Death!' I had met Dylan Thomas once, in 1953, just before I was posted to Korea and a few months later, bivouacked above the Imjin, a soldier told me he was dead. Now three-and-a-half decades later I was surrounded by The Welsh Society of America, talking of Thomas and talking of Wales.
 I did not tell the old man that the Wales his fellow exiles all remembered had died; it had died around the same time as the Poet. So when I wrote Barnaby And The Old Boys it was to be about an exile crossing the Atlantic after a long absence, in time for Christmas with his family in a South Wales he would find hugely changed. 
 My agent in New York was grim. 'Why such a large family? Couldn't some of them be dead?' I said it was a team play. 'Producers don't like 'team plays'. What producers like is a short comedy, two hours maximum, one set and four actors - and a fat part for A Star.' Three London producers rejected it instantly. The first said he no longer did 'straight' plays; he was now 'only into musicals'. The second wouldn't read it unless it was a vehicle for a star. The third said the Welsh words (24 of them) had given him a headache and wasn't the play dirty? 
 I heard Toby Robertson was doing remarkable work in Wales and Barnaby And The Old Boys duly opened under his direction at Theatr Clwyd. Apart from the woman who hissed 'Antichrist' at me in Welsh the local response was unanimously enthusiastic.
 We delayed the start of the play seven times as a result of telephone calls from London; seven times the seats were still empty at the end. One producer came up to Manchester for the funeral of a friend but 'alas it was a day when Theatr Clwyd was closed.' Another would send her trusted emissary, but it rained and fearing 'flu, he turned back at Hendon.
 One producer did indeed make the journey north and was enthusiastic enough to assemble a cast for a March transfer to London. We had some anxiety about his finances and our fears were increased when he postponed rehearsals until June 8. On June 7, he went into liquidation. I took out a mortgage on my house and tightened my belt.
 The director of a theatre on the outskirts of London gave me a drink. He was firm with me: he was not interested in doing work simply to transfer into the West End and the play absolutely did not need a Star Cast. Strangely however, without telling me, he sent the play to Julie Walters. Now Miss Walters is an actress of shattering accomplishment and indisputably A Star but hers would not be the first name that would spring into anyone's to mind when casting a middle-aged Welsh grandmother and quite rightly she said so. The director no longer returned my calls. 'Barnaby' was on the loose again and mortgage rates went up.
 Glynis Johns called me from Los Angeles. She had read the play. Could we discuss it when she came to London? That week I opened a letter from a young producer with impeccable credentials - the Manchester Royal Exchange, the Lyric Hammersmith. He and his partner were determined to do new work; they had read the notices and sent for the play and wanted to produce it. I took Glynis Johns to lunch at Joe Allen and the producer was at the next table, scrutinising her over his menu. He approved. On February 22 Glynis agreed terms; on February 27 she was back in Los Angeles. 'I love the play but I don't feel well.'
 The mortgage rate went up again, and a swingeing tax demand arrived, together with a Keith Baxter ..struggle peremptory letter from Lloyds Bank.
 On June 15 I had a message from ABC TV in New York asking me to accept a two-year assignment in their longest running soap, for which they would pay me a million dollars. If I accepted it Barnaby And The Old Boys would have to be abandoned. I had come such a long journey with the play I couldn't give up now. I telephoned New York and got more drunk than I'd been since Korea. On July 4 I went to the theatre in London and a theatre-owner saw me at the bar. It reminded him of my play - he went home, looked at it, read the notices, and the next morning we were offered his Vaudeville Theatre; as perfect a home as anyone could wish.
 This morning a friend telephoned: 'Isn't early December the very worst time to open a play?'
 Barnaby And The Old Boys, written by and starring Keith Baxter opens at the Vaudeville today.

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December 7, 1989

Barlow Clowes' death toll rises: More than 600 claimants die awaiting compensation

BYLINE: By DANIEL JOHN

LENGTH: 380 words

 
 More than 600 of the original 18,000 investors caught up in the collapse of the Barlow Clowes investment empire have died during the 18 months long battle to secure compensation, it was revealed yesterday.
 The death toll has worked out at the equivalent of seven a week since the two companies responsible for investing 190 million Pounds (pds) in government securities went into liquidation last June.
 Many who invested in UK based Barlow Clowes Gilt Managers and its Gibraltar sister operation, Barlow Clowes International, were elderly people whose plight has been made worse by the loss of their savings. 
 The latest number of deaths were released yesterday as the Barlow Clowes Investors Group (BCIG) sought to secure the release of the Parliamentary Ombudsman's report into the Department of Trade and Industry's role in the affair.
 The draft written by Sir Anthony Barrowclough, the ombudsman, is currently in the hands of the DTI for factual checking. Investors have been expecting its publication for the last two weeks but are fearful it will be kept back for the week when Parliament goes into the Christmas recess.
 That will prevent MPs scrutinising the report in detail and from questioning Trade Secretary Nicholas Ridley about the DTI's role in allowing Barlow Clowes to operate over the years leading up to its collapse.
 There are also indications that the current criminal investigation into Barlow Clowes may prevent the most sensitive parts from being release.
 BCIG representatives, including chairman John Dyer, yesterday lobbied key MPs in an effort to secure the report's earliest release. An early day motion has also been put down in the House of Commons supporting their case.
 A spokeswoman for the Ombudsman's office said the draft report was still in the hands of the DTI and that publication could not take place until it had been returned.
 Labour's City spokeswoman Dr Marjorie Mowlam yesterday claimed the delay was part of a Government attempt to avoid further embarrassment over the affair.
 The possibility that the report would not appear before Christmas would mean another miserable time for investors. 'How many more have to die before the report is published and they receive compensation,' she said.

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December 11, 1989

Elderly care crisis warning

BYLINE: By DAVID BRINDLE, Social Services Correspondent

LENGTH: 302 words

 
 Britain will face a spiralling demand for long-term residential care of the elderly unless funds are made available for the rapid development of community services, a report warns today.
 The warning that Government community care policies may fail to halt the residential care boom comes from Professor Nick Bosanquet, professor of health policy at the University of London, and Dr Alistair Gray, a research associate at Wolfson College, Oxford. 
 They calculate that the ageing population is adding 1 per cent annually to health service costs. Between 1986-95, they estimate a 33 per cent rise in the number of over-75s hospitalised for short-stay treatment alone.
 As a result, they say the health service must quickly adjust to big shifts in demand among specialties: while general surgery patients will rise by just 4 per cent between 1986-95, those in geriatric medicine will increase by 35 per cent, and those in urology by 42 per cent.
 However, the report - commissioned by the National Association of Health Authorities and the Society of Family Practitioner Committees - warns that the main danger is a spiralling of demand for long-term residential care.
 It says that without building on existing community services, residential care will expand even faster than the 1 billion Pounds (pds) growth in the 1970s, as measured by social security costs.
 Claiming the 1980s have been wasted in the development of elderly-care services, it suggests a three-year programme of community services development costing 700,000 pds - or another 1 per cent extra funding - in each health district.
 Will You Still Love Me? - New Opportunities for Health Services for Elderly People in the 1990s and Beyond; NAHA, Birmingham Research Park, Vincent Drive, Birmingham B15 2SQ: 15 pds.

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December 12, 1989

Hype raises crime fear, says report

BYLINE: By JOHN CARVEL, Home Affairs Editor

LENGTH: 265 words

 
 A 40-point plan to reduce the public's fear of crime was presented to the Home Office yesterday by a working party under Mr Michael Grade, chief executive of Channel 4.
 "We believe many people are paying an unnecessary and unacceptable price for the hyping of crime prevention," it concluded. 
 Sections of the community with the greatest fear of crime were those least likely to be affected - notably elderly women who commonly imposed an after-dark curfew on themselves in spite of very low risks.
 The report criticises the media for failure to present comprehensive information about crime patterns to balance horror stories.
 It said Crimestoppers TV commercials should be abandoned if they cannot avoid violent reconstructions which increase public anxiety. Mr John Patten, the Home Office Minister of State, rejected the report's finding that government crime-prevention advertising boosts fear. He also challenged a proposal that crime statistics should be published less frequently.
 The group said that police forces should be more open to the public with efforts to increase ethnic minority recruitment. Local authorities should also set up special units to tackle the fear of crime, improve pedestrian subways, unlit car parks and litter-strewn streets. There are also recommendations to improve safety on public transport.
 The working party included Mr Dan Crompton, the Chief Constable of Nottinghamshire, That's Life TV presenter Esther Rantzen, Mr Louis Blom-Cooper, QC, chairman of the Press Council, Home Office experts and leading academics.

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December 13, 1989

Ombudsman set to rule on Barlow Clowes

BYLINE: By ALAN TRAVIS, Political Correspondent

LENGTH: 391 words

 
 The Ombudsman's report on the Barlow Clowes affair in which 18,000 investors lost 100 million Pounds (pds) will be submitted to the Commons before the Christmas recess begins next week.
 The Ombudsman, Sir Anthony Barrowclough, is telling MPs that the report is being finalised, though an early draft is believed to recommend that not all the investors should be compensated for the losses they suffered when the investment group crashed 18 months ago.
 It is believed that the report will be highly critical of ministers' role in the affair, despite a claim last year by Lord Young, the former Trade and Industry Secretary, that an internal investigation concluded his department could not be held responsible. 
 Sir Anthony, whose official title is Parliamentary Commissioner, is expected to criticise successive corporate affairs ministers at the department, and could throw the spotlight on the role of Lord Young.
 The case turns on whether the department was legally responsible for supervising the group's unauthorised offshore arm, Barlow Clowes International, where most of the losses were incurred. Some 11,000 investors had money in the offshore fund.
 The report - which has taken more than a year to prepare in one of the most complex inquiries undertaken by Sir Anthony's office - will address the question of when the department first became negligent if it is shown to have been aware of the possible difficulties. The report will also examine the department's decision to license Barlow Clowes's United Kingdom fund.
 The report has been with the department's accountants for more than three weeks as they check its factual accuracy. The exercise has enabled the officials involved in the original decisions to respond to the findings. The Government will publish its response when the report is released.
 Sir Anthony wrote yesterday to Mr Alf Morris, Labour MP for Manchester, Wythenshawe, two of whose constituents were the subject of a test case. The couple, in their mid-70s, lost their life savings of 65,000 pds and had to sell their home.
 Mr Morris said: "Many of the investors in Barlow Clowes were elderly people and some 500 have died since they lost their money. If the Ombudsman's report recommends that compensation should be paid, the Government should act urgently and honour it."

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December 13, 1989

Wednesday People: Veteran looks back in anguish - Dick Trafford

BYLINE: By DENNIS BARKER

LENGTH: 319 words

 
 When he was 28 Dick Trafford went to work in Ormskirk as an ambulance driver at in that now mercifully defunct institution, a workhouse, where the elderly poor worked for their keep.
 When he was 50, he and his wife took over, as superintendent and matron, the old Oldham workhouse which had by then, with the advent of the National Health Service, become the Westlands Old People's Home. He and most others thought the workhouse conditions gone for good. 
 But yesterday, on his 91st birthday, Trafford, whose wife died in sheltered accommodation four years ago, told a community nursing conference in London, that, though a Tory voter all his life who thought most of what Mrs Thatcher was doing was good, he saw a danger that old people might be heading back towards the workhouse if the Government went ahead with NHS cuts and changes in community care.
 Trafford's moral right to speak was unassailable. Now the spokesman for the First World War Veterans' Association, he joined up at 15 on the first day of the war, giving his age as 18. In the King's Liverpool Regiment, he went through Loos, the Somme, and Passchendaele and was wounded twice - a thumb torn off by shrapnel, his neck pierced by a bullet.
 In 1926, when he first became an ambulance driver at Ormskirk workhouse "conditions were not "tip-top." Men had to wear rough cotton shirts and white corduroy jackets and trousers, to be easily visible.
 The able-bodied had to saw up old railway sleepers and then chop up the pieces for sale as firewood. One day a week, the men were allowed a dark suit to go out for the day to visit friends or relatives.
 "Old people get pensions now, so much pocket money in old people's homes and
 better clothing. But the government is cutting down, whereas they shouldn't.
  I should think it is working the way of bringing back the workhouse through
 having too much economy."

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December 14, 1989

Books: The gas chamber mentality - Review of 'Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism 1870-1945' by Paul Windling

BYLINE: By NORMAN STONE

LENGTH: 877 words

 
 Paul Windling: Health, Race and German Politics Between National Unification and Nazism 1870-1945 (Cambridge UP, 55 Pounds (pds)).
 As I write, two deranged men pass up and down outside my window. One thinks he is a bishop, the other would, without the mental derangement, be a good craftsman. Both have been released into "the community," and spend their time walking up and down, periodically knocking at doors. 
 I do not pretend to understand the reasoning that puts these poor men on the streets, but finance, I suppose, plays a part: harmless lunatics can be "farmed out" of asylums, and there are old-age pensioners who are glad of the money to take care of them - probably better care than they would receive in asylums. The Nazis had another answer: gas chambers.
 Paul Weindling's book is about the rationality of gas-chambers. In all of Europe, around 1900, worries occurred about the "inferior" elements of society. Doctors grew strong, their influence on public health-policy very strong. Industrialisation created great problems - of overcrowding, family-break-up, alcoholism.
 For the middle classes after the 1880s, there was an especial problem, in that their birth-rate, relative to the peasant or working classes, declined. Was society then going to reproduce is least promising elements? Germany, and, particularly, Prussia and Saxony, saw these problems most sharply, and her medical sociolgists form the centre of Weindling's book. The outcome is, of course, horrible.
 On the one side there is the Nazi theory of sterlisation, of euthenasia, and, for the sake of the future of the Race, the gas-chambers. On the other side, which Weindling does not mention, is the German Democratic Republic. I read in the latest Spiegel that that state, or ex-state, has a record second to none in coping with Aids. Its solution? It tests foreigners, and expels them if they are HIV positive. Weindling indicates, towards the end of his long book, that the Communist authorities took over a signficiant number of Nazi personnel. Attitudes live on: and Spiegel now says, with relief, that the German Democratic Republic contains fewer Aids victims than any big street in any large West German city.
 What is the balance between authoritarian moralism and let-it-all-hang-out destructiveness? The problem, nowadays, comes up with Aids and drugs. But it is an old one - in the old days, to do with a strange mixture of causes, in which syphilis and drink had their place.
 Paul Weindling's book is very good indeed. I owe to it many things - in particular two nuggets of information which should be passed on. There were, in the Twenties and Thirties, such strong links between Germany and the United States in medical research that the work of Dr Josef Mengele was subsidised, for a time, by the Rockefellers. Then again, in the 1930s, one piece of Nazi-Soviet collaboration which went on was a research institute, in Moscow, on racial qualities.
 This book, which has a scholarly backing of immense power, needs to be read by anyone embarking on a cultural history of the European world of 1990. the world which gave us a Freudian anser - if answer it was - also gave us the Nazi's gas chambers. Its chief opponent was the Catholic Church, and Freud, when asked, just after he arrived in London in exile from Nazi persecution, did say that his main enemy was not Hitler but Catholicism. And Catholicism, frequently unacknowledged, is the hero of Weindling's book.
 The book is too long and encyclopaedic - an outcome, probably, of its author's fundamental indecision as to which side he is on. Again and again, there are lists of names, of doctors, of societies for this and tht, of scholarly endeavours started, and scholarly endeavours aborted.
 In the 1970s doctors were liberals: leave us alone and all will be well. By the 1890s, a kind of professional imperialism took over: leave us to dictate, and all will be well. In Germany, the limits of democratic accountability were such that this "professional imperialism" could be more successful than in other countries. In the Nazi period, the doctors had a field day. Hitler, a teetotal vegetarian with a passionate hatred of smoking, was all for enthusiasts abortion of "life-unworthy" women, and medical experimentation on human beings - though not, be it said, on animals. "Eugeincs" - in effect, selective breeding - came into its own; Auschwitz is its monument.
 If Hitler had won the War, the continent would have contained about three hundred million blond, blue-eyed goody-goodies doing nothing but reproduce themselves: the sort of paradise which the more boring elements in the "caring" professions might wish to see. Still, in his horrible way, Hitler was pointing to a problem that is constant and, in today's "underlcass," very serious. How do you stop single teenage mothers from breeding up tomorrow's football hooligans? How do you deal with the mentally deranged, and should they be sterilised? What powers should be given to public health authorities? Weindling himself is, I suspect, rather schizophrenic about this - on the one side, admiring the medical endeavour that developed in modern Germany, and on the other, seeing how it could be abused.

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December 14, 1989

Books: Senile curses and a Swedish con / New fiction

BYLINE: By NORMAN SHRAPNEL

LENGTH: 830 words

 
 Gloria's Birthday, by Norma Levinson (Century, 11.95 Pounds (pds)).
 The Magnetist's Fifth Winter, by Per Olov Enquist, translated by Paul Britten Austin (Quartet, 12.95 pds).
 The Sacred Night, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, translated by Alan Sheridan (Quartet 12.95 pds).
 Their Own Kind of War, by Tom Hart (Bellew, 12.95 pds). 
 Time, we learn from the opening words of Gloria's Birthday, is a great healer - not the most expected or accurate of thoughts in the context since the setting of Norma Levinson's new novel turns out to be an old people's home.
 The residents of The Haven, or some of them, would themselves be the first to relish the grave joke. As the heroine of this emotionally uninhibited book soon discovers, they like a laugh when they can find one. A youngish woman, mentally disabled by domestic tragedy, she has been sent to work there for therapeutical reasons, and receives at least as much help as she is able to provide. She soon finds that what is left of life for these old people is more than senile grumbling or a muttering of maxims. They help each other and, when necessary, their helpers, if only with curses. There's no place like home, even when it's a Home.
 Truisms are unavoidable, and so is sentimentality, though one of the novel's appeals is the way they all seem to feel the need to fight it. These senior citizens sometimes address each other in terms that would be considered discourteous in a rugby scrum, while in extreme cases old ladies as fragile as stick insects bellow insults which must make The Haven quiver.
 Current fiction is not conspicuously soggy with loving-kindness, and when saints and sinners confront each other there's little doubt which of them has the edge; it isn't virtue triumphant that normally sends writers and publishers whistling to the bank. When the confrontation takes place within a single character, that makes things more difficult. Per Olov Enquist's novel, The Magnetist's Fifth Winter, is a solemnly interesting though baffling book about an early nineteenth-century faith-healer who achieves seemingly miraculous cures through mesmerism, winning hysterical popular acclaim.
 Con-man or spiritual revivalist? We are invited to work it out for ourselves. Can this be an early alternative medicine-man, setting himself against the orthodox practitioners of the faded age of enlightenment who were still, after all, clinging to their leeches? by dating him where he does, Enquist seems to be signalling the turn of the rational tide and the beginnings of a more inspirational era. But it's not as straightforward as that; the enigma remains. After some genuine cures, the healer is exposed in a major deception, beaten up and brought to court. So bald an outline gives no idea of the complexity of a novel that probes into all manner of moral and philosophical corners before finally leaving the hero, or anti-hero, in the dock without a verdict. Which seems, I must say, a bit of a Swedish tease.
 The Sacred Night, by Tahar Ben Jelloun, a Morocco-born writer working in Paris, is a highly individual novel with a heavily charged Eastern air that seems to beguile and mock with the same perfumed breath. An old woman weighed down by memory sheds the load by telling the story of her life. This she does in a series of episodes which might make her seem a senior Schherazade, were it not that, while shocking, amazing and strange beyond belief, nobody would call these tales entertaining in the usual sense of the word. They are obsessed with method and structure; Ben Jelloun mixes naturalistic scenes with dream and allegory, makes equal citizens of ghosts and humans, builds everything as solidly and theatrically as an expressionistic stage set. The opening is an enchanting mix of the mundane and the other-wordly: a truck-driver breakfasts in a transport cafe on sheep's head and mint tea, a scent of jasmine and sewage and a muezzin shouting into a microphone.
 But if this promises ribaldry the reader may be reassured or disappointed. The tone as it settles is solemn to a fault; the storyteller in the market-place laments that the bread is stale, the meat is spoiled and the camel butter is rancid - "as rancid as our times, O passing friends. We tell of life, and the passing vulture looms high."
 After two such complex works a plain story, plainly told, can sear the responses as if with a lack of protective clothing. Their Own Kind of War is a novel like that. The First World War has for most people stopped being autobiography and turned into history, though if centuries can have autobiographies it is, and for countless writers will remain, the shaping base of the 20th.
 Tom Hart makes an eloquent contribution, all the more telling for its simplicity and freedom from ponderousness. His theme is conscientious objection, at a time when this could demand its own kind of heroism; and the forthright, dolorous tale is almost laconically presented.

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December 15, 1989

Leading Article: Digging deeper

LENGTH: 573 words

 
 If you're in a hole, the first thing you do is stop digging. But the Health Secretary was still busy with his spade even as the fourth round of talks in the 14-week ambulance dispute broke down yesterday. In a press interview, Mr Kenneth Clarke seemed unbending. There could be no further concessions to the ambulance workers. Under no circumstances would he intervene. Arbitration was ruled out. So was a pay review body, like the one the nurses have. By the end, he was six feet deeper. Today the ambulance workers intend to escalate their action. 
 A baby, who might possibly have been saved with immediate and expert emergency help, died earlier this week in Hertfordshire before a delayed army ambulance arrived. An 80-year-old man in south London died last week from a heart attack after an army ambulance took two hours to arrive. The army are doing sterling service. There are now over 90 military ambulances trying to bring relief to the dispute. They are handling some 700 calls a day. But the military do not have the same expert training as the professional ambulance crews. These emergency crews have progressed far beyond the rudimentary first aid of an earlier age. They are now able to use highly technical procedures which allow them to resuscitate heart attack patients, replace fluid intraveneously after severe blood loss and maintain air supplies through intubation to unconscious patients. All of this is beyond the reach of the army crews. So, too, are some of the more basic skills needed to handle very elderly patients, people the army don't normally have to cope with.
 Yet now a 14-week dispute looks set to stretch into the New Year. No new talks are scheduled. Managers are about to shut up shop for Christmas: a period when, often because of drink, some of the worst road accidents occur. London alone has some 455 ambulance vehicles. Compare that to the 90 military ambulances now covering the entire country. And a bad situation is going to get worse with the threat from the ambulance workers that, from today, they will not receive any calls from central control headquarters. Instead they will only accept calls direct from the public, doctors or police.
 To their credit, the ambulance crews have still been providing unpaid emergency cover in many areas. Their anger is understandable. So is their tactic: if the Health Secretary is so intractable, then the heat is going to have to be turned up. But today is too early. Far too few people know the ex-directory station numbers. Twenty-four hours is far too short a period to properly publicise them. The crews should hold their hand. They should remember how much public support they can still command. Only six out of 100 people in the last Gallup poll published earlier this month supported the Government. Some 85 per cent backed the crews. They would be foolish to throw away this crucial support.
 The best tactic is to maintain the pressure on Kenneth Clarke. The idea that he cannot intervene is specious. In almost every interview, he contradicts this supposed non-involvement by discussing - and then dismissing - various options: arbitration, review body, more cash. Mr Clarke cannot duck his responsibility. This is not a dispute which can be resolved any longer by managers; only ministers have the power to authorise the compromise that is needed. He should act now before there are further unnecessary deaths.

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December 16, 1989

The Decade (Villages): Back-to-back to the future - Alan Bennet on life as a museum

BYLINE: By ALAN BENNETT

LENGTH: 696 words

 
 I read in The Guardian a few weeks ago that the Victorian school at Burley Woodhead in Yorkshire was to be taken down and re-erected in Bradford Museum, where it will be visited by (among others) patients suffering from Alzheimer's Disease, in the hope, presumably, of jogging their memories. This transubstantiation of school comes handily at the end of the decade to remind me of a stage play I wrote as the decade opened and which predicted just that.
 This was a play called Enjoy! The title was possibly a mistake (and certainly the exclamation mark) but it was about an old couple who live in one of the last back-to-back in Leeds. The mother's memory is failing and the father is disabled but while he lands up in hospital, the end of the play sees her still happily living in the back-to-back but now lovingly reconstructed in a museum. The fact that one of the social workers who effect this transformation is their long lost son in drag may have had someting to do with the less than ecstatic reception the play received but that apart the whole notion of the play was dismissed as too far-fetched, expressionistic even. A back-to-back in a museum! I was told in future to stick to the particularities of dialogue and niceties of actual social behaviour that I was supposed to be good at. 
 Of course there were things wrong with the play .. the title, maybe, the drag certainly, particularly since it persuaded some critics that I cherished a shamefaced longing to climb into a twinset and pearls. James Fenton, I was told, even referred to the drag character as "the playwright." Mr Fenton's subsequent abandonment of dramatic criticism to become the Independent's correspondent in the Philippines was one of the more cheering developments in the theatre in the Eighties, though when President Marcos claimed to be a much-misunderstood man I knew how he felt.
 However, if only in a spirit of "I told you so," I noted in the course of the Eighties various news items, like the reconstruction of the school at Burley Woodhead, which bore out the central thesis of the play and proved it to have been, though I say it myself, prophetic. For instance there was the creation in 1984 at Park Prewett hospital in Basingstoke of a room furnished as it would have been 40 years ago in order to assist elderly patients in "reminiscence therapy." There was the exhibit, also in 1984 at the Miami Zoo, of Urban Man in his natural habitat, a man in a sitting room in a cage. There was the proposal (later abandoned) to reconstruct part of the Death Railway in Thailand as a tourist attraction. Most pertinent of all (and, of couse, this is the cutting I have lost so you will have to take my word for it) was the devoted reproduction in a museum somewhere in England of the last of the prefabs, with the couple who had lived in it doing a regular stint as curators.
 I am long past wringing my hands over this cosiness of thinking there is anything to be done to stop the world turning into Disneyland under one's feet. Nor is there any escape. The village in Yorkshire where I spend all too little of my time now sports one of those DoE brown Heritage signposts declaring it as a "Dales Village" and it's only a matter of time before the inhabitants start playing it up as "Dales Folk." We're fortunate not to be in "Herriot Country" or the temptation to act the part might be even greater. But its toytown now on every hand, dignified and stately barns converted into bijoux residences with bottle glass windows and carriage lamps that bring with them a view of the countryside that is equally folksy. The village shop becomes The Village Shop, the confectioners The Village Bakery; it won't be long before some well-meaning parish council will be employing some of those turfed out of psychiatric hospitals as Village Idiots.
 I find this make-believe worse in the North than the South and certainly more offensive. Brutish though London has grown in the last 10 years, it causes less heartache. If you really want to fume and fret go to the country. And, I suppose, Enjoy!
 Alan Bennett is currently working on six poetry programmes for Channel 4.

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December 16, 1989

Hopes grow over compensation for Barlow Clowes investors: As the Parliamentary Ombudsman prepares to report, the government could be about to set aside up to 50 million Pounds

BYLINE: By DANIEL JOHN

LENGTH: 805 words

 
 Amost 19 months after the collapse of the Barlow Clowes investment group, investors left facing financial ruin appear on the verge of getting some compensation from the government.
 The Cabinet has agreed, in principle, to compensate investors. Details remain unknown but it is believed the government could be setting aside as much as 50 million Pounds (pds).
 The Barlow Clowes Investors Group reports growing financial hardship, particularly among many thousands of pensioners. 
 Savings have been wiped out, old people have been forced back into work and homes sold while the affair has dragged on.
 Hopes of a pay-out rose this week with expectations that Parliamentary Ombudsman Sir Anthony Barrowclough will rule against the Department of Trade and Industry when he reports next week for its role in licensing Barlow Clowes and allowing it to continue trading despite warnings from several official bodies.
 Sources indicate that Sir Anthony, has been heavily critical of the DTI and has recommended that compensation be paid. It is thought ministers will reject Sir Anthony's cirticism, but a decision not to pay may be almost impossible to defend in the light of his recommendations.
 While news of compensation will be welcomed by investors, it is the fine print which is most eagerly awaited by them and their legal representatives.
 The crucial question remains who will get compensated if the government pays out as expected. Sir Anthony's brief has been to carry out a wide-ranging inquiry into all aspects of the UK operations of Barlow Clowes, a task which has also involved him in the controversy surrounding its overseas sister business, Barlow Clowes International.
 The investors' case for total compensation - that is for all 18,000 people involved and not just the 7000 who invested in BCGM - rests largely on the one argument: that if the UK business had not been licenced by the DTI then the international fund could not have credibly operated given the reasons for refusal - even though it did not, technically, come under the department's responsibility.
 This point was developed further by the Barlow Clowes Investers Group which, in August this year, prepared a 27-page document supporting its case with factual evidence.
 They pointed out that the two funds were linked on the basis that: BCI came from the same parnership (BCP) as Barlow Clowes Gilt Managers; Peter Clowes, the former head of the business, was the principal director of both; both funds dealt in gilts and, perhaps, most importantly both were managed from London and trading in UK securities.
 As yet, there is no official acceptance of these points. The Le Quesne inquiry, which was ordered by former Trade Secretary Lord Young to establish the facts of the DTI's role in the affair, proved to be inconclusive.
 Sir Godfray Le Quesne's 60 page report devoted just six pages to the international fund and stated, variously, that the DTI did not know of BCI's formation at the time it was incorporated, that the department only became aware of the company in 1986 and that when BCP (the partnership) applied for the renewal of its DTI licence in July 1987 - a year before its collapse - the company declared it had not referred "investment-type business" to BCI.
 Of the 100 million pds which may be lost as a result of the collapse, the bulk of the money - around 85 million pds - was held in BCI. It also attracted the highest number of investors, 11,000, on hopes of exceedingly large returns.
 If the government does not fully accept linkage, a sizeable proportion of people will not be that much better off. Some hardship has been relieved, in part, by the interim pay-outs made by the Barlow Clowes liquidators. But even here there is controversy.
 Because of the complex legal nature of the case revolving around where the money went, which bank accounts it went through and who it actually belongs to, BCIG has actually been forced to take court action blocking payments to BCI investors. The aim is to ensure an across-the-board settlement rather than one which benefits individual investors who could do very well out of highly-accurate tracing claims at the expense of those whose money cannot be found.
 With partial compensation, the government may decide to only help the investors in BCGM, who can already confidently expect to recover about 65 p in the pound from the liquidators.
 But if it is prepared to set aside as much as 50 million pds, some 20 million pds could be used to increase BCGM investors compensation up to 90 p in the pound, leaving 30 million pds to ease the plight of the Gibralter savers.  This could then increase their anticipated 30 p in the pound from the liquidators to 50 p.
 The least likely - but best - outcome would be a full payout.

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December 16, 1989

McCarthy glum as it faces 5m Pounds loss

BYLINE: By BEN LAURANCE

LENGTH: 381 words

 
 Mr John McCarthy, chairman of Britain's biggest builder of sheltered housing, yesterday tried to pin part of the blame for his company's profits collapse on the greed of offspring of the elderly for whom the homes are designed.
 An increasing number of children are pressurising their elderly parents not to sell their houses in order to move into McCarthy & Stone sheltered accommodation, said Mr McCarthy, as he revealed an 80 per cent profits fall.
 Offspring wanted parents to hold on to the family home until the market picked up, rather than sell for less than it was worth 18 months ago. 
 McCarthy & Stone has tried to tackle its financial problems by cutting its staff by two-thirds, as well as by selling undeveloped sites which had been earmarked for new sheltered housing development, and other assets.
 Analysts believe the company will lose at least 5 million Pounds (pds) this year.
 Profits for the 12 months to August slumped to 7.1 million pds from 34.1 million pds a year earlier.
 McCarthy says that in the long-run, its business is bound to grow: the number of Britons aged 75 or over is likely to increase by 4 million between now and early next century.
 The latest figures underline the severity of the squeeze on a company such as McCarthy which relies on a bouyant and fast-moving property market.
 It sold 1,571 retirement flats in the full year - an average of between four and five a day and down by 40 per cent on the previous 12 months.
 The downturn has become even worse in the past three months.  McCarthy has sold only 193 sheltered apartments, the equivalent of two a day, which marks a 57 per cent fall.
 McCarthy & Stone had nearly 2,000 units completed and ready to be occupied by the end of its financial year, but unsold.  A further 1,000 homes were under construction.
 The company is forecasting no pick-up in the market before the end of next year.  The results came 24 hours after Anglia Secure Homes, which also specialises in retirement housing, announced losses of 4.4 million pds.
 McCarthy & Stone's underlying sales downturn in its core business was 24 per cent.  Its interest bill rose from 8 million pds to 14.4 million pds.
 Yesterday's news left the shares at 106 p, a fall on the day of 5 p.

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December 18, 1989
Correction Appended

Media: Glasnost adds the gloss - The world turns upside down in Eastern Europe, but that is doing no harm to the publications of Britain's Marxist and Socialist left

BYLINE: By NIGEL FOUNTAIN

LENGTH: 1241 words

 
 In Soho is a model company of Thatcherite enterprise. The United States takes 40 per cent of its product, while the Japanese market is booming. Its 20 per cent home sales are almost icing on the cake.
 But, as editor of the New Left Review, Robin Blackburn won't be getting a Queen's Award. The journal has for three decades been the main home of Marxist theory in Britain, selling an upmarket 9,000 copies bi-monthly. Alongisde it is its sister company Verso, probably London's leading left publishing house. 
 "Margaret Thatcher has done her best to strangle us by maintaining an artificial exchange rate for the pound," observes Blackburn, "but we are one of the few exporters to have survived all this."
 Glasnost and perestroika have done no harm to the NLR, or indeed to the other main periodicals of the tiny but tenacious Socialist and Marxist left. "Sales of stuff on Eastern Europe just sells out like that," adds Blackburn.
 The last decade of Thatcherism has squeezed dry some of the more exotic revolutionary currents. Amongst the survivors there is a reappraisal, coupled with an acceptance, that the changes in the East are positive. None would say that the 1989 revolutions have hit sales, indeed they would echo Blackburn's views on the insatiability of demand for analysis on the phenomenon.
 But after that, paths diverge. For magazines located around the Labour Party the East can be a new opening for democratic socialism; for Britain's Euro-Communists, the elderly Leninist baby is likely to follow the Stalinist bathwater down the plug-hole; for Trotskyites, the upheavals confirm their diagnosis of Stalinism, and open the path for real Leninism, socialism - and revolution.
 There are exceptions, a few unreconstructed Stalinists, and those with ideological guidance systems taking them so far into deep space that terra firma won't reappear much before Sirius B. For a few, even, Gorbachev is Trotsky's heir.
 With a 35,000 weekly sale the New Statesman and Society leads on circulation. Sales have climbed by around 10,000 since Stuart Weir took over as editor. But years of rundown and the closure of its distribution company has left it urgently searching for new backing. Robert Holmes a Court, a potential if unlikely saviour, lost interest after looking at the books. Meanwhile Weir emphasises the magazine's pitch towards cultural politics, targeted at the under-35s regarded by most editors as the key market. In its wake come a gaggle of bi-monthlies, monthlies and weeklies. The Labour Party/Fabian Society's New Socialist began the decade as a brand leader, with bi-monthly sales topping 30,000. Now after (resolved) clashes with the Labour leadership, fluctuations in design, location and direction, retiring editor John Willman reckons the magazine is reviving, albeit on a 10,000 circulation. Tribune, also a frequent subject of death-threats, has stabilised, following the installation of a two-year trade union-financed life support system. But the editor, Phil Kelly, concedes that the Labour Party's "parish magazine" isn't booming on 8,000 sales.
 On the far left, where attrition has been high, the strong runners are the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party and the smaller Revolutionary Communist Party. The SWP focuses on its 16,000-selling weekly Socialist Worker. Its monthly, Socialist Worker Review, sells 6,000.
 The RCP has pushed its monthly Living Marxism hard, with W H Smith's distribution since February. That, plus street sales, leads editor Keith Flett to claim a 20,000 sale. The RCP's brand of Leninism makes them elusive. A visit to Flett's annonymous headquarters was ruled out on "security" grounds, so we settled for a Soho tea-room. The RCP is no friend of the Communist Party of Great Britain, or its monthly, Marxism Today, but Flett concedes that the latter's success in getting into W H Smith in the early 1980s eased Living Marxism's path.
 Under editor Martin Jacques, Marxism Today it has been left publishing's
 success story. "He's the best editor on the Left," says John Willman. Over
 at its offices deputy editor Jane Taylor rehearses the familiar epithets
 directed at the product; yuppies, designer Marxists, Champagne Socialists
 ..  "Marxism Today has been virtually alone in trying to regenerate some
 form of critical political debate," she says.
 The result has been mainstream media attention, despite a still modest 16,000 sale. But not everyone is happy. Disgruntled CPGB members cite the magazine's iconoclasm as a factor in the party's decline. Blackburn suggests that Marxism Today has sometimes taken discussions initiated in the NLR - which he welcomes - and extracted the sting. For Socialist Worker Review's Lindsey German, Marxism Today's politics, and the Eastern European events are two - welcome - sides of the collapsing edifice of Stalinism.
 "Before anyone else Marxism Today realised that the Left doesn't have to be drab," says John Willman. "And it has some good writers - Eric Hobsbawm and Charlie Leadbetter are miles ahead of the field."
 And the bad news? "The content is terribly general. Their 'the Left's washed up, the Right has history going for it' broad sweep of argument makes people very depressed about what the chances are. It's fine writing about how 'distant' the health service is, we can all write that, but what are we actually going to bloody well do about it?"
 So what's the Labour left been doing? asks Taylor. "For the last 18 months we have been more descriptive/analytical and the magazine isn't yet at a stage where it is heavily prescriptive. The radical right was prescient in seeing the possible dynamism of a right programme. But that isn't Marxism Today's fault. But we do need to do more about revealing what socialism has to offer people who are on the losing side."
 What do the magazines have to offer? For Weir's Statesman the argument is for "a new politics of radical democracy, which sets people free." Blackburn stresses links with "the new type of left activism emerging in Eastern Europe" and cautions against "the wave of democracy ending up in a market-Stalinist dead end." Kelly aims to mix "unfashionable collectivism" with a "suspicion of the state" and provide a place for activists and "future cabinet members" to float ideas. New Socialist works on a 1990s agenda, and outside the direct Labour orbit the Socialist Society plans a spring relaunch for its Catalyst into "the real space for socialism."
 For most of the editors, Leninism, always unappealing, is now stone dead. For them the survival of far left magazines remains inevitable - and irrelevant.
 Blackburn demurs, noting the big attendance of "Thatcher's Children" at SWP gatherings, contrasted with the smaller, older crowds that Marxism Today pulls in. Such recruits that the SWP and RCP attract burn out fast, charges Taylor, but German says that older people are coming in too. Both she and Flett argue that behind the CPGB journal is an organisation too weak to move in on Marxism Today's success, and without the politics to do so, if we move into an era of "Labour reformism without reform."
 While, out east, the world turns upside down, in London cash flows and saleable cover images preoccupy many leftist journalists. Looking back at the Statesman's booming ssles and talent in the mid-1960s, Weir admits to some bewilderment. "What on earth happened?"

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CORRECTION:  
 The editor of Living Marxism is Mick Hume and not, as stated in Media Guardian, Keith Flett.

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The Guardian (London)

December 20, 1989

The Day in Politics in Brief

LENGTH: 266 words

 
 A private member's bill to introduce payment for Crown servants who were exposed to radiation during nuclear weapons tests and have since contracted leukaemia and other cancers, and to the dependants of those who have died, was presented to the Commons by Mr Bob Clay (Lab Sunderland N). Mr Clay drew eighth in the ballot for private member's bills, but with only seven Fridays available for second readings has limited chances of seeing his bill made law. 
 The Social Fund budget is to be increased by 3 million Pounds (pds) to increase allocations to 100 offices where applications have been higher than expected, Mr Tony Newton, Social Security Secretary, announced in a written answer. Mr Newton also announced that the amount of savings elderly people may have before cold weather payments are reduced will be increased to 1,000 pds.
 Subsidies totalling 11.6 million pds will be paid next year towards essential ferry and coastal shipping in the Northern and Western Isles of Scotland, Mr Malcolm Rifkind, Scottish Secretary, told Sir Hector Monro (C Dumfries & Galloway) in a written answer.
 Final allocation of water shares were 46.875 per cent to the public; 39.25 per cent to institutions and 13.875 per cent to overseas investors, Mr Michael Howard, water minister told Mr Graham Allen (Lab Nottingham N) in a written answer.
 Today's Business House of Commons: Scottish questions; Christmas adjournment debate; Consolidated Fund Bill - all night session of short backbench debates. House of Lords: Debate on international action to protect the environment.

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December 22, 1989

Three die in salmonella outbreak

BYLINE: By TOM SHARRATT and JAMES ERLICHMAN

LENGTH: 376 words

 
 Three elderly women patients have died after contracting salmonella at an Oldham hospital, it was disclosed yesterday.
 Another five were said to be "very poorly" after being transferred to a hospital specialising in infectious diseases.
 A total of 10 women patients and a nurse in the geriatric ward of the Royal Oldham Hospital in Greater Manchester have been infected by the disease since the first case was diagnosed last Thursday. 
 Admissions to the 17-bed ward have been halted and nurses have been ordered to wear special disposable gowns in hopes of preventing the infection spreading throughout the 1,000 bed hospital.
 Investigations have so far failed to identify the cause of the infection.
 Mr Peter Shrigley, general manager of Oldham health athority said: "There is nothing to suggest any connection between hospital catering and this outbreak. Inquiries are being pursued to try to identify possible sources and part of that is obviously to eliminate the possibility of food."
 Hospital sources said yesterday that the Royal Oldham was not using the controversial "cook-chill" method which permits food to be cooked elsewhere, quick chilled, and then re-heated by microwave on the ward.
 Food poisoning bacteria can multiply rapidly when stringent controls on temperature and shelf life are ignored.
 Mr Shrigley said that two of the infected women had died from the serious illnesses which caused their admission.
 The death of the third woman, however, might have been hastened by the additional complication of salmonella, he said.
 The five women described as "very poorly" have been transferred to the Regional Infectious Diseases Unit at Monsall Hospital in Manchester.
 The worst modern outbreak of salmonella in a hospital happened in 1984 at the Stanley Royd Psychiatric Hospital in Wakefield when 19 patients died and another 355 patients and 106 members of staff were affected by a strain of salmonella typhimurium.
 An inquiry concluded that cold rare beef, previously contaminated by chicken and left to stand too long, was the source of the outbreak.
 Crown immunity, then in force, has since been removed from hospitals allowing them to be prosecuted under food hygiene regulations.

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December 22, 1989

Arts: Irma La Douce

BYLINE: By ALLEN SADLER

LENGTH: 347 words

DATELINE: TAUNTON

 
 Taunton's Brewhouse Theatre continues its Christmas tradition of shows that have nothing to do with Christmas with the opening of the Century's tour of Irma La Douce. Touring reduces a full-scale dancing and singing show to a chamber musical and is an ambitious venture. Century engage actors who are also musicians. It is entertaing to see a group of loushe Parisian types forming a street band or filling in for cabaret. 
 Bob Eaton has many bright ideas for direction, but the show lacks a really winning song. There are lots of bright and witty numbers but The Language of Love is the nearest to a heart-schmaltzy ballad and it isn't very convincing.
 Irma La Douce is a musical based on the farce mechanism, with a cast of Damon Runyon characters, transferred from Brooklyn to the Pagally. Irma, a prostitute and a really nice girl, falls for Nestor, a young law student, who is jealous of her clients. Nestor invents an elderly admirer, who can pay enough for Irma to dispense with other clients. The elderly admirer is Nestor himself in a false beard and Irma, who is clearly short sighted as well as dim and really nice, hardly notices the difference.
 Nestor gets jealous of his other self and stages a killing of his rival, for which he is arrested and convicted. Well, a law student might have spotted that a man cannot be convicted without the dead body being around. Elementary. But this ruse gives a chance for Nestor and the gallery of small time crooks and pimps to be transported to Devil's Island, an escape on a raft in a storm and end up at the North Pole for a sequence with a dancing penguin and a polar bear, to give the show a Christmas gloss.
 Shelley Willetts plays Irma like a grubby angel. She gives a wistful version of the title song, but her Irma is more East-Enders than Montmatre. Wayne Morris is very active as Nestor and surely has a career in regular farce. Irma La Douce is lightweight entertainment, held down by the off hand commentary of Liz Spenz as the owner of the back street cafe where the plot keeps boiling over.

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December 22, 1989

Troops battle demonstrators in Bucharest

BYLINE: By Our Foreign Staff

LENGTH: 531 words

 
 The centre of Bucharest resembled a war zone yesterday, according to accounts from East European news agencies and diplomats in the Romanian capital.
 Helicopters hovered overhead and automatic weapons could be heard, the reports said. Police cars and ambulances surrounded the area. 
 Thousands of demonstrators in the centre of Bucharest "are surrounded by Romanian army soldiers, special troops armed with truncheons and plastic shields and security forces," the Soviet news agency, Tass, reported.
 "Choppers are patrolling over the city," Tass added.
 Military tanks rolled through the capital and formed a circle around several thousand, mostly young people at a main intersection, according to a Yugoslav journalist who reported deaths and injuries.
 Earlier in the day, the correspondent of the Yugoslav news agency Tanjug reported from Bucharest that armoured vehicles ran over students, while police sprayed crowds chanting "Down with Ceausescu" and "Down with the killers" with automatic weapons fire during demonstrations that erupted at a government-organised rally in support of President Ceausescu.
 Journalists from Eastern European news agencies provided graphic eyewitness accounts through the day of the slaughter on the streets of the capital, which remains closed to the eyes of the Western media.
 "Tanjug's Bucharest correspondent, Peter Tomic, witnessed armoured vehicles running over students, while police shot at everything that moved," the agency reported.
 Tass confirmed the report, saying that demonstrators were killed when armoured personnel carriers ran them over. Security forces attacked protesters with automatic gunfire when they tried to rescue them, it added.
 "When the group of witnesses rushed to pull those injured from under the wheels of the armoured personnel carrier, they were fired on by automatic weapons," Tass reported.
 Tanjug said demonstrators outside Bucharest's Intercontinental Hotel tore up pictures of President Ceausescu and sang an old nationalist song, "Wake up Romania."
 "Several thousand people, mostly pupils and students, found themselves surrounded by police and tanks," the agency added. "Police began firing on the trapped mass of people. Eyewitnesses said many were wounded and probably dead."
 "Police first fired teargas and then opened fire," Tanjug went on. "The policemen were armed with automatic rifles and protected by helmets and shields."
 It said some demonstrators held small children over their heads. "Today in Bucharest there was a repeat of Timisoara (scene of last week's massacre of demonstrators)," Tanjug said.
 Tass's correspondent in Bucharest said people were hiding in doorways, while others chanted "Freedom" and "Down with the dictatorship."
 "Along the central street of the capital, tanks are moving, following the lines of submachinegunners pushing back the crowds. Bursts of automatic weapons fire are being heard. Panic-stricken people are hiding in doorways and courtyards."
 The Bulgarian BTA news agency said that, during the brief period when shooting stopped, elderly people appealed to members of the security forces not to shoot.

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December 23, 1989

Property: Aunty Lou's war - The problems of providing suitable housing for the elderly and disabled

BYLINE: By DAVID LAWSON

LENGTH: 929 words

 
 Aunty Lou was as stubborn as a mule. She impressed on me at an early age how determined the elderly can be, steadfastly refusing to move in with the family even though she was disabled and frail. She valued familiarity with her crumbling little house more than breakfast in bed. And she worried who would take care of her even older friend next door.
 It is now a national problem as crucial decisions loom about how to cope with an extra 600,000 elderly people by the end of the century - most of them widows over 85. 
 Many are happy to move, and more than 13 million local authority sheltered homes have been built for them in England alone. But suitable housing is becoming harder to find as spending levels are slashed. Last month's decision to extend the right of purchase to tenants of non-sheltered homes suitable for the elderly will make things worse.
 Housing associations have struggled to plug the gap with another five million purpose-built homes but the burden is being increasingly shifted on to private developers who have taken in more than 50,000 elderly people over the last five years.
 Soaring property prices brought profits on ordinary family homes for the elderly to pay for these private schemes. But just when needs are becoming acute, these developers have faltered in the face of stubbornness from the government and a thousand Aunty Lous.
 McCarthy & Stone and Anglia Secure, the two largest specialist builders, are heading for losses and have slashed output. Both insist that business will revive in a couple of years through the sheer pressure of demand from an ageing population but a big gap is opening as building sites stand empty and sheltered homes are sold to ordinary buyers. Half the 8,000 sheltered homes built this year are standing empty.
 The government's stubborn insistence on high interest rates has deterred buyers from purchasing the family homes the elderly must sell to pay for special accommodation. And many a last-time buyer is showing rock-like determination not to compromise by cutting prices to attract a sale, even though builders have slashed theirs by up to 15 per cent.
 Developers are trying every trick in the book to attract business, including chainbreaking, shared ownership, restrictions on service charges, price discounts and annuity income schemes.
 Anglia, whose sales almost halved to 455 in 1989, sees some chinks of light. More than 250 potential buyers have reserved new homes - providing their own can be sold through the new chainbreaking scheme. Another 37 are still classed as 'soft' reservations because they refuse to cut asking prices for their homes.
 'But we will win them round to the reality of the situation,' says Anglia chairman Peter Edmondson. I just hope there is no-one on the list related to Aunty Lou.
 Thoughts are aimed beyond what builders see as a temporary slump, however. New problems will arise as current buyers age further into frailty and need extra nursing and Anglia is trying out a more comprehensive service to meet these needs. The scheme ranges from a morning check, meals and laundry for a fee of 90 Pounds (pds) a week, through more intensive medical care costing 140 pds, to full nursing home accommodation for 300 pds a week.
 This reflects a drift towards catering for the better-off elderly as builders find more attraction in expensive homes than the ubiquitous single-bed flats in blocks served by wardens, dayrooms and other communal facilities. Anglia's average prices are 80,000 pds. 'Buyers still average 74-plus but they are wealthier and are looking for better quality accommodation and services,' says Edmondson.
 Edmondson points out that sheltered housing specialists can sell services to local authorities forced to farm out welfare activities by the proposed revolution in communuty health care. He plans a network of nursing agencies for people who remain in their own homes or are restricted to rented accommodation. Anglia is already marketing the 24-hour emergency call-out system common in warden-assisted housing. McCarthy & Stone has similar plans, although it was forced to reduce the breadth of service by selling loss-making nursing homes to BUPA.
 The government is pressing local councils to farm out home-care services, following an investigation by Prof Anthea Tinker of King's College, London. She found many an Aunty Low wanting to remain at home, and that this solution was cheaper than sheltered or nursing home accommodation. But the economics takes little account of the need to care for homes as well as the occupants.
 The elderly live in some of the nation's poorest housing and Age Concern is worried about the future of a network of voluntary 'care and repair' agencies which could lose their grants after yet another university study comes out in the new year.
 Peverel, McCarthy & Stone's management arm, says the private sector can help here as well. It is linking with the finance group Home For Life to look after elderly people who sell their homes for a lump sum and annuity rather than moving into sheltered accommodation.
 The service involves both health and property care but both Age Concern and the Bristol researchers are sceptical about the scope for the elderly to tap the capital tied up in their homes. They point to problems of high interest charges and the wish to bequeath property to children.
 'Some will have considerable wealth tied up in their property but there are many obstacles to overcome in making use of it,' concludes the Bristol study.

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The Guardian (London)

December 23, 1989

Salmonella in ward spreads

BYLINE: By MICHAEL MORRIS

LENGTH: 412 words

 
 The number of cases of salmonella has risen to 14 at a hospital ward in Oldham, Lancashire, where three elderly women have already died, it was disclosed yesterday.
 The total has risen by three since Thursday when 10 women patients and a nurse in the geriatric ward had been infected by the disease. The first case was diagnosed nine days ago. 
 Mr Peter Shrigley, general manager of the Oldham health authority, said that investigations pointed to the infection having been brought into the ward rather than originating in the hospital.
 Dr Dennis Jones, director of the public health laboratory in Manchester, said that if there had been a problem with the hospital the disease would have been found in other wards.
 He suggested that the infection might have been caused by a visitor bringing in contaminated food. 'By the time you investigate the evidence has gone,' he added. 'But the sort of outbreak it is, means it is not hospital food. And it cannot be so because there would be a lot more patients affected.' Five of the patients have been transferred to an isolation hospital.
 Dennis Johnson adds: Five people have died from meningitis in new 'clusters' of the disease across the west country during the past month. A total of 24 cases has been reported, though health officials were unable to say whether the disease was of the same strain which caused deaths and illness in the Stroud area of Gloucestershire in the mid-eighties.
 In Plymouth there have been eight cases and three deaths - an 18-month baby boy, an 18-year-old youth, and a 40-year-old man. In Avon, there have been 11 cases, with two teenagers dying, Mark Taylor, aged 15, and Sorab al-Masri, aged 17, both from Bath. The Gloucester area has had five cases.
 The South-west regional health authority said the cases did not appear to be connected and they were still testing to identify the precise strain.
 In the past few years, incidence of the disease nationally appeared to have been declining slightly, with 1,001 cases up to December 1, this year, compared with 1,189 in 1987.
 The flu epidemic is past its peak, the Royal College of General Practitioners said. During the week ending December 19, the number of cases dropped to 260 per 100,000 from 290 per 100,000 the previous week, while those with flu-like symptoms fell 'substantially' from 260 to 208 per 100,000.
 There were 102 deaths from flu-related illnesses in the first week of December.

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December 27, 1989

Leading Article: The need to take care seriously

LENGTH: 403 words

 
 So was grannie on her own at Christmas? Contrary to popular myth, probably not. Just as they do for the rest of the year, families would have been looking after the majority of dependent elderly grandparents this week. These invisible carers now number over six million. Without them, there would be little community care. They provide the bulk of help for the growing number of dependent people. A survey of 75-year-olds for Age Comcern found three-quarters of those with surviving children were visited every week, two out of six more frequently. One out of six lived in the same building as their children. 
 Tey there are three reasons why society is right to be concerned by the needs of ther elderly. Firstly, many have no children to help them - over 40 per cent of elderly women are members of a generation whose plans were shattered by the first World War. Secondly, because the total numbers are so large, small proportions will add up to many people. There are 10 million retired people; three million live on their own. The third cause for concern is demograghic: the increase in the number of elderly and the reduction in those available to provide help. If child care was the issue of the 1980s, care of the elderly will be the issue of the 1990s.
 Meanwhile, the carers are changing. Of adult carers identfied in the most recent survey, 3.5 million were women but 2.5 million were men. Their burden will grow. Neither the reconstructed Health Service nor over-stretched social services will be able to cope. The response has to be at many levels. Technology should allow more elderly people to shop and bank from home and improve emergency alert services. Companies will have to follow IBM's lead in providing more support for employees who have care burdens. Local councils and voluntary organisations will need to provide more relief services for over-burdened carers. Most crucial, HMG will need to reassess its health and social service plans. The NHS reorganisation poses threats to the elderly including the demotion of geriatrics, removal of some essential services to distant hospitals and increased difficulties in coordinating health and social services on hospital discharges. The Government has provided sufficient protection to the community care budget to ensure funds do not leak into other services. Until it does so, the elderly connot look forward to a happy new year.

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The Guardian (London)

December 28, 1989

Rebirth of Romania: Life returns to normal in birthplace of the revolution

BYLINE: By BARNEY PETROVIC

LENGTH: 196 words

DATELINE: TIMISOARA

 
 As mothers took their babies out in prams for a drive in the December sunshine, Timisoara yesterday seemed far removed from what has been the worst fighting seen by Europe in its post-war history.
 People rushed out to carry away paper bags full with more food than they had seen for decades. And old age pensioners gathered in front of Christmas trees in the city centre, free for the first time to criticise both the old and the new authorities.
 Unlike Christmas elsewhere in Europe, however, army patrols are all over this town of 300,000 people in western Romania, where the spark that toppled Ceausescu was ignited.
 Tanks stood with guns pointing over the crowds in the streets and toward the newly-renamed Victory Square in front of the bullet-scarred Opera House. All crossroads and public buildings were under guard.
 'The struggle is not over, this is just the beginning,' said one resident. But most people seemed unaware of the negotiations in Bucharest over the new government and were happy just to walk around, even though last night shooting was still being heard at intervals. The resident warned: 'You'd better get away to be safe.'

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December 28, 1989

New technology strains alarm insurers: Employers likely to be forced into radical changes in working practices to avert RSI epidemic

BYLINE: By LISA BUCKINGHAM and SIMON BEAVIS

LENGTH: 705 words

 
 Radical changes in working practices are likely to be forced on employers whose staff are considered at risk from repetitive strain injury (RSI) by insurance companies, which are preparing for a huge increase in claims in the 1990s.
 Employees using computer keyboards are particularly susceptible through the repeated hand movements involved. Although insurers are coy about revealing details of RSI claims, they consider the problem so severe that they are sending accident surveyors to alert employers. In some cases, the insurers are recommending changes in the working environment to reduce the risk. 
 It is estimated that RSI accounts for 1 per cent of the 370 million Pounds (pds) a year paid by employers and their insurers for industrial injuries, and nearly 2 per cent of all cases. However, it is clear that RSI is becoming much more costly.
 Claims for this form of industrial injury have been averaging well under 10,000 pds. But a recent Midland Bank case involved a 45,000 pds compensation award for a keyboard operator.
 Unions are trying to improve the level of awards. The National Union of Journalists is considering a 'representative' action centred on an individual case at the Financial Times, which has been particularly severely affected.
 Insurers are concerned that RSI may follow the claims experienced for other industrial injuries such as deafness. Traditionally, the level of compensation starts low but accelerates rapidly once a condition is widely recognised.
 One of the reasons that claims are so low is that only two forms of RSI are recognised by the Government as 'prescribed' workplace injuries - meaning only some sufferers can claim disability benefit. Efforts are expected to widen the recognised categories of RSI.
 Employees in Britain, unlike those in Australia, which like Japan has suffered an RSI epidemic, are forced to prove they are suffering from a work-related injury and that effectively their employer realised the risk and was negligent.
 Australian law allows for no-fault compensation whereby an employee can be compensated without lengthy proceedings to prove negligence. Renewed demands for no-fault compensation are likely in Britain. At present, most RSI sufferers are women - they tend to do the jobs which are most vulnerable to the injury and least protected by employment rights.
 They have also tended to be the least vocal. However, with the fall in young workers, more older women are likely to be required to fill jobs, particularly in high-risk areas such as keyboard operation and check-out work.
 The Health and Safety Executive is understood to be planning a large research project into RSI and an ageing workforce in the coming year.
 Two studies have just been completed for the executive by the university of Birmingham and Edinburgh. The first, looking into workplaces - which was hampered by a lack of co-operation from employers - and the second, looking at sufferers being treated for the condition.
 Executive guidelines to be published next month are likely to recommend steps employers can take to prevent RSI, followed by further advice for specific industries.
 The emphasis is that companies can avoid RSI if the right preventative steps are taken, saving them money and increasing productivity. For example, there were nearly 4,000 reported cases of RSI at Telecom Australia between 1981 and 1985. This cost the company A Dollars 15 million in lost time and medical costs alone. Susceptibility to RSI varies, but key elements in the growth of the condition are thought to be the increased speed at which some people are forced to work, the design of the equipment, job stress, and working patterns.
 RSI has been around for years - familiar in the weaving, printing and poultry industries, for instance - but the introduction of new technology into more 'middle class' environments (not least journalism) has raised its profile and provoked more claims. Traditionally, people suffered in silence. As with the emergence of any industrial injury, sufferers are confronted with the vested interest of the Government, employers or insurance companies not to recognise the problem in its broadest terms.

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The Guardian (London)

December 30, 1989

A Country Diary

BYLINE: By AUDREY INSCH

LENGTH: 305 words

DATELINE: HAYES COMMON

 
 In the London area this common is unusual because it is a wood. The trees are a deciduous mixture with oak predominating - December is a good time to see trees, like going to the life class of art class. 'They bear the weight of sky and clouds upon the fountain of their veins.' Recently they've also carried the strength of high gusting winds. Top, slender branches churn around before them. The trunk picks up the power and starts to sway backwards, then, as the gust diminishes, forwards. When the wind dies down the trees stand apparently immovable. The rain has returned so that areas of grassland are glowing with an Irish beauty. The leaf litter is soggy. Everything looks more alert, but the wild life is quiet apart from the numerous squirrels chasing up and down trees, growling and chattering or hurling themselves from one tree to another, glowing in their silvery grey winter fur. One stopped to take a good look at me. Sitting on its hind legs, his hands (you might say) clapsed over his stomach he looked ready to audition for a Beatrix Potter pantomime. As it is on top of a hill the air here is always exhilarating. Nowadays an outing to Hayes Common from the centre of London would probably be ridiculed yet when the railway opened in 1882 it became very popular for a day's outing. No wonder. It was the site of Hayes Fair which in 1804 had boasted of amusements such as: 'A Match at Grimace or Grinning through a Horse Collar. A Match at eating Hot Hasty Pudding, by Boys. A Match at drinking Hot Tea, by Elderly Ladies. As Ass Race .. with various other amusements.' The hazards which might gather around such high spirits were also recognised: 'No Ladies permitted to enter the Prize Lists who may appear to have drunk too freely of Strong Waters.' This seems a suitable end to my diary year!

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December 30, 1989

Money: Now wives and Woopies can look forward to a happy New Year

BYLINE: By MARGARET HUGHES

LENGTH: 692 words

 
 The past decade has proved just how fool-hardy it would be to gaze into the crystal ball and confidently predict what lies ahead in the next 10 years. But it is possible to make a few predictions for 1990.
 Next year will certainly be a time for married women although their husbands will also be able to benefit from the personal tax changes which come into force on April 6. This is the date which will see the taxman treat a married woman as a person in her own right. 
 She will be taxed independently of her husband, allowed to complete her own tax return and pay her own tax. She will also have her own tax allowance, be entitled to her own standard rate band and have her own capital gains tax exemption.
 Apart from bestowing long overdue financial independence on married women, the changes also offer couples the chance of substantial tax savings. Non-working wives with incomes from savings or investment will be among the main beneficiaries as they will be able to receive tax free income or interest equivalent to their personal allowance. But to get the full benefit of the new tax regime these married women will need to look for investments that pay interest gross. That will tend to be offshore as banks and building societies in this country have to deduct tax at source.
 But as the deadline approaches look out for new products, such as cash unit trusts paying interest gross, as the banks and building societies battle to hang on to those deposits.
 This will also be the year when Woopies - well off older people - get a tax break. For April 6 is also the day when the over 60s will be eligible for tax relief on the premiums they pay for private medical insurance. Although primarily part of the government's plans for reducing dependence on the National Health Service, the main beneficiaries will be the Woopies since it is they who can afford private health insurance in the first place.
 At the other end of the age range employees who have not taken advantage of the incentives to contract out of the State Earnings Related Pension Scheme (SERPS) should do so before they dwindle away altogether. If you're not one of the 3.5 million who have already contracted out you will have lost out on the chance to back date for up to two years the National Insurance Contributions rebate plus the extra 2 per cent 'bribe'.
 Meanwhile, 1990 will again be a year when we will have to live with high interest rates. And that will mean resisting those tempting offers from lenders designed to encourage us to take on more debt by making the initial costs appear cheaper, but which store up trouble for the future.
 It will also pay to weed out credit cards which either charge high interest rates or an annual fee, unless combined with an especially low rate of interest.
 And if retailers do indeed start charging less for cash purchases than for those bought on credit cards, ensure that this is precisely what they are doing and not merely surcharging credit card users.
 On the other hand there will be a greater onus to shop around for the best home for whatever spare cash you may have. Despite the government's bail-out of investors, the Barlow Clowes scandal should have shown the value of placing funds in safe hands. Then it will be a matter of finding the best returns, taking advantage of the already fierce competition between banks and building societies. And as this competition intensifies we should become more demanding so that we actually get the kind of services and products we want.
 We should park a little of our funds in those societies either tipped to convert to a public company or ripe for takeover to benefit from any freebies that may be on offer.
 The stock market is unlikely to have much allure for the small investor although the start of the electricity privatisation may provide a temporary fillip. What equity investment there is will be best placed in the regular savings schemes offered by unit trust and investment trust schemes with higher rate tax payers using the tax shelter of PEPs. And Europe, rather than green, is likely to be the flavour of 1990.

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