Thursday 28th August 2008
Security guards and town hall workers are being armed with sweeping police-style powers, it has emerged.
For a few hundred pounds, state and private sector employees can receive Home Office accreditation. This allows them to hand out fines for a raft of offences, from dropping litter to riding a bike on the pavement.
They can also stop cars to check their tax discs, seize alcohol from underage drinkers and demand people's names and addresses.
The hope is that they will free up rank-and-file officers from having to perform these unpopular tasks. The uniformed, badged army of snoopers will become a vital part of the 'extended police family', ministers say.
But privacy campaigners have dubbed them Home Secretary Jacqui Smith's 'Stasi' after the East German secret police.
Phil Booth of NO2ID said: 'This is a sinister move towards a Stasi snooper state in which jobsworths are devolved the powers of the police - including the right to demand you identify yourself.'
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve added: 'This is a consequence of the Government's obsession with policing on the cheap as well as their staggering complacency towards the extension of surveillance by an increasing amount of different bodies.
'The public will be angered that the Home Office is seeking to take serious powers that should be appropriately applied by the police and encouraging them to be given not just to local councils, but also to private firms.
'The public want to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately - including unnecessarily snooping on the lives of ordinary citizens.'
Details of the new army of police-style officers emerged in Home Office papers released today. There are already 1,400 town hall and private sector staff accredited, and ministers want a dramatic expansion of the scheme.
Called the Community Safety Accreditation Scheme, it allows the likes of security guards, park wardens, car park attendants and store detectives to boost their roles if they undergo training and pay a small fee to their local police force.
The powers range from issuing £60 fines for truancy to giving out Penalty Notices for Disorder for more serious offences such as harassment.
Critics said today that the Government is creating a third level to the police service, behind fully-fledged warranted officers and the controversial Community Support Officers known as 'Blunkett's Bobbies'.
The only significant difference between the accredited workers and CSOs is that they do not have the power to detain a suspect.
Instead, they would have to summon police to help if a situation turned ugly. However, they will have a special priority hotline to report their intelligence to detectives.
So no arguments while being interrogated and fined £80 on the spot for brushing off that bit of dust off your shoulder onto the pavement. Otherwise you will be carted off to the nearest Gulag! (Ed)
Home Office Minister Vernon Coaker said the accredited workers have a 'critical role to play in neighbourhood policing teams and are a key component of the extended police family'.
They can wear a special badge, and a uniform approved by the local chief constable. At present, they are wearing their employer's existing uniform with the badge sewn on, but police chiefs could eventually be encouraged to decide on a standard uniform across their force area, the Home Office said. See what they can do
The guidance document seemed to acknowledge that the offences covered by the accredited workers could seem relatively petty.
It stated: 'It is particularly beneficial to use accredited persons to effectively target those community problems that are deemed unsuitable for the police because police enforcement might be seen to be excessive by the community.'
The scheme is being sold to companies such as security firms as a way of boosting their profile. Continued
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Police State Britain is here!
Ministers talk endlessly about reducing police paperwork in order to free officers to patrol the streets.
But, while making little progress in slashing bureaucracy, they have been quietly deploying another tactic: Giving big chunks of the job to other people. First, they invented Community Support Officers, armed with a raft of police powers, but with a fraction of the salary or training.
Inevitably, the recruitment of 16,000 of these 'Blunkett's Bobbies' - who can issue fines, but not make arrests - was greeted with accusations of 'policing on the cheap'.
Now, details of another part of what the Home Office calls the 'extended police family' have emerged - the 'accredited' council worker or private security guard.
They will be able to gather intelligence, help trap road tax cheats and hand out fines to unsuspecting members of the public. But, in a crucial distinction to CSOs, they will not be employed by the local police authority.
They will continue with their current employer, and simply undergo an unspecified level of training, as deemed appropriate by the local chief constable.
Critics believe it is a recipe for disaster.
Vetting runs the risk of being either too lax (with potentially alarming consequences for public safety) or so severe that the scheme does not get off the ground.
Among the 33 police forces who have already accredited snoopers, some have been carrying out no more checks than they would give an external contractor.
Others have been using full anti-terrorist and financial checks, taking so long that - by the time a person had been cleared - they had moved on from their original job, and were no longer interested in accreditation.
In future, the minimum standard is likely to be an enhanced Criminal Records Bureau check.
There are also inherent dangers in giving any civilian some, but not all, police powers.
The new army of officials will be able to issue fines of up to £80 for some serious offences, including harassment.
This is likely to lead to confrontation, but - unlike CSOs - the accredited workers cannot even detain a suspect for 30 minutes, let alone arrest them.
Accountability will also be a worry, given the lack of a direct police role in their employment. It is up to police to check regularly that any local authority or private firm they have accredited is behaving properly.
But senior officers are busy enough already, and this could slip. Meanwhile, a single accredited private security guard or town hall worker will only be reported to their local force if they receive three minor complaints from the public in any 12-month period.
If just a single complaint is made about a police officer or CSO, the local force finds out immediately.
The Home Office papers revealed that, among those officers who have already worked with accredited staff, the sharing of intelligence is another 'major concern'.
There is a difficult balance to be struck - share too much information with somebody who does not have the vetting and training of a PC and, in the worst case scenario, an operation could be compromised.
Share nothing, and the civilian force will not know what it is looking for, or supposed to be doing.
The path ahead appears fraught with difficulties and, for the Home Office, controversy. News Source
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An army of town hall spies who can hand out on-the-spot fines is being recruited by the Government.
Council staff, car park attendants, private security guards and even dog wardens are being used to snoop on the public and issue fixed penalties for minor offences.
Amid accusations of policing on the cheap, they are informing on car tax dodgers and fining people for dropping litter, dog fouling and truancy. They even have the power to demand your name and address.
There are already more than 1,400 so-called “accredited persons” – the equivalent of a small police force – and Home Secretary Jacqui Smith wants even more so they can do jobs regarded as too trivial for the police. This private army have their own badges and uniforms and a review is under way which could see them given the power to dish out fines for more public order offences.
Companies are being urged to sign up to the scheme and even encouraged to use their involvement as a way of promoting themselves for “market advantage”.
The development means yet another tier of civilians being used for cheap policing alongside the already controversial community support officers.
It also fuels the row over the level of powers which town halls have to spy on the public and dispense summary justice. One critic dubbed them a modern day Stasi in a reference to the notorious East German secret police. Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “The public will be angered that the Home Office is seeking to take serious powers that should be applied by the police and encouraging them to be given not just to local councils, but also to private firms.
“The public want to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately, including unnecessarily snooping on ordinary citizens. Continued
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Plenty of people gave me advice when I was a child, but one lesson in particular sprang to mind yesterday when I read that the personal details of a million bank customers had been found on a computer sold on eBay. It was this: 'Never put all your eggs in one basket.'
It's a popular pearl of wisdom. Indeed, when Churchill forbade several of his ministers and generals from flying in the same aeroplane, he joked that you should 'never put all your baskets in one egg'. As usual, he was right.
So why, in this digital age, when mountains of sensitive information can be stored on a single disk, and lost as easily, does everyone seem so eager to ignore that elementary counsel?
On this occasion, it was customers of American Express, NatWest and Royal Bank of Scotland who were left reeling by someone's extraordinary ineptitude.
The personal details - including names, addresses, mobile numbers, account numbers, sort codes, mothers' maiden names and even signatures - of more than a million of them were stored on the misplaced computer, which has been described as a 'data thief 's treasure chest'.
What struck me most about this elementary lapse of security was how could any professional organisation allow such a vast quantity of sensitive data to be stored on a single easily-portable computer in the first place? It beggars belief.
But the banks' embarrassment might come as a relief to ministers who have just admitted that the 'unfit for purpose' Home Office recently lost the records of 127,000 criminals.
I can just see Jacqui Smith, the smug and complacent Home Secretary, preparing her excuses for the next time she mislays (or allows to be stolen) the confidential information her ministry has gathered about us.
'Well, just look at the Royal Bank of Scotland,' she will no doubt claim. 'It even happens to the private sector. It's just one of those things.'
Well, here's news: it shouldn't. Indeed, far from being just 'one of those things', electronic data loss is fast becoming an unmitigated, and all-too-frequent, disaster that threatens each and every one of us in modern Britain.
It all goes back to eggs and baskets. Modern data-processing systems now involve placing massive concentrations of information in one place.
This is all well and good - enabling us to replace mountains of paperwork with a single computer chip.
But when the authorities gather highly sensitive and confidential information about us and then choose to store that information on such a device, they place us all in grave peril.
For what happens when that little chip, or disk, or memory stick is misplaced - and then falls into the wrong hands?
Among the demoralised remains of what, not long ago, was the finest civil service in the world, this seems to happen all too frequently.
And as I know, those dealing with such disasters are shameless in covering up their own appalling incompetence. Continued
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The Tories have accused the Government of "policing on the cheap" after ministers revealed that the number of civilians given police powers has increased by nearly 500 over two years.
Employees of private security firms, housing associations and NHS trusts can receive Home Office accreditation to allow them to hand out fines for a variety of offences.
Community Safety Accreditation Schemes, which were introduced under the Police Reform Act 2002, were set up to give civilians working in the community more powers to deal with the public.
Workers wearing special accredited badges are able to seize alcohol from under age drinkers, issue fines for graffiti and littering, and demand people's names and addresses.
The latest Government figures show that 1,406 people are now accredited within 95 approved organisations.
In 2006, there were only 950 accredited workers for 71 organisations.
But while ministers said this was evidence that the scheme worked, critics took the chance to accuse Home Secretary Jacqui Smith of cutting corners while increasing unnecessary surveillance.
Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said: "The public wants to see real police on the streets discharging these responsibilities, not private firms who may use them inappropriately, including unnecessarily snooping on ordinary citizens.
"This is a consequence of the Government's obsession with policing on the cheap as well as their staggering complacency towards the extension of surveillance." News Source
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The UK's electoral system is stuck in the 19th Century, under "severe strain" and needs reform, a report says.
The Electoral Commission, set up to oversee the electoral process, wants simpler rules on running elections.
It calls for clear leadership with new election management boards and individual voter registration.
It says a new board should oversee Scottish elections, after more than 140,000 ballot papers were rejected in 2007, amid widespread voter confusion.
'Fragmented arrangements'
An independent study into those elections found mistakes at all levels and suggested voters were treated as an "afterthought".
The commission said it was unlikely that the "current fragmented arrangements for electoral administration" would be used if the system was being designed from scratch.
Commission chairman Sam Younger said "a consistently high standard of service for all electors" was needed.
Mr Younger said: "The planning and running of elections need to be more robust and co-ordinated. We are still trying to run 21st Century elections with 19th Century structures, and the system is under severe strain."
The report proposes that funding for electoral administration should be improved, changes to electoral law finalised at least six months before any election and returning officers' roles strengthened. Continued
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Voters may have to take photographic ID into the polling station under proposals to reform the electoral system.
The Electoral Commission says the present system needs an urgent overhaul to restore voter confidence, protect against fraud and bring polling into the 21st century.
In a new report, it also calls on the Government to consider a national register with details of every voter to help to eliminate postal vote fraud. Every voter would have to provide a signature, date of birth and national insurance number.
The national register would replace the current system of local registers.
Its main recommendation is a reform of the way elections are administered with new independent management boards set up in six English regions, Wales and Scotland.
Sam Younger, the commission chairman, said: "The planning and running of elections need to be robust and co-ordinated. We are still trying to run 21st-century elections with 19th-century structures and the system is under severe strain."
The report follows criticisms from the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust that efforts to increase postal voting had raised the risk of fraud and undermined public confidence.
The commission says individual registration, which could include a photo ID at the ballot box, would make postal fraud or impersonation much more difficult.
In recent years postal rigging has become a major headache for the Electoral Commission. In 2004 Labour won elections in Birmingham by organising postal vote rigging. The following year a Labour councillor was jailed for postal vote-rigging in Blackburn while voters had their identities stolen in polling booths in Coventry in the same year.
And last year the Conservatives in Slough used postal votes to rig elections.
But despite the concerns a national register is likely to hit opposition after a year of scandals involving lost data from Government departments. Continued
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Only one in 5,000 children who are caught carrying knives are locked up for their crime, figures out today show.
Of the 1,164 ten to 15-year-olds caught with a knife last year only 30 ended up in prison.
The data, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act, show that three children a day were caught carrying a knife in England and Wales in the year up to April. Around half received a caution, the other 600 were prosecuted and 30 of those were sentenced to prison.
However, even those caught with a knife is a small percentage of teenagers who admit to carrying one. In a Government survey 150,000 children admitted to carrying a knife over the past year.
The revelations come days after 18-year-old Charles Junior Hendricks was stabbed to death, becoming the 18th teenager to be fatally stabbed in the capital this year and the 50th young person to be murdered in London in the past two years.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: "It's a shocking indictment of our broken society."
Scotland Yard have launched a high profile crackdown on knife crime, which includes a specialist task force and extending stop and search powers in crime hotspots.
Operation Blunt 2 began in May after the death of Jimmy Mizen, 16, an altar boy who was stabbed to death with a shard of glass in a bakery in south east London. A total of 11 other teenagers have died since then, despite police carrying out 32,395 searches, arresting 1,437 people for suspected knife offences and seizing 731 knives.
Yesterday the Government announced plans to tackle knife crime in schools by encouraging children from 160 secondary schools and colleges in some of Britain's worst knife crime areas to text Crimestoppers if they saw their classmates with a blade. News Source
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Pressure is growing for action to stop gang attacks in Derby's historic Arboretum park – just weeks after it was given a national safety award.
Attack victim Chris Jordan wrote to the Evening Telegraph and expressed his dismay that the park's CCTV was broken and plans for a police office had not been fulfilled.
The 64-year-old said he was kicked and spat on in a racist attack. It was one of six violent incidents in the park in recent months.
The Arboretum was Britain's first public park, dating back to 1840. It has undergone a £5.5m makeover with National Lottery cash.
But police are now trying to get community leaders together to stop it becoming a no-go zone.
Who are these community leaders??? Were they voted in by the whole community? Stop pussyfooting around and enforce the law ofthe land otherwise there won't be anywhere left to enforce it at all in the future!
They revealed that they were working on "a partnership plan to improve security", as well as making daily patrols.
Shokat Lal, chairman of Derby's Pakistani Community Centre, said: "Racist attacks of any form, on any community, are completely unacceptable and I have in the past few weeks had some very direct conversations with the police about why there seems to be a failure in stopping these attacks and charging those involved.
Who made you leader of the community? (Ed)
"I'm aware Pakistani individuals have also been attacked, so it's not just one community attacking another."
Derby's mayor, Councillor Barbara Jackson, said: "The park is a jewel in Derby's crown and is used by so many people. These incidents are very disappointing and it is a terrible shame. I hope they are isolated incidents and I know local councillors are working with the community to address the issues."
Jangir Khan, chairman of the Friends of Arboretum Park, said: "Security should be good enough to catch these people."
Police have met councillors and representatives of the city's community safety partnership and parks department to discuss problems at the park. Chief Inspector Gary Parkin said: "While there have been incidents of assault at the park, the offenders have not come from one specific ethnic group and neither have the victims." News Source
Reader Submitted Link. Thank You Janet
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A council publishing 'Wanted' photographs of alleged litterbugs insisted today that it has a legal right to identify suspects - even if they are eventually cleared.
As town halls face a growing revolt over their new powers to issue on-the-spot fines and access people's personal data, one authority has already handed out cameras to litter teams who patrol the streets for anyone dropping so much as a matchstick.
The publicity campaign has been launched by Colchester Borough Council who say it has been checked and approved by their lawyers and the police.
Its team of six 'street care officers' will now photograph everyone caught dropping litter in the council's 160-square mile area including Colchester town centre and surrounding villages.
And the council say the photographs will be kept on file indefinitely because people caught may re-offend.
The council spoke in defence of its policy today as it emerged that across Britain town hall workers are being armed with sweeping police-style powers to hand out fines for a raft of offences including dropping litter.
Officials say the Colchester scheme has been introduced after a 23-year-old local woman caught by a litter warden dropping a cigarette butt gave a false name and address when handed a £75 fixed penalty notice.
Her photograph appeared in an evening paper and she was eventually identified and now faces court on charges of littering and wilfully obstructing an officer.
The six-strong anti-litter patrols will now photograph anyone caught dropping litter in the street or from a car. Continued
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Suzanne and Lloyd Bishop did the decent thing when they heard a suspicious noise outside their home.
A glance out of the bedroom window revealed a man breaking into a neighbour's shed - so they swiftly called 999.
They assumed this would be the end of their crime-fighting role other than perhaps giving a statement to police at a later date.
But, to their astonishment, Cambridgeshire police sent them a text message an hour later asking the couple if they could investigate further.
The message said: 'Lloyd. Following on from your call earlier on to the police, please can you contact us is you are able to establish what has been stolen and where from?
'At this time we are struggling to get the police to attend general calls for service, many thanks.'
Mrs Bishop, 29, who along with her husband is a full-time carer for their special needs daughter, Lizzie, two, yesterday said she was 'gobsmacked' by the request.
'We were disgusted that this text was sent out an hour later to us,' she said.
'To text the person who calls and ask them to investigate what had been stolen, broken into and who did it is just incredible.
'What is totally unbelievable was that we were under the impression that this type of crime came under 999.
It just gives burglars the idea that they can get away with it because the police aren't going to send anyone out.
'What message does that send to my neighbours here? Is it just pointless to call police if you see someone breaking in to a house?'
The couple were woken at 5am on Sunday morning when they heard a padlock being smashed outside their home in Cambridge.
When they checked the street they spotted a man in a white t-shirt running away.
Mr Bishop, 33, immediately called police and was told a patrol car would do a sweep of the area.
'We went back to bed and were woken at 6am by a text message saying they couldn't get any officers out,' he said.
'They should have been able to catch a man in a white T-shirt as there couldn't have been many running around the area at five in the morning.
'It's complete madness. The police are essentially asking us to do their job for them. It makes you wonder what we pay our taxes for.' Continued
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More than half the babies born in Luton are to foreign mothers, according to figures released by the Office For National Statistics.
A spokesman said 758,000 babies were born in Britain last year. The UK fertility rate is now 1.91 children per woman - the highest level since 1973. In Luton, 51 per cent of births were to non UK-born mothers.
The rising birth rate has fuelled an increase in Britain's population to almost 61 million in 2007, largely influenced by the growing number of women of childbearing age in the country. Continued
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A devout Muslim was found guilty of child cruelty today in a British legal first after forcing two boys to beat themselves during a religious ceremony.
The jury at Manchester Crown Court found 44-year-old Syed Mustafa Zaidi guilty of two counts of child cruelty.
The boys, aged 13 and 15, were forced to beat themselves with a zanjeer zani, an implement containing five curved blades, during a ceremony to commemorate the death of a Shia Muslim spiritual leader.
Zaidi, of Station Road, Eccles, Salford, also flogged himself during the ceremony at a community centre in Levenshulme, Manchester, on January 19.
The boys, who cannot be named for legal reasons, admitted they wanted to beat themselves, but not under duress and not using Zaidi's zanjeer zani. Continued
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Britain will become the most populated country in the European Union thanks to immigration and soaring number of pensioners, experts warned yesterday.
The UK, despite being far smaller, will overtake Germany and France for having the most number of people by 2060.
And the pressure on the public purse will intensify with people aged over 65 accounting for a quarter of the population by that point.
The projections, from EU statisticians, will also fuel the concerns that Labour’s open-door policy has led to record numbers of migrants.
The study comes just days after the UK’s official statisticians revealed immigration has hit record levels with 1,650 people moving here every day.
Their figures also show that, for the first time, there are now more pensioners in the UK than children.
Shadow Home Secretary Dominic Grieve said: “This is why it is essential we develop a coherent strategy to deal with population growth. We not only need to ensure that our population grows at a more sustainable rate but that we also prepare properly for that sustainable rate of growth.
“The Government have shown that they have no answers to the challenges we face by failing to plan for our increasing population. This makes them part of the problem.”
Sir Andrew Green, chairman of MigrationWatch UK, said: “This is yet another warning that if we do not get a hold of immigration, the population of this small island will become unmanageable.”
The EU statistical office yesterday predicted the UK population will rise by a quarter from 61.2 million to 76.7 million by 2060. In contrast, Germany will see its population drop from 82.2 million to 70.8 million over the same period due largely to falling births.
France’s population will grow from 61.8 million but will only stand at 71.8 million by 2060 – making the UK the most populated across the 27 nations of the EU. Separate figures earlier this year warned England will become the densest area of Europe as early as next year. Continued
See Also:
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The Scotland Yard officer in charge of security for the 2012 Olympics is being sued for racism by his boss Tarique Ghaffur.
Richard Bryan, who is director of operations for Olympic security, is being accused of racism by Met Assistant Commissioner Ghaffur in a discrimination case lodged on Friday.
Mr Ghaffur, the Met's most senior Asian policeman, alleges that Mr Bryan made "thinly veiled" racist comments towards him and deliberately undermined his position. He is also suing Met Commissioner Sir Ian Blair.
Mr Ghaffur claims Mr Bryan told him "I can't understand what you are saying" and said he had to "calibrate" his reports so staff were able to understand them.
The case also suggests that planning for the Games' policing - overseen by Mr Ghaffur - has been marred by plotting among senior Scotland Yard figures and the Home Office, creating a " degrading and humiliating" environment.
He says he was treated differently to white officers and claims that the three other Asian officers working on the Olympics command have been told their contracts would not be continued.
He claims documents were kept from him by Mr Bryan and Whitehall officials, that he was not made aware of key meetings and his opinions were ignored by Sir Ian.
Mr Ghaffur, who earns £180,000 a year, is continuing to work alongside his deputy and reports three times a week to Sir Ian for "cabinet" meetings.
A spokesman for the Met said they would "robustly defend" themselves at the expected employment tribunal next year. News Source
Few apt comments:
- Does Mr. Ghaffur find time to do any police work thereby justifying his huge salary or is he too busy looking for slights from his colleagues?
- This petty self publicist is a bore and undoubtedly is bringing the force into disrepute. Who's he going to sue next... his tea lady for not asking him what he wants before everyone else?
- About time this idiot was given his marching orders isn't it? He's nothing but a drain on the finances of the Met!
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A man is seriously ill in a UK hospital with a strain of virtually untreatable tuberculosis.
The patient, believed to be an asylum seeker in his 30s from Somalia, East Africa, is the first to be diagnosed in Britain with extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis (XDR TB).
His case was picked up in Glasgow in January but a court order detaining him in hospital for treatment lapsed after his condition stabilised and he travelled south to Leeds, West Yorks.
He has been admitted to an isolation room at a hospital in the city where he is being given high-dose drugs by specialist medical teams.
Hospital chiefs are refusing to comment, but experts say they are confident there is no risk to staff or the public.
The man travelled to Leeds to be near relatives and attended A&E in the city within 24 hours.
It remains unclear if his application for asylum, made when he arrived in the UK last year, has been successful but the bill for treatment - which would run into tens of thousands of pounds a year - is being picked up by the NHS in Leeds.
XDR TB poses a worldwide threat amid major concerns over increasing resistance of tuberculosis to antibiotics which originally proved highly effective against the illness. The World Health Organisation has warned that if the strain becomes established, it could lead to a TB epidemic leaving few options for treatment.
A Health Protection Agency spokesman said it was aware that a patient with XDR TB was being treated in Leeds.
“All the appropriate infection control measures are being taken,” he said.
“The usual routine responses were put in place to identify any close contacts of the patient and all appropriate actions have been taken. There is no infectious risk to public health.” Continued
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A grieving mother who watched her ten-year-old son die of an asthma attack was left devastated after being arrested for his manslaughter.
Claire Humberstone said she was treated like a criminal after police arrived at her home with dogs and riot vans just 12 days after her son Dante Kamara died.
The shocked mother of four was held in custody for eight hours, questioned and had her DNA and fingerprints taken.
A week later, she was told she would not be charged.
Last night, the 29-year-old condemned the police tactics as ' disgusting', and insisted she knew of no reason why she should have been suspected of foul play.
She said: 'I was treated like a criminal and I was a grieving mother - it's made everything worse.
'I'm a good mum who loves my kids dearly.
'I looked after his condition well and did everything I could to save his life the day he died. I miss him every day and I can't believe this has happened. It's torn me apart.'
Miss Humberstone, who is pregnant with her fifth child, said that on July 1, Dante - who had suffered from asthma since he was a toddler - was off school with a bad cold.
But just 90 minutes after seeing a nurse at a local doctor's surgery, he began struggling for breath and Miss Humberstone rang for an ambulance.
She said: 'I was absolutely hysterical and screaming. I knew my son wasn't going to make it. The paramedic didn't know what he was doing.
'He was panicking and even dropped something down my son's throat by accident. It was awful.'
Miss Humberstone, who lives in Shiregreen, Sheffield, with her partner Jamie Maher, 22, and her children Kayden, 13, Roman, three, and Amelia, two, said: 'Police said they were arresting me because the coroner had raised concerns - but that can't be true because he had already issued a death certificate with the cause of death as an asthma attack.'
Detective Chief Inspector Clive Wain, of South Yorkshire Police, said: 'Claire is fully aware of the reasons for her arrest. She was arrested as a potential suspect, but we tried to be as sensitive and tactful as we could.' News Source
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Some 50,000 children are at risk of harm or neglect at the hands of nurseries, childminders and after-school clubs, Government inspectors have said.
Education watchdog Ofsted revealed more than 2,500 child care providers are 'inadequate'.
Its report - Early Years: Leading To Excellence - checked on 84,400 nurseries, creches, childminders and out-of-school clubs that look after an estimated 1.7million children each day.
The figures come at a time when mothers are being pressured to go back to work by ministers who claim they are trying to crack child poverty.
Prime Minister Gordon Brown, as recently as June, unveiled plans to pay mothers an extra £40 a week if they found a job.
Critics said the report's findings also suggested that the best childminders were quitting because they were fed up with increasing amounts of bureaucratic red tape.
Failings included not checking staff for criminal records, leaving children alone too long, providing unsuitable or unsafe play equipment and not having the correct first aid training.
The report found that one in 15 'extended' schools which look after an increasing number of children before and after class were below par, while four per cent of nurseries and creches were poor.
The declining standards are especially worrying as the industry is registering 1,000 new childminders each month.
The number of England's 54,000-plus childminders classified as 'good' also dropped from 62 to 54 per cent. However, those considered 'excellent' rose from three to five per cent. Ofsted also said it was 'concerned' that the quality of childcare was worse in the most deprived parts of the country. Continued
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Children under the age of 16 cannot legally give their consent to take part in religious flogging ceremonies, a prosecutor said in the case of a Muslim man accused of encouraging two boys to beat themselves with a bladed whip at a Manchester community centre.
Syed Mustafa Zaidi, 44, of Eccles, denies two charges of child cruelty in a trial at Manchester Crown Court.
In a closing speech to the jury, prosecutor Andrew Nuttall said: "The law applies to everyone and you can't just ignore it because you choose to do so."
He added that the issue of the boys consenting to take part in the ceremony was `no defence', since the law existed to protect children from themselves.
Earlier, Mr Nuttall said the law had drawn a `line in the sand' at the age of 16, with the intention of protecting children from harm.
He said: "Children under 16 are not allowed by law to buy cigarettes; it's unlawful for a man to have sexual intercourse for a girl under 16, the idea being to protect girls from certain people like the Gary Glitters of this world.
"A line has been drawn in the sand by the government and people in this country," the barrister added, claiming Mr Zaidi had chosen to ignore this line.
Mr Nuttall said there was `no doubt' that the defendant knew when he gave the whip to the two boys that they would `suffer injury', but not only did he not stop them from whipping themselves, but `ensured that they would receive injury', which amounted to `ill treatment', making him guilty of the charge.
The prosecutor also said the issue of religion was `no defence' in this case, since the use of the whip or zanjeer was voluntary, and not fundamental to the Shia Muslim faith.
The `emotion' of the event, and whether or not the boys were forced, were also no defence, said Mr Nuttall, since Zaidi knew the children would suffer injury and that it was against the law, but handed them his whip anyway.
The court has been told that Mr Zaidi encouraged the two boys to flog themselves with a 'zanjeer' at a Matam ceremony held in Manchester in January this year. They both sustained injuries to their back.
Zanjeer Matam is practised on the 10th day of Muharram, the Muslim month of mourning, to mark the martyrdom of Hussain, the Prophet Mohammed's grandson, who is central to the Shia faith. News Source
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A senior doctor says thousands of hospital patients are "starving" because nurses are too busy to feed them.
Professor Paul Goddard, a former radiology section president of the Royal Society of Medicine, made a scathing attack yesterday on the way the health service is being run, saying "an enormous amount of money has been put in but it has been wasted on excessive management".
He said the NHS is in "meltdown" and claimed medics refused to speak up about the problems for fear of being sacked.
Prof Goddard told Radio 4's Today programme: "Thousands of patients have been starving in beds because the nurses do not have time to feed them.
"That used to be a major part of the nursing process; now they just don't have time because they have to spend all their time doing reports and management work."
Superbugs were killing people by the "hundreds"; "you can't get dental care"; and people had to pay to have elderly patients looked after. Draft guidance to deny patients four kidney cancer drugs on the NHS was a "disgrace". News Source
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Thank Goodness for occasional good news!
For the first time a drugs company will pay to top up patients' treatment where the level of care paid for by the Health Service is not enough.
In a decision that marks a climbdown for the National Institute for health and Clinical Excellence (NICE), the first 14 injections of the sight-saving drug Lucentis will be paid for by the NHS.
If the patient still needs further treatment then Novartis, the manufacturer, will pay for any additional doses.
The ruling overturns previous draft guidance that patients would have to go blind in one eye before receiving treatment with Lucentis, which costs more than £10,000 per eye, on the second.
It also paves the way for other new drugs for which top-up doses may be required to be funded in the same way in future.
Richard Barker, director general of the Association of British Pharmaceutical Industry suggested other medicines the NHS cannot afford to pay for in full could be provided through cost sharing schemes between the NHS and the drugs industry.
A similar approach has been suggested for kidney cancer drug Sutent, which costs £24,000 a year, and three other drugs after Nice issued draft guidance saying that they were not "cost effective" despite extending life by two months.
NICE has been severely criticised in recent months by health campaigners, who have accused them of condemning patients to "an early grave" by denying them the drugs.
It has also been at the centre of a previous controversy over its decision to deny the £2.50-a-day drug Aricept to victims of Alzheimer's in the early stages of the disease.
Lucentis can stop the deterioration in sight caused by the condition wet age related macular degeneration (AMD), which affects about 250,000 people in the UK including 26,000 new cases each year. It can cause blindness within three months. Continued
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Patients' lives are being put at risk because a shortage of staff means ambulances are sent to emergencies without paramedics on board, experts warned today.
Vehicles manned only with lesser qualified technicians or emergency care assistants are often dispatched to deal with 999 calls.
Although skilled, they are not authorised to administer some drugs or treatments.
The Association of Professional Ambulance Personnel (APAP) today said it had 'great concerns' that the lack of paramedics is putting the welfare of patients in jeopardy.
South Central Ambulance Service, which covers Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Hampshire and Oxfordshire, is now desperately trying to recruit paramedics to plug the gap.
Paramedic and APAP spokesman Simon Surplice, said: 'I have got great concerns.
'The additional skills of a paramedic are required on about four to six per cent of all jobs.
'It's all very well that the vast majority of our jobs don't require extended skills or paramedic intervention.
'But that's no consolation for the relatively few jobs where those skills are needed, and needed urgently, and it turns out there is no available paramedic with the crew, or no way, within a reasonable time, of getting a paramedic to the scene.'
Campaigners also blasted the lack of paramedics, claiming it could lead to unnecessary deaths.
Michael Summers, vice chairman of the Patients Association, said: 'Patient care is going to suffer.
'Patients could lose their lives because of the inability of technicians to be able to use certain equipment and administer certain drugs.
'This could be avoided if ambulance services employed a greater number of paramedics as opposed to technicians - there is clearly a need.'
South Central Ambulance Service NHS Trust today admitted that the staff shortage means technicians are sometimes dispatched without paramedics. Continued
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Three men held in a suspected race hate plot to kill Barack Obama will not face any charges relating to an attempt on his life.
The authorities in Denver said that even though they had high-powered sniper rifles and were racists who said they wanted to kill Mr Obama to stop him becoming President, the case did not meet the legal standard to charge the men with a federal offence.
Tharin Gartrell, 28, Shawn Adolf, 33, and Dwaine Johnson, 32, are to face charges of possessing firearms and the drug methamphetamine following their arrest.
The US Attorney for Denver, Troy Eid, said that while investigators were keeping an "open mind" an intensive investigation had found no evidence of a credible plan to kill Mr Obama as he accepted the Democratic nomination at Denver's Invesco football stadium tomorrow.
"There is a difference between a true threat and the reported racist rantings of drug abusers," said Mr Eid. "This involved a gang of meth-heads who were all impaired at the time."
The plot was only uncovered after police seized two high-velocity rifles, camouflage clothing, walkie-talkies, wigs, a bulletproof vest and telescopic gun sights during a routine traffic stop.
One of the gang - who has the surname Adolf and was wearing a swastika ring - jumped from a sixth-floor window to escape after the FBI swooped on two hotels in the city.
Another denied being part of the plot, but reportedly said of Obama: 'Blacks don't belong in political office. He ought to be shot.'
The foiled 'hit' has sent shockwaves through the convention crowds pouring into the Colorado capital for the 47-year-old senator's Democrat coronation. Continued
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A bundle of sensitive files linked to a massive police drugs bust have been found dumped in a skip.
A probe has been launched after more than 100 'restricted' statements from police officers and forensic experts were discovered lying in a giant bin at a recycling centre.
They reveal personal details about suspects and witnesses linked to Operation Montrose, run by Merseyside Police from 2004, which led to 59 drug traffickers being locked up for a combined 340 years.
They detail how cops seized items including brown powders, bundles of cash and mobile phones across the country.
The papers provide information linked to a Liverpool Crown Court case involving gang leader Paul Hannon and eight others.
HM Courts Service has vowed to investigate the security breach after the files were handed to a local newspaper. A spokesman said: "HMCS takes data security extremely seriously and we will investigate all allegations of breaches or incidents." Continued
