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| Laughing policemen in trouble for sledging – using a riot shield Thames Valley officers reprimanded after fun video posted on YouTube We all know the feeling. The snowy slopes beckon and the urge to hurtle down them takes over but there is no sledge available. So you grab a tea tray, an old bag, a coat — or, if you are a fun-loving police officer, a handy riot shield.A group of officers from Thames Valley police have been reprimanded after one of their number showed his ability to improvise by using a shield to fly down a hill in Oxfordshire.Urged on by colleagues he sat on the the riot shield, grabbed on to the handles that could have been designed for this purpose and shot down the hill to hoots of laughter. Unfortunately for the officers, the escapade was filmed by an onlooker and, as is the so often the case these days, was posted on YouTube. The officers' bosses were not amused.Superintendent Andrew Murray, Oxford city commander, said: "The snow has a habit of bringing out the child in all of us. I have spoken to the officers concerned and reminded them in no uncertain terms that tobogganing on duty, on police equipment and at taxpayers' expense, is a very bad idea should they wish to progress under my command."The incident happened on Boars Hill in Oxford. The clip shows five or six officers, some also recording the adventure on their own cameras, in the snowy field, a police van parked in the background. One of the officers plonks the shield on the slope and is advised by another to hold on to the handles. He settles himself, holds tight and then two of his pals give him an almighty push.Squealing, the officer slides off, one of his colleagues advising him: "Whatever happens, keep smiling." The shield proves to be an effective sledge, even skipping over a ditch at the foot of the hill.Rick Latham, who filmed the 41-second clip on Tuesday afternoon, said he initially thought police were going to tell him off because he was attempting to get down the slope in a kayak. We were just having a laugh, then they pulled up and we thought they were going to give us a hard time."Then they asked how slippery the snow was and one of them grabbed the shield. I asked if I could film it and they said that was fine. They said something like: 'We're only human'."Latham said he was impressed by the officers' behaviour and hopes they were not severely reprimanded. "You don't always build up the most positive image of the police but they broke the mould. They were chatty and pleasant. It was just nice to see them in that situation."PoliceWeatherYouTubeSteven Morrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Vodafone: 'guarantees' home coverage with £50 femtocell Vodafone, the country's largest mobile phone operator, has promised to end so-called "not spots" by offering customers a £50 mini phone mast for their home. telegraph.co.uk |
Half of young black people without jobs Rate compares with fifth of white young without job but it is society's unfairness, not racial bias, which is being blamedThe recession has left almost one in two young black people without a job, appearing to contradict claims by the government that it would shield the most vulnerable from the effects of the downturn.The left-leaning Institute for Public Policy Research said 48% of black people aged 16 to 24 reported that they were out of work, compared with 20% of white people of the same age.Not only had the absolute level of unemployment risen for young black people, but as a group they suffered the sharpest leap in joblessness: black unemployment has jumped 13% since March 2008, compared with 8% among white people and 6% among Asians.The thinktank looked at data from the Labour Force Survey, a quarterly sample of about 60,000 households. Within that, the institute said it looked at the responses of 16- to 24-year-olds, a total of 7,200 people, in November 2009.The figures appear to fly in the face of assurances by ministers that class rather than race is a greater factor in holding people back and come at a time when there are concerns about rising poverty levels in a time of penury. However in an number of interviews with young black unemployed people many refused to accept that race discrimination was solely behind the joblessness – saying instead simply that "society was unfair".Godfrey Kingsley, a 17-year-old who has been unemployed since September, and is now on a programme run by Tomorrow's People, a charity helping the unemployed back into work, said: "I am not saying there is no racism but you cannot hold a grudge against the system. How many black people are selling cars in Jaguar showrooms or clothes in D&G? Not that many."But the point is that you need to be the best and that means not accepting that mindset of 'it's because I am black'. My problem was that my college was closed down by Ofsted and the teachers were sacked. That left a hole in my cv. No fault of my own."The government defended measures it had taken to protect the most vulnerable of the population during the recession. Jim Knight, the employment minister, said the problem was partly that there were more young people in the ethnic minority population and the recession had "hit young people harder than most".Academics said the reasons for the rise in youth unemployment among black youths were manifold: underachievement in the classroom, a disadvantage when it came to friends and family connections helping them find jobs, and the disappearance of the traditional blue-collar jobs."One in two young black people being unemployed is quite a shocking figure," said Steve Strand, associate professor at Warwick University's institute of education."If you think that education is a gatekeeper to a future there are gaps between black and white performance. But that is not big enough to account for the differences in employment."Others point out that even in good times a third of young black people are out of a job, a "scarring effect" that meant there was a persistent loss of skills, and a longer and harder road back into the workforce."What's of concern is that you have especially young Afro Caribbean people who are out of work for long periods of time," said Prof Richard Berthoud, of Essex University."That means you have a group who are not so embedded in the workforce. So when the economy recovers and they try and find a job they continually have to answer employers who say 'what's wrong with you?'"The possibility that the recession could permanently damage prospects for young black people echoes the experience of African-Americans in the US, who have fared much worse than those in the white population during the recession. Data last month showed that among young black American men without a high-school diploma, nearly half did not have a job.Feature films such as Precious, which is released later this month in Britain and explores the grim but ultimately triumphant life in inner city New York of a young Afro American woman, have been criticised by some for sending out a negative message.However, Femi Oyeniran, the 23-year-old actor who made his name in the 2006 film Kidulthood and in its 2008 sequel, Adulthood, said that his movies had been criticised at the time for "casting black people in a negative light". He said: "But it was fiction not reality. The recession means that we have to look at a lot of factors and some of them are down to black people themselves."Race issuesRecessionJob huntingRandeep Rameshguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Economy: Bumping along the bottom | Editorial So, it's official. The slump is no more. But the chancellor's boast yesterday that the UK was "back on the path to growth" was backed up by an achievement as thin as a statistical Rizla. National income figures for the last quarter of 2009 recorded a squeak of a recovery, expansion of just 0.1%. Ministers hope it will be amplified in revisions, by strong Christmas shopping which came in too late for yesterday's provisional data. In truth, no one knows if the apparent recovery will instead turn out to have been smothered by the blanket of snow which closed many businesses at the year's end. Regardless of how all the unknowns ultimately play out, however, the central judgment is clear. The economy is no longer hurtling downwards; instead it is bumping along the bottom.Grim as this reality is, the first thing to be said is in fact that it represents something of an achievement. Just 15 months ago many a punter was telling anyone who would listen that we were in for a Great Depression to match that witnessed by the US in the 1930s – with joblessness and bankruptcies on a scale that the entire social order would be called into question. That has not happened, even though the initial decline was as steep as in 1929. Most other countries halted it quicker, despite Gordon Brown's ill-advised early boasts about how debt-ridden Britain was somehow uniquely well-placed to escape from the slump. Nonetheless, in some small part and perhaps more than that, the levelling-off is a tribute to distinctive choices made by his government. As well as the action to save the banks, there was the decision to pump-prime the economy with tax cuts and spending, as well as more specific responses, such as the car-scrappage scheme. Amid the overall disappointment of yesterday's numbers, the Treasury can find vindication for much of its action in the small print. It revealed that public expenditure had underpinned such growth as there was, and that what the statisticians still quaintly label the "motor trade" had at last steered round the corner.Still more important than the Treasury's actions have been those taken at Threadneedle Street. The slashing of interest rates has put much more cash back in families' pockets than the VAT cut or anything else that the government did. Cheap money, reinforced by judicious use of the printing presses, and co-ordinated with nations right round the planet, has been the most important medicine of all. For all the (reasonable) bashing that economists have taken for not anticipating the crisis, this time around, unlike in the 1930s, they almost all understood that the government had to act to offset the monetary contraction once it was under way. We have that single simple insight to thank for the fact that the world economy is no longer withering away.The so-called dismal science, then, has developed treatments to arrest the course of the direst financial diseases. But in its quest for prescriptions that can restore full health, it remains just as dismal as ever. A UK government of whatever stripe would be foolish to treat the recovery as a solid fact until maybe 2011 at the earliest. Public debate will now be dominated by arguments about the lack of economic vitality, not the proof of it. Counterfactual claims about how things could have been worse are cold comfort – both to the millions who are continuing to find work hard to come by, and to a government trying to convince a sceptical country why it deserves a fourth term. With public borrowing close to the limit of what can be prudently justified, and with modestly resurgent inflation that could lead the Bank of England to end its quantitative easing programme as soon as next week, the anxiety is that there are few jump leads to attach to an economy which is still stalled. The slump may be over, but there is no feelgood factor, only a feel-slightly-less-fearful factor. A corner may have been turned, but it hardly feels like it.Alistair DarlingEconomic growth (GDP)EconomicsGreen shootsEconomic policyguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Richest 10% are 100 times better off • 1980s income gap still not plugged, say analysts• Brown says equality panel report a 'sobering' read• Datablog: get the numbers behind this storyA detailed and startling analysis of how unequal Britain has become offers a snapshot of an increasingly divided nation where the richest 10% of the population are more than 100 times as wealthy as the poorest 10% of society.Gordon Brown described the paper, published today, as "sobering", saying: "The report illustrates starkly that despite a levelling-off of inequality in the last decade we still have much further to go."The report, An Anatomy of Economic Inequality in the UK, scrutinises the degree to which the country has become more unequal over the past 30 years. Much of it will make uncomfortable reading for the Labour government, although the paper indicates that considerable responsibility lies with the Tories, who presided over the dramatic divisions of the 1980s and early 1990s.Researchers analyse inequality according to a number of measures; one indicates that by 2007-8 Britain had reached the highest level of income inequality since soon after the second world war.The new findings show that the household wealth of the top 10% of the population stands at £853,000 and more – over 100 times higher than the wealth of the poorest 10%, which is £8,800 or below (a sum including cars and other possessions).When the highest-paid workers, such as bankers and chief executives, are put into the equation, the division in wealth is even more stark, with individuals in the top 1% of the population each possessing total household wealth of £2.6m or more.Commissioned by Harriet Harman, minister for women and equality, the National Equality Panel has been working on the 460-page document for 16 months, led by Prof John Hills, of the London School of Economics.The report is more ambitious in scope than any other state-of-the-nation wealth assessment project ever undertaken.It concludes that the government has failed to plug the gulf that existed between the poorest and richest in society in the 1980s. "Over the most recent decade, earnings inequality has narrowed a little and income inequality has stabilised on some measures, but the large inequality growth of the 1980s has not been reversed," it states.Hills said: "These are very challenging issues for any government because the problems are so deep-seated.""But we hope that by doing this work, policy makers have now got information they never had before, to try and get at the roots of some of those problems."Harman said the issues raised meant the government needs to "sustain and step up" action introduced by government over the past 13 years, such as children's centres and tax credits. "It takes generations to make things more equal," she told Radio 4's Today programme.Social mobility was "essential" for the economy, she said. "The government should take action to ensure everyone has a fair chance."The panel found "systematic differences in equality panel economic outcomes" remained between social groups, and said many would find the "sheer scale of inequalities" in outcomes "shocking".Inequality in earnings and income is high in Britain compared with other industrialised countries, the report states.A central theme of the report is the profound, lifelong negative impact that being born poor, and into a disadvantaged social class, has on a child. These inequalities accumulate over the life cycle, the report concludes. Social class has a big impact on children's school readiness at the age of three, but continues to drag children back through school and beyond."The evidence we have looked at shows the long arm of people's origins in shaping their life chances, stretching through life stages, literally from cradle to grave. Differences in wealth in particular are associated with opportunities such as the ability to buy houses in the catchment areas of the best schools or to afford private education, with advantages for children that continue through and beyond education. At the other end of life, wealth levels are associated with stark differences in life expectancy after 50," the report states.It echoes other recent research suggesting that social mobility has stagnated, and concludes that "people's occupational and economic destinations in early adulthood depend to an important degree on their origins". Achieving the "equality of opportunity" that all political parties aspire to is very hard when there are such wide differences between the resources that people have to help them fulfil their diverse potentials, the panel notes.Researchers analysed the total wealth accrued by households over a lifetime. The top 10%, led by higher professionals, had amassed wealth of £2.2m, including property and pension assets, by the time they drew close to retirement (aged 55-64), while the bottom 10% of households, led by routine manual workers, had amassed less than £8,000.Harman acknowledged in the report that the "persistent inequality of social class" was a large factor in perpetuating disadvantage, adding that the government would begin to address this with the new legal duty placed on public bodies to address socio-economic inequality, included in the equality bill.The report follows research published by Save the Children which revealed that 13% of the UK's children were now living in severe poverty, and that efforts to reduce child poverty had been stalling even before the recession began in 2008.The Hills report also found that: • Divisions between social groups are no longer as significant as the inequalities between individuals from the same social group; inequality growth of the last 40 years is mostly attributable to gaps within groups rather than between them.• White British pupils with GCSE results around or below the national median are less likely to go on to higher education than those from minority ethnic groups. Pakistani, Black African and Black Caribbean boys have results at the age of 16 well below the median in England.• Compared with a white British Christian man with similar qualifications, age and occupation, Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim men and Black African Christian men have an income that is 13-21% lower. Nearly half of Bangladeshi and Pakistani households are in poverty.• Girls have better educational outcomes than boys at school and are more likely to enter higher education and achieve good degrees, but women's median hourly pay is 21% less than men's.The significance of where you live is another theme. The panel says the government is a "very long way" from fulfilling its vision, set out in 2001, that "within 10 to 20 years no one should be seriously disadvantaged by where they live". The paper notes "profound and startling differences" between areas. Median hourly wages in the most deprived 10th of areas are 40% lower than in the least deprived.Social mobilityEqualityHarriet HarmanGordon BrownLabourConservativesEconomicsAmelia GentlemanHélène Mulhollandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |