| Sheridan note change 'discussed' Scottish Socialist Party members talked about changing minutes relevant to Tommy Sheridan's defamation case, a court hears. bbc.co.uk |
School to use double-decker bus for classes Cornwall headteacher plans to convert yellow bus bought on eBay into science labIt's a school bus – but not in the conventional sense. A Cornish school struggling to find the money for an extension is planning to create two classrooms out of an old double-decker bus.The headteacher bought the yellow bus on eBay, drove it to Cornwall, and will oversee its conversion into a two-tiered annexe with a science laboratory on the bottom floor and a domestic science classroom on top.Parc Eglos school in Helston had planned a classroom extension but could not find the £15,000 needed. So the headteacher, Brett Dye, found a suitable bus on eBay and then travelled 400 miles to Lancashire to collect the £3,500 vehicle. The yellow 1983 Leyland Titan is now parked in the school grounds waiting to be transformed.Dye said: "A classroom extension would have cost £15,000 or more, which was just not going to be possible. Here we have found a creative solution that keeps the cost down while inspiring the children with a fun and unusual learning environment. It's good to inspire the children, be imaginative and very resourceful. It's a lot cheaper to have a bus, and I just thought it would be a wonderful thing for the school."The bus has passed health and safety checks and is fitted with three exits, including a fire escape. It is parked where a mobile classroom formerly stood, so power and water supplies can be used, and has a surprising amount of storage space. Dye added: "The whole community is fund-raising and offering services such as carpentry to help us carry out the conversion."The scheme, which is due to be completed in a few months' time, is supported by the MP for St Ives, Andrew George. He said: "What we're looking for is these kind of creative solutions. There will always be limited resources in public services. Schools like Parc Eglos coming forward with creative ideas like this is something we all need to be looking at."Bobbie, one of the school's pupils, said: "It's just so amazing, because we've never had anything like this before."School fundingSchoolsSteven Morrisguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
'My son was shot by a British sniper, now all I want is the truth' One evening last year, Helen Perry was told her son Michael, a military policeman, had been killed in crossfire in Afghanistan. Then the reality began to leak out. She is still trying to unravel the full factsHelen Perry vividly remembers the knock on her door that came late on a Sunday evening not long before Christmas last year.Subconsciously, the mother of three had been preparing for this visit for three months, ever since her only son, Michael, had started his first tour of duty in Afghanistan. But she had reassured herself that Lance Corporal Michael Pritchard – known to everyone as "Pritch" – was a military policeman, a redcap. He was not at the dangerous end of things, the uncharted hinterland where the Taliban fight intense battles to prevent the allies taking back remote tribal villages.She cannot recall exactly what happened after she opened the door of her terraced home in Eastbourne that night. "I didn't want to answer. Who would be hammering on my door at that hour?" she says.She does not remember being told by the army informing officer: "I have some news and it's not good news." She doesn't remember being told Michael had been killed.Later, she has been told by her family, she kept saying "Oh God, oh God" over and over again as she paced up and down the room. The officer gave her 24 hours to inform Michael's friends and relatives. After that, he said, the information would be released to the public. Helen rushed to tell Michael's grandparents and his father, from whom she is separated. Michael had many friends who also had to be told.Initially the details of Michael's death were sparse. He had been shot and had died "pretty quickly", despite efforts to save him at the scene, she was informed. It was not until the next day, when a second army officer visiting the house took a call on his mobile phone, that the horrible truth started to seep out. There had been a battle and Michael had been killed in the crossfire. It was a "friendly fire" incident.The killing has parallels with the case of the British aid worker, Linda Norgrove, who died last week. As with Norgrove's death, the truth of what happened to Michael emerged chaotically, leaving Helen in turmoil, in search of an explanation as to what went wrong.The Ministry of Defence arranged for Michael's body to be flown home and helped organise the funeral. At first his mother, a care worker in a hospice, was grateful for the help, but now, after months of demanding answers, she is suspicious. "You think they are looking after you, but it's all done to keep you from the truth. We kept asking for more details about how Michael died, but there was no more information about who he had been shot by," she says.Hints, however, came in a letter from Major Phil Hacker, Michael's commanding officer, expressing his condolences and paying tribute to Michael. Hacker wrote that Michael had been shot while manning a two-storey observation tower. Helen says "alarm bells" started ringing. Michael was a military policeman. What was he doing manning an observation deck in one of the most dangerous parts of Helmand province?It was then that Helen Perry's last phone call from Michael made sense. "I last spoke to him on a Sunday a week before he died," she explains. "I detected fear. He was being moved to somewhere more dangerous, but we were not to worry. It was as if he didn't want to end the conversation. It was as if he knew he wasn't going to be able to talk for some time."As in many of the homes of British soldiers who have died in Afghanistan and Iraq, Helen's front room has been turned into a shrine. On a table rests Michael's red and black military policeman's cap. The empty shell casing from a round fired over Michael's body before it was repatriated is positioned close by. His lucky $2 bill, his campaign medals, and an Elizabeth Cross – given to families of deceased soldiers – are in boxes on the table. A photograph of Michael, athletic, strong-jawed, almost bursting out of his uniform, takes pride of place. A metal cross, placed at the foot of his bed in his barracks after he died, stands against a wall.Helen admits she worries about the effect Michael's death will have on his sisters, Katie, 25, and Erin, 12. If it were not for Erin, the family would cancel Christmas this year, she says."The last year has been lost. It's completely taken over our life. Erin is what gets me out of bed in the morning now." She says Facebook has helped her connect with other mothers mourning their sons. She is in touch with some of her son's colleagues who came to Michael's funeral, an event that was attended by hundreds and which Helen remembers for the way pupils at the local college lined the streets as the hearse passed.Helen met Michael's colleagues again in May, when she attended a reunion ceremony for soldiers returning from Afghanistan. It was at the ceremony that Helen met the padre to Michael's regiment. He said that his thoughts were also with the sniper who "must feel awful" for killing Michael. The words sent Helen reeling. Nobody had mentioned the word "sniper".It was a friendly-fire incident; the fog of war, that much she knew. Helen says she made a "beeline" for the visiting officer, one of the men who had brought news of Michael's death, and "dragged him into a corner", demanding to know whether he was aware her son had been shot by a British army sniper.It quickly emerged that lots of people knew Michael had been shot by a sniper from the Scots Guards, but no one had told the family. Worse, Helen learned that many in the regiment had known within hours of Michael being shot.She is astonished at how she has been kept in the dark: "He died for Queen and country and this is how they honour him: by keeping us from the truth."Even now the Ministry of Defence appears to be reluctant to use the word "sniper". Its website states Michael was "killed as a result of small arms fire… The possibility that he died as a result of friendly fire is being investigated in Afghanistan, but no firm conclusion will be reached until the coroner's inquest."In response to the family's outrage, the army arranged a briefing with its Special Investigations Branch (SIB). And so it was that, almost five months after he died, Helen sat in the York House hotel, Eastbourne, to hear what many in Michael's regiment already knew."They confirmed he had been shot by a British sniper. They told us he had been on an observation post between two British patrol bases, each some 500m-750m away."The two SIB officers briefing Helen and her family blamed poor equipment. They told her the radios did not work properly and that sometimes their reception was poor, making communication between the men in the field difficult. They said a shift change at one of the two patrol bases meant the team taking over was unaware Michael and three others were manning the roof of the observation post a few hundred metres away.Questions also have to be asked about the sniper's rifle sights. Michael's observation post was in a dip below the base from where the sniper fired. It appears that the sniper believed Michael was on the ground, not in a prominent position on top of a two-storey building where he would regularly rotate with his fellow observers as they scanned the ground around them.Most strikingly, the SIB officers admitted Michael had been observed for more than an hour before a decision was made to call up the sniper. This decision was taken after several warning shots were fired from one of the patrol bases, codenamed BAR, an event that triggered frantic radio messages from Michael and his colleagues in the observation post. But only one of the two patrol bases responded to the messages. They denied firing at Michael and his colleagues.The initial report for the Ministry of Defence, seen by the Observer, includes an account from one of Michael's colleagues who was with him in the observation post: "The soldier states that there were then three shots fired very close to their location, this information was also relayed back, however, the reply back from Patrol Base BAR indicated that their warning shots were nowhere near the observation post location at compound N30."This was followed shortly by single shots which became progressively closer to the sentry position which they were occupying. The section commander then came to their location on the roof and began to position infra-red luminous sticks around their location to indicate their presence. As he was doing this a round passed extremely close to the observation post followed by another, which he heard strike Michael … He heard Michael say that he had been shot and fall to the ground."Michael died shortly after the bullet pierced his side, whipping through the Velcro fastening that tied his body armour together. He was 22.Since Michael's death, several army snipers have been in touch with Helen to express their condolences and also to explain they follow strict guidelines that should prevent such incidents. The standing operation procedures allow a marksman to refuse to shoot if there is an element of doubt. Given that Michael was in full body armour and helmet, was manning an observation post marked by infra-red sticks and had radioed the surrounding allied bases to warn they were firing at him, it is difficult to understand what made the sniper so certain his target was genuine."I see my son on the roof of an observation post doing his job, having been observed for over an hour and then being deliberately targeted by a Brit," Helen says. "When you think about Afghanistan and soldiers getting shot, you think of the fog of war, you think it's a war zone – tough luck – but this wasn't like that."Helen has been led to believe that the sniper has been withdrawn from Afghanistan, but there is a suggestion he is still in the army, at least until the SIB completes its investigations. Its report into what happened is due to be completed this month, but Helen is doubtful as to when it will be published.A coroner has pledged that one day Helen will be able to read a full report into Michael's death and has offered to share all the information he has seen with her. But, as many other grieving families have found, there is a backlog of inquests waiting to be heard. The prospect of criminal proceedings allows the army to insist it cannot comment for fear of jeopardising any potential trial.However, one question Helen believes the army could answer is why Michael was manning the observation post in the first place. He had been seconded to 3 Rifles Battlegroup, the renowned infantry regiment that is often in the thick of the fighting.But Michael was a military policeman whose chief job was supposedly to ensure law and order in post-conflict zones. He had little experience of close-combat operations, having spent six weeks on pre-deployment training in Kenya before being posted to Afghanistan. Out of the 160 members of his Military Police regiment, four of them have died in Afghanistan.Helen has the names of three soldiers from 3 Rifles who were with Michael in the observation post. But none of them has responded to her pleas for more information about how her son died. She says one even told her he had been instructed "not to say anything to anybody about what happened".In her quest to find the truth, Helen has sought the services of John Cooper QC, a barrister who specialises in military cases and who successfully represented the families of the downed Nimrod and Hercules aircrafts. But Helen knows it will be a long time before the truth emerges. Until then she will continue to fight "to honour Michael's memory".Visible from Helen's house a few hundred yards down a sloping street is Ocklynge Cemetery where Michael is buried. In the days after his death, she would visit almost daily, always taking fresh flowers.Helen goes to the cemetery less frequently now, waiting for when the grave has settled and the family can replace the temporary wooden cross marking her son's last resting place. The family had a choice, and opted for a military headstone.Given how they feel they have been treated, it appears an odd decision, but Helen believes it is what Michael would have wanted: "I'm not anti-military. I simply want them to tell me the truth about what happened to my son."AfghanistanMilitaryJamie Dowardguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |
Wikileaks: Iraq war logs claim Iran supplied chemical weapons to Iraq Iran supplied chemical weapons to Iraqi militias for attacks against civilians and US targets, documents released by Wikileaks suggest. telegraph.co.uk |
HMS Astute stuck nuclear submarine finally makes its way home The super-stealth vessel that ran aground off Skye and had to be freed by a tug, is now making its way back to its base at FaslaneThe nuclear-powered submarine that ran aground off Skye on Friday was making its way back to base for further checks yesterday. HMS Astute became stuck during sea trials in a channel off the Scottish mainland. The vessel, the UK's most powerful attack submarine, was eventually freed by a tug. The Ministry of Defence said checks of the sub's rudder, which is thought to have become stuck on a shingle bank, were carried out in deeper water. Astute will now return to base at Faslane on the Clyde for further checks. The MoD, which is launching a separate inquiry into the incident, said the investigation would consider if any crew were negligent and the submarine's skipper, Commander Andy Coles, could find himself in front of a court martial.MilitaryScotlandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |