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Posted by Lizzy Davies

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/french-woman-15-years-babies

Céline Lesage guilty of suffocating four babies and strangling two others after giving birth to them in secret

A mother who killed six of her newborn babies and hid their bodies in bin liners has been sentenced to 15 years in prison by a court in northern France.

Céline Lesage, 38, was found guilty of suffocating four babies and strangling two others after giving birth to them in secret between 2000 and 2007.

Though she admitted to the murders, she told a court in the Normandy town of Coutances she had no explanation for her crimes. "Yes, I am guilty. I am aware that I killed my babies … but it's too hard. I horrify myself so much that I am hiding from myself," she said yesterday morning.

On the first day of the trial Lesage, often in tears during the testimony of her friends and family, said she hoped the hearing would help her "understand and be understood". The prison sentence indicated the jury had decided her acts were committed in cold blood.

"The deeds were clearly premeditated," argued prosecutor Eric Bouillard during the trial. He said that Lesage was "in some way in denial of her guilt".

Defence lawyer Véronique Carré had argued that her client, though guilty, was far from the "cold manipulative being" portrayed by the prosecution. "She is guilty – she has always told you that," she said. "She must be punished, but also treated."

The grim secrets of Lesage's hidden pregnancies came to light in 2007, when her partner, Luc Margueritte, found the decomposing bodies of six babies in the cellar of their home in Valognes, near Cherbourg. One of them was that of his own child, conceived without his knowledge and killed by Lesage after she gave birth standing up in their bathroom.

The other five babies had been born in secret during their mother's previous relationship, which lasted from 1989 until 2006. Pascal Catherine, who told the court he had often suspected but never knew for sure that Lesage was pregnant, is the father of the couple's 14-year-old son.

Lesage, who told the court she had been too scared to tell anyone she was pregnant, said she was afraid that her partners and her parents would react badly to the news. But she insisted the killings had not been premeditated. "The linen, the bin liners and the string were next to me. I reached out my arm," she told the court, seeking to explain her almost automatic reaction to the successive births.

Because of her inability to fully explain to the court her motivations, several psychological experts told the court they feared the chances of her reoffending were high.

Lawyers for Lesage said she would not appeal against the verdict.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/19/edward-downes-assisted-suicide-son

Prosecutor say it would not be in public interest to charge Caractacus Downes over conductor's death at Dignitas

The son of the conductor Sir Edward Downes will not be charged with assisting his suicide, the director of public prosecutions said today.

Keir Starmer said there was sufficient evidence to prosecute Caractacus Downes but it was not in the public interest to do so.

Sir Edward, one of Britain's most respected conductors, died with his wife, Lady Joan Downes, at the Dignitas clinic in Switzerland on 10 July last year.

The Metropolitan police launched an inquiry when officers were contacted by solicitors acting on behalf of Mr Downes to report their deaths. They found evidence that he had booked a hotel room in Switzerland for his parents and accompanied them overseas.

Starmer said these acts would be sufficient to charge him with an offence under the Suicide Act 1961, of assisting suicide. But he said there was further evidence that Downes's parents reached a "voluntary, clear, settled and informed" decision to take their lives.

Starmer said that in helping them, Downes was "wholly motivated by compassion".

He said: "Although his parents' wills show that Mr Downes stood to gain substantial benefit upon the death of his parents, there is no evidence to indicate that he was motivated by this prospect. Other factors against prosecution are that Mr Downes' actions in booking the hotel room can be characterised as of minor assistance and, after reporting the matter to the police, he fully assisted them in their inquiries into the circumstances of his parents' suicide."

Starmer said he took into account new guidelines, which he published in February, making clear that motive should be at the centre of any decision on pressing charges.

Prosecutors were also provided with evidence in relation to Downes's sister, Boudicca Downes, but took no further action against her.

Sir Edward had a long and distinguished career, including conducting the first performance at the Sydney Opera House. He worked with the BBC Philharmonic and the Royal Opera House in London, and was knighted in 1991. His 74-year-old wife, a choreographer and TV producer, had become his full-time carer.

At the time of the couple's death, Caractacus and Boudicca released a statement saying their parents "died peacefully, and under circumstances of their own choosing".

The statement continued: "After 54 happy years together, they decided to end their own lives rather than continue to struggle with serious health problems ... They both lived life to the full and considered themselves to be extremely lucky to have lived such rewarding lives, both professionally and personally."

This is the first case in which the public interest factors outlined in the new guidelines have been applied. They state that anyone acting with compassion to help end the life of someone who has decided they cannot go on is unlikely to face criminal charges.

The document was published after law lords ruled in favour of Debbie Purdy, who has multiple sclerosis. She wanted to know whether her husband would be prosecuted for helping her to end her life.

Assisted suicide remains a criminal offence in England and Wales, punishable by up to 14 years in prison. But prosecutors have not pushed forward cases against families and friends of the growing numbers of Britons who have travelled to Dignitas to die.

Some people fear that relaxing the law on assisted suicide would lead to an increase in cases, and put people at risk of being pushed into taking their own lives.

Posted by Anna Bawden

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/19/birmingham-sacks-six-social-workers

Birmingham City council, criticised for the death from starvation of Khyra Ishaq, has fired six social workers for showing 'no sign whatsoever' of meeting standards

Six social workers at Birmingham City council, which was criticised over the death of Khyra Ishaq from starvation, have been sacked. Colin Tucker, the council's director of children's services, said they were not doing their jobs properly.

Khyra died in May 2008 from starvation. Her mother and stepfather were jailed last week for her manslaughter.

The dismissals were not directly linked to Khyra's case, but they follow other child deaths in Birmingham in recent years. Tucker said the sacked social workers showed "no sign whatsoever" of meeting expected standards.

In an interview with the BBC, he said: "We are not appointing some staff. As well as that, we have dismissed six staff in the last year.

"They did not adhere to standards and expectations that we laid down. They showed no sign whatsoever that they were keen to do so, so we dismissed them."

All six sacked staff were frontline social workers, not managers. Tucker told Radio 4's Today programme that while no managers had been dismissed, senior staff were having to undergo rigorous training and assessment. "They were frontline workers, they weren't senior managerial staff," he said. "Since I've been there, we've introduced a whole new set of standards. That includes managers going through an intensive programme of assessment.

"We're remodelling in the autumn. That remodelling will have fewer managers in place, less duplication, more responsibility."

Tucker also revealed the extent of the council's reliance on agency staff. He said there were about 120 vacant posts that had been filled with agency workers, but that he intended to cut this to 40-50 as the department recruits more permanent workers and continues with new training and managing staff roles.

The shake-up comes after eight children known to children's services have died in Birmingham in three years. An official report last year condemned the council's child protection arrangements as "not fit for purpose". It found a shortage of experienced staff, inadequate monitoring, excessive paperwork and too little time with children and families.

Tucker said three serious case reviews were under way.

Asked about the death of Khyra, he said: "In the profession, in the city, we are so upset about that it is untrue. Staff don't come into social work to harm children or to miss signs of when they're being abused or mistreated.

"Believe me, their motivation is to safeguard children. This has cast, and rightly so, a real shadow over this department for two years. But we can't turn the clock back."

Tucker said Sharon Shoesmith, the former children services chief who was sacked over the death of Baby P in Haringey, had been "relentlessly vilified", which was "not acceptable". He added: "I think we do have to encourage communities to trust us more, and that's very difficult in a climate where I feel with my staff often that we're damned if we intervene and we're damned if we don't."

Commenting on the dismissals, Harry Ferguson, professor of social work at Nottingham University, said:

"It is always sad to hear about social workers' careers ending like this. Child-protection work with families where parents are resistant to intervention and use hostility and other forms of manipulation to prevent workers from gaining proper access to the child are incredibly difficult to deal with.

"We haven't done nearly enough to prepare newly qualified social workers well to do this kind of authoritative work or to promote their skill development and emotional resilience while doing it. Having exacting standards that social workers must meet if children are to be protected is appropriate, and these are best met through a combination of individuals' skills, knowledge, courage and, crucially, employers providing the necessary kinds of organisational cultures and supports."

Hilton Dawson, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, called for a "strong, independent college of social work" to improve professional standards. "There's undoubtedly an issue about the quality of entrants to the profession, about the standard of training, about the standard of practice education and certainly about the quality of some individuals within the cadre of social work professionals."

"I don't think social work is for everybody, and I think it's important for the public to realise that this is a highly skilled, very important, job."

Posted by Barney Ronay

http://www.guardian.co.uk/football/2010/mar/19/champions-league-draw-live

Press F5 for the latest or use the auto-update button below, then send barney.ronay@guardian.co.uk your thoughts on the draw

I will be back in 20 minutes for the Europa draw. Keep it locked as they used to say on Sunrise FM.

11.34am Wim Vanhaelewijck has been looking in his tea cup: "Barça go through. Arshavin and Cesc will sign their contracts in Txiki's office after the return game." Txiki, very Txiki.

11.32am David Miles, Arsenal secretary, says "the draw gives us what it gives us". And "We will be up for both games" and then "we do expect two great games". Gah! Five great games surely. Come on, get with it man.

11.28am Oli Morran smells somehting fishy: "Typical UEFA keeping Bordeaux and CSKA apart until the final! They'll have the showpiece final they wanted. It's a money-spinning fix…" None other than Sid Lowe has a well-placed riposte: "Easy draw for Barcelona? To win the Champions League they will probably have to beat Arsenal, Inter and Man Utd."

11.27am I'm going with United v Lyon and Inter v Barca in the semis. And Inter v United in the final. But what do I know? A man who looks alarmingly like a clean-shaven Borat has just said "Obviously is good for Russian club to be in this stage." No high five yet.

11.25am Patrick Crumlish points out: "Lovely as it to see teams from six countries in the draw (and Michael Jordan should know Real haven't reached this stage in, what, seven years?), I'll be amazed if Barca or ManUSA don't win the competition." Don't under rate Bayern. They have a nice look about them. Damien Wims sighs: "Looks like the path is clear for Arselona in the final." And I thiank I know what he's talking about. And Joseph Matthews weeps: "oh dear I put my £10 on Asenal moments before the draw, not looking too clever now..."

11.22 Cathal Nagal spots an easy passage for the champions: "Perfect draw for Barca!!! At home second at both stages. Too strong for Arsenal and CSKA and easily beat Inter last time out." I still don't think they will win it this year. No one has ever retained the Champions League. It's really hard.

11.20 Well, what a lineup that is:
Lyon v Bordeaux
Bayern Munich v Manchester United
Arsenal v Barcelona
Inter v CSKA Moscow
No easy games for the two English clubs. Is it physically possible for Arsenal to beat Barcelona, given that they sort of are them, only not quite as good? And Bayern are in really good form. Really great ties those.

And, er, the draw for the final. Eh? The winner of semi-final one will be the home team. Against the winner of semi-final two believe it or not. And there's your draw.

11.17am Inter or CSKA Moscow v Arsenal or Barcelona

11.17am Bayern or Manchester United v Bordeaux or Lyon

11.16 Now the semi draw. This is all very exciting.

11.15am Internazionale v CSKA Moscow

11.15am Arsenal v Barcelona

11.15am Bayern Munich v Manchester United

11.15am Bayern Munich at home.

11.14am Lyon v Bordeaux

11.13am HERE WE GO!! Lyon are first out.

11.10am Butragueno the hammer of Denmark has just come on to the stage. He looks very fit and ferret-like. "Is a great pleaasure to be here," he says. He's representing Real, hosts for the final. Andrew Fyffe - and he is the last OK? - says: "I'd also like to see an Arsenal vs Bordeaux tie, it would certainly chamakh for a really interesting match up." A reminder also from Infantino that this is an open draw all round.

11.06am I wonder if Nyon is like a seaside town, all shut down conferencing facilities and sad, wind-blown executive hotels when the draw isn't going on. Michael Jordan is longing for the old certainties: "I have to disagree with you Barney. Today's draw without the likes of Liverpool, Chelsea and Real Madrid makes it all the poorer. CSKA and Lyon hardly get the juices flowing do they?" Sorry, that's just wrong. the best teams are here. Who wants to see a sub-standard Madrid? We have, mercifully, still some kind of meritocracy going on here.

11.04am this just in: Bayern beat Valencia in the final on penalties in 2001. Just goes to show you should never take anything for granted in footballer. Never. Tim Jones urges: "I'd like to see a Marouane Chamakh derby between Arsenal and Bordeaux." If only there was more 'n one Chamakh they could both have their own.

11.02am Gianni Infantino is kicking things off. "Hello and welcome to the draw. The heart is beating!" he says, proving that he's not a zombie. "Welcome to the house of football - Nyon!" he then argues. He seems to be in a lecture hall. Lots of football people, including Luis Figo, are sitting on benches listening looking bored and, no doubt, secretly texting each other.

11.00am Lorcan Walsh muses: "Maybe at last the UEFA Cup is regaining some of its lustre as the Europa League – so we actually have 2 intriguing draws to look forward to… Personally I don't think Inter are that good so shouldn't be feared. I think Bayern could be the dark horse." Yes, don't forget, the Europa is also coming up with plucky Fulham and plucky Liverpool both in the Euro hat.

10.30 am Hello and welcome to coverage of an unusually interesting Champions League quarter final draw. These things are of course relative. But this year's last eight do have a very faint air of lemony, fresh, newly-valeted.... No?

Perhaps not entirely. But neither Bordeaux nor CSKA Moscow have ever been past this stage, Inter are unfamiliar visitors in the league-era format, and only Barcelona and Manchester United have won the modern competition.

So it is a bit more mixed and perhaps there is a lot to be said for a climate of creeping fiscal austerity. As the man in the DVD shop said to me recently: "It makes life more interesting when things fall apart". This may have been a lyric by a post-punk New York band. He's very pop culture-nuanced.

Here are the ties I'd like to see drawn out of the Uefa version of a silken bag:
Bayern v Inter. Uefa co-efficent play-off.
Arsenal v Barcelona. I am more dinky than you derby.
CSKA v Lyon. shades of something Tolstoy-ish.
Inter v An Englist team, but save this one for the final becuase you've got to love the drama of it and football doesn't have that many interesting story lines left. Also Inter played with such passion at Stamford Bridge.

Anyway. Those are just my opinions. What do you think?

Join Barney Ronay shortly before 11am for the latest ball-by-ball action from the Champions League quarter-final draw. In the meantime, read Paul Wilson on why this draw is the most diverse since 1999:

"A certain amount of smug satisfaction will attend tomorrow's draw for the quarter-finals and semi-finals of the Champions League in Switzerland, even more than would normally be associated with a formal Uefa event. For the first time in over a decade, and despite years of dire warnings and suspicions that the competition was being corrupted to suit the leading nations, the Champions League bears more than a passing resemblance to the old European Cup.

Six different nations are represented among the eight teams involved in the draw, the highest total since 1999, when the rules had only just been changed to allow runners-up from selected countries to take part and Manchester United managed to win the trophy as part of their treble success after finishing second to Arsenal in the Premier League the previous season.

Before the 1997-98 season there would only be one team per country in the Champions League, as there had been in the original European Cup, which was for the champions of each European league plus the previous year's winners. That automatically guaranteed that most years eight different countries would be represented in the quarter-finals, although once the present system was adopted, with England and other top leagues sending four teams into the tournament each year, the later stages inevitably became less representative of Europe as a whole ..."

Read the full blog here

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/19/david-headley-mumbai-bombing-trial

David Coleman Headley avoids death sentence with guilty plea in US court and pledge to co-operate with police

An American man has admitted helping plan the 2008 terror attack in Mumbai that killed 166 people and plotting a strike on a Danish newspaper because of cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

David Coleman Headley, 49, pleaded guilty in a US court yesterday to all 12 counts he faced. Under a deal with prosecutors Headley will not face execution if he continues to co-operate with their terrorism investigation. He could face up to life in prison and a $3m fine when he is sentenced. A date has not been set.

His attorney, Robert Seeder, said after the hearing that Headley's decision to talk was "a manifestation and example of his regret and remorse" and was not based solely on the fact he would avoid a possible death sentence.

"He has provided significant help to the United States and aided other countries," said Seeder. He declined to specify what help Headley had provided.

In his plea agreement Headley admitted he made surveillance videos and conducted other intelligence gathering for the November 2008 attack on Mumbai. Nine of the 10 gunmen were killed in the three-day siege. The US and India say the gunmen were trained and directed by the Pakistani-based terrorist group Lashkar e-Taiba ("Army of the Pure").

Headley said he met a Pakistan-based terrorist leader, Ilyas Kashmiri, in a tribal area of western Pakistan in May 2009 and that Kashmiri told him he had a European contact who could provide Headley with money, weapons and manpower for an attack on Denmark's Jyllands Posten newspaper. That attack never happened.

He said men he knew as "elders" whom he understood to be leaders of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaida terrorist network urged swift action in attacking the newspaper, which offended many Muslims in 2005 by publishing a dozen cartoons depicting the Prophet Muhammad.

He said Kashmiri wanted newspaper staff beheaded and the heads thrown from the building to send a message to the Danish authorities. Kashmiri wanted a suicide attack and said the attackers should prepare martyrdom videos.

According to the indictment, Kashmiri has been in regular communication with al-Qaida's third in command, Sheikh Mustafa Abu al-Yazid.

Attorney general Eric Holder said in a statement from Washington: "Not only has the criminal justice system achieved a guilty plea in this case, but David Headley is now providing us valuable intelligence about terrorist activities.

"As this case demonstrates, we must continue to use every tool available to defeat terrorism both at home and abroad."

Headley could have been sentenced to death if convicted of the most serious charges – conspiracy to bomb public places in India and six counts of murdering US nationals in India – but Seeder said the death sentence was "off the table" if Headley continued to co-operate.

That could include testifying against his co-defendant, Tahawwur Hussain Rana, if he goes to trial. Rana, a 49-year-old Canadian who also lived in Chicago, has pleaded not guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to terrorism in Denmark and India, as well as to Lashkar-e-Taiba.

Retired Pakistani military man Abdur Rehman Hashim Syed and Kashmiri are also accused in the newspaper plot against the Danish newspaper. Their exact whereabouts are unknown.

Posted by Julia Kollewe

http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2010/mar/19/lloyds-banking-group-predicts-return-profit

Shares in the bank, which is 41% owned by the taxpayer, rose this morning as it told the stock market it has incurred fewer bad debts than feared so far this year

Lloyds Banking Group cheered its long-suffering shareholders this morning by predicting a return to profit this year, after incurring fewer bad debts than feared in recent weeks.

The bank, which is 41% owned by the taxpayer following its takeover of HBOS two years ago, told the City that trading had been "strong" in the first 10 weeks of the year. It is keeping a tight lid on costs, which are lower than in the same period in 2009. The bank's net interest margin is still in line with recent guidance and this has supported "a good level of income growth".

"Impairment provisions are currently trending at lower levels than anticipated and as a result the group now expects to deliver a better impairment performance than previously guided, in both the retail and corporate businesses, in 2010," Lloyds said in an unscheduled trading statement.

"Overall … the group believes that it will be profitable on a combined businesses basis in 2010."

The upbeat statement boosted shares in Britain's banks, and sent Lloyds shares up 8% to 60p in early trading. Royal Bank of Scotland gained nearly 6% to 44.45p, and Barclays rose almost 2% to 359.6p.

"We did this impromptu update because there is a material improvement in the performance," said a Lloyds spokesman. "We felt in the ten weeks of trading since Christmas the trends are better than we expected. These are the first signs of an encouraging performance in the year ahead."

But he added that the improvement is "not really a reflection of general market conditions" but specific to Lloyds' customers.

A big increase in bad debts drove Lloyds to a £6.3bn loss last year. Impairments ballooned to £24bn from £14.9bn largely because the loans that HBOS granted to commercial property ventures in the run-up to the financial crisis went sour. Eric Daniels, the Lloyds chief executive, said three weeks ago that bad debts had peaked.

Today's comments will calm fears about UK banks after Standard & Poor's warned yesterday that lenders remain vulnerable to a deterioration in loan quality and money markets. The rating agency said there is "limited scope" for banks to increase profits over the next two years. "Into 2010, we consider that UK banks will remain pressured by elevated loan impairments. Our expectation of a slow economic recovery may prolong the period in which losses are elevated relative to historic averages," S&P said in a report.

Analysts at Redburn Partners noted that the commercial property market ended 2009 on a high with an 8% rise in capital values in the fourth quarter, underpinned by the highest level of investment activity since autumn 2007. "This has materially positive ramifications for Lloyds' most troubled loan book."

Lloyds will update on trading again on 27 April. Today's comments are part of a presentation which Daniels will give to investors at the Morgan Stanley European financials conference on Wednesday.

"In general banks have been very bullish in client meetings post their results. Given that interest rates are at a 350-year low, it is not surprising that credit quality is improving," said Bruce Packard at Seymour Pierce. "But UK households are around three times more indebted than during the early 1990s recession, and consensus forecasts for growth look far too optimistic compared to how the banks grew income coming out of the last recession."

Today's news comes as a former Lloyds employee accused the bank of artificially inflating its profits by almost £1bn through the use of aggressive tax-avoidance schemes and exotic "Lehman-style" offshore deals.

Posted by Greg Wood

http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2010/mar/18/tony-mccoy-cheltenham

• Champion jockey wins Ryanair Chase after two spills
• Critics say McCoy too old for Gold Cup second favourite

Tony McCoy has rarely looked more like the battered veteran than he did at 4.05pm this afternoon. He limped from the track after a fall in the fifth race at Cheltenham, his second spill of the day, with stitches in his chin thanks to a kick in the head after the first. But in between there was a victory in the Ryanair Chase, one of the feature events at the Festival, and for as long as those keep coming, all the punishment will seem worthwhile.

Success on Denman in the Gold Cup this afternoon would be a balm to ease every ache and twinge in the 35-year-old's body. He has won the race just once before, in 1997, and may never get a better chance to win another. It would also erase the memory of his first ride on Denman, at Newbury last month, when McCoy was unseated after a horrible blunder three fences from home.

"Gone, history, pfffft," was McCoy's answer when asked to reflect on that race. But for some punters, it raised doubts about the champion jockey, whether he is the right man for Denman and whether his famous strength is beginning to flag. If thoughts like that ever worm their way into McCoy's mind, his remarkable career will be as good as over.

Tom Segal, arguably the most respected tipster in the business thanks to his Pricewise column in the Racing Post, has been the most prominent sceptic in recent months, though his concerns are not specific to Denman.

"I don't think that McCoy riding him is by any means a negative, but if I was going to choose a jockey to ride any chaser I owned, he wouldn't be in my top five," Segal said.

"Other jockeys win big races over fences and in general he doesn't. His win in the Ryanair was his first in a Grade One chase since 2008.

"He now leans back at his fences, all the weight is on the back and withers of the horse, whereas if you look at a jockey like Barry Geraghty, all the weight is at the front and that makes it easier to get a horse into a rhythm.

"It's really not surprising. He's nearly 36, he's been around for ages and taken loads of falls. I'd be the same. The longer you go on, the more you're slightly sceptical about getting a bad fall, and that's why you lean back. It's just what happens to jump jockeys."

Like his jockey, Denman's bravery is beyond doubt and he is not a difficult ride. "He's straightforward," Ruby Walsh, who will ride Kauto Star, Denman's great rival, says. "Either he's in form or he's not in form. There's a lot of waffle about the fall [at Aintree in April 2009] and the unseated [at Newbury].

"You don't have to hold him up, you don't have to delay your challenge on him. You line him up, put him in the van and up the ante on him."

Jonjo O'Neill, one of McCoy's regular employers and a Gold Cup winner himself, described him as "the magic man" after Albertas Run won the Ryanair, and it was certainly an example of McCoy at his best, as he seized the initiative coming down the hill and bent the race to his will.

"Racing is made up of opinions," Ted Walsh, the Channel 4 pundit – and father of Ruby – said. "Obviously some jockeys suit some horses better than others. I remember Jonjo O'Neill won two races here on Dawn Run, but I was always of the opinion that she ran quicker and faster for Tony Mullins, who wasn't a patch on Jonjo as a jockey.

"But I don't think this is one of those situations. Denman is straightforward, and Tony McCoy is one of the finest jockeys and horsemen that you could ever put across a horse."

McCoy may think of Newbury as history, but he will have been planning how he might correct the record ever since.

"The Gold Cup should be a great race, and it will be a better race if Denman beats Kauto Star," he said. "I think every racing enthusiast should be looking forward to it.

"When I was on the ground [after falling in the first] the pain threshold was testing me to the limit, and I got a good kick in the back of the head so I'm pretty sore. But I could get up, and if you can get on a horse and you can push it and do it justice, you should ride it, shouldn't you?"

Posted by Anna Bawden

http://www.guardian.co.uk/society/2010/mar/19/birmingham-council-sacks-social-workers

Six staff dismissed for not meeting standards at council which was criticised over death from starvation of Khyra Ishaq

Six social workers at Birmingham City council, which was criticised over the death of Khyra Ishaq from starvation, have been sacked.

Colin Tucker, the council's director of children's services, said they were not doing their jobs properly.

Khyra died in May 2008 from starvation. Her mother and stepfather were jailed last week for her manslaughter.

The dismissals were not directly linked to Khyra's case, but they follow other child deaths in Birmingham in recent years. Tucker said the sacked social workers showed "no sign whatsoever" of meeting expected standards.

In an interview with the BBC, he said: "We are not appointing some staff. As well as that, we have dismissed six staff in the last year.

"They did not adhere to standards and expectations that we laid down. They showed no sign whatsoever that they were keen to do so, so we dismissed them."

All six sacked staff were frontline social workers, not managers. Tucker told Radio 4's Today programme that while no managers had been dismissed, senior staff were having to undergo rigorous training and assessment. "They were frontline workers, they weren't senior managerial staff," he said. "Since I've been there, we've introduced a whole new set of standards. That includes managers going through an intensive programme of assessment.

"We're remodelling in the autumn. That remodelling will have fewer managers in place, less duplication, more responsibility."

Tucker also revealed the extent of the council's reliance on agency staff. He said there were about 120 vacant posts that had been filled with agency workers, but that he intended to cut this to 40-50 as the department recruits more permanent workers and continues with new training and managing staff roles.

The shake-up comes after eight children known to children's services have died in Birmingham in three years. An official report last year condemned the council's child protection arrangements as "not fit for purpose". It found a shortage of experienced staff, inadequate monitoring, excessive paperwork and too little time with children and families.

Tucker said three serious case reviews were under way.

Asked about the death of Khyra, he said: "In the profession, in the city, we are so upset about that it is untrue. Staff don't come into social work to harm children or to miss signs of when they're being abused or mistreated.

"Believe me, their motivation is to safeguard children. This has cast, and rightly so, a real shadow over this department for two years. But we can't turn the clock back."

Tucker said Sharon Shoesmith, the former children's services chief who was sacked over the death of Baby P in Haringey, had been "relentlessly vilified", which was "not acceptable". He added: "I think we do have to encourage communities to trust us more, and that's very difficult in a climate where I feel with my staff often that we're damned if we intervene and we're damned if we don't."

Commenting on the dismissals, Harry Ferguson, professor of social work at Nottingham University, said: "It is always sad to hear about social workers' careers ending like this. Child-protection work with families where parents are resistant to intervention and use hostility and other forms of manipulation to prevent workers from gaining proper access to the child are incredibly difficult to deal with.

"We haven't done nearly enough to prepare newly qualified social workers well to do this kind of authoritative work or to promote their skill development and emotional resilience while doing it. Having exacting standards that social workers must meet if children are to be protected is appropriate, and these are best met through a combination of individuals' skills, knowledge, courage and, crucially, employers providing the necessary kinds of organisational cultures and supports."

Hilton Dawson, chief executive of the British Association of Social Workers, called for a "strong, independent college of social work" to improve professional standards. "There's undoubtedly an issue about the quality of entrants to the profession, about the standard of training, about the standard of practice education and certainly about the quality of some individuals within the cadre of social work professionals.

"I don't think social work is for everybody, and I think it's important for the public to realise that this is a highly skilled, very important, job."

Posted by Rachel Williams

http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2010/mar/19/student-loans-grants-fiasco-slc

With twice as many applications forecast this year, auditors fear more unanswered calls and unpaid loans

England's student loans and grants system is at "substantial" risk of being hit by delays again this year, a damning report on last summer's fiasco warned today.

The government said it was sending auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) to check the Student Loan Company (SLC) was ready to process applications and answer customer enquiries this year, when it is likely to have to process twice as many applications for loans, grants and allowances.

The National Audit Office said there was no proof the company could deal with the extra demand, and blamed the SLC and the government for failing to grasp the scale of last year's problems with the newly centralised system when applications piled up and applicants struggled to make contact on the phone.

Tens of thousands of students faced delays to their grants and loans payments in the autumn, after the SLC took over processing applications by new students from local authorities. The audit office's report found that only 46% were fully processed by the start of the term, compared to 63% in 2008. As the crucial date approached, calls from students soared, with 4m made in September.

Despite having a target of no more than 14% of calls left unanswered, some 87% went unanswered that month. Between February 2009 and this January, only a fifth of calls were answered in 60 seconds, with 56% left unanswered.

An audit office survey of 1,000 first-year students found that half were asked to resend the same documents; half waited more than three weeks for a proper reply to a written question; and a third had to ring more than five times before making contact. Around one in six were told their documents had been lost.

On average, it took more than 12 weeks for an application to be processed in 2009/10, compared to more than nine weeks in 2008/09, when local authorities were in charge.

Amyas Morse, head of the audit office, said: "The question must be asked how the company, given its failure in 2009, will deal with twice as many applications in 2010, when it becomes responsible for applications from both first- and second-year students.

"The department and the company must give the highest priority to achieving a radical improvement in the service and, in so doing, to restoring the confidence of applicants and stakeholders. They will have to manage substantial risks."

The Department for Business, Innovation and Skills came under fire for failing to monitor the SLC. The report said "weaknesses" identified in 2006 should have served as a warning to "such a challenging programme".

The higher education minister David Lammy said: "It is clear that the service offered by the Student Loans Company last summer fell well short of expectations.

"It is important that we can be confident students and their families receive the service they deserve from the SLC throughout the rest of this year. This is why I have commissioned PwC to carry out this health check."

He announced that an additional £16m would be given to the SLC, partly to fund extra resources for application processing and call handling at peak times.

Two top SLC officials, ICT director, Wallace Gray, and the marketing and customer services director, Martin Herbert, quit in December. The resignations came after a government-commissioned review, by Professor Deian Hopkin, concluded a "conspicuous failure in key areas" which had had a far-reaching impact on students.

The SLC chief executive, Ralph Seymour-Jackson, said: "We deeply regret the problems that students experienced last year. This was the first year of a three-year process to centralise student finance in England and I would like to reassure students and parents that lessons have been learned."

The SLC said the service was currently running smoothly and backlogs were cleared some time ago.

The report concluded: "The company expects to process at least twice as many applications in 2010, when it becomes responsible for applications from both first and second years, and it is unproven whether it has the capacity to provide a good service this year."

It added: "Avoiding a recurrence of the 2009 problems is of the highest priority for 2010, but substantial risks remain to successful delivery of the service."

Posted by Catherine Shoard

http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2010/mar/18/peter-greenaway-nightwatching

Peter Greenaway makes one thing very clear to Catherine Shoard: there is nothing more to life but sex and death

^'I don't know much about you," says Peter Greenaway, sipping his mint tea, "but I do know two things. You were conceived, two people did fuck, and I'm very sorry but you're going to die. Everything else about you is negotiable."

Negligible, too. For Greenaway, there's sex and there's death and "what else is there to talk about?" He believes, he continues, as relaxed as if predicting rain tomorrow, "that all religion is about death and art's about life. Religion is there to say: hey, you don't have to worry – there's an afterlife. Culture represents the opposite of that – sex. A very stupid Freudian way of looking at it, but one is positive and one is negative. Especially against people like you. All religions have always hated females."

Steam billows up from the cup into his face. He looks half David Attenborough, breath fogging the lens as he explores the Arctic (he has the same energy, the same gleaming curiosity), half Chris Tarrant, emerging from a cloud of dry ice.

We're in a cafe on a grand, damp square in Amsterdam, 'Lady in Red' on a loop, sausages on the menu. Greenaway, 67, lives nearby with a theatre director called Saskia and their two young children – he also has couple of grown-up daughters from a previous, London marriage to Carol, a potter. Looming opposite is the Rijksmuseum, of which Greenaway has just given me a first-class tour, embracing the role with relish: rolling his r's, spitting his t's, hammering great deep cleaves between each syllable. Tourists stop and goggle, not necessarily at the Vermeers.

We wound up at The Night Watch, Rembrandt's musket-heavy canvas and the subject of Greenaway's latest film, Nightwatching. It's a sort of Renaissance-era CSI (a show he admires; he's also a Midsummer Murders fan) investigating the puzzles in the painting itself and the mystery of the artist's sudden fall into virtual penury. Martin Freeman plays Rembrandt: oddly plausible and often nude.

In fact Nightwatching is rather more conventional than much of his back catalogue. It's an easily digestible examination of – yep, sex and death – and Greenaway's other key concerns: painting, snobbery, conspiracy. It's the latest in an ongoing project to unpick nine art masterpieces through movies and attendant installations. He's already knocked off The Last Supper and The Marriage at Cana ("Which I think is the wedding of Christ"). The motherlode is Michelangelo's Last Judgment. Talks, he says, are underway with the Vatican.

The Night Watch, he reckons, is the first work of real cinema, on account of Rembrandt's manipulation of artificial light. Though were Rembrandt around today, "he would have been shooting on holograms. He would be post-post-James Cameron." He shakes his head. "All really worthwhile artists, creators, use the technology of their time and anybody who doesn't becomes immediately a fossil."

In Greenaway's case, that means moving towards "feature film as essay. Like Montaigne. It's much more discursive. It doesn't hang on to a psychological narrative and it's not impressionistic. I don't want to take you anywhere. It's not a piece of escapism."

At 67, Greenaway is no longer interested in cinema per se – it's a half-dead medium wasted by taking its cues from books, "telling bedtime stories for adults. Harry Potter and Lord of the Rings are illustrated books. Not cinema. I want to be a prime creator. As every self-regarding artist should do."

He believes cinema needs to figure out a way to get out of the dark ("Man's not nocturnal"), get rid of the frame, and the camera, too. "We have a cinema of what we see, not what we think." Until that happens, though, he's still making films. And still, apparently, enthused by their possibilities. He talks as much about two other films he has in the pipeline as he does Nightwatching: one about Eisenstein losing his virginity in Mexico, another – "my first, real, dyed-in-the-wool pornography" – about a 17th century Dutch engraver. He fishes a postcard from his blazer pocket. It's another Rijksmuseum highlight, this time by Hendrik Goltzius. "Here you can see Lot and his two daughters; this is a few minutes before they fuck him in order to produce a continuation of the human race."

Why does he do so much?

"Maybe it's a hunger. A horror of the empty space. Without wishing even remotely to impress you, I'm involved in 26 projects at the moment all over the world. It's a glorious opportunity to practice being an artist."

Greenaway is an incurable self-promoter, forever ready with a barrage of stats about how many people he VJ'd in front of in Gdansk, or have seen The Cook, the Thief, his Wife and her Lover. There will always be, he says, "people who travel thousands of miles to see a Greenaway film. And I'm still painting – I've got a big exhibit coming up in Milan soon. And that's even more private."

Yet it is on show to the public? "Yes. Well, do you think a person who keeps a diary keeps it for himself? Anybody who writes a diary insists it must be read by someone else. So if I'm making very private films I want people to see them; of course I do."

There's a soreness beneath the swagger. In England, at least, Greenaway must be his own cheerleader. He's come under attack from his peers; even some of his defenders qualify their praise. He's also had a rough write-up in a lot of interviews. He suggests various explanations: because he's a jack of all trades, not a specialist. Because he's not Oxbridge. Because the English are "textually minded … and so those who practise the image are regarded as not kosher." He cites an ally in undervaluation: RB Kitaj, another artist of ideas. "He had a big exhibit in Tate 10 years ago and he was absolutely excoriated by people like you because he did your job so much better than you can. He understood it so much more than you did."

He's happy in Holland. He likes the lack of snobbery, the openness, the freedom. "For a long time now they've been able to talk about homosexuality, abortion and euthanasia at the breakfast table. Elsewhere people turn away in embarrassment or run for the hills." He is, he says, planning to take advantage of the freedom afforded and kill himself when he's 80. "My youngest daughter will be 21 so I can see her to full adulthood. Why would it be sad? I've got 14 years left. They say the most valuable thing about death is that you never know when it's going to happen. But I think this a curse. I think if we knew we'd make much better use of life. I've had a fantastic life and I'm still enjoying it and am an extremely happy man, but there has to be a trade-off somewhere. I'm a Darwinian. All I can think is that we're here to fuck, to procreate. And we're incredibly focused towards it. All our literature and television is pushing us towards it. But I passed on my genes a long time ago, so I have to justify my place in the human race some other way."

You may have to cook up a purpose in life for yourself "since we've thrown away God and Satan and Freud"), but he's evangelical about the necessity of doing so. "I'm not here to play tiddlywinks and I don't think you are either."

He's off soon after, striding across the square in his thick pinstripes, booming into his mobile, bursting to crack on with those 26 projects while he's still got the time.

Nightwatching is released on 26 March
Peter Greenaway will be taking part in a Q&A for Nightwatching at the ICA on 28 March