Doctor At Centre Of MMR Controversy 'Failed In His Duties', GMC Rules | UK News | Sky News

Dr Andrew Wakefield went against the interests of children in his care, the GMC's Fitness to Practice panel found.

He also acted dishonestly and was misleading and irresponsible in the way he described research later published in The Lancet medical journal, the panel of experts ruled at a hearing in London.

The doctor has argued that he had been acting in the children's best interests.

His research on 12 children with bowel disorders and autism was published in The Lancet in 1998.

Although it didn't make a proven link with the MMR vaccine, Dr Wakefield subsequently warned parents to have single jabs against measles, mumps and rubella. The claim has been widely discredited.

Dr Wakefield did not attend the hearing today, which has sat for 148 days over a two-and-a-half-year period.

Parents who believe their children were damaged by the MMR jab heckled the GMC panel as its members delivered their findings.

Tomorrows newspapers will be interesting, for example how the Papers who have whipped up a frenzy about the supposed link between the MMR vaccine and Autism report this.

After the several arrests for photographing public buildings that have taken place under section 44 of the UK's terrorism act, what does Labour do as part of its campaign?

Change We See - The Labour Party

Since 1997, we've changed this country - rebuilding the lives of children, older people and families. Make no mistake this could not have happened without supporters like you.

Now we face an opposition who wants to deny our successes and cut the public services we rescued. We must stand together and show how proud we are of these historic achievements.

That's right appeal for people to send in before and after photos of public buildings to show how things have improved under Labour.

I think my Irony meter has exploded.

This week we get Alan Johnson, the latest in a long emergence of the hang 'em and flog 'em gene in the Labour party (I think they've been infected by close association with Chief constables) announcing an increase in the terror level. Now this isn't that unusual, but this one came with the announcement that there was

BBC - UK terrorist threat level raised to 'severe'

no intelligence to suggest a terrorist attack was imminent.

So if theres no evidence that there is any liklyhood that things are worse, then what did the home secretary wish to use precious minutes to divert attention from on the TV news?

Iraq Inquiry Blog - Iraq Inquiry: Blair evidence ticket draw

News just in: the Inquiry team has revealed details of the lottery (to be fair they use the somewhat drier term ballot) for armed forces relatives and members of the public to apply to attend Tony Blair's evidence session.

We're still not being told exactly when that will be, but there is now an official two-week window starting from 25 January so that successful applicants can begin to make travel plans. We're also told his session will last for one full day of two three-hour sessions. Tickets will be issued for people to attend either the morning or the afternoon hearing in order to get as many of them in at some point as possible.

Iraq Inquiry Blog - Iraq Inquiry: Blair evidence ticket draw

PS I'm not sure what notice if any the Inquiry is likely to take of it but this website's rather interesting, soliciting `tough' questions that Blair can be asked on the day.

This weeks walk took me to the North West corner of the county where I live and to one of the marvels of the Victorian age, the Welland Viaduct. Unfortunately I hadn't chosen the best day to visit. Morning weather consisted of thin fog, so distant views from the overhanging valleys were almost pure Grey. The first real sighting was as I dropped down into the valley from the Western End the view down the approaching road consists of less than a third of the complete structure, and yet still seems enormously imposing against the landscape.

promoted by nanne

As many of you either know or have guessed, the editorial team have been a bit busy lately fighting off an attack of spammers.

On Friday, 3 July, afew, Sassafras and I noticed a couple of new accounts that seemed a little dubious.  On further examination we discovered that the individual user accounts, recently created, contained links to sites selling a variety of services.  Realising that it wasn't just an isolated case, we started looking at all of the new user accounts.

It appeared that, starting on 1 July, we had suddenly started generating new accounts, about 200 by the time we discovered it.  As an initial step, several of us acted to shut down these accounts.  This was not an easy process, you had to check the accounts, see if they looked like a real account, record any spam information for later reference (so if someone came back and asked why their account had been shut down, we could tell them ), keep track of any potentially real accounts that have been created during this period, disable the spammer accounts entirely so that bio pages can't be edited either.  (Migeru, DoDo and Sassafras had a lot of trouble figuring out how to do the last one, and were excellent in hanging together the fine points of what we were doing in cleaning out these accounts.)

Occasionally on here UK posters refer to the Poll Tax, and it has come to our attention that some of you will not be aware of this divisive exercise in British political history.  A quick view on Wikipedia shows this:

The Community Charge was a poll tax to fund local government in the United Kingdom, instituted in 1989 by the government of Margaret Thatcher. It replaced the rates that were based on the notional rental value of a house. The abolition of rates was in the manifesto of Thatcher's Conservative Party in the 1979 general election, and the replacement was proposed in the Green Paper of 1986, Paying for Local Government based on ideas developed by Dr Madsen Pirie and Douglas Mason of the Adam Smith Institute. It was a fixed tax per adult resident, but there was a reduction for those with lower household income. Each person was to pay for the services provided in their community. This proposal was contained in the Conservative Manifesto for the 1987 General Election. The new tax replaced the rates in Scotland from the start of the 1989/90 financial year, and in England and Wales from the start of the 1990/91 financial year.

There were two central reasons for introducing this change in the tax system: firstly as the old rates system was based on the rentable value of the property, those who would be the conservatives' natural supporters felt that they were paying an unfair proportion of local government funding. Secondly, in the transfer, there was a sleight of hand transfer of the cost of funding from national to local government, to enable a further decrease in income tax.

Monday was a day for exercise, so I decided that the thing to do was stroll along part of the Brampton Trail, A walking route spread out through the counties of Leicestershire and Northamptonshire in the Centre of England. Starting from The Village of Lamport in the centre of the trail, opposite Lamport Hall (The place where Garden Gnomes were introduced to the UK)

With the G20 conference  happening today, no doubt the eyes of the worlds media  will be focussed on conference statements and protests (Or as Matthew Parris insisted on referring to them on Sundays Politics program on the BBC, "Riots")

Today is no doubt as a labour party Spin engineer once famously said "A good day to bury bad news" especially as it's been in Diarys worldwide for several weeks if not months

So what has your government published today with a minimum of fanfare which otherwise would have been hitting the news bulletins? take a look round your government websites, tell us what you've found.

UK house prices will plummet: look at this scary chart - MoneyWeek

I am detecting a certain amount of bullishness in the housing market of late. A number of people with cash are talking about "buying later this year", or "taking advantage of these low rates".

A gent I met at a drinks party at the weekend was very keen on a property in Kensington because it was down from £3 million to one and a half. Foreigners, we are told, are taking advantage of the falling pound to buy prime Central London property. Viewing activity at my neighbour's unsellable (or overpriced) house is increasing. At the recent Savills auctions, London properties in decent areas were still fetching surprisingly good prices.

UK house prices will plummet: look at this scary chart - MoneyWeek

House prices remain out of kilter with what people earn. No matter what the government does, they will head lower until they reach a level which people can afford, which history has shown to be about three times earnings. And they will probably overshoot this to the downside because of the scale of the preceding boom and the oncoming bust. There is nothing anyone, not tycoon nor politician, can do to stop this inevitable course. All they can do is delay it.

Article Withe plentifull Graphyness!

I keep seeing the numbers for the financial failure that surrounds us, Billions, Trillions and for the average person it makes no sense, You just have nothing reasonable to compare it to. So how do you explain the sheer size of the problem in numbers that the everyday person can understand?

Now the traditional units of measurement employed by UK newspapers are "The size of Belgium" "The distance to the moon" "The size of the Great Pyramid" and "the size of a double decker bus" so follow me inside to see how the crisis matches up. or if you can suggest some better units.

It may not be the most sane way of describing the problem, but then again some of the medias attempts have been no better

Heel size predicts Credit Crunch effect as stiletto-mania kicks in

Economists may have found a new way of predicting the full extent of the economic downturn. According to a report in The Sun, economic forecasts are out, and "heel size analysis" is in!

Skyscraper heels have not been in vogue since the last Great Depression of the 1930s, and 2009 is set to be the Year of the Stiletto.

The information comissioner today announced that he will be shutting down a firm run to blacklist union members from the building trades.

BBC NEWS | UK | Company sold workers' secret data

The information watchdog has shut down a company which it says sold workers' confidential data, including union activities, to building firms.

A raid on The Consulting Association in Droitwich, Worcs, revealed a serious breach of the Data Protection Act, the Information Commissioner's Office said.

The ICO said a secret system was run for over 15 years enabling employers to unlawfully vet job applicants.

An Email arrived on my system today forwarded from someone deep in the heart of the Labour machine indirectly  from James Purnell, Secretary of State for Work and Pensions. They said "We are asked to pass them on so our friends know what the Labour Party is doing for people, but if he can't see how much this sticks in the throat..." so here it is with the odd comment.

I wanted to write to you about today's unemployment figures.

We will never forget that behind the statistics are real people. Every time a worker loses their job it is a personal tragedy. We will not repeat the mistakes of the 80s and early 90s and will never say, like the Tories did, that unemployment is "a price worth paying."

That is why as unemployment increases Labour is increasing the help we give.

Follow me over the page to see the rest of this self serving idiocy.

[editor's note, by ceebs]Heres the slightly reworked version. Any changes anyone wants to suggest before it gets thrown up to the big orange place? (oh and whats the best time to do that for the most impact)?

A variety of the mainstream media today are reporting on a confidential world bank report on the effect of Biofuels on food prices. The initial figures of a 75% increase appear large, but what do they actually mean? If we look into it we find that Biofuels are in effect concealing an increase in transportation costs inside the family shopping budget.

The Elders : Every Human Has Rights

2008 is the Universal Declaration
of Human Rights 60th anniversary.

It`s a time for a global conversation about human rights.
To consider the values that unite us as one human family, and one global village. But it can be more.

For the last 60 years it`s been governments that have been asked to sign the Universal Declaration.

We hope that 2008 can be the year that individuals, not just governments, sign the declaration.

We`re hoping for one billion signatures from across the world.
We want yours to be one of them.

We urge you to embrace the values and goals of the declaration.
To protect the rights of your fellow global villagers. And encourage others to do the same in your communities, workplaces and schools.

Please sign the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Make your personal pledge to live your life by its principles.

Every human has rights.

Diary rescue by Migeru

POLITICS-US: Cheney Tried to Stifle Dissent in Iran NIE

WASHINGTON, Nov 8 (IPS) - A National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) on Iran has been held up for more than a year in an effort to force the intelligence community to remove dissenting judgments on the Iranian nuclear programme, and thus make the document more supportive of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney's militarily aggressive policy toward Iran, according to accounts of the process provided by participants to two former Central Intelligence Agency officers.

But this pressure on intelligence analysts, obviously instigated by Cheney himself, has not produced a draft estimate without those dissenting views, these sources say. The White House has now apparently decided to release the unsatisfactory draft NIE, but without making its key findings public...<snip>

Former CIA officer Philip Giraldi provided a similar account, based on his own sources in the intelligence community. He told IPS that intelligence analysts have had to review and rewrite their findings three times, because of pressure from the White House.

"The White House wants a document that it can use as evidence for its Iran policy," says Giraldi. Despite pressures on them to change their dissenting conclusions, however, Giraldi says some analysts have refused to go along with conclusions that they believe are not supported by the evidence.

So here we are once again with intelligence being (in the words of sir Richard Dearlove) "fixed around policy"

Sigh... — Promoted by Migeru

Reading Colmans elegant rant earlier today got me to finally writing the end of something I've been meaning to finish off from my half written pile for ages, so here it is. (and I finally have finished a diary so hopefully those of you who have been waiting for one won't injure yourselves with shock and surprise that I have finally finished one and posted it)

During the years following the industrial revolution a group of industrialists arose in the UK who ran highly successful businesses, but these businesses were not run entirely on an ethos of exploitation. the one thing they appear to have in common apart from a desire to treat their workers as human being s is their religion. they all appear to be quakers. Follow me below the fold to hear about them and to ask the interesting questions.

On ethical capitalism — promoted by Migeru

A couple of weeks ago I suggested a diary that asks the small questions. We spend much time discussing the large questions and often start off with a quite technical discussion on a subject. As an example take Migeru's current diary about M3 money supply. As a result of this we get quite a few lurkers or people who do not feel confident in joining the discussion as they feel they have nothing to add. I have been waiting for a Sunday when there was a diary since that appeared technical enough to start this regular series off (thanks Migeru) ;-)

So please ask any questions that you want for the community to answer. No question to insignificant, or simple. There will be no answers of Look it up on google.

A few days ago I was wandering the aisles of a local bookshop, looking for something to stimulate me, and keep my mind moving when I came across a fairly weighty tome full of diagrams and equations hoping to describe the state of physics. Thinking that there was probably a wealth of resource on here I asked for an opinion, and was pointed in another direction by the resident experts.

This got me thinking. In this community there are a variety of people with a variety of specialisations, they will have a selection of books that they think will serve as either a good introduction to their subjects, or will be a challenge to people who have started out on their subject and want something that will stretch them further.

So the question is, What are your recomendations for the polymaths library?