Monday
8th
February
2010
Maybe it's the army of bureaucrats we should cut, not defence spending
Supposedly, two things in life are certain – death and taxes. But in British national life, there are two more – economic downturns and defence reviews. And they have a nasty habit of interacting.
Roger Bootle - Capital Economics
As we are mired in the depths of another economic downturn, the air is thick with talk of massive cutbacks made necessary by "lack of money". Does this make sense?
In one sense, yes. The problem of waste in the defence sector is well known. Equally, even if all the money spent on defence were spent wisely, there would be a valid argument that we should spend less – effectively withdrawing from a global role and becoming more like Italy or Spain. This would allow us to cut back sharply our military budget and spend more on other things (or cut taxes).
Meanwhile, last week's Green Paper on defence argued that the UK faces new threats. But I am wary of believing that the more traditional threats to the UK's interests have simultaneously faded away. Supposedly, our armed forces are configured for fighting wars that don't happen any more and, accordingly, we can reduce spending on the equipment to fight them.
Does this ring a bell? It sounds remarkably like the idea of an end to "boom and bust" and the notion that the growth of derivatives had made financial markets safer. Same old failure of imagination; same old recklessness with regard to our security. The truth is, we never know where the next economic downturn, or the next defence crisis, is coming from and we don't know when. All we know is that it will come. And we should be prepared.
Even so, is a scaling back of spending made necessary by our economic circumstances? No.
Overspending on defence is not the root of our current financial problems. In the current year, defence spending is expected to equal £38bn, equivalent to 5.6pc of total managed expenditure and around 2.7pc of GDP, about the same percentage as when Labour took power in 1997. Although defence spending is higher than in earlier years in both nominal and real terms, proportionately it is well down from where it used to be. In 1970-71, it accounted for 4.6pc of GDP.
Since Labour took power in 1997, the number of people employed by the public sector has risen by 900,000. The number of people in the armed forces has fallen by 20,000.
What's more, there is an important social dimension to this squeeze. The influence of the armed forces in our society has been overwhelmingly beneficial, with its emphasis on group values, service and discipline. This is a valuable counterweight to the rampant greed of so much of the private sector and the extremes of wet, woolliness in the public services. The armed forces have done more good for the lower classes than a whole army of social workers.
The irony in including defence in the areas marked out for major cuts is that defence is a service that only the state can provide.
Meanwhile, the acute problem of the public finances is partly caused by the over-extension of the state into all sorts of areas where it is not needed and does not belong. I cannot now listen to commercial radio without wanting to throw a brick at the set for the flood of unnecessary adverts from the public sector – telling me to beware of fire, not to encourage thieves by leaving my possessions around (as though we all cause crime by encouraging it) and urging us all to claim various benefits which we didn't know we were "entitled" to.
Meanwhile, in those areas where the state does have a legitimate role, it employs too many people and pays them too much.
Ireland provides an object lesson in what has to be done. The Irish government has cut pay for all public sector workers by between 5pc and 15pc.
At the moment, the national mood is glum, and umpteen "experts" are telling us that we will be much poorer forever more. I don't believe it. Of course I acknowledge that the immediate outlook is dire. But reviews of our defence posture and our position in the world should not be made in reflection of current adversity but with a view to the future. At some point the UK will recover strongly, as it did in the 1980s and the 1990s, also after deep recessions which lowered our national self-confidence.
More importantly, defence planning should focus on what sort of economy we are going to be in the medium term. Talk about joined up government. While the financial experts and the defence boffins are puzzling over what to cut because of Britain's reduced circumstances, across the road in another part of Whitehall the population experts are telling us that the UK is on course for a population of 70m or possibly even 75m.
Now, you might not like this prospect and might support measures to prevent it from happening but, if it is going to happen, then we should consider the economic consequences. The UK would be the largest economy in Europe, with a population larger than Germany's. Should such a country as that be enfeebling itself and scaling down its presence on the world stage?
Defence spending: New battle lines
Defence spending row as chiefs spend £730 million on taxis, hotels and meals
Prominent Serbian philosopher dies
The philosopher Mihailo Markovic has died in the Serbian capital Belgrade aged 87.
He fought under Josip Broz Tito against the Nazis in the Second World War and shortly afterwards distanced himself from Stalinism. In the 1960s and 1970s, he pushed for a less hard line than that advocated by the then president Tito of Communist Yugoslavia.
He later became a prominent supporter of Slobodan Milosevic with whom he set up the Socialist Party of Serbia in 1990. He remained a loyal supporter of Milosevic even after the former Serbian leader was indicted by the Yugoslavia tribunal in The Hague.
 Mihailo Markovic
(1923 - 2010), was the most significant Serbian
philosopher of 20th century and a regular member of the Serbian Academy
of Arts and Sciences. Some of his numerous books, such as Dialectical Theory of Meaning (1961) and Philosophical Bases of Sciences (1981), belong to the world philosophical heritage. His books have been translated into all important world languages. He has taught at a number of European, American and Canadian universities and scientific academies. He has been a Professor at the Michigan University in An Harbor and at the Pennsylvanian University in Philadelphia, the Chairman of the Yugoslav Philosophical Association, the dean of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, the Head of the Institute for Philosophy of the Faculty of Philosophy in Belgrade, a member of the Organizational Committee of the Summer School in Korchula, a member of the Council of the ‘Praxis’ magazine, a member of the editorial staff of the magazines The Philosophical Forum, Boston, Filozofia, Torino, and Neues Forum, Vienna. |
Abulcasis - Spanish Muslim Philosopher
Jürgen Habermas
China seizes more melamine-tainted milk powder
Chinese inspectors tracing new cases of contaminated milk have shut dairy firms in the northwest and seized 72 tonnes of milk powder tainted with melamine, an industrial compound that killed at least six children in 2008.
Nearly 100 tonnes of tainted milk powder may still be on shop shelves, the China Daily reported Monday in detailing the closure of a Ningxia firm that sold the product.
A number of cases of melamine in milk have surfaced in the past few months, some of which appear to have come from old batches of contaminated powder that was never destroyed despite a scandal that damaged the reputation of the Chinese dairy industry.
Tiantian Dairy Co Ltd in Ningxia was closed after it was found to have repackaged and sold 170 tonnes of melamine-tainted milk powder that it received as a debt payment, the China Daily said, citing the local government.
The paper did not say where the milk had come from. Last week, three people at a dairy firm in neighbouring Shaanxi province were arrested for manufacturing or dealing in products laced with melamine, a compound commonly used in plastics or fertilizer but which can also be added to foods to show high protein levels in tests.
Another dairy firm, Ningxia Panda, was shut because of its ties to Shanghai Panda Dairy Co, which was closed late last year for selling products tainted with melamine.
There have been no reported deaths or illnesses from the latest batches of tainted milk. About 300,000 children sought medical treatment, many with kidney stones, in the 2008 scandal.
China executed two people in November for their role in the 2008 scandal that further sullied the made-in-China brand after a string of health and product-safety scares.
Old foe set to crush Orange revolution
Ukrainian Prime Minister cries foul and threatens to challenge election result
Shaun Walker - The Independent
Marking a spectacular personal resurrection, Viktor Yanukovich appeared
on course last night to win Ukraine's presidential election, a victory
that will take the former Soviet nation back into a closer embrace with
Moscow.Exit polls suggested that the fervour of the Orange Revolution – which prevented Mr Yanukovich assuming the presidency five years ago – had well and truly died. Exit poll figures released by the Central Election Commission had the 59-year-old winning 50.09 per cent of the vote, and his bitter rival Julia Tymoshenko on 44.39 per cent. Other polls gave him a slightly bigger margin of victory. Mr Yanukovich's team celebrated last night and called on Ms Tymoshenko to resign as Prime Minister and concede defeat. He said he would focus on economic reforms during the first months of his presidency.
"I will carry out the reforms that will allow us to overcome soon the consequences of the economic crisis," he told a news conference in Kiev last night.
But Ms Tymoshenko has so far refused to concede the vote, saying it was "too soon to draw any conclusions". She said her team would be monitoring the counting process closely.
She has promised to bring her supporters on to the street if she believes the election results have been falsified and even before the polling booths for yesterday's run-off vote had closed, her campaign team was crying foul. Alexander Turchinov, her campaign chief, said the party would contest results in 1,000 polling stations in Mr Yanukovich's industrial base in the eastern Donetsk region because election observers had been "blocked" from doing their jobs.
The charismatic Ms Tymoshenko, a leader of the Orange coalition, was propelled to power by the revolution five years ago. But she soon fell out with eventual President, Viktor Yushchenko, and formed her own political party. If the exit polls are confirmed, it will be a remarkable comeback for the man dismissed as a cheat and Vladimir Putin's stooge in 2004. Mr Yanukovich has managed to tap into a strong vein of discontent with the Orange leaders, exacerbated by the tough economic times Ukrainians are living through.
"I am sure that the Ukrainian nation deserves a better life. That is why I have voted for good changes, for stability and for a strong Ukraine," he said after casting his vote in the capital. Earlier, that same polling station had been overrun by an infamous all-female group of activists known as Femen, who burst semi-naked into the venue holding placards saying "Stop raping the country".
Elsewhere, polling day provided a continuation of the vitriol that has marked the run-up to the vote, which has been vicious even by the chaotic and aggressive standards of Ukrainian politics. Ms Tymoshenko's campaign staff claimed that supporters of her opponent had killed one of their team in the Western city of Ivano-Frankivsk in the early hours of the morning. Police confirmed the death but said it was likely to be caused by heart failure. A Council of Europe election monitoring mission proclaimed the election fair and honest. "We are 100 percent sure that this election was legitimate," said Matyas Eorsi, a representative of the mission.
Whether or not Ms Tymoshenko accepts the results calmly remains to be seen. But many analysts doubt that Ukrainians are ready to take to the streets again en masse, with the optimism and revolutionary spirit of five years ago drained by endless political infighting and corruption. Kiev resident Natalya Zhuk seemed to sum up the national mood. "It would be terrible to vote for Tymoshenko. It would be shameful to vote for Yanukovich," the 27-year-old voter told Reuters. "Nothing in this country will change in the next five years."
Ukraine-Russia: some background and context
Ukraine - the Orange tide has turned
Thousands to lose jobs as universities prepare to cope with cuts
• Post-graduates to replace professors
• Staff poised to strike over proposals of cuts
Jessica Shepherd and Owen Bowcott - The Guardian
Universities across the country are preparing to axe thousands of teaching jobs, close campuses and ditch courses to cope with government funding cuts, the Guardian has learned.
Other plans include using post-graduates rather than professors for teaching and the delay of major building projects. The proposals have already provoked ballots for industrial action at a number of universities in the past week raising fears of strike action which could severely disrupt lectures and examinations.
The Guardian spoke to vice-chancellors and other senior staff at 25 universities, some of whom condemned the funding squeeze as "painful" and "insidious". They warned that UK universities were being pushed towards becoming US-style, quasi-privatised institutions.
The cuts are being put in place to cope with the announcement last week by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (Hefce) that £449m – equivalent to more than a 5% reduction nationally – would be stripped out of university budgets.
The University and College Union (UCU) believes that more than 15,000 posts – the majority academic – could disappear in the next few years. Precise funding figures for each university will be released on 18 March.
The chairman of the Russell Group of elite institutions, Professor Michael Arthur, vice-chancellor of Leeds University, warned that budgets would be further slashed by 6% in each of the next three years. Last month he described the cuts as "devastating".
The savings envisaged include:
• More than 200 jobs losses at King's College, London, around 150 at the University of Westminster and, unions claim, as many as 700 at Leeds, 340 at Sheffield Hallam and 300 at Hull.
• Entire campus closures at Cumbria and Wolverhampton universities, where buildings will be mothballed and students transferred to other sites.
• Teesside University scrapping £2m worth of scholarships and bursaries that would have helped poorer students. It will also share services with a further education college in Darlington.
• Postponing plans for a £25m creative arts building at Worcester and £12m science block at Hertfordshire.
• Under-subscribed arts and humanities courses are being dropped. The University of the West of England has already stopped offering French, German and Spanish; Surrey has dropped its BA in humanities.
• Student/lecturer ratios are expected to rise, with more institutions using postgraduates and short term staff filling in for professors made redundant.
Ballots for industrial action are due to be held or are pending at the University of Sussex Arts, University College London, the University of Gloucestershire and King's College London. Lecturers at Leeds – where 750 posts are at risk – voted by a large majority to strike this week.
Higher exam pass marks will be required to win a place at university, according to the survey of academic principals. The cap on student numbers – set at 2008 levels – is restricting entry just as youth unemployment is peaking and intensifying competitive pressure.
Peter Mandelson, the business secretary who is in charge of universities, accused the principals of "gross exaggerations" and "extreme language", but would not be drawn over whether he would make further cuts to higher education. Universities had to do "no more than their fair share of belt-tightening," he said.
"We know that universities have a vital contribution to our economic growth, so we are not going to undermine them. We are asking for savings of less than 5% and we expect universities to make these in a way that minimises the impact on teaching and students. I am confident they will."
Mandelson also denied claims by vice-chancellors that he was letting arts and humanities courses close and cared only about maths and science degrees.
On Monday it was announced that an extra £10m would go to the teaching of science, technology, engineering and mathematics to support universities "that are shifting the balance of their provision towards these subjects".
Mandelson said: "I am an arts graduate myself. We don't dictate to universities which courses they put on. They tailor courses to meet demand. We want universities to play to their strengths, but we also want to keep this country civilised."
The pattern of cutbacks is not uniform, with some universities insisting they have been preparing for the downturn. Many have already dropped more vulnerable subjects such as music and history, increased fees for part-time students and expect to become even more reliant on income from higher, overseas student fees.
The vice-chancellor of Southampton, Professor Don Nutbeam, told the Guardian: "This [decision by Hefce] is one of a series of insidious cuts that have been made to higher education."
Professor Geoffrey Petts, vice-chancellor of Westminster University, said: "After a decade of huge successes in higher education we suddenly have to rethink."
Tomorrow the Universities and Colleges Admission Service (Ucas) is due to announce record numbers of applications for places this autumn. It is expected that as many as 300,000 applicants will be turned away.
The surge in demand comes as a government-commissioned independent review considers whether to raise tuition fees from £3,225 per year to up to £7,000. Over three years total cuts will amount to at least £950m.
The policy adopted by the government is in stark contrast to the response in the US where President Obama this week proposed a 31% increase in education spending for next year in order to combat unemployment and develop skills.
University funding cuts 'will ruin Scotland's architectural prowess'
Cuba plans city farms to ease economy woes
Project launched to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms
in bid to reverse agricultural decline
Marc Frank - The Guardian
Cuba has launched an ambitious project to ring urban areas with thousands of small farms in a bid to reverse the country's agricultural decline and ease its chronic economic woes.
The five-year plan calls for growing fruits and vegetables and raising livestock in four mile-wide rings around 150 of Cuba's cities and towns, with the exception of the capital Havana.
The island's authorities hope suburban farming will make food cheaper and more abundant, cut transportation costs and encourage urban dwellers to leave bureaucratic jobs for more productive labour.
But the government will continue to hold a monopoly on most aspects of food production and distribution, including its control of most of the land in the communist-run nation.
The pilot programme for the project is being conducted in the central city of Camaguey, which the Cuban agriculture ministry has said eventually will have 1,400 small farms covering 52,000 hectares (128,490 acres), just minutes outside the town.
The farms, mostly in private hands but also including some cooperatives and state-owned enterprises, must grow everything organically, and the ministry expects they will produce 75% of the food for the city of 320,000 people, with big state-owned farms providing the rest.
On a recent day, dozens of people were hard at work plowing fields, hoeing earth, posting protective covering for crops and putting up fencing as the sun came up.
"This land they gave to us, the private farmers. I have four hectares (10 acres) and now they have leased me eight (20 acres) more," one of the farmers, Camilo Mendoza, told Reuters.
"Look, on this side and the other side are other plots, and over there another. Here they have given quite a bit of land and support to private farmers," he said.
The project is modelled after the hundreds of urban gardens developed by then-defence minister Raul Castro during the deep economic depression of the 1990s that followed the collapse of communism in eastern Europe.
He proclaimed at the time that beans were more important than cannons, marking a strategic shift towards a more domestic focused agenda by Cuban leaders after decades of active support for liberation movements and leftist guerrillas overseas.The suburban project dovetails with other steps introduced by President Raul Castro since he took over the day-to-day leadership in 2008.
These have included the leasing of fallow state lands to 100,000 mostly private farmers, raising prices for farm products and allowing farmers to sell part of their crops directly to the people instead of to the state.
On the other side of Camaguey and a few miles up Cuba's central highway, Armando, the head of a cattle cooperative, said his group was persuaded to join the plan by the offer of land to raise garden and root vegetables and the chance for direct sales to the public.
Stands have been set up every mile or so along the city's ring road for the sales, but Armando said they are taking their products to the customers.
"They assigned us a district where we can sell our produce. We are using a mobile system, a bicycle cart, and sell out every day," he said.
"In December we produced around five tonnes. The root vegetables we had to sell to the state, but we were free to sell the garden vegetables directly," he said.
The changes are tweaks to Cuba's centralised socialism, not a significant step away from it, keeping with Raul Castro's vow to protect the system put in place after his brother took power in the 1959 Cuban revolution.
He has balked at more sweeping, market-oriented changes that many expected when he took power and without which many economists say Cuba will not significantly increase agricultural output.
Cubans have seen many past government efforts to transform the country's agriculture fail, so the farmers at Camaguey said they were taking a wait-and-see attitude on this latest one.
"For sure there will be more food around here if you come back in a few years," Camilio Mendoza said about his expectations. "More than that, I can't say."
UK couples offered Counsyl gene tests for 100 inherited diseases
Mark Henderson - The Times
British couples are to be offered a groundbreaking genetic test that would virtually eliminate their chances of having a baby with one of more than 100 inherited diseases.
The simple saliva test, which identifies whether prospective parents carry genetic mutations that could cause life-threatening disorders such as cystic fibrosis, spinal muscular atrophy or sickle-cell anaemia in their children, is to be launched within weeks in Britain, The Times has learnt.
If the procedure, which will cost about £400 per person or £700 for a couple, is widely adopted, it could dramatically reduce the incidence of 109 serious inherited conditions that collectively affect one in every 280 births.
However, the test, which is being launched by the Bridge fertility clinic in Central London, is ethically controversial. Critics argue that the diseases it detects are too rare for most people to need screening, and that it will cause needless alarm. It is also likely to raise demand for embryo screening and abortion.
There are further concerns about medical supervision. While the Bridge clinic will offer it only in conjunction with genetic counselling, Counsyl, the American company that developed the test, also plans to sell it directly to British customers over the internet, for home use without medical advice.
The Counsyl test shows whether people are carriers of mutant genes that cause 109 recessive genetic disorders. People who have a single copy of one of these genes are not usually affected themselves, but if their partner is also a carrier their children have a one in four chance of inheriting two copies and developing the disease.
If the results show that both prospective parents are carriers of a condition, they could choose to have IVF and screen their embryos, so that only healthy ones are implanted in the womb. Other options include genetic testing during pregnancy, with a view to having an abortion if the foetus is affected, sperm donation or adoption.
People with a family history of several of these disorders, such as cystic fibrosis, can already have screening on the NHS. Targeted programmes are also offered to certain ethnic groups, such as people of African and Caribbean descent who have a higher risk of sickle-cell anaemia.
The Counsyl test is a new departure because it screens for multiple conditions simultaneously and is marketed for the general population rather than high-risk groups. It is already offered by several fertility clinics in America.
The company said that, while each disease screened for is individually rare, one in three people will be a carrier of at least one. About one in 165 of the couples it has tested in the US are both carriers of the same mutation, though this may reflect the test’s appeal to people at high risk.
Balaji Srinivasan, Counsyl’s chief technology officer, said the test was inspired by screening in the Jewish community, which has virtually wiped out a fatal recessive disorder called Tay-Sachs disease by discouraging marriages between carriers. “It is something that should be on the radar of every adult before having a child,” Mr Srinivasan said. “Just as you know not to drink alcohol or smoke while pregnant, you should know you can screen against genetic disease. Couples have a fundamental right to know their carrier status and to make reproductive decisions on the basis of that status without outside interference.”
Alan Thornhill, scientific director of the Bridge, said: “These diseases are quite rare, but pretty horrible. This is something that couples can do to reduce their risk at a reasonable cost. We are offering it with counselling, so that couples are properly informed and understand the options if the results are positive.”
However Frances Flinter, consultant clinical geneticist at Guy’s and St Thomas’ Hospital, and a member of the Government’s Human Genetics Commission, said the test has an uncomfortable “eugenic flavour”.
“It plays unnecessarily on people’s fears,” she said.
Newborn genetic screening -The New Eugenics? [1644 KB PDF]
Unlawful anti-terror powers planned for use during 2012 Olympics
Adam Fresco and Fiona Hamilton - The Times
Police are planning to use an anti-terror law deemed unlawful by the European Court of Human Rights across the country during the London Olympics, The Times has learnt.
Senior officers are considering using Section 44 of the Terrorism Act 2000 at every Underground and railway station nationwide.
Privacy campaigners criticised the proposal yesterday. The powers would enable police to stop and search members of the public without any suspicion that they were involved in terrorism.
The Times understands that this would be the first time that the powers would have been used across such a wide area. Police said that Section 44, which must be granted by the Home Secretary for a designated area, would be used only in the event of an escalated terror threat. Officers are being trained to use behavioural profiling to spot suspicious characters during stop- and-search operations.
Privacy experts said that the plan could heighten tensions between the public and police. Simon Davies, the director of Privacy International, said: “The history of stop and search in this country is abhorrent. I wouldn’t trust the police to make the right judgment.
“It is well known that stop-and- search powers have created extraordinary tensions among a range of ethnic groups,” he said. “There’s no doubt that extension of the use of those powers would exacerbate those tensions.”
Last month the use of the terror law was criticised by the European Court of Human Rights. It found that Section 44 violated individual freedoms guaranteeing the right to private life.
The court said that the power to search an individual’s clothing and belongings in public involved an element of humiliation that was a clear interference with the right to privacy. Judges also attacked the arbitrary nature of the power as well as the way in which its use was authorised.
Despite this, Alan Johnson, the Home Secretary, said that police would continue to use Section 44. The Home Office is appealing against the European Court ruling.
The Metropolitan Police agreed last year to limit its use of the powers after critics claimed that it was discriminating against minority groups. However, Assistant Chief Constable Steve Thomas, of the British Transport Police, told The Times that the powers would be considered for 2012.
Mr Thomas, the Olympic National Transport Security Co-ordinator for the Home Office, said: “If there is a severe level of threat we will be looking to use Section 44 at every Underground and railway station. We are planning on the assumption that there will be a severe threat to the UK during the Games, on the basis that we can then scale down rather than quickly scale up.” He said that if Section 44 was put in place across the country it would not mean that every station would be flooded with officers, but individual stations would be targeted as part of an operation.
Shami Chakrabarti, the director of Liberty, the campaigning organisation that brought the European Court case, said that while there was an obvious need for heightened precautions during the 2012 Games, Britain’s antiterrorism laws need to be “tightened up”. She said: “It would be incredibly dangerous to build Olympic security on such a legally flawed foundation.”
March of the state spies
Laura Chinchilla voted first female president of Costa Rica
Laura Chinchilla thanked supporters
for electing her Costa Rica's first
female president and only the fifth ever in Latin America overnight, as
her opponents accepted defeat.The 50-year-old ruling party candidate joined thousands of supporters after first results showed she had won 47 per cent of the votes counted, way ahead of her main opponents and above the 40 per cent needed to avoid a run-off.
"Thank you, Costa Rica," Ms Chinchilla said in an address in a hotel in the capital, San Jose. "It's certainly a moment of happiness, but above all of humility ... I won't betray that confidence."
The Centre-left opposition candidate Otton Solis had won 24 per cent of the votes counted and right-wing lawyer Otto Guevara garnered 21 per cent.
"With a lot of respect, we accept the reality," Me Solis, who lost by a whisker to current President Oscar Arias in 2006, told a gathering of his followers earlier. Mr Guevara congratulated "our president Laura Chinchilla," shortly afterwards.
The opposition had criticized Ms Chinchilla as being a puppet of Mr Arias, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and she was expected to continue his policies of promoting free trade and international business ties.
The slight, long-haired graduate of Georgetown University in the United States served as vice president under Mr Arias and is socially conservative on issues such as abortion.
Her National Liberation Party (PLN) bet on her past experience as public security minister and justice minister to win voters over on the issue of crime - a growing concern here.
Voting took place calmly throughout Latin America's oldest democracy, which has no army, amid fears of high abstention rates.
Abstention was at 33.43 per cent, according to initial results, of some 2.8 million eligible to vote for a new president, two vice presidents, as well as 57 lawmakers and municipal leaders.
The elections again tested the organizational skills of the PLN, which has dominated politics in Costa Rica for the past six decades, and was expected to make gains among lawmakers too.
Ms Chinchilla was also aided by Costa Rica's relatively smooth passage through the global economic crisis, and by support from powerful economic sectors close to Mr Arias.
The mother of a teenage son has promised to increase grants for poor students, expand the pensions for the poor and open day-care centres to support working mothers.
Although she has vowed tougher anti-crime measures, she also underlined the importance of acting "intelligently" against crime caused by social inequalities.
She follows in the footsteps of four female presidents in Latin America - in Chile, Argentina, Panama and Nicaragua - in a nation which has promoted positive discrimination to bring women to political posts in recent years.
Mr Solis, an economist from the Citizen's Action Party, ran on an anti-corruption ticket and had lagged behind Mr Guevara, a 49-year-old lawyer who founded the pro-business Libertarian
Mr Arias is due to hand over to the new president on May 8.
Day of firsts as presidential baton passes from husband to wife
Higher pay, shorter hours...
but complaints about GPs soar 12 per cent in ONE year
Daniel Martin - Daily Mail
Grievances lodged by patients totalled almost 40,000, official NHS figures show.
That means a rise of a quarter in a decade during which GPs have seen their pay increased massively and their workload slashed.
Much of the increase in complaints has followed the introduction of a new GP contract in 2004, which sent family doctors’ salaries soaring by 47 per cent to an average of £106,000 a year.
At the same time, more than nine out of ten GPs stopped providing care at evenings and weekends – slashing their workload by an average of seven hours a week in exchange for an annual pay cut of £6,000.
Now figures from the NHS Information Centre indicate that this fall in the amount of work they are carrying out has damaged patient care.
Some 7,448 complaints were termed administration errors, including GPs not communicating properly with out-of-hours doctors and, between them, failing to provide proper care.
The largest group of complaints – 14,866 – was about clinical care, including failure to diagnose illnesses or refer patients to specialists.
Last week a coroner ruled that failings in NHS out of hours care led to the death of pensioner David Gray at the hands of Dr Daniel Ubani, an exhausted German GP who had just flown in on his first UK shift.
Out of hours care has been the focus of increasing concern since primary care trusts assumed responsibility.
A shortage of GPs willing to take up the work means PCTs often employ private companies, many of whom use overseas doctors.
It also emerged recently that medical lawyers have seen the number of complaints about out of hours care shoot up by 50 per cent in two years.
The Daily Mail revealed last week that care is so bad in some parts of the country that you only have a one-in-50 chance of a home visit from an on-call GP.
The latest official figures from the NHS revealed that 48,597 formal concerns were lodged with primary care trusts about GPs and dentists in 2008/09.
This was up around 10,000 in a decade – and up more than 5,000 on the 2007/08 total.
Dentists accounted for 8,909 of the complaints.
The Patients Association said failings in out-of-hours services and difficulties getting an appointment with a GP were likely to explain the rise in complaints.
Claire Rayner, president of the Patients’ Association, called for people unhappy with their GP to complain and do all they can to get onto a rival doctor’s list.
She said: ‘Too often people who are ill and frightened are not getting the care they need, especially when they are trying to get care outside normal surgery hours.
‘When people are not happy with their GP, we would urge them to vote with their feet.’
Both major political parties want to see the end of formal boundaries between GP practices, so patients can go to any doctor they choose.
But they face a tough battle with the British Medical Association, which would prefer to see them retained.
Tory health spokesman Mark Simmonds called the findings ‘extremely concerning’.
He blamed the 2004 change to out of hours arrangements for much of the rise, with family doctors taking the blame when patients could not get adequate help in an emergency in some cases.
Other complaints were triggered when out of hours services and GPs failed to share vital information.
Mr Simmonds said the Tories would tear up the 2004 contract and return responsibility for commissioning out of hours care to GPs.
He said: ‘I have no doubt that this is in part due to Labour’s failure to put the patients at the heart of the NHS and their changes to the GP out of hours system, which took responsibility for the service away from GPs and gave it to local bureaucrats.’
Dr Laurence Buckman, chairman of the GP committee of the BMA, said that while poor clinical care and bad behaviour could never be excused, it was possible that patients were more likely to complain now than they were ten years ago.
He added: ‘Putting this in perspective, there are nearly 300 million consultations every year in general practice and surveys show that, on average, nine out of ten patients are satisfied.’
A league table shows that the London borough of Islington had the highest number of complaints per head of population, followed by Lincolnshire, the London boroughs of Lambeth and Southwark, and Great Yarmouth & Waveney in Norfolk.
The NHS was forced to turn to foreign doctors to plug shortages in hospitals when Labour took office and set targets for cutting waiting times for treatment.
Since them, many more Britons have gone through the seven-year training period for doctors and begun work on the wards.
But the NHS still has to fly in foreign doctors to cover out of hours shifts since the vast majority of GPs were allowed to opt out of what was a traditional duty of care.
A Department of Health spokesperson said: 'It is important to note this is not representative of the picture across the NHS. The NHS treats millions of people every day and the vast majority of patients experience good quality, safe and effective care - the Care Quality Commission's recent patient experience survey shows that 93 per cent of patients rate their overall care as good or excellent.
'In April last year, we introduced a new, simpler complaints system, which encourages patient feedback and ensures Trusts act on this to make their services more effective, personal and safe.'
Sentenced to death on the NHS warning by UK doctors
High Court strikes down Muslim quota in education, jobs
Zeenews Bureau
Describing it as “unsustainable”, the Andhra Pradesh High Court on Monday rejected the Muslim Quota Bill which proposed 4% reservations for Muslims in educational institutions and government jobs.
A seven member bench of the High Court rejected the bill by 5 to 2 votes and observed: “The recommendations of the backward caste community is not sustainable so the enactment is also not sustainable.”
As per reports, the bench criticised the main objectives of the Muslim Quota Bill and the mechanical mannerism in which the state government was trying to appease certain sections of the society.
However, the court made it clear those admissions done since 2007 on the basis of this quota (while the case was being heard) will not be declared invalid.
Today’s ruling has come as a major shock for various Muslim bodies and political parties like Congress, which was trying to fulfil its electoral promise of giving reservations to Muslims.
The bench headed by Chief Justice AR Dave has been hearing the case for more than a year and concluded the hearings in March 2009.
A batch of petitions was filed in the High Court challenging the constitutional and legal validity of the Andhra Pradesh Reservation in Favour of Socially and Educationally Backward Classes of Muslims Act-2007.
Under the act passed on July 23, 2007, the Congress government in Andhra Pradesh had extended 4% reservations in education and government jobs to the 15 backward groups of Muslims in Andhra Pradesh.
Earlier the case was heard by a five judge bench from 2007 to January 2008 but in view of critical issues involved in the matter, the case was transferred to a seven judge bench.
When the High Court did not issue stay order against the fresh admissions of Muslim students in professional colleges under the rule of reservation, the petitioners went to the Supreme Court but a three judge bench of the Supreme Court in August 2008 refused to stay the admissions and asked the high court to give the final verdict as early as possible.
The passing of the law was the third attempt by Congress government to fulfill its electoral promise of giving reservations to Muslims. Earlier Chief Minister late YS Reddy made two attempts to give 5% reservations through an executive order but it was quashed by the High Court in 2005.
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