General News
Defra: Defra has confirmed how former members of the Women's Land Army and Women's Timber Corps will receive their long-awaited badge of honour. A ceremony will be held at No.10 Downing Street on 23rd July for around fifty Land Girls from across the country representing their former colleagues. They will meet the Prime Minister and Environment Secretary Hilary Benn and be presented with their badges.
Land Girls across the country will then be sent their badge & a certificate in the following weeks and events will then be held in every region around the country to celebrate this formal recognition of the Women's Land Army's role in the war effort. Over 29,000 applications for the badge have so far been received.
Press release ~ Defra - WLA ~ The Wartime Memories Project - The Women's Land Army ~ Women's Timber Corps
ScotGov: A new offence of introducing live fish or live spawn of fish to inland waters without the proper permission has been created and will come into force on 1 August 2008. The appropriate authorities will have to be satisfied that there is an acceptable case for stocking fish which will not threaten native Scottish species, before permission is granted.
The new provision will make it an offence for any person, without the written consent from the appropriate authority, to intentionally introduce or stock any live fish or live spawn of any fish into inland waters in Scotland or to be in possession of any such fish or spawn with the intention of introducing it into inland waters. These provisions do not apply to fish farms or to ornamental fish-keeping facilities.
ScotGov: Around 20,000 part-time students across Scotland will be able to apply for new support from last week. The support - provided in the form of a £500 grant - will be open to new & existing higher education students earning £18,000 a year or less and studying at 50% or more of a full-time course.
The grant will be delivered through ILA Scotland. Application packs can be obtained through the ILA Scotland helpline on 0808 100 1090.
Home Office: The largest ever police crackdown on human trafficking resulted in police recovering 167 victims and arresting 528 criminals associated with one of the worst crimes threatening our society. Human trafficking victims are brought to the UK and sold as commodities for the purposes of sexual exploitation, domestic servitude or forced labour.
Pentameter 2 is a coordinated campaign of activity aimed at disrupting those who engage in trafficking for sexual exploitation throughout the UK, involving all UK police forces, other law enforcement agencies, the UK Human Trafficking Centre, and other voluntary and statutory agencies. Intelligence reports were collated and placed onto a specifically created database on the HOLMES 2 system.
New measures to tackle trafficking and support victims have been published in an update of the UK Human Trafficking Action Plan, first published last year. In reviewing the strategy new areas and opportunities were identified to combat trafficking and lead to 23 new actions being added.
Press release ~ Updated UK Human Trafficking Action Plan ~ UK Human Trafficking Centre ~ Pentameter 2 ~ Don’t close your eyes ~ HOLMES 2 system ~ Council of Europe Convention on Human Trafficking
NA: Provide and Enable: The National Archives' Online Strategy sets out how they will respond to changes affecting the organisation's online services over the next three years. Changes will be driven by their Vision, as well as wider social and technical developments.
The National Archives website will be restructured into a 'family' of websites, to reflect the organisation's different functions and meet changing customer needs. They are also opening up their data, through projects exploring new technologies like RDFa in the Gazettes and in their partnerships with commercial organisations. In addition, they will explore the opportunities to develop a two-way conversation with their customers, opening up in areas such as social networking.
Provide and Enable sets out a decision-making framework for The National Archives' online services, embodied in ten Principles that will underpin all their online work and four Agendas directing the internal changes they need to make to become an online organisation (see Principles and agendas are listed in strategy).
HM Treasury: The Home Office has announced plans to speed up travel between the UK and the US for trusted people who move regularly between the two countries. The new scheme would benefit trusted travellers who travel frequently between the two countries, underlining the importance of speedy travel between the UK and the US.
The agreement sets out the shared determination to develop a swift channel across the two borders for trusted travellers, which uses fingerprint, iris or facial recognition technology to speed-up border controls while maintaining their security. IRIS enrolment stations and gates are available at all five Heathrow terminals and at Gatwick, Manchester and Birmingham airports
Also announced was a document that will give further details on how the new Points Based System for those seeking work in the UK will apply to the financial industry. The document, which will be jointly developed by the Corporation of London, HM Treasury and the Home Office and published in September, will set out how the new points system will impact on employers and workers in the City.
YF: Rural businesses are being urged to take advantage of the £9m a year funding that is available from the Rural Development Programme for England.
Yorkshire Forward is using its stand (no. 616, Avenue E) at the Great Yorkshire Show (Tuesday 8 to Thursday 10 July) to advise farmers and other rural businesses of the funding that can be accessed to support, amongst other things:
* the start up or expansion of a business
* skills development in the agriculture & forestry sectors and
* investment in new technologies that allow livestock farmers to make better use of their waste, energy & water resources
