General News
FSA: Heinz is recalling a batch of Heinz Mum’s Own Spaghetti Bolognese baby food due to the possibility of small pieces of plastic being in it, which could be a choking hazard. The Food Standards Agency has issued a Food Alert for Information. No other Heinz products are known to be affected.
NE: Eco-towns must be genuinely sustainable and the standards that are being proposed for them should be part of all urban development Natural England has said in response to the publication, by the Department of Communities and Local Government, of the shortlist of potential eco-town locations and the Planning Policy Statement setting outline standards of sustainability that eco-towns need to reach.
Helen Phillips, Natural England’s Chief Executive, said: “Eco-towns and the policies associated with them cannot be treated as isolated showcases of urban planning – the challenge of greening urban development is a truly national one that cannot be addressed piecemeal. The environmental standards proposed for eco-towns are demanding and rightly so, but similar standards should be set for all new development to ensure that they provide the quantity and quality of green infrastructure that communities and the environment need”.
Press release ~ Natural England ~ Planning Policy Statement: Eco-towns - A supplement to Planning Policy Statement 1 ~ Eco-towns: Location decision statement ~ CLG – Eco Towns ~
ScotGov: War veterans are surfing the web to boost job & training opportunities as a result of a Government-backed IT facility. An IT resource centre, the first of its kind in Scotland, has been opened in Whitefoord House in Edinburgh, run by Scottish Veterans' Residences (SVR). It enables veterans to access the internet for job seeking, employment advice, education and training.
Scottish Veterans' Residences is Scotland's oldest ex-Service charity, founded in 1910. Each year it helps some 300 ex-service men and women and their spouses.
Socitm: Entries in the Graham Williamson Challenge, Socitm’s travel award for people starting out on their career in ICT or a related discipline, are now open. The closing date is 31 August 2009 and the winner will be announced at Socitm 2009 in Edinburgh on Tuesday 13 October 2009.
The award was created in 2004 to enable a person at an early stage in their career to undertake a short period of work experience abroad, in order to broaden their understanding and knowledge of ICT & related disciplines in a wider public, or third sector context.
ScotGov: A new state-of-the art refuge for women & children affected by domestic abuse has officially opened its doors in Glasgow. The Refuge is run by Drumchapel Women's Aid, one of 41 local groups affiliated to Scottish Women's Aid.
The £1.8m purpose built facility offers:
* A secret location with the latest security features including digital access fobs and hi-tech security cameras
* Individual flats housing up to 8 women & 16 children at any one time
* A crèche for young children, enabling parents to get back into work if they wish
* A play room for toddlers & young children
* A games room with the latest gadgets & games consoles for older children
* A therapeutic room offering counselling, as well as complementary therapies & massage
* An outside playground, placed discreetly at the back of the building, unseen from the road
* Two flats built to fully meet the needs of wheelchair users
* Help from specialist support services to allow users to find permanent homes
Press release ~ Drumchapel Women's Aid ~ Domestic Abuse website ~ ScotGov ; Affordable Housing Investment Programme ~ National Domestic Abuse Delivery Plan
TfL: Londoners & visitors walking through Piccadilly Circus can now get the latest information on their Tube journeys by glancing at the world-famous ‘Coca-Cola’ Piccadilly Sign. Transport for London (TfL) has formed a partnership with Coca-Cola Great Britain to display up-to-the-minute Tube travel information on the iconic digital billboards.
The billboard screen which is run on 100% certified green electricity will display Tube travel updates by running a live ticker alongside a ‘Bus’ & ‘Tube sequence, at the bottom of the ‘Coca-Cola’ Piccadilly Sign. The information will run every 5 minutes from Monday to Friday from 8am to 6pm and is targeted at the 1.1m people who pass through Piccadilly Circus during the course of the week.
This move complements TfL’s extensive range of online Travel Tools which include the TfL website with its travel information status board and free text & email alerts – which are aimed at providing Londoners and visitors with the latest Tube travel information to help them work out the quickest journey from A to B.
BIS: A mobile film studio for disadvantaged young adults, football skills for the homeless and university lectures for older people are among the 18 projects which have won Government funding, kicking off a £20m scheme that will hopefully see creative learning flourish across the country.
The projects are the first ‘Early Bird’ bids to receive funding under the Government’s £20m Transformation Fund to support informal adult learning – learning for pleasure, self-development and community development. The projects will introduce a range of innovative adult learning initiatives and activities for the benefit of a diverse range of communities and individuals.
Press release ~ Transformation Fund ~ The Learning Revolution White Paper ~ National Institute for Adult Continuing Education (NIACE) ~ ‘Early Bird’ Transformation Fund winners
HO: The Association of Chief Police Officers’ Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS) will use its annual grant, which has been increased from £200,000 to £300,000, to fund its ongoing work identifying emerging trends in vehicle crime, co-ordinating intelligence & best practice, as well as recovering stolen vehicles, with more than £14m worth of stolen vehicles reclaimed since 2006.
Vehicle crime remains historically low, however organised criminals continue to develop new ways of profiting from vehicle crime such as cloning legitimate cars’ identities for stolen vehicles and stealing high performance cars to order & shipping them abroad.
Press release ~ Vehicle Crime Intelligence Service (AVCIS) ~ HPI check ~ Tracker ~ Finance and Leasing Association (FLA)
LDA: Londoners are to be given an opportunity to cut their bills and make their homes more energy efficient under a proposal given a £9.5m boost. It will be a joint initiative between the Mayor, the London Development Agency, London Councils and the capital's 33 boroughs, across London in April 2010, following the trial stages taking place in the coming months.
The scheme will include free-of-charge, easy-to-do & innovative measures – from changing to low energy light bulbs, to installing stand-by switches. The aim is that more substantial steps, such as loft & cavity wall insulation, will involve no upfront costs and be free for those on benefits and subsidised for those able to pay.
Over a third of London’s carbon dioxide emissions are generated from homes. 60% of London's housing was built before 1945, compared to 40% nationally, so it is less energy efficient than the UK average, which will allow London to make big savings through easy-to-complete measures.
HEFCE: The HEFCE has issued revised annual grants & funding agreements to universities & colleges for the academic year 2009-10. The agreements are accompanied by grant tables unique to each institution, which incorporate changes since the provisional announcement of grant in March.
These changes include an efficiency saving of £65m, following notification by the then Secretary of State for Innovation, Universities and Skills in May that higher education would be required to deliver efficiency savings of £180m as part of the additional efficiencies required in 2010-11 set out in the 2008 Pre-Budget Report – See also item in ‘Consultations’ section.
Press release ~ 2009 grant announcement ~ Funding agreements issued in July 2009 ~ March grant announcement ~ May letter from the Secretary of State
Newswire – EHRC: A new framework for monitoring progress towards equality & human rights in England, Scotland & Wales has been published. The Equality Measurement Framework (EMF) was developed for the Equality and Human Rights Commission and the Government Equalities Office by a team based at the London School of Economics.
The EMF will provide information for government & public bodies to inform policy, public services and campaigning priorities. It will also be a resource for journalists, voluntary sector groups & academics to find out more about the state of equality and human rights in Britain.
Ofsted: A revised framework for the inspection of the further education & skills sector has been launched by the Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills (Ofsted). The framework continues to place a strong focus on learners’ achievements and includes more emphasis on the capacity of providers to make & sustain improvements, so raising expectations for all learners.
Ofwat/CCWater: Ofwat has published draft proposals for the prices water & sewerage companies can charge their customers between 2010 – 15, following the submission of water companies' final business plans in April 2009. Its proposals would see household bills remaining broadly stable until 2015.
The regulator's scrutiny of companies' business plans will see the average household water and sewerage bill reduced by around 4% or £14 to £330 by 2015. This is before inflation is considered. Companies will still be able to invest extensively. Almost £21bn will be pumped into helping maintain & improve services to consumers. Flooding in 2007 highlighted the risk extreme weather conditions pose to water supplies and the proposed investment will see this risk reduced for around 10m people.
The Consumer Council for Water said it was ‘pleased that the regulator, Ofwat, seems to have listened to customers when putting together its draft decisions on water price limits in England and Wales from 2010 to 2015’.
Ofwat press release ~ CCWater press release ~
TfL: A green woodpecker sitting in grass and a seagull mid-flight clutching an ice cream are just some of the entries that have scooped top prizes from London Underground (LU) and the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds (RSPB) Mind the Bird photography competition.
The competition was launched to encourage Londoners to discover the Capital’s rich & varied bird life and highlight the easy access the Tube can provide to London’s green spaces & wildlife. LU itself is home to 42 bird species that have been recorded on its network while 1,000 plus different species of animals have been spotted along the Tube network.
Prizes for the winners included an annual pass to RSPB reserves, a family pass to the London Transport Museum, and bird-related goodies including books and bird feeders. Images of the winning and shortlisted entrants will be featured on the Mind the Bird section of the TfL website for 4 weeks.
Press release ~ Images of the prize winners ~ Other entrants on Flickr ~ LU’s work to protect the environment ~ RSPB in London
ScotGov: Technology which will help radically reduce fish discards is to be installed on Scottish vessels over the coming weeks. Seven skippers have been selected from a list of volunteers to participate in the pilot that will use CCTV to enhance monitoring, control & observation capability. A similar plan in Denmark has already begun to show hugely successful results in cutting discards.
It's claimed a significant amount of fish that is currently caught could be legally landed but instead is actually discarded. One reason is the mismatch between the quota available for North Sea cod and the increased abundance of the stock, particularly the abundance of marketable fish above the minimum landing size.
In the North Sea 45% of cod caught last year was discarded - according to last month's ICES advice; 50% of West of Scotland haddock "caught in recent years" (ICES wording) is discarded; 94% of the 1-year old North Sea cod that is caught is discarded: and 35% of the North Sea plaice that was caught in 2008 was discarded.
Press release ~ ScotGov - Fisheries ~ WWF Scotland ~ EU press release – phasing out of discards ~ Common Fisheries Policy (CFP) ~ EU cod recovery plan ~ EC published proposals ~ Fishermen on west coast 'facing crisis' ~ Fisheries Research Services ~ EC - Fisheries ~ BBC: Wasted catches hit Europe's cod ~ Telegraph: UK fishing boat filmed dumping 5 tons of fish
ScotGov: There were 832,565 visits to scotland.org in the year from April 2008 to March 2009 - a 51% increase over the previous 12 months - and an average of over 2,281 visitors a day. While the numbers show a strong interest in Scotland from traditional diaspora centres like the US, Canada and Australia, there is a marked increase in visits from other countries.
Opening the Scottish Diaspora Forum at the Scottish Parliament on Saturday, Minister for External Affairs Michael Russell said that these numbers demonstrate a clear opportunity for all Scots to benefit in the Year of Homecoming.
