03 October 2008
Northern Ireland is to follow Scotland and Wales in abolishing prescription charges. Health Minister Michael McGimpsey said that the cost would be reduced to £3 from January 2009 and abolished by April 2010. 'After looking closely at the financial position with my officials, I have concluded that the cost of free prescriptions can be found within my existing budget and without impacting on any existing service,' he said.
Unite is to ballot its members in the prison service for industrial action after they voted overwhelmingly to reject a 2.5% pay offer the union described as 'insulting'. Ian Waddell, national officer for Unite, said: 'It's a pay cut at a time when their costs are spiralling. In the face of a national shortage of the skills our members have, it's a grossly insulting offer. Our members are loyal, hard-working people operating in an extremely difficult environment, and all they want is fair pay for what they do.' Unite will hold talks with the other Prison Service unions, including the Prison Officers Association and the Public and Commercial Services union, to discuss how they might co-ordinate campaigns over pay, and work together to maximise disruption.
Local authorities in Suffolk claim they could save £30m a year if the county were split into three unitary councils. In a submission to the Boundary Committee for England, which has proposed a two-council format, Geoffrey Jaggard, leader of Forest Heath District Council, said: 'Our proposal means residents can escape the threat of all top-level decisions being taken by people miles away from them with very limited local knowledge, while also enjoying a real cut in costs.' The councils say the cost of setting up the unitaries would be recouped within five years.
A campaign against further law-making powers for the Welsh Assembly has been launched by dissident councillors. An all-Wales convention has been set up to canvas opinion in advance of an expected referendum. David Rees, a Labour councillor for Caerphilly and spokesman for the True Wales campaign, said: 'The people of Wales are astute enough to know the answer to the question is either yes or no. Let's have the referendum as soon as possible, so that taxpayers' money can be spent on vital public services.'
There were 9,300 people aged 100 years or over in England and Wales in 2007, according to new experimental population estimates by the Office for National Statistics. This is a more than 90-fold increase since 1911, when the estimated number was about 100. By the end of the 1960s, there were more than 1,000 centenarians, but annual growth rates slowed between 1981 and 2001, reflecting a slowdown in the birth rate a century earlier and deaths caused by the First World War and the 1918/19 flu pandemic. The major contributor to the upward trend is the increased survival rate of people between the ages of 80 and 100 due to improved medical treatment, hygiene and sanitation, housing and living standards and nutrition.
Recorded crime in Scotland has reached its lowest level for more than 25 years, according to police figures, with an 8% fall in crimes committed in 2007/08. In total, 385,500 crimes were reported to the police, the first time the figure has dropped below 400,000 since the early 1980s. There were falls in all eight police force areas. But detective chief superintendent John Carnochan, the head of Scotland's violence reduction unit, said many crimes still went unreported, and work was needed to rid Scotland of violent crime. Non-sexual violent crimes were down by 9% over the period to 12,874; crimes of indecency down by 3% to 6,552 and reported rapes or attempted rapes down by 6% to 1,053.
PFoct2008
