http://www.telegraph.co.uk/…

Envirowise is calling on businesses to appoint tea monitors to make sure people do not waste water.

It is advising companies to use teapots instead of making individual cups of tea, and hopes to re-introduce tea urns to the workplace.

They say that the moves will cut greenhouse gas emissions and, in turn, help businesses to save money.

Envirowise, which is funded by the Department for Environment Food and Rural Affairs, estimates that more than 30 billion cups of water are unnecessarily boiled each year.

In a statement it tells businesses: “Appoint a tea task force or tea monitor to make sure all your office hot drink-making facilities are as efficient as they could be. Only boil the water you use - this will avoid water and energy being wasted.”

They go on to say that employees should use a teapot when making a round of hot drinks as this “allows you to measure the correct amount of water you will need, and often tastes nicer than making tea in the cup.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

Coastguards have been banned from using flares in rescue missions after they were ruled to be a risk to health and safety.

The Maritime and Coastguard Agency says the devices, which are used to illuminate large areas of land and sea during night-time searches, could cause ‘considerable injury’.

Rescue teams have been told to use ’safer’ alternatives such as torches and night-vision goggles during land-based cliff and beach rescues.

All 400 Coastguard rescue teams now have until the end of the year to use up their cache of flares or hand them over to the Ministry of Defence for disposal.

Yesterday volunteers claimed the decision will put lives at risk because flares are essential for locating lost people and vessels in the dark.

One crewman said: ‘This is the most stupid, ignorant thing I’ve heard of. Flares light up the entire sky and aid rescue missions - something that obviously can’t be done with a hand-held torch.

http://business.timesonline.co.uk/…

Restaurants could be made to reveal on menus how much, if any, of their service charge is paid to waiting staff. The measure will be among proposals announced next week to ensure that diners know what happens to their tips, The Times has learnt.

Some establishments keep all gratuities, while others – particularly restaurant chains – funnel tips into waiters’ basic wages. Ministers have already pledged to close a loophole that allows restaurants and hotels to use service charges to top up pay rates beneath the minimum wage, currently £5.73 an hour.

Next week they will publish proposals for greater information on what happens to discretionary charges, typically 10 per cent or 12.5 per cent.

The consultation comes after negotiations between the industry and the Department for Business, Enterprise & Regulatory Reform.

A senior figure involved in the talks said: “People leaving a gratuity assume that it’s going to the person that served them – they have a right to know whether that’s the case.”

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

Grossly overweight children may be taken from their families and put into care if Britain’s obesity epidemic continues to escalate, council chiefs said yesterday.

The Local Government Association argued that parents who allowed their children to eat too much could be as guilty of neglect as those who did not feed their children at all.

The association said that until now there had been only a few cases when social services had intervened in obesity cases. But it gave warning that local councils may have to take action much more often and, if necessary, put obese children on “at risk” registers or take them into care. It called for new guidelines to be drawn up to help authorities deal with the issue.

“Councils are increasingly having to consider taking action where parents are putting children’s health in real danger,” he said. “As the obesity epidemic grows, these tricky cases will keep on cropping up. Councils would step in to deal with an undernourished and neglected child, so should a case with a morbidly obese child be different? If parents consistently place their children at risk through bad diet and lack of exercise, is it right that a council should step in to keep the child’s health under review?”

“The nation’s expanding waistline threatens to have a devastating impact on our public services. It’s a huge issue for public health, but it also risks placing an unprecedented amount of pressure on council services.”

Deadly facts

— Councils are spending tens of thousands of pounds widening crematorium furnaces to deal with fatter corpses

— Standard coffins are between 16 and 20ins wide (40-50cm) but coffins twice that size are being ordered to fit larger bodies

— Lewisham Council has ordered a 44in cremator from America and is taking coffins from the Midlands. A furnace has just been installed at King’s Lynn, Norfolk, for coffins a metre wide and Blackburn is to buy a 42in cremator

— New ambulances have been introduced across Wales with special equipment for fat patients, including a winch and an extra wide strengthened stretcher

— Fire services are threatening to charge police or hospitals a fee if they are called in to move grossly overweight people out of dangerous buildings

— Many schools are having to adapt their furniture to cope with heavier, wider children. Each larger table and chair costs about £30

— It is estimated that nearly 2,000 people are too fat to work

Another problem associated with socialism. One person’s problem is socialized and then everyone believes they have a say in your life. Isn’t that counter to what universal health care was advertised as? Everyone has care regardless of status or condition? You’d now be free from the worry of obtaining care. The problem is when you remove the incentive to take care of yourself you’re more likely to be worse off. The cost of not caring for oneself is spread out over the populous.

Karen DeCoster over at LewRockwell.com/blog made a good point: “I thought that the Department of Health banned the use of the word “obese” when referencing children?” Perhaps the local authorities haven’t gotten the memo yet.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/…

Pot-holed roads, crumbling schools, litter-strewn streets – there’s no shortage of problem areas crying out for their attention.But councils believe they have found a better use for their money: reducing the number of holes in chip shop salt shakers.

Research has suggested that slashing the holes from the traditional 17 to five could cut the amount people sprinkle on their food by more than half.Trickle or Treat: Chip shop owner Carol Ackerman shows off an old 17-hole shaker and the new model And so at least six councils have ordered five-hole shakers – at taxpayers’ expense – and begun giving them away to chip shops and takeaways in their areas.Leading the way has been Gateshead Council, which spent 15 days researching the subject of salty takeaways before declaring the new five-hole cellars the solution. Officers collected information from businesses, obtained samples of fish and chips, measured salt content and ‘carried out experiments to determine how the problem of excessive salt being dispensed could be overcome by design’.

They decided that the five-hole pots would reduce the amount of salt being used by more than 60 per cent yet give a ‘visually acceptable sprinkling’ that would satisfy the customer. The council commissioned Drywite Ltd – a catering equipment company based in the West Midlands – to make five-hole shakers and bought 1,000 of them at a cost of £2,000, giving them away to fast-food outlets in their areas.

Drywite confirms that it has since received orders for the shakers from at least five other councils, including Rochdale Borough in Greater Manchester.

Another giving the shakers away is Labour-controlled Middlesbrough Council, where the idea has run into fierce criticism.Cllr Chris Hobson, leader of the Conservatives, said: ‘This is just silly, a total waste of money in an area where council tax is very high. I’m all for good health but do they really think they are going to stop people using as much salt simply by putting fewer holes in thecellar? They’ll just shake it for longer.’

Beryl Scott, who owns the Chipchase Chippy in Linthorpe in the city, said a council worker had visited the previous week to explain the merits of less salty fish and chips. ‘He said he had a salt cellar with five holes to give me free.I thought it was a joke. It doesn’t matter how many holes it has, people are going to put on as much salt as they want.’

Another local chip shop owner, Carol Ackerman, who runs Carol’s Plaice in the suburb of Acklam, said: ‘People will just put on more salt if they want more. ‘In fact, we have had some people unscrewing the lids to do so.’ Gateshead Council defended its decision. A spokesman said: ‘Research carried out by us discovered customers were often receiving huge quantities of salt with their fish and chips – up to half their daily allowance. The council was so disturbed it decided to commission a manufacturer to produce a salt shaker with fewer holes, which it distributed free to every fish and chip shop and hot food takeaway in Gateshead. ‘We believe the cost to be a small price to pay for potentially saving lives.’The scheme is being promoted by the Local Authorities Coordinators of Regulatory Services, which is responsible for ensuring councils follow food hygiene rules. A spokesman said: ‘Heart disease costs taxpayers £7billion a year so to say that projects such as this are a waste of money is mind-boggling.’

17 holes?! That seems excessive.

I don’t doubt that increasing the overhead of getting the same ammount of salt would generally reduce the amout used. I believe there have been studies which showed that smaller plates and bowls tend to reduce total consumption of a meal. However, this is simply retarded. If the research they did was so conclusive why not attempt to educate salt providers and consumers? And why did they do research on this in the first place? Isn’t that sort of thing usually done at a national level? Not that I would prefer that. I’d likely be easier to toss out these local busybodies than the national ones.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/…

The National Health Service is providing dying cancer patients with drugs that are five times less effective than those available privately and is refusing to treat them if they try to buy medicines themselves.

One drug for kidney cancer, routinely available through public health systems in most European countries but not to British patients, can reduce the size of tumours in 31% of patients, compared with just 6% of those prescribed the standard NHS drug.

The growing row over “co-payments” has prompted the government to reconsider the ban. Alan Johnson, the health secretary, has promised a “fundamental rethink” of the policy.

Research presented at the American Society of Clinical Oncology found that kidney patients taking the new drug Sutent lived six months longer than those prescribed alpha interferon, the NHS treatment.

The failure of the NHS to make more effective drugs available to cancer patients has been condemned as “unethical” by leading doctors.

A woman with bowel cancer is fighting for the right to pay for a drug that could extend her life long enough for her to spend Christmas with her grandchildren.

Sheila Norrington, 59, a former NHS medical secretary from Maidstone, Kent, has been told by doctors that if she buys the drug Erbitux, which the health service will not pay for, she will lose her state-funded cancer care. Erbitux is the only drug capable of treating her advanced bowel cancer.

Norrington’s husband, Goff, 61, a former sales manager, said: “We have been told that if we pay for it ourselves we will be thrown off the NHS completely and we will need to pay for everything privately. We are devastated. This is not going to cure my wife, but if it keeps her alive a little bit longer, then we would pay for it.”

The couple say that although they could pay for a few cycles of the drug, which costs about £3,000 a month, they could not pay for all Norrington’s care, including scans, blood tests and consultations.

Goff Norrington added: “We have two young granddaughters and this could make the difference between sitting round the table with them at Christmas or not. We think it is deplorable that patients can get this drug almost anywhere in Europe but we cannot get it in the UK.”

A spokesman for Maidstone and Tunbridge Wells NHS Trust said: “We are governed by Department of Health policy on this issue.”

A poll for The Sunday Times shows strong support for allowing co-payment in the National Health Service, with 89% saying that people who buy additional cancer drugs should continue to get free NHS treatment.

Only 5% think allowing co-payment would create a two-tier NHS. Until now this has been the position taken by Alan Johnson, the health secretary.

Ministers had feared that allowing co-payment would upset less well-off patients, but the YouGov poll of nearly 1,800 people shows strong backing across the social spectrum and supporters of all three main parties.

Lee over at MooreWatch.com I think said it all: “This, of course, begs the question.  If compassionate free government healthcare can’t provide, y’know, actual healthcare to patients, and they are forced to paying massive amounts of money to buy their own treatments, maybe the solution to the problem is less free government healthcare and more private sector solutions.”

When will these people realize that the government can not negate scarcity? The only thing that can bring more and better healthcare to the masses is an increase in their wealth and the only way to do that is capital accumulation through free market capitalism.

http://www.examiner.com/…

Six parents of chronically truant San Francisco schoolchildren - each of whom missed more than 50 days of class - were arraigned Tuesday before a superior court judge on infractions that charged the guardians with failing to make sure their kids receive an education.

The infractions, pursued by District Attorney Kamala Harris, carry a $100 fine. If the truancy continues, the next step would be misdemeanor charges of neglecting a child’s education, charges that could land a parent in county jail for up to a year with a fine up to $2,500, Harris said Tuesday.

The parents - Connie Wilson, Jamelia Kellom, Shanae Seastrunk, Kenneth Reed, Chanell Brown and Joshua Pomar - were the first to be prosecuted under stricter enforcement guidelines announced by Harris at the beginning of the school year.

The number of students skipping school in San Francisco has long been above statewide averages and costs the already cash-strapped district more than $5 million in state funding every year. One absence costs the San Francisco Unified School District about $42, according to district data.

Among the most common reasons for truancies, especially among elementary school children, are child care issues, drug abuse by parents, lack of transportation, family abandonment and the students ditching classes, according to school district Superintendant Carlos Garcia.

“You know, little kids, what rights do they have? I think we as a society need to stand up for their rights, the right to an education,” Garcia said.

1. Education is not a right. You don’t have a right to other people’s labor. Your existence doesn’t create an obligation for others to provide you with anything. Taxation is theft, period. 2. The absence wouldn’t cost anyone anything if there wasn’t compulsory government schooling. This whole “your actions cost us all” “problem” only exists because these power hungry, megalomaniacs who think they know better than everyone one else use guns to force people into participating in things they could be doing voluntarily. If the service was so important as these people like to claim why then wouldn’t the free market be able to provide it? If you look at it historically it could… what has changed? Could it be that religious and socialist idealists wanted to control the populous? Could it be that compulsory education was instituted not for the children but those in power who wish to propagandize their utopian values?

http://www.cato-at-liberty.org/2008/06/13/obama-tax-proposals/

Candidate Obama has introduced an array of tax proposals, which he discusses in various places on his campaign website. There are four overlapping themes in the Obama tax proposals the way I see it:

1. Social engineering.
2. Discrimination.
3. Economic micromanagement.
4. Empty populism.

Under social engineering, I would put Obama’s plan to greatly increase the dependent care tax credit. That would further encourage parents to find institutional day care for their children, rather than providing care themselves.

Under discrimination, I would put Obama’s proposed special tax break for the elderly. The federal fiscal system is already heavily tilted in favor of the elderly, thus it is unclear why Obama would want to further discriminate against the young.

Obama’s “American Opportunity Tax Credit” also creates unfair discrimination. This new tax break for college essentially increases subsidizes for future lawyers, accountants, and other professionals. Why subsidize these folks who will likely have much higher earnings than factory workers, retail clerks, and others who don’t go to college?

Under economic micromanagement, I would put Obama’s Patriot Employer Act, which provides tax breaks to certain businesses that jump through hoops related to hiring, wages, and other items.  Obama wants to cut capital gains taxes on certain investments and increase capital gains taxes on others, and he is proposing various narrow energy tax breaks.

Under empty populism, I would put Obama’s railings against “tax haven abuse” and “corporate loopholes.” If Mr. Obama really wanted to reduce corporate tax avoidance–rather than just using it as a campaign prop–he would join with John McCain and call for an across-the-board corporate rate cut.

A final category might be “innocuous tax cuts that do nothing for economic growth.” Here I would put Obama’s $500 payroll tax credit called “making work pay.” If Obama had wanted to spur employment, he should have proposed a cut in the payroll tax rate, which would change the marginal incentive to work, unlike the proposed credit.

In sum, Obama’s tax proposals are pretty awful. It is true that many Republicans and Democrats have proposed similarly bad tax ideas over the years. But Obama can be contrasted with candidate McCain, who thus far has avoided narrow favoritism in his tax proposals, and favors broad-based tax reductions designed to spur economic growth.

This is “change?” Looks like more of the same failed policies and economic ignorance.