Jobs soar in public sector
Almost a quarter of all people employed in Britain work for the Government, including a third of all female employees, a study has revealed.
Research from Williams de Broë, the stockbroker, shows that the public sector has accounted for almost half of all new jobs in Britain since 1997, when the Blair Government was voted in. The study reveals that there are 6.907 million public sector employees in Britain, of whom about 64 per cent are women, up from 6.04 million in 1997. The total number of employees has risen by 1.908 million to 28.541 million.
Royal bill
Anti-monarchists in Australia complained that a five-day tour by the Prince of Wales, starting in a week’s time, will cost the Australian taxpayer an estimated £400,000, according to reports emanating from Canberra. It is his first visit since 1994. He is not expected to be joined by Camilla Parker Bowles.
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Wave for Ellen
Thousands cheered the record-breaking yachtswoman Dame Ellen MacArthur as she sailed on the River Thames. Dame Ellen, 28, took her trimaran B&Q up river to Tower Bridge then back to the Cutty Sark at Greenwich. She is favourite to win BBC Sports Personality of the Year with the bookmaker William Hill.
In the Navy
The Royal Navy is to sign up to the Diversity Champions Programme of the equal rights charity Stonewall, a scheme designed to promote the fair treatment of gay, lesbian and bisexual recruits. This comes after a change in the law in 2000 that formally permitted the recruitment of homosexuals.
Time traveller
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A British adventurer is looking for crew to help him to re-create in May next year Columbus’s voyage to America. Wayne Booth, 41, from Maryport, Cumbria, will wear period costume, eat the food of the day, use only 500-year-old navigation instruments and is building a replica of the Santa María.
Falconer denies royal love ban
Lord Falconer, the Lord Chancellor, has reiterated his view that the impending civil marriage of the Prince of Wales is permissible under current legislation, after some lawyers had cast doubts on its legality.
He told The Mail On Sunday that the 1949 Marriage Act, which updated the law on civil weddings, did not exclude the Royal Family as an earlier Act of 1836 had done. “I remain confident that the Prince and Mrs Parker Bowles can marry in a civil ceremony,” he said. “We have considered every aspect of this and taken all the appropriate advice.”
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River ‘accident’
Kelly Toye, 23, who drowned with her two children when the car she was driving plunged into the River Lee in Broxbourne, Hertfordshire, on Thursday, was more likely to have been the victim of an accident than suicide, police said. She had had an argument with a former boyfriend, Michael Turner.
Boy, 13, shot
A boy of 13 was shot after a row between groups of youths queueing for a party at a scouts’ hall in Thornton Heath, South London. He was in a stable condition. Detectives from Operation Trident, the Metropolitan Police unit that deals with “black-on-black” gun crime have appealed for witnesses.
Fiancé questioned
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Police have been granted an extra 36 hours to question Paul Dyson after his fiancée, Joanne Nelson, 22, of Hull, vanished on Valentine’s Day from the home they shared. Searches for the missing woman in a beauty spot near Hull and Hessle foreshore were suspended because of bad weather.
Dish of the day
A 35-year-old secretary from Manchester who bought a Clarice Cliff dish for £1 at a car boot sale sold it on for £1,920 at Christie’s first Sunday auction. The Latona Dahlia charger was made in 1933 by the Staffordshire potter, whose Bizarre Ware and Age of Jazz pieces are regarded as design classics.
‘Back to basics’ for new teachers
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Chris Woodhead, the former head of Ofsted, will be involved in the running of a teacher-training course specifically for the independent sector at the University of Buckingham, the country’s only private university.
Government approval has been given for the course, which will aim to challenge what its academics regard as the prevailing “progressive” orthodoxy of other teacher training institutions.
Professor Anthony O’Hear, head of Buckingham’s education department, said that the one-year course would concentrate on practical teaching rather than educational theories about the impact of gender, race or class, adding that the teacher was an authority who should teach, rather than a “facilitator” of learning. “Teaching is largely a practical matter best learnt in good schools in the classroom,” he said.
Sex law debate
A conference in Edinburgh today presided over by Harriet Harman, QC, and Elish Angiolini, QC, the Solicitors General for England and Wales, and Scotland respectively, aims to improve the way in which sex crimes are prosecuted. One in seven of the estimated 190,000 annual sexual assaults in Britain is reported and six per cent get a conviction.
Officers arrested
Two police officers have been arrested on suspicion of attempting to sell drugs. The pair, a man and a woman, are both constables with Thames Valley Police in Berkshire. They were arrested on suspicion of attempting to sell and possession of a Class C drug, perverting the course of justice and corruption.
Baby bat mobiles
Some 100 pregnant pipistrelle bats evicted from their home in the roof of Craig Dunain Hospital nurses’ home outside Inverness are to be rehoused in centrally heated bat boxes strapped to telegraph poles. Two £800 maternity bat units will be constructed for them and heated to a temperature of about 27C (81F).