Met police suspend sergeant over racism allegations

The Metropolitan police sergeant was suspended after allegedly making a racist comment in front of other officers. Photograph: Alamy

Scotland Yard has announced its 14th investigation into alleged racism since the controversy over prejudice within the force began six weeks ago.

A Metropolitan police statement said a sergeant has been suspended pending an investigation into racist comments he is alleged to have made on Wednesday. He is the 28th Met officer known to be under investigation or facing prosecution since the racism row began.

The controversy began at the end of March when the Guardian released a mobile phone recording in which Constable Alex MacFarlane was captured allegedly racially abusing a black suspect.

The Crown Prosecution Service recently announced that MacFarlane, 52, will face prosecution for racially aggravated public disorder — reversing its earlier decision not to charge the officer.

On Wednesday, the CPS said it had reversed its decision not to prosecute a second police officer, accused of assaulting a 15-year-old black boy. Both incidents occurred on the same night.

The second constable will be charged with assault occasioning actual bodily harm. There was no suggestion in the CPS announcement that there was any racial dimension to the second prosecution.

A third Met constable, Philip Juhasz, 31, was recently convicted of racially aggravated public disorder after telling a Pakistani takeaway manager in north London to "go back to your fucking country" after he refused to serve him discounted goods.

The Met commissioner, Bernard Hogan-Howe, has responded to the series of revelations in the Guardian about alleged racism by promising to "drive out" racists from the force.

Unusually, the Met did not provide many details about where in the capital the latest alleged incident occurred. The force said the incident did not involve members of the public.

"The incident happened at around 08:20hrs on Wednesday 9 May in the north London area. The male officer is alleged to have made a racist comment in the company of other officers. One of his colleagues subsequently reported the incident to a supervisor," the statement said. "The police sergeant has been suspended from duty while enquiries continue."

The case has been referred to the Independent Police Complaints Commission.

The Met is the only force in the country compelled to automatically refer all racism-related cases to the IPPC.

New protocols for dealing with racism complaints at the Met were introduced last month amid growing concern at the scale and nature of complaints.

The Met statement said: "Racism and racist language is totally unacceptable. The action taken in response to this allegation demonstrates the [Met's] determination to act swiftly and to support those that challenge others when alleged racist language is used."

Senior police officers argue the Met has improved significantly since the Macpherson inquiry in 1999 branded the force "institutionally racist".

However, the Independent recently obtained figures indicating complaints about racism in the police nationwide have more than doubled in the last 10 years.

Ed Miliband considering shadow cabinet reshuffle

Shadow work and pensions secretary could be stripped of role if Labour leader conducts limited reshuffle and rethinks policy review








Liam Byrne faces losing responsibility for the Labour policy review. Photograph: Leon Neal/AFP/Getty Images
Ed Miliband has been discussing whether to conduct a shadow cabinet reshuffle that would strip Liam Byrne of responsibility for the party's policy review. It is understood that Byrne, the shadow work and pensions secretary, is resisting the move and no decisions have been made. The limited reshuffle could occur as early as Monday.

Under plans being considered by Miliband, Byrne may also lose the work and pensions brief and could even be ditched from the shadow cabinet. Miliband has already told the shadow cabinet he is rethinking the way the policy review is conducted.

Byrne is seen as a Blairite, and there have been tensions in the party about how tough a line to take on welfare. Labour supported a regional welfare cap after it opposed a blanket national welfare cap. It has also supported introducing a duty to work for people who have been claiming unemployment benefits for a year.

Byrne, one of the more energetic and intellectual minds on the frontbench, has also been pushing Labour towards support for a return to the contributory principle in welfare. But there have been difficulties between Byrne and parts of the leader's office over consulting on major policy announcements, including ensuring Labour MPs are told in advance about key policy changes.

Byrne in turn has been frustrated at times by some decision-making structures in the leader's office, although recent restructuring of the leader's office has eased problems.

A Labour spokesman said the party did not comment on reshuffle speculation.

It had been expected Byrne would stand down as MP for Birmingham Hodge Hill if he was nominated as the Labour candidate for Birmingham mayor. But the city's voters rejected the concept of mayor in a referendum on 3 May, leaving Byrne free to remain active in the shadow cabinet.

Some of Miliband's advisers believe he should be removed from overhauling party policy. It is also understood the Labour leader has told the shadow cabinet he does not want a full two-year policy programme completed at this stage.

Byrne, with the agreement of Miliband, had set up a series of policy reviews and commissions with the intention of the policies being published this autumn or the following year in time for the party conference. In recent years Labour has prepared lengthy documents that then get amended and voted on by party conference, and by the party's elected national policy forum.

Byrne is expecting to publish five or so brief policy items from the shadow cabinet before the policy forum next month.

It has been agreed that with the election still three years away, publication of a long list of policies at this stage of the parliament would be politically unwise. The shadow cabinet has instead been briefed to produce signature policies that create a buzz around Labour.

An example cited was a visit to Denmark and Norway by Byrne and the shadow education secretary, Stephen Twigg, where they looked at free childcare for the poor, leading to a front page piece in the Observer.

It has been acknowledged that the policy review process has been unwieldy, and has not been going along at a uniform pace. But the disagreements may also reflect tensions between those that believe it is unwise for the party to come up with any detailed policy at this stage, and those who believe it is only through the discussion of specific policies that the party will renew itself.

Shadow cabinet sources also acknowledge that the existence of a five-year fixed term parliament changes the pace of opposition, since it is not credible to argue that the party is at this stage on the verge of power. That in turn puts less pressure on the party from the media to set out detailed policies.

Miliband at recent question and answer sessions has said he believes that one route to re-engagement with politics is not to over-promise.

One shadow cabinet member said: "There would be concern in the shadow cabinet if Liam were to lose any of his responsibilities. He is one of the most intellectually subtle and thoughtful politicians in the party."

Road safety budget cuts risking lives, advisers warn

'The focus on austerity is putting lives at risk,' says parliamentary advisory council for transport safety




The latest statistics point to the first increase in road deaths in the UK since 2003, the parliamentary advisory council for transport safety says. Photograph: David Jones/PA
Spending cuts are putting lives at risk on Britain's roads, a parliamentary advisory group has warned, as the annual death toll looks set to increase for the first time in years,

A report by the parliamentary advisory council for transport safety (Pacts) found 65% of local authorities have cut road safety budgets in the past year, with one in two believing they no longer have sufficient resources to adequately promote road safety.

Robert Gifford, the executive director of Pacts, said: "This report has a clear message to government: the focus on austerity is putting lives at risk."

Road deaths had been falling steadily until last year. In 2010, 1850 people died on the roads, the lowest figure since national records began in 1926.

But the latest statistics and European Commission findings suggest that, when final figures are counted, 2011 would go down as the first year since 2003 when the number road deaths increased.

Gifford said that was particularly concerning given the economic context: "This rise is especially worrying as the country is still in recession. Historically, deaths rise as economic output increases, not as it falls. The government should be deeply concerned by this change in course."

The research found bad news for the government about the reception given to its road safety policy, outlined in a strategic framework document published this time a year ago. Only one in six local authorities believe the impact of the new ideas was positive, with 39% saying they had made things worse.

Gifford said: "Ministers should be worried by the apparent lack of confidence in the much-vaunted framework document published last year. This has clearly failed to gain professional support."

He called for a renewed debate on road safety: "Where measures are cost-effective and achievable, society has a moral and economic responsibility to act for the public benefit."

Mike Penning, the road safety minister, said: "I am not complacent about road safety even though Britain has some of the safest roads in the world. Road safety is a top priority and we are determined to dramatically reduce deaths and injuries still further.

"We do not believe that further persuasion is needed on the importance of road safety through 'Whitehall knows best' national targets or central diktats. We removed ring-fencing from local authority grants so councils would have increased flexibility to respond to, and act on, local concerns, and we would expect that road safety would remain a priority for local communities and for local spending to reflect this."

• This article was corrected on Friday 11 May 2012 because it gave the number of deaths on the road in 2010 as 850 rather than the actual figure of 1,850.

Richard Hamilton's last painting to be centrepiece of posthumous exhibition

The artist, one of Britain's best-loved of the 20th century, worked on the National Gallery show until the eve of his death last year

A detail from Richard Hamilton's The Balzac, inspired by a short story by the writer, which is the centrepiece of a National Gallery exhibition. Photograph: Richard Hamilton

The last unfinished picture by Richard Hamilton, one of the most admired and best-loved British artists of the 20th century, will be the centrepiece of a National Gallery exhibition on which he was working until the eve of his death last September.

Hamilton died just short of his 90th birthday, and in his last months he knew he would not get it finished and that the exhibition would prove a valedictory from beyond the grave. On his last working day he was completing the layout for the gallery's Sunley room, a labyrinth through earlier works leading to the last picture – which poignantly deals with the failure of art.

"This was the picture literally on his easel, or rather in his computer, on the day he died," curator Christopher Riopelle said. "The whole concept of the exhibition changed very much, shaped by his knowledge that it would be his last."

Hamilton, credited with launching the British pop art movement with his 1956 collage Just What Is It That Makes Today's Homes So Different, So Appealing?, was a passionate supporter of free admission to national collections. The exhibition, which could well have been a moneyspinning blockbuster like the Lucian Freud retrospective around the corner in the National Portrait Gallery, will be free.

In order to ensure that his chosen works would be available for theNational Gallery, he deferred a major international touring show which will be seen at four cities in Europe and the United States, including the Tate in London, from next year.

It will include many works linked to his lifelong interest in the art of Marcel Duchamp, and to pictures in the National Gallery collection including his startling version of Fra Angelico's 15th-century Annunciation, with two naked women taking the places of the demure angel and Virgin.

The exhibition will culminate in three large working versions of his last work, inspired by a 19th-century short story by Honore de Balzac, The Unknown Masterpiece, in which an artist invites his peers to view a painting in which he claims to have created a nude indistinguishable from real life: they see only meaningless swirls and daubs of colour. In Hamilton's multi-layered version, the artists are based on self-portraits by Poussin, Courbet and Titian, standing by a reclining naked woman based on a 19th-century photograph, in turn referencing classical nudes including Titian's sexy Venus of Urbino.

The work will be titled The Balzac. Hamilton's widow, Rita, thought he would not like it called The Masterpiece, in case people thought he was claiming that honour for himself.

"The origin of the exhibition was one day when Nick [Nicholas Penny, director of the National Gallery] said: 'Come on, we're going to lunch at Richard's," Riopelle recalled. "The food was excellent, as always at Richard's, as was the wine, as always at Richard's. We probably had far too much for lunchtime – but at the end of it the germ of the exhibition was there. We lost two giants within a few months of one another last year in Hamilton and Freud. I'm not sure we're realised the scale of the loss yet."

Richard Hamilton: the Late Works is at the National Gallery, London WC2N, from 10 October to 13 January

Helicopter ditches into North Sea

Fourteen oil workers and crew airlifted to safety after helicopter makes 'controlled landing' off coast of Aberdeen

Emergency services safely rescue 14 oil workers and crew from a helicopter that ditched in the North Sea off Aberdeen Link to this video
Emergency services have safely rescued 14 oil workers and crew from a helicopter that ditched in the North Sea off Aberdeen soon after midday.


A major rescue operation began after the Super Puma EC225 helicopter operated by Bond Offshore made a "controlled descent" when a low-pressure warning light came on during a flight.


Three search and rescue helicopters, supported by a lifeboat and the coastguard, were scrambled. after the helicopter ditched safely in the sea about 25 miles south-east of Aberdeen.


The incident took place at about 12.15pm. A spokesman for Bond Offshore said all 14 people on board safely transferred to life rafts and were rescued shortly afterwards.


No significant injuries were reported. and Aberdeen Royal Infirmary said its accident and emergency department was expecting 14 people to be admitted for a precautionary assessment.


A Bond Offshore spokesman said: "A low-pressure oil warning light came on and the helicopter made a controlled descent and landed in the North Sea. It didn't crash."


The Maritime and Coastguard Agency said: "Aberdeen Coastguard was alerted at 12.15pm that a Bond helicopter was en route from Aberdeen to Maersk Resilient, and then onwards to ENSCO 102, when they broadcast an alert that they were forced to ditch the aircraft into the sea."


Helicopter flights from Aberdeen have been temporarily suspended.


Dozens of helicopters fly in and out of Aberdeen – Europe's busiest heliport – every day to service the North Sea's oil and gas platforms.


This is the first significant helicopter emergency since April 2009, when 16 people on board another Bond Super Puma helicopter were killed after a major gearbox failure caused it to crash into the North Sea.


In February 2009 another Bond helicopter crashed from a low level into the North Sea in thick fog. All 18 passengers survived, with a few minor injuries.


Jim McAuslan, general secretary of the British Airline Pilots' Association (BALPA), said the cause of the ditching would be investigated by the air accident investigation branch, and said the Civil Aviation Authority ought to study its findings to see if any safety trends in North Sea flights were developing.


But he paid tribute to the skills of the Super Puma pilots. "This looks like a terrific piece of airmanship from very skilled pilots," McAuslan said. "A helicopter ditching is one of the most difficult manoeuvres in commercial aviation and yet reports indicate that every passenger and crew member on board has been winched to safety."

National day of action spreads to prisons

Protest meetings outside jails across UK called off after government views stoppages as industrial action

Prison officers at a protest meeting outside Barlinnie prison in Glasgow as part of a day of action by public sector staff against pension reforms. Photograph: Jeff J Mitchell/Getty Images

Prison officers made a dramatic contribution to a day of action by public sector workers with a wave of unofficial protest meetings, before a threatened injunction forced them back to work.

The Prison Officers Association claimed more than 80% of its 25,000 members had supported the stoppages, which appeared to contravene a ban on strikes by prison staff. "This has been a great success in raising the public's awareness to the inherent dangers that the coalition government's policy change will bring to the prison service in the future," said a spokesman.

The protests came as civil servants, lecturers and health workers took part in the third wave of national strikes against pension changes in less than 12 months, and amid reports that the government is planning a system to assess and sack underperforming civil servants.

The Cabinet Office said about 150,000 employees stayed at home, as the general secretary of the Unite union, Len McCluskey, pledged more strikes next month and throughout 2012.

The POA action was a surprise addition to protests. Steve Gillan, the association's general secretary, said the organisation had been warned by the Treasury solicitor that ministers considered the protest meetings tantamount to industrial action and would seek an injunction if they continued.

The prisoners at the jails affected were put on a "lockdown" regime, but Gillan said minimum cover arrangements were in place to ensure prisoner safety.

Echoing concerns among the public sector workers who staged walkouts on Thursday, the POA is unhappy about plans to link the normal pension age for prison officers to the state retirement age.

"The state pension age will ultimately rise to 68 and it is unrealistic to expect 68-year-olds to walk landings and grapple with prisoners aged 20 or 21," said Gillan.

As police officers marched nearby against proposed pay changes and job cuts, a rally in Westminster marked a national strike against public sector pension changes by five unions: the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) civil servants' union; health workers from Unite; teachers and lecturers from the University and College Union; the Nipsa civil servants' union in Northern Ireland; and Royal Navy support staff at the RMT union. The PCS, the biggest participant in the walkouts, claimed support among members was "very strong".

Mark Serwotka, the PCS general secretary, told the rally "if we lose this fight, we will regret it for generations to come", adding that he would ask the TUC to reopen talks with the government on pensions.

Referring to Wednesday's comments by the cabinet secretary Francis Maude, that the protests are "futile", Serwotka said: "Francis Maude may say this is futile – but I say it's inspiring."

Serwotka added that members' pensions were being "robbed" by changes that include higher contributions and raising the public sector pension age.

Speaking at the rally, McCluskey said: "If the government thought their fight was over, they best think again. There will be more strike action in June and on into winter, spring and on, and on."

The Daily Telegraph reported that plans to overhaul the civil servicewere expected to be published within the next month. Aimed at bringing government departments into line with private companies, managers would be expected to rate employees under a "rigorous assessment regime".

In an interview with Francis Maude before the day of strikes, the Cabinet Office minister had said it was a myth that civil servants could not be sacked and that forcing managers to rank people would be one of the issues "we will be addressing in our civil service reform plans".

In a personal speech, McCluskey paid tribute to the care his mother, who died this week, had received from care workers.

Bob Crow, general secretary of the RMT union, drew parallels with the continent as he called for a nationwide walkout in the autumn. "You know the general strike action in Greece and France? We're going to bring it to Britain."

The government played down the impact of the stoppages, saying 102,000 civil servants had stayed at home compared with 146,000 in a national day of action in November, when other civil service unions took part.

The Cabinet Office said nine out of 700 jobcentres had closed, while four courts had shut. Major airports including Heathrow said there had been no significant disruption or delays at immigration halls following stoppages by PCS members in the Border Agency. The Department of Health said the strike by Unite members including radiologists, pharmacists and health visitors had "little impact" on the NHS, with some hospitals claiming that there had been no walkouts. Unite said "tens of thousands" of NHS and Ministry of Defence employees went on strike.

Maude ruled out reopening talks on changes to pensions for education, health, civil service and local government employees. He added: "The combination of the dedicated majority of public service workers who came to work as usual and our rigorous contingency plans ensured that public services were mainly unaffected."

The PCS and Unite are proposing another day of national walkouts next month and the TUC is planning a repeat of the March for the Alternative that attracted 250,000 people last year.

Marchers police themselves as protest calls for role reversal

The tens of thousands of police marching on central London made impressive, and unusually orderly, demonstrators

Police officers march on London, wearing 16,000 black caps to symbolise potential job losses. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

They were out of uniform, of course, but some habits die hard. As tens of thousands of off-duty police officers gathered in central London on Thursday to march against job cuts and changes to their pension deals, march organisers handed them baseball caps, which the overwhelmingly majority promptly, obediently, put on.

Some of the hats – 16,000 to be precise – were black, to represent the number of jobs that the Police Federation of England and Wales estimates could be lost under proposed cuts to policing services. Others were white, representing nothing more than that they had run out of black ones. It made an impressive image – a long, snaking and terribly well-behaved crowd, looking exactly like a bunch of police officers on their day off.

This was no leisurely day out, however. The march, past the Home Office, the Houses of Parliament and along Whitehall, might have been unusually mannerly – "the quietest demo ever", as the shadow defence secretary, Jim Murphy, tweeted from his office overlooking the route – but the mood was determined and frequently angry.

"Utterly betrayed," read the hand-made placard carried by David Ginn, a Metropolitan police dog handler based in south-west London. "No right to strike – every right to be screwed."

"Of course we're angry, we're very angry," he said as the march set off. "We've been treated with the most grotesque disrespect by this government." It was not all their fault, he acknowledged, and some belt-tightening was necessary. "We will take our share of the hit, but it would seem that our share is disproportionate, because we cannot strike." Of his team of 10, eight had turned out, all of them either on a scheduled day off or taking leave.

"We're here to show the public how strongly we feel about this," said one young frontline officer from Surrey, who, like many of those marching, preferred not to give her name. "I don't think the public realise what we're going through." She signed up three years ago to what she thought was a career for life, she said, but with 20% cuts to the policing budget, she was already seeing job losses among her team and fewer chances of promotion. People feared for the jobs, and she admitted she had thought of looking elsewhere. "The problem is, all the jobs I would be good at, civil service jobs, they are all being cut back too."

However great the frustration of those involved, it was not only their orderliness that marked this out as no ordinary protest. "All right mate!" shouted one marcher as the demo began to snake towards the Home Office. He had spotted a friend among the on-duty officers charged with policing the demo – distinguished by their fluorescent jackets and slightly bemused air – and bounded across to give him a hug. "Haven't seen you in ages! What have you been up to?"

Similarly, as the march processed along Whitehall ("Caps off, lads, as we pass the cenotaph"), it passed a number of police vans full of officers keeping an eye on a small, separate demonstration outside Downing Street, against the visit of the Pakistani prime minister. A handful of police marchers began to applaud as they passed the vans. One on-duty officer raised a discreet fist in a salute of solidarity.

As they rounded on to Parliament Square, the marchers encountered a separate protest being co-ordinated by striking public sector workers, and matters became briefly surreal. Some of those holding Unite banners applauded, while one man next to them shouted: "Remember what you lot did to the miners!" A tiny but rowdy group from the Socialist Workers party shouted: "Charge the police!"

"Have a bath," came the reply.

Simon Newport, a constable with North Wales police in Colwyn Bay, had worked from 6pm to 3am on Wednesday night, and come straight from his shift to catch the coach to London at 4am. It had been a typical night – two assaults, several domestics, paperwork for a couple of arrests. "A quiet one." All the same, he said, "you would be alarmed if I told you how few of us were on duty … Staff levels are critical."

Parallel cuts to other services make things even harder, he said, citing a recent example when ambulance service shortages meant an injured woman had to wait so long for treatment that "it led to a public order situation", requiring the police to make arrests.

"I'm careful not to scaremonger, but for the small force that we are, and the large area we cover, we are close to breaking point at certain times of day."

Two hundred officers felt strongly enough about the issue to make the journey from north Wales, a pattern echoed in forces across the country. How many had attended in total? The Police Federation was confident there had been more than 35,000. The Metropolitan police, as is now their habit with all protests, declined to say.

Police officers march in protest against cuts

More than 30,000 police officers from across the UK demonstrate against police reforms, budget cuts and pay cuts


Police officers demonstrate in London. Link to this video

The biggest demonstration by police officers held in England and Wales on Thursday demanded the government halts its cuts and "privatisation" of the service.

More than 30,000 officers marched through the capital, said the Police Federation, in the only action they are legally entitled to take, in a show of defiance against budget cuts and proposed changes to the service.

The last time they carried out a similar demonstration, in 2008, they numbered around 20,000, and the federation said this time it was a display of the anger of rank and file officers faced with cuts to their pay, pensions and changes to their working conditions.

Some officers wore T-shirts demanding full industrial rights – the last time officers went on strike was in 1919 but the government banned them from taking such action again. In a symbolic nod to the 16,000 officers the federation say will be cut in the next two years, the same number of marchers wore black baseball caps as they walked from Millbank, past the Home Office to Parliament Square and on to Waterloo Place.

Carrying banners stating "Police for public not for profit", the marchers booed and slow-handclapped as they passed the Home Office. Others chanted "Theresa May, Theresa May, leave our pensions and our pay". All the officers had taken a day off work to join the protest.

Phil Abbiss, from the West Yorkshire federation, said the demonstration was the voice of officers protesting against the 20% cuts being imposed on the service by the home secretary. "It is simple, we cannot protect the public whilst sustaining losses in police numbers of this magnitude," he said. "The government's answer is to privatise us by stealth so the likes of G4S will be patrolling the streets, that is why we are all here today."

The protesters used Twitter to call in support and raise their concerns with the policing minister Nick Herbert. In response, Herbert wrote a letter which he posted on Thursday morning on the Home Office website, stating: "All organisations have to keep pace with the modern world. I know that the spending reductions which police forces are required to make are challenging, but they are necessary." He said the changes were not just about cuts – but about professionalisation, modern training, equipment and cutting bureaucracy.

But PC Shaun Robinson, 30, who took his wife and two young sons to the march, said: "What's being done is being called modernisation, but it's not modernisation. At times we barely operate with what staff we've got. We're told we've got record numbers of police, but that's record numbers with an ever-increasing population. It's just ludicrous."

Many marching said the employment protection they had as crown servants was being removed by the recommendations of Tom Winsor – who has carried out a review of police pay and conditions – which the government has accepted. As such they wanted full industrial rights in return for the loss of their job protection.

One detective constable from the Met police, who did not want to be named, said: "Our problem is we don't have a union, so this march is the strongest action we can take. I think there are a lot of us wanting full industrial rights, and the right to strike. If you take away our job security we should have the right to defend our jobs."

Police strength reached a record high of roughly 143,000 towards the end of the Labour government but the latest Home Office figures show numbers at their lowest for a decade at 136,000.

Under the Winsor recommendations the way officers are paid will change, allowances will be cut, the ban on compulsory redundancies will be lifted and there could be pay cuts for officers who fail the fitness test. Winsor has also proposed ending the right for officers to retire after 30 years and has called for entry at inspector level for potential high-flyers.

Paul McKeever, the chair of the Police Federation, told the marchers they were "the best police officers in the world and you deserve far better than the government are currently giving you".

The demonstation was met with sympathy by senior police figures. "There is no denying that officers from across the country have shown the strength of their feeling today about the future of the police service," said Hugh Orde, president of the Association of Chief Police Officers. "Chief officers sympathise with the demands placed on the officers and staff in our charge. We recognise the financial uncertainty created by the current economic situation and changes to job security and pensions. We firmly believe that proposals for change have to be viewed for their cumulative impact and recognise the unique demands policing makes of police officers and staff."

A spokesman for David Cameron said: "The Government inherited a very tough fiscal challenge. We are having to make spending cuts across the board.

"We think the reductions in spending on the police are challenging but manageable and that the police will still have the resources that they need to do the important work that they do."

Household chemicals' 'cocktail effect' raises cancer concerns for watchdog

Phthalates, PCBs and parabens should be used with greater caution, claims environment agency – but ban not recommended

Parabens, commonly found in suntan lotion, are among the endocrine disrupting chemicals under suspicion. Photograph: Duncan Willetts/Sportsphoto/Allstar

Common chemicals found in household products, cosmetics and medicines may be causing cancers, fertility problems and other illnesses including diabetes and obesity, according to a study.

Europe's environmental watchdog, the European Environment Agency, has warned that products containing endocrine disrupting chemicals should be treated with caution until their true effects are better known. However, it stopped short of recommending a ban of any specific products. A few such chemicals have already been banned, but many are still in widespread use.

Jacqueline McGlade, executive director of the EEA, said: "Scientific research gathered over the last few decades shows us that endocrine disruption is a real problem, with serious effects on wildlife, and possibly people. It would be prudent to take a precautionary approach to many of these chemicals until their effects are more fully understood."

She singled out for particular scrutiny five classes of chemicals: phthalates, often found in pesticides; bisphenol A and other PCBs, used to make plastics and sometimes, controversially, used to make baby's feeding bottles; parabens, found increasingly in sunscreen; and the chemicals used in contraceptive pills.

But McGlade said that the real problem was not a single chemical or product, but the fact that we are constantly exposed to so many of them, and the interactions between them in our bodies. "It's the cocktail effect," she said. That effect is one of the most difficult to study.

Endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) interfere with the body's hormone systems, which is why some of the most common are those found in the contraceptive pill. They are increasingly found in a wide range of products, from cosmetics to plastics. For decades, researchers have suspected potential links between the increasingly common chemicals and a range of human illnesses, and numerous studies have been undertaken.

But the EEA study is the first to take a comprehensive review of the evidence gathered over the past 15 years, and it concludes that there is serious cause for concern.

According to the study, EDCs have been found to be connected to a higher incidence of breast cancer, and an earlier onset of puberty, as well as to male fertility problems including lower semen quality.

McGlade told the Guardian that ways of dealing with the chemicals included stricter treatment of sewage, such as installing sand filtration, membrane filtration and using ozone to purify water. But she also insisted the need to look "upstream", to the manufacture of products, to ensure their use is minimised and as safe as possible.

The EEA noted that several studies also linked exposure to some EDCs with neurodevelopmental disorders such as autism, attention deficit disorder and diminished cognitive function in children. But it concluded that more work would be needed to confirm or disprove this.

Linking EDCs to specific ailments is difficult: although tests on animals have shown clear links between the chemicals and a range of ill effects, this does not translate directly into problems for human health if these chemicals are dispersed in the wider environment.

The EEA said another complicating factor was that if these chemicals were harming the early development of the brain, reproductive, immune and metabolic systems, this could be invisible until several years or even decades after exposure.

The EEA report builds on a landmark study, the 1995 Weybridge report, that recorded serious questions over the chemicals but lacked long-range data in some key areas.

The Dictator – review

Sacha Baron Cohen delivers an explosion of weapons-grade offensiveness

Sacha Baron Cohen rides into New York as General Aladeen aka The Dictator. Photograph: Allstar/Paramount Pictures

After his live-ammo situationist spoofs Borat and Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen has returned to the world of the straight fiction-feature with his broad comedy satire The Dictator. There is one thing to be said straight away. This is not, repeat not, a cinephile homage to Chaplin's The Great Dictator.

1. The Dictator
2. Production year: 2012
3. Directors: Larry Charles
4. Cast: Anna Faris, John C. Reilly, Megan Fox, Sacha Baron Cohen, Sir Ben Kingsley
5. More on this film

It is less edgy than Baron Cohen's previous two films, featuring big, conventionally contrived gags and a colossal central turn from the man himself. Baron Cohen's Dictator is set to make Peter Sellers' Inspector Clouseau a model of subtlety and sensitivity.

The movie is in the fish-out-of-water tradition of Coming to America and many others. It doesn't, in truth, offer much of a twist on the genre. It does, however, deliver laughs and weapons-grade offensiveness.

Baron Cohen plays General Aladeen, the tyrannical ruler of the oil-rich north African rogue state Wadiya, who is intensely irritated by the western powers' infatuation with the Arab spring. This political annoyance is compounded by the stress of having to keep Osama Bin Laden in one of the spare rooms in his obscenely opulent palace after the Americans took out one of the al-Qaida leader's doubles.

He exerts a grotesque, Orwellian power and abolishes hundreds of words in the Adiyan dictionary, insidiously eroding his people's moral sense by replacing "positive" and "negative" with "Aladeen", leading to tense moments in the Wadiyan HIV clinics.

His confrontation with Washington has reached a crisis after a speech in which he announced Wadiya was just months away from enriching uranium, and then corpsed and giggled uncontrollably when trying to claim that this was for "clean energy purposes".

In fact, Aladeen is obsessed with nuclear capability and succumbs to Freudian rage at the thought of not having a big missile. "Everyone has one," he screams, "even Ahmadinejad and he looks like a snitch from Miami Vice!" There is a horribly funny scene in which Aladeen confronts his nuclear scientist about slow progress and reveals his assumptions about rockets and warhead delivery systems are based entirely upon cartoons.

But an invasion threat from the US forces Aladeen's hand. He is compelled to visit New York to explain himself to the UN and, like Borat before him, finds himself stunned in various ways by the strange and exotic world of New York City hotels: "Twenty dollars a day for wi-fi? And they call me an international criminal!"

But the general's duplicitous brother, played by Ben Kingsley, turns out to have a treasonous plan in mind and Aladeen finds himself anonymous and penniless on the Manhattan streets and becomes dependent on the charity of a feminist vegetarian cafe manager, played by Anna Faris, who comes to his rescue like Jamie Lee Curtis with Dan Aykroyd in Trading Places.

Subtle it isn't. The satirical content is far lower than in Borat, apart from one Michael Moore-ish speech at the end, in which Aladeen begs America to become a dictatorship and, in laying out the advantages, inadvertently reveals that this would involve no changes at all.

But basically this is a firework display of bad taste, calculated to be as silly as possible. I laughed a lot when Faris's character uncovers Aladeen's vulnerable side and the awful truth that his political aggression stems from the fact that he has never masturbated. Learning how to do this in the cafe's unisex toilet – with montages of soaring eagles and leaping dolphins – is a spiritual epiphany.

There is some great material in the time-honoured movie tradition of people in a tight spot making up false names from signs that they just happen to see.

It is gasp-inducingly offensive when the general plays his terrorist Wii in the palace and selects a game called "Munich Olympics". We hear screams of "meshuggeneh". Inevitably, Aladeen later explains, sentimentally, how living in New York has taught him to love Yiddish because the words sound like what they mean.

It is relentlessly immature and I was often reminded of the cheerfully reprehensible Kentucky Fried Movie in the 70s, a film unashamedly low in nutritional value. But it was very funny and so is this. The Dictator isn't going to win awards and it isn't as hip as Borat. Big goofy outrageous laughs is what it has to offer.

Charles Windsor: prince, heir to the throne … weather forecaster

Prince Charles predicts 'a few flurries over Balmoral' as he reads the TV weather forecast during tour of BBC Scotland offices


Prince Charles reads the weather on BBC Scotland Link to this video

It was indeed, as the new weatherman on BBC Scotland pronounced, an unsettled – not to say unsettling – picture.

The forecast was vile but the diction immaculate, as he predicted "a little hazy sunshine for the Castle of Mey in Caithness", but otherwise rain, wind and even snow, "with the potential for a few flurries over Balmoral". The weatherman glared at the camera: "Who the hell wrote this script?"

"Unscripted" humorous asides now being a must for weathermen, he concluded: "But a cold day everywhere with temperatures of just 8C and a brisk northerly wind. Thank God it isn't a bank holiday."

Prince Charles was invited to expand his CV and read the lunchtime weather forecast during a tour of BBC Scotland's Glasgow headquarters with his wife, Camilla. The regular presenter, Stav Danaos, grinned during the Prince's forecast, which contained references to Scotland's royal residences, but said he had got it spot on. "They did a great job and were consummate professionals. The prince even ended with his own pay-off line, which is always good," he said.

BBC Scotland viewers only learned of the guest weatherman when presenter Sally Magnusson announced: "Let's take a look at the weather forecast now. I'm delighted to say we've got a new member of our weather team – let me hand over to him now. Your Highness..."

A spokeswoman from Charles's London home, Clarence House, said: "He spends a lot of time in Scotland so he's very interested in the weather."

The couple take the title the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay in Scotland. The Duchess also tried her hand at being presenting the weather after her husband. The forecast was first shown at lunchtime, then repeated in the evening, and it became a viral internet phenomenon when it was posted on the BBC website.

The couple were in Scotland as part of their annual Holyrood week, celebrating Scottish culture and history and visiting the BBC's Scotland office as it celebrates 60 years of broadcasting.

The first televised event shown on BBC Scotland was the funeral of Charles' grandfather, King George VI in 1952.

The couple toured the studios which is the home of BBC Scotland's productions including Question Time. During their visit, the Duke and Duchess of Rothesay watched the filming of an episode of the quizshow, Eggheads.

After their trip to BBC Scotland, they travelled to the City of Glasgow College to meet young people taking part in the Prince's Trust Get Into Cooking programme. Aimed at 16- to 25-year-olds, the programme is designed to teach young people the skills needed to work in the hospitality sector.

Michael Gove: public school domination 'morally indefensible'

Michael Gove: told headteachers Britons were 20 times more likely to play cricket for England if they went to private school. Photograph: Chris Ison/PA

The dominance of the public schoolboy in every prominent role in British society is "morally indefensible", according to the education secretary.

Michael Gove said the sheer scale of privately educated men in positions of power in business, politics, media, comedy, sport and music was proof of a "deep problem in our country".

Politicians have failed to tackle the issue with "anything like the radicalism required", he admitted in a speech to independent school headteachers in Brighton. In England, more so than almost any other country, the privileged are likely to stay privileged and the poor are likely to stay poor, he said.

"Around the cabinet table, a majority, including myself, were privately educated," Gove said. He added that the shadow chancellor, shadow business secretary, shadow Olympics secretary, among others, were also educated at private schools.

"On the bench of our supreme court, in the precincts of the bar, in our medical schools and university science faculties, at the helm of FTSE 100 companies and in the boardrooms of our banks, independent schools are – how can I best put this – handsomely represented," he said.

Just 7% of the English population are educated privately, but half the UK's gold medallists at the last Olympics went to independent schools, Gove said. Quoting Luck, a book by Ed Smith, a former England cricket player turned journalist, Gove said Britons were 20 times more likely to play for England if they had attended a private school. While 25 years ago, only one of the 13 players representing England on a cricket tour of Pakistan went to a fee-paying school, that figure had risen to two-thirds. "The composition of the England rugby union team reveal the same trend," Gove said.

The stars of British comedy, theatre and TV were predominantly from public schools, he said, citing Hugh Laurie, David Baddiel and Armando Iannucci. "Popular music is populated by public schoolboys," he said, giving Chris Martin of Coldplay and Tom Chaplin of Keane as examples.

But the public school "stranglehold" was strongest in the British media, Gove argued. The chairman of the BBC and its director-general, as well as many national newspaper editors, were former private schoolboys, he said.

"Indeed, the Guardian has been edited by privately educated men for the last 60 years. But then, many of our most prominent contemporary radical and activist writers are also privately educated," he said. "George Monbiot of the Guardian was at Stowe, Seumas Milne of the Guardian was at Winchester and perhaps the most radical new voice of all – Laurie Penny of the Independent – was educated here at Brighton College.

"I record these achievements not because I wish to either decry the individuals concerned or criticise the schools they attended, far from it… It is undeniable that the individuals I have named are hugely talented and the schools they attended are premier league institutions, but the sheer scale, the breadth and the depth of private school dominance of our society points to a deep problem in our country.

"More than almost any developed nation, ours is a country in which your parentage dictates your progress," he said. "Those who are born poor are more likely to stay poor and those who inherit privilege are more likely to pass on privilege in England than in any comparable country. For those of us who believe in social justice, this stratification and segregation are morally indefensible."

Britain was "squandering our greatest asset, our children" because they were not achieving their potential. The coalition's education reforms were helping a more schools prove "destination need not be destiny", Gove said.

Teachers don't know what stress is, says Ofsted chief

Ofsted chief Sir Michael Wilshaw as headmaster of Mossbourne academy School in Hackney, east London, last year. Photograph: Felix Clay for the Guardian

England's teachers do not know the meaning of the word 'stress', the chief inspector of schools has said, triggering a bitter standoff with the profession.

Sir Michael Wilshaw, a former headteacher who is head of Ofsted, said that despite widespread cuts to school budgets, teachers' salaries were at a record high and that they had more power, independence and resources than ever before.

Teachers need to "roll up their sleeves and get on with improving their schools, even in the most difficult circumstances", Wilshaw told a conference of independent school headteachers in Brighton. "What we don't need are leaders … whose first recourse is to blame someone else – whether it's Ofsted, the local education authority, the government or a whole host of other people."

Wilshaw's comments come amid a growing standoff between teachers and Ofsted.

Last weekend, at the National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) annual conference, heads accused Wilshaw of using "bully-boy tactics" to create a culture of fear in schools. Mike Curtis, an Oxfordshire headteacher, told the NAHT: "Can we really put our trust in Her Majesty's chief inspector? I suggest not.

"Successful careers are damaged or destroyed on a daily basis as more schools are put into categories. Fear reigns and confidence wanes as Ofsted waves its stick. We must stand up to the bully-boy tactics of Michael Wilshaw. We need to send a strong message to Michael Wilshaw to say that we have had enough."

The National Union of Teachers has warned that it is considering locking inspectors out of classrooms.

But Wilshaw, a former head of Mossbourne Academy in Hackney, told heads that – despite education spending facing the biggest cuts since the 1950s – teachers do not know what stress is.

"Stress is what my father felt, who struggled to find a job in the 50s and 60s and who often had to work long hours in three different jobs and at weekends to support a growing family," he said.

"Stress is what many of the million and a half unemployed young people today feel – unable to get a job because they've had a poor experience of school and lack the necessary skills and qualifications to find employment. Stress is what I was under when I started as a head in 1985, in the context of widespread industrial action – teachers walking out of class at a moment's notice – doing lunch duty on my own every day for three years because of colleagues who worked to rule."

Wilshaw's comments came as hundreds of thousands of university lecturers and public sector workers staged a walkout over increased contributions to their pensions.

The chief inspector vowed to hold his nerve on controversial changes to the inspection system that will lead to a "satisfactory" school being reclassified as one that "requires improvement" and more frequent visits by officials to the worst schools.

"I am determined … not to panic at the first whiff of grapeshot, some of which has whistled past my ears over the last few days … We will intervene wherever performance is low and report without fear or favour," Wilshaw said.

Michael Gove, the education secretary, said Wilshaw was a "visionary school leader" and that criticism against him in recent weeks was "misdirected at best, mischievous at worst". "When his critics achieve results like him, then I'll believe their arguments carry the same weight as his experience," he said.

Speaking at the same conference as Wilshaw, Gove said positions of power were still dominated by those who had been privately educated in England and that this was showing no signs of changing.

"Around the cabinet table, a majority, including myself, were privately educated … On the bench of our supreme court … in our medical schools and university science faculties, at the helm of FTSE 100 companies and in the boardrooms of our banks, independent schools are … handsomely represented. You might hear some argue that these peaks have been scaled by older alumni of our great independent schools and things have changed for younger generations. But I fear that is not so."

He said the dominance of privately educated men and women was proof that England was a "profoundly unequal society" where "more than in almost any developed nation, parentage dictates your progress".

Christine Blower, general secretary of the NUT, said teachers were "well aware of the massive problems that many of their students will face as youth unemployment and child poverty levels continue to soar".

"Policy by personal anecdote and put-downs does not appear to be the best way to interfere in the education service," she said.