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.