Swedish sameness

So, David Cameron is off to Sweden to attend the Nordic-Baltic Summit. Great place to go to learn a fair bit about equality. Sweden has much lower income equality than the UK (see here). Its gender equality is also much better: http://www.sweden.se/eng/Home/Society/Equality/Facts/Gender-equality-in-Sweden/.

I doubt very much that our PM will be adopting the Swedish approach though. They redistribute wealth using taxes and benefits. Public services are provided by a very well developed welfare state. Sweden's state is large. Public services are well developed and there is effective legislation to ensure that both men and women can have reasonably balanced work and family lives and good prospects for fair involvement at all levels of society. This is the opposite of Cameron's Conservatism.    

How experts found that the legal drugs alcohol and tobacco are seriously harmful

BBC - Mark Easton's UK: Drugs debate hots up

...the ISCD [Independent Scientific Committee on Drugs] has returned to the fray with what is called multicriteria decision analysis.

This approach includes 16 criteria including a drug's affects on users' physical and mental health, social harms including crime, "family adversities" and environmental damage, economic costs and "international damage".

The scientists, based on their expert knowledge, score a substance on each category from zero to 100...

The problem remains, however, of how much weight to give each of these categories.

"The weighting process is necessarily based on judgement, so it is best done by a group of experts working to consensus," the report authors say.

"Extensive sensitivity analyses on the weights showed that this model is very stable; large changes, or combinations of modest changes, are needed to drive substantial shifts in the overall rankings of the drugs."
What emerges is a ranking of drugs at complete odds with the official Home Office classification system.

The fact that alcohol emerges as the most harmful drug leads the authors to conclude that "aggressively targeting alcohol harms is a valid and necessary public health strategy" but its place at the head of the table also suggests a legal status in stark contrast to the much less harmful effect of Class A drugs including ecstasy and LSD.

It is also notable that cocaine and tobacco emerge with very similar rankings in terms of harm...

More here:
http://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(10)61462-6/fulltext

No Impact Man: in cinemas from today

The modern day "Good Life" - Time Out

**** - The Times

Synopsis: Can you save the planet without driving your family crazy? In No Impact Man, Colin Beavan decides to completely eliminate his personal impact on the environment for the next year.

No problem - at least for Colin - but he and his family live in Manhattan. So when his espresso-guzzling, retail-worshipping wife Michelle and their two-year-old daughter are dragged into the fray, the No Impact Project has an unforeseen impact of its own.

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To find out which cinemas No Impact Man will be playing in, visit gonoimpact.dogwoof.com including the special nationwide screenings next Tuesday 7th September. This will be the only chance for many areas of the country to see the film.

If you sign up you'll be entering a draw to win one of 3 prizes kindly donated by
www.nigelsecostore.com.

We're also giving away copies of Colin Beavan's book Saving the Planet One Family at a Time. All winners will be selected at random and notified directly by Dogwoof. For a chance of winning either of these fantastic prizes SIGN UP today!!

dogwoof.com

Pledges on children and childhood

I pledge to support children today to make tomorrow better for everyone - see email below from Action for Children. See all posts on young people here (which includes details of NSPCC, Every Disabled Child Matters, Save the Children and Gingerbread work and pledges).

Via the Political Exchange site I've also signed Plan UK's pledge to: Do what I can to ensure young people are given a voice in discussions about issues that affect the world they live in, particularly climate change; Support the campaign to ensure more girls have the chance to realise their potential and go to secondary school; Encourage more schools in my constituency to create links to schools in developing countries to share learning and turn young people into global citizens.

Also via Political Exchange I've agreed with the National Deaf Children's Society work to: Close the gap in educational attainment between deaf children and other children; Improve public services so deaf children and their families get the support they need from the start; Help deaf children in my constituency get the same opportunities as other children
______________________________________________

Dear Mr Vowles,

Make the future better: take your action for children now

As a prospective parliamentary candidate for the forthcoming general election, I would like you to take action for children now by pledging to support children today to make tomorrow better for everyone.

Around a million of today's children will be trapped in the same cycle of deprivation as their parents. From the moment they are born, their hopes of leading a happy and fulfilling life will diminish. Right from their first breath, they will be at risk of neglect - they will do worse at school, they are more likely to be unemployed, they are more likely to suffer mental ill health, to misuse drugs or alcohol and to end up in prison. And eventually, when they have children, the chances are the same thing will happen all over again. The costs of this to individuals, families, the State - and society as a whole - are almost unquantifiable.

But it doesn't have to be like this. Financial support alone will not solve the problem of deprivation. We are writing off their futures unless we take action now. We know what action is needed: targeted early intervention breaks the cycle of deprivation.

Please sign our pledge to support our campaign for early intervention and help us stop another generation being caught in the cycle of deprivation.

http://e-activist.com/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=114&ea.campaign.id=5915

To find out more, read our latest research: Deprivation and risk: the case for early intervention.
http://www.actionforchildren.org.uk/content.aspx?CategoryID=680

Best wishes,

Helen Donohoe
Director of Public Policy

Gingerbread: lets lose the labels campaign

Was very happy to sign up to the Gingerbread campaign against stereotyping single parents after receiving the email below today from, perhaps a little unusually, a certain Roger Berry MP. I will certainly fight such prejudices, along with any similar or related ones - this is essential work if we are to build the fair society and fair future that the Green Party wants.

Dear Mr Vowles,

I’m writing to ask you to support Gingerbread’s campaign to challenge the stereotyping and stigma that single parents face.

Eighty-three per cent of single parents surveyed by Gingerbread said the media portrays them in a negative light. Polling confirms that the wider public overestimates how many single parents are teenage, never married and not in work. Too often they are depicted as scroungers or bad parents responsible for ‘broken’ families.

There is likely to be intense debate around family policy in the run up to the election. Please help make sure this focuses on the facts, not on the stereotypes.

Gordon Brown, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have already signed the Gingerbread pledge below:

I promise to challenge prejudice against single parent families and support Gingerbread’s campaign to lose the labels.

Please email campaign@gingerbread.org.uk to pledge your support for the campaign. And I’d appreciate a reply to this email too, if possible, to let me know you’ve signed. Many thanks.

Gingerbread will be publishing a list of signatories on their website, along with regular campaign updates: see http://www.gingerbread.org.uk