Pregnancy test company to close base

Unipath, who make home pregnancy testing kits, are to close their Bedford base, causing the loss of around 500 jobs.
The company had been owned by Unilever until 2001, when it was taken over by American company Inverness Medical Innovations (IMI). The company now plans to transfer production to low cost facilities, which are mainly in [...]

Police will be sued over mosque programme

West Midlands Police and the CPS will be sued for libel by the makers of a programme shown on the Channel 4 series Dispatches in January 2007.
The programme – called Undercover Mosque – detailed Islamic extremism in the West Midlands. Police and the CPS claimed that the programme had been heavily edited and therefore distorted [...]

Muslims object to hospital hygiene rules

Muslim medics are refusing to follow hospital hygiene rules because it goes against their religion.
Muslim doctors at hospitals in three major British cities are refusing to follow the rules introduced to combat the spread of superbugs because it goes against the rules of their faith.
Female medical students at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital in Liverpool objected [...]

Prescription charges should go

People are often put off collecting prescriptions because of the costs, say Citizens Advice.
Prescriptions in Wales are free, and this will follow in Scotland, but in England ministers are refusing to drop the £6.85 charge.
The impact of the charges hits the long term sick and people on low incomes the worst. Almost half of the [...]

House of Commons must provide breakdown of MPs’ expenses

The House of Commons has been told it must provide a lengthy breakdown of MPs’ expenses relating to second homes.
The “Additional Costs Allowance” (ACA) system is classed as “deeply unsatisfactory”, says the Information Tribunal.
Andrew Walker, Commons resources boss, said that publishing more details of the expenses would intrude on MPs’ private lives. However, the Tribunal [...]

Drug dealers may get assets seized

Drug dealers may have their assets seized under new plans put forward by ministers.
Home Secretary Jacqui Smith said that people found to be innocent would have their assets returned to them. Addicts would also lose their benefits unless they attended a meeting with a treatment adviser.
Maybe there is enough pandering to drug addicts. Whilst law [...]

Scotland keeps neurosurgery units

All four of the specialist neurosurgery units in Scotland will be saved. The centres are located in Edinburgh, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Dundee, and the Scottish Government had wanted to centralise services in one place, either Edinburgh or Glasgow.
Objectors in the north east of Scotland said that this would mean certain death for those injured in [...]

Many object to Heathrow expansion

Crowded Terminal Four at Heathrow, taken from BA A319 by Louise Scott
Thousands of people who live near Heathrow Airport (EGLL/LHR) have joined politicians and environmentalists in raising their objection the a new runway and extra terminal at the airport.
Yesterday, Greenpeace flouted airport security to climb onto the fuselage of a British Airways Airbus A320 and [...]

Muslims complain about crisps

Walkers crisps are the latest things to fall foul of Muslims, after it was revealed that some varieties contain a tiny amount of alcohol as a chemical agent to extract particular flavours.
The Asian newspaper Eastern Eye carried the story after a Bradford shopkeeper said that a customer informed him that a few Walkers brands (Sensations [...]

Fine over sewage spill

A company has been fined £13,500 for discharging 120million litres of raw sewage into the Firth of Forth.
Veolia Water Outsourcing, which was known as Thames Water Services, made the unauthorised discharge at a treatment plant in Leith.
After a pump failure, sewage poured into the river for 64 hours, causing a foul smell. Tests which were [...]