The government is pushing ahead with plans to toughen up 23-year-old laws governing the treatment of people with severe mental health problems. Ministers want to amend rules to allow people with untreatable personality disorders to be detained even if they have not committed a crime. The new bill also suggests beefing up powers to ensure patients have therapy once they are back in the community.
Two thirds of UK call centres fail to protect their workers against hearing damage from noise, a report warns. Experts will tell an acoustic safety conference in Glasgow many of the 900,000 call centre staff are at risk. They are set to say increasing numbers of injuries and illnesses are being caused by acoustic shock and other noise related hazards.
A new test may help researchers understand why a toxin builds up in the brains of Alzheimer's patients. Amyloid beta protein accumulates in the brain in Alzheimer's disease but whether the body produces too much or cannot break it down is unclear. But by labelling the protein with a carbon isotope, doctors can measure the rate of turnover, a report in Nature Medicine suggests.
A group of influential MPs has accused banks of treating people on low incomes like "second class citizens". The Treasury Select Committee estimates that eight million people are excluded from financial services.
Liberal Democrat leader Sir Menzies Campbell has accused Prime Minister Tony Blair of being "addicted" to bringing in new laws. In his response to the Queen's Speech, he said legislation passed since 1997 ran to more than 114,000 pages.
I've recently discovered that the state of our streets and towns has been cited by marketing experts as the major block on "selling" Folkestone and Hythe. The litter our our streets, the overflowing bins, and the state of the town centre at night mean that those marketing experts feel its not even worth trying to get people to come here. Their prognosis is simple - get and keep Shepway clean and tidy - all the time. Make people like where they live, and want it to succeed. From there, the marketing has a chance.
