Weekly news from Bedford, UK

'Death Notice' placed on OAP

This is the alarming leader in Beds. on Sunday. It reports that a family is demanding to know why their father was ‘given the equivalent of a death sentence' by the hospital without their knowledge.

The 71-year-old pensioner was only in hospital because of a water infection.

But a 'Do Not Resuscitate' notice was placed on his bed at Bedford Hospital without him or his family being consulted.

They only found out when the ambulance service moving him asked for a copy of the notice.

He is now in respite care and has a good quality of life.

His family are demanding the rules are tightened so that this cannot happen again.

For some time there have been fears that patients of more than a certain age have such a Do Not Resuscitate notice, known in hospitals as a DNR, placed against them without gaining formal consent from the family. This breaches Government and health service guidelines, as well as being in breach of the Human Rights Act.

Son-in law, Kevin Long, from Flitwick, said:

"We are all very upset that the equivalent of a death sentence was placed on him without any of us being consulted.

"We have received an apology from the hospital but cannot help thinking what might have happened. Also is this just the tip of the iceberg? How many more older people in hospital get these DNR notices without relatives being informed? I think there should be a national inquiry."

Jean O'Callaghan, chief executive of Bedford Hospital said:

"It was an unfortunate event. We have apologised to the family and reviewed all our procedures. It should not have happened and we have learned from the mistake and sincerely regret it."

DNR orders are sometimes placed on elderly patients where the person is not expected to have any quality of life. It means the hospital will not attempt to revive the patient. Age Concern has condemned what it believes to be a widespread practice where DNR is posted on notes for elderly patients without this being discussed with either the patient or relatives. A report for Age Concern said:

"It was hard to avoid the conclusion that the treatment plan (of one patient) was to do little more than allow the patient's life to ebb away."

(As a 65 year-old, I shall be looking at every notice above my bed, should I ever land in hospital!)

When evening comes, Bedford Bridge is lit up, with green lighting. But that may change. Anglia TV is not happy with the green lights which adorn the town bridge and want them to be blue.

So, for at least a week, blue they will be.

Anglia is going digital next weekend and wants a 'scene setter' it can display as a backdrop to the news.

The scene chosen is of Bedford town bridge at night.

Unfortunately trials showed the green lights made the television presenters look a bit pasty and even turned their skin green, so Anglia has asked if the colour can be changed.

The borough council has agreed, so long as it is of no cost to the council. Anglia has agreed to pay. Now for a week the lights will be blue.

Anglia is asking Bedfordians which colour they prefer and if there is a clear blue majority, the lights may never be green again.

Surrey Beddows, editor of Anglia News, said:

"We took some shots of the town bridge which looked fine but in the studios it turned our presenters green.

We are turning the lights blue to match the rugby club. We will be running the blue bridge for a week and asking viewers which colour they prefer."

Much ado about nothing. The parking attendants again, only they are known by BoS as the Zone boys:

Enthusiastic zone boys ticketed a Blood Transfusion Service bus while workers were busy carrying out their life saving duties.

The bus was in Bedford's Riverside Car Park while staff took donations of blood at the nearby Harpur Suite on Tuesday afternoon.

But there was a shock in store when they went to pack up for the day when they discovered they had been given a parking fine for failing to display a valid car park ticket.

A call to the Parking Shop resulted in the offending article being withdrawn but one woman blood donor said:

"This is a bit ridiculous, what did they think they were doing? This is a vital service and costs need to be kept down, surely there was no need to issue a parking ticket in the first place."

A council spokesman confirmed:

"The parking ticket has been revoked. The van did have a dispensation but this wasn't visible to the parking attendant."

Former Dame Alice student is set to appear on BBC's astronomy show The Sky At Night.

Dr Lucie Green, 30, is a Royal Society Dorothy Hodgkin Fellow based at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory which is the Space and Climate Physics Department of University College London.

(Picture shows Dr. Green with Patrick Moore).

She specialises in the study of activity in the atmosphere of the sun and is taking part in the show to discuss the tenth anniversary of the SOHO (Solar and Heliospheric Observatory) projects mission around our nearest star.

Dr Green said: "The SOHO project has been looking at the sun 24 hours-a-day, 365 days a year and it has helped us to learn how the sun interacts with the earth. The mission has really put the subject of space weather on the map and not just for scientists, but for the public as well."

Dr Green will be appearing on the December 4 episode of the Sky at Night on BBC1 at 11.50pm.

Cranfield University has won a £366 million contract to help train Ministry of Defence personnel.

The Ministry is making the investment to deliver postgraduate education and training to around 4,000 students per year both civilian and military.

The contract will provide a focus for all management, technology and leadership education and training for the Defence College of Management and Technology.

It covers around 80 different courses on a range of topics including defence technology, information management, strategic leadership, acquisitions and security studies.

Individuals at all levels from the Royal Navy, Army, Royal Air Force and the civil service will be eligible for the courses which will offer a mix of residential and non-residential learning programmes to suit the needs of students.

Steve Lowe's piece this week, about homework and other maters, may strike a chord!:

SOMETIMES governments are prone to biting off more than they can chew. At the moment Mr Tony Blair is running around like the Lone Ranger, trying to solve everyone's problems.

Unfortunately his silver bullets are not always hitting the target and I am not entirely sure Tonto Brown is the good and faithful sidekick he is painted.

One area they are now rushing into where they might want to tread more carefully is kids cheating on their school coursework.

Tougher guidelines are to be introduced to stop parents, friends and the Internet doing the work for the students.

When they have achieved this, Government ministers will no doubt turn their attention to making sure it never rains on Sundays.

Coursework is a relatively new word which covers work done in school lessons and homework. I readily accept that things have moved on since we used to spend the lesson writing down notes the teacher scribbled on the blackboard and copying it into our neat books for homework.

We did also get sent home with a list of Latin verbs to conjugate and nouns to declense and I am sure my dad would forgive me for pointing out he did not help much.

My mum, on the other hand, occasionally chastises me for supposedly spending too much time doing my friend Vic's homework. She shakes her head and asks me to look what he has achieved in life and where I have landed up.

But Government plans to stop kids getting help with their homework from wherever they can is going to prove more elusive than weapons of mass destruction.

Undaunted, parents are going to be given tough new guidelines on what they can and cannot do when helping their children.

For some parents this will be a Godsend, as they tell their little ones that, as much as they would like to explain simultaneous equations rather than watch the football, the Government has banned them from offering help.

In reality, unless they start employing younger brothers and sisters as snitchers, there is little they can do. Teachers themselves sometimes find it difficult to show complete impartiality when helping and judging their students.

Were there not always a couple of kids in the class who always seemed to be getting the help and attention of the teacher while the rest of us were left to plough on as best we could?

Even easier than bothering their parents is getting the information from the Internet. It is all there at the click of a button.

Of course children will use the information on the website and who can blame them? It is a modern tool designed to provide everything that anyone could want to know on any subject.

Stopping children using such methods, as well as preventing their parents, or their school friends, helping with their coursework is going to be impossible and is not the point.

It is knowledge, not information, that is power. What students need to demonstrate is not simply that they can describe events and theories but can understand, explain, analyse and remember them.

These skills can all be tested without there being a parent or computer in the room.

If coursework cannot be a reliable indicator of what a child has learned, then stop relying on coursework to mark the child's progress.

Desperately trying to plug the leaks to ensure the work is all the student's own is neither achievable nor necessary.

It is built on two liberal fallacies: first, that tests and exams prove nothing more than how good a child is at taking tests and exams; second, that because failure is a bad thing, no-one should fail.

There is a place for coursework in assessing a student's performance but it should be writ small.

Sooner or later they are going to learn that tests, exams, success and failure continue well beyond the school gate.

A British soldier who served for over 30 years has been asked to send one of his medals back to the Government so he can be demoted.

Tom Foster, who is now a local Councillor, was only 16 years old when he joined the first paratroop regiment in 1950 and his first posting was the dangerous canal zone in Egypt.

Mr Foster, who survived the Aldershot barracks bombing in 1972, was presented with a medal in 1956 while he was a sergeant in Cyprus.

The Government has since changed its policy and is asking him to send that medal back, to replace it with one from his time in Egypt when he was merely a private.

Mr Foster has no intention of sending his medal back.

"It would mean dismantling my medals which would cost around £50. The medal I already have shows me as a sergeant - why would I want to get rid of that?"

In the past, soldiers received one medal for their rank, and then received bars to place on the medal's ribbon for each tour. The new policy awards soldiers' individual medals for each tour.

The councillor contacted us after reading about Michael Taylor being prevented from receiving a medal from the Malaysian Government after his efforts in the Far East because they happened more than five years ago. Mr. Foster added:

"It seems strange that they can't accept a medal for something that happened more than five years ago, but they want to give me a medal from over 50 years ago."

Despite years of service abroad, the closest he came to death was when the IRA bombed the officers' mess in Aldershot - he was only yards away from the blast that killed six people.

When he was pulled out of the debris he only had minor bruising.

BoS reports that money has started to roll in thanks to the success of a well run council.

Bedford Borough Council received huge praise for being a successfully run authority and now it is sharing its knowledge with some fledgling councils around the country.

Erewash Borough Council in Derbyshire is one of the first to pay for the services of Shaun Field, chief executive and director of commercial services at the borough council at a cost of £1100-a-day. Mr Field (pictured) has already identified savings of a quarter of a million pounds.

Erewash had already suspended its chief executive John Rice after an investigation revealed the authority was spending £3500 a week on outside consultants.

Mr Field will work for the Derbyshire borough for two days a week until the authority's leadership problems are resolved.

A Bedford Borough spokesman said:

"This council is known for providing high quality, cost-effective services. Mr Field will be working with Erewash to help them deliver value for money."

Bedford Mayor Frank Branston and Mr Field have also been talking with other councils to explore better ways of working and developing further trading opportunities.

SIR - I quote from Paul Gipe on www.wind-works.org which lists some of the incidents involving wind turbines in failure mode.

'Though no passer-by or neighbour has been injured by a wind turbine, there is some, albeit minor, risk. For example, there are anecdotal reports of wind turbines throwing their blades. On Samso (an island off Denmark) a 55 kw Nordtank threw a blade through a window into an indoor swimming pool, according to one knowledgeable source. Fortunately nobody was hurt.

'As turbines become larger, the consequences of such catastrophic failures as throwing a blade raises the stakes for the public at large. At the European Wind Energy Conference in Nice in 1999, the halls were buzzing with the news that several megawatt turbines had 'lost' a blade in Germany.

'The manufacturers of the turbines were understandably uncomfortable even acknowledging that the events actually happened.'

The small but not insignificant possibility of a detached blade going through the roof of the Oasis pool and into the swimming pool has to be considered when the placement of this turbine is considered.

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• SIR - As I write this the sky is clear, the air is still, daylight hours are few and it is freezing outside. The wind farms are static and the heat of the sun is barely detectable.

At our time of need, when we all want to keep warm and well fed, where is 'sustainable' energy? No source of comfort that is for sure!

Fortunately Blair is coming round to the inevitable and priming us to accept new nuclear energy. Not before time!

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• SIR - I look forward to the day when Bedford Borough takes the lead in generating some of its electricity from a sustainable and renewable source such as wind. I hope the executive will now grasp the nettle and be innovative in moving forward on this.

What is needed is the type of turbine, graceful and sleek such as the Swaffham turbines, which could become a tourist attraction bringing new users to the Beach Pool and the surrounding areas.

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SIR - I attended the parades on Friday, November 11, and Sunday, November 13, and was honoured to be among the veterans from the Second World War.

During the lead up to both services a photographer was extremely busy taking photos of the Royal British Legion members on parade with their various standards and of the public.

I wondered what became of all these photos. Did they appear in quantity in our two local papers - FAT CHANCE. The Times and Citizen had six small ones and Bedfordshire on Sunday none.

Just for the record two of the veterans on parade had been rescued from Dunkirk and then wounded at Monte Casino.

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SIR - I was disappointed to see that Bedford's Labour MP joined his colleagues last week in voting in support of 24-hour licensing.

There is clearly a problem with alcohol-related incidents and it is getting worse. Passing the buck to local councils, when all they can do is carry out the Government's agenda, is not acceptable.

Figures show that there has been a 15 per cent national rise in 'violent offences committed in connection with licensed premises' in the last year to almost 1,000 a week.

In England and Wales there was an increase by 18.4 per cent in alcohol-related deaths in 2004. In this context it is clearly wrong to introduce this Act giving 24 hour opening and it is a shame that Labour MPs can't see this.

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SIR - The article in last week's Bedfordshire on Sunday ('Parents' anger SEN failures') failed to include some important explanations provided by the county council regarding criticisms made in the article.

The claim that the council has 'no idea' what happens to the money we provide for the education of children with Special Educational Needs (SEN) is wrong.

Every school in the county receives money to support children with SEN as part of its overall funding. Each school has a member of staff and a governor with responsibility for SEN who are required to ensure that these funds are allocated appropriately. The county council monitors schools' SEN spending as part of the annual review process.

It is correct that some parents have received amended statements for their children that contain crossed out paragraphs. The corrections were included because the Department for Education and Skills (DfES) asked the council to send parents' versions containing both the original and the new wording. We are investigating how the requirements of the DfES could be met in a more user friendly way.

Our proposals for amending the remaining 1,200 statements for Bedfordshire children in mainstream schools are being considered by the DfES and we await their feedback. In the meantime our officers will continue to work to improve our SEN statements in line with recommendations made by the DfES.

An innovation for Bedfordshire police - stun guns - is the main headline in the Times&Citizen:

Bedfordshire Police takes delivery of new weapon. A stun gun which has reportedly caused deaths and posed risks to heart patients was made available for use by Bedfordshire Police on Thursday.

The Taser electrical gun has been issued to trained firearms officers for when they confront violent and armed offenders.

Chief Supt Nicky Dahl, head of the operational support unit, said: "Negotiation is always our preferred way of resolving a situation where the suspect is potentially violent.

"But often this is not possible, and officers whose duty it is to keep the public safe in these situations must have the full range of options available to them."

The Taser joins the arsenal of weapons used by the force, including CS gas and the baton gun – which was used for the first time at an incident in Luton last week since its launch three years ago.

Chief Supt Dahl added: "Only trained, authorised firearms officers faced with violent situations will be able to use the Taser guns."

Bedfordshire Police believe there are minimal after-effects, in comparison to CS spray or the baton gun, which can leave severe trauma.

Sarah Wilkinson, spokesman for Bedfordshire Police, said: "Research has been conducted by the Police Scientific Development Branch (PSDB) which has tested the use of the weapons. They are less lethal and people's lives will not be in danger."

The weapon – already in use by Northamptonshire Police – works by discharging a pair of barbed probes which attach to the clothing or skin, creating a circuit through which 50,000 volts of electricity is passed.

Also on the front page is a report of a shoplifter who threatened staff with a handgun along the High Street.

The man, aged 25, fled into the alleyway alongside Mission nightclub and threw away his weapon. It broke into pieces on hitting the ground, reveling itself as an air or gas-powered replica.

At the time of publication the man was in custody but had not been charged.

The Falcon Public House in Bletsoe has been severely damaged by fire which swept through the building on Wednesday. It is thought that the fire started in the laundry room. The blaze is not being treated as suspicious.

Bedfordshire's top education officer, David Doran, is planning to move on next year.

David has devoted twenty-five years to education within the Authority, and was formerly deputy Head at Sharnbrook Upper School.

All who know him see him as a dedicated gentleman who took a real interest in the schools, visiting them whenever possible, and encouraging those teachers he met.

Though this coincides with (yet another!) shakeup in the management, where libraries are being hived off, his decision has nothing to do with this. He is an established author, and will be devoting more time to writing.

An excellent director, he will be sorely missed.

No picture this week. Partly it's due to pressure on my time, but it's also the weather - very gloomy as I look out at the moment! I find Bedford a somewhat depressing place at Christmas time because of the commercialisation of Christmas. Jill and I are planning to be careful over presents, and instead buy a goat to be given to someone in an asian country, following up the quickly forgotten "Make poverty history" campaign. Only a small gesture, I know, but somehow the frantic rushing around buying "stuff" seems to have got to us both this year! I see it has also affected others, and learned last week that in the US there is a "Buy nothing day." Of course, it's just pointless if one buys all ones needs the day before, but perhaps this is striking a chord with an increasing number of people, especially when this year seems to have seen more disasters than in our memory.

May I wish you a good week ahead

Robert

Week ending 3 December 2005