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First-time buyers have struggled to get on to the market House prices dropped in October compared with the previous month as the property market saw an autumn fall, according to the Nationwide.
The building society said that prices were down 0.7% compared with September, with the average home now costing £164,381.
The more reliable three-month on three-month comparison showed prices fell by 1.5% in October.
The average home still costs 1.4% more than it did a year ago.
However, this was closer to parity than in September, when the difference was 3.1%.
“If the recent trend in house prices were to continue through November and December, the annual rate of house price inflation would drop to between 0% and -1% by the end of 2010,” said Nationwide’s chief economist Martin Gahbauer.
The drop in prices would generally be good news for those trying to get on the property ladder.
But first-time buyers still face the demand for high deposits from lenders, who are keen not to hand out mortgages to those who may be at higher risk of defaulting.
A separate report by the Home Builders Federation said that the average first-time buyer would need to save all their earnings for two years to get on the property ladder.
This meant that the average age of a first-time buyer, unassisted by their parents or other family, was 37 years old.
“First-time buyers – the life-blood of the housing market – are almost entirely shut out,” said Stewart Baseley, executive chairman of the federation.
“We desperately need an increase in lending and a properly functioning and sustainable mortgage market.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Kings of Leon announce series of outdoor UK concerts in 2011 after their intimate gig for Radio 1.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
The study compared the main sources for learning about sex Young people get more information about sex in school lessons than they do from their friends or parents, according to research by Edinburgh University.
About half of 15-year-old boys and a third of girls said school was the place they learned most about sexual matters.
The study showed a change since 2002, when youngsters said they got most information from friends.
The survey was carried out in 300 schools across Scotland.
The survey also revealed that young people who reported school as their main source of information were less likely to have had sex than those who said they got their information from their parents or friends.
Less than one-fifth of boys, 18%, and one quarter of girls, 23%, who reported getting their information from school have had sex.
This compared with two-fifths of boys and girls, 41% and 43% respectively, who got their information from friends.
“Improving teacher-pupil communication about sexual matters may further increase the benefits associated with sex education in schools”
Jo Kirby University of Edinburgh
Only a small proportion of young people reported TV or radio, books, doctors or family planning clinics as their main source of information.
The study also found that pupils who received sex education were less likely to have negative views about condoms than those who had not received sex education.
Researcher Jo Kirby, of the University of Edinburgh’s child and adolescent health research unit, said: “This paper highlights the impact of the increasing prevalence of information provided about sexual matters to young people at school.
“Improving teacher-pupil communication about sexual matters may further increase the benefits associated with sex education in schools.”
The research is part of a wider Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study, an international survey by the World Health Organisation involving more than 40 countries in Europe and North America.
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The recalled vehicles include the Nissan Cube, March and Tida made between 2003 and 2006 The Japanese car company Nissan is recalling more than two million vehicles worldwide because of a faulty engine control system.
It involves nine models including the Cube, March and Tida.
The cars were produced in Japan, the United States and four other countries between 2003 and 2006.
Nissan said there had been no accidents reported due to the fault, which can cause the engine to stall while running.
In Europe, 354,170 are being recalled, but the majority affected are in Japan itself and North America.
In Japan alone, Nissan will recall a total of 834,759 vehicles with another 762,000 units being called back in the US and Canada.
A further 194,409 are being recalled in China and Taiwan.
The company will exchange for free defective parts on certain models, as the fault may cause the engine to stall while running.
Earlier this year, Nissan recalled about 76,000 cars in Japan and more than 2,000 overseas due to a defect that may cause engine failure.
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Demolition has triggered violent – even fatal – clashes in Port Harcourt The rights group Amnesty International has criticised Nigeria’s government over mass evictions in the oil-rich Niger Delta.
Plans for urban development and slum demolition have been a violently contested issue in Port Harcourt.
Amnesty is warning that continued development may leave as many as 200,000 people homeless.
Sprawling and chaotic, the city of Port Harcourt is Nigeria’s oil capital in the Niger Delta.
“These planned demolitions are likely to plunge hundreds of thousands of Nigeria’s most vulnerable citizens further into poverty ”
Tawanda Hondora Amnesty International
Its shanty towns and slums are home to tens of thousands of people all scraping a living in a city pumping billions of dollars worth of oil.
In 2009, the Rivers State government began plans to rebuild parts of the city.
They are demolishing slums on the waterfront as part of the “Greater Port Harcourt master plan”.
Forced evictions regularly spark demonstrations there and police have even fired live rounds at protesters. Several civilians have been killed.
The local government hopes to develop the area to create jobs, stimulate the local economy and build better roads – all of it urgently needed.
They hope to build an eight-screen cinema, a shopping mall and hotels.
They are following a buy-out scheme, paying those who own the properties to move.
For some, the demolitions have already begun But most of the residents on the waterfront are poor tenants who get no compensation and have nowhere to go.
Many of them now sleep outdoors under bridges and in the streets.
Amnesty is now warning that as many as 200,000 people could end up homeless if alternative housing is not found for them.
“These planned demolitions are likely to plunge hundreds of thousands of Nigeria’s most vulnerable citizens further into poverty,” said the group’s Africa deputy programme director, Tawanda Hondora.
“The government should halt the waterfront evictions until they ensure they comply with international human rights standards.”
This article is from the BBC News website. © British Broadcasting Corporation, The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
David Sillito tests the changing sound of English pronunciation
The pronunciation of common words has changed drastically over time. So, as the British Library begins a quest to record people’s articulations, what do the differences in how we pronounce words say about us?
Pedants, beware. The sound of says, ate, mischievous, harass, garage, schedule and aitch is shifting.
Once upon a time, there were gales of laughter when Frank Spencer in Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em pronounced harass with the emphasis on the first syllable.
Now, according to the British Library, evidence suggests that for people under the age of 35, it is becoming the favoured pronunciation.
Indeed the younger you are, the more likely you are to make says rhyme with lays rather than fez, ate rhyme with late rather than bet and to add a whole new syllable to mischievous, turning it in to miss-CHEEVY-us rather than MISS-chiv-us.
British English dictionaries give aytch as the standard pronunciation for the letter H. However, the pronunciation haytch is also attested as a legitimate variant. We also do not ask broadcasters who naturally say haytch to change their pronunciation but if a broadcaster contacted to ask us, we would tell them that aytch is regarded as the standard pronunciation in British English, people can feel very strongly about this and this pronunciation is less likely to attract audience complaints.
Haytch is a standard pronunciation in Irish English and is increasingly being used by native English-speaking people all across the country, irrespective of geographical provenance or social standing. Polls have shown that the uptake of haytch by younger native speakers is on the rise. Schoolchildren repeatedly being told not to drop Hs may cause them to hyper-correct and insert them where they don’t exist.
Jo Kim
BBC Pronunciation Unit
The British Library now wants to get a clearer idea of how spoken English is changing by recording as many people as possible reading the opening paragraph of the Mr Men book, Mr Tickle.
The library’s socio-linguist Jonnie Robinson picked the passage because it’s well known, easy to read and will probably be read with as “normal a voice as possible”. He does not want people to put on a “posh” speaking voice.
It’s part of the library’s forthcoming Evolving English exhibition and aims to show how pronunciation is not a matter of right and wrong but merely fashion.
One exhibit is the BBC’s guide to pronunciation from 1928. In it, it informs announcers that pristine rhymes with wine, respite is pronounced as if there were no e, combat is cumbat, finance was finn-ance. Even then some of the suggestions were becoming archaic. Not only is housewifery no longer pronounced huzzifry, it is almost entirely obsolete as a word.
Quite why some words change is unknown. Because, while many are importations from America – schedule turning into skedule is almost certainly a consequence of American films and television – the gradual shift of garage to sound like garridge is less easy to explain.
So too is there a mystery as to why certain pronunciations cause such strong feeling. Take the eighth letter of the alphabet, pronounce it haitch and then look for the slightly agonised look in some people’s eyes.
One suggestion is that it touches on a long anxiety in English over the letter aitch. In the 19th Century, it was normal to pronounce hospital, hotel and herb without the h. Nowadays “aitch anxiety” has led to all of them acquiring a new sound, a beautifully articulated aitch at the beginning. America has perhaps hung on to its aitchless herb because it has less class anxiety attached to pronunciations.
Language change happens through innovation – each generation talks slightly differently from the one before. So we hear a “pronunciation divide” between the young and the old with forms like aitch and haitch. Children’s first exposure to English is usually through their parents, but once at school, the words and pronunciations they adopt are more influenced by other children they spend all day with. It’s a human thing to adapt to the group in this way. We also gradually change borrowed words, like village and garage from French, to fit a more English pronunciation – with an -idge sound in the last syllable. Village is much further along in this ongoing process and therefore less controversial. Languages have always been alive and evolving to suit the users’ communication needs, and it’s not a bad thing to have change like this.
Jon Herring, British Library
However, the link between class, voice and status is not what it once was. Many of us are barely aware of how we say says or ate or what was once considered the right and proper way.
It marks a decline in class anxiety in speech; attitudes to accents and pronunciations have become much more relaxed.
However, there are some pronunciations that do inspire ridicule and prejudice. If you rhyme cloth, wrath and off with north and wharf then you are in a small and declining tribe.
The shift from the “received pronunciation” of the 1930s and 40s is well documented but one example of how far it has fallen out of favour is that in the forthcoming BBC costume drama, South Riding, the Yorkshire accents of the 1930s pass without comment but the voices that would have been classic “RP” in the book have been updated.
Audiences, it is argued, simply could not sit through a drama and care about a character if they sounded that “posh”. They would be too busy laughing.
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Intel referred to the launch of the Alliance as “Cloud Independence Day” Some of the world’s biggest companies are using their market clout to demand that computer equipment makers change the way they make their machines.
The 70 firms, which includes BMW, Shell and Marriott Hotels, said systems that do not work together are holding back the spread of cloud computing.
The companies have formed the Open Data Alliance Centre to push for unified standards for technology.
The businesses involved account for more than $50bn (£32bn) in IT spending.
“The old way just won’t work anymore,” said Andrew Feig, an executive director at Swiss bank UBS.
“We want to pay for what we need, when we need it.”
The principle goal of the body is to help businesses cope with an explosion in the number of people that will want to access services and applications online using a plethora of different devices from phones to TVs to tablet computers.
Researchers estimate that another one billion users will come online in the next five years.
Goals and principles
The Alliance’s Cloud 2015 vision is aimed at creating a federated cloud where common standards will be laid down for those in the hardware and software arena.
Another goal is to ensure all devices are interoperable when accessing services via the cloud.
“The advancement of technology is growing at such a rapid pace where we have gone from a PC to a laptop to a netbook to a tablet in the space of not very many years,” said Marvin Wheeler, Alliance chairman and chief strategist for cloud services provider Terremark.
“The demands on the IT organisations are coming at such an alarming rate that there are many, many different solutions being developed today that maybe don’t work with each other,” he said.
“We need one voice, one road map, so that companies are able to say to manufacturers here is a clear vision of what they should be developing their product to do.”
At a press event in San Francisco Intel, which is also technical advisor to the Alliance, said that by 2015 there will be another 15 billion devices connected to the web.
“No-one knew that there would be a Facebook 10 years ago and now they have hundreds of millions of users and that is because the cost of computing has become virtually free to an end user,” said Kirk Skaugen, general manager of Intel’s data centre group.
“So as we go from data growing 650% because of multimedia and hi-definition and such, we need new economics within these data centres to enable these services to still be affordable,” he said. “If we want to add another billion people to the internet and lower the digital divide we have to reduce the cost of computing and cloud is a fundamental way to do that.”
‘Self interest’
Some industry watchers believe despite its lofty ambitions the Alliance will achieve little.
“Goodness knows what’s going on here,” said Adamson Rust of technology blog TechEye.
“We believe like so many alliances, it will be riven by dissensions and self interest. But we could be wrong, and it could turn out to be like the League of Nations.”
For Larry Dignan of technology news site ZDNet.com, the $50bn the 70 members of the Alliance wield cannot be ignored.
“That buying power is why this open data centre push is interesting. Given the buying clout, vendors will have to play the cloud interoperability game.
“While it’s unclear how successful this alliance will be, it is at least shedding the spotlight on cloud interoperability, a big emerging issue,” added Mr Dignan.
The Alliance is not the only group looking at setting standards for cloud computing.
IBM launched its own open cloud initiative last year and earlier this week unveiled its cloud computing lab in the UK with the aim of helping partners reap the benefits of the cloud.
Conspicuous by their absence from the new Alliance are tech titans Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Yahoo and Apple.
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A soldier has defended the Armed Forces’ new body armour after it saved his life while on patrol in Afghanistan’s Helmand Province.
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A man has been arrested in connection with the fraud at North Ayrshire A Scottish council has been conned out of £270,000 in a fraud involving a bogus supplier.
North Ayrshire Council was duped after criminals, posing as an official contractor, used forged documents instructing a change of bank details.
Earlier this year, South Lanarkshire Council lost £102,000 in a similar con.
Strathclyde Police said a 44-year-old man had been arrested by West Midlands Police in connection with fraud at North Ayrshire Council.
A spokeswoman said: “Officers from Strathclyde and West Midlands Police economic crime units are working closely together to investigate alleged acts of fraud within local authorities in North Ayrshire and South Lanarkshire.
“At present, a 44-year-old man has been arrested by West Midlands Police in connection with an alleged fraud at North Ayrshire Council.
“We are confident of recovering at least £117,000 of the £270,000 which was fraudulently obtained and will work with the police, banks and our insurers to recover as much of the money as possible”
Alasdair Herbert North Ayrshire director of finance
“We work closely with all police forces, sharing information in order to expedite the arrest and conviction of individuals involved in criminal activities.”
North Ayrshire Council’s director of finance Alasdair Herbert said that the scam was discovered in September.
The council had been reviewing its procedures for updating creditors’ bank details following e-mail alerts regarding a nation-wide fraud.
“It has now emerged that – prior to that review – we had processed a forged document from a bogus company claiming to be one of our creditors,” he said.
“The forged document was used to fraudulently obtain a significant sum of money from the council between September and October.
“We contacted the police as soon as we discovered that the fraud had taken place and this resulted in an individual being arrested and charged in Wolverhampton on Friday afternoon.”
Mr Herbert said the council was commissioning an independent investigation into the fraud and would continue to co-operate with the police investigation.
He added: “We are confident of recovering at least £117,000 of the £270,000 which was fraudulently obtained and will work with the police, banks and our insurers to recover as much of the money as possible.
“We have alerted other local authorities and local businesses to the methods used in this fraud and would be willing to share any information they may require to ensure they do not fall victim to the same crime.”
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In Indonesia funerals are being held for many of those who died when Mount Merapi erupted in central Java, as activity at the volcano calms down.
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A wayward schoolgirl gets the shock of her life when her mum hands over control of the family home to her teacher for a week to improve her behaviour. The experience was recorded for a BBC Three TV documentary as Executive Producer, Fiona O’Sullivan explains.
You could have heard a pin drop in the head teacher’s office when Loretta Cook was told the news that her 29-year-old technology teacher, Hannah Dudley would be moving in.
There was a pause and then Loretta’s response. “Does this mean you’re going to see me without any makeup?” A funny knee-jerk response but one that completely summed up the boundary that Loretta’s teacher was about to cross.
And for 14-year-old Loretta, being seen without makeup is a sore point indeed.
“She’s such a lovely, wonderful, beautiful girl… I feel like I’ve failed her”
Loretta’s mum, Karen
Just two days earlier, mum had refused to give Loretta time for her beauty regime because she had been running late and at the school entrance, Loretta had refused to get out of the car.
The scuffle actually got physical as Mum tried to undo Loretta’s seatbelt. “I’m not going in looking like this,” she said. “I’m not going to school unless I’ve got my hair and make-up ready.” Loretta ended up walking off the school grounds.
So, back to the head teacher’s office.
Loretta was in shock and Mum in tears. “She’s such a lovely, wonderful, beautiful girl and has such a fantastic sense of humour and she’s just wasting herself,” her tired mother Karen whimpered. “I feel like I’ve failed her.”
Miss Dudley tried to explain to Loretta that Mum was at her wit’s end and did not know how to control Loretta or what else to do.
Loretta’s parents and the school had decided that by joining forces in this remarkable way, they might be able to get Loretta back on track and help her make the most of an education she could get a lot out of.
“Loretta is somebody I would say, is on the cusp of becoming quite a behavioural problem but isn’t there yet and is, I think, salvageable for that reason,” said the head teacher, Tracy Campbell. “She’s somebody that deep down wants to do better than she is.”
Driving home
Within minutes Miss Dudley was joining Loretta and mum on the drive home from school. Hannah Dudley would return to her own home overnight but for every waking hour, at school or at home, she would be part of Loretta’s life.
Hannah Dudley had no experience of dealing with children or families outside a classroom. She certainly did not come with a tried and tested formula on how to sort Loretta out.
Hannah Dudley and Loretta share the family sofa “A lot of people have said that I’m maybe a bit crazy to take this on, maybe this is too big. Maybe it is but I’d rather give something a go and it not work than never have tried in the first place.”
Hannah felt she needed to find out what was going on at home in order to see what might be causing Loretta’s erratic disrespectful behaviour.
But Loretta was not going be a pushover and despite having her teacher in her house, she had no intention of doing everything she was told to do.
The young teacher was overwhelmed with the task that lay ahead of her and feeling very wobbly as to whether she would be able to have any positive impact on the Cook household.
It all came to head on the second day with a simple request that Loretta should change out of her school uniform. Loretta flew off the handle and told Hannah it was not her bloody house. The stand-off lasted all afternoon.
The interesting thing about that afternoon was that while Loretta lost her temper and got very angry, Hannah remained calm and quietly stood her ground. Even when Loretta walked away from her on more than one occasion and Hannah felt completely undermined, she did not let it show.
The consistent, calm approach to conflict started to have an effect on Loretta. Suddenly the tantrums and battles with her Mum stopped happening.
Hannah put every waking moment that week into listening to Loretta, remaining calm in the face of her obstinance and pursuing her belief that a proper structure and routine would greatly improve Loretta’s disposition.
The real turning point came the next day with another stand-off between Hannah and Loretta but this time there was no shouting match. Instead Loretta opened up to Hannah and revealed the reason for her angry outbursts.
It was all to do with the after-effects of her parents’ divorce two years earlier. Mum was being too hard on her she felt, picking on her.
“Ever since my mum and dad have split up, she has to find somebody to blame it on … it has to be me because I look like my dad”
Dad’s home was only a couple of miles away and Loretta visited regularly, which when things got tough gave her the chance to play the two off against each other.
Hannah Dudley now had the extra insight she needed. She set about improving communication between mum and dad. It was no use only one parent trying to enforce discipline. They needed to be consistent and support Loretta a great deal more.
“Me and Karen need to put our differences aside for the sake of Loretta”
Loretta’s dad, Mick
Hannah succeeded in getting Mum and Dad and Loretta into the same room. It took some effort but the family worked out a set of rules and they all agreed it was a huge achievement.
Loretta’s behaviour altered drastically and she was unquestionably a very different girl. Her body language was no longer negative and resistant and she was smiley and confident. She looked prettier and happier.
“I’m really proud of Loretta,” said dad Mick who was chuffed with the new found energy he saw in his young daughter. “She’s happy and she’s confident. Me and Karen need to put our differences aside for the sake of Loretta.”
Mum too was delighted that relations with Dad were greatly improved. When Loretta announced she wanted to be a teacher I think you could have knocked us all down with a feather!
“There’s a hunger there for something,” explained mum Karen. “When you lose that hunger then you’ve lost and I’m so glad she’s got it now”.
It was a reminder of why we embarked on this project in the first place. Teachers are taught to take students’ family lives into consideration but it’s very difficult to really grasp what students are going through at home, and that there is no comparison for witnessing it yourself.
You can’t help wondering what would happen if every badly behaved teenager in the country were to have this opportunity?
Wait Till Your Teacher Gets Home! is on BBC Three at 9pm on Thursday 28 October. Watch via iplayer or find out about repeats at the above link.
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The World Bank has launched a global partnership aimed at helping countries include the costs of destroying nature into their national accounts.
Ten nations will take part in the pilot phase, including India and Colombia.
The bank’s president Robert Zoellick said environmental destruction happens partly because governments do not account for the value of nature.
The partnership was launched at the UN Convention on Biological Diversity (CBD) meeting in Nagoya, Japan.
“We know that human well-being depends on ecosystems and biodiversity,” said Mr Zoellick.
“We also know they’re degrading at an alarming rate.
“One of the causes is our failure to properly value ecosystems and all they do for us – and the solution therefore lies in taking full account of our ecosystem services when countries make policies.”
Norway’s Environment Minister Erik Solheim said re-valuing nature in this way would force business practices to change.
“We need to move from a situation where the benefits of ecosystem services are privatised whereas the coasts are socialised,” he said.
“The full costs of negative impacts on ecosystems must be covered by those who receive a benefit from destroying it.”
The new project aims to pick up conclusions of a recent UN-backed project on The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity (Teeb), and help governments turn them into policy.
Teeb’s headline conclusion was that degradation of the natural world is costing the global economy $2-5 trillion (£1.3-3.2bn) per year.
In the report, it also commented that the natural world’s economic value, in terms of its provision of clean water, good-quality soil, pollination and other services, was largely neglected by policymakers because it was “invisible”.
“The groundbreaking report… has helped define the importance of biodiversity in a new way,” said UK Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman.
“What’s absolutely clear is that we need to bring about a real change in the way we value natural capital and ecosystem services and integrate them into the mainstream of our decision-making processes.”
Ms Spelman and Mr Solheim both indicated their governments would support the new project’s rollout.
In response to questions about whether businesses would resist this kind of natural capital accounting because it could affect their bottom lines, Ms Spelman suggested they would not object once they understood the reasoning behind it.
“Bees, for example, are worth about £440m to the UK economy,” she said.
“When you think of having to substitute what nature provides for free, I think there won’t be a backlash once people understand what ecosystem services provide.”
Achim Steiner, executive director of the United Nations Environment Programme (Unep), added that a recent analysis showed that companies viewed biodiversity loss as a bigger threat than international terrorism.
The finding came originally from a World Economic Forum report, , which indicated businesses saw about an 8% likelihood that biodiversity loss would affect them – largely by damaging their reputation – while about 4% saw international terrorism as a threat.
“Some businesses are ‘free riders’ and take advantage of lax legislation to do things they won’t be able to do in future,” said Mr Steiner.
“But a lot of businesses are looking for ways to minimise their risk.”
The draft agreement ministers are considering in the main negotiations here calls for “the values of biodiversity” to be integrated into countries’ development and poverty reduction strategies.
But delegates are still arguing over whether to call for integration into national accounts.
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It is around three months since heavy flooding devastated Pakistan.
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Santander’s profits have fallen because of strict new rules on bad debt provisions Santander, the Spanish bank that owns a number of UK banks, has reported a fall in profits after being hit by new rules on bad loan provisions.
Profits for the three months to September fell 13% to 2.1bn euros ($2.9bn, £1.8bn).
The bank warned that profits for the full year would be below forecasts.
Santander, the eurozone’s biggest bank, has been rebranding its UK banks, which include Alliance and Leicester, Abbey and Bradford & Bingley.
Also, it recently bought some 300 former Royal Bank of Scotland branches.
For the first nine-months of the year, profits were 6.08bn euros, down 9.8% from last year.
Provisions for bad debts for the nine months were 472m euros – 72m euros more than the bank estimated at the end of July.
The higher provisions reflect new rules introduced by the Bank of Spain, which has cut the time needed to fully provide for the estimated loss on non-performing loans.
It also requires a further 10% write-down on the value of properties held for more than two years.
As a percentage of total loans at group level, bad debts rose to 3.42%, from 3.37% at the end of June.
“The bank has opted to apply the new Bank of Spain rules in a very conservative way and not to release provisions,” the bank said in a statement.
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The head of MI6, Sir John Sawers, has said the organisation faces “real, constant operational dilemmas” to avoid using intelligence gathered by torture.
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