A recent survey found that 71 per cent of Britons believe GM food, and meat from animals fed on GM food, should be banned from supermarkets. A further 15 per cent are ‘undecided’. In other words, just over one in ten thinks it’s a good idea.
But in modern government, where big policy decisions are taken behind closed doors, the opinions of ordinary folk play second fiddle to the self-interested demands of big business.
The GM industry’s wealthy — but little-known — trade body, the Agricultural Biotechnology Council [ABC], seems to have decided it had a sporting chance of converting David Cameron and his administration to its cause.
Last June, it duly invited a selection of Tory ministers, high-ranking MPs and top civil servants to attend a round table discussion about GM at the Westminster Conference Centre in central London.
To the ABC’s surprise and delight, several accepted. On paper, the summit, inside a steel and glass building a stone’s throw from the Houses of Parliament, couldn’t have sounded more anodyne.
Headlined Going For Growth and held in an air-conditioned upstairs boardroom, it was billed as an informal talk between politicians and industry experts hoping to find ways of ‘realising the potential of agricultural technologies in the UK’. Read more >>
Britain's most senior medical adviser has warned MPs that the rise in drug-resistant diseases could trigger a national emergency comparable to a catastrophic terrorist attack, pandemic flu or major coastal flooding.
Dame Sally Davies, the chief medical officer, said the threat from infections that are resistant to frontline antibiotics was so serious that the issue should be added to the government's national risk register of civil emergencies.
She described what she called an "apocalyptic scenario" where people going for simple operations in 20 years' time die of routine infections "because we have run out of antibiotics".
The register was established in 2008 to advise the public and businesses on national emergencies that Britain could face in the next five years. The highest priority risks on the latest register include a deadly flu outbreak, catastrophic terrorist attacks, and major flooding on the scale of 1953, the last occasion on which a national emergency was declared in the UK.
Speaking to MPs on the Commons science and technology committee, Davies said she would ask the Cabinet Office to add antibiotic resistance to the national risk register in the light of an annual report on infectious disease she will publish in March. Read more >>
Dozens of masked youths have been clashing with police at a union protest in Athens during a general strike against the cash-strapped government's planned pension and labor reforms. Riot police fired tear gas and stun grenades to disperse troublemakers who threw chunks of marble smashed off a metro station entrance and set rubbish bins on fire. Bus and ferry services have been disrupted, leaving some tourists stranded, in protests against planned pension and labour reforms. The industrial action is another in a series of mass-demonstrations against a swathe of severe austerity measures.
guardian.co.uk Greek anger over austerity measures spills on to Athens streets Popular anger over economic austerity measures in Greece exploded on to the streets as striking workers brought the debt-stricken country to a halt and militant seamen stopped holidaymakers from boarding island ferries.
The stand-off, which saw thousands of bewildered tourists being stranded at the port of Piraeus, follows mounting tension between unions and George Papandreou's socialist government. In an electric atmosphere, about 20,000 protesters marched through the capital to denounce the IMF-sponsored fiscal programme Papandreou has vowed to enact in exchange for €110bn (£89bn) of emergency loans, the biggest bailout in history. Athens' debt exceeds €310bn, by far the largest in the European Union.
"Capitalists, not workers, should pay for the crisis," the demonstrators chanted as riot police clashed with a minority of self-styled anarchists also attending the rally. "IMF – get out of Greece."
The protests, which despite a lower than usual turnout attributed by unionists to the summer heat, came as parliament prepared to debate legislation outlining radical reforms to the pension system. The shake-up, which also overhauls labour laws long blamed for the country's lack of competitiveness, will cut pensions, raise the retirement age and enable companies to dismiss employees with greater ease.
Lavish pensions, more than anything else, are thought to have contributed to the drain on public finances. Greek pensioners on average retire on 96% of the salary earned while they were employed, more than twice that enjoyed by Germans now bankrolling the rescue package, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). "Greece," said Miranda Xafa, a former director at the IMF, "is a classic case of entitlements granted by short-sighted governments that didn't bother to secure financing sources."
Without radical redress, experts believe the country's pension system will collapse in under 15 years. But the reforms, which follow drastic cuts to public sector wages, tax rises and an increase in VAT from 19 to 23%, have also ignited controversy and the fiercest opposition yet. Greeks contend the legislation will dismantle the social welfare system.
Anger is such that senior members of the ruling Pasok party have signalled that they may reject the legislation when it is put to vote in Athens' parliament next week. Papandreou, who was forced to expel three MPs when they refused to endorse the IMF-EU austerity measures, now commands 157 seats out of 300 in the house.
