A mouse that can speak? A monkey with Down’s Syndrome? Dogs with human hands or feet? British scientists want to know if such experiments are acceptable, or if they go too far in the name of medical research.

The Academy of Medical Sciences has launched a study to look at the use of animals containing human material in scientific research.

Using human material in animals is not new. Scientists have already created rhesus macaque monkeys that have a human form of the Huntingdon’s gene so they can investigate how the disease develops; and mice with livers made from human cells are being used to study the effects of new drugs.

But scientists say the technology to put ever greater amounts of human genetic material into animals is spreading quickly around the world — raising the possibility that some scientists in some places may want to push boundaries.

Religious groups are among those that are uneasy about the trend. One Catholic cardinal, Keith O’Brien of Edinburgh, has branded such work “Frankenstein science.”

Martin Bobrow, a professor of medical genetics at Cambridge University is chairman of a 14-member group looking into the issue.

He says: “Do most of us care if we make a mouse whose blood cells or liver are human? Probably not. But if it can speak? If it can think? Or if it is conscious in a human way? Then we’re in a completely different ballpark.”

What do you say?

This week, hundreds of thousands of people will join the annual act of remembrance to commemorate those who have died in war, proudly wearing a poppy to honour the fallen.

However the simple flower emblem, which has been used since shortly after the end of World War One as it was the only thing to grow on the devastated battlefields of Belgium and northern France, has once again become an issue in itself.

Is the decision to not wear one an act of disrespect?

The Daily Mail newspaper is running a campaign, demanding that Premier League football teams have a poppy embroidered onto the shirts they wear this weekend. Twelve clubs initially said they would do so, but as the Mail turned its ire on those that didn’t, all bar two — Manchester United and Liverpool — have now agreed to make the gesture.

The Mail said football teams wearing the poppy sent out a “powerful message of solidarity” to Britain’s armed forces.

“All too often footballers - on and off the pitch - set a dreadful example to their young supporters,” the paper said in its editorial. ”It would be to their eternal shame if Manchester United and Liverpool snub the opportunity to demonstrate that their sport can be a force for good.”

Footballers are by no means the first to be criticised for failing to wear a poppy. BBC, ITV and Sky News presenters and reporters all wear a poppy when they appear on our screens following complaints in the past, and even producers on “Strictly Come Dancing” have come in for criticism this year for suggesting contestants should not wear the emblem because of health and safety fears. They have since backed down.

A few years ago, Channel 4 news presenter Jon Snow described such insistence as “poppy fascism”. He said he wore a poppy off air but would not wear one or any symbol — such as an AIDS ribbon — while broadcasting.

Guardian columnist Marina Hyde described the outrage of the Mail and other media commentators as “phoney poppy apoplexy”.

“The point so often ignored is that the second world war, in particular, was fought to allow people the choice in this and many other matters,” she wrote. ”Victory meant freedom from fascism, which makes Jon Snow’s choice of words for this annual hounding of any public figure pictured without one – “poppy fascism” – particularly significant.”

The Royal British Legion which runs the Poppy Appeal itself says that wearing a poppy was a voluntary gesture. But with British troops fighting, and signficant numbers dying or being wounded in Afghanistan, many argue that it is more important than ever to show the soldiers have the support of the public — and the best way is by wearing a poppy.

Fight them there or fight them here?

Former Foreign Office minister Kim Howells poses the question in the Guardian in a piece made grimly relevant by Wednesday’s shooting dead of  five British soldiers by an Afghan policeman.

Howells says troops should be brought back from Afghanistan and that the billions of pounds saved should be used to beef up homeland security in Britain – drawing the front line against al Qaeda around the UK rather than thousands of miles away in Helmand province.

He accepts that such an approach would result in “more intrusive surveillance in certain communities,” a tacit acknowledgment that Britain’s Muslims would be subject to greater scrutiny by police and intelligence services.

His “Fortress Britain” theory takes into account indications that a growing number of experts feel the war against the Al Qaeda’s supporters the Taliban in Afghanistan is unwinnable.

It also makes the point that not all Al Qaeda training camps are in Afghanistan anyway.

Howells is Gordon Brown’s intelligence and security watchdog and his theory goes counter to the prevailing wisdom in Washington and London, both of which are preparing to send more troops to Afghanistan.

Do you agree with him?

Prince Charles is in Canada, the Queen is expected to go there next year and William is preparing to go to New Zealand and Australia – but are there signs that the locals are revolting?

Polls published in advance of Charles’ visit show support for Canada’s constitutional monarchy is weak, even if the public’s frosty opinion of the Prince of Wales himself has begun to warm just a bit.

Sixty percent of Canadians felt the constitutional monarchy was outdated, although 80 percent said it was an important part of Canadian history.

Polls in New Zealand show people generally in favour of the monarchy even if it seems to have little relevance to their lives but when William heads off afterwards to Australia he will find a much more developed republican movement.

Prime Minister Kevin Rudd is an avowed republican whose announcement of William’s trip made it crystal clear that the young royal was coming because because he asked to, not because he was invited. Foreign Minister Stephen Smith says a split from the monarchy is inevitable in the next decade.

William, travelling without girlfriend Kate Middleton, can expect to bask in the lingering “Diana factor,” but this enduring phenomenon may actually work against the older couple in Canada.

Do you believe such royal visits have any point?

The government’s attitude towards science is under the microscope this week over accusations that expert advice is being ignored if it fails to fit prevailing political agendas.

The row has been prompted by the sacking of the government’s chief drug adviser, Professor David Nutt, who has been making statements that do not fit in with the government’s hard line on drugs. Two of his colleagues resigned in protest over the weekend and more may follow.

Nutt has criticsed the Home Office decision to upgrade cannabis to a Class B drug, saying it is less harmful than alcohol and nicotine. He has previously said taking ecstasy is less dangerous than horse-riding and that consideration should be given to downgrading the classification of both ecstasy and LSD.

Liberal Democrat science spokesman Dr Evan Harris says: ”I fear there will be many more resignations unless the government acts to restore confidence among its independent scientific advisers.”

Home Secretary Alan Johnson says Nutt was sacked because he crossed the line between an advisor and a campaigner. ”You can do one or the other. You can’t do both,” he insisted.

Do you think Johnson has a point?

Fury, resentment and a general feeling of being hard done-by is reported to be the prevailing mood amongst MPs as they reconvene after the Summer break to find brown envelopes of an unwelcome sort waiting for them.

These are the already infamous “Legg letters,” the latest symbol along with duck houses, moats and mole-catchers of the expenses scandal which did so much damage to all parties earlier this year.

Written as a result of the inquiry headed by former civil servant Sir Thomas Legg, they assess the expenses claimed by each MP between 2004 and 2008 and, where anomalies have been found, they either demand repayment or clarification.

Gordon Brown is to pay back 12,415 pounds, Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg 910 pounds and SNP leader Alex Salmond 700 pounds. David Cameron has been asked to provide more details about his mortgage repayments.

But three things have particularly annoyed backbenchers.

The first is that Legg has imposed  retrospective limits on various categories of expenses that the MPs themselves obviously cannot have known about at the time. He has said the maximum allowable for cleaning for example is 2,000 pounds and that for gardening 1,000 pounds, according to newspaper reports.

The second is the perception at Westminster that those MPs who made the really big claims, the ones on mortgage payments, are getting away with it. Saying “sorry” seems to be enough, as in the case of former Home Secretary Jacqui Smith.

And the third is that some MPs feel they have been unfairly singled out for reprisal by party leaders eager to be seen to be taking action.

Do you think they have a point? Is it time to stop harassing MPs and get on with government?

Mr Justice Coleridge has ruled that Baby P’s mother Tracey Connelly and her boyfriend Steven Barker should be named so that the public should not lose faith in the criminal justice system.

Such was the notoriety of the case, he ruled, that “for the public to be prohibited from learning the identity of the defendants may give rise to considerable public disquiet.”

Their identities had been circulating on the Internet for some time but officially naming Baby P’s tormentors makes them much more open to reprisals, both in prison and outside, when their sentences expire. The mother was jailed for five years and the boyfriend for 12.

The pair may well have to be given police protection and new identities when they leave prison, all at public expense, as happened with the killers of James Bulger.

What did we gain from knowing the names of Robert Thompson and Jon Venables in that case, asks Roger Smith, director of law reform group Justice, in the Guardian on Tuesday. ”What does it help me to know if her name is Smith or Jones,” he says of Baby P’s mother.

Do you believe any useful purpose has been served in naming her or her boyfriend?   

Britain’s railway franchises have been branded “a mess” by a group of MPs, who call for major reforms including the nationalisation of the troubled East Coast mainline.

The Transport Select Committee has called for the East Coast, set to be taken off the hands of current operator National Express later this year after the company complained of heavy losses, to be kept under state ownership and used to compare against the performances of private companies.

But why stop there?

The present system of privatised railways, with its split operation between infrastructure and train operating companies, has always been criticised by passengers’ groups as un unwieldy beast with a distinct preference for profit over performance.

The Transport Committee says the system actively encourages train operators to take their passengers for granted.

Would it be such a drastic step to take the whole system back under public control? After all, the government already effectively owns Network Rail, pouring billions of pounds a year into the tracks-and-stations company.

Is the time right to go back to the days of British Rail? Or would that just lumber the public purse with another colossally expensive enterprise which may turn out to be no more efficient than the present system?

The shockwaves reverberating through Westminster as the MPs’ expenses scandal unfolds have been compared with the “Clean Hands” bribery scandal that effectively demolished Italy’s post-war political establishment in the space of a couple of years in the early 1990s.

If things are going to get that bad, the guilty politicians are going to have an uncomfortable time.

As a reporter in Rome at the time, I remember how surprise turned to anger then just as it has now as the public began to realise the sheer extent of the corruption that was helping to line the pockets of the country’s leading politicians and their parties.

The morning newspapers brought fresh revelations almost daily of how the main political parties routinely demanded kickbacks in return for government contracts. There were the “golden sheets” for example in which invoices for linen and bedding were inflated to thousands of pounds, and the exorbitant demands placed on suppliers to hospitals, which caused particular anger.

People used to demonstrate in the streets wearing white gloves to show they had clean hands. They would try to scare MPs they felt were corrupt by sending them spoof versions of the ”avviso,” the official notice that warned potential offenders they were under investigation. The avviso itself became one of the enduring symbols of the scandal, almost like the guillotine in revolutionary France. Reproductions of it used to sell well as birthday and Christmas cards.

Another favourite amng the angry public, if any disgraced politician dared show his face his public, was to mockingly shower them with coins.

Such was the fate of one of those held to have been most deeply involved in the corruption, Socialist leader Bettino Craxi, who was forced to flee to his second home in Tunisia to escape jail in Italy. Other disgraced politicians and businessmen even took their own lives.

What was going on in Italy at that time was undoubtedly far more serious than the exploitation of MPs’ expenses, but because the British have tended to be less cynical about their elected representatives, the sense of outrage has been much the same.

But before the calls for a complete shake-out of the British political establishment become so loud as to be unstoppable, it might be worth remembering, as former Labour minister Michael Meacher points out in his blog, that political vaccuums often produce surprise results.

Fringe parties, for example, can make big gains, as seems to be happening already in Britain.

And in the case of Italy, the net result of the collapse of its main parties was — Silvio Berlusconi.

--Fay Goddard is chief executive of the Personal Finance Society. The opinions expressed are her own.--

As predicted, Budget 2009 was heavy on figures and forecasts and hard on the highest earners. Unsurprisingly it is the latter that the press has picked up on. We all knew that there would be a new top rate of income tax – though some were taken by surprise at the rate of 50 percent and the speed at which it will be introduced.

This wasn’t the only hit taken by those on big salaries with restrictions on pension tax relief for those on over £150K and personal allowances for those earning over £100K. These changes will be of concern and mean that financial advisers will need to review the position of their affected clients. However, advisers will have breathed a sign of relief as the rumoured removal of all higher rate tax relief on pensions did not materialise.

There was better news though for savers. The rise in ISA limits is a welcome move and will be available immediately for those over 50, with everyone else having to wait until next year. Whilst I assume this is aimed at providing some immediate assistance to those who rely on their savings to generate income, with interest rates so low, the increase will not deliver much benefit. At least some pensioners will also receive additional tax credits though.

Help for families came in the form of increased child tax credit, and for those who lose their job in these troubling times statutory redundancy pay has been increased.

Those looking to buy houses under £175K will continue to benefit from the stamp duty holiday – this was extended by a further six months until the end of the calendar year but there was little else to stimulate the housing market.

In terms of more direct measures there was the ubiquitous raise in alcohol and tobacco duty and also the rise in petrol duty. The VAT rate cut will end in December as announced in last year’s Pre-Budget report and so VAT will revert back to 17.5 percent. None of these will be sufficient to top up the Chancellor’s coffers quickly but could further reduce spending for middle England.

This was certainly a Budget for the times with the Government looking to replace revenues lost in the downturn and as I said prior to the Chancellor’s speech it’s the first step towards universal belt tightening.