Catholic bishops in England and Wales warned against people thinking they may be exempt from prosecution in assisting suicide after new guidelines were issued.

The  Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) set out the guidelines in September in an attempt to bring greater clarity to the thorny issue of prosecution, inviting comments during a consultation period.

Suicide is still against the law in Britain, but the high-profile case of multiple sclerosis sufferer Debbie Purdy, from Bradford, northern England, who has sought clarification on whether her husband would be prosecuted if he helped her go abroad to die, has been an impetus for the guidelines. 

They set out a range of factors influencing whether a person would face prosecution or not. In favour of prosecution would be if there were a financial motive involved, pressure put on the individual into committing suicide and if the person wanting to die was suffering from mental illness.

Factors against prosecution would include whether the suspect was motivated wholly by compassion and was a spouse, partner, close relative or personal friend.

But the Catholic Bishops’ Conference of England and Wales said the guidance did not protect the vulnerable such as the disabled, the terminally ill and those prone to carrying out repeated suicide attempts in the form of a shout of help.

They also said it should not assume spouses and partners will always be supportive. “Indeed, crimes of violence are very commonly carried out by someone known to the victim not infrequently within the same family,” they said.

While acknowledging the DPP had a difficult job, they said the word “assisting” should be reconsidered in preference for “aiding and abetting”, which reflected the law.

They warned against a culture shift in which “assisted suicide” becomes partly “decriminalised” or that the DPP authorises “exceptions to the law”.

“This could in turn lead to a much wider range of cases of assisted suicide, even including the facilitation of suicide within the United Kingdom by medical professionals,” they said.

A similar line was adopted by the Church of England, which separately issued its response on the same day.

“The Church of England believes that every suicide is a tragedy and that a caring society ought to ensure that anyone considering suicide is able to have ready access to life-affirming and life-enhancing support, counselling and medical and nursing care,” it said in a statement.

“It is essential that assisted suicide is never deemed to be acceptable or commendable. Aiding, abetting, counselling or procuring a suicide remains a crime and we are assured that the DPP’s guidelines are not intended to or designed to compromise this.”

In his ill-spent youth my brother owned a Ford Capri. It was a monstrosity.

I’ve just called him and the car’s specifications slipped off his tongue as though he was still driving it. “It was a classic — a Mark One, 1600 GT XLR with fake wood dashboard, a clock in the centre console, not forgetting the twin choke Weber and the huge General Grabber tyres.”

He seemed to spent most of his weekend primping, preening and pimping his motor and while his head was under the bonnet I would laugh at him incessantly.

But maybe I was wrong. Crap cars are now apparently highly desirable and 20-year old Trabants are selling for over £5,000. In these days of financial uncertainity that’s quite a nice little investment.

Ah the Trabant. Immortalised by U2’s “Achtung Baby” album cover in 1991, with its fibre-glass body and  600cc engine Vorsprung durch Technik it was not.

Not that bone-rattling suspensions and outdated designs were confined to behind the Iron Curtain.

Just over a year ago the Austin Allegro was voted Britain’s worst ever car, leaving the Morris Ital and Talbot Sunbeam in second and third place.

What was the worst car you’ve driven? And let us know how much an Austin Allegro, often referred to as the ‘All-aggro’, is going for these days?

-Lavinia Carey is Chair of the Alliance Against IP Theft, and Director General of the British Video Association. The opinions expressed are her own. -

The proposals contained within the much anticipated Digital Economy Bill have prompted lively debate among politicians, industry and consumer groups. Unfortunately, some have characterised the debate as industry versus consumer, when in fact both industry and the consumer have an interest in reducing copyright theft.

The proposals will benefit millions of people, and significant consensus exists about the need to tackle the issue by first warning and ultimately taking action against those who distribute other people’s content online without permission.

Whilst some have criticised the Government’s proposals on temporary broadband account suspension this is one of a number of potential measures, implemented only after due process and a robust appeals process, which may be used as a last resort against those who have ignored multiple warnings and continue to persist in illegal file-sharing. Research also shows the important role the existence of such a deterrent has to play in changing people’s behaviour.

Equally, most parents would surely welcome a warning that alerted them to the fact that the activities of their children were exposing the whole family to security breaches. That is what happens when people file-share – the software they download to access illicit music or film files, for example, also provides access to other users to all the files on their computer, some of which may contain very personal and private information and it’s a great propagator of malware and viruses.

Many internet users find broadband speeds unsatisfactory, particularly during the heaviest use of bandwidth by file-sharers between the hours of 6pm and midnight, so consumers who use legitimate services will probably welcome the fall in illegal traffic, which significantly contributes towards congestion on the networks.

Those who rely on the creative economy for their livelihood, including musicians, directors, software developers, lighting and camera operators, make-up artists, costumiers, designers, producers, grips, writers and sound engineers to name just a few deserve to have their creativity protected. They are consumers too. If they are not properly rewarded for their work, our creative economy will suffer. This is not something our country can afford to risk. This is one of the fastest growing industries in the UK, 8 percent of GDP, and in many parts of the sector we justifiably lead the world.

We must not fall into the trap of accepting that an illegal and damaging practice has to continue just because it has become normalised among certain groups. Quite the reverse is true. It is the job of Government and Parliament to make sure that the public has access to and can enjoy the opportunities presented by a Digital Britain, that no section of our society is excluded from those opportunities, and that those who make it possible are properly rewarded for their innovation.

Ahead of a U.N. summit in Copenhagen next month, scepticism is growing that an agreement will be reached on a global climate treaty to replace the Kyoto Protocol, due to expire in 2012.

The protocol set targets aimed at reducing greenhouse gas emissions, which are believed to be responsible for the gradual rise in the Earth's average temperature. Many scientists say that reducing carbon dioxide emissions is key to preventing climate change.

But authors Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner argue in their new book SuperFreakonomics that humanity can take an alternative route to try and save the planet.

"If the goal is to stop warming then geo-engineering solutions are worth considering because they are far cheaper, probably much more do-able and easily reversible," Dubner told Reuters before a talk at the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce in London.

Related vlog: How to become a freakonomist

LibDem leader Nick Clegg had called for the speech to be cancelled because he says there is little chance of much legislation getting through before the coming general election. 

“The speech will be dressed up as the way to ‘build Britain’s future’ when it will be little more than a rehearsal of the next Labour Party manifesto, an attempt to road-test policy gimmicks to see whether they might save this Government’s skin,” he said.

“It is a waste of everyone’s time, and should be cancelled in favour of an emergency programme of political reform,” he added in the Independent. “That is the only job this rump of a Parliament is fit for.”

The Conservatives piled in too, with their leader in the upper House, Lord Strathclyde saying that if the measures outlined were so important they would have been in the government’s legislative programme last year rather than being left to the last moment of the fifth term.

Downing Street however called the speech a ”very focused programme” of legislation, while Labour’s deputy leader Harriet Harman said it contained important plans to foster economic growth and make the banks more accountable.

What do you think?

Although the Queen’s speech on Wednesday is a formal occasion to outline the government’s agenda for the new parliamentary session, with less than six months to go before a general election, commentators are viewing it as the unofficial launch of Labour’s campaign.

Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, outlines some of the challenges the parties face before elections, which must be held no later than June 2010.

Yes, I remember Clapham Junction, the name, because one rainy morning this week the (very) slow train drew up there unwontedly — and stayed for ages. Plenty of time to take in the dismal scene.

No blackbirds singing around there, just huge numbers of cross people huddling in door-aligned bunches on a forbidding station that seems in parts like a throwback to the days of steam. 

Britain’s busiest railway junction, in southwest London, on the line to Waterloo, has been named as one of the 10 worst stations in Britain, a richly deserved honour which will however entitle it to a share of 50 million pounds of refurbishment money.

The others have been named by a group of “Stations Champions” as Barking, Stockport, Manchester Victoria, Preston, Wigan North Western, Liverpool Central, Warrington Bank Quay, Crewe and Luton.

Are there any others that you would like to see included on the list? 

Scientists argue that rich nations must make drastic cuts in greenhouse gas emissions to prevent dangerous climate change. The way energy is used, priced and created would have to change in order to institute these cuts.

Ahead of elections in Britain, which must be held before June 2010, Dave Timms of Friends of the Earth shared his thoughts with Reuters on what the group thinks the next government needs to do in order to build a low-carbon economy.

-Steven Barnett is professor of communications at the University of Westminster and has written extensively about the Sky deal and cricket for the Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack. The opinions expressed are his own.-

David Davies’ review panel on UK sport’s “crown jewels” – the list of sporting events which have to be reserved for free-to-air television – has proposed adding significantly to the existing list of 10 events.

Most controversially it wants to see cricket’s Ashes Test matches, part of the package sold to Sky five years ago, back on mainstream television. Given its terms of enquiry, the Davies panel’s report was bound to be either lame or contentious. Thankfully, they have chosen contentious.

We’ll be hearing some cries of anguish from Sky over the next few weeks, but that’s to be expected. BSkyB’s hugely successful business model depends on exclusive access to sport, and you can’t blame Rupert Murdoch for understanding long ago the commodity value of exclusive live sport on television. He famously told an annual meeting of News Corp in 1996 that sport was to be the "battering ram" for expansion of his global pay television network.

And Sky does it brilliantly: three sports channels, pioneering innovations in coverage and much more domestic and international sport on offer than than ever before. But this array of sporting choice comes at a price – in excess of 600 pounds per year if you want it all. Most people don’t: pay TV in Britain is still a minority activity.

That shifts the focus of responsibility to the sports bodies – and this is where the real challenge lies. Can they be trusted to represent the wider public interest of universal audience access for their blue riband events?

Increasingly the answer is no, as cricket eloquently demonstrated. The county game was struggling and Sky made an offer in 2004 that no terrestrial broadcaster could reasonably match. Result: Test cricket vanished from most viewers’ screens, and a peak viewing figure of 7.4 million on Channel 4 when England won the Ashes in 2005 plunged to just 1.9 million this year on Sky – beaten even by the 2.3 million who were watching Songs of Praise on BBC1 at the same time.

Exactly the same happened in Ireland when rugby’s Heineken Cup switched from Irish national broadcaster RTE to Sky Sports 3 years ago and an audience of 255,000 fell to 47,000. When a sport migrates from free-to-air to subscription television, there is a simple algorithm: it will lose around three quarters of its audience.

Does it matter? In a debate dominated by sports governing bodies and the big beasts of pay TV, the arguments of ordinary sports fans tend to be drowned out. So here are three examples of the cultural damage of allowing major events to migrate to pay TV.

First, it removes major sport from exposure to the maximum number of people. Television fuels participation and aspiration, particularly of children. Public tennis courts are full during Wimbledon fortnight, and I have lost count of the number of eventual sporting champions who describe the moment they saw an inspirational performance on television which galvanised them into excelling at that particular sport. Even a few minutes of peak-time mass audience exposure can have an astonishing impact on generating popular interest.

Second, there is the shared national experience, where great sporting events create and cement a sense of national identity. Even non sports fans recognise a tangible feel- good factor that follows national sporting success. And many commented on how this year’s Ashes success was a damp squib compared to four years ago.

Third, those most likely to be deprived of access to these major sporting events are the most disadvantaged sections of society – pensioners, the low paid, the unemployed, the disabled. Do we believe as a nation that this is fair?

We will hear plenty of claims from sports bodies about the huge investment in grass roots initiatives being funded by television’s money, some of which will be true. But they all managed before Sky arrived, and there is a compelling response to this much-repeated argument from the other side of the world.

Australia has listed every rugby league and union test match, every Ashes test match and one-day international in Australia; every round of the Australian and British golf opens; Wimbledon and the Australian Open tennis championships; and even international netball matches. Not to mention soccer, motor racing, the Melbourne Cup and the Commonwealth Games.

That’s a population one third the size of ours which is hardly noted for its lack of sporting success or grass-roots participation. It’s a nation that understands the cultural significance of sport and the role of universal free to air television in driving that culture. It’s time we did the same in Britain.

Although the number of Britons claiming jobless benefit in October rose by its smallest amount in 18 months, the jobless rate is at 7.8 percent.

One resource, sometimes overlooked by unemployed professionals and businesses looking for new recruits, is Jobcentre Plus, a government-run employment agency.

Businesses can cut costs by using the free vacancy-advertising and recruitment service offered by Jobcentre Plus. As well, employers that hire people who are unemployed for six months or more through a so-called Recruitment Subsidy scheme will receive 1,000 pounds for each eligible jobseeker. They can also access in-work training of a value of up to 1,500 pounds.

Chris Nicol, district manager, south London, explains what’s on offer for professional jobseekers.