No more Winterbournes: For those of you who haven't signed it yet, here is the link -

Over 1600 people have now signed the Mencap and the Challenging Behaviour Foundation e action (UK) to the minister Norman Lamb. The more who do will make the point that enough is enough and we will not tolerate another Winterbourne View. For those of you who haven't signed it yet, here is the link – www.mencap.org.uk/outofsight

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Foundation for People with Learning Disabilities

 'Pushing disabled people off benefits – without creating jobs or tackling employer discrimination – is simply a means of cutting disabled people's living standards' 

PCS, DPAC and Black Triangle Campaign are united in opposing the government's austerity programme, which seeks to force people to pay for the failure of the finance system and of the government to regulate it.

The government is making unprecedented cuts across the public sector and is removing people's social, economic and civil rights. The welfare state which was established to provide social security to those unable to work is being systematically dismantled through privatisation and £30 billion of cuts announced to date.

This is not about balancing the books. Over the same period, the government has also given away £30 billion in tax breaks to business. This is an ideological assault on the welfare state.

Disabled people are being disproportionately and brutally affected by these cuts, which include Employment and Support Allowance, and the Disability Living Allowance, the imposition of the Work Capability Assessment (carried out by Atos) and the proposed abolition of the Independent Living Fund.

It is shameful and immoral that private companies are making profit from disabled and unemployed workers but worse, it does not work, the public sector delivers services more effectively, efficiently and less expensively than the private sector.

The cuts are blighting the lives of the least economically secure in society. The government's approach cannot work: there are already 2.5 million people unemployed, and over 6 million seeking additional work. Pushing disabled people off benefits – without creating jobs or tackling employer discrimination – is simply a means of cutting disabled people's living standards.

Read the whole statement here

Researchers say that consuming as little as one glass of wine a week during pregnancy could lower the IQ of the baby by an average of 1.8 points

– but only in women with a certain genetic make-up. The normal span of intelligence is 20 points – from 90 to 110 – so though the effect is small for any individual it could have a noticeable impact on the population as a whole.

The study of over 4,000 mothers and their children by researchers from Oxford University was commended by rival scientists as "important" and "ingenious".

David Nutt, a professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College, London, said: "Even though the IQ effects are small, if at all possible women should avoid [alcohol] in pregnancy because it is a known toxin." Previous research has demonstrated that heavy drinking damages the foetus in pregnancy. But experts have been divided about the risks of moderate drinking.

The National Institute for Clinical Excellence said in 2007 that alcohol should be avoided for the first three months of pregnancy but one to two drinks a day was safe thereafter. The Department of Health said in 2006 there was no safe limit throughout pregnancy.

The new findings are published on-line in the journal Plos One (Public Library of Science One) and indicate that genes determine the sensitivity of the foetus to alcohol. 

Read the whole article here