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Raine Spencer dies aged 87 follwing short illness
Raine Spencer, the stepmother of Diana, Princess of Wales, died yesterday aged 87 after a short illness, her family has said. Countess Spencer was the daughter of prolific romantic novelist Dame Barbara Cartland and grew up in the rarefied world of upper class England. She was famed for her immaculate dress sense, bouffant hair, pearls and clipped accent but as a young mother served as a councillor for the London Borough of Westminster and went on to hold positions on many other bodies.
She amassed a collection of aristocratic titles from her marriages to men from the upper echelons of society. At various points in her life she was known as Raine McCorquodale, the Honourable Mrs Gerald Legge, Viscountess Lewisham, the Countess of Dartmouth, Countess Spencer, the Dowager Countess Spencer and Countess Jean-Franois de Chambrun.
The Countess had four children with her first husband Gerald Legge, 9th Earl of Dartmouth, whom she
married in 1947. In the early 1970s she met Diana’s father and married him in 1976, a year after he became Earl Spencer, and after she had separated from her first husband. Much has been written about the strained relationship between the Countess and Diana, but it in the early 1990s there was a reported reconciliation between the two women.
Man charged with murder of Pentonville prison inmate
A man has been charged with murder after an inmate was killed in Pentonville prison. New father Jamal Mahmoud, 21, died after being stabbed at the north London jail during an attack which left two others injured on Tuesday.
Basana Kimbembi, 34, of no fixed abode was charged by police with his killing yesterday. A 26-year-old man who had been arrested in connection with the offence has been released, police said. The two other victims in the attack have non-life threatening conditions but remain in hospital.
A post-mortem of Mr Mahmoud concluded he had died from a single stab wound. The killing of the young father prompted calls for an inquiry into the state of jails in England and Wales, with his family accusing the prison of “neglecting him”. Cuts to staff and resources by the Government meant the “tragedy” at the site was “no massive surprise”, the Prison Governors Association said on Wednesday. It follows a slew of warnings about safety behind bars while Pentonville was last year singled out by former justice secretary Michael Gove as “the most dramatic example of failure” within the estate.
Boy ‘living life entirely as a girl’ removed from mother’s care
A seven-year-old boy who was “living life entirely as a girl” has been removed from his mother’s care following a ruling by a High Court judge. Mr Justice Hayden said the woman had caused her son “significant emotional harm”, and criticised local authority social services staff responsible for the youngster’s welfare. He said the woman had been “absolutely convinced” the youngster “perceived himself as a girl” and was determined that he should be a girl. The boy is now living with his father, but the child still sees his mother. The judge said no-one involved in the case - including the local authority - could be identified.
Mr Justice Hayden said “flares of concern” had been sent from a “whole raft of multi-disciplinary agencies”, adding that he could not understand why so many concerns were “disregarded so summarily” by social services. He said staff had “moved into wholesale acceptance that (the boy) should be regarded as a girl” and that he wanted the council to undertake a review of the “social work response” to the case. A council spokesperson revealed bosses had already begun a review.
“(His mother) told me that (he) was ‘living in stealth’ by which was meant, she explained, that he was living life entirely as a girl,” said Mr Justice Hayden. “He dressed, at all times, like a girl and, it transpired, had been registered at a new general practitioner’s as a girl.” He said the woman had told him how the boy “expressed disdain for his penis”, adding “I consider that (the mother) has caused significant emotional harm to (her son) in her active determination that he should be a girl”.
Public service workers suffer 40,000 violent attacks in 10 years
More than 40,000 violent assaults against public service workers in Scotland have been recorded in the past decade, according to new research. Unison’s annual Violence at Work Survey 2016 launched yesterday showing a rise of 20,000 to 40,000 violent assaults against public service and local authority workers in the period between 2006 and 2016. There has been a significant rise of recorded violent incidents within local authorities rising from 13,206 to 17,605 this year, with authorities including
Aberdeen, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee and Stirling reporting significant increases.
Unison say the increase cannot be explained by better awareness and reporting, but instead insist that violence against workers must be addressed by employers and the Government. Care workers experience twice the national average risk of assault while nurses are four times that, the union said. School assistants are also said to be suffering from high level assaults, mostly against females. It was also found that 83 per cent of workers within the voluntary sector surveyed said that their employer regarded violence as part of the job.
Scott Donohue, Unison chair of health and safety committee, said: “Violence against public service workers has increased, with significant increases against local authority workers. We cannot ignore a doubling of the figures over 10 years. It is also reasonable to make the correlation between the swingeing cuts to councils and increase in violence to council workers. Staff tell us if you have to wait longer, or the service you need is no longer available, or a support worker has less time to spent with a client, it's being taken out on those working face to face with the public.”
Subway and Burger King at bottom of hospital catering rankings
Food retailers in hospitals have been rated according to how well they are meeting healthy eating targets set down by NHS England, with Subway and Burger King at the bottom of the rankings. Firms such as Costa, Starbucks and Subway have been rated by the Campaign for Better Hospital Food for their commitment to improving the range of healthy food they offer patients, staff and visitors.
The Royal Voluntary Service comes out top in the league table, while Subway and Burger King - which has an outlet at Addenbrooke’s Hospital in Cambridge - are at the bottom. NHS England has set targets for healthier checkouts by March, together with targets on food advertising and price promotions.
Katherine Button, from the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, said: “It’s disappointing that Subway and Burger King alone out of all the major brands serving food in hospitals are the only two we found not to be working towards NHS England targets on promotion of healthier food. The healthier option should be the easier option in hospitals, and at the moment Subway and Burger King appear to be holding back moves towards a healthier NHS.”
Shipwreck and ‘birthplace of feminism’ among heritage sites at risk
London Zoo’s aviary, a 16th century shipwreck and a Unitarian church dubbed “the birthplace of feminism” are among sites added to the latest list of heritage at risk. Additions to the Heritage at Risk Register also include Brighton Old Town, a fort which defended Portsmouth from the French and a church immortalised in TS Eliot's poem The Waste Land and where anti-slavery campaigner William Wilberforce worshipped.
But there is good news for some historic sites which have come off the at-risk list, which is kept by Government heritage agency Historic England, following work to restore and save them. They include the Grade I registered grounds at North Yorkshire’s Castle Howard and the world’s oldest pub music hall, Wilton’s Music Hall in London, which after decades of decay and a lengthy campaign to save it, has been repaired to its former glory. There are 137 fewer entries on the list this year, but experts warn the gap between the cost of repairs and the value of restored properties is growing - driven in part by a shortage of skills and in some places of scaffolding which have pushed up costs.
There are 926 places of worship on the register, along with 2,582 scheduled monuments such as prehistoric barrows which are the most at-risk type of heritage, 95 parks and gardens, six wrecks and even
six battlefields. In total there are 5,341 sites on the register in 2016, compared to 5,478 last year, but fewer of them are economic to repair, with country houses, textile industry buildings and public baths particularly facing problems, Historic England said.