Riot summit for social networks

25 August 2011 Last updated at 01:23 GMT More than 1,400 people have appeared in court in connection with the riots Home Secretary Theresa May will meet senior police officers and executives from the major social networks later to discuss this month's riots in England.

Representatives from Twitter, Facebook and Blackberry are expected to attend the meeting, which will look at how to stop people plotting violence online.

The networks were criticised during the riots after it emerged they may have been used to plan some of the disorder.

The prime minister has said police may need extra powers to curb their use.

David Cameron also said the government would look at limiting access to such services during any future disorder.

But a Home Office source said there was "no suggestion" that any of the sites would be closed down.

Networks such as Blackberry Messenger - a service which allows free-of-charge real-time messages - were said to have enabled looters to organise their movements during the riots, as well as inciting violence in some cases.

Last week, Facebook and the owner of Blackberry, Research in Motion (RIM), both said they welcomed the opportunity to discuss the matter with Mrs May. Twitter has yet to comment.

'Whether and how'

Crime and security minister James Brokenshire and Lynne Owens, assistant commissioner of central operations at the Metropolitan Police, will also be at the meeting - as will a member of the National Security Council.

A Home Office spokeswoman said the talks would explore "whether and how we should be able to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality."

BBC technology correspondent Rory Cellan-Jones said one social media executive had told him the networks were keen to cooperate but that the idea of trying to block communications was "ludicrous" and had not been thought through.

Our correspondent said it was unclear whether the hour-long meeting would produce any major new policies.

Facebook says it has already prioritised a review of content that is "egregious during sensitive times like the UK riots" with the hope of being able to take down such material more swiftly.

A number of people have appeared in court in recent weeks for organising or attempting to organise disorder on social networks.

Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan and Jordan Blackshaw were jailed for four years for incitement on Facebook

Jordan Blackshaw, 21, from Marston, Cheshire, and Perry Sutcliffe-Keenan, 22, from Warrington, Cheshire, were jailed for four years for online incitement.

Blackshaw had created a Facebook event entitled "Smash Down Northwich Town" while Sutcliffe-Keenan set up a Facebook page called "Let's Have a Riot in Latchford". Both have said they will appeal.

Meanwhile, 21-year-old David Glyn Jones, from Bangor, north Wales, was jailed for four months after telling friends "Let's start Bangor riots" in a post that appeared on Facebook for 20 minutes.

And Johnny Melfah, 16, from Droitwich, Worcestershire, became the first juvenile to have his anonymity lifted in a riot-related case for inciting thefts and criminal damage on the site. He will be sentenced next month.

Plotting violence

In the aftermath of the riots, which spread across England's towns and cities two weeks ago, Mr Cameron said the government might look at disconnecting some online and telecommunications services if similar circumstances arose in the future.

"We are working with the police, the intelligence services and industry to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality," he told MPs during an emergency session of Parliament.

Tim Godwin, the Met police's acting commissioner, also said last week that he considered requesting authority to switch off Twitter during the riots.

However he conceded that the legality of such a move was "very questionable" and that the service was a valuable intelligence asset.

Currently, communications networks that operate in the UK can be compelled to hand over individuals' personal messages if police are able to show that they relate to criminal behaviour.

The rules gathering such queries are outlined in the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA).

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Has feminism blocked social mobility for men?

6 April 2011 Last updated at 11:34 GMT Feminism provided an obstacle to social mobility for working-class men, Cabinet minister David Willetts has controversially argued. But is he right?

They were meant to welcome a new era of fairness and opportunity for all. Instead, a minister's remarks have prompted debate over the effect of women's entry into higher education and the professions.

In a briefing to journalists ahead of the government's social mobility strategy, David Willetts, the universities minister, appeared to suggest that feminism had made it harder for working-class men to get ahead in life.

Asked what was to blame for a lack of social mobility, the Daily Telegraph quoted him saying: "The feminist revolution in its first-round effects was probably the key factor.

"Feminism trumped egalitarianism. It is not that I am against feminism, it's just that is probably the single biggest factor."

His remarks sparked a wave of criticism, and Mr Willetts made it clear that he supported the move of women into the workplace and higher education. But to some the notion that more jobs for females equals fewer opportunities for males will be a convincing one.

Continue reading the main story

Alan Manning, professor of economics, LSE

"The expansion of university education was faster among women - they went from being a minority of students to a majority.

"But it's not true that if one group takes something, there's automatically less for the other.

"The deterioration in employment opportunities among young men was primarily the consequence of the decline in manufacturing.

"It's not the case that all these apprenticeships were suddenly taken by lots of young women. It's that the manufacturing jobs just weren't there anymore."

Certainly, there is no question that the number of female workers in the UK has increased significantly over the past four decades.

Labour Force Survey estimates suggest that the employment rate for women aged 16 to 59 rose from 56% in 1971 to 73% in 2004.

Whereas in 1971 there were nine million women over the age of 16 in work, by 2004 that figure stood at 13 million.

At the same time, social mobility for men appears to have fallen back over the same period.

According to the government's own social mobility strategy, the proportion of males born in 1958, with parents who were in the bottom fifth of earners, moving upwards was 70%. For those born in 1970, the figure was 62%.

In 2008-09, 51% of young women entered higher education, according to figures released earlier this year by the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills, compared with 40% of young men.

It was the first time more than half of women went on to higher education - 20 years previously, only about one in five young women went into higher education and a decade prior to that it was about one in 10.

It is figures like these that may have led Mr Willetts to conclude that greater opportunities for women have resulted in fewer for men.

Continue reading the main story The 2010 gender pay divide, which was the closest since figures started in 1997, showed UK men took home 10% more pay than their female counterpartsThe Office for National Statistics data shows that, in April 2010, the UK workforce was made up of 12.7 million men and 12.3 million women.However, work patterns were vastly different between the sexes. Some 88% of men worked full-time, but only 58% of women worked full-timeWomen tended to have lower hourly rates of pay in general, the figures showRod Liddle, the son of a train driver who has risen to become a prominent journalist, says he does not like the manner in which the minister made his point. And Liddle insists the move of women into the workplace was just and correct.

But he says such statistics demonstrate that the arrival of middle-class women in large numbers into the universities and professions has restricted the prospects for men with working-class backgrounds.

"The move of women into the workplace is absolutely right - it should be guaranteed," he says.

"But what Willetts said in down-the-line, factual terms is right. It annoys me when the left refuse to accept that it's harder for men or that the process has had an effect on the family. That doesn't mean it was wrong."

Of course, the number of job opportunities on offer and the nature of the labour market did not stand still as women began to make up a greater proportion of the labour force.

As a result, many academics regard such an interpretation of the data as simplistic.

Men used to achieve social mobility by rising through the factory ranks

Karen Mumford, professor of economics at the University of York, says it is "woolly-minded" to assume that the number of job opportunities has remained static.

In the days before feminism, she says, those working-class men who achieved upward social mobility tended to do so by moving through the ranks at their workplace.

But, Prof Mumford adds, the decline in manufacturing - which traditionally was a source of better-paid jobs for a predominantly male workforce - has meant that these opportunities are no longer available.

The number of jobs in manufacturing fell to 2.5 million in 2010, according to figures from business organisation, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI). This is equal to just 9% of the total workforce. In 1978 over seven million people were employed in the sector, equal to 28.5% of the workforce.

She points out, additionally, that the rise in the proportion of women attending higher education mirrored a huge increase in the number of places available for both genders. Government figures show an all-time high of 45% of young people going to university in 2008-09 compared with only about one in 20 in the early 1960s.

As a result, Prof Mumford says, there was never a pre-feminist golden age in which large numbers of working-class men attended universities.

Continue reading the main story

Janice Turner, Times columnist

"I don't like to defend government ministers.

"But I don't think David Willetts was saying feminism is wrong or evil.

"It's not about social mobility per se. What's happened is that middle-class parents aren't just getting their sons into university, they're now getting their daughters in as well.

"That's just a fact. We need to have a clearer debate about these things. The issue needs to be unpicked."

"It was very rare then and it's very rare now," she says. "They are not competing. The problem isn't feminism.

"What's happened is that those middle-income working class jobs with which a man used to be able to keep a family have disappeared, while the number of lower-skill service sector jobs, which women have always tended to do, has expanded."

She acknowledges that the number of better-paid "problem-solving" occupations at the top of the income scale which require a university education have increased, but that this has benefited male and female workers alike.

Moreover, feminists would point to the fact that men in the UK took home 10% more pay than their female colleagues in 2010, according to the Office for National Statistics.

Kate Saunders, feminist writer and novelist, says the idea that greater female participation in the workforce is to blame for a decline in male social mobility ignores the large numbers of women working in badly paid service sector jobs that many men don't want.

"So many things have changed, not just the number of women in the workplace," she says.

"Years ago many working-class men used to work in the factory at the bottom of their street, it just doesn't happen like that anymore and that's not the fault of women. They aren't to blame for things like the decline of the manufacturing industry in this country."

But as long as there is a debate over social mobility, there will also be debate about the repercussions of feminism.

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Council budget 'social vandalism'

12 February 2011 Last updated at 12:46 GMT Birmingham City Council says 2,450 jobs will go in the coming financial year Birmingham City Council has been accused of "social and economic vandalism" after revealing plans to cut thousands of jobs.

Leader Mike Whitby said the authority would "play its role" in helping to tackle the national deficit.

He said 4,300 council posts would be cut and 3,000 more transferred into a schools co-operative, amid funding cuts from central government.

But a spokesman from Unison criticised the scale of the cuts.

Roger McKenzie, assistant general secretary of Unison, said the coalition government had "pulled the rug from beneath Birmingham society" and called the council's move "disastrous" for the city.

He said: "The cuts amount to social and economic vandalism and they threaten the economic viability and social fabric of our city."

The city council, which is run by a Conservative and Liberal Democrat coalition, has 18,993 full-time staff posts.

Mr Whitby said that the target of 4,300 posts had almost been met, as 1,807 council employees had already taken voluntary redundancy and a further 1,500 had opted to do so in the coming financial year.

The authority - the largest in the UK - has made 302 compulsory redundancies and is consulting over the remainder of the posts which must be cut.

Increase parking fees

The introduction of schools co-operatives means that council workers in supportive roles in Birmingham schools, including catering, cleaning and caretaking staff, will no longer be employed by the city council.

They will instead be paid directly by schools.

Further savings are to come from plans to privatise adult social care, increase parking fees and remodel youth services.

The details were revealed on Friday in a document by the council.

Mr Whitby said: "Undoubtedly this has been one of the most challenging budgets to plan."

But Mr McKenzie said the council had made a "political decision" to push ahead with cuts that threatened the "very viability" of public services.

Roger Jenkins, GMB regional officer for workers at the city council, said: "Whichever way you look at it the outlook for the employment and the services provided by Birmingham City Council are very bleak."

A final decision will be made in March.

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