June 2012

Moonlighting stripper sacked by US paper

A journalist of an American newspaper was sacked in March after a rival paper broke the story that she had a second job as a stripper, according to The Independent.

30-year-old Sarah Tressler, from Houston, was called into her editor’s office and summarily dismissed by The Houston Chronicle.

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Courts will sprint to deliver justice when Olympics come to town

Many citizens living in locations that will impacted by the Olympic Games are less than pleased over the hassle surrounding the summer event. One of the biggest fears is over a potential increase in crime.

There has been speculation over how the court system will cope. Plans for how the courts will deal with offences committed during the Olympics have now been outlined and there will be an ‘Olympics fast-track system’ for crimes correlated to the Games.

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1,292 jailed from last summer’s riots

The Independent has today reported that more than 1,200 people have been convicted with an average sentence of 16.8 months after the riots last year.

The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said 3,051 people appeared in court prior to June 8 charged with being involved in last year’s looting and violence.

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Twitter ‘airport bomber’ appealing conviction

A man who joked about bombing an airport on Twitter appeared in the High Court today to challenge his conviction, according to The Telegraph.

Paul Chambers was fined £385 and ordered to pay £600 in legal costs in May 2010 after being convicted of breaking the 2003 Communications Act by sending “a message of menacing character”.

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BBC presenter guilty of benefit fraud

The Telegraph has today reported that Dan Penteado, a presenter on the BBC’s Rogue Traders programme, has pleaded guilty to more than £24,000 of housing-benefit and council-tax fraud.

Penteado admitted to eight charges of dishonestly or knowingly taking benefits while not declaring his income from the BBC.

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Cameron accused of hypocrisy over tax

Several news outlets, including politics.co.uk, are reporting that David Cameron has come under fire in the last few days over apparent hypocrisy in his handling of the tax avoidance scandal.

Members of the opposition, including Labour’s John Mann, have suggested that Cameron is acting inconsistently.

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Creative writing lecturer accused of plagiarism

The Times has today reported that Joanne Benford, an Associate Lecturer in creative writing for the Open University, is being investigated for plagiarism.

The allegations were brought forward by fellow author Alex Keegan when he discovered that a short story he published in 1990, called ‘Postcards From Balloonland’, appeared in an anthology called ‘Coming Up For Air’ in 1995.

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Hospital manager awarded compensation after maternity discrimination by employer

Mrs Michelle Stone, a 43-year-old general manger from Gloucestershire, has been awarded £18,000 in compensation, after an Employment Tribunal in Somerset found she had been subject to sustained discrimination during her maternity leave.

The Daily Telegraph reports that Mrs Stone, who had worked for Ramsay Health Care UK for 15 years, became pregnant in 2009. She gave birth by caesarean section and was suffering a painful aftermath, when she started receiving work e-mails and phone calls.

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Sick workers can retake annual leave

The European Court of Justice (ECJ) has today ruled that workers who become sick while on annual leave are entitled to take that leave at a later date, according to the BBC.

All EU countries are bound by the ruling and the UK is unable to opt-out.

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Government to reduce power of ECHR ‘right to respect for family life’

This week in the House of Commons MPs of all parties unanimously backed a Government motion concerning the interpretation of Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) by UK courts in immigration cases.

Article 8 declares that every citizen has the right to respect for family life. However, the Home Secretary, Theresa May, speaking in a BBC interview on Sunday, said she was concerned the entitlement is being misused by foreign criminals trying to avoid deportation.

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