Brace yourself – dodgy takeaway story approaching. Look away now if prone to squeamishness. In fact, by the standards of Environmental Health News (March 28), the goings-on at a takeaway in Kent were not as stomach-turning as some. But the owner did seem especially inventive in his approach to breaching hygiene standards. Rather than use that most basic of kitchen implements, a spoon, to stir his curry sauce, he used “a piece of skirting board wrapped in plastic with splinters and a nail at the end”. The obvious question is why? His reward for such original thinking was a £3,000 fine.

Continuing the “eeugh” theme, BMJ (March 29) includes an item on the health benefits of smelly shoes. There are not many – benefits, that is – but apparently a pongy pair of trainers can be used as a first-aid measure in epilepsy. In some poorer countries where medication is in short supply, this is well known, but researchers have only just unlocked the secret of odiferous footwear. Strong olfactory stimuli increase the epileptic threshold and, as you know, “interfere with seizure activity in the limbic system”. Obvious really, but how was the shoe-seizure link first established?

To The Times Educational Supplement (March 28) next, and a tale of pupils, prostitutes and drugs. In what marks a slight detour from old-fashioned education staples such as trigonometry, oxbow lakes and PE, students from a school in Essex are travelling to Amsterdam to see how the Dutch cope with drug-taking, alcohol and sexual health issues. Traditionalists may scoff and splutter, but there is sense behind the initiative. While booze-fuelled teens in the UK are busy impregnating each other with abandon, Dutch kids are, comparatively, models of restraint. The idea is that the British students will look, learn and report back to local police, peers and health organisations.

Not much space left to raise the tone after all that talk of sex and smelly trainers, so we won’t bother. Instead, we shall turn to Third Sector (March 26) and, ahem, Mr Testicles. Mr T is the “iconic” mascot of the Male Cancer Awareness Campaign, which is rebranding itself. Usually this involves a “consultant” and a random figure with several noughts on the end. But thanks to some cunning advertising and the offer of a week’s work placement, the campaign has won the services of a design student from “a top London college” for 350 quid, the price of keeping the student “tooled up and fed”. But fear not. Mr Testicles is safe. He is, apparently, untouchable.

The real cost of PFI schemes

Study reveals that NHS staff and patients are paying the price for PFI built hospitals

BACKGROUND

• Staff stressed out by managers

• Cutting edge of improvement

• Jackpot for some GP practices

• What worked for me

Related Internet Links

• Public sector jobs

• Snakes & Ladders

Wall aboard

If at first you get no joy with your letter of protest to the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, then build a wall around its entrance. That, at least, was the response of campaigners from the Lincolnshire village of Langworth who grew frustrated by the lack of response to their letters about the proposed closure of the local post office. Third Sector (March 26) says that after travelling to London by coach, with breeze blocks and barrows on board, they blocked the doors to the department with a 5ft wall. An official suggested that they write a letter instead.

Shared options

You may think that anyone with a fondness for photocopying deserves sympathy, if not strong medication. But research reported in The Times Educational Supplement (March 28) suggests that teachers are missing the more mundane aspects of their roles taken over by teaching assistants. The “low-level tasks” such as photocopying may appear dull, but in fact they offer teachers important “collegial moments”, the study says. Perhaps they could just stand around the machine and pretend.

Public trust in charities plummets

Public trust in charities has fallen to its lowest level for five years, according to nfpSynergy, a voluntary sector think-tank, Third Sector (March 26) reports. Just two adults in five now say that they trust charities. Only confidence in the BBC and the banks has suffered a bigger slump.

Charities also need to change how they communicate with donors, Third Sector reports. Many go for the traditional giver, a woman in her 70s or 80s, when they should focus on baby boomers, who own 80 per cent of UK wealth. Charities need to break reliance on the post and communicate more via the telephone, interactive TV and online, it states.

Other views

“You can’t build world-class services on poverty pay and it’s time that Local Government Employers faced up to this.” Heather Wakefield, Unison’s head of local government, on the LGE’s 2.2 per cent pay offer, in Local Government Chronicle (March 27)

“Women interested in leadership roles are being told how low to have our neckline, what shade of lipstick to buy and what types of clothes to wear.” Women managers in universities are struggling, says Ruth Holliday of the Centre for Gender Studies, in Times Higher Education (March 27)

“It is possible to be clever and knowledgeable and wipe a bottom – they are not mutually exclusive.” Kathy Dixon, a nurse who has been a cancer patient for the past four years, says that nurses need to revive their pride in hands-on care, in Nursing Standard (March 26)

“Schools are places of purposeful fun and natural laughter that no office environment I’ve encountered can begin to match.” Roy Blatchford, director of the National Education Trust, says images of Britain’s toxic childhood are wide of the mark for most young people, in Public Servant (April)

“The Freedom of Information Act must be properly implemented by public bodies – it is not a voluntary scheme that organisations can dip in and out of.” Richard Thomas, the Information Commissioner, cracks the whip in Health Service Journal (March 27)

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