UK population 'will be top in EU'

The UK population is projected to become the largest in the EU

The UK population is set to become the largest in the European Union, according to a report.

It is expected to increase from its current figure of 61 million to almost 77 million in 2060 - a rise of 25%.

This would make it the largest population in the EU, ahead of the projections for France (72 million) and Germany (71 million).

The EU's statistical office Eurostat also predicts the EU population will be 506m in 2060, up from 495m in 2008.

It is expected to peak at 521m in 2035 but then decline.

The report predicts the average age of the EU population will rise, due to "persistently low fertility and an increasing number of survivors to higher ages".

The proportion of the population aged 65 or above in the UK is projected to reach 24.7% in 2060, from 16.1% in 2008.

The number of Britons aged 80 or above is expected to reach 9% in 2060, compared with the current figure of 4.5%.

If the projection is correct, 42.1% of the UK's population would be above retirement age - that proportion is currently 24.3%.

Ahead of the UK, the largest population growth within the EU is expected in Cyprus (+66%), the Irish Republic (+53%), Luxembourg (+52%).

A Home Office spokesman said: "Projections such as these are proof that we are right to be carrying out the biggest shake-up to the immigration system for a generation.

"Centre-stage is our new Australian-style points-based system, which means only those we need can come here to work or study."

Strategy call

Shadow home secretary Dominic Grieve said the figures showed it was "essential we develop a coherent strategy to deal with population growth".

He added: "This strategy must bring together policy on issues from the family to border control, housing to skills and planning to immigration control.

"We not only need to ensure that our population grows at a more sustainable rate but that we also prepare properly for that sustainable rate of growth.

"The government have shown that they have no answers to the challenges we face by failing to plan for our increasing population - this makes them part of the problem, not the solution."

Alasdair Murray, director of think tank CentreForum, said the projection should not be considered a certainty.

He said: "Population statistics are predicted by using recent figures so this report will have used the statistics of immigration in the UK in the last few years. The level is high so the prediction will be high.

"There are signs that immigration in this country is starting to tail off. If you were to do this again in 2010 or 2011 I think it would be different.

"A more realistic assessment would be to consider the two factors of birth rates and immigration rates together when predicting population."

Five alternative Olympics medals tables

The official Olympics medals table is based on the number of gold medals and it puts China top and Great Britain third. But what happens if other factors are taken into account?

Much has been made of the Great Britain team's lofty position in third place in the official Olympics medals table.

That is based on the number of gold medals, with the number of silver and bronze medals only counting when two countries have the same number of golds.

We have won one gold medal in the last 48 hours and our six-gold advantage has almost disappeared entirely BBC's Matt Slater Official medals table Olympics blog: Battle for third

This system counts against countries like France which, as of 1000 BST on Friday morning, had enjoyed 32 podium finishes but only a handful of wins.

Maybe with this in mind, and half an eye on China, media in the US have been publishing a table of total medals won, regardless of colour, and that puts the US top.

Here are five alternative ways to interpret how countries rank, taking into account gold, silver and bronze, population size, gross domestic product and size of the Olympic team. The medal tallies were counted at 1000 BST on Friday.

TOTAL MEDALS WON

RANK	COUNTRY	TOTAL
1	United States	100
2	China	83
3	Russia	53
=4	Australia	41
=4	Great Britain	41
=6	France	33
=6	Germany	33
8	South Korea	26
=9	Japan	24
=9	Italy	24

POINTS SCORED (THREE FOR GOLD, TWO FOR SILVER, ONE FOR BRONZE)

RANK	COUNTRY	TOTAL
1	China	212
2	United States	190
3	Russia	101
4	Great Britain	89
5	Australia	77
6	Germany	67
=7	France	56
=7	South Korea	56
9	Japan	48
10	Italy	45

POPULATION PER MEDAL

RANK	COUNTRY	TOTAL
1	Bahamas	307,451
2	Jamaica	311,592
3	Slovenia	401,542
4	New Zealand	463,717
5	Australia	502,459
6	Armenia	593,717
7	Belarus	645,717
8	Estonia	653,803
9	Norway	663,499
10	Lithuania	713,041

GDP - BILLION DOLLARS PER MEDAL

RANK	COUNTRY	TOTAL
1	North Korea	0.36
2	Jamaica	0.53
3	Zimbabwe	0.85
4	Armenia	1.28
5	Georgia	1.29
6	Tajikistan	1.40
7	Krygzstan	1.41
8	Mongolia	1.57
9	Togo	2.21
10	Belarus	2.46

NUMBER OF ATHLETES AT GAMES PER MEDAL WON

RANK	COUNTRY	TOTAL
1	Uzbekistan	2
2	Jamaica	2.95
3	Panama	3
3	Togo	3
5	Zimbabwe	3.25
6	Afghanistan	4
7	Indonesia	4.8
8	Georgia	5.83
9	US	5.95
10	Tajikistan	6.5

Sources include the CIA Factbook and the World Bank.

Argentine dog saves abandoned baby

By Daniel Schweimler BBC News, Buenos Aires

La China has become a celebrity in her shanty town (Photo courtesy of Clarin)

An eight-year-old dog has touched the hearts of Argentines by saving the life of an abandoned baby, placing the girl safely alongside her own new puppies.

The country's media are calling her "the miracle baby".

She was born prematurely to a 14-year-old girl in a shanty town outside the capital, Buenos Aires.

The mother is said to have panicked and abandoned the baby in a field, surrounded by wooden boxes and rubbish.

Then along came La China, the dog which somehow picked up the baby and carried her 50m to place him alongside her own puppies.

The dog's owner heard the child crying and found her covered with a rag.

The baby, weighing 4kg (8lb 13oz), had some slight injuries, but no bite marks. The owner called the police and the child is now being looked after by the authorities, while a decision is taken about her future.

The frightened mother appeared shortly after her baby was found.

The Argentine media has descended on the shanty town, talking of "the Argentine Romulus and Remus", the founders of Rome, abandoned as babies and rescued by a wolf, nearly 3,000 years ago.

La China, worried about her own puppies, is reported to be petrified by her new-found fame, and her owner says he is worried that she is not eating.

Working at Google, Chicago

This is what its like to work at Google via Brian FitzPatrick - Fitz (Google 15 author).

Just following procedure - that's the mantra of cost-cutting Britain

So the moral is, try to speak to the MD or directors when you encounter 'procedure ignorance' and let them know the idiocy of their procedure without human intelligence.

The misery of the call centre experience shows customer and employee alike are dragged down in the name of efficiency

All comments (7)

• 
• • Jenni Russell
  • The Guardian,
  • Thursday August 14 2008
  • Article history

A few weeks ago I was listening to a news report about Boots's treatment of a 12-year-old schoolgirl whom they had detained for trying out a dab of nail polish from a bottle that wasn't a tester. The minute the polish touched Hannah Gilbert's nail she was stopped by a security guard, told she had committed a crime, and marched into an office. Three policemen were called to the scene. The policemen checked to see whether she had a criminal record. Boots then summoned Hannah's parents, who were told that unless they paid the full (£6.29) cost of the nail polish, Hannah would be charged with theft. After more than an hour of detention, the shocked child was released.

What I wanted to know was how Boots would apologise for this ludicrous, heavy-handed overreaction by junior staff. Why had they called the police when a tap on the shoulder and a 30-second lecture on the difference between testers and pristine bottles would have been enough?

Why indeed had a permanently overstretched police force decided that this was one of its priorities? How would a company that needs to keep the custom of teenage girls in these credit-crunchy times redeem itself?

Boots's head office was quite clear. There was no apology. Their statement was prim and self-congratulatory: "Our staff were following set procedures."

This isn't a defence, but a monstrous smoke screen. It's an increasingly common and chilling variation of the old defence of the indefensible, "I'm just doing my job". Too many organisations seem to imagine that sticking to procedures is in itself a virtue. That's not how it feels to those of us at the receiving end of this inflexible, wooden approach. Too often it feels as if we're being corralled into a cage made by madmen, pleading for some kind of intelligence or humanity from the person in front of us or on the end of the phone.

Earlier this summer my father, who is in his late 70s and disabled, had a stroke. It happened on a Friday, and my distraught mother rang in the late afternoon to say that he had collapsed, and could neither walk nor speak. She was calling the neighbours around their remote hillside in rural Wales to see whether they could help her lift him up.

Forty-five minutes later I called her back but there was no reply. Fifteen minutes later: "This number is not recognised."

In a panic, I rang BT. The first person I spoke to was in an Indian call centre. Could he check the line please; this was an emergency. He asked me for the account number. What account number? The telephone number? No, he needed to know the account number before he was permitted to check the line. How would I find it? By asking the account holder. "But that's why I'm ringing you! I can't speak to the account holder because something's gone wrong with your line!" Then he couldn't help me. Well, could he transfer me to customer services, or the engineers?

Number, name, postcode, account number. Desperate, I explained the situation to person number two. This one was in England. She told me there was no record of my parents' line. And that, as far as she was concerned, was that. Please, I said, look again. This line existed until an hour ago. Meanwhile my father might be dying on a Welsh hillside. Complete indifference from person number two. I plead to be transferred to someone else.

I explain everything again to person number three. She finds the line and confirms that it has been cut off that afternoon. I know this isn't about bills, this is some madness. Can it be reconnected as a matter of emergency? She's not interested in my emergency. Nothing can be done until BT can determine why it has been cut off. I am transferred to person number four.

It is now an hour into the call.

Number, name, postcode, account number. It turns out BT has been confused over the validity of the line, whatever that means. It is their mistake. They do not care. The engineers have gone home and I cannot talk directly to them anyway. I will have to go on a list for reconnection which could be a fortnight.

Tearful, I ask if the wait can be shortened for cases like this. The answer is no. Person number four is as bored by me as the rest have been. Not one has said they're sorry - either for the situation, or for BT's mistake. Can I speak to a manager? No, they've left. No, there's no one else who can help. If I want to make an appointment for reconnection, I will have to speak to person number five.

Person number five offers me a date. It is a month away. Incredulous, with knots of fear in my stomach, I explain it all again. No reaction. This is the system, she says. Do I want to make the appointment or not? Because if I don't wish to accept it, she will terminate the call. As an afterthought, and because it's clearly on the script, she asks: "And is there anything else I can help you with today?"

I put down the phone and burst into tears.

It has been an 80-minute call, and I have either been listening to machines, or conversing with automatons throughout. The indifference of the system feels brutal, and I can't break through it. It is now seven o'clock. As a last resort, I ring directory inquiries and ask them to put me through not to the faults line, but to BT's head office.

A real person answers the phone. She is a middle-aged Welsh woman with a comfortable voice, and when I tell her why I'm ringing, the first thing she says is: "Oh dear! That sounds terrible!" She is the chairman's secretary, and she isn't following any script. She says immediately that she has a list of managers and she will start ringing them now until she finds one who will deal with it and call me back. And she does. The phone is reconnected within 40 hours, and many apologies sent to my father as he recovers.

We have all had miserable experiences like these, often as companies try to increase efficiency by giving workers templates to work from, and by outsourcing work to call centres here and abroad. It's better for them if every client can be fitted into the pattern which makes their work simplest. Yet this attitude also runs the risk of damaging what is supposed to be their core purpose: keeping customers satisfied.

Cary Cooper, professor of management at Lancaster University, says that too many companies imagine that, in rule-bound workplaces, employees will still recognise that solving customers' problems must come first. In practice the majority of employees are too frightened of getting things wrong to make that effort, he says. Give them a procedure and they'll follow it blindly. And that's the real test. BT may have apologised where Boots was unrepentant, but nothing in BT's procedures or attitudes will stop the same thing happening to someone else tomorrow.

Working to rules, with no opportunity to use your initiative, must be as depressing for employees as it is for us on the receiving end. Companies must be calculating that the frustration on both sides matters less than cutting costs. Maybe they're right. If we disagree, it's up to us to demonstrate it - where we can - by using consumer power to reward the ones that do respond on a human level.

jenni.russell@guardian.co.uk

Student debt 'could top £17,500'

Student fees have massively increased student debt

Students who started university in the UK last year can expect to owe more than £17,500 by the time they leave, according to an annual poll on debt.

The Push survey of 2,000 students also suggests that

the average debt tops £4,500 for each year of study - nearly 10% more than last year.

The rise suggests students are being badly hit by the credit crunch.

Another poll of 3,385 students for the National Union of Students found many under-estimated their living costs.

According the NUS survey of 3,135 current students and 250 would-be students, they spent £710 a year on groceries when they expected to spend £510.

They spent £740 on household bills but thought they would spend £580 and £100 more on travel than the expected sum of £285.

It is clear that many students are sleepwalking into financial crisis Wes Streeting, NUS president

The Push survey revealed considerable differences between universities, with 11 breaking the £20,000 mark for projected debt.

It also revealed differences between students in universities in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland.

The average yearly debt was highest in England at £4,729, where students are now charged £3,145 a year in fees.

But debt was lowest in Northern Ireland at £3,061 where students face the same tuition charge.

It was second highest, at £3,453, in Scotland - where contributions from students who live in Scotland were abolished in February 2008.

Before that date, students from Scotland would had to pay a graduate endowment tax of £2,289. So many of the students surveyed in the poll would have had to pay some fees.

Also students from outside Scotland pay the same tuition fees faced by students in England and Northern Ireland.

Series editor of Push.co.uk Johnny Rich said increases in the cost of living in Scotland may also have had an impact.

'Credit crunch'

He said: "It's easy to become immune to stories about student debt, but this increase is not just another rise. Some students are facing real financial hardship.

"Even so the advantages of having a degree still outweigh the costs and the Push survey shows that - with high quality advice and information - students can keep their debts while still enjoying the benefits of university."

The NUS survey also showed more students expected financial help than they are likely to receive.

Some four out of 10 believed they were entitled to a bursary to help support their studies, but only 28% were.

NUS president Wes Streeting said: "It is clear that many students are sleepwalking into financial crisis.

"As the credit crunch kicks in, and with food and fuel costs set to rise even further, we can expect more and more students to get into serious financial difficulty, with many having to resort to taking out commercial loans, or being bailed out by their parents.

"Our research shows that prospective students need far more information, advice and guidance about how to manage their own finances.

"When they leave home for the first time, many students are unaware of the costs of everyday life and how debt can mount up."

He also called for a new, simpler national bursary scheme so that support is based on what students need not where they study.

Chief executive of umbrella organisation Universities UK, Diana Warwick, said fear of debt was a real issue that concerned universities.

"Government, universities, schools and colleges - all those involved - must continue to ensure that all those who can benefit from going to university are not deterred from doing so by the prospect of debt."

She added that universities had done much work to raise awareness of the support available and had also made strenuous efforts to get bursaries to all eligible students.