budget | ukwatch.net

Science cuts threaten Jodrell Bank radio telescope

tim — Thu, 17 Apr 2008 15:03:43 +0000

The Labour government of Prime Mister Gordon Brown is pushing ahead with unprecedented cuts in the UK science budget, with many critical programmes and facilities now threatened. In March, the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) outlined a Programmatic Review listing all the science projects it funds in order of priority.

The review followed the STFC’s December 11 budget announcement proposing severe cuts to the budgets of critical physics research and astronomy projects in the UK. The council cited an £80 million shortfall in its £670 million triannual budget as the reason for the cuts.

The report divides scientific projects into High, Medium-High, Medium-Lower and Lower categories. Scientists fear that funding may be withdrawn from those facilities deemed to be “Lower Priority” and some of those listed as “Medium-Lower Priority.” Some 18 projects are listed as “Medium-Lower Priority” and a further 25 as “Lower Priority.”

Among the many projects described as being of “Lower Priority” are the following:

* MERLIN, e-MERLIN and “Jive”—The Multi-Element Radio Linked Interferometer Network (MERLIN) is an array of radio telescopes centred on the world-famous Lovell telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire and is operated by the nearby University of Manchester. The array is distributed around Britain, with separations of up to 217 km. The project is preparing to complete a full £8 million upgrade to fibre-optic cables, enabling the full use of each dish to be made. The latter is known as e-MERLIN.

* Astrogrid: An open-source project leading worldwide efforts in partnership with established astronomical archives and facilities to establish a Virtual Observatory. The project has already designed much of the infrastructure to enable simultaneous access to most astronomical catalogues, images, spectra and other datasets in a standardised way from anywhere in the world.

* BiSON: The Birmingham Solar Oscillations Network consists of a network of six remote solar observatories monitoring low-degree solar oscillation modes.

* CASU/WFAU: The Cambridge Astronomical Survey Unit (CASU) is part of the Institute of Astronomy, Cambridge University, and is mainly involved in survey astronomy.

* Gemini: The Gemini Observatory consists of two of the largest telescopes in the world, one in Hawaii and one in Chile. Gemini North is both a very advanced and the largest telescope UK astronomers have access to in the northern hemisphere.

* EISCAT: The EISCAT Scientific Association project operates three incoherent scatter radar systems, at 931 MHz, 224 MHz and 500 MHz, in northern Scandinavia. EISCAT monitors and studies the interaction between the Sun and the Earth as revealed by disturbances in the magnetosphere and the ionised parts of the atmosphere. It is these interactions that produce the spectacular aurora known as the Northern Lights.

* UKIRT: The United Kingdom InfraRed telescope is located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. It is currently carrying out the most extensive survey of the infrared sky ever attempted.

* UKATC: Based at the historic and world-renowned Royal Observatory in Edinburgh, the UK Astronomy Technology Centre is the national centre for astronomical technology. UKATC designs and builds instruments for many of the world’s major telescopes.

* ING: The Isaac Newton Group of Telescopes has been listed as a “Medium-Lower” priority. The ING consists of three important telescopes on the island of La Palma in the Canary Islands, Spain.

* Also listed as “Medium-Lower” is the UK Solar System Data Centre (UKSSDC). This is a central archive and data centre facility for Solar System science in the UK, supporting the archives for all the researchers in the UK’s solar system scientific community.

Jodrell Bank

Immediately following the publication of the STFC review, there were protests throughout the astronomy and physics communities and among scientists in general. Sir Bernard Lovell, who founded and oversaw the construction of Jodrell Bank and who still works there at the age of 96, said, “We are all astonished. I’m sure some solution will be found. It is the wrong time to close it. The work is of such fundamental importance. It would just not be sensible for them to pull the plug now.”

Prominent astronomer Patrick Moore condemned the STFC plans. He said, “If we lose Jodrell Bank, it will be a devastating blow not only to British radio astronomy, but to astronomy all over the world. The amount involved is not very much in the bigger scheme of things. It’s about the same amount claimed by Cabinet ministers last year for their expenses.”

Robert Massey of the Royal Astronomical Society said, “We are very concerned about these plans—they are a real threat to Jodrell Bank. Jodrell Bank is a world-class facility and to save £2.7 million a year by axing something the UK is so good at is terribly disappointing. And this is only the tip of the iceberg.”

Since it was constructed in 1957, the huge 76.2 metre (250 ft)-wide Jodrell Bank radio telescope dish located in the Cheshire countryside, 20 miles south of Manchester, has become known and loved by millions of people. One letter published in the local newspaper, the Manchester Evening News, said, “I can’t believe that this is happening. I was inspired to study science myself by visits to Jodrell Bank as a child and I know that a lot of other people had the same experience.”

Such is the public affinity with Jodrell Bank that in 2006, it was named the winner in a BBC News online competition to find the UK’s greatest “Unsung Landmarks.”

For more than 50 years, the Jodrell Bank Observatory, originally known as the Jodrell Bank Experimental Station, has been at the forefront of worldwide radio astronomy. Sir Bernard Lovell had worked on radar in the Second World War and wanted to investigate the phenomena of cosmic rays. He had originally used a 218-ft wire mesh Transit aerial on the same site. Unlike the aerial, the dish could be pointed to any part of the sky to detect radio waves emanating from space. It was built at an estimated cost of £260,000—at least £3 million at today’s costs.

Despite the great advances in radio astronomy since 1957, and the building of many other dishes worldwide, the Lovell remains the third-largest steerable radio telescope in the world today. Today, there are four radio telescopes of varying sizes on the site, with the main one being the Lovell.

Over the past five decades, Jodrell Bank has made an astounding contribution to science and our understanding of the universe.

Stars, galaxies and other objects in the universe emit different types of radiation—from visible light to invisible X-rays, gamma rays and infrared. Prior to the advent of Jodrell Bank and the radio telescope age, astronomers were only able to view the visible light emitted by stars. Overnight, it revolutionised astronomy, as it was able to detect radio waves from objects at the far reaches of the universe. The Lovell telescope allows these radio waves to bounce off its dish onto an aerial and radio receiver at its centre.

Among its many achievements, it has developed our understanding of the age of the universe and what it is made of. It has led the way in the understanding of quasars, pulsars and supernovae and played a critical part in a number of space missions. Today, it researches various fields in physics and astronomy including gravitational lenses, cosmic microwave background, active galaxies, stellar Physics, solar plasmas, starburst galaxies and supernovae.

On becoming operational in the summer of 1957, it was the only telescope able to track Sputnik 1, the world’s first artificial satellite launched into space by the Soviet Union. On October 12, 1957, Jodrell Bank located the satellite.

In 1959, Jodrell Bank received the very first pictures transmitted from the far side of the Moon by the Soviet probe Luna 3.

Jodrell Bank also tracked the NASA probe Pioneer 5 between March 11 and June 12, 1960. It was also used to send commands to the probe, including the one to separate the probe from its carrier rocket and the ones to turn on the more powerful transmitter when the probe was 8 million miles away. It was the only telescope in the world capable of receiving data from Pioneer 5.

Recalling the tumultuous era that marked the beginning of humanity’s exploration beyond Earth, Lovell commented in 2003, “Both the Soviets and Americans had the ability to launch payloads into space, but no means of tracking them!”

Another milestone in the history of Jodrell Bank was in February 1966. The telescope tracked the Soviet Union’s first unmanned moon lander, Luna 9. It was able to detect the facsimile transmission of photographs from the moon’s surface being relayed back to the Soviet Union.

Perhaps the most outstanding moment in the history of Jodrell Bank was when it assisted in tracking the Apollo mission that put man on the moon on July 20, 1969. During the descent of the Eagle lander to the surface of the moon, Jodrell Bank mapped out a plot chart of it based on Doppler Shift measures. This plot showed a very discernable movement that marked the exact moment when the crew assumed manual control of the craft and momentarily changed course in the last seconds before landing. This was because they had seen a potentially hazardous crater that may have jeopardised the mission.

Today, that plot chart can be seen by visitors on the wall of the cafe in the Jodrell Bank Visitor Centre.

Even as recently as 1993, the Lovell Telescope was asked by NASA to help in the search for the lost Mars Observer spacecraft. Although the craft was not detected, the Lovell was the only instrument on Earth with the capability to do so.

Scientific observations carried out by the telescope included using radar to measure the distance to the Moon and to Venus. It has also observed pulsars and discovered various types of pulsars including millisecond pulsars and the first pulsar in a globular cluster.

In 1979, it inaugurated the field of the study of “gravitational lenses” as its radio observation led to the discovery of the first such lenses. Gravitational lenses had first been predicted by Albert Einstein in his theory of General Relativity at the turn of the last century. Einstein conjectured that instead of light from a source travelling in a straight line (in three dimensions), it is actually bent by the presence of a massive body. This allows the observer to see the object that is further away and would not actually be detected without the presence of the large object.

Further discoveries in this field were made in 1998 with the joint Jodrell Bank/NASA detection of a special type of gravitational lensing known as Einstein Rings.

In September 2006, Jodrell Bank announced that following three years of observing a double pulsar with three of its telescopes, the attending results showed that the general theory of relativity is accurate to 99.5 percent.

Last but not least, the telescope also plays an important role in the search for extraterrestrial life.

Jodrell Bank’s latest groundbreaking research

Jodrell Bank/MERLIN has recently been instrumental once again in another monumental scientific breakthrough. On April 2, the team at MERLIN in collaboration with a network of scientists in the US announced the discovery of the youngest planet ever detected.

The planet is still in the process of formation and is known as a “protoplanet.” The gas planet and its surrounding mix of rocky particles and dust is thought to be just a few hundred years old and orbits around the star HL Tau. The parent star itself is very young and is estimated to be less than 100,000 years old. It lies in the direction of the constellation of Taurus at a distance of 520 light years. Our own Sun, in comparison, is 4,600 million years old.

The discovery reveals a new planetary system in the process of formation. The evolving planet is a gas giant, some 14 times the size of our Jupiter. Prior to its discovery, the previous youngest planet was confirmed to be 10 million years old.

The HL Tau star region was initially imaged by the Very Large Array (VLA) of radio telescopes in the US at emission wavelengths. These were specifically chosen to detect rocky particles about the size of pebbles. Scientists hoped that the presence of such tiny rocky material would reveal that they were beginning to clump together to form planets. MERLIN, including Jodrell Bank, was able to study the same system at longer wavelengths. These observations confirmed the emissions were from rocks and not from other sources such as hot gas.

Dr. Anita Richards, one of two scientists at Jodrell Bank who analysed the data, said, “The new object, designated HL Tau b, is the youngest planetary object ever seen and is just one percent as old as the young planet found in orbit around the star TW Hydrae that made the news last year. HL Tau b gives a unique view of how planets take shape, because the VLA image also shows the parent disk material from which it formed.”

Jodrell Bank’s future is bound up with the e-MERLIN project, which is currently being finalised. It is due to be operational in late 2008 or early 2009 at a total cost of £8 million.

It has also been selected as the headquarters of a larger international project—the Square Kilometre Array. This proposes to connect dozens of radio dishes at a remote facility to be built either in South Africa or Australia at a cost of about £1 billion. This project is not intended to be fully operational until 2020, meaning that Jodrell Bank is reliant on the continuation of the e-MERLIN project.

The upgrade of Jodrell Bank associated with e-MERLIN will increase the resolution and sensitivity of the system by 30 times. This would result in the telescope being able to observe a much wider range of objects in the universe. The scrapping of e-MERLIN would result in no new science being achieved from the £8 million investment and the possible closure of Jodrell Bank altogether.

Phil Diamond, the director of the observatory, said, “It means there is a threat to the whole facility. We are coming to the end of the £8 million MERLIN upgrade, which when it comes on stream, will make us one of the most powerful telescopes on the planet, so it is unbelievable.”

The cuts being proposed by the STFC have been aptly described as “scientific vandalism.”

For several generations, Jodrell Bank has been a powerful symbol representing scientific achievement and progress. For many school children, including this writer, seeing the giant telescope up close as a child left an indelible memory. Tens of thousands of people still visit Jodrell Bank each year and marvel at the structure and what it represents historically. Lectures are regularly held there that continue to play an important role in the dissemination of the latest developments in the fields of radio astronomy and physics.

Precisely due to the great advances in scientific understanding and discoveries, in which it played a major role, today Jodrell Bank and the other projects threatened in the STFC review are ever more critical in both enhancing and promoting scientific enquiry. The slashing of the science budget is bound up with a general onslaught being carried out by a government whose policies are based on facilitating the requirements of big business. The pursuit of science and knowledge is being sacrificed to the narrower and more immediate demands of corporations for returns on their investments.

A web site www.savejodrellbank.org.uk has been set up by students at the University of Manchester in response to the threat.

Pledges that Melt Away

Ellie Keen — Sun, 06 Apr 2008 18:53:44 +0000

IT is to be hoped that Labour MP Greg Pope is kicking himself today for believing the assurances made to him by Prime Minister Gordon Brown and various senior ministers that they would review the impact of the abolition of the 10p basic income tax rate and its effect on the poor.

The gullible Mr Pope withdrew his motion opposing the abolition, which had been signed by over 40 MPs, in the light of those assurances.

But no sooner had Mr Pope withdrawn the motion than reactionary Business Secretary John Hutton leaped onto the airwaves to rule out any rethink of the government's decision, claiming that it was not possible to go back on the change that was announced by Mr Brown last year in his final Budget as Chancellor.

So much for promises from new Labour ministers. Clearly they are not worth the paper they weren't written on.

But what adds insult to injury is the vacuous nonsense that Mr Hutton spouted to justify his government's inflexibility.

Claiming that the tax change had been part of a "balanced package" which cut the main rate of income tax by 2p to 20p, and which left families with children "significantly better off," he continued by saying that, for those who did lose out, the scale of the losses was relatively small.

"We are talking in the worst case scenario about half a per cent of net income being the scale of the maximum loss that someone might have," he said.

It takes little imagination to trash such a blatantly untrue statement.

Mr Pope pointed out that people with low incomes between £5,000 and £15,000 a year will pay up to £152 more tax and pensioners particularly could be hard hit.

Well, if £152 is half of 1 per cent, then the old or low paid would appear to be trousering around £30,000 a year, if Mr Hutton's statement had any truth in it.

So Mr Hutton is, quite simply, a liar.

And his political master Mr Brown is revealed as a manipulative deceiver who will promise anything to quell dissent in Labour's ranks, with his cronies not even waiting a week before they shamelessly renege on his pledges of a review.

The new tax rates took effect on Sunday and the biggest beneficiaries will be people earning £35,000 a year, who will be £377 a year better off, those on £30,000, who will see a £292 increase in their take-home pay, and people earning more than £45,000, who will also be paying £292 less tax a year.

But, down at the bottom of the heap, people earning between £5,931 and £15,075 will be up to £152.40 a year worse off.

However, we can console ourselves that those poor devils of struggling higher-rate taxpayers with short-term investments will see the rate at which they pay tax on those investments fall from 40 per cent to 18 per cent.

Quite possibly the only truth ever uttered by the new Labour clique was when they proclaimed themselves as the natural party of business.

For the rest of us, its a question of devil take the hindmost and, for new Labour, hindmost clearly means poorest.

Those 43 MPs whose signatures appeared on Mr Pope's motion will have their work cut out to fight for the reinstatement of the 10p rate.

But fight they must if the gap between rich and poor is not to be widened yet again by this monstrously ineffective Labour government.

The Evil of Gross Inequality

Ellie Keen — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 00:00:00 +0000

This is not an article about the recent Budget but about a social issue that is relevant for every Budget. It also has wider implications for economic policy. The issue is the gross inequality which exists in Britain in the distribution of wealth, income and opportunity.

What makes this issue of special relevance at the present time is that the inequality has been getting worse. The cost of living is rising at a faster rate than for many years. This has a disproportionate effect on pensioners, the unemployed, the disabled and millions of workers who have low paid jobs.

This recent and continuing rise in prices, accompanied by serious instability in stock exchanges, fluctuations in rates of currency exchange and in the loans market for property of all kinds, has not been caused by the British government, except that its support for the invasion of Iraq has certainly added to costs in many directions.

Periodic instability in the economy is an inherent characteristic of capitalism. It is an unplanned system motivated by the drive for ever greater private profit. As part of this motivation it seeks to hold down the purchasing power of very substantial numbers of workers.

Defective demand, resulting from lack of consumer purchasing power, can be offset for a limited time by demand stimulated by expectations of growth in new directions. The lack of planning, however, which is a characteristic of capitalism, leads eventually to periodic disruption. This disruption may be prompted at different times by a variety of apparently dissimilar events. Nevertheless periodic economic setbacks of varying intensity are an inevitable feature of capitalism. The pain is felt by millions of working people through unemployment or attacks on living standards or even through war caused by economic greed for markets, for areas of investment for future profit or for the control of raw materials or other supplies.

There are a number of causes of the current world-wide rise in prices. There is increased demand for oil, attributable in part to the industrial expansion of China and India, but aggravated by war in the Middle East. There is a rising demand for consumer goods, including grain and other farm produce, again stimulated by the developing world. The lifting of millions of people from poverty and periodic famine is not a ‘calamity’. It is a welcome development.

Climate change has also already begun to affect the output of certain primary goods. Drought in some areas, excessive rainfall in others, turbulent weather and flooding have all contributed to uncertainties in the means of life for millions of the world’s population.

The economy has also faltered seriously in the USA because of the scramble for private profit in the market for property loans. The financial disturbance has spread to many other capitalist countries, including Britain.

It is at the very heart of the tradition of the labour movement to seek to eradicate the evils of capitalism. Gross social inequality is one such evil.

There are still far too many children in Britain living in poverty. It is to the credit of the government that they have acknowledged this fact and through the payment of family tax credits have reduced the number in poverty. Nevertheless it seems likely that the target of poverty elimination will not be achieved by the target date. More action is needed.

In 1997 pensioners were promised that Labour would defend the basic state pension, without means-testing, and would ensure that it remained the foundation of pensions policy. It also pointed to the ‘unfair lottery of community care’ and accused the Conservatives of betraying a generation of older people who were promised care from the cradle to the grave.

Means-testing for supplements to the basic state pension is now a strong feature of the system and the link to earnings in annual pension increases, originally introduced by Labour, has not been restored. There are many elderly people, other than in Scotland, who still have to pay for care.

Since 1997 the very rich in Britain have become even richer, whether measured before or after tax. A recent report of the Institute of Public Policy Research pointed out that over the past 10 years the average earnings of British employees have gone up by 45 per cent but for the lead executives of the top 100 companies the rise had been six times as fast. The rise had not been 45 per cent but 288 per cent. The richest one per cent have seen their share of total income double from 6.5 per cent to 13 per cent.

Labour must address itself to the gross inequality that disfigures British society.

Untold Millions

Ellie Keen — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:35:49 +0000

The true financial cost of the conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq is finally on the media's agenda for the first time since the occupations began. This follows the dramatic March report (pdf) of the Commons defence committee showing that total expenditures since 2001 had risen to almost £10bn - with a likely acceleration of outlays in the years ahead. Joseph Stiglitz claims in his recent book, The Three Trillion Dollar War, that Iraq alone will probably, in the end, cost Britain "over £20 billion". In terms of human tragedy, everyone is aware of the obvious human costs - in Iraq, the 175 British troops, 3,800-plus US troops, and hundreds of thousands of civilians dead, as well as the million-plus people displaced since the 2003 invasion; in Afghanistan, as of February 20, 89 British and 482 US service personnel dead, along with many thousands of Afghans. All of this, quite properly, has been very much in the public eye. There has, by contrast, been a total absence of sustained discussion of monetary costs.

Parliamentary near-silence on the matter is in stark contrast to proceedings in the 1920s, when David Lloyd George, Winston Churchill and Andrew Bonar Law - to name but three - all contributed to extended and highly informed debates on the financial cost of British military involvement in Iraq. Up until this year, the only real chance to discuss the issue has come with the publication of the defence spring estimates - that is, after the money has been committed. In all other spending departments, estimates are delivered in the July of the financial year, enabling parliamentary reviews to take place in advance of expenditure. This is not the only way in which the government has been standing in the way of debate. Members' questions, in so far as they occur, are often brushed aside by exaggerated cautions concerning national security. The MoD also refuses to give breakdowns for capital-expenditure costs. Most problematic of all, money for the wars comes mainly from a Treasury special reserve fund, the aggregate figures here being slipped into the chancellor's budget and pre-budget reports. Up to the budget of 2007, £7.4bn had been allocated in half-yearly increments, locked away inside hold-call categories of expenditure, and never the subject of parliamentary discussion.

How do the figures now stand? Total costs (a combination of "operational" and "capital" expenditures) for both theatres have risen to £9.9bn: a remarkable 94% increase on 2006-07. Over the last two years there has been close to a trebling of expenditures. The principal factor in this huge increase has been the bloody operations in Helmand ("shots", contra John Reid, having been "fired"). Comparing the latest estimate for the country as a whole with that for three years earlier, the increase has been, stunningly, 25-fold. Capital expenditures over the last year alone have gone up by 207%. Iraq, by comparison, had been showing a levelling off between 2004-05 and 2006-07. This year, however, the estimated figure has rocketed up, by 72%: from £956m to £1,648m - by far the steepest annual rise since the war began, and, extraordinarily, occurring at a time of withdrawal from active operations in Basra. The defence select committee notes this extreme oddity, but describes it only as "surprising". One has to wonder, especially in the light of Admiral William Fallon's resignation on March 11 as chief of US forces in the Middle East, if the UK is holding on for anti-Shia operations in the event of a US or Israeli strike on Iran.

It is important to realise, of course, that we are dealing here with minimum estimates, covering only direct military outlays and excluding what the leading UK expert on war costing, Keith Hartley, enumerates as "possible higher oil prices, impacts on such sectors as the airline industry, foreign tourism and share prices, a loss of investor confidence, as well as a possible recession in the world economy". There are also "opportunity costs" - other government (including MoD) objectives being abandoned or compromised by the prioritising of war expenditures. The notional list here is endless. To cite just one example, a brand new state-of-the-art hospital in Birmingham would cost a probable £545m. At a time of acute fiscal stringency, as evidenced by the March 12 budget, we are struggling to provide older people with adequate pensions, economising on flood relief systems, and denying public-sector workers properly indexed pay rises. It is time, therefore, for a vital debate - especially when the foreign secretary is reasserting the case for Blairite liberal interventionism; when there is developing an open-ended, ad infinitum commitment to a highly losable war in Afghanistan; and when all confident bets on an imminent "drawdown" to the disasters in Iraq have had to be called off.

Budget Defeat Over Child Poverty

JamieSW — Thu, 13 Mar 2008 19:07:51 +0000

In 1999 the Government said it would halve child poverty by 2010 - taking 1.7m children out of poverty. To date it has missed its targets and only removed 600,000 children from poverty. In the pre-budget briefings pouring out of Number 10 and the Treasury we were all led to believe that the Chancellor would make a major announcement today to get the Government back on course to meet its target.

Instead, the Chancellor has admitted defeat in the war against child poverty and has confirmed that the Government will not meet its 2010 target - and will leave over 2.5m children still living in poverty in the fifth richest countries in the world.

The measures announced today will only remove at most a further 250,000 children from poverty by 2010. Some of the media and other agencies have grasped at this straw argung that at least the Government's budget proposals aren't as bad as some thought they would be . But on analysis the situation is even more disappointing. In calculating child poverty the Government has massaged the figures by removing housing costs from the calculation. If these costs are put back the real assessment of child poverty confirms that in fact 3.5 million children will remain in poverty in our society. The TUC has rightfully expressed the deep disappointment of the trade union movement at the failure of the Government to prioritise effective action against child poverty.

At the same time the Chancellor has done virtually nothing to tackle the unfairness of our tax system. Big business benefits from the lowest corporation tax in this country in decades, which is to be cut further on 1st April. Proposals to tackle the scandal of non doms, some of whom are paying less tax than their servants, have been watered down and there are no measures to address the £97 to £150 billions the Treasury now admits to losing each year from tax avoidance.

If after eleven years in office, a Labour Government cannot meet such a basic aim of lifting our children out of poverty, many will judge this period of government as the greatest missed opportunity in the history of the Labour party. There is a growing feeling that the Government is running out of both time and ideas.

Misplaced Priorities

JamieSW — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 12:59:09 +0000

AS Gordon Brown's "mini-me" Chancellor prepares his budget speech for Wednesday, campaign groups and unions are already issuing their wish-lists, urging Alistair Darling to use his alleged control over the Treasury's purse strings to deliver social justice and sound investment in Britain's long-suffering infrastructure.

The National Pensioners Convention president is calling for an immediate increase in the state pension, the restoration of the link to earnings and a doubling of the winter fuel allowance - along with Age Concern and Help the Aged.

Meanwhile, children's charity NCH wants to see the "cycle of deprivation" broken with help for poorer families.

Britain's unions have urged Mr Darling to ignore the usual siren-song from the likes of the CBI and pay public servants decent wages while obliging business to shoulder its fair share of taxation.

However, the auguries do not look good. On Sunday, we saw the Chancellor again echoing Mr Brown's desire for a "competitive" rate of corporation tax.
The defence select committee, which has done the number-crunching, called the 52 per cent increase in the cost of Iraq operations to £1.45 billion - and this is after the much-vaunted troop reduction - "surprising," which merely demonstrates that the art of British understatement is alive and well in Westminster.

In Afghanistan, the cost has merely risen by 48 per cent to £1.42 billion - presumably the cost of airlifting out the PR "hero" Prince Harry.

MPs voted through the Ministry of Defence's "spring supplementary estimate" last night, which gave the green light to increase the military budget by these amounts.

In doing so, they should pause to consider what better things could have been done.

Britain's workers and pensioners will be anxious to know why the watchwords at home are "competitiveness" and "cost savings," while it seems that Mr Brown's original declaration that he would spend "as much as it takes" on Iraq still stands.

For such massive sums of cash to be flung into the void without any real hope or expectation that they will improve matters for the Iraqi or Afghan people is little short of obscene from a government that vetoes any progressive policies on the grounds of "affordability."

CND chairwoman Kate Hudson points out that "the human cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are clear, with an estimated 655,000 dead in Iraq alone, but the opportunities lost by spending these billions on further destruction rather than on humanitarian reconstruction adds to the long list of tragedies unleashed by Bush's wars.

"The public should be told why billions are being diverted from public services to fighting an unwanted and unnecessary war."