“If the minimum wage were put at anything like a reasonable figure, say pounds 4 an hour, then inevitably that will start to price people out of jobs, especially where people are paid badly.”John Monks, general secre-tary of the TUC, told Public Eye that “zero- hours contracts” were becoming more popular, where employees are kept on call but are only paid when they work. “What has tended to happen is that people with relatively few skills have found the labour market working against them because there were too many of them [looking for the same work].”But Ms Lea opposes a statutory national minimum wage as planned by the Labour Party. Ruth Lea, head of policy at the institute, told BBC2 that flexibility gave Britain a distinct competitive advantage However she conceded that some employees had been victims. “This idea of flexible working means that people are losing rights they used to have.

There is no protection now against low pay.”The right wing Institute of Directors is also showing signs of concern. Mr West, who was charged with 12 murders, was found dead in his prison cell on 1 January this year.Under cross-examination by Brian Leveson QC, prosecuting yesterday, Mrs West told the court: “I would like to say that there was an incident with Caroline Owens. She insisted that her memory of the attack on Caroline Owens in 1972, for which the Wests were subsequently convicted and fined, was unclear.Mrs West, 41, is pleading not guilty to the murders of 10 girls and young women whose remains were found at 25 Cromwell Street and at the Wests’ previous home in Gloucester. WILL BENNETT

A family story that Heather West was buried under the patio at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, emerged during a row between the West children, Rosemary West told Winchester Crown Court yesterday.
Mrs West admitted that she had been appalled by the story which was blurted out by Anne Marie Davis, her stepdaughter, and then passed on to her by two of her children.Mrs West also said yesterday that she might “pay dearly” for being involved with her husband Frederick in a sexual assault on a woman more than 20 years ago. You’ve got friends, enough money to take time to do things, far luckier than many other people It was an absurd overreaction There is no ignoring that.”.

One is reminded of the Dorothy Parker line: ‘You might as well live’. I hasten to say I do not feel that kind of black at the moment.”Referring to himself, he added: “You look at your life and say it is hopeless when in fact it is not hopeless. Asked if he had contemplated suicide he said: “Yes, of course, if one is honest, yes absolutely.”He refused to describe the crisis moment, saying it could be something he would write about in the future, but the thought of family and friends pulled him back from the edge.”It seems a rather negative thing that the only reason to consider carrying on having a pop at living is so other people don’t get upset, but it is a good enough reason. But he would not be working and pushing himself as much as in the past.The pressures of working non-stop in entertainment for so long had contributed to him reaching “crisis point” when he got bad reviews in Cell Mates.It was a general feeling of complete unhappiness, he said.”When you get just a complete sense of blackness, a void head view that somehow the future looks an impossible place to be, and the direction you’re going seems to have no purpose.”There is this word, despair, which is a very awful thing to feel,” he said. He was also getting back to writing.Looking slim and fit, having lost two stone and begun training at a gym – and with his once dyed blonde hair now a brown colour, called Chocolate Kiss, he said he was ready to take on the future. He has since undergone psychotherapy in the US.He was now feeling much better, he added, and was starting to work with cameo roles in television and film.

The physical environment is very hostile – swamps, poor roads, flooding, extreme temperatures and humidity – and so is the political one, with an incompetent military dictatorship apparently uninterested in enforcing environmental standards.. DAVID LISTER

Arts Correspondent
Stephen Fry spoke yesterday for the first time about the breakdown he suffered earlier this year, saying he had considered committing suicide.Referring to his dramatic exit from the West End play Cell Mates, he also criticised the show’s producer, Duncan Weldon for suing him for pounds 500,000.”He does not accept medical reports that make it quite clear that I was not a well person,” said Fry.The comedian and actor was speaking to journalists for more than half an hour, before being reinstalled as Rector of Dundee University.He said that ultimately it was the thought of hurting family and friends which pulled him back in the days when he was alone in Europe. But it is not simply a matter of riding roughshod over the environmental needs of poor, uneducated people. When oil occasionally gets burnt with the gas soot is dumped on villages.Greenpeace claims that Shell could never get away with operating onshore oilfields in the developed world in the way it does in Nigeria. The oil company says local people do it in order to claim compensation or “make political gains”.Another major problem is the flaring-off of the gas which comes up with the oil The flares are hot, noisy and light up the night sky. Many of the pipelines are corroded; Shell admits that this is the main cause of the more than 200 spillages that occur each year.But a quarter of spillages are due to sabotage, says Shell, and in the Ogoni area the proportion is more than two-thirds Hacksaw cuts and tampering with valves are the main methods. There are dozens of onshore fields linked by 4,000 miles of pipeline to the coast.The Ogoni area is rural but densely populated, with 500,000 people living off farming and fishing in an area the size of greater London.The biggest environmental problem is oil spills which damage farmland and contaminate waterways from which the Ogoni get fish and water.