Campaigner who founded Voice of the Listener and Viewer to defend public service broadcasting

It was easy to underestimate Jocelyn Hay, with her quiet, well spoken voice and unfailingly good manners – but unwise. She was tirelessly determined to defend what she saw as the essence of public service broadcasting in Britain. Her journey to prominence started in November 1983, at the comparatively late age of 56, when she called a meeting, attended by 80 people, to oppose a plan by the BBC to turn Radio 4 into a news and current affairs network, stripped of well loved programmes such as The Archers.

At the time Mary Whitehouse, founder of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, had become an established opponent of the permissive society. Hay, who has died aged 86, was always concerned with broader issues, which soon spread beyond a narrow defence of Radio 4's middle-class ethos. In 1991 her pressure group, Voice of the Listener, became the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV), formally registering a determination to lobby across broadcasting.

After winning the Radio 4 argument, Hay had turned her attention to the Peacock review of the BBC's funding in 1985-86, set up by Margaret Thatcher, opposing privatisation of Radios 1 and 2, and arguing for the licence fee to be retained exclusively for the BBC. The VLV went on to oppose the auctioning of ITV franchises to the highest bidder under the 1990 Broadcasting Act, a second move by the BBC in the 1990s to turn Radio 4 long wave into a news channel and concerns about dumbing down Radio 3.

By now she had helped change the climate to one in which listeners and viewers had to be consulted, for example, over digital switchover plans. As she said, a sea change took place: "before, people were patronised, held at arm's length". Hay was concerned about the economic focus that drove the powerful communications regulator Ofcom, established in 2003. She said bitterly that campaigners had been hoodwinked into thinking public service strands were safeguarded, as ITV systematically cut religious, children's, regional and current affairs programming.

One of her outstanding skills was the ability to ask the penetrating question, and to lobby with a masterly persistence, and this continued right up until her final illness. The VLV annual conferences and children's conferences were always able to call on influential broadcasting executives: BBC chairmen and director generals were regular speakers. An annual awards ceremony brought broadcasting talent to the handily scheduled lunch-time event. Jeremy Paxman said: "She's an institution … on the side of the angels." Sir David Attenborough called her a great defender of public service broadcasting.

Daughter of William and Olive Board, she was born in Swansea, and had a sketchy education, being sent to Australia to live with an aunt at the age of 13, to avoid the second world war. She was reunited with her parents in Trieste, at the southern edge of the iron curtain, at the age of 19, where her father, an accountant, was by now an army adviser to the allied military government. Her absence from the UK seemed to give her a clear view of what needed to be defended in UK culture. She always brought an international perspective to broadcasting, with concern about the World Service, and the Commonwealth.

In Trieste, using the radio name Susan Page, she became the host of a forces radio station request programme, linking servicemen with their families back home. She would visit any listeners who were hospital patients. Here she met and in 1950 married a Scottish army officer, Bill Hay, and they married in 1950, later moving back to England with their two daughters. She was briefly a press officer for the Girl Guides, and also worked for the media training agency London Media Workshops.

It was from her house in Gravesend, Kent, that the VLV was run by dedicated helpers, until 2008, when Hay assumed the title of life president. At this point the VLV had grown to 3,000 members; it continues to flourish.

Hay was made an MBE in 1999 for services to broadcasting, advanced to CBE in 2005; and won the Elizabeth R award for services to public service broadcasting from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Organisation in 1999.

Bill died in 1975. Hay is survived by her daughters.

• Jocelyn Hay, broadcaster and campaigner, born 30 July 1927; died 21 January 2014 Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.

Campaigner who founded Voice of the Listener and Viewer to defend public service broadcasting

It was easy to underestimate Jocelyn Hay, with her quiet, well spoken voice and unfailingly good manners – but unwise. She was tirelessly determined to defend what she saw as the essence of public service broadcasting in Britain. Her journey to prominence started in November 1983, at the comparatively late age of 56, when she called a meeting, attended by 80 people, to oppose a plan by the BBC to turn Radio 4 into a news and current affairs network, stripped of well loved programmes such as The Archers.

At the time Mary Whitehouse, founder of the National Viewers and Listeners Association, had become an established opponent of the permissive society. Hay, who has died aged 86, was always concerned with broader issues, which soon spread beyond a narrow defence of Radio 4's middle-class ethos. In 1991 her pressure group, Voice of the Listener, became the Voice of the Listener and Viewer (VLV), formally registering a determination to lobby across broadcasting.

After winning the Radio 4 argument, Hay had turned her attention to the Peacock review of the BBC's funding in 1985-86, set up by Margaret Thatcher, opposing privatisation of Radios 1 and 2, and arguing for the licence fee to be retained exclusively for the BBC. The VLV went on to oppose the auctioning of ITV franchises to the highest bidder under the 1990 Broadcasting Act, a second move by the BBC in the 1990s to turn Radio 4 long wave into a news channel and concerns about dumbing down Radio 3.

By now she had helped change the climate to one in which listeners and viewers had to be consulted, for example, over digital switchover plans. As she said, a sea change took place: "before, people were patronised, held at arm's length". Hay was concerned about the economic focus that drove the powerful communications regulator Ofcom, established in 2003. She said bitterly that campaigners had been hoodwinked into thinking public service strands were safeguarded, as ITV systematically cut religious, children's, regional and current affairs programming.

One of her outstanding skills was the ability to ask the penetrating question, and to lobby with a masterly persistence, and this continued right up until her final illness. The VLV annual conferences and children's conferences were always able to call on influential broadcasting executives: BBC chairmen and director generals were regular speakers. An annual awards ceremony brought broadcasting talent to the handily scheduled lunch-time event. Jeremy Paxman said: "She's an institution … on the side of the angels." Sir David Attenborough called her a great defender of public service broadcasting.

Daughter of William and Olive Board, she was born in Swansea, and had a sketchy education, being sent to Australia to live with an aunt at the age of 13, to avoid the second world war. She was reunited with her parents in Trieste, at the southern edge of the iron curtain, at the age of 19, where her father, an accountant, was by now an army adviser to the allied military government. Her absence from the UK seemed to give her a clear view of what needed to be defended in UK culture. She always brought an international perspective to broadcasting, with concern about the World Service, and the Commonwealth.

In Trieste, using the radio name Susan Page, she became the host of a forces radio station request programme, linking servicemen with their families back home. She would visit any listeners who were hospital patients. Here she met and in 1950 married a Scottish army officer, Bill Hay, and they married in 1950, later moving back to England with their two daughters. She was briefly a press officer for the Girl Guides, and also worked for the media training agency London Media Workshops.

It was from her house in Gravesend, Kent, that the VLV was run by dedicated helpers, until 2008, when Hay assumed the title of life president. At this point the VLV had grown to 3,000 members; it continues to flourish.

Hay was made an MBE in 1999 for services to broadcasting, advanced to CBE in 2005; and won the Elizabeth R award for services to public service broadcasting from the Commonwealth Broadcasting Organisation in 1999.

Bill died in 1975. Hay is survived by her daughters.

• Jocelyn Hay, broadcaster and campaigner, born 30 July 1927; died 21 January 2014 Reported by guardian.co.uk 4 hours ago.

This is Plymouth -- JACQUELINE Cooke descended into a spiral of abuse, alcohol and self-harm from an early age. It was a tragic decline which ended in murder. Yesterday the 31-year-old was jailed for life for her part in the brutal murder of former pal Keith Dance. Cooke's ex-lover Ian Gollop was also locked up for life following the "calculated revenge attack" at Mr Dance's Stoke bedsit in March last year. During her trial Cooke, of Victoria Place, Stoke, admitted she had stabbed the 33-year-old victim in his neck and back of his head and carved the word "whatever" on his stomach. She said she had never had a relationship which was not abusive – and ultimately she could not break away from violent and sadistic killer Ian Gollop. At the time of Mr Dance's death, Cooke was drinking between nine and 12 litres of cider a day. Cooke lived with her mother and older brother until she was taken into care aged four. She said her mother was an alcoholic and had mental health problems. Cooke lived with foster parents until she was adopted aged six. But she said her relationship with her adoptive father broke down and she ran away to live with a friend's family. She started drinking aged 14, which was out of control by the time she was 16. Cooke said she began cutting herself when she was 14. She told the court: "I used to cut myself. It was a sense of release. I found it really hard to express my emotions. When I cut myself it was a release of emotions." Cooke lived with other foster families, at a children's home and a hostel. She said she then entered a string of what she said were abusive relationships. Cooke had two children but they too have been taken into care. Cooke said she was "devastated" to lose her children. She said she was living on the streets at the age of 27 and was sofa-surfing when she met Gollop aged 28. The court heard how Cooke had convictions for assaulting a constable in 2002, punching one officer and kicking another. In 2007, she was convicted of common assault after attacking a neighbour, spitting into his face and mouth before trying to headbutt him. In 2009 she was again convicted of assaulting a police officer, and the following year of racially aggravated public order after she was removed from a train for being drunk and racially abusing a member of staff. The court heard how she had shouted: "On my kid's life if I ever see you again I'm going to slash your face." Cooke and Gollop had gone out for seven months but had split up about five months before the murder. She said in a statement to officers that he was violent, hitting her on many occasions. Police were called 20 times during the relationship and she said she tried to leave him many times. Cooke said that Gollop, also known as "Taff", had gone to Wales but had returned to Plymouth at the end of January. In the weeks before the murder, Cooke told police that she was drinking nine to 12 litres of cider a day. She said: "If there is alcohol in the room, then I tend to drink most of it." Gollop had contacted her and said he still loved her. Cooke said she thought he was "controlling and manipulative" but agreed to see him. Gollop, who worked as a labourer, was staying with Mr Dance in Molesworth Road, where he left many of his possessions. Cooke blamed Gollop for the savage attack which led to the death of their friend. When police arrested the couple two days after the murder, Cooke said she loved Gollop and wanted to marry him. She asked for a last kiss. Cooke told her trial she did not love him – but could not explain why she said that in front of police officers when Gollop was in no position to harm her. Gollop himself told police as he was driven away: "It was me that done it. Don't get her for it. She wanted to take the rap. Nobody rapes my mrs, I take the rap for everything." *LIFE IN JAIL FOR REVENGE ATTACK KILLERS* A FORMER couple who murdered their friend in a "calculated revenge attack" have been jailed for life. Jacqueline Cooke, aged 31, and her ex-lover Ian Gollop savagely assaulted their drinking partner Keith Dance at his Stoke bedsit in March last year. During her trial Cooke, of Victoria Place, Stoke, admitted she had stabbed the 33-year-old in his neck and back of his head and carved the word "whatever" on his stomach. She claimed the assault was because Dance had raped her and the word she carved into him had been his response when she accused him. The jury had found her guilty of murder earlier this week. Gollop, 51, had strangled Mr Dance with cable, and kicked and stamped on his head repeatedly. A pathologist found Mr Dance had suffered about 70 injuries. Nine female members of the jury remained to hear the pair's previous convictions and mitigation from their advocates. Prosecutor Joss Ticehurst told the court how both had lengthy criminal records. Sentencing the pair Mr Justice Burnett noted that both went to Mr Dance's home that day to "teach [him] a lesson, although I do not believe that at this stage you planned to kill him". Though Cooke accused Mr Dance of rape, which he denied, she "could not understand how [he] could have had sex with you because you went to sleep in leggings and they were in the same condition when you woke up." He noted how they were angered by Mr Dance's "casual attitude" and his use of the word 'whatever'. The pair had become angry and for "about 40 minutes [he] was punched, kicked, stamped on, strangled, stabbed and cut." The judge said the violence used against Mr Dance was "extreme and involved the extensive use of a shod foot". He said an aggravating factor was it was a "calculated revenge attack" with a "significant degree of planning and premeditation". Mr Justice Burnett said that both Gollop – who pleaded guilty in August last year – and Cooke would receive statutory life sentences for murder. He imposed a minimum term of 17 years and 6 months on Gollop and 15 years on Cooke, noting that it would be the decision of a parole board after that time to determine whether it was safe to release them. Gollop made no response as he was handed the sentence. Cooke smiled briefly in the direction of the public gallery as she was led away. Det Insp Costa Nassaris, lead investigator, praised Mr Dance's family who he said had shown "grace and dignity" throughout the trial. He said: "It's been a very difficult for them to sit there each day, hearing the awful evidence and attacks on his character. It must have been really difficult for them to hear, but they have done it with real grace and dignity. I would also praise the commitment, professionalism and effort by the investigating team. At the time we had three ongoing murder investigations which came in over 48 hours and officers put in extra hours and went the extra mile to ensure the case was solidly built and that justice for Keith Dance and his family was done." *A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE* SADISTIC killer Ian Gollop threatened his drinking partner with a knife five weeks before he murdered him, the court heard. Victim Keith Dance had complained that the 51-year-old held a blade to the back of his head and threatened to kill him. Gollop was also accused of assaulting his ex-partner Jacqueline Cooke during the same incident at Mr Dance's bedsit. Cooke told police Gollop also held a knife to her neck on January 31 last year. Gollop was arrested and released on bail by police later that day on condition he did not contact the pair. Only four days later, the labourer breached his bail. Police attended Molesworth Road and arrested Gollop but he was de-arrested when both Cooke and 33-year-old Mr Dance said they had invited him in. Mr Dance then withdrew his complaint of assault, though the prosecution continued. Magistrates continued Gollop's bail when he appeared in court to deny two assault charges. A trial was set for April last year and the case was only discontinued when the murder charge was preferred. Three weeks later, Gollop was with Cooke when she reported to police that she had been raped by Mr Dance. Again he was not taken into custody. Cooke's barrister Sarah Forshaw asked the officer in the case: "Bail conditions were effectively ignored by everyone in this case, were they not?" DC David Cross said: "It is a difficult set of circumstances. Police cannot be there for 24 hours a day. "We cannot be accountable for what other people do." Cooke herself said that in the circle of drinkers where they mixed assaults were common and police were often called. Mr Dance was assaulted in an entirely separate incident only a day after he complained Gollop had attacked him. The assailant, unconnected to the murder case, accepted a caution. Only two days before the murder, Mr Dance again called police saying Cooke had attacked him. She admitted in court scratching him with a knife. Devon and Cornwall Police referred the case, known as Operation Locomotive, to the Independent Police Complaints Commission to investigate as a matter of routine because the force had contact with the victim before his death. Detective Inspector Costa Nassaris, Major Crime Investigation Team said after the case: "Police contact with Mr Dance and the offenders prior to his death is currently subject to an independent IPCC investigation. "We await the outcome of this and any recommendations the IPCC may make." During Gollop's sentencing, prosecutor Joss Ticehurst listed his previous convictions. Gollop had served three years for robbery in the early 1990s after he had impersonated a police officer to get into a woman's home. He had punched her and tried to tie her up before stealing cash. He was also jailed for nine months for intercourse with a girl aged under 16 in 1995, the court heard. Gollop also had convictions for actual bodily harm and criminal damage when he broke into a woman's flat with a sledgehammer and pushed a door into her face, knocking her unconscious. *ECHOES OF THE GIRL WITH THE DRAGON TATTOO* COOKE'S branding of Mr Dance with the word "Whatever" echoes a chilling incident in the popular book and film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. Rape victim Lisbeth Salander tattoos her abuser, the sadistic social worker Bjurman, in Stieg Larsson's Swedish-set best-seller. She wrote in five lines in red and blue ink between his chest and his genitals: "I am a sadistic pig, a pervert, and a rapist". Cooke also marked Mr Dance, but using a knife, with a series of relatively neat, shallow scratches across his stomach. Police believe they could have formed a word but it was impossible to decipher. Cooke herself volunteered that word the had been "whatever", which Mr Dance had repeatedly used to brush off her accusations of rape – an offence he formally denied in a police interview. But she claimed that Mr Dance had been conscious when the word had been etched into his skin and had even lifted up his top. The alcoholic said Gollop had then launched a fatal assault she had tried to stop. Prosecutors claimed that he was unconscious as the neatness and similarity of the marks showed no sign of him flinching or struggling. It was part of grisly evidence as many of Mr Dance's 70 injuries were repeatedly and minutely analysed. High Court judge Mr Justice Burnett took the unusual step of having two shadow jurors for three days as the evidence unfolded – in case any of the panel was too disturbed to carry on. In fact the jury, unusually but randomly chosen with 11 women and just one man, were able to sit for the whole trial. *THE MURDER WEAPON THAT WAS NEVER FOUND* HIGH Court Judge Mr Justice Burnett told the jury evidence against Cooke was circumstantial because there were no witnesses to the attack. But he said that the panel could build up a picture of the events in Flat 5, 128 Molesworth Road, as if assembling a jigsaw puzzle – even if they did not have all the pieces. One of the missing pieces was at least one of the weapons used in the savage and prolonged assault. No knife was ever found which could be linked to the numerous injuries caused to Keith Dance. Police did not examine a sharp implement left in the tiny bedsit, the court heard. Defence barrister Sarah Forshaw, QC, spotted what she called a "black-handled sharp object" in a photograph of the scene. It was seen in one of 175 photographs taken by an officer of the flat. But neither police scenes of crime officers nor privately-employed forensic scientists seized the object. Cooke did not help the investigation by first saying she had disposed of the knife down a drain. She then claimed it had been put in a bag with Gollop's blood-stained boots in the service lane outside the home. Cooke finally said in the witness stand that Gollop had in fact put the bag in a wheelie bin a little way from the flat. The bins were collected on the morning that Cooke reported Mr Dance's death. Police contacted the city council and asked refuse collectors to isolate the waste from the round, which was said to be 60 tons. It was later released before Cooke changed her story. The court heard days of evidence from experts in blood distribution in a bid to reconstruct what happened in the flat. Reported by This is 17 hours ago.

This is Grimsby --

A YOUTH organisation instructor who "corrupted" and had sex with a 13-year-old girl was caught out by her suspicious mother – who texted him from her daughter's phone, pretending to be her.

He behaved in a "calculated and manipulative way" and exchanged more than 2,000 text messages with the girl, a court heard.

Mark Pitts, 20, of Ladysmith Road, Grimsby, admitted three offences of sexual activity with a girl and another of causing or inciting her to engage in sexual activity, between November 2012 and January last year.

Eleanor Fry, prosecuting, told Grimsby Crown Court that Pitts was an instructor at the time for a local youth organisation and the girl was a member of it.

He met her mother through his work there and they struck up a friendship.

She "took him under her wing" and treated him like her son. He got to know her children and she occasionally attended activities of the youth organisation, which is not being named for legal reasons.

Pitts went with the family on a holiday to France. He later told the girl how pretty she was and how he felt about her, and they regularly kissed.

He twice had sex with her and also touched her intimately and engaged in other sexual behaviour.

Her mother became suspicious about what was going on and confiscated the girl's mobile phone.

She found that her daughter had sent more than 2,000 text messages to Pitts and that she had spoken on the telephone to him between 11pm and midnight.

The mother sent a text message to Pitts, pretending to be her daughter, mentioning the fact that the girl had been having sex with him and asking him what she should say to her mother.

Pitts replied: "You don't tell her anything, especially not that."

Miss Fry said that Pitts had been reprimanded by the youth organisation in December 2012 for having some of those involved in the organisation stay at his home.

All the children involved in that matter had the permission of their parents to stay there that night, added Miss Fry.

Richard Butters, mitigating, said Pitts made no excuses for his behaviour.

"The defendant, through his own actions, has shattered two families," said Mr Butters.

"He is deeply ashamed about what he has done to this girl and his remorse is entirely genuine.

"His life has also now been shattered. It's his own fault."

Pitts had no previous convictions, had numerous GCSEs and had been doing a foundation degree in hospital and health care at college in Grimsby.

"His life, through his own fault, is in tatters," said Mr Butters.

Judge David Tremberg told Pitts: "You were more than old enough to know you should not have laid a finger on the complainant, but you did so.

"You corrupted her into accepting this unlawful relationship as being part of her life.

"You caused or risked serious emotional harm as you acted as a corrupting influence on the complainant, creating a secret life for her, between herself and her mother.

"You used emotional blackmail, saying you would kill yourself if it all came out.

"This was a repeated breach of trust by you over a significant period of time. You behaved in a calculated and manipulative way, creating opportunities to offend."

Pitts was jailed for three years and nine months. He was given an indefinite sexual offences prevention order and must register as a sex offender for life.

The girl's mother was in court for the case with other supporters but, afterwards, she said she was not allowed to comment. Reported by This is 16 hours ago.

This is Somerset --

I've been thinking about our rush to save time.

And I've been wondering, as I think, what do we do with the time we think we have saved?

All this has been brought on by reading a piece somewhere about the HS2 railway. I'm in a sort of dilemma about this. It has obviously provoked a furore of mixed opinions, especially about its impact on people who live close to its proposed route. But if someone had just proposed building the M5, there would be the same reaction and we can't imagine life without that! I'm more interested in the proposed time savings.

By its very nature, it can't stop at many stations, because all that stopping and starting would negate the speed it travels at. So if the journey from the Midlands to London is cut by half an hour but you have to travel three-quarters of an hour to catch the train, where is the saving? Or is that me being more simple than usual?

So what do you do with the time you think you've saved? Half an hour is no big deal; why not get up half an hour earlier? Why not work out what benefits you would get if you spent all that money on something else? I think we all should chill out a bit, slow life down a bit. What's all the rush?

In the middle of January we had our staff Christmas party. With all the family and children there's about 20 of us. Each year we invite someone to join us who has given us good service during the year. Last time it was the electrician, this year it was the vet and her husband and children. At the pub it caused a bit of amusement. "What's going on in there?""It's the Evans Christmas party.""In January?"

But it's no big deal, so it's a bit late, we still had crackers and Christmas pudding, we all enjoyed it. And anyway, it wasn't the 2013 party, it was much later that that. It was the 2012 party. We missed one last year, but so what, we might have another this year to catch up, then again we might not.

It was a part of the lot of the dairy farmer, because of the nature of his work, that he should only ever see half of a film or a rugby match on television. If something was on that he wanted to watch on a Sunday afternoon, for example, he would only see half of it because it would soon be time to leave the house to go out to milk. Similarly in the evening, who wants to watch a late-night film if he's got to be up at four in the morning to attend to cows? In such a lifestyle, sleep becomes a precious commodity.

I've spent most of my life thus and sometimes the best you could hope for was that you would see the half you had missed on another occasion, even if as often happened, you had to put up with seeing the second half first, if you follow me.

I enjoy good films but not enough to drag myself 25 miles to the nearest cinema. I've not been to the cinema for 30 odd years. I work on the principle that no matter how big the blockbuster, it will be on TV before long, even if you only see a half of it.

All that is changed now because we have the technological ability to pause things and record things and satellite TV gives us choices we never had before. So most days I scan the movie channels to see what's on and probably record two films a week, that I can watch at my leisure. I might only watch a bit at a time, but at least the bits are in the right order. This week I recorded the Alfred Hitchcock thriller The Birds. Special effects have moved on a long way since that particular film was made, but it is still very scary stuff. So we park films for a moment and move on to grandchildren.

Having grandchildren is one of the very best things that happens to you in life. In my various writings I've always written about them, to the point that once a good friend of mine actually told me that I mentioned them too much and they were no big deal. Years later he apologised and said I was right all along and it was one of the best things that had ever happened to him. So last night we had my daughter's children here for the evening. The girl is 13 going on 23 and very sophisticated with it. The boy is seven, full of life and can pester you endlessly, in a nice way mostly.

So she's trying to do her homework, and he's trying to disrupt it, and it's been going on, this disruption, for about an hour, stealing pens and nudging elbows and the like, tempers are getting frayed and violence is imminent and "leave her alone David" isn't working any more.

"I'll quieten him down," I say. I get the remote control and put The Birds on. I have his attention immediately, one seagull down the chimney and he's behind the settee, which is quite a good place for seven-year-old boys intent on winding up their sisters. Perhaps a bit cruel, but very effective. Roll on light evenings when I can take him on adventures. Reported by This is 16 hours ago.

Nawal Jabarin wants to be a doctor when she grows up. For now, she lives in a cave with 14 siblings, in constant fear of military raids. We meet the Palestinian children living under Israeli occupation

The rough track is an unmarked turning across a primeval landscape of rock and sand under a vast cobalt sky. Our Jeep bounces between boulders and dust-covered gorse bushes before beginning a bone-jolting descent from the high ridge into a deep valley. An Israeli army camp comes into view, then the tiny village of Jinba: two buildings, a few tents, a scattering of animal pens. A pair of military helicopters clatter overhead. The air smells of sheep.

At the end of this track in the southern West Bank, 12-year-old Nawal Jabarin lives in a cave. She was born in the gloom beneath its low, jagged roof, as were two of her brothers, and her father a generation earlier. Along the rock-strewn track that connects Jinba to the nearest paved road, Nawal's mother gave birth to another baby, unable to reach hospital in time; on the same stretch of flattened earth, Nawal's father was beaten by Israeli settlers in front of the terrified child.

The cave and an adjacent tent are home to 18 people: Nawal's father, his two wives and 15 children. The family's 200 sheep are penned outside. An ancient generator that runs on costly diesel provides power for a maximum of three hours a day. Water is fetched from village wells, or delivered by tractor at up to 20 times the cost of piped water. During the winter, bitter winds sweep across the desert landscape, slicing through the tent and forcing the whole family to crowd into the cave for warmth. "In winter, we are stacked on top of one another," Nawal tells me.

She rarely leaves the village. "I used to ride in my father's car. But the settlers stopped us. They beat my father before my eyes, cursing, using foul language. They took our things and threw them out of the car."

Even home is not safe. "The soldiers come in [the cave] to search. I don't know what they're looking for," she says. "Sometimes they open the pens and let the sheep out. In Ramadan, they came and took my brothers. I saw the soldiers beat them with the heel of their guns. They forced us to leave the cave."

Despite the hardships of her life, Nawal is happy. "This is my homeland, this is where I want to be. It's hard here, but I like my home and the land and the sheep." But, she adds, "I will be even happier if we are allowed to stay."

Nawal is one of a second generation of Palestinians to be born into occupation. Her birth came 34 years after Israel seized the West Bank, Gaza Strip and East Jerusalem during the six-day war. Military law was imposed on the Palestinian population, and soon afterwards Israel began to build colonies on occupied land under military protection. East Jerusalem was annexed in a move declared illegal under international law.

The first generation – Nawal's parents and their peers – are now approaching middle age, their entire lives dominated by the daily grind and small humiliations of an occupied people. Around four million Palestinians have known nothing but an existence defined by checkpoints, demands for identity papers, night raids, detentions, house demolitions, displacement, verbal abuse, intimidation, physical attacks, imprisonment and violent death. It is a cruel mosaic: countless seemingly unrelated fragments that, when put together, build a picture of power and powerlessness. Yet, after 46 years, it has also become a kind of normality.

For the young, the impact of such an environment is often profound. Children are exposed to experiences that shape attitudes for a lifetime and, in some cases, have lasting psychological consequences. Frank Roni, a child protection specialist for Unicef, the United Nations' agency for children, who works in the West Bank, Gaza and East Jerusalem, speaks of the "inter-generational trauma" of living under occupation. "The ongoing conflict, the deterioration of the economy and social environment, the increase in violence – this all impacts heavily on children," he says. "Psychological walls" mirror physical barriers and checkpoints. "Children form a ghetto mentality and lose hope for the future, which fuels a cycle of despair," Roni says.

But their experiences are inevitably uneven. Many children living in the major Palestinian cities, under a degree of self-government, rarely come into contact with settlers or soldiers, while such encounters are part of daily life for those in the 62% of the West Bank under full Israeli control, known as Area C. Children in Gaza live in a blockaded strip of land, often growing up in extreme economic hardship, and with direct and shocking experience of intense warfare. In East Jerusalem, a high proportion of Palestinian children grow up in impoverished ghettoes, encroached upon by expanding Israeli settlements or with extremist settlers taking over properties in their midst.

In the South Hebron Hills, the shepherds who have roamed the area for generations now live alongside ideologically and religiously driven Jews who claim an ancient biblical connection to the land and see the Palestinians as interlopers. They have built gated settlements on the hilltops, serviced with paved roads, electricity and running water, and protected by the army. The settlers and soldiers have brought fear to the cave-dwellers: violent attacks on the local Palestinian population are frequent, along with military raids and the constant threat of forcible removal from their land.

Nawal's village is inside an area designated in the 1980s by the Israeli army as "Firing Zone 918" for military training. The army wants to clear out eight Palestinian communities on the grounds that it is unsafe for them to remain within a military training zone; they are not "permanent residents". A legal battle over the fate of the villages, launched before Nawal was born, is still unresolved.

Her school, a basic three-room structure, is under a demolition order, as is the only other building in the village, the mosque, which is used as an overspill classroom. Both were constructed without official Israeli permits, which are hardly ever granted. Haytham Abu Sabha, Nawal's teacher, says his pupils' lives are "very hard. The children have no recreation. They lack the basic things in life: there is no electricity, high malnutrition, no playgrounds. When they get sick or are hurt, it's hard getting them to hospital. We are forced to be primitive."

The children are also forced to be brave. Nawal insists she is not afraid of the soldiers. But when I ask if she has cried during the raids on her home, she hesitates before nodding almost imperceptibly, unwilling to admit to her fears. Psychologists and counsellors working with Palestinian children say this reluctance to acknowledge and vocalise frightening experiences compounds the damage caused by the event itself. "Children say they are not afraid of soldiers, but their body language tells you something different," says Mona Zaghrout, head of counselling at the YMCA in Beit Sahour, near Bethlehem. "They feel ashamed to say they are afraid."

Like Nawal, 12-year-old Ahed Tamimi boldly asserts that she, too, has no fear of soldiers, before quietly admitting that sometimes she is afraid. Ahed's apparent fearlessness catapulted her to a brief fame a year ago when a video of her angrily confronting Israeli soldiers was posted online. The girl was invited to Turkey, where she was hailed as a child hero.

Amid tree-covered hills almost three hours' drive north of Jinba, Nabi Saleh is a village of around 500 people, most of whom share the family name of Tamimi. From Ahed's home, the Israeli settlement of Halamish is visible across a valley. Founded in 1977, it is built partly on land confiscated from local Palestinian families. An Israeli army base is situated next to the settlement.

When settlers appropriated the village spring five years ago, the people of Nabi Saleh began weekly protests. Ahed's parents, Bassem and Nariman, have been at the forefront of the demonstrations, which are largely nonviolent, although they often involve some stone-throwing. The Israeli military routinely respond with tear gas, stun grenades, rubber bullets, jets of foul-smelling fluid known as "skunk", and sometimes live ammunition.

Two villagers have been killed, and around 350 – including large numbers of children – injured. Ahed was shot in the wrist by a rubber bullet. At least 140 people from Nabi Saleh have been detained or imprisoned as a result of protest activity, including 40 minors. Bassem has been jailed nine times – four times since his daughter's birth – and was named a "prisoner of conscience" by Amnesty International; Nariman has been detained five times since the protests began; and Ahed's older brother, Waed, was arrested. Her uncle, Rushdie Tamimi, died two days after being shot by soldiers in November 2012. An Israel Defense Forces investigation later found that soldiers fired 80 bullets without justification; they also prevented villagers giving medical aid to the injured man.

Ahed, a slight, elfin-faced girl, is a discomforting mix of worldliness and naivety. For a child, she knows far too much about tear gas and rubber bullets, demolition orders and military raids. Her home, scarred by repeated army assaults, is one of 13 in the village that are threatened with being bulldozed. When I ask how often she has experienced the effects of tear gas, she laughs, saying she cannot count the times. I ask her to describe it. "I can't breathe, my eyes hurt, it feels like I'm suffocating. Sometimes it's 10 minutes until I can see again," she says.

Like Nawal, Ahed is familiar with military raids on her home. One, while her father was in prison, began at 3am with the sound of assault rifles being battered against the front door. "I woke up, there were soldiers in my bedroom. My mum was screaming at the soldiers. They turned everything upside down, searching. They took our laptop and cameras and phones."

According to Bassem, his daughter "sometimes wakes up at night, shouting and afraid. Most of the time, the children are nervous and stressed, and this affects their education. Their priorities change, they don't see the point in learning."

Those working with Palestinian children say this is a common reaction. "When you live under constant threat or fear of danger, your coping mechanisms deteriorate. Children are nearly always under stress, afraid to go to school, unable to concentrate," Frank Roni says.

Mona Zaghrout of the YMCA lists typical responses to trauma among children: "Nightmares, lack of concentration, reluctance to go to school, clinginess, unwillingness to sleep alone, insomnia, aggressive behaviour, regressive behaviour, bed-wetting. Psychosomatic symptoms, such as a high fever without a biological reason, or a rash over the body. These are the most common things we see."

The flip side of Ahed's life is one of poignant prosaicness. She plays hopscotch and football with her schoolfriends, likes movies about mermaids, teases her brothers, skips with a rope in the sitting room. But she shrinks from the suggestion that we photograph her near the army watchtower at the entrance to the village, only reluctantly agreeing to a few minutes within sight of the soldier behind the concrete.

Her answers to questions about what the protests are over and the role of the army seem practised, the result of living in a highly politicised community. "We want to liberate Palestine, we want to live as free people, the soldiers are here to protect the settlers and prevent us reaching our land." With her brothers, she watches a DVD of edited footage showing her parents being arrested, their faces contorted in anger and pain, her own confrontation with Israeli soldiers, a night-time raid on the house, her uncle writhing on the ground after being shot. On top of witnessing these events first-hand, she relives them over and over again on screen.

The settlers across the valley appear to her as completely alien. She has never had direct contact with any of them. No soldier, she says, has ever spoken a civil word to her.

It's the same for 13-year-old Waleed Abu Aishe. Israeli soldiers are stationed at the end of his street in the volatile city of Hebron 24 hours a day, yet none has ever acknowledged the skinny, bespectacled boy by name as he makes his way home from school. "They make out they don't know us, but of course they do," he says. "They just want to make things difficult. They know my name, but they never use it."

Nowhere in the West Bank do Israeli settlers and Palestinians live in closer proximity or with greater animosity than in Hebron. A few hundred biblically inspired Jews reside in the heart of the ancient city, protected by around 4,000 soldiers, amid a Palestinian population of 170,000. In 1997 the city was divided into H1, administered by the Palestinian Authority, and H2, a much smaller area around the old market, under the control of the Israeli military. H2 is now a near-ghost town: shuttered shops, empty houses, deserted streets, packs of wild dogs, and armed soldiers on most street corners. Here, the remaining Palestinian families endure an uneasy existence with their settler neighbours.

In Tel Rumeida, Waleed's neighbourhood, almost all the Palestinian residents have left. Only the Abu Aishes and another family remain on his street, alongside new settler apartment blocks and portable buildings. Waleed lives much closer to his settler and soldier neighbours than either Ahed Tamimi or Nawal Jabarin: from his front window, you can see directly into settler homes a few metres away. Next door to his home is an army base housing around 400 soldiers.

Following violent attacks, stone-throwing, smashed windows and repeated harassment from settlers, the Abu Aishes erected a steel mesh cage and video cameras over the front of the three-storey house where the family has lived for 55 years. When not at school, Waleed spends almost all his time inside this cage. "For me, this is normal," he says. "I got used to it. But it's like living in a prison. No one can visit us. The soldiers stop people at the bottom of the street, and if they are not from our family, it's forbidden for them to visit. There is only one way to our house, and the soldiers are there day and night. I don't remember anything else: they have been here since I was born." Despite his "normality", he wishes his friends could come to the house, or that he and his brother could play football on the street.

The cage, and public condemnation that erupted in Israel following the broadcast on television of a Jewish woman hissing "whore" in Arabic through the mesh at female members of the Abu Aishe family, have reduced settler attacks and abuse. But Waleed still gets called "donkey" or "dog", and is sometimes chased by settler children.

His mother, Ibtasan, says the soldiers take no action to protect her children. "They have got used to this way of life, but it's very exhausting. Always I am worried," she says as images from the street below flicker on a television monitor in the corner of the living room. "It was easier when they were little, although they had bad dreams. They would sleep one next to me, one next to my husband and one between us."

A 2010 report by the children's rights organisation Defence for Children International (DCI) said Palestinian children in Hebron were "frequently the targets of settler attacks in the form of physical assaults and stone-throwing that injure them" and were "especially vulnerable to settler attacks".

I ask Waleed if he's ever tempted to retaliate. He looks uncomfortable. "Some of my friends throw stones at the soldiers," he says. "Even if I wanted to, I couldn't, because the soldiers know me."

Stone-throwing by Palestinian children at settlers and security forces is common, sometimes causing injuries and even deaths. Bassem Tamimi neither advocates nor condemns it: "If we throw stones, the soldiers shoot. But if we don't throw stones, they shoot anyway. Stone-throwing is a reaction. You can't be a victim all the time," he says.

Another father, whose adolescent son has been detained by the Israeli police 16 times since the age of nine, concurs. "We have the right to defend ourselves, but what do we have to defend ourselves with? Do we have tanks, or jet fighters?" asks Mousa Odeh.

His son, Muslim, now 14, is well known to the Israeli security forces in the East Jerusalem district of Silwan. A few minutes' drive from the five-star hotels around the ancient walls of Jerusalem's Old City, Silwan is wedged in a gulley, a dense jumble of houses along steep and narrow streets lined with car repair workshops and tired grocery stores.

It has always been a tough neighbourhood, but an influx of hardline settlers has created acute tensions, exacerbated by the aggression of their private armed security guards and demolition orders against more than 80 Palestinian homes. The area's youths throw stones and rocks at the settlers' reinforced vehicles, risking arrest by the ever-present police.

"Every minute you see the police – up and down, up and down," Muslim says. "They stop us, search us, bug us. When I'm bored, I bug them, too. Why should I be frightened of them?" The boy insists he is not among the stone-throwers, an assertion that stretches credulity. "The police accuse me of making trouble, but I don't throw stones, ever. Some of my friends, maybe."

Hyam, Muslim's mother, says her son, the youngest of five children, has changed since the arrests began. "They have destroyed him psychologically. He's more aggressive and nervous, hyper, always wanting to be out in the streets."

Muslim's detentions have followed a typical, well-documented pattern. Between 500 and 700 Palestinian children are arrested by Israeli security forces each year, most accused of throwing stones. They are often arrested at night, taken away from home without a parent or adult accompanying them, questioned without lawyers, held in cells before an appearance in court. Some are blindfolded or have their hands bound with plastic ties. Many report physical and verbal abuse, and say they make false confessions. According to DCI, which has taken hundreds of affidavits from minors in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, these children are often pumped for information on relatives and neighbours by their interrogators. Muslim has been held for periods varying from a few hours to a week.

For Muslim, his repeated detentions are a rite of passage. "People respect me because I've been arrested so many times," he tells me. Child psychologists see it rather differently. They say young boys are often feted as heroes when they return from detention, which denies them the scope to process their traumatic experiences and express common feelings of acute anxiety. According to Zaghrout, boys are expected to act tough. "In our culture, it's easier for girls to show fear and cry. Boys are told they shouldn't cry. It's hard for boys to say they are frightened to go to the toilet alone or that they want to sleep with their parents. But they still have these feelings, they just come out differently – in nightmares, bed-wetting, aggression."

Mousa, Muslim's father and the imam of the local mosque, says that, despite his son's bravado, he is an unhappy and insecure boy. "When the army comes, he clings to me. Since the beginning of the arrests, he sleeps with me." While Mousa is talking, Muslim suddenly leaves the house carrying a knife, intent on puncturing a football being kicked against the front wall by local children. "This is disturbed, irrational behaviour," Mousa says. "This is because of the arrests. They have destroyed his childhood. He saw his father, his brother, his sister being arrested. There is a demolition order on the house. Most of our neighbours have been arrested. This is the childhood of this boy. He is not growing up in Disneyland."

Mousa describes his own detention while trying to prevent the police arresting his son. "They carried me in my underwear from here to the Russian Compound [a cell and court complex in central Jerusalem]. Can you imagine more humiliation than this? We are religious people – we don't even let our children see us without clothes. If you gave me a million dollars, I would not go outside in my underwear."

The moment when children realise their parents, especially their fathers, cannot protect them is psychologically significant, according to experts. "For children, their fathers are the protectors of the family. But often these men reach a point where they cannot protect their children. Sometimes soldiers humiliate fathers in front of children. This is very difficult for children who naturally see their father as a hero," Zaghrout says.

According to Roni at Unicef, "Children can lose faith and respect when they see their father beaten in front of them. These children sometimes develop a resistance to respecting people in authority. We hear parents saying, 'I can't control my child any more – they won't listen to me.' This creates great stresses within a family."

Muslim now skips school regularly, saying it bores him, and instead spends his days roaming the streets. According to Mousa, the boy's teachers say he is hard to control, aggressive and uncooperative. At the end of our visit, the restless teenager accompanies us back to our car. He bounces along the road, leaning in open car windows to twist a steering wheel or honk a horn. As we prepare to leave, he gives us a word of warning: "Be careful. Some kid might throw rocks at you."

Despite their difficult lives, each of these four children has a touchstone of normality in their life. For Nawal, it is the sheep that she tends. Ahed likes football and playing with dolls. Waleed is passionate about drawing. Muslim looks after horses in his neighbourhood. And each has an ambition for the future: Nawal hopes to be a doctor, to care for the cave-dwellers and shepherds of the South Hebron Hills; Ahed wants to become a lawyer, to fight for Palestinian rights; Waleed aspires to be an architect, to design houses without cages; and Muslim enjoys fixing things and would like to be a car mechanic.

But growing up under occupation is shaping another generation of Palestinians. The professionals who work with these children say many traumatised youngsters become angry and hopeless adults, contributing to a cycle of despair and violence. "What we face in our childhood, and how we deal with it, forms us as adults," Zaghrout says.

"There is a cycle of trauma imprinted on Palestinian consciousness, passed down from generation to generation," Rita Giacaman, professor of public health at Birzeit university, says. "Despair is also handed down. It's hard for children to see a future. The past not only informs the present, but also the future." Reported by guardian.co.uk 15 hours ago.

When armed men arrive in Mexico's remote villages, mothers hide their daughters – especially the pretty ones. Jennifer Clement hears the distressing stories of the girls and women stolen by drug cartels to be trafficked for sex

Lupita is in her 30s and works as a laundry maid in several houses in Mexico City. She can still remember the first time she saw a girl taken from her home village. "She was very pretty," says Lupita. "She had freckles. She was 11 years old."

Lupita was 20 when five men drove into the small community near Dos Bocas, outside the port of Veracruz. "When they got out of the van all we could see were the machine guns in their hands. They wanted to know where the pretty one was, the girl with freckles. We all knew who that was. They took her and she was still holding her doll under her arm when they lifted her into the van like a bag of apples. This was more than 12 years ago. We never heard from her again."

The girl's name was Ruth, Lupita tells me. "She was the first one they stole. Then we heard it had happened in other villages." The men who visited the villages worked for the local drug cartels, snatching girls to be trafficked for sex. "There was nowhere in our village to hide," explains Lupita. "Where do you hide? So we dug holes in the ground and if we heard there were narcos around, we'd tell the girls to go to their holes and be very quiet for an hour or so until the men left." She remembers how one mother would leave paper and a crayon in the hole for her daughter. "This worked for a while until even the narcos began to know about the holes." Two years later, Lupita left the village and came to Mexico City looking for work.

The lists compiled by government agencies and NGOs for missing girls in Mexico read like this:

Karen Juarez Fuentes, 10. Female. Disappeared going to school in Acapulco. Brown skin. Brown hair. Brown eyes.

Ixel Rivas Morena, 13. Female. Lost in Xalapa. 1.5 metres tall. 50 kilos. Light brown hair. Light brown skin. Oval face. Thin. Left ear lobe torn.

Rosa Mendoza Jiménez, 14. Female. Disappeared. Thin. Brown skin. Dark brown hair. Long. No more data.

They go on and on. According to government figures, kidnapping in the country increased by 31% last year. Those statistics tend to refer to victims who have been kidnapped for ransom, as people are more likely to report the crime when money is demanded. But there is another kind of kidnapping that goes unreported. When a girl is robada – which literally means stolen – she is taken off the street, on her way to school, leaving the movies, or even stolen out of her own house. No ransom is asked for. Her body is all the criminals want. The drug cartels know they can sell a bag of drugs only once, but they can prostitute a young woman many times in a single day.

To avoid the traffickers, families are now taking to extreme measures. Some women hide in secret shelters and homes, the buildings disguised from the outside to look like shopfronts. Many poor farming families have secret places in their shacks where they can hide their sisters and daughters from the constant raids from drug traffickers.

A woman who sells beaded necklaces on a beach in Acapulco tells me how her parents created a small crawl space between the wall and the refrigerator where she would be sent to hide if they heard that there were drug traffickers roaming around in their SUVs or on motorcycles. "There were shootings and kidnappings all the time," she tells me. "We don't live there any more. Nobody lives in that village any more."

Another way to avoid the narcos' attention is by being unattractive. Over and over again I hear mothers explain that they don't let their daughters dress up or wear make-up and perfume. Some mothers from rural areas, who I meet at marches and protests in Mexico City, even make their daughters "ugly" by cutting their hair and making them dress like boys. "I told my daughter to keep in the shade," Sarita from Chilpancingo, a large town in the state of Guerrero, tells me. "She never listened to me." Sarita's tears roll down her cheeks and she wipes upward, as if to put them back in her eyes. "We would fight all the time because I did not want her to wear lipstick. And I don't know if she willingly ran away with a man, she was wanting to be loved, or was stolen, robada. I don't know. She went to school in the morning and never came home."

In one town in the south of the country I visit a 17th-century convent that has been established by one of the few groups in the country that secretly works to help women leave dangerous situations. Here, the nuns, all over the age of 75, have 20 women and their children hiding in a basement to escape their husbands and boyfriends. I ask the nuns what would happen if one of the women's husbands or boyfriends should appear on their doorstep with their gang, carrying AK-47s under their arms. The nuns tell me, without hesitation, that they would stand together and create a wall with their bodies and die for the women and children they protect.

At the convent there is a slim, brown-haired woman who is 18 years old. Maria has been living with the nuns for more than a year. Her husband first saw her at a party. "He looked at me and I knew I was trapped," says Maria. "I hid in the bathroom for the rest of the night and he stood outside the door for hours. If you turn these men down, then they steal you. There is no saying no. A woman cannot say no. I finally left the bathroom and there he was. He raped me for days."

Maria explains how, after a few days, she managed to crawl through a window while the man was asleep and make it back to her family home. "When my mother saw me walk in the door I thought she was going to hug me, but instead she picked up the telephone to call that man to tell him where I was," she says. "My mother said that she was not going to die for me. He beat me badly after he came to pick me up. One night, months later, he took me into the woods so that I would help him dispose of a barrel of hydrochloric acid in which a body was decomposing. He wanted to make sure I was an accomplice."

There are no precise figures as to how many women and girls are being stolen and trafficked in Mexico. In rural areas few trust the police forces as they are often involved in local mafias, so many cases of missing girls are not registered. One fact all government and non-government agencies agree on is that instances of forced labour, debt bondage and sex trafficking are growing at an alarming rate. The government has vowed to find a more effective means to fight the country's violence – the head-on fight with the drug cartels has killed up to 70,000 people in the past six years – but has yet to produce any kind of plan.

Last November the president of Mexico, Enrique Peña Nieto, stood beside Rosario Robles, Minister of Social Development, as she opened a women's centre in the remote, impoverished community of Tlapa de Comonfort in Guerrero. "In Mexico in the 21st century the worst expression of discrimination against women is violence," said Robles. "In this modern Mexico there are still states where the punishment is greater for stealing a cow than stealing a woman."

At the cathedral in Xalapa, Veracruz, families of missing, stolen or killed women staged protests last year on International Women's Day. As part of the protest, the shoes of missing girls and women were left on the cathedral steps with the names of their owners written next to them. A sign beside one pair of size-two sandals reads: "You took her alive, bring her back alive."

"We stopped taking our daughters to the market," one mother there told me. "It was too dangerous. You'd let go of your daughter's hand to pick up a papaya and in a second she was gone. This happened to my cousin. They took her daughter at the market. She felt a movement, a push, and she fell on the ground. They pushed her away and picked up the girl. She was only seven. When my cousin went to talk to the policeman that is supposed to guard the market he said only an idiot would take her daughter to the market. You can have another child, he said to her. You're still young."

In Mexico City's women's jail, Santa Martha Acatitla, prisoners wear one of two colours: those who are sentenced wear navy blue and those awaiting sentencing are dressed in beige. The women's jail faces the men's jail and the prisoners can see each other through the cracks in the concrete walls. A man and a woman can look at each other for 35 years. They see a flash of skin, the shadow of a face, a blown kiss across a courtyard of cement and barbed wire. They wave handkerchiefs at each other.

The artist Luis Manuel Serrano has given collage workshops at the jail for more than 10 years, helping women tell their stories by cutting images out of magazines and gluing them to large pieces of cardboard. Serrano explains to me that collage technique allows the women to express themselves and tell their stories, without needing technical skills. The collages tell an overwhelming number of stories about women who were stolen, then used or sold as prostitutes, and then jailed for working as prostitutes.

Serrano says the most frightening collage he ever saw was made by a young woman called Marcela. She was from Tijuana and had been walking away from school to take the public bus home when she was snatched off the street and thrown into a car. She was 14 years old. She became a paradita – literally "one who stands"– in Tijuana's well-known prostitution area called Callejón Coahuila, where the women stand out on the street and lean against walls. "We were all little girls, really," she told Serrano. "How did I know we were all little girls? We only had to look at each other's small, small breasts to know." Serrano says her collage was black and white and covered in skulls. "It's the only time a collage has frightened me," he adds. "It shook me up."

Almost every woman I meet in the prison testifies that her life here is better than it was outside. Proof of this is that the jail authorities never tell the inmates when they are going to leave. Instead, very late at night, a prisoner is taken from her cell and released quietly. The prisoner, or her friends, might otherwise do something (place drugs or a weapon in the cell or attack a guard) in order to remain in jail. Luis Manuel Serrano tells me that, once released, women often commit crimes so they can return: "Here, for the first time in their lives, many are safe and cared for."

The main activity at the jail is beautifying; sometimes it almost seems like the largest beauty parlour in Mexico. The jail smells of hair spray, nail polish remover and perfumes, and the prisoners spend most of their day painting their nails, dyeing their hair all kinds of colours and applying false eyelashes. A couple of years ago, several members of staff were fired for hosting a Botox party in the infirmary. Perhaps here, inside the prison, it feels safer for the women to be pretty.

Jennifer Clement's Prayers for the Stolen is published by Hogarth at £12.99. To order a copy for £10.39, with free UK p&p, go to theguardian.com/bookshop Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.

Sports events can lead to surge in abuse and trafficking of young girls, say campaigners

It's a Friday night in Fortaleza and the dusty roads around the new stadium are deserted, apart from the prostitutes who work the south side of the city in north-east Brazil. For the outreach workers on one of their routine drives around the area, the sight of an unknown young girl prompts a familiar dread. Dressed simply in denim shorts and a blue vest, this one looks only 13 or 14.

"We have been seeing more young girls," says Jacinta Rodrigues, from Barraca da Amizade, an NGO that provides advice and assistance to sex workers. "Some of them are already mothers and they do it to support their children."

The NGO's van stops at a corner where the girl is waiting with a group of travestis – men or boys who claim a female gender identity. We have come to talk to Germana, a 24-year-old travesti who is to be the subject of a Dutch TV film. Germana wears a pink dress and careful make-up, but one glance is enough to show why she has drawn particular curiosity: she is completely blind.

"Go on, there are two of them," an older prostitute says to the girl, known as "Andressa", who walks over to a car to negotiate a programa with two men. On average, a programa of sexual services costs around 30 reais (£10).

As Brazil prepares to host the World Cup this summer, Fortaleza is under the spotlight for its reputation as the country's capital of sex tourism and the sexual exploitation of children. With around 6,000 foreign fans expected to arrive, and Brazilians travelling to matches nationwide, Rodriguez and her colleagues fear a huge surge in the sex trafficking of minors.

Sexual violence is the second most reported crime against children in Brazil, with most victims aged between 10 and 14. Fortaleza has received more complaints, or denuncias, to a special toll-free telephone line than any other city.

Last Tuesday in London, the charity Happy Child, which works mainly in Brazil, launched a campaign called It's A Penalty, backed by the UK's National Crime Agency and footballers including Frank Lampard and Brazil's David Luiz. Its aim is to raise awareness of child sexual exploitation and warn fans that paying for sex with anyone under 18 is a crime for which they will face prosecution in the UK or Brazil.

Happy Child's chief executive, Sarah de Carvalho, said: "Children as young as 11 or 12 are already being trafficked in preparation for the World Cup."

In Fortaleza, capital of Ceará state, officials expect this June, when the city will host six matches, to be tough. "We plan to use the strategy we used during the Confederations Cup, doubling both the number of outreach workers on the streets and the shelter service; two independent secretariats will monitor this work," said Leana Regia Faiva de Souza of the Ceará human rights secretariat.

De Souza acknowledges that Fortaleza has a reputation for child sex exploitation, but says the high number of complaints – rising from 193 in 2009 to 2,122 in 2012 – reflects its success in improving awareness. "In many areas of Brazil, the population does not regard it as a crime," says De Souza.

The link between sex trafficking and global sporting events has been disputed in a report entitled What's The Cost of A Rumour? by the Global Alliance Against Trafficking of Women, but experts in Brazil agree that the danger for children is real, involves Brazilians and foreigners, and is not only about tourism.

Anna Flora Werneck of the charity Childhood Brazil, based in São Paulo, says: "Major sports events increase vulnerability. Children are displaced due to building projects; they are not at school and are unsupervised; there may be alcohol and drugs; friends tell them sex with a foreigner could transform their life."

The charity has uncovered child sexual exploitation by workers at construction sites for the World Cup and for the 2016 Olympics.

De Souza says tourism remains a key battleground: a crackdown on guests taking minors into hotels has reportedly pushed the child sex trade into "love motels", short-stay hotels offering privacy for sex. In the bars on Iracema beach, it is common to see young girls with older foreign men. It is hard to see how this can change if, as Rodriguez says, taxi drivers, hoteliers and even the police "belong to a mafia that provides tourists with children for sex".

A heavy-handed police crackdown brings added dangers for all prostitutes and street populations, says Rodriguez, who says that police reportedly beat sex workers to keep them away from tourists during the Confederations Cup. In this climate, street children are particularly vulnerable, says Joe Hewitt of Street Child World Cup, whose first tournament – in South Africa in 2010 – helped to end police roundups of street children. The charity will hold a second tournament in Rio in March. .

Back on the streets near the stadium, the outreach workers make a final round and a group of travestis approach. Several are planning to go to São Paulo to top up the silicone injections that give them female attributes – to maximise their earning power during the World Cup. There is no sign of Andressa. Reported by guardian.co.uk 11 minutes ago.

When Damien Hirst's spot-painting of Mickey Mouse is sold, the money will go to Kids Company. Elizabeth Day meets him – and the charity's founder Camila Batmanghelidjh – to hear how art saved his own childhood, and why it's crucial for so many vulnerable kids

When Damien Hirst was a child, he never thought you could get paid for making art. His mother was a shorthand typist and his father a car salesman. His parents split up when he was 12. After his dad walked out of the family home in Leeds, money was tight at home and although the young Damien loved drawing and art galleries, he thought he'd have to get "a proper job" to make a living.

"We ran out of money and we couldn't pay the bills so we had the electricity cut off and things like that," Hirst, 48, says now. "At school I tried to do technical drawing. I could see that could get you a job whereas I never thought 'artist' could be a job, I never thought artists could get paid."

It was an art foundation course at Jacob Kramer School of Art (now the Leeds College of Art) that convinced Hirst that being an artist could be a proper career. "That blew my mind," he says. Later he moved to London, went to Goldsmiths and his work was snapped up by über-collector Charles Saatchi.

Today, Hirst is believed to be worth more than £200m. One of the most famous artists of modern times, he is seen as the great populariser of conceptual art. It was Hirst who put a shark in formaldehyde, painted spots on a canvas and exhibited a skull encrusted with diamonds with a £50m asking price.

But those formative experiences as a young boy in Leeds have left their mark. For all his success, Hirst still believes in the transformative nature of art for children. It is partly for this reason that, over the past few years, Hirst has been quietly building up his philanthropic work. One of his chosen charities, Kids Company, which works with disadvantaged and vulnerable children in London and Bristol, has benefitted to the tune of more than £2m from his donations. Last month, it was announced that Hirst would be auctioning a painting of Mickey Mouse (reinterpreted as one of his iconic spot paintings) and giving the proceeds to Kids Company. In doing so, Hirst joins a select group of artists, including Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein, invited by Disney to recreate the corporation's most famous mascot. Hirst's Mickey is expected to reach up to £750,000.

"I've always believed art's more powerful than money," he says. "The money's just a sideline. I remember those people who burned £1m and I thought it was disgusting. The K Foundation or something…"

Who became the KLF?

"Yeah." He nods vigorously. "You have to respect money."

Money and art have long been intertwined in Hirst's mind. And it is this that has brought us here today, to Science, the airy central London headquarters of Hirst's art and business empire. The office is filled with his works, including a giant pill capsule and an intricate mosaic of butterflies – even the lavatory is wallpapered with a Hirstian representation of pharmaceutical cabinet contents.

But perhaps the most arresting installation of all is sitting on the sofa next to Hirst in the form of Camila Batmanghelidjh, founder and director of Kids Company, swathed in a bright crimson printed cloak and matching turban, with fluorescent yellow Crocs on her feet.

"The thing is," Batmanghelidjh says, by way of explanation, "I can go from the crack den to the palace and not change outfits."

"Me, too," adds Hirst. "Actually, I think I'm better in the crack den."

The two of them whoop with laughter.

Hirst first got involved with Kids Company in 2007 and has become one of its most generous backers. His donations have been a lifeline for a charity which gets 80% of its income from philanthropy.

"He never asked for public acknowledgement or anything like that," says Batmanghelidjh.

"So there was this funny world where I could see there were times when people were very envious of his success, but I couldn't publicly say: 'Do you realise how much this man is contributing?'"

Hirst interjects drily: "It's just not very rock'n'roll." He shifts in his seat, rolling up the sleeves of his leather bomber jacket and tapping his trainers on the floor. Hirst's attention is mercurial, his speech so rapid he seems constantly on the verge of impatience.

"A lot of people give stuff to charity to make themselves feel good," he says. "When I started off, I didn't have much money. I had an interest in art – don't know where it came from – and art helped me get where I've gone. So you do feel you want to give something back, but you don't feel you need to be acknowledged for that. It's a lot nicer to just do it."

But might there not be another reason – an attempt, perhaps, to rebrand himself? Over the past few years, Hirst has got divorced, gone sober and bought up most of Ilfracombe (arguably one of the most sedate places in Britain). Is his decision to talk about his philanthropic work connected to a deeper re-evaluation, an impending sense of his own mortality?

"I think I've constantly re-evaluated since I was seven," Hirst says blithely. "You get older, you get calmer, hopefully you get wiser, but death is unknowable. It doesn't matter how old you are, you still can't get your mind around it."

The work of Kids Company focuses on the needs of neglected inner-city children in London and Bristol, including the most deprived and at-risk whose parents are unable to care for them due to their own practical and emotional challenges. The charity's services reach 36,000 children and support 18,000 who need more intensive attention.

A key part of this is art therapy: Kids Company is the biggest employer of arts psychotherapists after the NHS, and Hirst has been actively involved in developing its programme. "What happens to traumatised children is they freeze often in shock and one of the first things that goes is their verbal abilities to describe the situation," explains Batmanghelidjh. By working with art therapists, the hope is that these children can eventually "start showing the trauma through the art materials… and they tend to have very powerful, emotional pieces that come almost from the bleakest spaces that they've gone to".

She mentions the case of a nine-year-old girl in Bristol who, when Batmanghelidjh first met her, had been subjected to years of sexual abuse by a family member and who was "crawling on the ground and kind of howling and getting inside the cupboard in a foetal position". After six months of patient counselling and art therapy, "the transformation was extraordinary". The next time she saw the girl, says Batmanghelidjh, "She was sitting there with ribbons in her hair and was really girly-girly, with her box of little art materials cases all lined up."

Art for these children, just as it was for Hirst, is a necessary means of expression. In 2009, Batmanghelidjh launched an initiative in which she asked 125 schoolchildren to use a shoebox to recreate a room from their home. The results were startling: one in six of the shoeboxes threw up child-protection issues.

"They told us things like: 'I feed the rats in the cupboard'; they talked about firearms being hidden; they talked about sexual abuse," says Batmanghelidjh.

In order to raise the necessary cash to work with these children, she got in touch with Hirst and asked him to get a group of famous artists together to create their own shoebox rooms which were then stacked on top of each other like a tower block. The results were auctioned off, raising more than £200,000.

"Camilla's great like that with those kind of ideas," Hirst says. "I mean, I get emails saying 'We're [auctioning off] artists' underpants, artists' shoes and artists' shirts and artists' mugs,' but to do something like that – making a tower block, keeping it simple – it's a great idea."

The children relate to Hirst's art, says Batmanghelidjh, because "his work is daring. It has a 'Why not?' attitude". Hirst, too, sees the best art as unapologetically child-like, quoting Brancusi's famous dictum that: "When we are no longer children, we are already dead."

"I think a lot of people will say my work is childish or child-like and I think neither of those things is a bad thing," he says. "The world's a very complicated place and sometimes you look at it and you feel like a child and that's the sort of best viewpoint. In the face of the world, we're always children."

He encourages his own children – Connor 18, Cassius 13, and eight-year-old Cyrus – to create. Hirst split up from his wife, fashion designer Maia Norman, in 2012 and seems to have adapted well to single parenthood, moving his sons into a big house in Richmond, in the leafy London suburbs. (He also owns Toddington Manor, a stately home in Gloucestershire, plus a farm in Devon and houses in Mexico and Thailand). Children, he says, can produce "much better" art than adults. "I took my eight-year-old when he was about five to my studio for the first time. And when we got back he got a TV box, made a circle, put a chair in the middle and taped an umbrella to it over the top and put his own drawings on the wall and he sat in the middle and said: 'My studio's better than yours.'" Hirst grins. "You just go: 'Wow.'"

Adults, by contrast, are more hamstrung by their anxieties. "You get an adult going: 'How many coats [of paint] should I use? What if it's bad?' And they get the fear, whereas kids just dive in, throw it all around."

As a child, Hirst used to visit a local museum in Leeds where works of art were hung in the same rooms as stuffed Bengal tigers and fish in huge aquariums. He remembers being stunned both by the scale and the anarchic atmosphere – both qualities which he tries to bring to his own work. For Hirst, size most definitely matters. "What I quite like to do is take [my children's] ideas to another level sometimes," he says. "My 18-year-old came home one day and he'd made a huge mosquito out of plastic boxes and it had a straw for a point and wings made with string, so I took them to the foundry and had it cast in bronze, the same size. It's not a massive effort to do that."

Perhaps not if your father has access to a foundry. The issue with a lot of the children Batmanghelidjh deals with is that they don't have anyone to take their art home to – let alone the opportunity to cast it in a precious metal. Instead, she encourages them to make objects and pictures that are sent as thank-yous to key donors. The vibrant, painted chair on which my Dictaphone lies is one such piece – it is covered with colourful patterns and every available bit of space has a message of thanks scrawled across it. Once, Hirst recalls, he took delivery of a table from Kids Company. "And they'd obviously been told to write something nice on it. So it was all: 'You're great, we love you, thank you so much' and then on the back someone wrote: 'Whatever.'" He snorts with laughter. "I love that."

It's the kind of rebellious attitude that would appeal to Hirst, who, when he first started out, was often described as the "enfant terrible" of the art world. That stopped, he says, "as soon as I started making any money, as soon as I could get tables at my favourite restaurants an hour before… You start off kicking against the system and then you become the thing to be kicked against. I definitely feel more mainstream than outsider now."

In fact, Hirst is often accused of being too mainstream. His work has been derided as shallow, overly commercial and derivative. Critics have lambasted him for not producing his own art – Hirst famously got his assistants to produce thousands of spot paintings that bear his signature – and for making money from what they see as little more than clever marketing. His diamond-encrusted skull, entitled For the Love of God, was condemned by the critics for its "vulgarity" and "decorative" nature when Hirst put it up for auction in 2007.

But one teenager at Kids Company saw it differently. "The diamond skull inspired one of our kids to do a piece on how trauma kills off your soul," says Batmanghelidjh. "He'd seen the skull and then he started doing this whole funeral piece of skull heads. It was extraordinary – and it was all because of seeing Damien's diamond skull. He did this piece about how child abuse had basically murdered pieces of him… It was very haunting."

How does hearing a story like that make Hirst feel? "The word is 'inspirational', isn't it?" he replies. "In my mind, when I imagine my audience, it's always a single person looking at my artwork. I'm aware that I make things for people to hook on to and connect to, but it's vague in my mind, so when you hear about a specific which is definite and somebody connects to it…" he trails off.

For Batmanghelidjh, art has an even deeper resonance. She sees it as an example of "audacity… and I think the same cycle needs to be conceptualised in social care. You have to have the audacity to say: 'This is unacceptable' and come up with an alternative."

"The defence budget is £42.4bn," continues Batmanghelidjh. "The Crossrail budget is about £40bn. The child-protection budget is £113m. And, actually, we've got a catastrophic epidemic of childhood maltreatment in this country. And every so often, you hear about it because there's an inquiry when a child dies, but the death of that one child represents only the pin of a needle compared to the scale of children who've been maltreated behind closed doors."

Hirst, sitting quietly on the sofa as Batmanghelidjh speaks, rubs his eyes with the tips of his fingers. I think briefly that he might be welling up. But when I look again, the slight moistness has gone and his gaze is re-focused. "The world's fucked," he says sharply. "What do you want me to say?"

Does he vote?

"I don't, no. Not yet," he grins. "I kind of like the idea and I think it's a cop-out not to, but I can't see anything to vote for."

He says people have a tendency to view an artist "like some sort of saviour".

"You get it with Hollywood actors, rock stars [people saying]: 'Don't sell out, don't sell out!'" he says. "There's a sort of desperation that money taints and poisons everything… Money's a big issue. It's as complex as love in the world today. As an artist, I think you should take that on and look at it."

Money and love: the two, in Hirst's mind, seem inextricably linked. It's not that he thinks of money as a substitute for love, but at least it's a start. At least it can help to change the lives of deprived and vulnerable children. It can give them a voice and a vision. It can, as Hirst would put it, go some way towards making the world that little bit less fucked.

Damien Hirst's Mickey will be auctioned at Christie's in London on 13 February (christies.com) Reported by guardian.co.uk 17 hours ago.

The nightclub clinch made news, says William Langley, but her gift for the unexpected is rarely idle for long
 
 
 
  Reported by Telegraph.co.uk 13 hours ago.

The bungling hero may stretch your patience but the cliffhangers will keep you reading until the end… in one sitting

If ever there was a perfect victim for a femme fatale to sink her claws into, it is George Foss, the inept protagonist of Peter Swanson's Larsson-esquely titled debut, The Girl With a Clock for a Heart. George is approaching 40, bored, and feels "as though his world had been slowly drained of all its colours". He has spent the 20 years since his college sweetheart disappeared thinking, mistakenly, that he sees her everywhere. Then, one August night in Boston, there she really is.

She's in danger; she needs his help. Will George deliver a huge stash of banknotes to the man she stole them from, and say sorry from her while he's at it? Of course he will. Will he do this despite being punched in the kidneys by someone who is hunting her, and despite knowing she is very far from who she says she is? Of course he will.

She's very attractive, after all, and was his first love. Swanson's thriller weaves together two timelines: George at college, meeting the girl he knew then as Audrey, falling for her, then grieving when he learns she's killed herself over the Christmas holidays. There's a wonderful scene when he visits her parents, and realises the picture they have of their Audrey isn't his. His Audrey – Liana Decter – is still alive, and may have done some terrible things to escape her real past.

Then there's George in the present, spotting Liana in his local bar, being drawn into her femme fatale world of guns and tranquilliser darts, false identities and diamond robberies.

Swanson has set out to create a hero who is just an average guy thrown into a world of crime he has no idea how to handle. Fair enough. But George is so terribly clueless! Perhaps he hasn't read enough thrillers, and he should be forgiven for being in thrall to Liana, but he makes such silly mistakes. He unnecessarily breaks into a deserted house which is almost certainly linked to the Bad Goings On. He locks sliding glass doors to protect himself from a baddie with a gun. He forgets his mobile when heading into danger.

And he keeps going to sleep! He's even tempted to nod off after the most dramatic scene in the book. A reader is hard pressed not to shout "yes George" when the character wonders "if the limited banks of his memory were entirely filled with details of Liana, all used up on the first semester of college, those 16 heady weeks".

Yet i'ts hard not to warm to this book – and very hard not to read it in one sitting. Of course it's faintly preposterous – at one point there is even a steak knife concealed in a pair of knickers – but it's also lots of fun. Swanson's writing is clean and measured, he throws in a ton of cliff-hangers, and he plays out his stolen identity concept – impossible in the age of Facebook, but how intriguing to remember how it wouldn't have been, 20 years ago – to thrilling, chilling effect. Reported by guardian.co.uk 14 hours ago.

Letters written by artist in his early 20s to his girlfriend Felicity Hellaby provide insights into Freud's life, thoughts and interests

Some of them look as if they have been written by a seven-year-old, although it would be an unusually developed child who wrote so gleefully about putrefying birds, Daumier lithographs and his joy at purchasing a zebra's head.

In fact the letters were written by Lucian Freud in his early 20s, and they are packed full of his waspish wit, skittish restlessness and pleasure at the high-low life he lived so rapaciously.

This week Sotheby's will auction a previously unseen and fascinating cache of letters, mostly written in 1943 and all of them addressed to Felicity Hellaby, one of the first of Freud's many girlfriends, whom he met at the art school they both attended.

Oliver Barker, Sotheby's senior international specialist in contemporary art, said the letters provided insights into Freud's life, thoughts and interests. 

"It is so interesting that he would have such an intense correspondence with a girlfriend from his time at art school," Barker said. "They kind of have everything … paintings he was working on, plays that he'd seen, films he'd seen, jackets that he'd bought, props he'd bought, compositions he was struggling with. It's a litany of the favourite things that Lucian loved and set the tone for the rest of his life."

Freud and Hellaby first met at the East Anglian School of Painting and Drawing in Dedham, Essex. They were teenage sweethearts, although it was an unusual relationship for the serial philanderer Freud in that it did not go beyond kissing and canoodling.

The "Darling Felicity" letters provide glimpses into Freud's life, such as an incident in 1939 when the art school burnt down and he was widely thought responsible. In one letter, Freud mentions Cedric Morris, the man who set up the school and had been so pleased to have Sigmund Freud's grandson as a student.

The enthusiasm clearly did not last. "Cedric wrote a letter to my mother asking her to persuade me not to come down again as I was too destructive and unscrupulous," Freud writes. He says he is not surprised as Morris "was unusually friendly over the weekend".

The fire in July 1939 destroyed the school, and Morris lost many of his paintings. Many students believed Freud was to blame, possibly careless with a cigarette. In his book Breakfast with Lucian, the artist's friend Geordie Greig said Freud "revelled in his role of suspected arsonist, enjoying the aura of being dangerous". He also spoke of his guilt, Greig wrote, but that did not necessarily mean it was not "wishful thinking".

The letters often reveal Freud's single-minded focus on his art, and are peppered with references to known works. In one, Freud is animated about all the dead animals in parcels he is getting and making pictures of. "I did one of a gamecock in a bucket of hot scummy water and the fumes and smell of decay was so overwhelming it sent me into a coma."

That description – he goes on to describe the flies eating the carcass, going mad and diving "with a splash into my paint water where they die"– relates to the 1944 work Chicken in a Bucket.

The letters contain lots of references to plays and films he has seen including Michael Redgrave in A Month in the Country and "a very good sad film", the Clark Gable western Honky Tonk.

In another letter Freud, who died in 2011 aged 88, talks about his acquisition of a zebra's head that was used in his more surreal works. "By far the best thing I have ever bought."

There may have been a war on but Freud was a regular shopper. "Yesterday I bought a lovely yellow jockeys [sic] waistcoat at an auction sale and also six doumier [sic] lithographs."

The handwriting is fantastically easy to read because it is so childlike, with some atrocious spelling – "delishious", "postphoned", "spontanious", "wonderfull", "sprowting". Some of the letters have little drawings.

Hellaby, the subject of one of Freud's first full-scale portraits, The Girl on the Quay, has had the letters in her possession for the last 70 years. Their relationship fizzled out but she told Greig that she recalled Freud as "very, very funny, incredibly charming, and there was something about him that made me think, even then, that he was going to do extraordinary things."

Now in her nineties, Hellaby is selling the letters – estimated at £3,000-£5,000 – together with a drawing he made of her in 1941 and two early works he gave to her as presents. They will be sold at Sotheby's contemporary art day auction on Thursday. Reported by guardian.co.uk 6 hours ago.

Police investigaing horrendous attack say the girl was so traumatised they had to wait a day before they could speak to her Reported by guardian.co.uk 1 day ago.

This is Hull and East Riding --

THOUSANDS of families could find their blue bins left uncollected unless they follow strict new rules over what goes in their recycling.

Hull City Council has introduced bans on the collection of blue bins containing crisp packets and black bags used to store recycling, including yoghurt pots and milk cartons.

Refuse collectors are refusing to empty bins with recycling in black bin liners and are placing stickers on bins highlighting the banned items.

But with the recent switch to fortnightly collections, some residents now face a lengthy wait for their blue bins to be emptied.

Carol Noman, 63, of Greygarth Close, north Bransholme, chased after her bin crew after they refused to empty her blue bin.

She said: "I recycle religiously and was quite angry when they just left my bin out in the street.

"I ran after them and one of the crew just laughed at me and said it was because I had put some black bags in.

"I've always used black bags in the house to collect everything to go in the blue bin.

"No one sent me a letter explaining the new rules. Now I've got to go another fortnight before the next collection."

George Porte, 61, also discovered his blue bin had been left behind after he put out the recycling.

Mr Porte, of St George's Grove, west Hull, said: "When my blue bin wasn't emptied, I rang up to find out why.

"The girl asked me if I ever put crisp packets in. I told her I did and she said that was why it had not been collected.

"Just because I put the odd crisp packet in seems a bit of a trivial reason not to empty my bin because I always try to recycle what I can.

"What is more annoying is that we didn't get any notice of this from the council."

Blue bins found with nappies, food waste and textiles inside are also no longer being emptied.

The new rules will apply to all 117,000 blue bins currently being used by householders in Hull.

The restrictions are being rolled out across the city as part of a ten-week programme.

It follows a four-week trial in four areas of the city last November, which saw contamination levels reduce by 50 per cent.

Doug Sharp, the council's assistant head of waste, said: "We are sending letters out to households in advance of their next blue bin collection, explaining what can no longer be placed in the bins.

"I apologise if people haven't received any notification beforehand and I can understand it must be annoying for people who are committed to recycling to find their blue bin has not been emptied."

Rubbish from Hull's blue bins is recycled at a plant in Walsall.

Contamination levels in Hull's blue bin waste have doubled to about 15 per cent since the switch to fortnightly collections.

As a result, the plant's operators increased its charges by £12 per tonne last September to reflect the extra work involved in separating the contaminated waste.

Mr Sharp said the price hike meant the cash-strapped council faced having to pay an extra £288,000 a year unless contamination levels were dramatically reduced.

He admitted the new rules would upset some people but he said: "We know that most residents are committed recyclers and are trying to do the right thing.

"Our aim is to reduce the most significant problems and reduce overall contamination by raising awareness."

As an alternative, the council says residents can use clear plastic supermarket-style carrier bags to collect recyclable items.

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*• Politics news for Hull and East Riding* Reported by This is 16 hours ago.

This is Lincolnshire -- Valentine's day came early for some of the single ladies who took part in the St Barnabas Lincolnshire Hospice's Take me Out evening. Based on the popular television programme hosted by Paddy McGuinness, 19 ladies had a balloon to pop instead of a light to switch off, if they didn't "likey" their potential date. With lots of encouragement from the audience, six men got to show off their talents to the ladies, in the hope of securing a romantic date at Nando's in Lincoln. Ian, Ant and Blake were lucky in love and won a an evening out with the girl of their choice, but sadly Lee and Daniel were not chosen and went home with nothing more than from a hug from the Nando's giant chicken. Hosted by DJ Flipstones from Siren FM, the event held at Lincoln Performing Arts Centre raised £3,300 for St Barnabas. * Click to see the full gallery… * Reported by This is 11 hours ago.

This is Dorset -- A new poll has revealed that curvaceous blonde Holly Willoughby topped the most wanted female celebrity Valentine's date this year! Drawing in over a third of the nation's male votes according to a new survey. Closely behind Holly, it appears almost a quarter (23%) of British males wish for an intimate date with the beautiful blue-eyed, dark haired Katy Perry. And famous for her hairstyle, being the girl next door and once married to Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston polled the third most desired celebrity date, taking almost a fifth of male votes. However, the former glamour model Katie Price gained no votes at all. Male respondents branded her look having "tacky hair extensions, over-bleached hair, piled on makeup and far too skinny." Beyonce Knowles and Tulisa Contostavlos unexpectedly received no votes too, with males surveyed choosing the wish to date stars Rhianna, Michelle Keegan and Cheryl Cole over them. And very surprising after all the hype over her bottom back in 2011, only three per cent of male voters polled Pippa Middleton to be their most favourable Valentine. "Pippa is gorgeous looking but her high flying lifestyle does puts me off a little, I prefer more down to earth ladies, I think Katy Perry would be really fun to date." says one male respondent from Wales. The recent poll by natural mineral makeup brand zaomakeup.co.uk surveyed 1000 male and female Britons to explore the types of looks our opposite sex are most attracted too and desire to date on Valentine's Day. Topping the most wanted male Valentines date poll came no surprise, pulling in over a quarter of female votes for the number one spot was our British football favourite David Beckham. "David Beckham is talented, absolutely gorgeous and comes across a down to earth doting dad, who wouldn't want not to date him, I think he'd be a true gentleman." says one female respondent from the South-East of England. Closely behind with almost a quarter of female voters (24.6%) stating they would most like to date the "tall, dark and handsome" Johnny Depp. The silver fox George Clooney has obviously still got what it takes to attract the ladies taking just under a fifth of female votes. "I think George Clooney is handsome, his greying hair makes him even more attractive, I would prefer greying to balding any day." says a female respondent from Scotland. Surprisingly, Harry Styles, Pharrell Williams and Robert Pattinson only gained just over one per cent of votes. It seems most our British ladies have a preference to the more mature tall and handsome, men Most wanted celebrity date Female Holly Willoughby 33% Katy Perry 23% Jennifer Aniston 18% Rhianna 13% Michelle Keegan 7% Cheryl Cole 3% Pippa Middleton 3% Beyonce 0% Tulisa Contostavlos 0% Katie Price 0% Male David Beckham 29% Johnny Depp 25% George Clooney 18% Gary Barlow 10% Brad Pitt 8% Ryan Gosling 4% Leonardo Dicaprio 3% Harry Styles 1% Pharrell Williams 1% Robert Pattinson 1% Reported by This is 13 hours ago.

This is Exeter -- The judge has started to sum up in the case of man accused of murdering a ten-month-old baby girl who allegedly died after a Christmas Day attack. The jury at Exeter Crown Court will retire later this week to consider their verdict on James Hunt, who is accused of killing Kimberly Barrett more than two years ago. Judge Mr Justice Lindblom is expected to take at least two days to sum up the three weeks of evidence which has included medical experts called by both the prosecution and defence. Hunt, aged 30, of Pellinore Road, Exeter, denies murdering Kimberly at her mother's flat in Spencer Court, Ottery St Mary, over Christmas 2011. The child died at the Bristol Children's Hospital on December 29 after collapsing unconscious on Boxing Day and being transferred from the Royal Devon and Exeter Hospital. The prosecution case is that Kimberly died from head injuries caused either by being shaken, slammed against a wall or other hard surface, or thrown onto a cot or mattress so hard that her brain moved inside the skull. They say the baby suffered two different attacks on December 12 and 25 when Hunt lost his temper with the girl while left in sole charge of her. Pathologists and consultants called by the prosecution have identified a combination of three symptoms known as a 'triad' which they say is indicative of trauma. Experts called by the defence have challenged the diagnosis and say the fatal swelling of the brain and bleeding found inside the skull and eyes could have been caused by blood clotting or an aneurism. Ends The trial continues and the jury are likely to go out on Wednesday, although it could be later if the summing up takes longer. Reported by This is 13 hours ago.

This is Bristol -- LUCY Bryan again showed she can rise to the occasion by winning a superb silver medal at Sainsbury's British Indoor Championships Sheffield. The 18-year-old Bristol & West AC British junior international cleared a season's best of 4.26m to add silver to her bronze at the senior championships last year. "I was very pleased with my silver especially as I beat my main rival Sally Peake," said Bryan. "It felt like gold!" Peake is the girl immediately ahead of Bryan in the UK Rankings as the pair currently hold second and third places respectively a long way behind outstanding British No 1 Holly Bleasdale, who easily won the competition on Saturday. "Holly only came into the competition when the rest of us were out so it felt like two competitions," added Bryan. Also in the field events former Easy Runner athlete of the month winner Hayley Pitman soared to a new personal best of 1.81m to finish sixth in the high jump with the 24-year-old Bristol & West athlete adding one centimetre to her lifetime best. Clubmate Emily Diamond continued her comeback after injury with sixth in the 400m after clocking a season's best in the semi finals and there was a PB for Yannick Budd in the heats of the 60m hurdles. In the sprints B&W athletes Scott Bajere and Omar Simpson reached the semi finals of the 60m and 400m respectively but GB junior international Leon Reid ad Chris Stone were both knocked out in the heats of the 200m. *Sainsbury's British Indoor Championships Sheffield* (selected west performances) *Senior men – 60:* 6 Danny Talbot (Birch) 6.64 (s/f 6.62 PB); S/f: Scott Bajere (B&W) 6.89; 200hts: Leon Reid (B&W) 21.48; Chris Stone (B&W) 21.99 (SB); DISQ Bajere; 400: s/f 1: 4 Omar Simpson (B&W) 48.17 (hts 47.76 PB); 60Hhts: Yannick Budd (B&W) 7.97(PB); 3000: 14 Steve Mitchell (B&W) 8:25.49. *Women –200 hts:* Eliza Reid (TBAC) 25.56 (SB); 400: 6 Emily Diamond (B&W) 54.70 (s/f 53.73 SB); hts: Loren Bleaken (TBAC) 55.58 (SB); HJ: 6 Hayley Pitman (B&W) 1.81 (PB); PV: 1 Holly Bleasdale (Blackburn) 4.73; 2 Lucy Bryan (B&W, U20) 4.26 (SB); LJ: 10 Amy Woodman (Birch) 5.81. Reported by This is 13 hours ago.

José Salvador Alvarenga thanks president and people of Marshall Islands, where he washed up after fishing trip from Mexico went awry

Castaway Jose Salvador Alvarenga has flown out of the Marshall Islands on his way home to El Salvador after an odyssey that he says saw him drifting in the Pacific for 13 months.

Alvarenga shook hands with the island nation's president, Christopher Loeak, in a brief ceremony at the airport on Monday before departing from where he washed up 12 days ago with an amazing story of survival.

"Thank you for everything the people of the Marshall Islands have done for me during my stay," the 37-year-old fisherman said through an interpreter as Loeak placed a woven lei garland around his neck.

Alvarenga will arrive in Hawaii in the early hours of Tuesday and then travel to San Salvador to be reunited with the family who had long thought he was dead.

It will be a quicker and more comfortable journey across the Pacific than the 12,500km (8,000 mile) sea journey which began when a fishing trip off the Mexican coast went awry in late 2012.

Alvarenga says he stayed alive in his 7m (24ft) fibreglass boat on a diet of raw fish and bird flesh, with only turtle blood and his own urine to drink.

He said last week that his crewmate – named as 24-year-old Ezequiel Cordoba – could not stomach such foodstuffs and starved to death four months into the voyage.

Officials have said his story checks out and survival experts concede living in such conditions is theoretically possible, supporting the veracity of what could be one of history's greatest maritime endurance feats.

Alvarenga needed a green light from doctors to fly out of the Marshalls after falling into ill health in the wake of his ordeal, which ended when he was found disorientated and clad only in ragged underpants on a remote coral atoll.

He was in and out of hospital with dehydration and a range of ailments, including back pain, swollen joints and lethargy.

Franklyn House, a retired US doctor who met Alvarenga last week, said he had also become increasingly withdrawn and appeared to have post-traumatic stress syndrome.

The Salvadoran had been due to leave last Friday but medics warned he was too sick and needed more rest.

Alvarenga lived as an illegal immigrant in Mexico for more than a decade before the fateful shark-fishing trip and has expressed interest in returning to his adopted homeland.

But Manila-based Mexican diplomat Christian Clay Mendez, who was in Majuro helping co-ordinate Alvarenga's repatriation, made it clear he would have to go to El Salvador first, then apply to enter Mexico legally.

His parents, who have hailed his survival as "a divine miracle" live in western El Salvador, near the border with Guatemala, where they care for his 14-year-old daughter Fatima.

The girl has little recollection of her father and could not even picture his face until newspapers published photographs of the stocky fisherman with the bushy beard and unkempt hair who washed up on the other side of the Pacific.

In an interview with AFP from hospital last Tuesday, Alvarenga said he had had suicidal thoughts during his trip but was sustained by dreams of reuniting with his family and eating tortilla and chicken.

His mother, Maria Julia, said she was eager to oblige when he returned home.

"We will make him a big meal, but we won't feed him fish because he must be bored of eating that," she told AFP. "We will make him a big plate of meat, beans and cheese to help him recover." Reported by guardian.co.uk 12 hours ago.

This is Plymouth -- A 63-YEAR-OLD man is to face trial after he denied confronting a teenage girl in a park while completely naked. John Parker pleaded not guilty at Plymouth Crown Court to indecently exposing himself to the 14-year-old girl in Central Park on October 8 last year. Judge Paul Darlow set a date for a jury trial lasting a day or two to start on June 4. Parker, of Pounds Parke Road, Peverell, was released on unconditional bail to an interim hearing on April 28. Judge Darlow allowed Parker, who walks with a stick, to sit in the well of the court rather than to surrender to custody. Magistrates were told at a previous hearing that Parker was alleged to have emerged naked from a bush into view of the girl. Reported by This is 10 hours ago.