'I felt numb – we'd lost our little boy'

Linda Sterry with her son Gregor, who died shortly after his second birthday.

One of my most treasured memories of my son Gregor is the image of his cheeky face on his second birthday as he pinched icing off his birthday cake. It was 4 March 2009, and we celebrated with a tea party with his four-year-old brother, Ben, and two of their friends. It was the perfect day. Little did we know that less than two weeks later he would go down for his afternoon nap and never wake up.

On the morning of 15 March, Gregor had been out playing in the park. At lunchtime, my husband, Mark, put him to bed for his nap, but when he went to check on him later he wasn't breathing. Mark tried desperately to resuscitate him, while I phoned the emergency services, with Ben clinging on to me asking what was happening.

The paramedics and hospital staff did everything they could, but it soon became clear that Gregor wasn't going to make it. I felt utterly numb – it was like a surreal nightmare. When we were told we had lost our little boy it was as if the world had come crashing down around us. We drove home in a complete daze.

Arriving back, I was stunned to see a police officer guarding the house. We were told it was a crime scene, and that we would need to answer some questions. He didn't know if we would even be allowed back in that night. Just two hours ago, we had been told our child had died, and now this. The officer was clearly inexperienced and didn't know how to speak to us. On top of all this, the police had to take away Gregor's sheets as evidence. It was horrendous.

Soon, two CID officers arrived to question us and all I could think was: I want these men out of my house, so answer their questions and they'll leave. The automatic reaction when a police officer starts questioning you is to feel inexplicably guilty. I was thinking, do they think I've harmed my child? They went through a list of questions about illnesses, what had happened that day, who had been where, and things like that.

Eventually they finished and left, and we had the heartbreaking task of telling Ben what had happened. He was devastated. We told him that the doctors couldn't make Gregor breathe again and he had died. It was the hardest thing I've ever had to do.

After that I was on autopilot. We had a fantastic funeral director who gave me a list of things to do every day, and there were things that I wanted to make sure happened – the situation was distressing enough, so it was very important to me that Gregor's life was celebrated.

For the funeral, I encouraged people to wear their brightest item of clothing and the coffin was covered in daffodils. I had made it clear to friends and family that Ben needed his peers there, and I definitely think having lots of children there helped. But in the days after the funeral, the house felt empty and silent. I desperately missed the sound of a toddler running around.

In some ways Ben's grief and straightforwardness really helped me and I would answer his questions as honestly as I could. A lot were along the lines of: "What do you think happens with such and such?" and I'd say: "I don't know. What do you think?" Two seconds later, he would be asking what was for tea. Children's grief has been described to me as "puddle jumping" and I think that is an amazing analogy. One minute they have their foot in a puddle, then they are straight out again and they won't return to it.

I hadn't lost anyone close before so grief was very new to me. I think helping Ben got me through it. I encouraged him to talk about his brother. He knows what grief feels like, he knows that feeling in his tummy. He says: "I really miss my brother." I'm probably his best counsellor right now. If I thought he needed other support I'd be the first person to seek it, but he is very open. He misses his brother terribly – they shared a room.

I keep loads of photos of Gregor in the house. Images are hard sometimes because they show you what you had, yet they show you what you have lost. But Ben will always be a big brother. Six months after Gregor's death, the first school project he had to do was All About My Family. How tough is that? Especially when children are quite factual and will say: "You don't have a brother."

There have been occasions when I haven't hidden my tears from him. I don't think I could. If he is sobbing in front of me, sometimes I want to cry with him, but the pain and sorrow is a measure of love and showing emotion is a healthy thing. I'd be a lot more worried if he was keeping it all in.

Shortly after Gregor's death, a police officer put a leaflet for the Scottish Cot Death Trust (SCDT) through the door. Cot death hadn't even crossed my mind, so that was a shock. At an initial postmortem, the verdict was "unascertained, pending further investigation". We then had a four-month wait for the cause of death, which was found to be an overwhelming virus. Even though he hadn't had any symptoms, we discovered the virus had infected all Gregor's organs. The paediatrician explained that it was very rare for this to happen in a healthy child and that was hard to deal with.

The police were involved throughout. In Scotland, where we live, the procurator fiscal heads up the investigation, acting like the Crown Prosecution Service in England. They take information from the police and all the other reports and pathology and communicate with the family. Our experience with the procurator fiscal was pretty shabby. The communication was not well co-ordinated and led to a lot of confusion.

But the referral to the SCDT was crucial. I called and spoke to the community services nurse. For the first few months I hadn't cried very much, but I found myself comforting a lot of people who were crying, so it helped to be able to talk things through with her.

The whole thing has been tough for my parents, too. Something like this challenges relationships with your family because, suddenly, the child is experiencing something the parents have not. That has been really difficult, but with the help of counselling I have managed to keep things on track.

In fact, counselling has helped me in a lot of ways. The anxiety I felt back then was overwhelming. I've always been quite self-confident, but my self-esteem was so low that I felt physically sick at the thought of going to work.

I got myself back to work but didn't enjoy being there. Then last November I was made redundant. It was a shock, but I think I probably would have left at some point because I felt I wanted to do something worthwhile.

After I was made redundant, I saw an advert for Vodafone's World of Difference scheme, in which people "donate" themselves to a charity. I was accepted on to the scheme, working with the SCDT running a survey for bereaved families about their experiences. It was almost somehow making good of my pain. It gave me a massive boost. I gained a lot from talking to other parents who had lost children. I had a sense of aloneness that is really hard to explain to people. I was surrounded by friends but I still felt alone in my head. So talking to others who had been through it helped.

Every year brings new challenges and more lie ahead. My approach is to face up to them because, even if Gregor's death couldn't have been prevented, the more people know about how they can reduce the risks of cot death, the better.

A key finding of my survey was inconsistency of care. The biggest problem was that a lot of professionals didn't listen to families. Most acknowledged why the police had to be involved, but sometimes they felt it was done insensitively. For me, it was a really tough thing to cope with on top of everything else. If our son had died in a hospital or hospice, we would have been surrounded with support – instead, we were made to feel guilty. There are huge opportunities for training. I would hope that the local bobby who turned up on my door could be given an insight into being as kind as the law allows.

But it is hard for anyone to know what to say. I gave up protecting other people's feelings a long time ago. If people ask: "Do you have children?" I answer honestly. If I did otherwise, I feel I would be betraying Gregor's memory.

Visit scottishcotdeathtrust.org or fsid.org.uk. Linda's blog is at worldofdifference.vodafone.co.uk/blogs/linda-sterry

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Pauline Black: Going back to my roots

Pauline Black. Photograph: Sarah Lee for the Guardian

Pauline Black's earliest memory is of throwing up her breakfast in response to the news that she was adopted. It was 1958, in Romford, Essex, and Pauline was four. Until then, she had been in "blithe ignorance" about her origins, despite the fact that she was the only non-white person in her family. She knew her skin colour was different from that of the rest of her family, and that this seemed often to be worthy of negative comments, but she hadn't understood why. "It was something that never came up, I had no notion of it," she says.

Aware that her little girl was about to start school, where questions were bound to be asked, Pauline's mother, Ivy, told her daughter that her "real" mother was a Dagenham schoolgirl and her "real" father was "from a place called Nigeria".

Throughout her childhood, Pauline felt like a "cuckoo, in somebody else's nest," she writes, in her new memoir, Black by Design. It wasn't until 20 years later, when she was lead singer of the 2-Tone band, the Selecter, that she felt she finally belonged somewhere: "Any band is like a surrogate family," she says.

In the 1950s and 60s, Essex was not an easy place to be an adopted mixed-race girl. "It was totally unreconstructed," says Pauline. Her memoir is full of shocking stories, such as her mum telling her she looked "like a bloody golliwog" when she decided to grow an afro. Were Pauline's family racist? "I'm not going to say they were racist – they weren't racist. The word hadn't been invented then. They were xenophobic, absolutely, but that wasn't just confined to black people, that was anybody," she says.

In her 40s, Pauline's mother had developed Bell's palsy, a facial paralysis that made her reluctant to leave the house. The family doctor suggested the 1950s cure-all for depressed women – a baby. As Ivy had had a hysterectomy (after her fourth son), adoption seemed the answer. "The story I was given was that she had difficulty leaving the house and the doctor said, 'What you need is a baby,'" says Pauline. She was fostered and then adopted when she was 18 months old.

Pauline describes her mother as uptight and fearful of the world, but also "home-loving, a woman who loved babies".

How did such a fearful woman come to adopt a black child in the 50s? "I don't think colour really came into it. I don't think they'd actually thought that question through. I think there were only boys around that day and she wanted a girl," says Pauline. Her parents were so unprepared for the arrival of a newborn baby that they didn't have anywhere for her to sleep: "They didn't have anything. They didn't have a cot – I spent the first few weeks of my life in a drawer. This was the family joke," she says.

Pauline's relationship with her mother had become strained by the time she was 11, but she felt more affinity with her father, Arthur, a mechanic, whom she describes as "working-class and proud". "He was a very loving and very open man. I can never consciously remember him saying anything about a black person that was derogatory, but I can remember my brothers and uncles, saying things," she says.

Looking back, Pauline believes her father was a depressive. He used to take to his bed for a week at a time and she would be sent upstairs to cajole him out of his bedroom. How was her parents' relationship? "Pretty weird. I guess they loved each other in their own peculiar little way, but it wasn't all beer and skittles," she says.

Many of Pauline's memories will be familiar to anyone who has grown up adopted, mixed race or black in a white family: the sense of isolation, the alienation, the sheer loneliness of looking and feeling so different from your family, compounded by the guilt of having these feelings and the frustration of not having the vocabulary to express it at the time.

In her book, Pauline likens adoption to a full blood transfusion: "It may save your life in the short term, but if it's not the perfect match, rejection issues may appear," she writes. What would have made things easier? "To have known another black family. To have known other black kids. I needed to know there were black people who had jobs, were living normal lives," she says.

Her mother taught her to fear black people, particularly men: "I suppose all mothers make you scared of men, but black men were definitely bogey men, they got you pregnant, they didn't care, they'd run off and leave you, and if that happened – 'If you revert to type' she was trying to say – then we wash our hands of you."

Does she wish she'd been adopted by a black family? "That would have been better because I'd have had role models. But it isn't who brings you up – a black or mixed-race family could have adopted me and been absolutely dreadful, just like a white family could have been dreadful, but it's the lack of role models," says Pauline.

As she grew older, her relationship with Ivy became uncomfortable: "By the time I was 11, things had changed irreparably and that was because I was more conscious of who I was," says Pauline.

Education created another chasm: "My parents had both left school pretty much by the time they were 12, so I was just allowed to get on with it. By that time I was a very secretive child. I mistrusted adults. I went inside myself."

Even today, wearing a beautiful black silk shirt and looking at least a decade younger than her 58 years, Pauline seems shy and reserved, rather than the exhibitionist one might expect of a stage performer who was arguably the most influential women on the male-dominated 2-Tone music scene.

By the late 60s, early 70s, the American Black Power movement had given Pauline the vocabulary she needed to express herself, often with mixed results. She combed out her hair, wore an afro to school and painted "Say it Loud, I'm Black and I'm Proud" on a poster in her bedroom. This new found pride in her identity infuriated her mother, who was convinced no good would come of it: "She wanted me to be Shirley Bassey – I wanted to be Marsha Hunt."

In 1971, Pauline left Romford for Lancaster Polytechnic (now Coventry University), to study science before training as a radiographer in Coventry. It was around this time that she met her husband, Terry, an engineer – they have been together 38 years, quite an achievement for someone who says she has "little concept of family".

By 1976, Pauline was singing in local pubs, earning ?10 a gig. Then one day in May 1979, she went to a rehearsal with a group of friends and left as the lead singer with the Selecter. A few months later, the band had their first hit, On My Radio. Within seven weeks of being a fully formed band, the Selecter were supporting the likes of Madness and the Specials and Pauline was being hailed as the Queen of Ska.

It was around this time that she changed her surname from Vickers. The name Black came to her after a session with the band – she was naming the elephant in the room, she says: "I thought, that is just absolutely amazing! My family, for the first time, will have to say it," she says.

"[The term] coloured was still used in those times. Black was still an underground thing, and to actually name yourself Black, as far as my family was concerned, was quite a big bone of contention. I don't think I've ever been fully forgiven. If I'd changed my name to Smith, that wouldn't have been quite so bad," she says.

If changing her surname to Black was radical for the time, so too was her androgynous "rude-girl" uniform of a sharp black and/or white suit with a grey fedora.

Though never quite as successful as Madness and the Specials, the Selecter had their own loyal following and a string of UK hits after On My Radio, including Too Much Pressure and Three Minute Hero. What made them different from other bands on the 2-tone scene was not only the fact that they had a black female singer, but there was only one white member, out of a line up of seven. "Madness were all white, there were only two black people in the Specials. And then there was us," says Pauline.

It was a time of racial tension in Britain and it was not uncommon for rightwing skinheads and National Front supporters to launch into sieg heil chants during 2-Tone gigs. Wasn't Pauline disheartened when the music she loved was appropriated by "bonehead skins," as she calls them? "It was never appropriated, they were just there. In Top Rank clubs and Tiffany's, and all those kinds of places, you would have 2,000 people in there and 40, possibly 50 people who sieg-heiled at you that particular night," says Pauline.

How did she deal with it? "I rather naively thought they could be shown the error of their ways. That didn't happen, but we tried. We'd ask the audience: 'Do you want these people in here?' Sometimes that would shame them into shutting up," says Pauline.

When the Selecter broke up in 1982, (they have since reformed and have a new single out this week) Pauline built a successful career as an actor. But in their Top of the Pops heyday, when she was regularly on television and featured in the press, Pauline began to wonder if her birth mother might see her and get in touch.

Out of loyalty to Ivy, Pauline didn't try to trace her birth mother until she was 42, eight years after Ivy's death – her father had died in 1976.

"I knew I couldn't do it while she was alive. It would have been too upsetting for her," she says.

Once she had decided to trace her birth mother, Pauline became "a whirling dervish" of activity. Within a couple of weeks she had found an address and telephone number. This was fast work given that her birth mother, Eileen, was a "?10 Pom", one of the wave of Britons encouraged to emigrate to Australia in the mid-60s – she had left when Pauline was 13 and knew nothing of her daughter's success.

Pauline wrote to Eileen right away and within a week her telephone rang at 5am. When she answered, a woman with a strong Australian accent said: "Darling, it's Mummy."

Eileen told her that her father had been an engineering student who had come to London from Nigeria to study. His name was Gordon Adenle. Pauline hit the phone book and rang every entry under that name. The following day, she found herself in the London flat of Gordon's second wife. She was shown pictures of her father, who, it transpired, was a Yoruba prince. She felt an instant physical connection with him: "It was the strangest thing, walking into the room and there was my father, staring at me, I wasn't prepared for that, at all, or the whole story about him," she says.

Sadly, he had died a year earlier, so he still remains a mystery: "Almost like a fantasy figure," she says.

She has yet to visit Nigeria, although she has met a half sister: "I've tried to talk to people, I've written letters about my father, their impressions of him, but you don't get anywhere ... A cousin went there and photographed my father's grave. That was cathartic because that's a bit like a full stop."

There was, however, a proper reunion with her birth mother. A few weeks after first speaking to Eileen, Pauline stepped off a plane in Sydney to meet her and, as she writes, was "enveloped in 42 years of love".

After the initial euphoria of their reunion, came the hard work of building a relationship. "When you've done with all the introductions – this is my life story, this is your life story, where do you go from there?" she asks.

Reunion is a little bit like a love affair, she says: "For the first two weeks, it's absolutely wonderful. They're the most adorable thing in the world, your heart flutters, you've got so much to learn about each other." Then things become more prosaic: "You've just got to get on with it," says Pauline. (She maintains a good relationship with her four older adoptive brothers, but they have shown little interest in the connections she has made with her birth family.)

Eileen, who writes once a week, told Pauline that she used to stand at the end of her street in Romford and watch her go to school.

What kind of advice would she give anyone who is considering tracing their birth family? "Don't just think about the object of your desire – your birth mother – think about everything that's going to come with it, and think about that quite hard. Be prepared for it. She's going to come with a whole heap of other people and they are going to have a whole heap of other agendas. Be prepared for that, but don't let it stop you," says Pauline.

She thinks not enough is done to support adopted children: "They've addressed the needs of everybody else, but not the child."

She also believes adopted children should have follow-ups with social services and, where possible, contact with birth parents. If it's not possible? "They should have photographs, some sort of family history, who you came out of. You should grow up knowing that – be able to assimilate that – so that by the time you are 18 you're not feeling as though you are bereft or you don't belong to – or never belonged to – something."

Black by Design: A 2-Tone Memoir, by Pauline Black, is published by Serpent's Tail, ?12.99. To order a copy for ?10.39, including free UK p&p, go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0330 333 6846

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Sorry, Jane Horrocks, but it's you who's being common | Barbara Ellen

Jane Horrocks doesn't do things by halves. Some people bite the hand that feeds them, she rips off the whole arm at the shoulder. Or so it seemed with her comment about Tesco being "full of chavs". Not forgetting the "pensioners holding everyone up" and "screeching kids". Wow, such contempt, even though their commercials bought Horrocks the home she dubbed "Tesco Towers" and, as she said herself, gave her the financial security not to have to do "crap" work.

I wasn't surprised. I interviewed Horrocks years ago, presuming she'd be nice, but she was awful. With every question, she eyed me like a cobra weaving up out of a basket. I asked at one point whether she'd ever fancied doing my beloved Corrie, and she was really snotty about it. "Why would I do Coronation Street?" (Erm, because it's a British institution, because it's well written and acted, because the likes of Sir Ian McKellen don't seem to think it's beneath them.)

Shortly after we'd spoken, I got word not to write up the interview, because of lack of space. What a relief. It was as if Horrocks had been given myriad blessings (talent, intelligence, quirky beauty, that engaging Lancashire accent), and instead chose to turn her back on her own working-class background, and become a dreary snob. Talk about going over to the luvvie dark side. On a wider level, how depressing that this is what "doing well" means to some people – the opportunity not to look back in anger, so much as to look around and sneer.

There has always been mockery for people, who bang on about their working-class origins, their impeccable council house credentials – guilty! And I get it, I understand why this kind of thing (competitive retro-poverty?) can seem hilariously overdone, in that Monty Python "We lived for three months in a brown paper bag in a septic tank" kind of way. The question is, do you "get" us? Do you register that it's not all about chippy chest-beating and mindless class war, great sport though that undoubtedly is?

Rather it's an intricate jumble of memory, insight, respect, affection, identification, and even survivor's guilt. Never mind that some of us feel as if we're only a couple of paychecks from ending up back there anyway. There's the sense of not wanting to forget where you "came from" (maan), because this feels like betraying the people who are still there.

This is why the casual contempt directed at the "masses" never fails to make you flinch. I always thought "common" was the truly offensive C-word, but it was a dark day when "chav" showed up – simply because it was a new way to make sneering sound respectable. These days, Horrocks might think twice about using the word "common", but it's fine to speak of "chavs" marauding around Tesco.

Thing is, I remember Horrocks talking about "Tesco Towers" in our interview, how the commercials freed her to be more choosy with work. Then, as now, there seems nothing wrong with that – I'm sure many actors do commercials for the same reasons. It wasn't Horrocks's view, it was the charmlessness, which I know wasn't a one-off.

It's easy to lampoon those who are misty-eyed for the working class. But I'd still take their good hearts any day, over those who seem to think their success is a free pass to opine on the horror and hilarity of the "lower orders" they once belonged to. Note to Jane Horrocks: the only people who are truly common, are those who stoop so low as to call others common – or chavs, or whatever the hate-lingo is these days. If you don't know that by now, Ms Horrocks, you're as thick as Bubbles, your character in Absolutely Fabulous.

The latest list of the most popular baby names is out. A fascinating barometer of changing times, it's usually studied with shrieking anxiety by parents, hopeful that their children's names aren't positioned too high (too ordinary?) or too low (they're freaks!).

You can tell how "hot" your child's name is by whether it appears on novelty key rings or drinks bottles. Adults also like to check how their own names are doing, but I have no sympathy for the once dominant, now fallen, Susans and Pauls. They have had their moment.

Barbara (and variants thereon) never made it on to popular names' lists, drinks bottles or even those ceramic plaques for the bedroom door.

Barbara was considered tragic and passe when I was born and remained so through many different eras.

There seems no male equivalent to its enduring low-level unpopularity (Barry? Derek? Ken?). Consequently, I love my name, simply because someone has to. It's got two Bs, two Rs and three As; it means "foreign or stranger"; what's not to like?

Obviously I would appreciate a mention of Barbara in the next list, even if it is just a pity party.

Baroness Scotland, chair of the National Catholic Safeguarding Commission for England and Wales, and its child protection chief have said that churchgoers should take Roman Catholic priests to football matches, or invite them to have a glass of wine, as this would stop them feeling "lonely, isolated and unsupported emotionally" and turning into paedophiles. Hmm.

This past year, abuse allegations have doubled against the Catholic church, which Baroness Scotland rightly cites as a positive sign that victims are less afraid to come forward. However, is she seriously suggesting that, if people were more sociable towards priests, the molesters wouldn't be sexually attracted to children any more? That the occasional fun night at the bingo with worshippers would be enough to unravel the complex psychosexual tangle of the average pederast? As in: "Invite me around for Christmas drinks or the kid gets it"?

It's arguable whether loneliness is a reliable indicator of paedophilia. While one could accept the direct link between loneliness and general depression, child abuse seems rather too specialised. Paedophiles often choose professions that give them access to children, also the kind of status that makes them slow to spot and hard to catch. While some may be loners, other paedophiles are gregarious and charming, duping adults as well as children. All this sounds less "isolated" and "unsupported" than chillingly well-organised.

Whether such levels of sickness, calculation and cunning could be neutralised with an invitation to watch a footie match or share a glass of sancerre seems unlikely. Baroness Scotland makes a valid point about the isolation of Catholic priests, but twinning it with paedophile tendencies seems random to say the least. Conviviality is a wonderful thing, but, the last time I looked it wasn't a cure for paedophilia.

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Why I'm calling a pensioners' strike | Brian Schofield

The coalition's war on pensions continues. The latest assault is on the provision for the retirement of public sector employees – who are going to have to pay more to get (probably) less, and later. And not because their pensions funds are financially unsustainable (they're not) but because the pensions on offer just seem too decent, too respectful, in a country where such sentiments are now a luxury. No one else gets a well-managed, reliable employee pension scheme any more, so why should doctors or teachers?

And the war goes wider. There's talk of vicious cuts to the tax relief on private pensions contributions (vigorously denied, for now, but we shall see) and while the plans for the flat weekly state pension of ?140 look enlightened, how long will we have to live before we get the first cheque? Sixty-six (the retirement age in 2020) is just the start of a relentless creep upwards. Frank Field MP, with his depressing willingness to think the unthinkable, has mooted a state retirement age, very soon, of 74.

Can the war be stopped? Not, surely, by the threatened public sector strikes. As a country, we've travelled so far from the idea that a secure retirement is a citizen's right, that no number of angry nurses on Whitehall will shift the argument. Only one group can remind us why we all chip in to pay each other's pensions. Retirees themselves.

I'm calling a pensioners' strike.

"Hang on, but pensioners don't work, do they?" And that's the nub of the problem. Because that pervasive attitude, that retirees don't "work" or "add value", and are a "burden" on the productive population – that idea needs squashing, flat. In an act of solidarity with their juniors – and a demand for a bit of bleedin' respect – Britain's retirees should all, just for one day, do what everyone assumes they do – sit around watching Cash in the Attic, maybe play a spot of golf, have a nap … and do absolutely nothing else. And the country would grind to a standstill.

Let's have the strike in the school holidays, shall we? Because seniors are the largest childcare sector in the UK – providing more hours of care than nurseries, nannies or playgroups, allowing hundreds of thousands of parents to go to work. The value of retirees' grand-childcare is estimated at ?2.6bn a year. On pensioners' strike day, the economy would stall so heavily, George Osborne could use it as an excuse for his next growth figures. Then you have the 1.5 million people over the age of 60 in the UK who currently "work" as carers for ailing spouses, siblings and children. And these days, a significant proportion of retirees are actually still managing, sourcing or providing the care for their own parents.

Finally, a mere 4.9 million people over the age of 65 are currently regularly volunteering or participating in their local civic life. On strike day the country's museums, galleries, stately homes, community bus services, meals on wheels services, literacy programmes, adult education services and so much more would have to be shut down, denied the grey army that keeps them alive. As my grandmother perfectly puts it: "David Cameron goes on about the 'big society' because he doesn't know any old people. We've built it already."

Ironically, old age advocacy charities are desperately trying to promote increased public spending on pensions in developing countries, arguing that pensions are an investment in people at the heart of their families and communities, whose wellbeing thus promotes wider wellbeing. I recently met Lucy Wambui, a 70-year-old raising 10 grandchildren and three great-grandchildren in the slums of Nairobi, and funding all their education through her chip stall and the small pension the charity Help Age International was paying her. Was she a burden on society? Was she hell.

And that's how we should start viewing pensions – not as an outlay, an entry in the national liabilities column, but as an investment in people who haven't stopped making a massive contribution to our lives. And maybe then, after the great grey strike of 2011, we can start a genuinely collaborative conversation about how the generations need to support and depend upon one another, in a humane and caring future.

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Coalition cuts are making life tough for mothers

Siobhan Courtney had to give up her job as a television journalist because the numbers do not add up after the birth of her son Alban.

The notion that maternity leave should be abolished is easy to dismiss as a ludicrous piece of "blue sky" thinking by one of the prime minister's inner circle of trusted advisers. Steve Hilton, David Cameron's director of strategy, is known for thinking the unthinkable. Portrayed as a maverick who wanders around No 10 in his socks, he is said to have nine mad ideas for every good one. A spoof website, The Steve Hilton Policy Generator, throws up suggestions such as "Return to VHS to abolish online piracy … just to see what happens" or "Make children sweep chimneys to make things more fun".

No need to worry, then. "He comes out with this stuff all the time," one senior Whitehall source said after news of the idea emerged last week. "He is madder than any of the caricatures around."

But what then of the government's cuts to childcare provision, Sure Start services and working tax credits? And what are women to make of recent research from the Fawcett Society, the gender equality group, which found those hardest hit by the triple whammy of cuts to jobs, benefits and services were single mothers?

Despite all the talk of family-friendly policies, and Cameron and Nick Clegg insisting on taking paternity leave and doing the school run, perhaps Hilton's remarks are just further proof of the Conservatives' blind spot when it comes to motherhood.

"There are serious signs across the government not just of a carelessness about women's lives but of an ideological approach which risks turning the clock back," said Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary and minister for women. "It is hard to imagine anyone who has any idea about working mothers or their importance to the British economy proposing the abolition of maternity leave – unless, of course, they think mothers shouldn't work at all."

Cooper's intervention could be passed off as party politicking, but even within the coalition there is some evidence that Hilton's plan was following a direction of travel not entirely alien to the government. This month, the minister for equalities, Lynne Featherstone, a Liberal Democrat, publicly warned government departments and local authorities that they will be in breach of equality laws if they do not examine the potential for cuts to fall disproportionately on women. Last year the Fawcett Society said that of the ?8.1bn in savings (from cuts to jobs, benefits and services) announced in the emergency budget of June 2010, ?5.7bn, or 72%, was being borne by women, compared with 28% by men.

Featherstone rejects the "blind spot" thesis, but when asked to justify the fact that women were being hit hardest by public sector job cuts, she said: "You can't make an omelette without cracking eggs." Critics say there have been too many omelettes. Many families have seen their income fall thanks to changes to working tax credits and a lowering of the threshold for receiving them. The proportion of childcare costs that a parent can claim back from the government has already been reduced and the Observer revealed earlier this year that ministers are considering almost halving the childcare allowance for some parents. It would reduce the amount a family with two children can claim from ?210 to about ?120 a week.

There has been a ?20m (28%) cut to Playbuilder funding, a Labour government programme to build more playgrounds. A 22% cut to funding for childcare provision and Sure Start, with the removal of ringfencing, has resulted in many councils withdrawing, scaling back or charging extra for services such as holiday childcare and leisure activities. Justine Roberts, co-founder of the website Mumsnet, said: "It seems rather ironic that the coalition government agreement included a promise to make our society more family-friendly. We've yet to see much evidence of this. Parents are struggling with some of the highest childcare costs in Europe, static wages and the prospect of reduced child benefit and tax credits for many."

Siobhan Courtney, 28, who has a four-month-old son, Alban, has given up the job she loved as a television journalist because the numbers do not add up. She and her partner live in St Albans, Hertfordshire, and both work in London. "We are on the threshold and aren't entitled to any tax credits," she said. "If I send my son to nursery, I'll be going to work just to cover his nursery fees and my commuting fares. That's bonkers. Many new mothers I've met say the same. I'm going to freelance, but the trouble with ad hoc work is that you have to pay for childcare whether or not any work comes in. I don't want to come across as some sort of middle-class, bleating woman but it does seem unfair. It's a really tricky time."

Luciana Berger, the Labour MP for Liverpool Wavertree, said the squeeze on women and families was a constant topic of discussion in her constituency surgeries: "From cutting funding for childcare and working tax credits to closing Sure Start centres and changing the state pension – affecting women aged 56 and 57 particularly hard – this Tory-led government has systematically pursued policies that disproportionately affect women. I've been inundated with representations from female constituents."

A year on from the coalition's first budget, research from the Fawcett Society and the Institute for Fiscal Studies has found that single mothers are the most affected and, after all the changes, can expect to lose 8.5% of their net annual income by 2015. Anna Bird, acting chief executive of the society, said: "Childcare is getting more expensive, incomes are falling and the tax credits that add to low income are being reduced. Single mothers are facing difficult decisions about whether they can afford to go out to work. These women want to be role models for their daughters too. It's the role models we'll lose that will have the biggest impact."

One lone parent who is finding life a financial struggle is Victoria Hopkins, a human resources manager from West Yorkshire. "I would really like to see the government offering more assistance in the way of tax relief to single working mothers like myself," she said. "I get no financial assistance from my daughter's father because his business went into administration. My annual salary is ?28,000, which I appreciate is OK, but by no means is it a huge wage. I have to cover my outgoings and on the weeks that my daughter is on school holidays I have to pay ?130 a week for childcare. This equates to nearly ?2,500 a year, and the contribution from the government via tax credits is ?345 a year – pitiful.

"I am contributing to society by working, I am contributing to the economy through my taxes, I'm being a good role model for my five-year-old daughter. Where is the incentive for me to work? I'd be better of being a stay-at-home mum living off benefits. It's ridiculous."

Siobhan Freegard, co-founder of the website Netmums, calls women in this situation "ledgers". "It sums up what a huge proportion of the working mothers who talk to us feel," she said. "They are on this ledge where they are just coping but if one thing changes – for example, when they get a tax credit review and are told they are going to be ?40 worse off, or they have to take unpaid time off because a child is sick, or there's a snow day – it tips them off the ledge. We have women with jobs telling us they are worse off than if they didn't work but they are hanging on because in a year's time one child will start school and their childcare costs will fall."

Sharon Hodgson, the Labour MP for Washington and Sunderland West, said she believed the government was targeting women with children because they were the demographic least likely to vote. "The worst things they did last year, people have forgotten about. Getting rid of the child trust fund, the baby bond, the health in pregnancy grant, added to all the things they have done recently, is all targeted at women and families."

Tory MPs reject the notion that the government's way out of economic problems is to make women suffer more, and the latest intake of the parliamentary party insist that they are different from their predecessors. Certainly, they claim, there is no ideological motivation. "I would say this is more woman- and family-friendly than previous governments," said Damian Hinds, the MP for East Hampshire. "It is probably an evolution over time, but also [the result of] having a man in Downing Street with a young family and Nick Clegg with a young family too. Of course, there have been cuts but I genuinely think there is a real will to address problems such as multigenerational worklessness and dysfunctional households. The design of the new benefits system is an enormously ambitious project and there are obstacles we need to overcome but there is nothing ideological about this, not at all."

Shortly after the coalition took power, Hilton spoke at a staff meeting in Downing Street. Described by one of those who attended as inspirational, Hilton stressed he was interested in three things: "Transparency, big society and family."

The Fawcett Society said last week it was hugely encouraged by the Modern Workplace consultation, which is looking at extending the right to request flexible working and changing parental leave so fathers can take a greater role in their child's first year. But perhaps the government should look to France for truly family-friendly policies. Mothers there are helped by free pre-schools, family allowances, tax deductions and four months of maternity leave on full pay. Or would this be too much for even the wackiest of blue-sky thinkers?

¦ A ?20m cut (28% of the total) from Playbuilder funding, which allows local authorities to build more playgrounds. No longer ringfenced.

¦ A grant that helped women eat a healthier diet during pregnancy has been abolished.

has been rolled in with other programmes, cutting the funding by 22.8% this year and removing the ringfence. Many councils have had to withdraw, scale back or charge extra for services such as holiday childcare and leisure activities.

¦ The childcare element of the working tax credit has been cut from 80% to 70%, meaning an average loss of ?436 a year for 470,000 families.

cut all non-statutory provision such as libraries and youth services, which provide

crucial services for working mothers.

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Having cancer is an education

The discipline of nursing converts science into care. Photograph: Bert Hardy/Getty Images

Now entering my fifth year of living with multiple myeloma, a haematological cancer, I reflect back on a roller-coaster ride of symptoms, treatments and side effects. Whatever else this experience has been, it's been an education. But what exactly have I learned? To begin with, that any glib answer to the question misses the core of the experience – the complex dialectic of being ill, which is a social as well as physical condition.

For me the experience has led to a heightened awareness of both our intricate dependence on others and our deep-seated need for independence. Sitting with my IV drip, I like to think about all the human labour and ingenuity that come together in this medical moment. I could dedicate the rest of my life to this exercise and still not complete the inventory.

The first circle of dependence is immediate and sometimes intimate. Partners, friends, doctors, nurses, cleaners, porters. Beyond them is a vast network of people I never see: pathologists, pharmacists, IT engineers, appointments managers. Everyone who has anything to do with maintaining the supply of medications or the functioning of equipment or getting me to and from hospital. Everyone who makes sure the lights are on and the building safe. The whole intricate ballet that is a functioning hospital. One misstep, and the whole breaks down, with potentially dire consequences.

Beyond that, I'm dependent on a long history of scientific development to which individuals and institutions in many countries have contributed. From the British chemist Bence Jones identifying the protein associated with multiple myeloma in the 1840s to the pathologist and one-time film star Justine Wanger developing the IV drip in the 1930s; from the first experiments with chemotherapy (a byproduct of chemical warfare) in the 1940s, through the protracted struggle to master the art of toxicity (a dialectic of creation and destruction, if there ever was one), to the discovery of proteasome inhibitors in the 1990s and the creation of new "targeted therapies", like the one I'm currently receiving.

Without innumerable advances in immunology, biochemistry, chemical engineering, statistics and metallurgy, to name but a few, I wouldn't be where I am now – in fact I wouldn't be at all. The drip flowing into my vein is drawn from a river with innumerable tributaries. It is an entirely rational, intelligible process but no less miraculous for that.

And it's not just a story of science. Alongside that – and necessary to it – is the long history of the hospital, of the discipline of nursing, of the social developments that made it possible to convert raw science into practical care.

I'm acutely conscious of how dependent I am on those who built and sustained the NHS – including, pre-eminently, generations of labour movement activists and socialists. And as I sit with my IV drip, I'm mindful of those in government and business who would smash the delicate mechanism of the hospital and shatter the network of dependence that sustains me.

I'm being kept alive by the contributions of so many currents of human labour, thought, struggle, desire, imagination. By the whole Enlightenment tradition, but not only that: by older traditions of care, solidarity, mutuality, of respect for human life and compassion for human suffering. The harnessing of science, technology and advanced forms of organisation and information to compassionate ends is by no means automatic. It leans on and is only made possible by the conflict-riddled history of ethical and political development.

Beautiful as it is, this network of dependence is also frightening. Restrictions in capacity and mobility are hugely frustrating, and relying on others to supplement them is not a straightforward business – for patient or carer. I often feel I'm engaged in a never-ending battle for autonomy. I fight it out in relation to institutions, experts, medications, means of mobility, forms of diet. Not to mention the vital effort to live a life beyond illness, to hold on to that kernel of freedom that makes you who you are.

Paradoxically the struggle for autonomy is one you can't win on your own. You need allies, and part of being a carer is being an ally, not a nursemaid or controller. Independence is the stuff of life. But you can achieve it only through dependence on others, past and present. That's a truth driven home to the cancer patient but applicable to all of us.

Illness is not an ideology-free zone. Certainly not for the government, which aims to divide sufferers into acute cases deserving of support, and less acute ones that must be forced back into the labour market, where our only function will be to undercut wages.

This is one reason why resistance to the attacks on benefits for the disabled ought to be a central plank of the anti-cuts movement. The crisis facing the ill is an extreme form of the crisis facing the majority of the populace. We don't want charity – the form of dependence that makes independence impossible – but rights, and the resources to exercise those rights. Speaking for myself, taking part in anti-cuts activity is some of the best therapy available, an unashamed acknowledgement of social dependence and at the same time a declaration of political-spiritual independence.

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The root of inequality? It's down to whether you ploughed or hoed...

An Indonesian rice farmer uses oxen and a wooden plough to work the land. Photograph: Alamy

The invention of the plough allowed humanity to plant crops on hard and stony soil. But it has also helped enslave generations of women, a group of US economists has claimed. The roots of inequality have taken hold in soil of our own preparing, they argue.

In their research, the economists found a major difference between women's roles in societies that were descended from farming communities that used ploughs and those whose ancestors used hoes. These two different tilling techniques, although introduced long ago, have produced major divisions in modern society, say Alberto Alesina and Nathan Nunn of Harvard University, and Paola Giuliano of UCLA. Crucially, these divisions have survived immigration and persist even in cities and towns.

In those societies that relied on ploughs to prepare the ground, women are today less likely work outside the home, be elected to parliament or run businesses, the groups states. "The descendants of societies that traditionally practised plough agriculture, today have lower rates of female participation in the workplace, in politics, and in entrepreneurial activities, as well as a greater prevalence of attitudes favouring gender inequality," they state in a paper published by the US National Bureau of Economic Research.

Ploughs are used to prepare the ground when large tracts of land are needed for growing crops such as wheat, barley and rye. By contrast, hoes are used in communities that rely on sorghum, millet, root and tree crops. These require less land and can be cultivated – using hoes – on thin, sloped or rocky soils, state the authors.

Women often played a significant role in tending the land in the distant past. But when ploughs were introduced in various regions, men were placed at an advantage. Working with ploughs and the animals used to pull them required considerable strength. Women were sidelined and kept housebound. Typical plough-using societies include those found in Pakistan, India and Egypt.

By contrast, societies in which hoeing is common are found in African countries such as Burundi, Rwanda, and Kenya. Women here continue to have significant roles in working on the land because hoeing does not require the use of heavy force. In Burundi, women make up 90% of the country's agricultural workforce, for example. By contrast the figure in Pakistan is 16%.

Basing their analysis on studies of more than 1,200 different language groups from round the world, the authors found that societies and ethnic groups descended from plough-using peoples were significantly more likely to agree with statements that men should have first choice of jobs and that men make better political leaders. These attitudes persist even when the people have emigrated to western nations.

However, these beliefs are not necessarily fixed for ever. Many countries in the west were once populated by plough-using communities but do not insist on such divisions between the roles of the sexes, add the authors. Nevertheless, their message is clear: attitudes to the roles of women in the workplace have deep roots.

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Bill Gates sells 5m shares in Microsoft

Bill Gates sells 5 million shares to fund the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Photograph: Justin Sullivan/Getty Images

Bill Gates has sold another 5 million of his Microsoft shares, according to a regulatory filing.

Microsoft's multi-billionaire founder has been selling shares in recent months. He is the company's non-executive chairman, having stepped back from running the software firm in 2008 to concentrate on his charity work.

According to the filing, Gates sold 5m shares in Microsoft at an average $27.59 each on July 27. He has sold more than 90m Microsoft shares in the past 12 months.

Gates still has more than 500m shares in the company, but has decreased his shareholding over the last two years to fund his charitable endeavours and to diversify his portfolio.

This week the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation said it was making $42m available for eight universities to develop a toilet that does not need a sewer connection, water or electricity to operate. The ain is to improve people's health in parts of the world where there are few if any flushable toilets.

He is also backing research into improving education. "Every student needs a meaningful credential beyond high school," Gates said in a speech last week. "Higher education is crucial for jobs," he said, calling education an equaliser in society and the answer to getting urban America back to work and fighting poverty.

Forbes magazine estimates Gates's fortune at $56bn. Once the world's richest man, he is now second to Mexican telecoms mogul Carlos Slim after giving away a large chunk of his fortune to his charity.

Gates and long-time friend Warren Buffett have pledged to give away the majority of their fortunes to charity before their deaths, and have convinced a host of other billionaires, including Facebook's Mark Zuckerberg, to follow suit.

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Probation officers don't need telling off

'David Cameron has made it clear that Kenneth Clarke's views are not what he wants from a justice secretary.' Photograph: Martin Godwin for the Guardian

"Probation red tape: Probation officers told to spend more time with offenders and less on paperwork." I could have done without a telling off from BBC News before my breakfast. The media has misunderstood the justice select committee's report as chastising naughty officers who prefer forms to people, missing important points about bureaucratic culture. I've been working in probation for 10 years, and the committee's summary is a pretty accurate picture of the "tick-box culture" that dominates the organisation.

Having said that, I don't think the report fully grasps how much of the 75% figure (the percentage of a probation officer's time not spent dealing with offenders) is taken up with computerised forms. The "electronic Offender Assessment System" – eOASys – was introduced in 2003 and described during my training as the most important task we undertake. In it, officers input information on an individual, ranging from details of their offence(s) to their accommodation, education, mental health, approaches when faced with problems and drug and alcohol use. Ratings are given to show the extent to which they display certain traits or problems. These are aggregated and weighted to produce figures for the statistical likelihood of their reconviction.

eOASys must be carried out before reports are prepared for courts and parole boards, at the start of any supervision, at least every 16 weeks while a case is in the community and at least every year for most prisoners, as well as when supervision ends, and following significant events – such as further arrest. A full eOASys takes five or six hours, and I generally have about five or six to do per 37.5-hour working week. Some reviews are quicker than others, but the time still adds up – particularly considering the slowness and unreliability of the IT. The repetitive nature of the task is very frustrating, as is the format: human beings' lives and minds do not often fit well into discrete categories and neat boxes to rate 0, 1 or 2.

It's remarkable that the justice committee largely confines discussion of eOASys to a single section, bizarrely entitled "the management of risk". eOASys do not provide a statistical calculation of the risk of a person causing serious harm to others, merely a "rubber stamp" of reliability for an officer's own comments, entered repeatedly under pages of headings. Seeing eOASys and risk assessment as synonymous does practitioners a disservice: it's a demoralising sign of how little trust is placed in our judgment and experience, and can rob us of confidence in our own abilities by institutionalising reliance on a limited tool.

This reliance means the forthcoming "relaxation" of national standards is going to be a major change. From drafts I've seen so far, the standards are almost being done away with: for example, pages of detail on how and when sentence planning should take place is replaced by the statement "there must be a sentence plan". Probation staff are used to bosses chucking the baby out with the bathwater (or chucking us three dozen babies and an inch of bathwater, and blaming us when their faces are still mucky five minutes later) but this is quite staggering, and seems to be motivated by producing a privatisation-friendly environment rather than a supportive framework for effective, defensible work.

The justice committee report is, however, strong on the importance of the professional relationship with clients in effective work: this is certainly not a new idea, but it has been sidelined by politicians terrified of sounding "soft on crime". In my area, the notion of "the working relationship" is presently being sold back to us as if it's brand new thinking. Interacting meaningfully is now a radical innovation called "offender engagement".

This comes hot on the heels of an initiative pushing target-hitting like never before: daily meetings at which everyone's performance is questioned, with detailed and sometimes individualised figures circulated to all during the week. For a time in 2010, officers were expected to attend a meeting with an assistant chief officer to explain a single missed target. After all this, someone notices that it's taking up quite a lot of our time to jump through all these hoops. I could scream.

To address the problems of bureaucracy, the government needs to get a coherent idea of what the probation service is for; eOASys and target-ticking have become ends in themselves. As the committee says, leadership and courage will be needed. Kenneth Clarke showed both – as a knit-yer-own-hummus lefty Guardianista, I didn't exactly expect to end up respecting him more than any of his former Labour counterparts – but David Cameron has made it clear that his views are not what he wants from a justice secretary. I expect to be replaced by a robot within the next five years.

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Care homes: A flawed system insults the old and vulnerable| Observer editorial

A stream of distressing cases has revealed the desperately low standards in too many care homes for older people and people with learning disabilities and challenging behaviour.

The horrific expose by BBC's Panorama of the culture of casual cruelty at Winterbourne View was preceded by example after example of neglect of the frail and vulnerable in hospitals and care homes. The aim of the Care Quality Commission (CQC), the independent regulator of all health and adult social care in England, is "to make sure that better care is provided for everyone, whether it is in hospital, in care homes, in people's own homes or anywhere else care is provided".

Last week, the CQC told the Castlebeck Care Group, responsible for Winterbourne View, now closed, that it has serious concerns about four of the other services run by the group, while a further seven do not fully comply with essential standards of quality and safety.

Among the concerns, based on inspectors' unannounced visits, are a lack of training for staff, inadequate staffing levels and a failure to notify relevant authorities of safeguarding incidents.

In sum, that all adds up to a life of misery for the residents.

Almost certainly, the faults in these homes are not exclusive to Castlebeck. If standards of care in England are to rise to a premium standard, then the CQC requires a radical overhaul. At present, it is underfunded, understaffed – even if its current high level of vacancies are filled – and its inspections are neither frequent enough nor sufficiently detailed.

Good regulation costs money. Last week, for instance, Ofsted launched a consultation that could mean that, in future, inspections of local authority children's services will consist of two-week unannounced visits.

One result of inadequate regulation was revealed in an investigation by the magazine Community Care. It discovered that nearly one in five people in learning disability hospitals such as Winterbourne View has been resident for five years (the average is 23 months) even though these facilities are intended only for short-term stays. Primary care trusts are paying, on average, ?2,770 a week to place people inappropriately.

So what role has the CQC played? Inspection of adult care services plummeted by 70% from 2009 to the beginning of this year because of the demands of new legislation and insufficient staff.

So, for example, Terry Rooney, aged 29 and who is autistic, entered a learning disability hospital for a six-month stay. Five years later, he has yet to return home.

Lack of care in hospital is matched by the absence of care in the community. The council allegedly offered only one hour of daycare a week. The result is a high cost to the taxpayer and an even bigger price paid by Terry and his parents.

The CQC is proposing a new "excellence" scheme for adult social care. The consultation process closes this week. It's intended that the scheme will be voluntary and care providers who apply for the award will pay a fee. This sounds dangerously like instituting a two-tier system: first class and steerage.

Aspiring to excellence is be welcomed. The concern is the fate that could befall others in less caring hands when the system of regulation is so profoundly flawed.

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HM Revenue & Customs under fire for breakdown in service

An increasing focus on online is putting HMRC service beyond the reach of some people, select committee report warns. Photograph Faiz Balabil/Alamy

Alex Hawkes

A breakdown in basic services provided by HM Revenue & Customs, including unanswered phone calls and unopened letters, risks undermining respect for the tax system, MPs on the Treasury select committee warn today.

Large-scale job cuts, a senior management out of touch with day-to-day issues and severe delays responding to queries left the future looking "bleak". An increasing focus on online is putting its services beyond the reach of some people.

The committee paints a picture of a department barely able to function, mainly as a result of cost savings and re-organisations imposed by the coalition and the last Labour government. HM Revenue & Customs has had to deal with real-terms cuts to its budget every year since its formation.

In recent weeks HMRC failed to issue thousands of income tax demands to meet the 31 July self assessment deadline. Lord Oakeshott, the former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman said: "Britain is fighting its financial deficit with one hand tied behind its back because HMRC is in such chaos. When businesses lose control of their cash collection they go bust, but HMRC just seems to blunder on."

The report highlights problems with the PAYE system as an example of cuts being introduced before efficiency savings were secured.

In June 2009 the department introduced a new computer system but when it came in, a year late, it emerged that 6 million people had either overpaid or underpaid tax, resulting in unexpected bills.

The MPs say the ensuing row damaged the public perception of HMRC. "There have been credible suggestions that HMRC has made savings by reducing staff before the enabling efficiencies have been fully realised – with resulting impacts on performance and costs," the MPs say.

The report quotes a former HMRC employee, Martin Lewis, who alleged that senior management are out of touch.

"Middle managers are discouraged from reporting "bad news" or news that projects were becoming unmanageable or going awry, he told MPs.

"Senior managers are largely unaware of the difficulties, problems, and obstacles that the bulk of the organisation faces. They know little of the scale of unanswered phone calls, and the unopened letters, the data quality of tax payers' records and perhaps most importantly the nature and quality of the service provided on a daily basis to the taxpaying public."

The committee said HMRC's record on returning telephone calls was "patchy at best and unacceptable at worst". Long delays in answering post were endemic, the MPs add. "Such delays increase demand elsewhere , as taxpayers and tax credit claimants chase progress, increasing costs for the public and HMRC alike."

The prospects of HMRC's service to taxpayers improving are "bleak", the MPs say. "HMRC's written evidence suggests the department accepts and understands many of the issues. But the chairman Mike Clasper admitted that, in relation to customer service, 'we are not going to be in a great place until 2013.'"

An HMRC spokesman said: "We know we have a lot more to do to improve our services to customers. But HMRC is in a much stronger position now than in 2010 and plans to go further.

"We have recruited 1,000 contact centre advisers to manage exceptionally busy periods this year. We have improved the way we deal with post, for example rapidly reducing turnaround times on PAYE and Self Assessment post.

"Moving services online has been a success, making it easier and quicker for most customers to access HMRC services. We recognise that not everybody can access these online services but we are committed to delivering the same quality of service to all customers.

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The Tory council assault on unions | Peter Lazenby

Local authorities spend billions on services such as refuse collection. Photograph: Frank Baron for the Guardian

The government has opened a new front in its war on Britain's trade unions. It is attempting to wreck trade union organisation among hundreds of thousands of local authority workers by saddling unions with millions of pounds in costs.

The first evidence I saw of this came in Leeds, ironically in the week that Britain's labour movement marked the anniversary of the imprisonment of the Tolpuddle Martyrs, the six Dorset agricultural labourers who were transported to Australia in 1834 for swearing allegiance to a union.

Here's what is happening. Councils give union representatives – elected convenors or shop stewards – time to do their union work. It's called "time off for union duties". The work is the nuts and bolts of trades union activity, such as representing people at disciplinary and grievance hearings. Some of it fulfils people's statutory right to be represented.

Some convenors with thousands of members work full time on union duties, although they are employees of the councils, who pay their wages. For example in my city, Leeds, the secretary of the council branch of the public service union Unison, which has 8,000 members, is a social worker, but spends all his time on union duties.

It is in councils' interests to have such a system. It helps maintain smooth industrial relations. It avoids the disruption of pulling people off their jobs daily to represent colleagues. It provides a mechanism to solve potential disputes before they happen.

In Leeds, Conservative councillors are attempting to sabotage the arrangement by calling on the Labour-controlled council to stop paying the union convenors' wages, and make the unions find the money. There are 15 convenors. The Tories say stopping their pay would save Leeds council around ?400,000, at a time when the council has to find ?90m in cuts (cuts imposed by the Tories and their Lib-Dem supporters in government).

The proposal is accompanied by mealy-mouthed lip service to the "valuable role" played by trades unions, and reaffirming "reasonable support" for trades unions, including time off for union duties. But if implemented it would cripple the Leeds council unions' abilities to provide representation for their members.

At first I thought the plan might be a one-off from some ambitious, union-loathing Tory wanting to make a name for himself, and make life difficult for the unions. It isn't. It's happening across the country, with other Tory councillors making similar proposals or preparing the ground for them. The Tories are even targeting union organisation in police authorities. If successful, it would financially cripple public sector unions.

Local authorities spend billions of pounds a year in taxpayers' money to provide refuse collection, street cleaning, housing, old people's homes, state education and other services. Some Tories want the billions it costs to run these services handed to the profit-hungry private sector. Union organisation is the biggest single obstacle to this aim, so it has to be removed.

If the Tory strategy succeeds, remaining services in the public sector will be privatised and their provision will be motivated by profit, not people's needs. Dividends and bonuses will be the key factors in running our schools and old people's homes.

Margaret Thatcher recognised that organised labour was the biggest stumbling block confronting privatisation. Now David Cameron and his allies plan to finish the job of destroying union organisation.

In 1834 the Tolpuddle Martyrs were transported to Australia for organising collectively. Transportation may be a thing of the past. The Tories' determination to remove obstacles to private sector profit is not.

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Students given tips to stop gap year travel being 'a new colonialism'

Volunteering in developing countries such as Nepal can help young people gain confidence and a sense of self-reliance. Photograph: Jonny Cochrane/Alamy

The multi-million pound gap-year industry is in danger of damaging Britain's reputation abroad and raising fears that the west is engaged in a new form of colonialism, according to a leading thinktank.

Young people planning a gap year should focus on what they can offer their hosts in order to discourage the view that volunteering is merely a new way of exercising power, says a new report by Demos.

Those who carefully select the projects in which they take part are likely to make the most of their time, while doing the most to dispel the belief that their trips are merely self-interested, says the report.

Nine out of 10 young people surveyed by YouGov for Demos said they had improved their self-confidence, self-reliance and sense of motivation following a stint of volunteering in a developing country.

However, the gap-year industry is a ?6bn business for western companies, costing volunteers between ?1,500 and ?4,500 for a mere two-month experience. One in five people who took a gap year said they believed their presence in the place they visited made no positive difference to the lives of those around them.

Jonathan Birdwell, author of the Demos report, said there was even evidence that an ill thought-out gap year could be bad for local communities and Britain's relations with other countries. "There is a risk of such programmes perpetuating negative stereotypes of western 'colonialism' and 'charity': a new way for the west to assert its power," he said.

Birdwell added that "projects that do not appear to have benefits or make a difference for communities abroad leave volunteers unmotivated and disillusioned".

One respondent to the survey's report said: "I felt that the local community could have done the work we were doing; there were lots of unemployed people there. I'd have preferred to work with local unemployed and helped them in some way to benefit their community."

The study comes in the wake of the government's launch of the International Citizen Service which, in the words of the prime minister, is designed to "give thousands of our young people, those who couldn't otherwise afford it, the chance to see the world and serve others".

The scheme is means tested, allowing those who come from families with a joint income of less than ?25,000 the chance of a gap year for free. The pilot of the scheme will involve 1,080 young people visiting 27 different countries.

The Demos report found that 64% of 3,000 parents surveyed want their children to take part in the ICS scheme. However, Demos's research indicated that there were key factors which make a gap year successful and the report recommends the ICS should incorporate them.

There should be post-placement support, which allows the young person to continue the work they started abroad once back home, it claims.

The report says there should be pre-departure training to ensure that young people are able to offer relevant skills. It says placements which are short are just as likely to have positive outcomes in personal development and civic participation as long-term ones. Young people who live with a host family are also more likely to report positive outcomes in "skills, identity and values".

The report found that the typical UK overseas volunteer tended to be young, affluent, white and female, although those with few qualifications and those from low-income backgrounds reported the most positive experiences.

Birdwell said he hoped the ICS would grow to help around 3,000 young people a year and that these would be the least well-off in society. He said: "The new International Citizen Service is an exciting opportunity for young British people to experience the world and gain invaluable experience and skills while helping to contribute to the UK's international development goals.

"However, the ICS is competing with an already crowded gap-year market. In order to be successful, it must ensure that activities benefit communities abroad and it must target recruitment to young people who couldn't afford commercial gap year programmes."

Harry went on an expedition with funding from the charity Raleigh International to Costa Rica and Nicaragua before starting at Manchester on a business studies course. "I wanted a gap year which gave me work experience, a chance to travel and the chance to give something back to a community. When I returned, I managed to get on to an internship with IBM. I could have just travelled to Australia like everyone else, but how often do you get to trek through rainforests, build a community centre for a remote village or reforest a national park?"

Amy spent eight weeks in Nakavika village, Fiji, in 2008 before studying English at Nottingham. "I learnt nothing. By and large, the villagers living there seemed really happy. Probably earlier projects would have been rewarding, when you helped to build their toilets and when they didn't have sports equipment and text books already. I felt the only impact I had was the money I paid. Realistically, my presence only positively impacted the children there, as we played with them a lot when we were meant to be 'building'!"

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Peter Lovatt: 'Dancing can change the way you think'

Dr Peter Lovatt is head of the University of Hertfordshire's Dance Psychology Lab.

Dr Peter Lovatt has been head of the Dance Psychology Lab at the University of Hertfordshire since founding it in 2008. Prior to this he trained in ballet, tap and jazz, and worked as a professional dancer. Last summer he wrote, produced and performed in Dance, Doctor, Dance! The Psychology of Dance Show as part of the Edinburgh festival fringe. In March he gave a talk at TEDx Observer.

How can dance change the way people think?

We've had people in the lab dancing and then doing problem-solving – and different sorts of dancing help them with different sorts of problem- solving. We know that when people engage in improvised kinds of dance it helps them with divergent thinking – where there's multiple answers to a problem. Whereas when they engage in very structured dance it helps their convergent thinking – trying to find the single answer to a problem.

You've been studying the effects of dance on people with Parkinson's disease…

Yes, we know as Parkinson's disease develops it can lead to a disruption of the divergent thinking processes. So we thought if we used improvised dance with a PD group we might see an improvement in their divergent thinking skills, and that was exactly what we did see.

Next we would like to study what it is about dancing as an intervention that has as impact on neural processing. One possibility is that when they dance they are developing new neural pathways to get around dopamine-depleted blockages.

Watch Peter Lovatt's talk at the Observer's TEDx event earlier this year.

How else can dance change how we think?

There have been several papers looking at the self-esteem of ballet dancers in training – and what they've found is that girls in their mid-teens have significantly lower self-esteem than non-ballet-dancing girls. There are two explanations for this. One would be that girls with low self-esteem choose classical ballet because the struggle for perfection reinforces their poor self-image. Another theory says that ballet training subculture can be very detrimental to a young girl's self-esteem because they are constantly being told they are not doing it right and that the body shape issue is very important in classical ballet.

Which explanation do you think is correct?

We are trying to test these two hypotheses in the lab by comparing data from 600 dancers in different dance groups. So we're looking at things like comparing classical ballet dancers with Indian classical dancers – the latter don't have to wear tight-fitting clothing in training. We're also comparing them with burlesque dancers who are very happy to show a fuller body. If it's the case that girls with low self-esteem choose ballet there's not a great deal we can do about that. But if the classical ballet subculture might lead to eating disorders and self-harm then that's something very important we should be flagging up.

Is there a dance style that is good for self-esteem?

Anything where there's a high degree of tolerance for not getting it right. Things such as ceilidh dancing people smile, laugh and giggle, and they are adults and it's absolutely fine. It's wonderful. There have also been studies that have found that dancing in baggy "jazz" clothing is better than tight-fitting clothing for the dancer's self-esteem.

Is it correct that women think men whose ears are the same size are better dancers?

It sounds like nonsense but a study by Brown et al found that physically symmetrical men were rated better dancers by women. A second study by Fink et al focused on men's fingers. They measured the 2D-4D ratio – the relative length of the second and fourth digit, an indicator to exposure to prenatal testosterone. He found that those men with a high degree of prenatal testosterone exposure were again rated as more attractive and masculine dancers.

You've built on this research?

I went to a nightclub where we offered people free entry if they took part in the study. Wemeasured fingers, their ears, their fertility, where the women were in their menstrual cycle, their relationship status, whether they were looking for a mate. And our findings were very similar. Those men with high 2D-4D ratio were rated as more attractive dancers. We also found something unique: the women signalled their degree of fertility through their body movement by isolating and moving their hips, which made men find them more attractive.

So is their a causal link between factors such as symmetry or hip-movement and being an attractive dancer?

Some people, such as Brown and Fink, argue that your hormonal and genetic make-up is being signalled by the way you dance. They posit a direct link. But it might not be that at all: imagine you are a really beautiful person so whenever you go out to a club, everyone looks at you and that fills with you with confidence – that might be what makes you dance in an attractive way that people find even more attractive. There might be a link, it could be an association though behaviours that makes you more confident.

So female performers in pop videos dance as if they were at the most fertile point of their cycle?

Yes, they do. There are often lots of images of women's hips moving in isolation. Often it's not the most attractive form of dancing – it's an artificial enhancement. What's interesting is that people who look at these women and tell us why they find them attractive never say: "I just spent the last three minutes looking at her hip region", which is what our data suggest they are doing. Rather, they find all kinds of other reasons to justify what they think.

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Castlebeck raised 'serious concerns' – watchdog

An incident between a resident and a care worker at Winterbourne View, in Bristol, filmed by the BBC in its investigation into Castlebeck. Photograph: BBC/PA

A private care company that was forced to close one of its hospitals following horrifying allegations of abuse has been ordered by the social care watchdog to make "root and branch improvements" after inspectors raised "serious concerns" over the treatment of people with learning disabilities at a further three hospitals and one care home.

The Care Quality Commission (CQC) initially investigated Castlebeck after an undercover BBC reporter secretly filmed vulnerable residents with learning disabilities at Winterbourne View hospital near Bristol being pinned down, slapped, doused in cold water and repeatedly taunted and teased. Twelve people who worked at the hospital were arrested and are currently on police bail. Four other employees were suspended from Castlebeck's Rose Villa care home in Bristol amid claims of misconduct.

The CQC has since inspected 23 properties and services owned by Doncaster-based Castlebeck and nearly half were "judged by inspectors to be non-compliant with the essential standards of quality and safety". Of these, patients in four – Arden Vale, near Coventry; Rose Villa, in Bristol; Croxton Lodge, in Melton Mowbray, Leics; and Cedar Vale, in Nottingham – suffered ill-treatment.

Among the failings, inspectors found that patients were not safeguarded from "physical and emotional harm", "restraint was [not] always appropriate, reasonable, proportionate and justifiable to that individual", "people … are not safe" and there were not enough staff. As a result of the findings, the Nursing and Midwifery Council launched an investigation into the conduct of registered nurses employed by Castlebeck.

The stakes are high, as the CQC has the power to strip Castlebeck of the right to provide services.

CQC chief executive Cynthia Bower said the problems were not on the same scale as Winterbourne View. "Our inspections have found a range of problems, many of which are found in a number of different services. This clearly suggests that there are problems that Castlebeck needs to address at a corporate level – the company needs to make root and branch improvements to its services and processes," said Bower.

The other non-compliant sites are: Acrefield House in Wirral, Briar Court nursing home in Hartlepool, Chesterholme in Hexham, the East Midlands centre for neurobehavioural rehabilitation in Melton Mowbray, Hollyhurst in Darlington, Oaklands in Hexham and Willow House in Edgbaston.

The CQC is following up its Castlebeck inquiry with a major review of learning disability services. "We will carry out unannounced inspections of 150 of these services," said Bower.

Paul Burstow, the care minister, said that "what went on was unacceptable" and "commissioners in local authorities and the NHS need to ask themselves whether [Castlebeck] are the right people to be taking services from".

Castlebeck is owned by Lydian Capital Partners, a Geneva-based investment fund backed by a consortium of investors including Irish billionaires Denis Brosnan, Dermot Desmond, JP McManus and John Magnier, the racehorse breeder. The NHS and local authorities pay Castlebeck an average of ?3,500 a week to care for each patient. Since 2006, when Lydian Capital bought the company, yearly receipts have risen by 80% to ?55m.

Paul Brosnan, the 35-year-old chairman of Castlebeck and son of Denis Brosnan, resigned earlier this month in the wake of the closure of Winterbourne View. Dick Stockford, a veteran NHS adviser, was brought in to turn the company around.

Castlebeck chief executive Lee Reed said the company identified the areas for improvement when he took the job in January. It then spent several months on "the subject of internal reviews and recommendations".

He said: "The safety and wellbeing of people in our care will always be of paramount importance to us and we will have a zero tolerance policy towards inappropriate behaviour directed against those who use our services. We remain deeply sorry for all that happened at Winterbourne View and also apologise for any incidents where our services have in the past not met the high standards that we, those we support and their families, expect and deserve."

The Department of Health announced a new review of quality and regulation in social care, led by Imelda Redmond, chief executive of the charity Carers UK. She will look at the standards of care homes, staff training and the way in which they are monitored.

Burstow said her recommendations would form part of a white paper on adult social care due next year, which is also expected to disclose future funding options for elderly care.

However Labour were critical of the government, saying that data showed nearly one in five people in learning disability hospitals such as Winterbourne View had been there for more than five years. "You have NHS cash being used by councils to fund places where people with learning disabilities are left for years. We need to get them out into the community," said the shadow health minister, Emily Thornberry.

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Diary of a separation

'That sounds lovely, darling."

"What?"

"I said, that sounds lovely." I'm in Paris, in a shop doorway on the Rue des Archives in the Marais, on a sweltering Sunday morning, sweaty and hungover. I have ducked out of the shop, which sells slightly fetishy men's underwear, to call the children.

They have just set off on holiday with X, for three weeks. It seems a very long time, but this is the arrangement we have come to: three weeks for him, three for me, and a few fiddly days here and there still to sort out. I have not had time to start missing them yet, but I know it will get harder.

To stop myself staring mournfully at their discarded socks and crying every time I step on a Lego brick, I have come to Paris with my friend Jamie and his new boyfriend. They are wonderfully, intoxicatingly in love, and it is casting a rosy glow over our weekend. That should feel awkward, but they are so expansively, inclusively joyful I feel entirely at ease. We've had a lot of fun.

I am also not feeling like a spare part because I've given them plenty of space: I spent last night with a man I met at a party a few months ago. I was quite proud of myself for plucking up the courage to ask him if he wanted to meet up, and relieved when he said yes. It seems like a new development for me, a new streak of bravery.

As it turns out, we have almost nothing to talk about, so instead we have lots of cocktails and some tapas. Later, he drives me on his scooter to his flat, through the illuminated Place de la Concorde. If you crane your neck, you can see Sacre Coeur from his kitchen window. When I leave in the morning, and walk back across the silent city, I feel exuberantly happy for the first time in ages. I doubt I will see him again, but it was fun.

Now I am talking to the children, though, I feel a bit peculiar. They seem a terribly long way away.

It has been one of the stranger small adjustments of separation, learning how to talk to them on the phone. Sometimes they seem pleased to hear my voice, sometimes not, but either way they don't have much to say. For them, I think, a parent on the phone is largely useless: we can't see what they are doing, can't understand the game they are playing, can't even give them a hug. I've seen how they react when X calls, how hard they find it to drag themselves away from their comics or video games. Even so, it feels important to call, a way of showing that I'm thinking of them.

"What?" I'm talking to the youngest. I can hear his attention wandering. They are on their way to the beach, X has told me. "I said, is it sunny?" I am practically shouting into the phone.

"What?"

"Never mind. Are you having fun?"

"Yes".

Silence.

"So you're OK?"

"Yes, bye."

He has lost interest. I look at the window display and wonder if I should hang up and try again. I am surrounded by pictures of men in their underwear. There's some rustling, then his brother comes on the line. "Hi, Mum."

"What have you been up to?"

"I caught an enormous crab."

"Wow! Did it nip you?"

"What?"

"Did it nip you?"

"No."

We both lapse into silence. Inside the shop Jamie is gesturing at me, waving two packets of pants, with a questioning look. I point to the one on the left. "OK, sweetheart. I'll call you soon."

"OK."

"Have fun."

I hang up. After a moment's pause, I go back inside. "All OK?" asks Jamie, giving my shoulder a kindly squeeze.

"Fine."

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Jail population rises to record high

The prison population in England and Wales has reached a record high. The total number of prisoners hit 85,578 on Friday, above the previous record of 85,495 set in October last year and just under 2,500 short of the usable operational capacity of 88,073, Ministry of Justice figures showed. Criminal justice campaigners have called on the government to reduce the number of people behind bars. But last month David Cameron scrapped justice secretary Kenneth Clarke's "too lenient" plans to let offenders who plead guilty out of jail early. Clarke had proposed increasing the discount for early guilty pleas. from one third to a half in a bid to encourage more offenders to admit their crimes but was forced into a U-turn after the plans came under fire.

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Ruby Wax: 'I think I became a cartoon to escape how ill I was'

As soon as Ruby Wax arrives for our lunch at Zuma in Knightsbridge, she starts obsessiing over the fashionably dressed man at the next table. Her eyes flicker back and forth, taking in his designer clothes and Aviator spectacles. "Rich boy," she says, exaggeratedly mouthing her words. When his female companion turns up, Wax is all a flutter. "How much do you think she's worth?" she asks in a loud whisper. "I'd say 50 million." Her eyelids bat frantically. Her lips twist at the corners, breaking out into a vulpine grin. The newly arrived diner flinches. "Oh, OK, now she knows we're talking about her," Wax says, turning to face me. "Embarrassing."

For Wax, the American-born comic famed for her brash irrepressibility, the primary appeal of eating out is the opportunity it affords for people-watching. "That's why this – " she gestures at the table, now filling up with an array of sashimi dishes, "is a bit false. You're asking me all the questions but I want to find out about you." She skewers a piece of grilled tofu with her chopsticks and for a moment is totally silent, rolling her eyes and flapping her free hand as though she is about to cry. Then she groans with pleasure. "Mmm, have you tried that?"

When the waiter asks us about the food, Wax replies that it is "orgasmic" and peppers him with questions. Soon, she has discovered that his name is Claudio, he was born in Brazil and considers himself a fairly good dancer. Claudio giggles. Wax tilts her head flirtatiously. She smiles, her teeth twinkling in the light like the studded diamonds on her Theo Fennell necklace. Within seconds, Claudio is smitten and falling over himself to offer us special platters, "compliments of the chef".

Over shared dishes of light langoustine tempura and a punchy tuna tataki, Wax admits: "I love figuring people out." As a student, she took psychology at the University of California, Berkeley but dropped out after a year. Now, after retraining as a psychotherapist, Wax is studying for a masters in neuroscience and cognitive behaviour at Oxford University: "I have 11 classmates. They're all doctors and intellectuals." She takes out her iPhone to show me pictures of herself in a gown and mortarboard at her matriculation ceremony, mugging for the camera.

Part of Wax's fascination with how the mind works comes from "trying to find out what was wrong with me". Over the years, she has battled depression and bipolar disorder, with several spells in the Priory. For a long time, her illness went undiagnosed – "People thought it was glandular fever" – and she would be buffeted through a four-yearly cycle of frenetic spikes of energy followed by slumps of "nothingness" where the pain was unbearable. "I've spoken to women who've had depression and cancer and they've said the cancer was easier to deal with," she says, unblinking.

Wax recently turned her experiences into a one-woman stage show, Losing It, which she will be performing at the Edinburgh Festival. "It's not a show about mental illness," Wax insists. "It's really more about how none of us know how to live our lives. Everyone is bluffing. It's about those women who do Pilates five times a week so they can strengthen their pelvic floor and be able to lift a carpet. It's about when the list-making becomes extreme. I used to wake up in the morning dripping in sweat, having to buy a light bulb."

The first performance of Losing It was in the Priory two years ago. "We played mental hospitals for a year. To see people wake up [from depression] and start to laugh is really satisfying." The show has been "the happiest experience of my life because… I'm speaking the truth rather than doing anything shallow." At her lowest ebb, Wax had suicidal thoughts. "That was part of it, but I knew I wouldn't do it." Since finding the right medication, she has got better at recognising when her depression is about to spiral out of control. "I have to slow down," she says. "The doing too much is a sign of something else. Even on holiday I find it difficult to relax. I'm the one who has to go kayaking."

Is she difficult to live with? "Yeah, but I married my husband [television producer Ed Bye] for the gene pool. I was conscious that he would bring to the table a) length and b) the ability to be a rock." Her three children, Max, 22, Maddie, 20, and Marina, 17, are "so happy. They're the opposite of me". And two out of three of them are also tall, so the marital plan worked quite well.

Her 2002 autobiography painted an unflattering picture of her parents. Edward and Berta Wachs were Austrian Jews who fled to America from the Nazis in 1938. Growing up an only child in Evanston, Illinois, Wax was "an introvert". Her mother was an obsessive compulsive housewife who covered every available soft furnishing in plastic. Her father sold sausages and was a strict, sometimes violent, disciplinarian.

She thinks now that her mother too suffered from some form of mental illness. "She could have been saved, that's the sadness. A couple of little drugs…" Did they eat a lot of sausages at home? "Oh yeah," she says. "We ate so many sausages my mother would put wings on each side and say it was chicken."

At 16, she discovered a talent for comedy. "I was not attractive to boys and I wanted to be, so I started to be funny." She laughs. "It didn't work. I got a lot of gay guys." After dropping out of Berkeley, Wax came to the UK and studied at the Royal Shakespeare Company where her contemporaries included Alan Rickman and Zoe Wanamaker – both now close friends. Wax ended up writing for Not the Nine O'Clock News, French and Saunders and Absolutely Fabulous through the 1980s and 90s. But she is probably most known for her 1996 BBC series Ruby Wax Meets… in which she interviewed celebrities including Madonna, OJ Simpson and Imelda Marcos, alternately cajoling and cowing them into submission. In one memorable scene, she posed with a pair of Madonna's crotchless knickers over her head. "I think I became a cartoon to escape how ill I was," she explains.

Then, without warning, Wax was fired. "It makes me furious," she says, through mouthfuls of spicy beef. "Did I do something wrong?" Well, did she? "No! I mean, at the beginning I was very controlling because I was so scared, but at the end I was quite cool about it all. I loved it." Does she miss television? Wax pauses. "It would have ended at some point because women are replaced and I had 25 years; I was luckier than most." She takes a sip of Diet Coke. "Now, I go to Oxford...[and] if I hadn't broken with TV, that wouldn't have come up, so in a way I'm grateful."

She confesses she is scared of getting older – she refuses to give her age but, judging from the cuttings, Wax is 58. In person, she looks much younger: her features are small and delicate. Her eyes are always darting to and fro, as if looking for new material.

Does Wax still think she is funny? "I do. I'm not so sure I'm smart though." She grins, then looks at her watch. A car is waiting outside. After persuading Claudio to put the banana sponge pudding in a doggy bag, she takes her leave. "God I wish I could eat here every day," she says, eyeing up the rich boy at the next table. He looks up at her with an expression that lies somewhere between terror and adulation. Wax gives him a dazzling smile and then dashes out of the restaurant, doggy bag swinging from her hand.

Ruby Wax: Losing It is at the Edinburgh Fringe, 5-29 August; edfringe.com

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