Their occupants were followed for a year and compared with those from 20 other homes

Their occupants were followed for a year and compared with those from 20 other homes.
Researchers from the Royal Hallamshire Hospital in Shef-field, who measured the residents’ breathing at five intervals over the year, found the improvement was equivalent to a daily dose of 400 micrograms of inhaled asthma drugs. AN EXPERIMENT in which the air quality of suburban homes was converted to that of a Swiss alpine chalet could signal a new approach to the treatment of asthma. Graham Allan, Eden District Council’s director of planning services, said council officers could not make ethical value judgements. “We have to consider the question of how it fits aesthetically with the existing site,” he said.But those who interfere with Mayburgh do so at their own peril. The 18th-century antiquarian William Stukely, who witnessed the destruction of stones at Mayburgh, tells of the fate of two of the workmen who blasted them into fragments with gunpowder: one hanged himself and the other went mad.. English Heritage is concerned about large numbers of people converging on the henge during the festival. And Mr Nicholls believes there is a far more appropriate site for the cross, in an empty courtyard opposite St Andrew’s church in Penrith, the site of Saxon preaching crosses.

[We] believe our religion is the truth our ancestors were seeking, which is why we want the festival to be linked with the henge,” he said.Alternative positions for the cross have since been proposed, within Mayburgh’s field but outside the boundaries of the henge stone and its huge circular bank, which was built with pebbles from nearby rivers.The proposed Christian monument would be inscribed with `alpha’ and `omega’, representing the past and the future.Many still consider the plan unsatisfactory, though. “The plan seems based on the misconception that Paganism is dead and buried,” said Sandy Brock of the Pagan Federation. Even local district councillors are perplexed.One, Brian Nicholls, who is a local history teacher, said: “The arguments that the Christians have always pillaged Pagan sites have been interesting here.”People will go to Mayburgh to see a neolithic site, not a 21st-century monument.”Canon Gervase Markham, who chairs the Millennium Festival’s co-ordinating committee, said the cross would complement the henge.”The henge marks our forefathers’ first search for truth through the supernatural world. A block of local Shap granite, emblazoned with a cross, was to have been dedicated there by the Bishop of Carlisle during the festival next June.
Pagan groups accuse the festival’s organisers of attempting to annex the site. The Mayburgh Henge site at Penrith – an amphitheatre that in the Bronze Age rivalled Stonehenge but is today a 9ft single standing stone – was chosen by organisers of the local Eden Millennium Festival as the place to site a monument to mark Christ’s 2,000th birthday. OLD-FASHIONED Christian imperialism is alleged to be alive and well in Cumbria, where contentious plans to build a millennial monument at a 4,000-year-old Pagan site have left local planning officers struggling to resolve a religious dispute.

In hairdressing, which employs many young women, the proportion earning less than the youth rate of pounds 3 an hour dropped from one in 10 in 1998 to one in 100 in the same period.IDS Report no 799; details from www.incomesdata.co.uk or telephone 020 7250 3434.. The top one-tenth of full-time employees have had a pay rise of 3.7 per cent on average compared with 4.3 per cent for the bottom tenth.The introduction of the national minimum wage in April has had a particularly big impact on low-paid women, as 1.3 million of the 1.9 million workers affected are female.For example, the proportion of female full-time care assistants paid less than pounds 3.60 an hour fell from 22 per cent to 7 per cent in the year to April 1999. Female earnings are below two-thirds of male earnings in high-flying professional private-sector jobs such as financial management and jobs on assembly lines.The report, from the independent pay consultancy Incomes Data Services, says the lowest paid have seen their earnings rise more than the highest paid in the past year. Women are generally treated more equally in the public sector, where they provide a high proportion of professionals. At the top of the earnings distribution, just 12 per cent of females make more than pounds 500 a week compared with 27 per cent of males.

And those in high-paid occupations are far less likely than male counterparts to be paid the most. Among top doctors, for instance, 95 per cent of men earn more than pounds 540 a week, a figure reached by only 64 per cent of the women.The gap does vary by occupation. According to research published today, female average full-time weekly earnings stood at 74 per cent of men’s in 1999, up from 62 per cent 20 years ago. However, a higher proportion of women have jobs at the bottom of the income ladder, and they have therefore benefited the most from moves to tackle low pay.
The report concludes: “Overall, the gender pay gap has not closed more quickly because the growth in earnings of women professionals is offset by the expansion in the number of women in low-paid jobs with slow earnings growth.”The median level of earnings for women working full time is pounds 284 a week, compared with pounds 374 a week for men. But female earnings are skewed towards the lower end and relatively few earn high incomes.One woman in five earns less than pounds 200 a week, compared with one man in 12.