Scientists from Scotland’s Rural College (SRUC) are warning that this spring there is a high risk of damage to spring cereals from Leatherjacket grubs.

Today we will hear how non food sales in February fell.  This is to take the British retail Consortium figures of sales for non foods on a like for like basis, adjusting for expansions in shop space. The overall true figure is total sales of all items grew by 0.4% on the month, with food especially strong showing growth of 2%. Non food was affected by a later date for Mothering Sunday delaying purchases compared to last year.

Many shops continue to be pessimistic, as more retail spending takes place on line rather than in shops, and as severe competitive pressures keep down prices.

The next West End Police Surgery takes place at the Mitchell Street Centre today – details below :

More than 80 percent of women in China experience gender discrimination at work, according to a survey carried out by one of China’s largest job sites.

In the survey released just ahead of International Women’s Day by Zhaopin.com, 81 percent of the female respondents say that they feel gender discrimination at work. About 22 percent of them say the discrimination is “serious,” 59 percent say the discrimination is “moderate,” and only 2 percent of female respondents say they experience no discrimination at all.

Thesurvey is based on answers from 128,576 respondents, 43 percent of whom are female.

About 74 percent of the male respondents say that they feel gender discrimination at work, slightly less than their female counterparts.

Working females who hold higher qualifications experience more discrimination, the survey found. About 43 percentofthe female respondents who havea master’s degree or higher report”serious gender discrimination,” compared to 12 percent of women who graduate from high school, 18 percent of women who graduate from junior college, and 28 percent of women who have only attended college.

Working women have also reported gender discrimination in promotion. More than 80 percent of the femalerespondents say they haveexperienced discrimination in promotion, 25 percent report “serious discrimination,” while only 3 percent say they feel no discrimination at all.

Among all therespondents, 59 percent of men say they had their first promotion after workingfor two years, compared to 49 percent of women — 10 percent less than men. And 72 percentof all the respondentssay their immediate superiorsare male while only 28 percent are female.

Ye Tingfang

Families with a second child should enjoy subsidies, tax free or rebated individual income tax, Sun Xiaomei, professor from China Women’s University and a deputy of the National People’s Congress (NPC) recently proposed.

Sun submitted the proposition during the ongoing two sessions, namely, the NPC and the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) which opened at the beginning of March.

Families with a second child need subsidies and preferential policies to alleviate the economic costs, Sun explained.

She advised the country to prioritize the rights of second-child families by securing their privileged access to low-rent houses or low-costs housing, extra medical reimbursements and insurance, the exemption of children’s tuition in universities and preferential maternity leave to relieve the mothers from extra working hours.

Initiated 10 years ago by Ye Tingfang, a translator as well as a former CPPCC member, out of concern for China’s diminishing demographic dividends, the right to have a second child won an overwhelming mandate in 2016, putting an end to the decades-long one-child family-planning policy.

The average birth rate in China per couple was 1.2 from 2010 to 2015, indicating a sharp decline of 36 percent in birth of every generation. The demographic aging draws considerable concern among the deputies and members in the two sessions.

Huang Xihua, a NPC deputy, advised the country to lower the minimum legal marriage age from 21 for females and 22 for males, to 18.

“It is not an advocacy for early marriage, but a move to protect the rights of young people,” Huang said.