7ikayat حكايات … الموقع الأول للمسلسلات العربية

The traditional role for town halls is undergoing a radical shakeup as local authorities are being forced to contemplate a seismic shift in the way they operate in the wake of massive cuts to their budgets.

Perhaps the most outlandish proposal was voted through by councillors at Conservative-controlled Suffolk county council last week. It is to proceed with plans for a "virtual" council that could outsource all public services to social enterprises, the voluntary sector or private companies.

The aim is to turn the authority from one that provides public services itself, to an "enabling" council, which only commissions them. The council hopes that off-loading services could shave 30% off its £1.1bn budget, as part of the government's drive to reduce the fiscal deficit.

Children's centres in the county will be among the first to be jettisoned, probably to social enterprises, alongside a wave of other potential "early adopter" services, ranging from libraries and parks, to youth clubs and independent living centres. The rest will be divested in three phases from April 2011.

Ultimately, only a few hundred people could remain directly employed by the council, primarily in contract management. At present, the local authority employs around 27,000 people, 15,000 of whom work in education, which is set to be taken away from local authority control as the government converts schools to academies and free schools. Many of the remaining 12,000 public servants could face either redundancy or be transferred to a social enterprise or to the private sector.

Although councils have outsourced chunks of their services before, this is the first time a local authority has considered not directly providing any services at all.

"By changing the way council services are delivered, the county council will be able to reduce costs, reduce its size, cut out waste and bureaucracy and give the people of Suffolk a better say on how they receive services," said the statement put out by the council after the vote last week. "In the future, the council will focus more on commissioning services and supporting other organisations, including the voluntary sector, private sector and community groups, to deliver services."

Suffolk is not the only council examining radical measures to address the scale of the cuts that is imminent. According to Tony Travers, director of the Greater London Group at the London School of Economics, cuts estimated to be 25%-30% over five years have prompted a number of authorities to adopt measures that would have been inconceivable before. "What's clearly hugely important in this outbreak of radicalism is the dawning realisation that the light at the end of the tunnel could actually be an oncoming train," he says.

Brighton & Hove city council in East Sussex intends to adopt a similar commissioning model to Suffolk, though it is taking a more nuanced approach. Barnet's "easyCouncil" model in north London would see local authority services run on the no-frills approach of budget airlines, while Lambeth's John Lewis-style approach advocates running services in the south London borough along co-operative lines.

Simon Parker, director at the New Local Government Network thinktank, says: "Some councils are now coming to the conclusion that their role is a democratic, strategic one, determining what's going to be delivered, what the outcomes for citizens should be, but that they shouldn't do the day-to-day heavy lifting themselves." Suffolk's new strategic direction is not only about managing the cuts but also about rushing to embrace the principles of David Cameron's "big society".

"The coalition requires lesser government and a bigger society, and Suffolk county council has responded to this change," Jeremy Pembroke, the leader of Suffolk county council, said last week.

Matthew Taylor, chief executive of the Royal Society for the Arts, which has a number of projects looking at local innovation and the government's big society agenda, believes that Suffolk's new approach may be harder to achieve than Pembroke envisions. "My own view is that, politically speaking, what Suffolk is doing is ill-advised," he says. "In setting out this ambitious vision they're almost certainly setting themselves up to underachieve.

"The danger is that they look as though they're doing this in order to prove a point rather than pragmatically seek to deal with the problems they face."

This could make implementing the plans problematic. Barnet council has recently been criticised by independent auditors for failing to develop a proper business plan for its easyCouncil model more than two years after the project began.

For Taylor, success for Suffolk, therefore, depends on getting the contracts right, and that can be costly. Far from saving money, its virtual council blueprint could end up being more expensive. "We want to avoid reaching the conclusion that on its own contracting out saves lots of money or reduces bureaucracy," he says. "Success is all about the quality of the commissioning process. Probably the biggest weakness of contracting out is the quality of commissioning."

This means the authority will have to hire staff with real expertise in commissioning and managing contracts. "Suffolk needs to invest more in bureaucrats to have good quality commissioning," he stresses.

What the council must avoid, says Parker, is just thinking about how they can reduce costs when commissioning contracts. "Then you'd get cheap and nasty services, instead of trying to get costs down through doing services differently."

Suffolk will find it easier to offload some services than others. Waste, libraries, parks, leisure centres, theatres and back office services are the most obvious candidates. Travers points out that outsourcing will work best where the "downsides of failure are not as cataclysmic for the council and its staff".

But he warns: "The nearer you get to children's services and, to a lesser extent, social care for the elderly, the more councils are going to want to ensure that the agencies and charities to which they hand over services are those they completely trust."

"Going too far towards minimalism is not going to be possible," Travers adds. Even if services are outsourced, the council will still be held accountable for delivery. One consequence of Suffolk's approach will be increased local regulation, he argues.

"Councils will have to become micro-regulators of those providers to ensure it functions properly."

For now, council employees are not only fearful for their jobs but also the quality of local services. Polly Smith is a domiciliary carer, one of around 350 of the council's Home First staff, who provide personal care services to people who have just come out of hospital. The service is set to be one of the first the council transfers. "If it goes to the private sector, what happens if the company goes bust? If this service goes, who's going to look after these vulnerable people?," she asks. "I'm very concerned that vulnerable people will not have as good standards of care."

Rachel Robinson is concerned about the Treehouse children's centre that she uses in south-east Ipswich being run by a social enterprise. Three years ago she started attending the centre which offers a range of services for children and parents, including health clinics, play-and-stay groups and information and advice. Robinson, 38, spent 20 years working for a factories in East Anglia, but three years ago, when her daughter Lily-May was born, the lone mother decided she wanted a career. She says that without Treehouse, she wouldn't have known where to start: "The centre was a lifeline to me."

She emphasises what a big step it was for her walking through the door the first time. "As a single parent on benefits it was a bit daunting going to the centre at first, thinking that people might judge you," Robinson explains. But the experience has been a success. Robinson now runs a toddler group and, with the centre's help, has completed a maths course, has a level 2 qualification in working with parents and hopes to study for a level 3 qualification in childcare at the YMCA. "I'd like to become a family support worker," she says.

For service users such as Robinson, the only hope for the safe future of Treehouse is that an amendment to Suffolk council's plans, requiring much more discussion with local communities, will enable her voice to be heard.

The adopted amendment, proposed by Green party councillors, means that the county council will have to embark on "proactive and wide-ranging engagement" across Suffolk to establish whether its proposals find favour with communities before any services are offloaded. Findings from this process will be reported back at the next full council meeting on 2 December.

Although the council says it wants to target children's centre funding towards the most vulnerable, Robinson says the move would be counter-productive for the future of Treehouse children's centre.

"If they change it, that's going to be very unsettling. If Treehouse goes to a charity, it's going to be a new centre."

She also thinks that services would deteriorate. "If they're cutting back now, what's it going to be like if someone else is running the centre?"

Some names have been changed

The class of 2009 left university knowing they were facing the toughest battle for jobs in a generation. The outlook for the 300,000 young men and women who were leaving university appeared decidedly bleak, with warnings that the number of new graduates out of work would be double that of the previous year, that students who had graduated from English universities would be the most indebted in history, and that up to 40,000 graduates would be still looking for work six months after leaving university.

That was, at least, the dire prediction, but what was the reality? I have spent the last year documenting the post-graduation lives of six students who are among the class of 2009. The six studied at the University of Leeds and Leeds Metropolitan University, and agreed to keep audio diaries throughout their year in which they recorded their hopes for the coming year as well as their reaction to the reality.

By the end of the year, the six students were scattered around the world and were far more cynical about the value of a university education than they had been on graduating. Back in the summer of 2009 they had all been reasonably clear about the type of work they were seeking. Jonathan Page, who had graduated in biochemistry, had his mind set on the sales industry. Fiona Knight, who studied neuroscience at the University of Leeds, was contemplating a shift in focus – she had decided to try to get a job in the media. Mohsin Ali, a computer studies graduate from Leeds Metropolitan, wanted to work in online research and development. Caroline Gerrard had ambitions to work in sound design. Samantha Del Core hoped to work in interior design, and Lauren Hughes wanted to be a journalist.

Hughes told me that she had been realistic about what the employment market would be like. "My expectations after leaving university were quite low," she says. "Graduating amongst the hype of the economic crisis meant that I was fully prepared to not be able to get a job easily, especially when my aspirations were to go into journalism, which is such a competitive field."

Others were less hard-headed. In an audio diary recorded soon after graduating, Gerrard predicted that within six months she would be "in a high-powered job in sound design and really loving it". Knight said that she "wanted to do something that is exciting, I am not happy just doing nine to five, I want a way of life not just a job", while Page claimed that he would not expect to start on anything less than £30,000 a year.

Inevitably, reality has taken a wrecking ball to some of these rather optimistic notions. "Initially when I graduated I thought I would be unemployed for a month or two," said Gerrard. "After a month or so I'd tried over 70 companies and I only had positive responses from two. The earliest opportunity was about five months later for a week of unpaid work."

Page and Ali both left the country to seek work in Cyprus and Saudi Arabia, while Del Core found the soul-crushing business of being rejected hard to take. "I've looked for jobs in newspapers, at the job centre, on the internet, and by word of mouth," she says. "I've had several interviews, some of which I got to the second stage, but I never got past that. It has been quite disheartening – some positions I applied for were more the dream job than a means to an end, and I was very upset when I didn't get those. I was in tears."

Having spent time with the graduates, I was struck by how much they seemed to have believed, at least at the start, that they were entitled to a well-paid and fulfilling job simply because they had been to university. "When you look at the people who are going to university," explains Professor Kate Purcell, of Warwick University's Institute for Employment Research, "they have been encouraged to think that education has given them employability skills, so as well as learning about history or English or business studies they are also learning problem solving, developing communication skills, so they are pretty confident about themselves."

This confidence is not necessarily well founded. I attended a graduate careers fair at the University of Leeds earlier this summer, where I spoke to some employers who gave me a rather different perspective on the calibre of this year's graduates. Susie Young is the recruitment manager at Waitrose and she told me that out of the 2,500 applications they had received they still could not fill the 20 graduate positions that were available. "A lot of the graduates are scared," she said. "They think there are no opportunities out there so they apply for anything and everything and they don't really invest in the time to really look into each organisation."

Will Corder, recruitment adviser at Kimberly-Clark, told a similar story. "I find that there are quite a few people who apply to us who can't even spell Kimberly-Clark – even though it is written on the application form," he says. "A lot of people go to university for the sake of it because they think it is the right thing to do. So that makes lots of graduates. Universities are still selling the idea to people that if they go to university they are guaranteed a great job at the end of it, and that is just not the case any more."

It was at the Labour party conference in 1999 that Tony Blair announced that by 2010 50% of school leavers would be enrolled in higher education. Although the Labour government quietly abandoned that target last year, the latest numbers from the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills show that they actually came pretty close to meeting it: by 2009, university participation rates among 17- to 30-year-olds had risen to 45%. But while the numbers may be up, the consequent rise in social mobility that this policy was intended to help with hasn't been achieved. According to a report last year called Fair Access to the Professions, a graduate's chances of getting into one of the top professions – such as law, medicine, politics or the media – are still heavily influenced by background, as today's young professionals in these areas come from families with an income that is up to 27% higher than average.

The increasing number of graduates entering the job market has meant that employers are often insisting that prospective employees pass psychometric tests as a way of selecting candidates, and it has also led to claims that too many young people are being herded into university.

"When I think about a university course, I think of something that teaches people a skill so that they are qualified to do a certain job," says Gerrard. "But, in reality, after my degree I don't feel qualified for anything – degrees don't indicate someone's common sense or people skills, and I don't think you can get through many interviews without a little of both."

All our students left university with large debts and they had strong views about how university education should be funded in the future. The prospect of a graduate tax, recently floated by the business secretary, Vince Cable, was met with some scepticism. "I can see the rationale behind a graduate tax," said Hughes, who currently has debts of around £11,000. "But I cannot see the benefit in the current economic climate. It seems unfair to charge a higher tax rate on graduates without providing enough jobs to enable them to be able to pay. And it may make people less serious about going to university as the tax is imposed after graduation."

One year after graduating none of the students is quite where they hoped to be. Hughes is spending two months travelling around South Asia before she returns to Britain to save money for a post-graduate course in journalism she wants to start next year. Page is soon to start work at a headhunting agency in London. Del Core is still sending out her CV to interior design companies and trying to set up her own website. Knight is still working as a receptionist. Gerrard is working in a local theatre in Newcastle, and Ali is in Saudi Arabia contemplating a return to Britain.

Like the 14.9% of graduates who are unemployed, our graduates haven't had the best of years, at least in terms of getting a job. Some of them told me they felt that university had not properly equipped them for the hard world of work. "We were meant to be taught about CV writing and how to do job interviews but it was all self-learning," says Del Core. "When I would ask questions I wouldn't get an answer so I don't feel I was taught anything new. I felt more patronised than anything else."

"The only career guidance we got was to write a CV each year for their records," says Page. "I was taught nothing about how to succeed in interviews."

Despite these complaints, perhaps the most surprising, and heartening, thing I discovered in following the graduates over the last year was that, for all the talk of debt and recession, they would not have given up the chance to go to university. "Living away from home and having to fend for myself taught me to use my own initiative," explained Hughes. "It made me a lot more independent."

The class of 2009 may have entered the job market at a bleak time but, one year on, they were grateful for their chance to spend three years studying and socialising. Gerrard spoke for the entire group when she reflected: "I probably didn't get what I thought I would out of my course, but I can't say I wish I hadn't done it, as that would mean I wouldn't have met some of my best friends."

• Sarfraz Manzoor was following the students for The Graduate, a series on BBC Radio 4. The next programme will be at 11am on Monday. You can hear the first episode, broadcast yesterday, via BBC iPlayer

The former Panamanian dictator, Manuel Noriega, will appear in court in Paris today at the start of his trial on charges of laundering drug money in France.

The 76-year-old general, who spent 20 years in jail in the US before being extradited to France in April, is accused of using money from a Colombian cocaine cartel to buy luxury properties in the French capital in the 1980s.

He and his wife Felicidad were convicted of money laundering in absentia by a French court in 1999 and sentenced to 10 years in prison and a €11.2m (£9.2m) fine. He was extradited from Miami in April on an international arrest warrant.

Now the general is being retried on the same charges: that he laundered €2.3m from the Medellin cocaine cartel through the BCCI bank in the 1980s. The money was allegedly used to buy three luxury apartments in Paris that have since been seized by the French authorities.

At the time, Noriega, who ruled Panama from 1981 to 1989, was welcomed in France at the highest levels of state. He was decorated with the Légion d'honneur - the country's highest award - by the then president François Mitterrand during an official visit in 1987 and allowed to open accounts with large French banks.

His wife is living in Panama and faces no charges. She and the couple's daughters were known in Paris for spending tens of thousands of euros in one day's shopping.

Noriega, who waged a long battle from his Miami cell to fight extradition to France, denies the money came from drugs. He says the fortune came from his brother's inheritance, his wife's own personal fortune and from payments made to him by the CIA.

"I would like to say that I disagree with the accusations being laid against me," Noriega, speaking in Spanish, told the French court during his first appearance in April.

The once-feared and reviled dictator invoked his immunity as a former head of state. He also spoke of health problems saying he suffers from hemiplegia, a condition that causes partial paralysis and high blood pressure brought on by a stroke.

Since his extradition to France, his lawyers have lodged several appeals for his release on bail. These have been turned down, with judges fearing a strong risk that he may flee the country.

His lawyers have also appealed to the Red Cross, citing that their client should be treated as a prisoner of war and not be held in what they described as inhumane conditions at the La Santé prison in Paris. They also complained he has been deprived of his medals and his uniform and that he has no access to a Spanish-speaking doctor.

The trial will last for three days, but a verdict is not expected for several months.

Once backed by the CIA, Noriega fell out with the US in the late 1980s when it was reported he had become involved in drug trafficking and amid claims he was collaborating with Fidel Castro's Cuba.

In 1989, US president George Bush Sr sent American troops to Panama to capture the general and bring him to the US to stand trial in Operation Just Cause.

When the dictator sought refuge in the Vatican embassy, US troops surrounded the building and blasted it with heavy metal music around the clock to force him out.

The standoff lasted 10 days until Noriega surrendered. An American court sentenced him to 40 years in prison, later reduced to 17 years for good behaviour

The French trial is not the end of the former dictator's legal worries. Panama has asked France to send him back to his home country to face trial for human rights abuses for which he faces a 54-year jail sentence if found guilty.

Three activists at the Kingsnorth Power Station protest in 2008 are to receive compensation after Kent Police admitted they had been unlawfully stopped and searched.

The three, including two 11-year-old twins, were stopped under laws requiring police officers to have 'reasonable suspicion' that an individual is carrying prohibited weapons or articles that could be used to cause criminal damage.

However, during the case, brought against the police by the three protesters, it has now emerged that police had been conducting a blanket stop and search policy. Kent police now admit that search policy was 'unlawful' and 'should not have happened'.

An internal police review last year had initially said Kent police's widespread use of stop and search at the protest was only 'disproportionate'.

Lawyers acting on behalf of the three protesters say it was a 'massive violation of the human right to protest', and that the police should have admitted their errors earlier.

'That human rights breaches occurred on this scale, were not identified by the two internal police investigations into the operation, and ultimately had to be exposed by the activist and two tenacious children who brought this case says something very worrying about policing of peaceful protest about vital issues like climate change,' said John Halford from Bindmans LLP.

Other protesters who were at the Kingsnorth Camp say the stop and search tactics were not the only unlawful actions taken by police and that protesters were met with 'harassment, intimidation and violence'.

'Hundreds of people's possessions were seized, from walking sticks to crayons to health and safety supplies,' said protester Sarah Horne. 'Riot police burst onto the site on a number of occasions and started beating people with batons, without warning or provocation.'

'Kent police have offered compensation to three people – but thousands of members of the public were searched, attacked or otherwise harassed at the 2008 Camp. Are Kent Police going to compensate and apologise to them all?'

The next Camp for Climate Action protest will take place near Edinburgh in August for a week of action against the Royal Bank of Scotland and its funding of fossil fuel projects around the world.

INDIANAPOLIS — A bride and groom who were among 14 people injured in a shuttle bus crash that killed a member of their wedding party were married Saturday at an Indianapolis hospital just hours after the accident.

Lauren Magee and Tom Hanley were among seven people taken to Methodist Hospital for treatment, said Clarian Health spokeswoman Holly Vonderheit. After tending to the injured, she said, staff prepared a conference room for the wedding.

"It was an emotional ceremony," Vonderheit said.

About 100 people, including guests who had planned to celebrate the wedding at a downtown event center, gathered for the hospital ceremony, Vonderheit said. A nurse's husband brought a suit for the groom and other staff helped clean the bride's wedding dress before they exchanged vows, she said.

The crash happened about 2 p.m. Saturday, killing James Douglas, 29, police Lt. Jeff Duhamell said. The injured were taken to two hospitals with what were described as non-life threatening injuries.

Wishard Memorial Hospital spokesman Todd Harper said seven others were taken to that hospital. Security officers from Methodist picked up crash victims from Wishard to attend the ceremony, Vonderheit said.

The bus was knocked on its side by the crash, which happened as the wedding party was apparently heading to take photos downtown, Duhamell said. The driver of a sport utility vehicle that collided with the bus wasn't hurt.

One of the vehicles ran a red light, but Duhamell said police are still trying to determine who is at fault.

"This is unbelievable," Rami Haddad, 26, of Livonia said Sunday night after the pageant. "It's a dream come true. I can't express my feelings."

Fakih, of Lebanese descent, went into the pageant as Miss Michigan. She is thought to be the first Arab American and Muslim to become Miss USA.

Haddad was one of many supporters who gathered at La Pita in Dearborn, where Arab Americans were proud to see Fakih win.

"This is the real face of Arab Americans, not the stereotypes you hear about," said Zouheir Alawieh, 51, of Dearborn. "We have culture. We have beauty. We have history, and today we made history. ... She believed in her dreams."

The music was loud and thumping inside La Pita, with pictures of Fakih everywhere, including on T-shirts her fans sported. On the back was a quote from Fakih: "It's beauty that captures your attention, personality which captures your heart."

A woman at Sunday's celebration sang about beauty in Arabic, but the overall theme was heavily American, with red, white and blue decorations around the banquet hall that read "USA."

"We're so excited," said Rania Jergess, 35, of Dearborn Heights.