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Private Notes
Provocative clothing, raunchy dancing on prime-time TV, access to pornography - Panorama examines the growing concern about the sexualisation of children in the UK. Sophie Raworth, a mother of three, goes behind the headlines to discover what images young people are being exposed to, and asks what impact the sexualised world is having on our children. Is too much, too young, putting them at risk?
Are actively-involved dads becoming an endangered species in some parts of Britain? Panorama meets the dad who can't remember all his kids' names, as the government's 'poverty tsar' Frank Field says there are just too many 'feckless' fathers.
This programme examines why many men are losing contact with their children and asks what can be done to keep them in the picture. Reporter Declan Lawn has been given access to a ground-breaking project in South London that might have found the answer.
Imagine you were being constantly threatened and abused by someone who wouldn't leave you alone. And no-one believed you. Stalking affects an estimated two million people in Britain a year, most of them women. Panorama tells the extraordinary story of one woman who's been recording years of abuse - as it takes away her job, her home and her child. Reporter Richard Bilton investigates how the UK fails to deal with stalkers.
For four years, thousands of British servicemen fought with the Taliban for the district of Sangin - the most violent part of Afghanistan. The fighting cost 106 British lives, including Staff-Sergeant Olaf Schmidt, who won the George Cross there.
Last year, the British withdrew - handing the area over to the US Marines. Ben Anderson, who was with the British forces in 2007, returns to see if the Americans are faring any better. His remarkable film follows Lima Company, a unit of the US Marines, as they dodge improvised bombs and struggle to reclaim the same territory the British previously occupied.
As the war enters its tenth year, with Sangin still far from secure, real questions remain as to what so many British men died there for.
For the last 14 days, the world has watched as hundreds of thousands of Egyptians have thronged the streets to protest - and then battle it out - in a popular uprising against the 30-year-old regime of President Mubarak. Panorama's Jane Corbin has been filming inside these extraordinary scenes - in the main squares with the protest organisers, and in the mean back streets where vigilantes and undercover police fight for control in a tense and terrifying struggle for power.
Colonel Tim Collins, whose eve of battle speech before the invasion of Iraq brought him international fame, meets the soldiers who return home only to find that their service for Queen and country counts for little on civvy street.
In a Panorama Special, Collins meets veterans who struggle to find work and housing. He sleeps rough on the streets of Brighton with a former soldier who's spent much of the past six years either on the streets or in jail.
He meets veterans who fear for their sanity as they suffer flashbacks, night terrors and violent outbursts and talks to families who struggle to cope with the husbands and fathers who went to war, only to come home as strangers.
John Sweeney assesses what WikiLeaks and its exposing of sensitive official material has achieved and asks whether it has lived up to its own ideals on openness.
Will the death of Ireland's boom-time economy spell big trouble for the UK? Fergal Keane returns home to find out why Ireland went from being one of the richest countries in the world to the brink of bankruptcy. Bailing out Ireland has put Britain on the hook for billions, but will it be enough to save one of our most important business partners?
Panorama goes back to school to examine government plans to send in the troops to Britain's troubled classrooms. Can they help restore discipline, leadership and respect? It is an idea born in the USA, where around 15 thousand ex-military personnel have become teachers and done their bit in some of America's toughest inner-city schools. Vivian White reports on the military manoeuvres claimed to be building David Cameron's so-called "Big Society".
Panorama investigates the multi-billion pound world of the criminal tobacco trade. Reporter Sam Poling reveals that more than half of all hand-rolled tobacco in the country is now either counterfeit or smuggled, and one in five cigarettes smoked is fake.
Using secret filming, the film exposes the gangs which are costing British tax-payers four billion pounds in lost revenue each year. Taking you to the heart of the supply chain, Sam Poling buys directly from the criminals, and reveals their products are up to thirty times more toxic than ordinary cigarettes.
And with exclusive access to Customs investigators, we watch as they take out a major organised Chinese tobacco gang which has set up home in Britain.
Phone hacking was once dismissed by executives at News International as the illegal work of "one rogue reporter". The defence collapsed with one journalist at the News of the World being sacked and the original police inquiry having to be re-opened.
Panorama exposes the full extent of the "dark arts" employed by journalists across the industry to get their story. The programme reveals a dishonourable history of law breaking that went beyond phone hacking and questions the police inaction that let it continue.
As the world unites against Colonel Gaddafi, Panorama reveals the real story behind the country's revolution. Using remarkable new footage, it tells how a group of young professionals bravely stood up to 42 years of dictatorship.
Reporter Paul Kenyon travels across the front line to uncover how the Libyan military fired on unarmed protestors and tracks down the man accused of ordering the shooting - Colonel Gaddafi's son, Saadi.
It should be the most romantic day in any couple's relationship, but every year hundreds of weddings take place where often the bride and groom barely know each other, and will rarely ever meet again. These are sham marriages - a way for desperate immigrants to stay in the country illegally by paying to marry a stranger with an EU passport.
In this Panorama Special, reporter Richard Bilton exposes a lucrative - and growing - industry. Posing as a wedding photographer, he films a sham wedding and reveals the real human cost at the heart of it; he investigates an Eastern European gang that charges 8,000 pounds to supply teenage prostitutes as bogus brides; the immigration solicitor who will prepare the legal paperwork for sham couples; and he discovers how even the Church of England has been a target of bogus wedding fraudsters.
With the cost of living rising fast and wages falling behind, Panorama unveils new research which shows that most of us are significantly poorer than we were two years ago. Reporter Andrew Verity reveals which jobs are being hit hardest, just how many of us are likely to be tipped over a financial cliff if interest rates go up, and he gets tips from the experts on how we can fight The Big Squeeze.
Proportionally, there are more long-term unemployed over 50s than any other age group. But are they victims of their own inflexibility or should more be done to help them? Uncompromising advice from former business leader Lord Digby Jones challenges four jobless 50-somethings to change their approach to job-hunting. Reporter Fiona Phillips reveals a group of people facing stacks of rejection letters and money worries after a lifetime at work. Can they beat the odds and get their working lives back on track?
oung Iranians speak out for the first time about life in a state where putting up a poster can get you jailed, releasing a rap CD calling for change gets you tortured and being gay is punishable by death. In a country where men and women can still be stoned to death for adultery, reporter Jane Corbin asks how much longer Iran can keep a lid on internal unrest as revolution and regime change sweep across the Middle East.
Panorama tracks down a fraudster who stole a football club and broke a bank. With his tales of foreign gold and assets worth 2 trillion dollars, the con man fooled politicians, celebrities and the City. He even tricked the former England football manager, Sven-Goran Eriksson, into visiting North Korea to support his scam. So why were so many people taken in, and how did one man run rings round the regulators and authorities?
With nearly five million people on a waiting list for social housing that most of them will not receive, Panorama reveals the compelling stories of families who struggle to get by in overcrowded or hazardous homes, or who have no option but to rent properties they simply cannot afford. Reporter Richard Bilton goes undercover to confront the cheats who make money unlawfully from badly-needed council flats or offer cash rewards for tenancies.
The full story of how America tracked down and killed the world's most wanted man - Osama Bin Laden. From the small Pakistani town of Abbottabad to the streets of New York, the programme speaks to eyewitnesses, victims of Al Qaeda's terror and military and intelligence insiders. There is also a look at why so many people were kept in the dark about the operation and whether the Pakistanis were really unaware of Bin Laden's whereabouts.
As British soldiers take on the Taliban in Afghanistan and the public remain alert to potential terrorist attacks here at home, Panorama asks whether Britain can trust Pakistan to be an ally in the battle against terrorism.
How does a broken TV thrown out at a council site in London end up 3,000 miles away on a toxic dump in West Africa where children scavenge for metal waste in a cocktail of poisonous fumes?
Using tracking equipment inside broken TV sets, Panorama investigates the illegal market in electronic waste - and the recycling companies whose green credentials may not be all they claim.
On June 1 2011, the world's football associations will elect a new president of Fifa: either current incumbent Sepp Blatter, or his challenger from Qatar, Mohamed Bin Hammam.
The organisation they want to head is facing the biggest crisis in its history over allegations of corruption in its senior ranks. At its heart are questions over the World Cup bidding process and the multi-million dollar bribes scandal which Fifa refuses to investigate.
As Fifa's host nation Switzerland demands that football's world governing body clean up its act, Andrew Jennings asks whether either candidate is up to the job.
On the top floor of a special hospital, locked away from their families and friends, a group of men and women are subjected to a regime of physical assaults, systematic brutality, and torture by the very people supposed to be caring for them.
The victims are some of the most vulnerable in society - the learning disabled, the autistic, and the suicidal. In a Panorama Special, Paul Kenyon exposes the truth about a gang of carers out of control, and how the care system ignored all the warning signs.
With the government promising a welfare revolution, getting people off benefits and into work, Panorama visits the seaside resort of Rhyl in North Wales. In some parts of the town, nearly half of the adult population are on benefits.
The programme follows the real life stories of some of the unemployed there, and asks the government whether this battle can really be won.
The Panorama team goes undercover to test whether staff in Britain's high street banks have learnt the lessons from the massive penalties imposed for mis-selling insurance and investment products.
Financial journalist Penny Haslam meets savers who have lost out because they were persuaded to put their money into risky investments, and talks to former staff about the pressure they faced to sell.
Evan Davis uncovers the truth behind the economic migrants who cross continents to try to illegally enter Britain. In a ground-breaking special edition of Panorama, two reporters set out to follow the journeys that these migrants take along the most popular and dangerous routes to the UK.
Shoaib Sharifi begins in his homeland of Afghanistan, following people as they enter Greece illegally. He discovers hundreds of fellow-Afghans sleeping on the streets of Athens, many with their children, and meets those who risk everything to smuggle themselves on lorries for Italy and beyond.
Ugandan-born Kassim Kayira looks at the trade in fake documents that many Nigerians are using to fly into the UK, before heading to the Sahara and North Africa to meet those prepared to risk death for their dream of getting to Britain.
And Evan Davis explores what Britain and the rest of Europe is doing to stop these economic migrants getting in.
This is the story of people from across the world who risk their lives to find a way into Britain and a Fortress Europe. But just how hard is it to break into Britain? And why do so many risk so much to try?
It's the ultimate failed state - a land of war, banditry and piracy. And after Bin Laden's death, its civil war with Islamist extremists has gained even greater importance to the West. But what is it like to live in the anarchy of Somalia?
Reporter Peter Greste goes where no western journalist has been to witness a crisis that threatens millions of lives. He ventures through the streets of Mogadishu, dubbed the most dangerous city in the world, to meet those who attempt to live amid a deadly civil war.
Greste visits refugee camps - among them the world's largest - as well as hospitals and markets along the frontline to witness the fighting at first hand.
Vigorous investigation of a topical issue. Panorama investigates concerns about the quality of surgical instruments being used on patients in the UK. Reporter Samantha Poling hears from those working inside the NHS who claim that tools with dangerous defects are being supplied to hospitals.
Panorama travels to Pakistan, where the majority of the world's surgical instruments are made, and finds an industry blighted by poor quality control and child labour where workers manufacture tools for £2 a day. Reporter Sam Poling asks whether the NHS is sourcing goods ethically and is doing all it can to protect the health of its patients.
It invades our homes, dropping onto our doormats in its millions and costs the taxpayer a fortune to get rid of. It might be a menace in our mailbox but without junk mail, would our postal service survive?
Panorama reporter Tom Heap asks whether junk mail is only good for one thing, burning it to heat his home, and investigates whether Royal Mail is addicted to the darker side of the letters business - scam mail.
With motor insurance premiums up nearly 40 percent this year Panorama investigates the car insurance industry from top to bottom.
We go undercover to infiltrate a criminal gang faking accidents for fraudulent insurance claims and we look at who's benefitting from some of those text claim messages we're all getting. Declan Lawn investigates what's gone wrong with the industry and discovers how we're all paying for it.
For decades, Rupert Murdoch has held a unique position of power in Britain through his media empire.
After the revelations of the News of the World phone hacking scandal, Panorama tells the inside story of how the media giant's influence was dramatically challenged.
The UK is in the middle of a baby boom. Last year, there was one born every forty seconds - the highest number for 20 years. But reporter Shelley Jofre reveals that some parts of the UK are facing a chronic shortage of midwives, and asks if the NHS is failing to deliver the safe and high quality maternity care mothers and babies deserve.
Victoria is 35 and critically ill after a decade of heavy drinking. Forty-five-year-old Matthew was so sick from his alcohol abuse he needed a new liver. Brian, at 32, drank so much that he ended up living in a cave. Panorama uncovers the impact alcohol is having on a new and younger generation of problem drinkers, and asks whether the government is doing enough to stop us drinking ourselves to death.
Have you bought a diamond recently? Would you really know where it came from?
Panorama goes deep into Zimbabwe's Marange diamond fields and uncovers evidence of torture camps and wide scale killings. As the international community argues over whether these diamonds should be sold on the open market, we ask if President Robert Mugabe will ever face prosecution for these crimes.
John Sweeney reports on the recent civil unrest in London and other major cities, which has led to tens of millions of pounds' worth of damage, dozens of injured policemen and widescale looting by gangs of youths rampaging through the streets. The programme tells the full story of the riots and asks why a generation has turned to violence
In this special edition of Panorama, troubleshooter and businessman Sir Gerry Robinson examines the government's plans for the biggest shake up of the NHS in its history. As they return before Parliament for debate, Gerry travels the country assessing support for the reforms - and talks to GPs with opposing views on them. He finds how change has already started with the closure of many Primary Care Trusts and asks Health Secretary Andrew Lansley if the future of the NHS is at risk should his reforms fail.
'HEART BUS' PATIENTS BYPASS NHS COSTS
Six months on from one of the world's most devastating tsunamis, Panorama returns to Japan to hear remarkable tales of survival amid the epic destruction.
Piecing together new footage of the wave, reporter Paul Kenyon tells the dramatic stories of those who managed to escape when so many did not.
The film also follows those returning briefly to homes abandoned within the radioactive no-go area around the Fukushima nuclear power plant, and asks what the future holds for the thousands affected.
Most of our water comes from rivers, and environmentalists fear we are pushing some of them and the wildlife they support to the edge. With many of Britain's rivers at the limit of what can sustainably be taken from them, Simon Boazman investigates whether the water industry and its regulators are doing enough to protect the nation's rivers.
After Libya, will Syria be the next Arab dictatorship to fall to people power? For months, a popular uprising has been fighting an unseen and bloody battle against the Syrian regime. Panorama has been filming inside Syria, and can now tell the full story of those struggling against President Assad and the truth about his brutal crackdown against his own people.
With millions of people enduring pay freezes and cuts, the national minimum wage is supposed at least to guarantee that pay cannot drop below a legal minimum level. But as the adult rate rises to £6.08 an hour, Panorama goes undercover to reveal how some employers exploit loopholes or get round the rules so workers do not even get paid that minimum. And it speaks to others, especially the young, who feel they are being forced to accept low - or even no - pay just to get work.
CREDITS
Nick Griffin's British National Party, already under investigation for breaches of electoral law, is facing fresh allegations of corruption. Panorama uncovers new evidence of financial documents being falsified and fabricated in order to deceive the Electoral Commission. The programme also has evidence of the BNP's failure to declare major donations to the party.
As Darragh MacIntyre reports, the BNP, which is better known for its controversial views on race, is in debt and according to its own published accounts appears to be technically insolvent.
Britain's petrol and diesel is among the most expensive in Europe. But the rising cost of fuel has also placed it at the heart of a growing criminal black market.
High value, untraceable and in constant demand, fuel has become the perfect illicit commodity. It is a crime that stretches from drivers filling up at garage forecourts without paying, to a dark and dangerous underworld run by gangsters and former terrorists.
With exclusive access to the police and HM Revenue and Customs teams tasked with fighting fuel crime, Panorama reporter Samantha Poling investigates this multi-million pound illegal business.
Meet 'Alice'. She is a four-year-old child out on the streets of London begging hours on end, day in, day out. 'Alice' is just one of Britain's Gypsy child beggars, and she can earn hundreds of pounds a day.
A special Panorama investigation uncovers the truth about these children. Reporter John Sweeney tracks down the begging gangs to luxury homes in Romania, where he confronts the adults forcing the children to beg.
After four decades as one of the world's most notorious dictators, Colonel Gaddafi is now dead - just weeks after being forced from power. Panorama has uncovered shocking pictures and testimony, never seen before, that reveal the truth about the regime and its ties with the British government. Reporter Paul Kenyon tracks down the man responsible for much of the brutality, who fled to Britain during the recent civil war. Kenyon finds him at a luxury hideout in the Gulf, and challenges him to come clean about his role in torture.
For 10 years, 400 or so travellers on Dale Farm in Essex fought to stay on land they own. In October 2011, with all legal options exhausted, time finally ran out for them. As riot police and bailiffs moved onto the site, Panorama received exclusive access to the travellers' families, their neighbours and the authorities - to film on both sides of the barricades during the months that led up to Britain's biggest ever traveller eviction. It also follows those evicted as they set off to an uncertain future.
Described as the largest illegal traveller site in Europe, Dale Farm in Basildon is on designated Greenbelt land, and the local council said the travellers had broken the law by building on it. As the legal battle raged through the High Court and beyond, activists from across Britain converged on the site ready to defend the travellers' right to remain. For the council, this was the culmination of a legal fight which has cost them millions. For the travellers, it was the last stand to keep their homes.
What happens when the police fail in their sworn duty to protect life, when they get it wrong or when police officers themselves break the law? Richard Bilton investigates cops who behave badly, and discovers just how many cases are dealt with by the police themselves behind closed doors. He asks why, in some cases, police officers are allowed to simply walk away.
It's estimated that twenty-two billion pounds of taxpayers' money is effectively stolen or lost every year through fraud and error - a sizeable chunk of that is benefit fraud - money that could end up being taken out of the pockets of those in genuine need.
In this Panorama Special, Richard Bilton uses undercover cameras to expose people on benefits sailing yachts and driving Bentleys. And he follows fraud investigators as they tackle the rising tide of benefits cheats using fake identities to steal millions.
Panorama investigates the inconvenient truth behind the UK's rocketing energy bills - that government policy is stoking much of the rise. Your money is being staked in the country's biggest energy gamble ever. As power stations are closed down, due to old age or high carbon emissions, 200 billion pounds are needed to keep the lights on. Fuel poverty now threatens one in four households yet the government remains committed to expensive alternatives like offshore wind and nuclear power: greener but, so far, dearer.
Police and shopkeepers in Greater Manchester give Panorama's Jeremy Vine a behind-the-scenes account of what happened on 9 August - the day England's rioting reached the streets of Manchester.
Victims of burglary and other crimes are increasingly being offered the opportunity to meet the criminals who offended against them, in a controversial scheme aimed at empowering victims and potentially cut levels of re-offending among former prisoners.
Panorama reporter Raphael Rowe goes into a jail to witness a tense encounter between two young women and the youth who broke into their home while they slept.
Meetings between victims and offenders have proved to be remarkably successful in cutting reoffending and allowing victims to recover far more quickly. The government wants to see more of these restorative justice meetings used in the criminal justice system following all types of crimes.
Another victim of a horrific attack reveals to Panorama how her true motive in agreeing to meet her burglar was to get revenge and kill him.
As Government spending cuts bite, one group of businessmen know they will keep making vast profits from our taxes while getting us ever deeper into debt. Since 1997 almost every new school and hospital in the UK has been built by private companies who lease them back to the government. But what's in it for the taxpayer?
John Ware investigates the inflexible terms and conditions of what has become the government's flexible friend - the Private Finance Initiative - a kind of ministerial credit card which racks up huge public debts without showing on the nation's balance sheet. He uncovers evidence of how government claims that PFI gives taxpayers value for money have been manipulated.
And he asks why the coalition government signed so many PFI deals when in opposition both the prime minister and his deputy branded them as 'dodgy accounting'.
Part Whitehall farce, part Cold War throwback, this is the inside story of the Russian "honey trap" spy who never was. How did an MP's former assistant come to be wrongly accused by MI5 of being a threat to British national security? In an exclusive interview, Katia Zatuliveter tells Panorama's Peter Taylor how she became the centre of a diplomatic row over her relationship with a Liberal Democrat MP.
The 26 year-old Russian graduate reacts to being cleared of the charge - made by government lawyers - that she exploited her position as Mike Hancock's assistant and mistress to pass information to Moscow.
The film also interviews Mr Hancock, who sat on the Commons Defence Select Committee and chaired its all-party Russia Group, and speaks to former Russian and British intelligence officers who warn of new security tensions with Moscow.
With their price drops, roll-backs, brand matches - as well as that old firm favourite, the two-for-one offer - our leading supermarkets are doing battle for our cash. They claim their price war is good news for shoppers in these tough times, but are their money-saving offers all they seem?
Sophie Raworth takes her trolley round the aisles of Britain's biggest supermarket chains and reveals some nasty surprises at the checkout.
The world economy appears to be in meltdown, the euro is in turmoil and the economic future looks bleak. But does it have to be this bad? Panorama investigates how Britain plc could survive the crisis. Reporter Adam Shaw explores the potential for growth away from Europe in the fast-growing economies of places like Brazil, China and India. He also asks what our government needs to do to chart a path to a brighter future.
Adoption is now high on the political agenda as the best option for the 65,000 children in care. But, with less than 5% actually placed for adoption, children must wait an average two years and seven months for a permanent family. Why does it take so long? What is the human cost?
This Panorama Special follows six children in Coventry waiting to be adopted over six months. Some have waited five years. Others were returned after almost three years with prospective adopters. One child, then aged 18 months, was returned after just two weeks. This film addresses the hidden cost of adoption breakdown. In all cases, the children's pain and longing is tangible.
