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Maternity wards to be revamped to accommodate dads

The government will this week announce plans to overhaul maternity wards to make room for extra beds and allow new dads to spend the first night of their child's life with their family.

Under the reforms the NHS constitution will also be re-written to give pregnant women a legal right to chose where they give birth, including the option of a home birth, the prime minister Gordon Brown revealed yesterday during an online chat with the Netmums website to mark Mothers' Day.

The plans are part of a five-year programme of the reform of children's services from birth to the age of five, to be announced this week by the health secretary Andy Burnham and children's secretary Ed Balls. The move is designed to appeal to middle-class families and mothers in particular.

Women with young children have been identified in polls as a key target for Labour votes in the election. There are 53 constituencies where mothers could swing the result prompting a run of family-friendly policies.

The work secretary Yvette Cooper revealed on Sunday separate plans to encourage more flexible working to attempt to break the culture where part-time work is seen as a dead-end in careers. All jobcentres are to ask employers to consider offering jobs they advertise on a flexible basis when they advertise. Brown revealed that he wanted to end the situation where the mothers' partner is not allowed to stay the night with their new child after their birth. Many hospitals already supply make-shift beds, and more are being built with private rooms instead of wards, but many still operate strict visiting hours asking dads to leave their new family at night. Brown said he wanted a change in the service to include fathers in their new families from the beginning.

He wrote: "Maternity services should definitely remain a priority for the NHS. We have almost doubled funding since 1997 and there's no doubt that our maternity services have got better over the last 10 years, but sometimes I think we haven't done enough to make sure they provide a really personal service for mums and dads.

"Over the next few years we want to see a legal right for mums to choose where they give birth, including home births for anyone who wants one. And we want to see services changed so that not just mums but dads can be given a bed if they need to stay in hospital overnight after the birth of their baby. We have also set a goal to recruit an extra 4,000 midwives by 2012."

Mothers can already request a home birth but the likelihood of getting one is almost entirely dependent on the availability of midwives. Ministers privately accept that maternity services have not been reformed enough and hope that giving parents legal entitlements will force further improvements to meet the aspirations of middle class families in particular. Under this week's plans, the NHS Constitution will be re-written to include a new legal right for pregnant mums to choose where and how they give birth including the option of a home birth. The proposals will be consulted on and introduced in the next parliament.

Plans to give both parents a bed for their child's first nights in hospital would also be completed within the next parliament.

Further reforms to improve post-natal care and an extension in post-natal support for teenage parents to reduce the chances of further teenage pregnancies will be set out on Tuesday.Mary Newburn, head of research and information at the National Childbirth Trust, said: "We support both those measures. But the key thing is that significant investment is needed to make them happen. So far we haven't seen the investment required to implement their current policies.

"Parents were supposed to be able to chose the place of birth by the end of last year – our research shows there has been some improvement but there is still a long way to go. It would take an enormous building programme to accommodate new fathers, so I'm not sure how fully that's been thought through.It would be fantastic if there was scope for more family rooms but it would mean a building programme."

It might have been the sofas that did it, but the BBC has made a howler in letting More 4 go to the dogs

The Crufts dog show – or DFS Crufts, as it now likes to be called – has been kicked, sad-eyed and yelping, to More 4. Either it has fallen out with the BBC because it made a mess on the living-room carpet or the branding barks a little too loudly for a public-service broadcaster. The slogan "think sofas, think DFS" around the arena at Birmingham's NEC certainly had me thinking sofas, and not before time, what with the DFS winter sale ending in just three days. Fortunately, in a bizarre twist of fate, the spring sale started two days ago.

Sponsorship or not, More 4 has wisely maintained a link with Crufts' BBC days by retaining the puppy-dog enthusiasm, bright eyes and glossy coat of the indefatigable presenter Clare Balding, who I believe may have travelled all the way to the assignment with her head sticking out of the car window.

She bounded into the NEC at the end of a strange week for dogs. It began with news footage of toddlers' scarred legs and man's best friend being rapped on the snout, told to sit and have microchips fitted, like a tin of Tesco beans. It ended with some positive PR for the species at their annual shindig, where they were cooed over, petted, praised wildly and generally given a level of care and attention rarely lavished on a human outside of a barmitzvah in Los Angeles.

Not that Clare, who can be quite a tenacious newshound, was unaware of the controversy surrounding dog breeding. She was eager to stress this was now a politically correct Crufts where the emphasis would be on "happy, healthy" dogs rather than the pompadoured freaks of nature that have sometimes won in the past.

She raised the issue of micro-chipping with her guest, the vet Marc Abrahams, who was very much in favour, and said the dogs mostly did not mind it either. This recalled for me one of my favourite jokes, probably unsuitable for quoting family website like this, the punchline of which runs: "Well, give him a dog biscuit and he might let you."

For those of us who remain neutral about dogs – dognostics, if you will – Crufts is as strange and foreign a ritual as the Khangai Mountains Yak Festival (an annual event in Mongolia which I expect to see on Transworld Sport soon), and is difficult to view without an ironically raised eyebrow. As Christopher Guest underlined in Best in Show, his very funny spoof documentary – dogumentary, if you will – for us it is more about the humans than the animals.

When it comes to that richly comic sequence where the dogs run round the parade ring to be judged, with their owners holding the lead, trying to keep up, often wearing clothing entirely unsuitable for a vigorous jog, and the commentator Frank Kane says, "Beautiful substance, strong shoulders, lovely outline, slight slope from the withers," there is very little chance I will be looking at the dog.

What is it, you wonder, about these doggy types that they will buy their pet the latest protective clothing, whatever the cost, to keep it from catching a chill, and make sure it eats only the finest nutrients, yet not invest in a sports bra for themselves (and the women are just as bad)? As Jerry Seinfeld says, if a visitor from outer space were to observe a dog walking round a park with its human attendant following behind, scooping, it would report back that this planet is under canine control.

The dogs do sport too, taking part in a game called flyball, a relay race contested by teams with names like Wilmslow Wagtails and Warrington Woofers, and proving themselves rather easier to drill than the 20 young unemployed men whom Scott Quinnell and Will Greenwood are trying to mould into a rugby union team in the Sky Sports reality show School of Hard Knocks.

As a confidence-building exercise, the team members were taken to mock job interviews this week. If you have ever lain awake at night wondering what happened to the Apprentice winner Lee McQueen, who did the so-called "reverse pterodactyl" impression (no, me neither), here he was — he is a "development director" now — quizzing the lads. One was asked about his poor timekeeping and said he was only ever late when he had a valid excuse, "like when the police break down your door and are all over the place looking for drugs".

Lee and his colleagues reckoned the mention of police raids and drugs at the first interview stage might have been something of an own goal, the kind of strategic error your well-bred pomeranian sheepdog would never make.

Milan is probably one of the most brand-obsessed cities in Europe, says Yvan Rodic

Bang Goes the Theory | Dispatches: Children Of Gaza | Panorama | Man V Food

Bang Goes the Theory

7.30pm, BBC1

Too old for Blue Peter, missing Tomorrow's World, and longing for a Clarkson-free Top Gear? Chuck all the above in a blender and you end up with this: pop science with a youthful grin. Served chilled. Tonight, Jem Stansfield aims to trump Jeremy Clarkson's land speed record for fire extinguisher-propelled go-karting. It's fast all right, but what it needs is a bit of oomph after it tails off at 30mph. "Nothing like a bit of second-stage thrust!" squeals co-presenter Liz, disconcertingly. Can he pull it off?

Dispatches: Children Of Gaza

8pm, Channel 4

Jezza Neumann's film captures the human consequences of political actions, in this case the aftermath of Israel's assault on Gaza at the end of 2008. He follows the lives of three children for a year. Nine-year-old Amal has shrapnel lodged in her skull, which requires an operation that can only be performed in Israel. Ibraheem is an 11-year-old from a family of fishermen who helps his uncles fish in the permitted two-mile strip of sea. And Omsyate, also 11, struggles with her new life, living in a tent after her house was bulldozed and her little brother was shot dead. Panorama

8.30pm, BBC1

Are The Net Police Coming For You? refers to the government's proposals to tackle web piracy by slowing down or cutting off the internet connection of persistent offenders. The UK's "creative industries" claim it costs them £400m a year, but critics accuse the government of pandering to a powerful business lobby. Jo Whiley hears the well-rehearsed arguments; the X Factor's Louis Walsh reckons someone has to pay for it somewhere, while the people's troubadour Billy Bragg says, "The music industry is thriving. It's the record industry that is dying."

Man V Food

9pm, Good Food

A new show in which food fanatic and heart-attack-waiting-to-happen Adam Richman scours the US for the biggest food-eating challenges. He starts off in search of the Sasquatch, a burger almost as fantastical as the mythical beast it's named after: "4lb of burger, over 1 ¹/₂lb of toppings and a 2lb homemade bun the size of a barstool cushion." It's the kind of food only Homer Simpson could manage and Richman has to eat the whole thing in an hour, something only four people have ever achieved – although they don't say whether or not they actually survived.

This week saw the first three-way kidney transplant, in which living donors gave to a stranger in return for an organ for a loved one. Peter Martin, who donated a kidney to his sister, describes how it feels

Four years ago I gave my sister Paula a kidney. It was just before Christmas and I'm sure we exchanged books, or knitwear or something too, but the details of the gifts we wrapped remain sketchy. The kidney (her kidney, now) is doing fine work filtering impurities from her blood. I don't think she works it as hard as I did, so things have worked out well for both of them.

When she was 21, Paula had an allergic reaction to penicillin that caused her immune system to attack her skin and kidneys. It began with pinprick sensations around her lower legs, and within two days both her ankles and knees had seized up. These unpleasant symptoms were followed by much more serious kidney problems. When she told me that she might need a kidney one day and that I was a potential candidate, I said OK and forgot about it. It was another 10 years before her deteriorating kidneys narrowed her options to either dialysis or a pre-emptive transplant.

I was happy to attend the first, crucial blood test, though I was less than keen on a major operation and the possibility of three months' unpaid convalescence. I wanted to help, but I also wanted my life to continue undisturbed. There was a part of me that hoped I would be ruled out of the donor process, and thought that mum or dad would be better candidates. My reluctance made me ashamed.

The outcome I feared most was the blood tests ruling out my parents, leaving me the only suitable candidate. You're constantly told no one will think any less of you if you say you don't want to donate, but who could refuse when to do so would announce one's unsurpassed selfishness to the world? (I later met a woman who donated a kidney to one of her sisters; a third sister had not only refused to be tested but had encouraged the donor not to be tested either.)

It turned out my parents and I were all good matches. I started to take time to talk to friends about my feelings, doing my best not to sound selfish, even though that's how I felt. I asked one, "What if I say no?" He didn't hesitate, "You won't say no. You'll do it, and it won't be a big deal." He was mostly right.

Over the next month or two, to their bitter disappointment, my parents were both ruled out on medical grounds. My reaction surprised me: I was happy. Now the only candidate, my ambivalence vanished. I felt relieved that neither of my parents would have to undergo a big operation – I'd been so busy agonising about my own tangled feelings that I hadn't thought about them.

Further tests had made it clear that I was a very good match and in great shape to face an operation. One ultrasound operator even told me my candidate kidney was "beautiful". (I bet she says that to all the donors.)

As it faded, I began to understand the roots of my initial reluctance. I was afraid of being forced to decide whether to donate because I was afraid that I might not want to, but wouldn't have the guts to say no. Now my head cleared: I did want to donate. It was a unique opportunity to do something good, and I wanted to spare my sister the risks and rituals of dialysis, and the long wait for a cadaver's kidney.

The operation itself wasn't a big deal. Because I opted for surgery they had to tell me every risk involved: risk of death? One in 5,000 (is that high or low?). Risk of chronic pain for the rest of my life? Depends on whether the surgery is open or keyhole – keyhole lessens the risk (I can't remember the exact figures, but I do remember thinking it might be better to be the one in 5,000). My upper lip wasn't stiff exactly – I had a minor freak-out when the op was delayed for a few days at the last minute – but when Paula and I were finally admitted, we managed to have a laugh. I even got to take my soon-to-be-ex-kidney to Pizza Express for a valedictory beer the evening before the op (my sister is teetotal, so for the donor kidney it was goodbye to me and goodbye to my pre-op stimulant of choice).

There were no nerves the next morning, just a series of procedures. At the last moment, before she was wheeled away, Paula said, "It's hard to say … but thank you," and gave me a hug. I managed to fire back a bright "You're welcome!", which somehow didn't spoil the moment for the orderly who was discreetly wiping his eyes. Paula's surgery was open, mine keyhole. Once she was ready for the transplant they brought me down and placed me in the theatre next door. I was anaesthetised, then the team disconnected my left kidney via two small holes in my abdomen and removed it through a larger hole in my stomach. They then popped next door and gave it to Paula, leaving her two "birth" kidneys in place.

Two days after the transplant my sister felt better than she had in two years. She stayed awake until midnight for the first time in as long as she could remember and even had rosy cheeks. She was taken off her high blood pressure tablets and managed three journeys to the double doors of the ward and back. She was home in a week.

I was home in three days, falling asleep with the unfinished crossword in my lap. Aside from some severe referred pain (irritation in the diaphragm causing terrible shoulder pain for reasons I still fail to understand) my recovery was quick. I could have returned to work in six weeks, but my employer, anticipating a longer convalescence, had hired someone on a three-month contract so told me to enjoy the break. I took a trip to the Lakes and fondly recall running up a hill in a state of giddy excitement.

On the night before our operations, a donor on the ward spent much of the night moaning in pain after his surgery. The next evening he was up and about, telling us he felt "euphoric". He'd donated a kidney to his nine-year-old daughter, who had been on dialysis for a year. He told us he'd woken knowing he'd done a good thing. His joy was deepened when staff told him his daughter was doing well. He stumbled off grinning, his dressing gown flapping open to reveal his shaved stomach and the freshly bandaged scars he bore with obvious pride.

My friend was right – I did it. But he got one thing wrong: it was a big deal. I don't know if I'll ever do a better thing. It was a privilege to be able to help my sister live a longer, happier life. She is doing well. I am very lucky.

Not unless you think Crocs, an anorak and a cowboy shirt is a good look

I am angry. Fashion angry! There is a policy in my workplace that I feel is reverse discrimination. Although all staff are asked to dress smartly, only men are asked to wear a collar. I have smart jumpers and T-shirts that I feel would be suitable, but the company disagrees. The office womenfolk on the other hand can wear what they like, and I see everything from Topshop floral dresses to H&M vest tops to knock-off Chanel suits. Why can this fashion liberty not be extended to the less fair sex?

Name withheld by editorial decision

Now, before we deal with the anger – fashion anger – I think we have to deal with the interesting story behind this letter. For this is not just any letter, readers – it's not even just an M&S letter – it's a letter from a rival news- paper. That's right; such was this correspondent's sense of anger with his employer, or desire to self-sabotage, that he sent it from his work email address, with his name, address and job title affixed to the bottom.

Well, this column was astounded (and impressed – we don't have that job title thingy attached to our emails). And a little flummoxed: who would have expected our female rivals at this very downmarket rag to have the nous to wear Chanel-style suits, knock-off or not? H&M vests sound about right, Topshop floral dresses – sure, at a push. But the legacy of Coco? Living on in cough, cough? Golly. Even more unfathomable is the idea of a newspaper with a male dress code, but that might be because, in my office, a hint of polish on a brown shoe is seen not so much as pushing the boat out as requisitioning the whole fleet.

Anyway, after much gleeful gazing upon the hard kernel of power now lying in my hand, which could (possibly) allow me to bring down a rival paper and (more likely) get a correspondent into mortal trouble at work, my inner Sesame Street muppet reared its head and said: "Hey! Don't print his name. Be nice! And always share your toys!"

So anyway, thoughtfully anonymised correspondent, to your query. As much as it does not behove me to defend a rival paper's policy, I must confess that I agree with it. Give a man an inch in the fashion stakes and he will take a mile, some Crocs, an ugly, brightly coloured messenger bag, and probably an anorak, too. Men need strictly controlled perimeters in which to dress. Women don't. This is not (entirely) men's fault, but a result of men's high-street options being so dire that they are apt to go astray and rock up at work one day in a cowboy shirt because Topman told them it was a good idea.

So in this instance, oh rebellious journalist colleague, I must counsel you to break your career-long habit of questioning authority, gritting your teeth against the winds of established wisdom, and just kowtow to the man, dude. In this instance, he knows best.

Oh, you don't like your fashion choices being dictated by others for the sake of propriety? You feel that the other sex get an easier ride? Resent being the patronised sex? Anonymous correspondent, welcome to life as a woman. Who would have expected such a gender-bender experimentation and open-minded busting of cultural conventions from cough, cough, cough.

I have recently noticed that a large percentage of male cyclists have adopted baggy, just-below-the-knee shorts with black woollen leggings beneath. You must know people. Please, please pull strings.

Neil, by email

I do know people, Neil, but I don't know if any of these people have the necessary power to rectify the international blight that is bicycle-wear. I move in very humble circles.

Now, this is turning out to be a very conformist week for this column because, after defending a rival paper's fashion policy, I'm now going to defend this cycling look and, believe you me, I have about as much empathy with cyclists as I do with far inferior so-called rivals. Nonetheless, let's consider what the alternative would be to this, admittedly, upsetting doubled-up trouser look, Neil. On the one hand, just the shorts: it could get a little breezy for some parts of the anatomy, if you catch my drift. On the other, just the leggings: a bit too much "and here's the shape of what I have to offer", if you catch this second drift.

So really, it is a question of welcoming rare modesty from the cycling community, Neil, and this week, wearing a conformist cap (I'm thinking a bit of Maoist chic here), I welcome the conservatism.

• Post your questions to Hadley Freeman, Ask Hadley, The Guardian, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London N1 9GU. Email ask.hadley@guardian.co.uk

From Elle Macpherson's feminine minimalism to Karen Millen's fringed flats to a new unisex fragrance – and more

Lazy but you want to be liked? Then you'll find yourself paying the Nice Tax, just like we did

We came out of Colchester station at 10.30 on a Monday night. There she was, babbling into her phone, a wild-eyed, mini-skirted girl in her 20s, with a woollen tartan cap. The next time we saw her, a minute later, she was rushing up to us in the station car park, telling us how relieved she was to see a man with a woman, as she'd just approached a man on his own and he'd immediately "been sexual". My sexlessness aside, though, what did she want? The answer, of course, was that she wanted to tell us a story.

She told us she had to go to Kelvedon – two stops from Colchester – but didn't have enough money for the journey. She was, she assured us, "not a scallywag". We could come with her to the booking office, where they'd confirm she'd asked for a ticket. All she needed was "two or three quid".

By coincidence, I'd spent the earlier part of the day with an independent radio producer, working on 300-word story outlines to pitch to BBC radio, to persuade them to fund me to write scripts. I could see little difference between me and the girl in the tartan cap; except that my wife and I had two or three quid and I'm not sure that BBC radio does.

Speaking professionally, I'd say the girl's pitch was pretty damn good. The early mention of the sexual predator drew us in and made us feel for her. The reference to the booking office was a reassuring detail. The assertion that she wasn't a "scallywag" showed empathy – at that very moment, we were wondering if she was a scallywag.

Was she telling the truth, though? Some might say her pitch was too artful to be believed. A truly desperate person wouldn't have been so polished. Then again, we weren't the first people to whom she'd pitched. (There was definitely the sexual man, and possibly others before him.) You can't blame her for getting good with practice.

As I reached for my wallet for the three quid, though, her pitch changed. She no longer needed three. Actually, she said, she needed five or six. Did this outburst of greed make her entire story unbelievable? No. Greed, as any banker will tell you, is not necessarily the mark of a liar. Her greed didn't mean she wasn't going to Kelvedon. It was just that, now we were giving her some money, how about some extra towards some chips, say, or a cab ride home from Kelvedon station?

Three quid now seemed a bargain, given that what she really wanted was six, but my wife said we'd give her two. She could get the remainder from someone else. What a woman. (My wife, that is.) If the story was a con, we'd wasted only two quid. And if the story was true, we'd allowed someone else to join us in donating to a good cause. We'd started a charity bandwagon that would take this girl all the way to Kelvedon.

Later, as we drove off, I looked through the window of the booking office. She wasn't there. Maybe she was raising the rest of her fare. Maybe she was already on the platform. I doubted it. Anger and self-loathing had kicked in. Never mind that we were talking about only two quid. Forget the "only". We'd given her two hard-earned, shiny pound coins so she could buy drugs. (It's always drugs, isn't it?)

Why had we been so nice? I'll tell you. Nice guys finish last and pay up first for the same two reasons: they want to be liked and they're lazy. All we had to do was accompany her to that booking office, as she herself had (bluffingly?) suggested, pay what it took to get her that ticket, walk with her to the barrier and watch her go through it, safe in the knowledge that no dealer gives you drugs in exchange for a Colchester-Kelvedon train ticket. Instead, we paid our two quid – our Nice Tax – and saved ourselves the bother. Who wants to spend their life thinking and acting like a detective, with 24-hour suspicion and mistrust coursing through their veins? Far better to pay up, lazily, without question. I only hope that BBC radio feels the same.

Jon Canter is a novelist and scriptwriter

Last year was supposed to have been the end of the super-thin supermodel. So why were the collarbones and hollow necks back on the catwalk again at this year's shows?

In 2009, as the leaves turned orange, and autumn met winter, it seemed as though a new trend was taking hold in fashion. After year upon year of emaciated young women stalking the catwalks, a new breed was in the spotlight. These weren't the fetishised fat women we'd occasionally seen before – they didn't resemble Beth Ditto, naked, on the cover of Love magazine, her rolls of flesh beautiful, but much more bountiful, than any average woman's. They didn't signal the industry replacing one extreme body shape with another. Instead, they were that unlikely sight, a vision that made people double take. They were women with healthy, normal bodies.

Hayley Morley, a size 12, took to the catwalk for knitwear designer Mark Fast. Lizzie Miller, a size 14, caused a furore when pictured naked with a roll of stomach flesh in US Glamour magazine. And then there was the size 16 supermodel, Crystal Renn, who published her autobiography Hungry, and appeared in Vogue, Glamour and V magazine's Size Issue. Renn said that a new kind of model was emerging, "lush and sparkly with nary a jutting collarbone in sight".

Then came the latest round of autumn/winter ready-to-wear shows, which ended in Paris last week. Jutting collarbones weren't just easy to spot; they were almost ubiquitous. There were the hollowed-out necks striped with taut, rope-like tendons, straining to keep balloon-like heads aloft on childlike shoulders. There were the tiny upper arms, fragile and snappable as a bird wing stripped of feathers. And, perhaps most notably, there were the women's thighs, space gaping between them, often even slimmer at their upper reaches than at the stark, bony knees. In some cases, it was hard to fathom how the women could walk. There were a couple of shows – Louis Vuitton and Prada – where healthier bodies were on display. But they were the exceptions; and anyway they weren't a political statement, they were simply an aesthetic choice. Miucca Prada did put healthy women into that Prada show, but at her other show – her Miu Miu show – some of the models were skeletal.

Even designer from whom you might expect more, such as Stella McCartney – famous for designing trousers that real women can actually wear – put models on the catwalk who looked far too thin for comfort.

No one seems to have said a thing. After years of arguments about the extreme thinness of fashion models, after horror at the 2006 deaths of Luisel Ramos (who had fasted for several days), and Ana Carolina Reston (who died from an infection related to anorexia), after the editor of British Vogue, Alexandra Shulman, voiced her worries last year about models with "jutting bones and no breasts or hips", the debate seems to have gone eerily silent.

It's not clear why. Perhaps it's that the existence of a few healthier women has acted as a diversion, has convinced the outside world that the industry is changing. Or perhaps it's just that we're tired of talking about it. After all, emaciated women have been a fixture in fashion for at least 15 years now, since the amazonian supermodels of the late 80s and early 90s – Cindy Crawford, Linda Evangelista, Naomi Campbell, Christy Turlington – made way for heroin chic and hollowed-out eyes, for an ideal of womanhood that has become thinner and thinner and thinner.

But it does seem important to point out that this is still going on, that the images of women that are multiplying around us look not just unhealthy, but in some cases horrifying. It's not that every woman on the catwalk has to be a certain size, not that they all need to be weighed at the door to the venue, but it would be a big leap forward if catwalk photographs didn't seem bound, instantly, for a pro-anorexia website. Surely that's not too much to ask?