Remember that mundane conversation you had with a friend on Twitter last week - something about a football transfer or your latest favourite gif? If you Google words from that conversation, it's fairly likely that you'll be able to find those tweets, even if you have since sent hundreds more. A Twitter conversation you had years ago can affect Google's auto-suggestion when you type in your name.

So Spirit, a new app that allows you to ensure that your tweet self-destructs by deleting after a specified amount of time, could be a welcome solution. Similar to how one can share specific tweets on Facebook (tagging them #fb after you've installed the Selective Twitter app), Spirit requires users to hashtag their tweets with how long they want them to last: #5d, #2w, #4m, and so on. It can delete tweets from only a minute after they are initially sent.

Founder Pierre Legrain explained to me that he had already seen a number of use cases emerge. Beyond the mere novelty of the app, which has seen users try and "trick" their friends by watching their tweets disappear mid-conversation (unexpectedly common), meteorologists have been showing some excitement about its potential use.

Legrain, a designer-cum-developer, explained:

"...when you are tweeting and updating people about a fast-updating situation, you want the freshest information in the network being passed around and you don't want to be contributing to misinformation... They then have explicit control."

Yet while this use case is valuable, this idea of having more explicit oversight of your information is what interests Legrain. He said that, since it launched last Wednesday, he has been fascinated by its uptake. "[People] want to put things into the public but have more control."

And in addition to this making sense, especially in light of the NSA leaks, it demonstrates how people are becoming more aware of the infinite memory of the internet. That's a good thing. Legrain wouldn't give specific details on the number of users already signed up but said that there were an average of two users signing up every minute.

The idea of a lasting digital footprint is one that is gaining increasing attention and rightly so. In America, New York mayoral candidate Anthony Weiner sparked a debate about social media use after he sent inappropriate messages through Twitter's direct messaging feature. US talk show hosts explained how male students have started to use phones to send sexual messages to girls they don't know because i) it's more uncomfortable getting rejected in person; and ii) young people believe that something sent over the internet is less "real" than saying something out loud.

The idea that text messages, Snapchats and other updates sent across the internet are less tangible than real-life conversations is worth talking about because of how widespread it is. British Youth Commissioner Paris Brown ended up leaving a "dream job" only one week after she started because of a media furore over (now deleted) tweets that could have been perceived as homophobic and offensive.

Updating a public Twitter account does not only send those updates to your followers but into the wider internet.. The same can be said for Facebook and Instagram, where a growing number of people are unwittingly sharing images. For example, do you have a cover photo? Its default setting is set to public and cannot be changed. That image can be seen by anyone who can find your profile.

And take Instagram. Anyone who quickly scans my account there could very easily figure out that I've been in New York since mid-July, have a soft spot for coffee, tea, Nutella, coconuts and Asian cuisine and that I have, at least once, played Draw Something. And that I'm awesome at it. And that's the profile of someone who's careful about what he shares online.

Despite this, such technology has a way of tricking our minds into sharing more than we're comfortable with the world knowing. A new retweet, favourite or "like" brings with it a positive sentiment and this, in turn, eases us into sharing more. Perhaps Spirit can force us to be more wary with our tweets. We'll never know now, I suppose. Literally.

I know a man who’s had sex with a prostitute, or hired a sex worker, or used a prostituted woman. (Which of these formulations you use matters, because they determine where you have flung your chips in the exploitation-or-self-determination argument.) Actually, I probably know more than one, but once you’ve introduced yourself as a feminist journalist, it’s quite rare that the next thing someone says to you is: “Let me tell you about all the brothels I’ve been to. . .”

So let’s say I know one man who’s told me about his experience as a john. This man went on a lads’ holiday, and part of the plan was for them to hire a “girl” each. One member of the party, though, had something specific in mind: he was going to do “the chocolate finger”. The chocolate finger is a sort of practical joke. You might have already guessed how it works. The punter has sex with the prostitute from behind, fingering her anus: the aim is to get the unwitting woman to suck on the bummy digit.

Now, it seems unlikely that women working in the red light district are that easily tricked, but that’s not quite the point. The point is that enjoyment from the punter’s point of view here comes from believing that he’s getting a woman to do something that she hasn’t consented to, something that wasn’t included in the fee, something that he assumes she would find disgusting. His orgasm is only a false climax on the way to the big finish, the punchline. And the punchline is delivered by him, in the pub to his mates: “I had sex with a whore, ha-ha-ha, and what’s more I got her to lick her own shit.” His pleasure comes from her humiliation.

It feels increasingly natural to talk about sex work as though it’s a simple capitalist transaction. Men (it’s assumed) generally want more sex than women, so individual women can exploit this scarcity to put a price on intercourse. This model explains why sex workers are overwhelmingly female, and the purchasers of sex even more overwhelmingly male. It’s so simple and persuasive that it can seem perverse to challenge it at all.

Catherine Hakim, whose “erotic capital” theory invites women to apply this logic to pretty much every aspect of their lives, writes airily that “the evidence from all national sex surveys points unequivocally to higher sexual motivation and lust among men generally”. Actually, those surveys could well be misleading: we live in a culture that makes female sexuality a dangerous property, and behaviour that seems negligible in a man becomes a ruinous stain on a woman. In this environment, there’s plentiful incentive for women to keep their lusts undisclosed.

That doesn’t mean women don’t have desires, though. Daniel Bergner’s book What Do Women Want? points to a body of experimental evidence that suggests women want a lot more than they ever openly confess to. Meanwhile, Julie Bindel’s report on female sex tourists for the New Statesman shows that women are more than capable of paying for it in the right circumstances – they just prefer to do it in a way that keeps the commercial exchange tastefully covert.

When men pay for sex, I think many of them are buying more than a share in a restricted resource. I think that, like the man with the chocolate finger, they’re often buying power, and the chance to exert it over women. Laura Agustin is an anthropologist who has extensively studied migration and sex work. She takes a radical harm-reduction approach and is dismissive of structural analyses, chiding feminist condemnation of the sex industry for failing to recognise “that women who sell sex can be rational, ordinary, pragmatic and autonomous.”

Well, I recognise it. I’m fully aware that selling sex can be rational, ordinary, pragmatic. In the main, prostitution strikes me as less like a marginal activity and more the clearest distillation of a chauvinist logic that says female desire is only allowed to exist under male licence: the sex worker consents when the client pays her to. It’s not that I think, in Agustin’s words, that “women who sell sex are actually (and deplorably) different from women who don’t.” It’s that I know we’re all subject to the same controlling order.

Those in prostitution are often exposed to the very worst of that order, and I believe strongly that everyone who sells sex should be safe. I’m willing to weigh up in nerdy detail the effects of different forms of ban, decriminalisation and regulation when it comes to securing that safety. But in at the same time, I want to be able to ask what it is that makes selling sex a rational choice for women when men appear to have other options. A world where it makes sense for women to offer themselves as consumables rather than equals is probably a fundamentally shitty world; and why should we accept shittiness as inevitable?

Movers and sheikhas

Gulf of misunderstanding

The difference is Doha

Majority minorities

The Ministry of Sound is suing Spotify for letting users make and share playlists which mirror the record label's compilation CDs, the Guardian's Stuart Dredge reports:

Ministry of Sound launched proceedings in the UK High Court on Monday, and is seeking an injunction requiring Spotify to remove these playlists and to permanently block other playlists that copy its compilations. The company is also seeking damages and costs.

Chief executive Lohan Presencer claims that his company has been asking Spotify to remove the playlists – some of which include "Ministry of Sound" in their titles – since 2012.

"It's been incredibly frustrating: we think it's been very clear what we're arguing, but there has been a brick wall from Spotify," said Presencer.

The news has been reported with a faint tone of derision, but it really isn't outrageous to suggest that copyright law might cover playlists.

After all, the selection and ordering of artistic works is itself a form of art. That may not be immediately obvious in the case of a Ministry of Sound compilation, but it's far more evident when looking at something like the Oxford Book of English Verse, or the annual Best American Comics anthology.

Almost every type of human creative action has been covered by copyright law. That includes maps, mathematical tables, and, since a Supreme Court case earlier this year, newspaper headlines. Part of the reason why society has yet to fall apart in lawsuit upon lawsuit is that copyright protection isn't absolute, like patent protection or trademarks are. If I invent a widget only to discover it's already patented, then I'm out of luck: the person who got there first owns the concept. But if I write a novel only to discover that someone else used the same concept, I'm in a better position. So long as I can prove that I wasn't actively copying the story, I should be safe.

(The easiest way to do that is to show I haven't read the other book, which is part of the reason JK Rowling won't read your ideas for Harry Potter sequels. But only part.)

There's a similar application of the law behind the old concept of "trap streets", streets shown on a map which don't actually exist in reality. If my map shows the invented "Thief Road" and then yours comes out a year later also showing Thief Road, I can be pretty sure that you didn't go out and make a record of every street – instead, you just copied mine.

So the real problem for Spotify is that their users aren't particularly shy about where they got their playlists from:

Whether Ministry of Sound can sue is a different question from whether they should sue, though. Some might say that, in an age where anyone can put together a playlist of 40 popular dubstep tracks in a matter of seconds, the label's business model of doing much the same thing but with a bit of cross-fading may be one worth consigning to the dustbin of history. Going out in a blaze of lawsuits just looks a bit tacky, really.

It's back-to-school week in Politicoland, with party conference season - traditionally the magazine's busiest time - on the horizon. 

And here at the New Statesman website, we're undergoing a few changes, too. In August, we had record traffic figures yet again: 1.84 million unique visitors and 3.8 million pageviews (compared with just over a million visitors and 2.6m pageviews for the same month in 2012). That is down to our phenomenal in-house team - web editor Caroline Crampton, Staggers editor George Eaton, business blogger Martha Gill and economics blogger Alex Hern. Sadly, Alex is leaving us for the Guardian tomorrow, but he will be replaced by a dedicated Science/Tech blogger very soon. 

We're also saying goodbye to David Allen Green, who has been an outstandingly successful legal blogger at the New Statesman, writing on libel reform, the myths around the extradition of Julian Assange, the outing of the police blogger Nightjack, and many other stories. He will be taking up a role at the Financial Times, and we wish him all the best. 

At the same time, we're saying hello to two new hires: Sarah Ditum and Jonn Elledge. Both have written for the website for several months now, covering everything from the foibles of Iain Duncan Smith to why parcel delivery companies are so useless. Ian Leslie, author of the popular Marbury blog and the book Born Liars, will also be contributing a monthly online column. 

You can also hear from our bloggers on our weekly podcast, which can be downloaded on iTunes, or from the website here.

Economical with the truth

Market forces

The dark ages

GMB general secretary Paul Kenny chose to feign innocence when he arrived at Portcullis House for his meeting with Ed Miliband earlier today, the day after his union announced that it was cutting its affiliation fees to Labour from £1.2m to £150,000. "What's all the fuss over? All we're doing, if you like, is going towards what Ed says he wants," he remarked. 

But as Kenny knows, the objection is that he has pre-emptively disaffiliated 88% of the union's political levy-payers from Labour, rather than trying to persuade more to sign up once an opt-in system is introduced. It was an unambiguous vote of no confidence in Miliband's reforms.

In its statement yesterday, the GMB, the third-largest union, also warned of "further reductions in spending on Labour party campaigns and initiatives". For Labour, which relies on large one-off donations from the unions to fund its general election campaigns, it was an ominous threat. 

Privately, however, some in the party are more sanguine. They regard Kenny's move as a negotiating tactic designed to deter Miliband from reducing the unions' voting power in leadership elections and at party conferences. The GMB is not due to implement the funding cut until January, leaving Miliband wtih time to reach an agreement. But the dilemma is already becoming clear: does Miliband pursue comprehensive change and risk losing even more funding, or does he compromise and risk being accused of bottling reform? 

In the summer of 1972, in school playgrounds the length and breadth of the land, prefabs sprouted. After nearly a decade of ministerial dithering, the government had finally raised the school leaving age, to 16, and made parents legally liable for ensuring their kids stayed in the classroom. Those flat-pack buildings were the result: a physical manifestation of the fact that schools suddenly found themselves dealing with a lot of kids that they would previously have expected to bugger off.

Four decades later, the leaving age has risen again: as of this month, teenagers are legally required to stay in education until the academic year of their 17th birthday. In two years time, it goes up again, to 18.

This time, though, the change hasn’t been quite so conspicuous. In fact, unless you work in education, or have a 16 year old of your own to contend with, its possible you won't even have noticed (a survey reported last week showed that a quarter of parents hadn’t). To give you a sense of exactly how visible this seismic change in our education system has been, here is a brief précis of every major speech a coalition education minister has given on the topic:

There haven't been any.

To be fair, this isn't a coalition policy, but a Labour one, enacted into law back in 2008. What's more, the parallels with the class of '72 are not exact. Forty years ago, it was the school leaving age that was going up: that meant desks and exams and bits of chalk and so on. Today, it's the education participation age. That could mean A-levels, but it can also mean vocational courses, or apprenticeships, or a job with a certain amount of training.

Under this broader definition, most 16 year olds already do stay in education: at the end of 2011, just 5.5 per cent of them had left the system. (A year later, this had risen slightly, to 5.8 per cent. Great start, guys.) Nonetheless, that figure still covers several thousand kids who'd previously have left education but are now expected to remain. This, one might think, would be something ministers might want us to know about. Not a bit of it, though.

One good reason for ministers' silence might be the nature of their plans to actually make sure kids stay in education: they don’t have any.

Part of the problem is money. The Institute for Fiscal Studies said two years ago that 16-19 education spending would fall by 20 per cent over the life of this parliament. To make things tougher still, appealing to that last five per cent probably means vocational training – and the equipment required for such courses is generally more expensive than that required for, say, English A-level.

The lack of funding probably won't be that big a problem, though, because the government isn't planning to enforce the new law anyway. When Labour first introduced the plan, ministers talked about “carrots and sticks”, but seemed to be a lot more keen on the latter, in the form of £50 fines and criminal records for those who played hooky. The coalition, though, isn’t bothering with any of this. Kids who drop out of education won't face any sanctions. Nor will their parents. Nor will employers who hire them but don't offer the requisite 280 hours a year of training. The raising of the participation age is almost entirely notional.

It'd be unfair to say the government is doing nothing. It is, slowly, reforming the perplexing potpourri of vocational qualifications. It's introducing "traineeships", basic skills courses intended to get teenagers ready for full apprenticeships. These things will help at the margins – but nonetheless, the coalition's actions are not those of a government that is serious about ensuring that every teenager stays in education for another year.

And this, remember, is the easy bit. While 94 per cent of 16 year olds are in education, and 93 per cent of 17 year olds, that number drops to less than 85 per cent of 18 year olds. The increase in the leaving age this year will be hard to deliver. The next one, due in 2015, will be damned near impossible.

In the past, each time the school leaving age has increased, hysterical opponents warned that the result would be truancy, or schools chock full of kids so unwilling that classrooms would look like the set of A Clockwork Orange. Each time, those opponents were proved wrong. Perhaps, it'll be the same this time.

But perhaps, it won't. In 1972, those prefabs were also a reminder that kids didn't have to actually do anything to stay in school: all they had to do keep turning up. This time round, though, they have to navigate a dizzying array of options, and make an active decision about their future. It'd be a brave education minister who assumed inertia would be enough to make the policy a success – or, perhaps, an indifferent one.

Whenever we talk to low-income families about welfare reform, they always ask the same question: when will I be moved on to Universal Credit? The National Audit Office’s report on the new benefit published today suggests the answer could be like picking petals off a flower: this year, next year, some time, never…

The report provides a forensic exposition of Universal Credit to date. It documents how the government had to 'reset' UC earlier this year because of the Major Project Authority’s concerns about the programme implementation, how DWP has had to scale back its ambitions with respect to the pilots launched in April and how the vital IT systems that underpin UC are woefully under-developed, forcing the department to abandon the planned national roll-out this October. 

It’s a controlled but withering assessment, which contrasts sharply with the rosy picture the Secretary of State and his officials gave to the work and pensions committee only a few weeks ago.

Why so many problems? Reading between the lines, the report suggests that many of UC’s difficulties stem from the fact that the project has marched to the beat of the political drum, rather than the more sober tempo of sound programme management principles. As the NAO tactfully puts it, "The Department was not able to explain to us how it originally decided on October 2013 or evaluated the feasibility of roll-out by this date". Traditional management approaches would have indicated an April 2015 launch instead.

In the scrabble to honour ministerial commitments, the DWP has had to cut many corners. The report shows that time and again, the UC team has departed from the original brief in order to deliver to deadline. The pilots were radically reduced in scope and size, for example, and the national roll-out has been scaled back to just six new pathfinder sites. 

But these short-cuts have profound implications for the future progress of UC. The IT that supports the 1,000 or so claimants currently trialling the new benefit has cost the department £303m to date, yet is so primitive that the NAO questions whether it can form the basis of the national system. DWP has already had to write off £34m of new IT assets as not fit for purpose, with the report suggesting that other UC investments could prove equally redundant in the longer term.

In working to deliver to an arbitrary timetable, then, DWP has hunkered down and developed a fortress mentality. But in the meantime, those low-income families set to gain under Universal Credit are left waiting. Let’s hope that for their sake, the NAO report, with its robust suggestions for remedial action, can penetrate the departmental defences.

A small group of workers gather in a dingy pub in central London. It's the middle of a bright morning, but these young cinema staff don't want to be seen. Months after their fight against their employer Curzon was first published in the New Statesman, they are still campaigning for three basic rights: a living wage, stable employment contracts and the recognition of their union. So far, all three of these demands have been refused.

"Leafleting and striking are all on the cards," says Lee, one of the frontline staff. "There will be a response. We want to be positive; we won't do anything without reason. The ball is in their court. We'd love them to take our concerns seriously. We're still up for a conversation."

Located in areas like Mayfair, Chelsea and Soho, Lee works in the box office to serve the capital's liberal intelligentsia who enjoy watching progressive, free-thinking films with an anti-capitalist edge. But if they knew about the conditions of Lee's seven pound an hour work, they might be less keen to come. Although Lee has worked at the Curzon for over eight years, his weekly pay packet leaves him on the edge.

"I have a very small clothing budget, about £50 a year. I get past the weekend and I don't spend any money for the end three days (until pay day). If I need to eat I bring something from home, but generally I buy a lunch for £4 and eat half for lunch and half for dinner."

"It's quite common for the workers here to buy a bag of chips and share them. That's all I have. A bag costs £2, so that's £1 each and I won't have anything else for the rest of the night."

Lee is particularly vulnerable because he also has caring responsibilities for his family, a role which he shuffles around his shifts.

"I got into several thousand pounds of debt (working at the Curzon) and it took five years to pay it off. I had a more expensive rent then and it just built up. If you suddenly have to travel somewhere for family reasons, that's another expense you can't help. Now I'm back on top but we all know the cost of living is going up and if anything changes. I'm on a zero hour contract, I'm going to the media - there's a lot of risks there."

Like one million other people in this country, frontline Curzon workers are employed on zero hour contracts. Those that have been working for more than a few years usually develop a few days work they can rely on, but this informal regularity could be swept away at any time without justification.

As Gus Baker, an organising official from BECTU working with Curzon staff put it, "Zero hours are used as a threat by management - it's like saying you can work these hours, but only if you don't play up."

One worker, let's call her Anna, recently had her hours cut by 20 per cent. Although she had worked at the chain for years and had come to rely on those shifts - unlike more recent employees who scrabble for hours announced at the beginning of each week via email - she was given just three days notice of the change.

"I was angry, because I was trying to create stability and work out what I had to spend every week," she says, "And there was no time to think about it or find something else."

I ask the workers around the table - who come from different branches across London - whether any of them had kids or were thinking about starting a family. The question is met with laughter.

"I can't afford kids!" says a third worker, David. "I would have them if I could but it's out of the question. It's definitely to do with money. You just don't start to think about it because you just know."

The average age of Curzon workers is 22, so for most this is ok. But for workers now in their thirties, things are getting difficult.  Staff say it's hard to find alternative work, because you have to grab hours where you can, even if they clash with interviews and training for new jobs that might give you a better deal in the long term.

Anna is in a better situation than most, but her hours still fluctuate from anywhere between twenty-five to forty-five hours a week. She generally says she earns between 650-950 a month. As for her outgoings, she has to pay £560 a month for rent and bills. Combine that with £140 a month tube travel and £150 a month on food, and you can see she barely breaks even. A sudden unexpected cost tips her over the edge, and many workers report having to move. For those with families abroad, the travel costs are prohibitive.

Workers across all Curzon cinema chains have had enough. A year ago these young, white-collar workers on insecure contracts became some of the first frontline cinema workers to get organised in this country, and they joined the union BECTU. Now union reps say that some 45 per cent of Curzon workers have joined - no small commitment when it costs £5 a month - and a recent survey across the company's eight cinemas found 70 per cent in favour of the union being recognised. So far 1,500 have signed the petition, including famous progressive directors like Mike Leigh.

"For me joining BECTU wasn't just about the pay rise," says Anna, "It wasn't about any one issue. The union can offer me a hearing (on a variety of issues), and a real voice in the company."

Despite this, Curzon's management still refuses to recognise the union. Bosses say that they need to verify the names of union staff members first, but the union doesn't want to hand over names which they feel would put members at risk from retaliation, and have instead called for Curzon to work through ACAS. Now they're at a stalemate, and BECTU is trying to force recognition through the courts.

Meanwhile, relationships with workers are fast becoming fraught. The company set up a "Forum" for workers to air their views, but the workers have started boycotting this because they thought it was "patronising" and failed to make any concrete agreements or get back to workers in a reasonable time frame.

"The head of human resources said she was disappointed about the bad press," said David, "Why wasn't she saddened by our conditions of pay? It was obvious to all of us that these talks and presentations were for their benefit not ours."

Although staff defend their day to day managers - who they say are doing their best under difficult orders - they are furious with the senior management at the head of the company. Rumours are spreading that these top managers are spending an exorbitant amount on consultancy fees, and went out of London for a punting trip last year, and bowling in the capital this year. As David put it, "Wouldn't it be nice for the cinema workers to be invited too?"

When all of the above allegations were put to Curzon, they provided the following response, which is here reproduced in full:

As a company, we recognise the critical role our employees play in delivering the Curzon experience. Our employees have always been - and will continue to be - a point of differentiation for Curzon. Having a knowledgeable, engaged and enthusiastic team is an integral part of our curated offering.*

We recognise and are aware that we have some dissatisfied employees and as a responsible employer we recently set up a democratically elected Employee Forum, which enables our employees to talk to us openly and give us feedback about their experiences working for Curzon. In turn, we ask for input on proposed policies and procedures.

We rarely place job adverts and we have a very low turnover of staff because the brand means something to people working in the film industry. In the coming months we intend to build on this by increasing hourly paid staff rates by 5.7% for all Front of House London employees and significantly ahead of minimum wage rates, a review of zero hour contracts on a cinema-by-cinema basis, the introduction of a benefits package for all staff later in the year and a commitment to begin a pension scheme by April 2014.

Zero hour contracts are standard practice across the leisure and hospitality industry but we deplore the misuse of such contracts. As a company we use zero hours contracts responsibly: employees are consulted on their availability, given advance notice of rotas, work consistent weekly hours and, with the exception of emergencies, are not required to attend work at short notice. Employees across the company, regardless of their contract, are entitled to the same benefits such as holiday and free cinema tickets. Our employees are paid weekly, which ensures that they receive a regular income.

We are also actively looking to expand and we wish to do so by providing enhanced employee opportunities to our current employees at existing and new Curzon Cinemas.

As for the workers, they aren't satisfied with this response. In particular, they point out that the much of the pay rise given was scheduled to happen anyway with inflation, and the rates they do get now are still well below the living wage.

But these workers are not going to give up. Despite difficult working conditions across different cinemas with odd hours and little time, no money or HQ, they are growing the union membership and getting more organised. They've even started meeting workers from the cinema chain Everyman, who are in a similar position. The aim is to improve conditions not just here, but across the board.

"I think head office's treatment of us is shocking, particularly given their image (as a progressive cinema chain)" says Lee, "The idea that they would not even recognise my right to join a union is disgusting. They have an opportunity to turn this around and set a good example. It's up to them.

They (the Curzon) would be an ideal company to lead the living wage. They can afford to do it, and they can make other companies follow."

All names have been changed to protect identities

A vaccine against HIV – the deadly virus responsible for 35,000 deaths worldwide – looked a bit more viable this week as researchers from Canada hailed an early trial of a vaccine for the infection a major success. Researchers at the University of Western Ontario in a Phase I study of the HIV-1 vaccine (SAV001-H), the first stage of human testing of a drug, found the vaccine produced no adverse effects in all patients.

This particular vaccine, developed by Dr. Chil-Yong Kang and his team at the University’s Schulich School of Medicine & Dentistry with the support of Sumagen Canada, is especially unique because it is the first and only preventative HIV vaccine based on a genetically modified killed whole virus – a similar technique used for vaccines for polio, influenza and rabies, among others.

"We infect the cells with a genetically modified HIV-1", Kang said in an interview with Ontario Business Report.

 "The infected cells produce lots of virus, which we collect, purify and inactivate so that the vaccine won’t cause AIDS in recipients, but will trigger immune responses."

One of the key benefits of genetically engineering the vaccine is it is safer and can be produced in large quantities, which will be a vital component if the vaccine is to have future success. From March 2012 to August 2013 the vaccine was tested for safety in humans; a major hurdle the vaccine needed to overcome in order to move on to more advanced testing phases.

The vaccine and a placebo was given to HIV-infected, asymptomatic men and women and after monitoring the patients for 52 weeks no adverse side effects were reported. However, the vaccine is still in very early stages of development. It will now have to go on to Phase II testing, which will measure the actual effectiveness of the vaccine in prompting immune response, and then further Phase III testing, before it can ever become a viable treatment prospect.

Nevertheless, it is so far proving more successful than other vaccines. Since HIV was characterised in 1983 there have been numerous trials through pharmaceutical companies and academic institutions around the world to develop vaccines; but to date there is not a successful on produced. However, in the last decade scientists’ clinical work has resulted in some major breakthroughs in the treatment of HIV.

In March French researchers said that if caught early and treated aggressively, antiviral drugs could functionally cure about one in 10 infected. The claim was made after the researchers analysed 14 people who stopped therapy, but have since shown no signs of the virus resurging.

Later, in July, researchers announced at the International Aids Society Conference that two HIV-positive patients had been taken off their anti-retroviral drugs after bone marrow transplants seemed to clear the virus from their bodies, although they stressed it was too early to say if they were cured.

These are all early but hugely encouraging studies that show the fight against HIV is making progress. Could we see the spread of HIV be diminished by the next generation? It may be a possibility.

 In April the Department of Health launched a campaign along with the Terrence Higgins Trust called "It Starts With Me" to get people tested for HIV earlier. They said due to the effectives of modern drug treatment, which reduces the virus in the body to undetectable levels, it is much harder to pass it on. But testing in the first instance is the key to ending the spread of the virus.

At its launch Sir Nick Partridge, chief executive at the Terrence Higgins Trust, also involved in the campaign, told the BBC: "While a cure or vaccine for HIV remains stubbornly out of reach, what many people don't realise is that medical advances mean it is now within our grasp to stop the virus in its tracks."

I will rape you. Fucking pathetic slut.

I will shove a 3 foot pole in your vagina. You deserve nothing, but pain. 

U fucking spanish dirty hooker. 

I had been off Twitter for much of the morning. When I returned, these tweets were just three of a stream of abusive messages I received from a single account earlier today. As has become habit, I screencapped them, and prepared to email them to the police investigating my ongoing case.

But when I looked at my inbox, I found an email already there. It was from a police officer, asking me to approve a statement which he had attached along with some screencapped evidence. I read over the statement and made a few changes. Then I looked at the accompanying evidence, and was surprised to find only two relatively innocuous tweets to me included. I emailed the police officer back, asking why this was, given this particular user had sent me multiple threats from multiple accounts. The response came back: this is all we have from you. 

How can I describe the way that made me feel? I knew I had sent more than that to the police - far more. I remembered that the police had originally told me I only needed to screencap one threat per account, because they would look into the rest.

It now looks as though not only had they not done that, but they didn't even have the screencaps I had sent them. They were now asking me to go through all the threats I'd received - and relive all the psychological trauma involved - to look for three specific usernames, to see what evidence I had of their abuse. 

It started to dawn on me that, contrary to the advice I'd been given, I should have screencapped and reported every single threat every user sent me, because I needed to have reported it myself for the police to act on it. 

I felt completely hopeless - on the edge of breaking down. The thought of going through the threats all over again was traumatising in itself. I emailed back and said I didn't want to do it.  I asked if they could find a way that I didn't have to go through all the screencaps myself. I asked if they had received the rape threat screen-caps I had just sent them.

They replied telling me what they had and asking me again to review my systems. 

That was two hours ago, and they still haven't responded. And so, purely because I couldn't take the anticipation and the tension anymore, I've done it. I've gone through the screencaps and relived the experience of being told I was going to be gang-raped until I die. I found the ones they wanted and read again about how this particular user was going to find me and kill me - although of course, I haven't found all of them, because I'd been told I didn't need to record them all. I've collated all the threats I do have and created a shared online folder of them. I've sent all this to the police. That was two hours ago. And I've heard nothing.

I have been feeling uneasy for a while about the way my case was being handled. Things had moved achingly slowly from the start. It took four days from the first threat before someone was assigned to my case. The only arrests made had been of people who were so easy to find even I could have tracked them down - or of people where the media had done the work and then informed the police.

There have been no arrests of the many other people who sent me gruesome and graphic death and rape threats, who told me they would mutilate my genitals, burn my flesh while my children watched, rape me until my body fell apart. Given how quickly the media managed to track down my abusers, I had been wondering what had been taking so long, why hadn't I heard anything. Now I'm wondering if it's because the police don't even know about those threats, because I didn't report them individually.

This experience has left me feeling utterly hopeless and powerless. I had always felt like the police didn't really understand the impact this experience had on me. I'd always felt that, while they had seemed perfectly pleasant, they didn't really treat the case with any sense of urgency, of importance. I'd always felt almost apologetic for asking this to be investigated, for letting this affect me so deeply. And now I feel that I was right to feel like that.

Given this experience, given this attitude, given how I've been made to feel, would I report the abuse again?

Frankly, no I wouldn't. I simply don't see the point.

Apple probes work conditions at China factory (FT)

Apple is investigating fresh allegations of poor working conditions at a Chinese factory said to be producing a cheaper iPhone, expected to be unveiled next week.

Ford says US car sales will rev back to pre-crisis levels (FT)

Ford has fuelled the bullish mood in the US auto industry by predicting that car sales there will reach 17m in the next few years, as pent-up demand drives the market back to pre-recession levels.

Fresh fears over North Sea safety after Elgin leak (Telegraph)

An extensive programme of repairs could be needed across North Sea oil and gas operations in light of emerging evidence of causes of last year’s Elgin gas leak, experts have warned.

TUC warns of co-ordinated strike action (BBC)

The leader of the TUC has warned that unions may come together to strike on a range of issues affecting members.

Frances O'Grady, the TUC's general secretary, raised the prospect of co-ordinated strike action in the coming months ahead of the annual TUC Congress that starts this weekend.

Set up Olympics-style body for new nuclear, says John Armitt (Telegraph)

The former chairman of the Olympic Delivery Authority has told the Government that it could break the log-jam over new nuclear power plants by setting up a similar body to build them.

1. Osborne has an economic recovery, but what sort? (Daily Telegraph)

The Chancellor’s plan is to fire up demand and hope sustained growth follows in its wake, writes Jeremy Warner. 

2. No one is left to enforce the rules (Financial Times)

Europe’s posture in the face of Middle East unrest is best described as hiding under the bedcovers, writes Philip Stephens.

3. Russia and the US are closer than we think (Times)

When the smoke clears, both sides are set on stopping extremists taking over Syria, writes Tony Brenton.

4. On Syria, we have allowed Labour policy to be dictated by the government (Guardian)

Ed Miliband was right to halt Cameron's 'rush to war', says Ben Bradshaw. But now is the time to reflect, as a party, on our own position.

5. We need a law to end gender-specific abortions (Daily Telegraph)

Terminations based on sex are a disgrace that most politicians would rather ignore, says Fraser Nelson.

6. Whose recovery is this? That's the great general election question (Guardian)

If competition over living standards for low and middle earners does become the next battleground, that's cause for celebration, writes Polly Toynbee.

7. Labour can’t allow the unions to win this (Times)

The GMB union has called Ed Miliband’s bluff, writes Philip Collins. Despite the financial cost to the party, he must stand firm.

8. The bravery of women like Asma Jahangir shines through Pakistan’s murky history (Independent)

The laws repealed are testament to what can be achieved, writes Peter Popham. 

9. The judicial review system is not a promotional tool for countless left-wing campaigners (Daily Mail)

Britain cannot afford to allow a culture of left-wing-dominated, single-issue activism to hold back our country from investing in infrastructure and new sources of energy, says Chris Grayling. 

10. New York’s farewell to America’s mayor (Financial Times)

The high-profile post could be taken by a candidate grounded in humble issues, writes Gary Silverman. 

The British defence, security and aerospace company BAE Systems is planning to close its US facility at Lemont Furnace in Fayette County of Pennsylvania state by the end of this year, primarily due to cuts in the US budget.

The facility, which currently employs 78 full-time employees and 35 contractors, has been producing and upgrading the Bradley fighting vehicles and M109 self-propelled howitzers for the US Army, Marine Corps and other customers for the past 20 years.

The company would either move the affected employees to other facilities or may ask them to leave.

Erwin Bieber, president of BAE Systems Land & Armaments sector, in a statement said: “The current business environment has made this difficult announcement necessary. The plant closure in no way reflects upon the work and dedication of the employees. We will do all we can to assist them in this difficult transition.”

BAE, however, said that it was not intending to close other facilities that produce fighting vehicles other than Bradley.

The left over production work at the facility is expected to be completed by the end of November 2013.

The US has reduced its defence budget due to the end of the war in Iraq, as well as withdrawal of its forces from Afghanistan in 2014.

Earlier in July, the US Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel said that President Barack Obama’s fiscal year 2014 budget includes “a carefully calibrated and largely back-loaded $150bn reduction in defense spending over the next 10 years.”

Back in June, three right-wing Conservative MPs, Peter Bone, Philip Hollobone and Christopher Chope, teamed up to produce an "alternative Queen's Speech", a set of 40 bills that appeared to be drawn from a Chris Morris satire.

The proposed laws included a ban on the burqa, the reintroduction of capital punishment, the privatisation of the BBC, a referendum on equal marriage, withdrawal from the EU and the renaming of the August bank holiday as Margaret Thatcher Day. All of these bills have been given space on the parliamentary timetable and, to David Cameron's undoubted glee, will be debated at various points between now and 28 February 2014. 

Today there are three from Hollobone before MPs: the National Service bill, the European Communities Act 1972 (repeal) bill and, most egregiously, the Face Coverings (Prohibition) bill. 

The bill states that "a person wearing a garment or other object intended by the wearer as its primary purpose to obscure the face in a public place shall be guilty of an offence." It adds that "where members of the public are licensed to access private premises for the purposes of the giving or receiving of goods or services, it shall not be an offence for the owner...to request that a person wearing a garment or other object intended to obscure the face remove such garment or object; or to require that a person refusing a request...leave the premises."

In 2010, the last time he tried to introduce such a law, Hollobone revealed that he refuses to meet with constitutents who wear the burqa or the niqab. He said: "I would ask her to remove her veil. If she said: 'No', I would take the view that she could see my face, I could not see hers, I am not able to satisfy myself she is who she says she is. I would invite her to communicate with me in a different way, probably in the form of a letter."

There's no prospect of any of the bills mentioned above becoming law but their political significance is that they further poison a Tory brand still in need of detoxification. They alienate many of the voters that the party needs to win over if it is ever to win a majority again, such as ethnic minorities (just 16% of whom voted for the Tories in 2010), LGBT voters (an equal marriage referendum aimed at securing a no vote), northerners and Scots (try proposing "Margaret Thatcher Day" in those parts of the country), and makes it appear obsessed with fringe concerns. Unfortunately for Cameron, he has six months more of this to look forward to.