Earlier this month, Prime Minister Gordon Brown placed housing firmly at the top of the government’s agenda, unveiling plans to build three million homes by 2020 – possibly the biggest building programme in Britain for 30 years. But in this edition of Dispatches, reporter Andrew Gilligan investigates the private house builders charged with solving Britain’s chronic housing
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Britain’s Bad Housing
Dust to Dust: The Health Effects of 9/11
Just days after September 11, 2001, the Environmental Protection Agency assured the public that there should be no concern about any health hazards associated with exposure to smoke and debris in lower Manhattan. This disturbing documentary asks whether the EPA’s pronouncement was based on science or politics. Now many of the first-responders
Umbrella
Zhongshan, Guangdong Province: Many young off-farm workers are busy working for orders of next year. They work day after night, repeating monotonous tasks just like machines, they have to finish their tasks at the highest speed, since maximum output per unit time means that they will earn as much money as possible; but in fact, even that is rather slim.
John and Yoko’s Year of Peace
Amazing that a nearly hour-long film about a Beatle that contains almost no music could still be worthwhile, but that’s the case with John & Yoko’s Year of Peace. The year in question is 1969, when the newly married couple staged the notorious bed-in at a Toronto hotel to promote their somewhat naive but sincere campaign for world peace; they then moved on
My Pet Dinosaur
It’s a palaeontologist’s dream: the chance to live in a world where dinosaurs are not something to be dug out of the ground but are living among us. It may sound far-fetched but dinosaurs were actually rather unlucky. The meteorite impact that doomed them to extinction was an event with a probability of millions to one. What if the meteorite had missed? Had
Secrets of the First Emperor
In the early years of anno domini, China experienced one of its most formidable and brilliant rulers in the personage of Qin Shi Huang, or ‘The First Emperor of Qin.’ By all accounts a visionary, Huang is now credited with laying the groundwork for the Chinese empire, setting forth the plans for the Great Wall (the first ruler to do so) and establishing the largest burial site
Technology: World War 2.0
Josh Davis of Wired magazine investigates an internet botnet attack of Estonia’s banks and newspapers. Wired Science reports on cardiac surgery performed by a robo-doc. Adam Rogers explores the disappearance of home chemistry sets. Ziya Tong delves into technology that is helping children with Asperger’s Syndrome by translating facial expressions into
Marathon Challenge
How do you run 26.2 miles if you have trouble making it around the block? With good coaching, discipline, and lots of group support, as NOVA shows when it follows 13 generally sedentary people through a training regimen designed to prepare them for an ultimate test of stamina and endurance. Created in cooperation with the Boston Athletic Association®, which
Life of Mammals
In this series, Sir David Attenborough takes you on a tour around the life of mammals. What makes them so special and what makes them thrive? More importantly, what are the features that makes mammals the winning design. Mammals can be found on all parts of earth, from the depths of the caves to the peak of mountains and cliffs.
The Machine That Made Us
The Machine That Made Us is a documentary in which Stephen Fry examines the story behind the first media entrepreneur, printing press inventor Johann Gutenberg, to find out why he did it and how, a story which involves both historical inquiry and hands-on craft and technology. Fry travels across Europe to find out how Gutenberg kept his development work secret, about