Henley News – 22/02/12

Latest local news for 22nd February 2012.

1. Thames Valley Shrievalty Awards 2012

Members of Thames Valley Police, including the Local CID Team South Oxfordshire & Vale, will be presented with awards by the three High Sheriffs of Berkshire, Buckinghamshire and Oxfordshire at The Judges Lodgings, in Aylesbury on Friday 9^th March.

Created in 1981 by the three High Sheriffs, the Shrievalty Merit Award is the most prestigious award to be presented within Thames Valley Police.

The local CID team for South Oxfordshire & Vale’s performance has been top of the Force for the last three years, and the Local Policing Area has the highest overall serious acquisitive crime and burglary detection rate in the Thames Valley. They have developed cross border intelligence flows with significant results during this time. They were responsible for Operation Milligan, an investigation into a burglary conspiracy affecting Thames Valley, Hampshire and Surrey. To date this has realised 113 burglary detections and brought a halt to a series which has been running for two years.

2. Digital switchover completed in south England

Television viewers in parts of Oxfordshire will have their analogue signal switched off later.

The Hannington transmitter will switch to digital which means people with analogue TVs will lose their channels.

Those with digital equipment will have to re-tune their boxes. A message will appear on the screen explaining how to receive the new digital channels.

3. Alcohol in films linked to teenage boozing

A study published in BMJ Open found teenagers who watch a lot of films featuring alcohol are twice as likely to start drinking and are more likely to progress to binge-drinking.

The study findings prompted the US researchers from Dartmouth Medical School to suggest that Hollywood should restrict alcohol product placement in films in the same way it does for tobacco.

More than 6,500 US young people aged between 10 and 14 were involved in the two year long study. The youngsters were regularly questioned about alcohol consumption, whether they have ever drunk without their parents knowing, what films they watched, friendships, and their life at school and at home.

They were asked what films they had seen from a list of 50 which were randomly selected from the top 100 US box office hits in each of the preceding five years. Typically the youngsters had seen an average of 4.5 hours of on-screen alcohol use and many had seen more than eight hours.

Over the course of the two year study, the proportion of teens who started drinking alcohol more than doubled from 11 per cent to 25 per cent, while the proportion who began binge drinking – defined as five or more drinks in a row – tripled from four per cent to 13 per cent.

The link between films and alcohol consumption was not only seen with film characters drinking, but also with alcohol product placement.