With just months to go before Londoners take to the polling stations to vote in the next Mayor of London, Dispatches investigates the current mayoral system and the way in which this office operates. The investigation reveals how it enables one individual to wield a great deal of power with little accountability to the London Assembly, creating a position which can potentially be open to misuse.

As the current Mayor of London, Ken Livingstone holds a unique and powerful position in British politics. Commanding a budget of around £10 billion of taxpayers’ money, he has the final say on the running of the capital’s transport network, controls which parts of London are regenerated and chairs the city’s development authority. Read more & comment »

Britain is the most obese nation in Europe, and we’re continuing to pile on the pounds. Many of us believe it’s not our fault, choosing to blame our genes, age or metabolism. Others find their weight gain a complete mystery. This investigation examines the excuses we make for our increased girth and debunks the myths that mask our calorie consumption. Journalist Jane Moore examines how much food we’re really eating and puts the spotlight on the food industry to reveal what effect our increased dining-out habit is having on our health.

She takes a group of children undercover to find out just how much fat is on the menu for kids in Britain’s favourite family restaurants. Moore meets a family who insist that despite eating healthily and exercising they seem unable to shift their excess weight. With the help of a fridge-cam and a little secret surveillance, Dispatches attempts to unearth the root cause of their problem. Read more & comment »

Dispatches has discovered that the government, despite its promises, is failing the elderly across Britain. With energy prices soaring, its provision to make sure that they’re warm and properly cared for in winter is becoming more and more inadequate. At the same time it is impoverishing the elderly and their families, who increasingly have to pay for basic social services.

Dispatches reveals what life is like for elderly men and women forced to live on today’s state pension and deal with the complexities of the government’s means-tested benefits to keep body and soul together.

Monday 4 February 2008
8:00pm

Are there killer toys on sale this Christmas in Britain? Dispatches has bought dozens of toys from shops and markets in major British cities and has had their safety tested. The investigation reveals that the same hazards occur again and again: choking, strangulation, poisoning, and hidden sharp edges.

Hard-pressed trading standards officers tell Dispatches that they no longer have the staff or the money to combat the flood of shoddily made and counterfeit toys arriving in the UK. But it’s not just cheap toys which pose a danger. Dispatches reveals that many top-selling toys incorporate a type of magnet; a component that the toy companies now know can kill and seriously injure children who swallow them.

Monday 17 December 2007
9:00pm, Channel 4

This Christmas shoppers are expected to spend £31 billion on the high street. Over £7 billion of that will be on plastic. But has this British addiction to borrowing got out of hand? With higher interest rates and the UK banks burnt by the global credit crunch, reporter Tazeen Ahmad investigates the unsettling implications for those who’ve borrowed too much.

As house repossessions and mortgage defaults continues to soar, is Britain’s trillion-pound credit timebomb about to explode? How responsible were the high street banks to allow people to borrow so much on plastic?

Monday 10 December 2007
9:00pm, Channel 4

Monday 29 October 2007
8:00pm

In this week’s Dispatches BAFTA Award-winning journalist Sorious Samura shows how in Africa corruption has become normal and accepted, even though it’s tearing the continent to pieces. Samura moves into one of the largest slums in Africa, Kibera in Kenya, to reveal the relentlessness of everyday corruption, where the poor have to bribe just to survive: for hospital appointments, building shacks, getting work and staying out of jail.

Monday 22 October 2007
8:00pm

Lost for Words , the childhood literacy season on Channel 4, begins with a Dispatches investigation into why so many of Britain’s children can’t read. A fifth of youngsters leaving primary school can’t read and write properly. Reporter Alex Thomson investigates how this failure has come about and shows that with the right teaching methods virtually every child in mainstream schooling can be taught to read. Focusing on the effectiveness of the various methods currently employed to teach children to read, Thompson also explores the wider societal impact of poor literacy rates.

Thursday 18 October 2007
9:00pm

On May 3 this year, Madeleine McCann went missing. What has really happened in the 168 days since Madeleine was last seen? Dispatches sent a team of five of the UK’s best-qualified criminal investigators to Praia da Luz. Led by retired Detective Chief Superintendent Chris Stevenson, who headed the investigation into the murders of Holly Wells and Jessica Chapman in 2002, their goal is to review the Portuguese police investigation. With testimony from observers who witnessed events in the crucial early days, they differentiate between the fact and the wildly speculative media fiction.

Wednesday 17 October 2007
10:40pm

As the 40th anniversary of abortion law nears and the Select Committee on Science and Technology meets to hear evidence investigating scientific developments relating to abortion, Dispatches reporter Deborah Davies looks at the latest scientific research into foetal pain and pre-term infant viability. Featuring a new survey into doctors’ opinions on abortion, Dispatches reveals why many doctors want the law changed and lifts the lid on the debate that is happening in private within the medical profession.

Immigration is a pressing and hotly debated issue in the UK. But what is really known about the multitudes of immigrant communities in Britain and the impact they have on the economy?

Channel 4 News presenter Jon Snow reveals the contributions made by different immigrant groups, drawing on exclusive research from the Institute for Public Policy Research. This brand new statistical information breaks down 25 of Britain’s biggest immigrant groups to paint the most revealing economic portrait to date of the one in six people living in the UK who were born abroad. Read more & comment »