A burger in Brighton is so hot that people have to sign a legal disclaimer before eating it.

The spiciest meals in Britain

A burger in Brighton is so hot that people have to sign a legal disclaimer before eating it. And a curry in Edinburgh has hospitalised two diners. Here's a roundup of those and other extreme spicy eating challenges

How much chilli can you handle? Photograph: Alamy

It used to be that just ordering a vindaloo impressed people. Then it had to be a phaal. Then maybe eating a whole scotch bonnet chilli, once you could get them in the supermarkets. Then, around 10 years ago, things really left the rails. Bhut Jolokias and Dorset Nagas became widespread. People started extracting capsaicin, chilli's main active ingredient, to make ever-hotter dishes. Today in Brighton an otherwise unremarkable burger joint is offering customers a sauce with a reputed score of 9m on the Scoville scale. That's about two or three times hotter than police pepper spray. That's ridiculous.

Yet people eat it. Why? You might as well ask why Hillary and Tenzing climbed Everest. Because it's there. Unlike mountains, however, new chilli-eating challenges are appearing all the time.

XXX Hot Chilli Burger, Brighton

The strength of Nick Gambardella's chilli sauce seems to be rising steadily, as does his bewilderment at people eating it. In 2009, reports put the potency at around 6m Scoville units. Now it is up to more than 9m, and has hospitalised several customers. "Why [they] eat it I don't know," Gambardella told the Mail. "I have spoken to people at environmental health but they think it is hilarious." So far around 3,000 people, each signing a legal disclaimer, have tried the burger, but Gambardella isn't one of them. Only 59 have finished it.

The Kismot Killer, Edinburgh

All five of the world's hottest chillies, as rated by the Guinness Book of Records, go into the Kismot restaurant's famous "Kismot Killer". And that's not "famous" in a cute, parochial way, you understand, but nationwide, after the dish hospitalised two people and caused several others to be "very unwell" at a curry eating contest in 2011. It "felt like I was being chainsawed in the stomach with hot sauce on the chainsaw", said Curie Kim, the runner-up and one of the people taken away by paramedics. Afterwards the Scottish Ambulance Service urged organisers "to review the way in which this event is managed".

The Widower, Lincolnshire

While preparing the Widower, a chicken curry at the Bindi Indian restaurant in Grantham, chefs wear goggles and a protective face mask. The ingredients, as displayed on the restaurant's website, include 20 of their own "Infinity" naga chillies, 10 fresh finger chillies, five scotch bonnet chillies, a tablespoon of chilli powder and a drop of chilli extract. Nobody had ever finished a portion until consultant radiologist (and daredevil) Ian Rothwell managed it in January last year. "It took Mr Rothwell just over an hour," said Muhammed Karim, the restaurant's boss, "but that included a 10-minute walk down Grantham High Street when he started hallucinating."

The Fallout Challenge, Bristol

Two competitive eating disciplines come together in the Fallout Challenge at Bristol's Atomic Burger. A triple burger, with triple cheese, sandwiched between two deep-fried pizza slices, with triple fries on the side, would be too much for most people, even without the ghost chilli extract (4.2m Scoville) in the sauce. "What makes our challenge different is it's not just ridiculously hot but it's big too," says co-owner Martin Bunce. What makes it a good idea is vaguer.

Give and take in the EU-US trade deal? Sure. We give, the corporations take

 

I have three challenges for the architects of a proposed transatlantic trade deal. If they reject them, they reject democracy

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • The Guardian, Monday 10 March 2014 20.30 GMT

Illustration by Daniel Pudles

Nothing threatens democracy as much as corporate power. Nowhere do corporations operate with greater freedom than between nations, for here there is no competition. With the exception of the European parliament, there is no transnational democracy, anywhere. All other supranational bodies – the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, the United Nations, trade organisations and the rest – work on the principle of photocopy democracy (presumed consent is transferred, copy by copy, to ever-greyer and more remote institutions) or no democracy at all.

When everything has been globalised except our consent, corporations fill the void. In a system that governments have shown no interest in reforming, global power is often scarcely distinguishable from corporate power. It is exercised through backroom deals between bureaucrats and lobbyists.

This is how negotiations over the Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership(TTIP) began. The TTIP is a proposed single market between the United States and the European Union, described as "the biggest trade deal in the world". Corporate lobbyists secretly boasted that they would "essentially co-write regulation". But, after some of their plans were leaked and people responded with outrage, democracy campaigners have begun to extract a few concessions. The talks have just resumed, and there's a sense that we cannot remain shut out.

This trade deal has little to do with removing trade taxes (tariffs). As the EU's chief negotiator says, about 80% of it involves "discussions on regulations which protect people from risks to their health, safety, environment, financial and data security". Discussions on regulations means aligning the rules in the EU with those in the US. But Karel De Gucht, the European trade commissioner, maintains that European standards "are not up for negotiation. There is no 'give and take'." An international treaty without give and take? That is a novel concept. A treaty with the US without negotiation? That's not just novel, that's nuts.

You cannot align regulations on both sides of the Atlantic without negotiation. The idea that the rules governing the relationship between business, citizens and the natural world will be negotiated upwards, ensuring that the strongest protections anywhere in the trading bloc will be applied universally, is simply not credible when governments on both sides of the Atlantic have promised to shred what they dismissively call red tape. There will be negotiation. There will be give and take. The result is that regulations are likely to be levelled down. To believe otherwise is to live in fairyland.

Last month, the Financial Times reported that the US is using these negotiations "to push for a fundamental change in the way business regulations are drafted in the EU to allow business groups greater input earlier in the process". At first, De Gucht said that this was "impossible". Then he said he is "ready to work in that direction". So much for no give and take.

But this is not all that democracy must give so that corporations can take. The most dangerous aspect of the talks is the insistence on both sides on a mechanism called investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). ISDS allows corporations to sue governments at offshore arbitration panels of corporate lawyers, bypassing domestic courts. Inserted into other trade treaties, it has been used by big business to strike down laws that impinge on its profits: the plain packaging of cigarettes; tougher financial rules; stronger standards on water pollution and public health; attempts to leave fossil fuels in the ground.

At first, De Gucht told us there was nothing to see here. But in January the man who doesn't do give and take performed a handbrake turn and promised that there would be a three-month public consultation on ISDS, beginning in "early March". The transatlantic talks resumed on Monday. So far there's no sign of the consultation.

And still there remains that howling absence: a credible explanation of why ISDS is necessary. As Kenneth Clarke, the British minister promoting the TTIP, admits: "It was designed to support businesses investing in countries where the rule of law is unpredictable, to say the least." So what is it doing in a US-EU treaty? A report commissioned by the UK government found that ISDS "is highly unlikely to encourage investment" and is "likely to provide the UK with few or no benefits". But it could allow corporations on both sides of the ocean to sue the living daylights out of governments that stand in their way.

Unlike Karel De Gucht, I believe in give and take. So instead of rejecting the whole idea, here are some basic tests which would determine whether or not the negotiators give a fig about democracy.

First, all negotiating positions, on both sides, would be released to the public as soon as they are tabled. Then, instead of being treated like patronised morons, we could debate these positions and consider their impacts.

Second, every chapter of the agreement would be subject to a separate vote in the European parliament. At present the parliament will be invited only to adopt or reject the whole package: when faced with such complexity, that's a meaningless choice.

Third, the TTIP would contain a sunset clause. After five years it would be reconsidered. If it has failed to live up to its promise of enhanced economic performance, or if it reduces public safety or public welfare, it could then be scrapped. I accept that this would be almost unprecedented: most such treaties, unlike elected governments, are "valid indefinitely". How democratic does that sound?

So here's my challenge to Mr De Gucht and Mr Clarke and the others who want us to shut up and take our medicine: why not make these changes? If you reject them, how does that square with your claims about safeguarding democracy and the public interest? How about a little give and take?

The Met's problem isn't bad apples, it's the whole barrel. Abolish it

After Stephen Lawrence, Ian Tomlinson and countless other scandals, it's clear the Metropolitan police is institutionally rotten. London deserves better

• 
• • Owen Jones
  • The Guardian, Sunday 9 March 2014 18.29 GMT

'It's all over for the Met.' Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

If hacking someone's voicemail is a gross invasion of privacy, what words are left to describe agents of the state with fake identities having sex with women they're spying on? One activist who had a child with the undercover police officer Bob Lambert has offered four words: "raped by the state". She is among a group of women activists currently fighting attempts by the Met to sabotage their quest for truth and justice. If phone hacking provoked anger, the use of police spies should chill.

But police spies stealing the identities of dead children and duplicitously sharing the homes, beds and lives of women is only the latest in a string of damning scandals about the Metropolitan police: Stephen Lawrence, and the Macpherson report's subsequent conclusion that the Met is institutionally racist; a stop-and-search policy that discriminates against black people; deaths in police custody; the shooting of Jean Charles de Menezes; the unlawful killing of Ian Tomlinson; the treatment of protesters as social problems to be contained; the stitching up of a Tory heavyweight.

Each scandal is examined in isolation, treated as the action of rogue officers. But together they suggest an institutionally rotten system. Londoners need a force devoted to protecting their security, which treats all sections of the community equally, and which enjoys the consent and trust of everyone. Currently they do not have one, and so it must be built on new foundations.

This is a suggestion that will infuriate some, not least Met officers. Easy for a columnist, issuing grand proclamations behind the safety of his desk. Met officers, on the other hand, are taking rapists and killers off the streets, putting their lives in danger as they do so. More than 3,000 British police officers are injured a year; about 800 seriously. But this is not about individuals: it's the system that is the problem, and it traps good and bad officers alike.

The government has finally announced an inquiry into police spies, driven on by the revelation that a police force supposed to be solving the murder of Stephen Lawrence was actually spying on his grieving family. But Doreen Lawrence is right to state that police failings go to "the highest level", and the Macpherson report's damning conclusion – that the Met is "institutionally racist" – is as true as ever.

 Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, 'is right to state that police failings go to the highest level'. Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA

I've never been randomly stopped and searched by a police officer, but I've met plenty of young black men who have. The experience varies: sometimes officers are almost apologetic, other times full of intimidation and aggression. The evidence shows that black people are significantly less likely to use drugs, and yet black Londoners are six times more likely to be stopped on suspicion of possession. It is difficult to conclude that this is anything but racism.

It is not just black Londoners who have described the Met as "the biggest gang around here": senior officers have self-described as such. "You might have 100 people in your gang," publicly declared Chief Inspector Ian Kibblewhite, of Enfield police, in 2012. "We have 32,000 people in our gang. It's called the Metropolitan police." But a "gang" does not serve a community: it has a turf, a demand for prestige and status, a desire to smash enemies.

When Andrew Mitchell was stitched up by Met officers, the lesson was frightening and instructive. The number of officers involved – including PC Keith Wallis, jailed for falsely claiming to have witnessed the infamous bicycle incident – must give pause to those who think it is a story of "bad apples". If an upper-middle-class Conservative cabinet minister can be stitched up, what hope for the rest of us? It is a point he has passionately and rightly made himself.

A story of conspiracy and cover-up is all too familiar, although other victims do not enjoy anything approaching the power and influence of a Conservative chief whip. There have been 82 black and minority ethnic deaths following contact with the Metropolitan police since 1990, and not a single successful prosecution. Among them is Sean Rigg, a black musician who died in Brixton police station in 2008; four years later, an inquest jury found that police had used unnecessary force against him. It was in stark contrast to initial police claims, and – after a prolonged fight by Rigg's family – three officers were arrested on suspicion of perjury.

When the newspaper vendor Ian Tomlinson died after being thrown to the ground in 2009 at the G20 protests by PC Simon Harwood, the initial police narrative – faithfully repeated by so many news outlets – blamed protesters, claiming that officers coming to his help were bombarded with "bricks, bottles and planks of wood". It was all lies, and symptomatic of a force that saw protest as something that had to be contained, not facilitated. Young people had been patronised as the apathetic "X Factor generation": when they mobilised on the streets, they were met with batons and kettles.

What would a new police force look like? That should be left to a royal commission – headed by an independent figure, not an establishment patsy – which calls evidence from all sections of the community. Structures, training, forms of accountability: all need to be designed from scratch. It needs to be a body stripped of prejudice and bigotry, that defends hard-won democratic freedoms, as well as protecting people's security. It is all over for the Met, and time to debate the police force that London deserves.

On the NHS frontline: 'being a doctor in A&E is like being a medic in a war zone'

Doctor explains why she decided to make a film depicting the real-life drama of targets and staff pushed to the limit

• 
• • Saleyha Ahsan
  • The Guardian, Wednesday 5 March 2014

The start of a shift and I brace myself as I walk into the waiting area. A huge number of people are already there, waiting to be called. I try to avoid eye contact. It's like entering an arena but I feel more like the sacrificial lamb than a gladiator. Entering the main area of the emergency department, a scene of chaos. All available space to see patients is occupied. Staff shout instructions to each other above the noise. I hear a patient vomiting, another is crying out in pain and an elderly woman's voice cuts through, confused and repeating that she wants to go home. "So do I," I whisper to myself.

Colleagues run between cubicles with clean sheets, urine pots and trays for taking blood. Ambulance sirens heard above the noise signal that more patients are coming. A cardiac arrest case is sped into the resuscitation room with paramedics pumping the chest of a patient as the rest of the crash team run through. The atmosphere is explosive and adrenaline charged.

A senior doctor in the middle of the storm tries to bring order in a place that refuses to be controlled. Junior doctors are flushed, red in the face, eyes wide with a hint of panic. I find a tearful one at the computer. She is new and hating every second of it. There isn't time or even space to console her with a pep talk. Give her a few more weeks and the hard outer shell will develop like body armour.

My first patient of the shift needs a full neurological exam. I hunt around for a pen torch to shine into her eyes. "Make sure you have your weapons before you go to war," says a fellow registrar, wryly, handing over the torch. I smile. This is not Palestine, Libya or Syria. This is a hospital on the eastern outskirts of London.

 The A&E department at Queen's hospital in Romford deals with 400 patients a day.

Being a doctor in accident and emergency has at times resembled being a medic in a war zone. I have worked as a doctor in various conflicts and yet some of my most stressful moments, facing a tidal wave of pressure, have happened closer to home, in Queen's hospital, Romford.

The UK's A&E departments have been described by the College of Emergency Medicine (CEM) as facing a crisis. The term was specifically chosen to describe the situation that everyone from the most senior consultant to the most junior nurse is experiencing. Last year Dr Cliff Mann, the CEM president, wrote in a press release: "A lack of a plan for resolution [is] an existential threat to emergency medicine."

There are recurrent themes causing the crisis: more people are coming to A&E; a falling number of doctors want to work there because of the pressures involved and the poor work/life balance; and hospitals are increasingly full – resulting in bottlenecks that back up into the emergency department.

Over the past four progressively worse winters I came to a tipping point. Nothing in the media was reflecting the daily realities of being a doctor on the shop floor. Last April, when the CEM's press release hit the headlines, I took my cue.

I divide my time as an A&E doctor and film-maker. I wanted to make something honest and reflective of the reality.

After a year's worth of access negotiation, I began filming with the Guardian this winter in two hospitals – Queen's where I work as a middle-grade locum, and Musgrove Park, in Taunton, Somerset, where Cliff Mann also works.

"For a long time we were like John the Baptist, crying into the wilderness and no one was listening," Mann said to me, while on shift at Musgrove Park. The most senior consultant within emergency medicine leads from the front, including a Friday shift that runs from 3pm to midnight. "No one goes into emergency medicine thinking it's going to be easy and calm – that would be bizarre. But if you push the individual with persistently increasing intensity levels they will start to fade."

The TV stories of George Clooney and the ER cast don't come close to reality. My research into the speciality obviously went beyond watching medical dramas but nothing prepared me for what it was actually like.

Attending conferences in emergency medicine becomes almost therapeutic in its sharing of experiences. At an emergency medicine conference, Expanding Scientific Horizons, held in Twickenham, south-west London, last year, it was telling that the sessions entitled Creating Satisfaction and Maintaining Wellbeing in Emergency Medicine were standing room only.

One of the speakers, Susie Hewitt, a consultant from Derby, spoke about her battle with depression during the time she was appointed head of service for the introduction of the four-hour target – the government's instruction that 95% of patients should be seen within four hours of arriving at A&E.

The culmination of work and personal pressures resulted in what Hewitt describes as being "hit with what felt like a big freight train".

Many of us recognised ourselves in that. At the conference leaflets for well-being support and therapies were being distributed widely. We are clearly not a very healthy bunch right now.

The CEM warned the government three years ago that there was a problem with falling numbers of staff, but no concrete solutions emerged. I began to see my own consultants and middle-grade colleagues make plans to fly to the other side of the world.

 Medics with a patient at Queen's hospital. The hospital was built for 90,000 patients a year but receives 140,000.

Queen's A&E, part of the Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Trust, sees about 400 patients a day and its sister hospital, King George's, sees 200. The trust serves a population of 750,000 and is one of the UK's largest. It also has one of the highest elderly populations in London. Following a report by the Care Quality Commission (CQC) that its A&E was "at times unsafe because of the lack of full-time consultants and middle-grade doctors", Queen's became the 14th hospital to be put into special measures last December. Filming with the Guardian inside its A&E began the next day.

The hospital was built for 90,000 patients a year but receives 140,000. Ironically, King George's A&E, which performs better against targets, is scheduled for closure in 2015, after a unanimous vote by local primary care trusts. Queen's is expected to absorb the extra numbers. Queen's is understaffed, with only eight full-time consultants where it requires 21 in order to provide 24-hour cover, seven days a week. Four consultants left last year.

One of them, Dr Rosie Furse, described the pressure of targets. Battles with certain specialities to accept patients on to their wards are also a common complaint. She left for a post on the island of Mustique before being recruited to a hospital in Bath.

David Prior, chairman of the CQC, was reported in the Guardian in May 2013 as saying too many patients were arriving at hospital as emergency cases, and improved earlier care in the community was needed. He suggested more acute beds should be closed. "Emergency admissions through accident and emergency are out of control in large parts of the country," he said.

That prompted memories of a recent bed-blocked day in Queen's. Matron Mary Feeney rushed into A&E having secured a bed on the intensive therapy unit for an unwell patient in an A&E cubicle.

"They say bring him in half an hour – half an hour we have not got," and with that the patient was out of the door on the way with matron off to negotiate access at the hallowed gates of ITU.

A significant contributor to breaches of the four-hour target is the quest to find a bed for someone who is clearly not well enough to go home. Over Christmas one woman was brought in with diarrhoea and a ruptured bowel requiring a surgical side room. She waited in A&E for 17 hours until a room became available. Another woman was brought in with high blood sugars and needed an acute medical bed. I saw her when she arrived in the evening and then met her the next morning when I came back to work. That's when A&E becomes a ward.

On the first day of filming we had four intubated, unconscious patients in the resuscitation room at the same time, all of them requiring critical beds. The rest of the room was full of acutely unwell patients being redistributed around A&E as more room was needed with each new ambulance arrival.

Finding alternatives to A&E through improved care in the community is essential but if more acute beds close the A&E waits will get longer for sick patients requiring admission.

 Staff at work at Queen's hospital. The hospital has only eight full-time consultants.

I went through a period of having palpitations during a stretch of extremely challenging shifts last winter. It was when I had a palpitation and nearly passed out while driving that I decided to step down my intensity of work. I had further investigations but the remedy was obvious. I reduced my shifts and the palpitations have stopped.

Over the past three years I have worked harder than in my previous life in the army. I went through the Sandhurst commissioning course, renowned for its tough schedule, but in accident and emergency medicine at its peak, the intensity is tougher.

The CEM published an aptly named report – Stretched to the limit – in October last year. It described a consultant workforce under pressure. As a middle grade I wonder if actually I can physically do the job of a consultant.

The report said: "Evidence confirms that burnout among physicians in emergency medicine occurs at the highest rate of all medical specialities. There is also a very worrying trend developing of consultants seeking to move abroad after having been trained in the NHS."

The report details 21 consultants having left the UK in 2013 with an overall exodus of 78 since 2008.

Within the report details of a survey reveal that consultants on average plan to retire at 60 with the current job not compatible with advancing age. "Doing four nights in a row when you are 50 or 55 is physically impossible," said Dr Antoine Azzi, a specialist registrar working at Queen's at the very end of his training and soon to be a consultant.

He hopes for a less intense workload as a consultant, but it appears that is not going to be the case. The report said that 40% of the consultant workforce were on call one night in every six. The average age of emergency medicine consultants is 43 and the survey showed most plan to retire at 60.

The things that make a difference include access to training, which provides juniors with skills they need and reduces a layer of stress.

Before she left, Furse, like many other consultants, was dedicated to improving the working lives of her trainees and colleagues.

On one occasion I placed a chest drain into a patient with a spontaneous pneumothorax – a collection of air between the lung and the chest wall. If I failed, he could go into respiratory arrest, which could lead to death.

Furse stood by, calm and instructive. "Get it in quick, Saleyha," was all she said. I urged the drain's tube into his chest and the moment I saw the swinging bubble of the drain, signalling a successful placement I allowed myself to breathe and the patient was stabilised.

Moments like that are what makes being a doctor count but opportunities for training are few as workload grows.

The constant turnover of new junior doctors hits the department, too. Most junior doctors who spend six months in A&E leave at the end of their assignment with a lot of experience, but they are relieved to be going and they won't be coming back.

Mann says: "They come and do their six-month attachment and at the end say, "Thank you very much, it was interesting but I am moving on because it nearly killed me.'"

There is a quote from Hippocrates that says: "Where there is a love of medicine, there is a love of humanity." I see this every day to some degree in A&E. Before she left Furse reminded us during a teaching session: "Patients are key to everything we do and if you stop caring about them – well you should not be here any more."

Looking back on diary entries related to shifts I did last year during the spell when I was having palpitations I was reminded why I put myself through it. It's what makes us go back the next day no matter how awful the shift has been.

I wrote: "It was hard, I am tired and I was pushed but I feel alive. Today counted. I cared for patients and they remained the main focus of my day. Nothing else. Patients arrive here to be seen on possibly the worst days of their lives and through them we learn so much about our art. They teach us how to be doctors. As I walked into work today I was hit by reflection of all the patients who have left their mark – the ones that didn't make it.

"They stay with you, like companions. I shared the last few hours of their lives with them … forming a bond that transcends into something almost spiritual even for those that don't believe. Above all else, that is what counts and it remains a privilege."

WHAT Do You Do? Great Responses to this question

1. I'm a proctologist. (Proc·tol·o·gy n. The branch of medicine that deals with the diagnosis and treatment of disorders affecting the colon, rectum, and anus.)


2. "I'm unemployed since leaving prison. But I have applications in to be a bouncer at several whorehouses. Why do you ask?"


3. The Queen: "Oh. I ride around in the last horse-drawn carriage in England—and give tiny hand-waves. But the pay is good."


4.  'Work covered by official secrets act' 


5. 'Model for a contraceptive products company'


6. 'Fiction writer for the police'


7. "It depends what day of the week it is"


8. Not a lot, but its how I do it that counts.

Discrimination UK style: Meet the professional refugees lucky to get the minimum wage in the UK

They were professionals in their own countries – lawyers, doctors, academics. Now, having fled and sought asylum in the UK, they're lucky if they can get a minimum-wage job. We meet six refugees adjusting to a very different way of life

• 
• • Amelia Gentleman
  • The Guardian, Saturday 8 March 2014

 

Wahid Ahmad: ‘The people I work with are very kind. They know I am an educated person.’ Photographs: David Emery for the Guardian

Wahid Ahmad, 33

Was: civil engineer, Afghanistan
Now: shelf stacker, north London

Wahid Ahmad trained as a civil engineer in Afghanistan, where he worked in a senior role for the UN on infrastructure projects, overseeing road- and bridge-building. "I was proud of the job I was doing, helping with the development of my country," he says. It was a well-paid job and very satisfying: the new roads he worked on helped farmers get produce to the markets more quickly and children to school more safely. But his role working for an international agency attracted disapproving attention from the Taliban and after receiving a series of threats, in 2008 Ahmad fled to the UK with his wife and two children.

For six months, while his asylum application was being considered, Ahmad was not allowed to work. He studied to pass high-level English language exams, so he could take a one-year post-graduate certificate in construction management. While studying, he worked part-time in a cafe, making pizzas, kebabs and burgers, and delivering takeaway meals.

When he started applying for engineering jobs, he was so discouraged by the constant rejections that he was prescribed antidepressants. Most of the time he gets no response to his applications, just an automated email that tells him to assume his application has been unsuccessful if he hears nothing back within four days. When he calls to ask why, despite his excellent qualifications, he has not been invited for an interview, he is told he has no UK experience. At this point, he often proposes that he volunteers with the company, but the offer is always rejected. "How am I to get experience if they won't even let me volunteer?"

He took on a job in a food shop, working first as a halal butcher and later on the shop floor. "For a while it was very new to me. I would be preparing the fruit and vegetables, and it would keep coming to my mind what I was and what I am now. To be honest, it made me cry, but I have no option but to continue. The people I work with are very kind. They know I am an educated person. They tell me, 'Please don't be sad. You will find a job in your own field eventually.'"

He has been getting support from a charity, Transitions, which helped him work on his CV, try to get work experience and stay positive. On his CV, under the section detailing his civil engineering experience, he summarises the skills he has gained in his new job: "Be attentive to customers' needs; handle the payment for any purchases; make the customer aware of any special offers."

Iftikhar-ul-haq Khan, 46

Was: supreme court lawyer, Pakistan
Now: volunteer, Citizens Advice, Liverpool

In March 2010, Iftikhar-ul-haq Khan was dropping his children off at school when his car was stopped and he was kidnapped by a group hostile to the Ahmadiyya Muslim community to which he belongs. He was held for 19 days, in brutal conditions. As soon as he was released (upon the payment of a substantial ransom by his family), he made preparations to flee to England. It was clear to him that he and his wife and children would be in danger if they were to remain.

The transition was stark: "In Quetta, we had maids, a garden. We had a smooth life. In London, we shared one room in a bed and breakfast." It took almost two years before his asylum request was granted, during which time he was not allowed to work. "That was very difficult for me, particularly from a professional point of view." Once he was granted refugee status in October 2012 and began trying to find work, he was told that, without UK qualifications, his professional experience in Pakistan counted for little. "I was a legal adviser to the UN, to the National Bank of Pakistan." He worked on amending the Pakistan constitution and ran a private legal practice. To work here, he has to do an expensive legal conversion course. "After the course, I would need to start from scratch. People will still be asking what experience I have in this country. I achieved the highest level in my profession. Here I am at the beginning again."

The jobcentre is encouraging him to apply for work in the admin sector. "It feels a bit ridiculous. I had status, my own law firm, my profession. After three years here, I am in no man's land. I want to stand on my own two feet. I don't like being on benefits. I'm more used to helping others than taking help."

Khan has volunteered for Refugee Action and for the local Citizens Advice bureau. He enjoys it, but feels occasionally frustrated about the gulf between what he does now and what he once did. "I don't always think of myself as a supreme court lawyer. I try to give what I can. But sometimes it is in my mind that maybe I'm not doing the work I really should be doing."

His eldest daughter, 15, completed a two-year GCSE course in six months and got A*s, and a local newspaper interviewed her. "She made a contribution," Khan says. "We all want to give things back to this country. That makes me happy. I have no regrets. No complaints."

Agnes Tanoh, 57

Was: senior government adviser, Ivory Coast 
Now: destitute asylum seeker, Birmingham

Agnes Tanoh, former government adviser on financial and social affairs in Ivory Coast, fled her country because she faced arrest and long-term imprisonment, after regime change pushed her to the wrong side of the political divide. Before the government fell, she worked for the first lady, as her aide, then as head of her administration. Three years after fleeing to England, Tanoh has swapped a five-bedroom house in Abidjan for a flat paid for by the charity Women for Refugee Women in Birmingham. Her initial claim for asylum has been rejected, which means she has no entitlement to benefits and gets only £20 a week from the Hope Projects, a local asylum charity; £15.50 of that goes on her bus pass, which allows her to travel to language classes; she feeds herself by picking up basic supplies once a month from a food bank.

Most of her family have fled Ivory Coast; her husband of 33 years is in Ghana, her four children scattered in different countries. But for the moment, what makes her unhappy is the enforced idleness: the UK Border Agency stipulates, in emphatic capitals, in correspondence with her, "You are NOT allowed to work."

"Work is health," she says, taking off her glasses and rubbing her eyes. "I started working when I was 21. I am an active person. When you have nothing to do, you look on your situation and start to think. You say to yourself: 'What am I doing? What will become of me?'"

Although she is not a qualified teacher, in Ivory Coast she founded and ran a secondary school. For a while, when she was in a hostel in Bolton, she volunteered with a charity and taught French to retired people. "I enjoyed it a lot. I felt I was bringing something to people."

Hasan Abdalla, 58

Was: academic and artist, Syria
Now: jobseeker, London

Hasan Abdalla had a well-equipped studio in the garden outside his Damascus flat; every morning he would walk past orange, apple, pear and pomegranate trees, to paint inside or in the open when the weather was fine. Now he paints in the bedroom of the south London bedsit where he has been living since he was granted asylum. It's much noisier, and he finds that the sounds from the Iceland loading station in front of the house and the railway tracks behind are often distracting. He has tried listening to music or singing to himself to drown out the noise, but on the whole it has been a difficult period for painting. He misses his wife and three sons, whom he hasn't seen since his hurried departure from Syria in July 2011. He finds London an inspirational place, but he also feels disoriented and alone.

Every stretch of wall in his small flat is covered with the artworks he managed to bring with him, and a few that he has done since arriving here. Beneath his bed he keeps rolled-up 3m canvases. The small kitchen table is covered with old newspaper, ready for him to start painting, but at the moment this happens rarely.

When you are dependent on jobseeker's allowance, painting is an expensive habit. In Syria, Abdalla regularly exhibited with two galleries, and made a good living from selling his work. But his reputation has not travelled with him, and although he has had pictures exhibited in three galleries here, he has sold very little. For three months he went by bus every Sunday to Bayswater Road, with as many paintings as he could carry, to try selling them on the park railings. It was a dispiriting experience, since the pictures got battered on the journey; and although passersby made appreciative comments, they rarely bought pictures.

In Syria and Libya, Abdalla sold his work for around £2,500. He has sold only four pictures since coming to England, each for a fraction of that price. Despite these difficulties, he knows that fleeing Syria, and paying an agent £20,000 of his savings, was the right thing to do. Two of his friends, who had been with him on a protest march in 2011, were shot by the authorities. He had spent time in prison in 2010, and been badly beaten. He was sacked from his job as a university lecturer because he failed security checks. Following his departure, his flat was searched and one of his sons arrested.

He has been supported by the Red Cross and thinks he is lucky to have ended up in England. "People are friendly. They try not to make you feel like a stranger."

Tiegisty Kibrom, 27

Was: IT graduate, Eritrea
Now: hotel cleaner, London

Tiegisty Kibrom graduated with distinction in her computer science degree and hoped to open a computer business. "I wanted to have my own shop, which would be open for people who had no access to computers – I could train people on them. There's a real need for places like that in Eritrea."

She fled after being persecuted for her religious beliefs. When she was gone, her mother was arrested and held for three weeks. She thinks that it would not be safe to return.

With her excellent degree, she thought it would be easy to find work here, but when she realised how hard it would be to get a job, she enrolled on a BSc in internet computing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Even after completing the course, she has not found work in computing; last autumn she took a job cleaning rooms in a five-star hotel near Hyde Park. She works an evening shift, is responsible for cleaning 45 rooms and is paid £6.31 an hour. "I was expecting I'd get a better job. I am not ashamed to do a cleaning job. It just embarrasses me that, with all my skills, I can't find a single opportunity to work in my field." The work is hard. "Sometimes you feel abused. They say: 'If you don't do this, we will sack you.' I have enough stress in my life. They say: 'You know, girls, you have to be more grateful. Some people don't have any jobs.'"

She has volunteered as a computer instructor in a refugee centre; ultimately, she would like to be a database assistant, but mostly her job applications are not acknowledged. "I'm a fast learner, I know I could do it if they gave me a chance," she says.

Helal Attayee, 30

Was: doctor, Afghanistan
Now: healthcare assistant, London

Before qualifying as a doctor, Helal Attayee worked for a US charity, Samaritan's Purse International Relief, as well as the British army and for the International Security Assistance Force as an interpreter and project manager in his home town, Mazar-i-Sharif.

He was repeatedly targeted by local fundamentalists, who branded him a traitor and threatened his family. He decided it would be safer to leave the country for his medical training, and went to Turkey. Once he had qualified, he returned to Afghanistan to work as a doctor, but quickly realised his life was at risk. "The local fundamentalists, who became Taliban later, told me that I was helping the infidels," Attayee says. "They warned me that I should stop."

He was forced to flee to the UK. He has been supported by the Red Cross while he studies for a number of exams he must pass before he can take up his old career, including a very demanding English exam. His English sounds flawless to me (as you would expect from a former UN interpreter), but he has failed the exam three times already. Each time he has to retake it, he has to pay £145. His bedroom, in a shared flat in north London, is filled with books and test papers, and ahead of his next test, he has covered a whiteboard on the wall with words that he finds challenging.

Attayee is currently working as a locum phlebotomist, taking blood for testing. "To become a doctor, you have to study for six or seven years," he says. "For phlebotomy, you just have to complete a four-day course. Anyone can do it. It was very, very difficult to find a job, so I was lucky,. Phlebotomy is fine. I know that it is only temporary."