Idiot at the back

Making history.

2020-06-12T04:37:00.001-07:00

The WOKE generation are presently making history by destroying it. I wish they would work to end modern slavery, end human trafficking now happening across the world. Then we might have statues made to commemorate their success - and future generations might say they were racist for having but the chains of slaves.

Diesel fumes kill

2016-05-02T04:01:00.000-07:00

The most strongly carcinogenic compound ever analysed (3-Nitrobenzanthrone) is found on the surface of particulates, soot, in the exhausts of diesel engines. Diesel engines make you sick, yet these vehicles do not have catalytic converters or any equivalent exhaust cleaning system.

Either vehicles with diesel engines must be fitted with devices in the tailpipes to capture the particulates or diesel engines must be made to burn them all up, reprocess and neutralise the 3-Nitrobenzanthrone within the power generating process. Banning diesel engines from built up areas with shops that need supplying cannot be done. But they have got to stop killing people.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/05/18/wfumes18.xml&sSheet=/news/2004/05/18/ixworld.html&secureRefresh=true&_requestid=67196

Car fumes 'may cause one in six cot deaths'

By Roger Highfield, Science Editor

Exhaust fumes from vehicles may be to blame for up to a sixth of cot deaths, says an international study.

Soot from combustion is already linked with lung disease, asthma and a rise in deaths from cardiovascular disease.

Now scientists have linked the tiny pollutant particles with 16 per cent of unexplained deaths among babies of normal birth weight.

The particles, called PM10s because they are less than 10 micrometers in diameter, may also be responsible for 24 per cent of all respiratory disease deaths of normal birth weight infants under the age of one.

The international team looked at death rates among 700,000 infants in the United States between 1995 and 1997 and compared them with air pollution levels.

The average all-cause mortality rate was 236.8 deaths per 100,000 infants, with 14.7 per 100,000 attributed to PM10 pollution. In the case of unexplained infant deaths, the figure was 11.7 per 100,000 - 16 per cent of the total.

The research, led by Dr Reinhard Kaiser, previously at the University of Basel in Switzerland, was published in the online journal Environmental Health: A Global Access Science Source.

The scientists wrote: "Evidence is building that air pollution has an effect on infants and young children and a potential impact during the foetal period…We conclude that air pollution-related infant mortality is a major public health problem."

Cot death, or Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (Sids), affects about 300 babies a year in Britain. The Foundation for the Study of Infant Deaths said it was likely that the link between air pollution and cot death was real, and not the result of confounding factors.

In the current issue of the journal Science, a team led by Prof James Quinn of McMaster University, Ontario, reports evidence that particulate air pollution can produce a genetic timebomb, after discovering that mutations caused by the pollution in male mice can be passed to future generations.

In the journal, Prof Quinn, Dr Christopher Somers and colleagues describe how they exposed two groups of laboratory mice to air at an industrial site near a major motorway but passed the air for one group through a filter designed to remove particulates. The researchers also repeated the experiment with two groups in a rural area.

After 10 weeks of exposure, the mice were bred and the researchers looked for mutations in marker genetic sequences.

The team found that offspring of the mice that had breathed the polluted, unfiltered air inherited mutations from their fathers twice as frequently as the offspring from the other three groups.

This result suggests that the culprit is airborne particulate matter: microscopic, breathable particles of soot and dust that are often attached to toxic chemicals, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which can cause DNA mutations. These particles can penetrate deep into the body.

Research by Prof Günter Oberdörster at the University of Rochester in New York has shown that the very smallest particles, called nanoparticles, can become dispersed widely in the body after being inhaled. They accumulate not only in the lungs but find their way to parts of the brain.

I seem to have been banging on about this since 1996!

Air pollution has gone up again in spite of all the pressure to stop people using cars, and the government is making a huge song and dance of pressing for research to be started. Work already done by Hitomi Suzuki at Kyoto University clearly shows that the most strongly carcinogenic compound ever analysed (3-Nitrobenzanthrone) is found on the surface of particulates in the exhausts of diesel engines. Diesel engines make you sick, yet these vehicles do not have catalytic converters or any equivalent exhaust cleaning system.

A modern car emits exhaust that is cleaner than the air taken in, and according to research already done by the National Environment Technology Centre it takes 128 cars to produce as much pollution as one bus. If all buses always carried in excess of 128 passengers who would otherwise go by car they could be said to be helping the environment, but they do not.

If this government is really serious about cutting air pollution in our cities they must ban the buses and bring in more cars. Not enough parking spaces. The only sensible solution is to force public transport operators to use petrol instead of diesel and to make them use properly maintained catalytic converters.

Try it for a week, ban the buses and bring in more cars and see what the figures say. The scientific research has been done already. All it takes is the political will to use it.
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Well done, Theresa May

2013-07-07T03:45:00.003-07:00

Well done, Theresa May, MP, for getting rid of Abu Qatada. She has done what others failed to do. Good job well done. We all owe you a massive thank you.

Sue Doughty

Nil Points

2013-05-18T03:11:00.002-07:00

How to win Eurovision

We should pay James Blunt to walk on barefoot dressed in jeans and tee shirt, with dangly bits and a bushman’s hat. He should sit on a stool with his guitar with a backing group of London street style singers and sing a song entitled -

Nil Points.

This is a losing song. I am a former British tank commander and though I saved most of your from tyranny you are not going to vote for me so I don’t even have to sing in tune because this is a losing song. I am singing the losing song and I don’t care because I am a Brit and we win everything else. We invented Eurovision, and we pay a quarter of the running costs, we invented soccer and tennis but you will not vote for me because this is the losing song. If we won we would have to host next year’s do in London and frankly we have enough fabulous events in London already so I am singing the losing song. Give me nil points, please give me nil points! You might take this contest seriously but frankly, come on, it is a farce so I am singing the losing song. Lots of people make lots of money making up costumes and lighting and shoes but what’s the point because I am singing the losing song for you tonight. I could do a change in key right now, I can do that, and then sink back to the starter one but who cares what I sing, this is the losing song.

After 1.5 minutes of that he could end with, thank you and goodnight, take a quick bow and walk off.

It doesn’t need to have timing or rhythm or a tune, because it is the losing song. Nil Points.

A thief’s greatest threat is the victim.

2013-02-15T04:23:00.002-08:00

A thief’s greatest threat is the victim.

Burglars, we are told, fear disturbance by their victims. They aim to do their illegal work when they know where the victim is, often asleep in bed. An identity thief has the same problem with the exception that the identity still lies with the victim so long as the victim lives, breathes and does what their identity drives them to do. If the identity theft is carried out for money, the theft of credit cards and bank details is enough to get them the money before the thief disappears into the firmament to become anonymous once more. But there are other reasons to steal an identity. Someone who feels so dissatisfied with what they have that they wish to abandon it and take on a new persona. To steal one from another living person.

Imagine a woman whose own life is deeply depressing. She feels small, meaningless and ignored. Imagine one such woman who then takes up the identity of someone she fantasises has everything anyone could ever crave, and talent to go with it. The choice of persona to take on must be made on some basis, maybe an infatuation with a man in the office and whose wife she wishes to be. In the twisted mind of such a hopeless case the target of obsession grows to be a super person, life and soul of every party, wit of the century with perfect mind, body and hair. Of course no such person exists. In real life even Kate Moss has blemishes like the rest of us do. The sad woman takes on the name of a woman she wishes to emulate, maybe encouraged to do so by a group of people to whom the supposed super star is seen as a threat to their aspirations. She proclaims that is her name and pursues a happier life with that name, achieving the acquisition of fame and fortune using that name but one that the original owner of that identity never applied for, having her own reasons for reticence.

The only fly in the ointment, gristle in the pie, is the cold hard fact that the original owner of the identity still exists. The characteristics that made the true person a target remain, she lets it be known that she remains in existence, as she always has in spite of having been diagnosed a serious illness that is mistakenly thought to be fatal. In the twisted mind of the thief the real person is a threat to be erased, deleted, destroyed. The thief could kill of have killed the original and persistent owner of the identity. Like in a plot from an Agatha Christie story therein lies the twist.

Social networking gives raised profiles but also makes it easier to delete an identity. Libel laws do exist. Just as police detectives do catch burglars social network managers do keep records and can prosecute customers who do not give true answers on demand. Extradition to the USA, home of social networks, is a lot easier than it used to be.

Sue Doughty
18/5/2011

Adendum.

The person who has taken on a different name may have decided to do so because her own name is a connected to a criminal record. As she is hit by a refusal of the original owner of that name to give it up to her, and is repeatedly blocked by modern technology and the information super highway, she grows even more desperate. Police would warn the original owner of the name that the pretender would now target those people perceived to be close to her.

Deprived of career prospects and something else to do the woman who wants to get rid of her real name would switch to seeking revenge. She might revert to old acquaintances and summon their assistance. To disguise association she might even undergo voice coaching to make it appear her origins and former acquaintances were remote from her in early years in the belief that would block any linkage with those who do as she asks. The rewards, incentives for doing this, are relevant and clear.

The advantage to the old partner in crime, let’s call her Mrs B, of attracting the attention of the real woman’s closest friend could be the hope of financial reward, say and inheritance but in the short term it could be a new avenue for money laundering. The advantage to the now former acquaintance of the woman who owns the name could also be clear, sex and income, attention, maybe a belief in a long lasting relationship. But when he announces his new association he loses the relationship with the original owner of the name and the “old flame”, Mrs B, drops him – the task having been fulfilled. The favour requested of her has been given.

The original owner of the name does not fade away; she persists, and now finds herself with more time and better focus to do what she earned accolades for, the very persona that the name thief wanted to destroy has grown stronger and more diligent.

And she has an indisputable story to write.

Sue Doughty
15/02/2013

2013-01-26T02:59:00.001-08:00

Death by Milk Bottle The plastic top was stuck solid, refusing to move. Try as he might the middle aged man’s arms just could not make that plastic cap twist off because it was glued in place by the tab of the plasticised paper tamper-proof protection underneath, the next security layer. A wrenching sound from his arm told him of torn muscles and ligaments that would take almost as many weeks to sort out as his knew had when in his skiing accident. Thinking that top security prisons were less secure than a milk bottle he tried to force it, holding the flexible plastic bottle pressed onto the worktop with one hand and trying to grip the top with the palm of the other. This ripped the skin off his hand so he rooted through the kitchen knife drawer looking for the thing with black plastic handles he had been given for opening jars of pickles. His eye spied it and he reached through for the handles, catching the skin between the thumb and palm of his right hand on the carving knife and cutting it badly. That didn’t hurt immediately and he pulled out the black and silver opening aid. With that in hand and blood now dripping down the side of the bottle from the deep gash made by the carving knife he managed to grip the blue plastic top. It refused to move, the grooves in the metal squashing and sliding around the grooves in the plastic. He placed the bottle in the sink to get better traction and with huge effort managed to get it to twist, wrenching open the gash in the hand even further. A gust of wind through the window reminded him the tea was cooling fast. In a flood of urgency, his hand now hurting a great deal and beginning to throb, feeling weak from the loss of blood he set about trying to remove the loosened cap again. When it came free the tab was stuck in the underside of the blue cap and the white seal sat impartial to his efforts thus far, keeping his milk safe from intrusion. He tried to pick at its frilled edges to no avail, his finger nails having all been broken down when he had spent ten days repeatedly trying to get his new smart phone open on instruction from the service supplier’s helpline. The shiny new mobile phone now worked. He hoped one day someone might phone him on it so that he would learn how to answer it. The milk bottle remained securely closed. In desperation and refusing to be beaten by a ring of paper he reached once more into the knife drawer and pulled out a serrated knife used for slicing tomatoes. Holding the bottle firmly in the sink he made careful aim at it, pressing carefully at first just to make a starter hole. He knew it would have been safer to take the task to his workshop, grasp the bottle in a vice and make that starter hole with an electric drill but this was a milk bottle, how hard could it be? He tried again to push the sharp point into the shiny plasticised paper but it slid off to the right. School mechanics lessons sprang to mind, forces and vectors in diagrams with angles marked and numbered, followed by the mathematics of the rate of cooling of a liquid in a cup being dependent on the temperature difference between the liquid inside the cup and the temperature outside it, and the heightened cooling effect of moving air. He reached up and closed the double glazed plastic window, observing the way it cut out the noise from life outside. He breathed deeply and aimed anew, holding the knife as upright as he could with his thumb turning black and useless. He focussed on applying increasing force. When the knife slipped he cursed, then saw it had gone through the forearm above his left hand that was now spurting blood across the bowl of the sink, swirling down the drain. As the knifepoint skittered across the seal it had sliced a narrow line through which a few white drops were now exuding as his hand squeezed the bottle. Sensing success he grabbed the bottle, but now too weak to hold a four-pint load his hands dropped it again, the top was pushed off by the forces of confined liquid under pressure and milk gulped out into the sink mixing with the flowing blood to make a sticky pink mess. Using both hands he got the bottle to the tea and got some of the milk to fall into the cup before dropping the rest of the bottle onto his foot, from where it bounced and lay on its side. The first of the milk ran out leaving a vacuum within until air managed to sneak past the outflow and temporarily release the force of vacuum and allow gravity and fluid mechanics to have more leap out. It made a glupping noise as it poured out onto the rug and the ceramic tiled floor as if escaping from prolonged confinement. He stirred his much needed tea but was barely strong enough now to pick up the cup and sip from it. Deciding he ought to do something about the severe blood loss that was mixing with the milk on the floor he reached for the cupboard where sticking plasters were kept, slipped on the blood and milk soaked rug and fell, hitting his head on the sink as he went down. Dazed, he knew that he needed to call for help so pulled himself across to the table where his new mobile phone sat inert, its screen completely black. He tried to get it to light up by pressing the tiny slit shaped white inset switch on the top of the stylishly slim device but the blood slipped over it and his thumbnail was too short to do it. He grabbed for the screwdriver on the dresser and managed to get that to do the job. It lit up, demanding he slide his finger from the bottom to the top in order to have it work. The blood pooling on its shiny surface made him feel faint and he was soon on the floor wrestling with the device, finally hearing the ping sound of success. He jabbed at the telephone icon but his bloody finger slid off with every attempt. Finally he managed to get that up and working, demanding to know the number required and suggesting a few options. He dialled 999 and fainted. When the emergency service arrived at the source of the mobile phone signal they found the house doors securely locked and the bloodstained kitchen window immovable. By the time the man with the enforcement gadget let them in the man had died of blood loss and tea deficiency.

Following the money

2011-07-18T01:22:00.000-07:00

Throughout most of Labour’s time in office the British government was the world’s largest advertising spender, bigger even than Reckitt and Coleman. Newspaper revenue comes mostly from advertising, the cover price hardly covering even the costs of printing and distribution. Newspaper executives knew they had to bid for and win the government’s advertising money to stay in business and the Labour party knew they could use the advertising budget to persuade the newspapers to help keep them in power, threatening to withhold ad placement from newspapers who were not “with the project”. They stroked their single best customer with gusto. Their hospitality departments would have delivered smiles, free meals and parties, tickets to prestigious events, time at health spas, luxury holidays, maybe even cash in hand and share tips. There were suggestions that the Labour party took a hand in selecting newspaper editors, placing individuals they thought would be supportive of their “project”.
In the light of this week’s news it could be inferred that newspapers wanted more than money in reciprocation for political support, they wanted unfettered access to information to generate headline-selling scoops. They wanted and apparently got access to government ministers and departmental in-trays, freedom to bribe police officers, and to hack phones and computers, without fear of investigation and prosecution. A symbiotic relationship became established between government and the press funded with taxpayers’ money in chunks big enough to recapitalise a minor High St bank.
In between the government advertising placement department and the newspapers looking to pick up the contracts were a set of PR agencies who creamed off huge amounts in commission for placing advertisements, one of which was owned and run by the woman who went on to marry the Chancellor of the Exchequer. Tales of 6 figure payments for deals to promote the existence of benefits office schemes to help the poor abounded, at taxpayers’ expense.
One has to ask if the government is still placing advertising expenditure with News International but the continued existence of the Times Educational Supplement tells us that it does.

Glottal stops

2011-06-19T02:16:00.001-07:00

There are times when reading the gaps tell us more than reading between the lines.

The glottal stop in speech is used by people when they know what they are saying is a lie, as if believing it cannot be quoted or on record. Ed Balls is a prime user. He says, Suddenly found ou'. He was in government for years; he left the pensions time bomb as a land mine to those who come after him. The phrase was in common parlance. It was no surprise to anyone that public sector pensions are unaffordable and would have to be reformed but the highly educated and highly paid Mr Balls tries to offset all rebuke with a glottal stop.
Tony Blair used that trick on many occasions to offset a lie as if missing out the Ts was enough to make it a casual comment that could not stand up in court or public enquiry. When promising that a second tranche of best performing teachers should get more pay he hoped the teachers would not hold him to it because he used the glottal stop. They did. But his government only part funded the extra pay to the detriment of all state schools with higher performing teachers. He told us with a chuckle that Gordon Brown was the best Chancellor this country ever had, a sentence littered with glottal stops, dropped Ts and H’s littering the floor at his feet. And yet the sentence that included the 45 minutes claim was all pronounced correctly.
One wonders if these trained and experienced speakers actually practice the glottal stop in front of the mirror ready for when they feel the need to let a lie slip from their lips.

Of cucumbers

2011-06-08T05:45:00.000-07:00

My neighbour decided to cut back the cluster of cherry laurels out side his house. What started out as a ring of cute bushes in now over twenty feet high. Through the window I glanced over at him sweeping it with an electric hedge trimmer. The sound stopped. He looked at the trimmer. He reached back and pulled the cable out of the bushes and examined the cut end. He went into the house and came out later to start again, cable fixed with yet another join.
I asked if was trying to do topiary, what shape was he looking to end up with? An elephant?
No. A cucumber.
Why a cucumber?
He said he had in mind the big green building in London, a cucumber.
You mean the Gherkin?
That is a gherkin, but this one will not look pickled. This one will be a cucumber.

The people have the final say

2011-05-24T01:56:00.000-07:00

We are a democracy. We elect representatives to send to parliament to make laws on our behalf – in consenting to have them do that job and to pay them for doing it we are saying that the British parliament is sovereign. British law, done in the name of the British people, is subordinate to parliament because we pay them to be sovereign.
In 1215 the Magna Carta gave us all the right, in perpetuity, to be tried by our peers in open court.
Down the ages exceptions have been put in law - national security is one and the needs for children to be protected is another. Children about whom there is talk of law breaking or victimisation might suffer in social circles, mainly the playground. Protecting their privacy was required but withholding publishing court cases no longer works, simply because it should never happen. Closed courts are bad justice. The law must be seen to be made and justice must be carried out and be seen to be carried out.
Now we are seeing injunctions taken out, usually to prevent talk of a misdemeanour, by those who can afford to do it. And we are seeing family courts held behind closed doors with all concerned bound to secrecy about every detail, and no right of appeal. Gradually our inherited right to be heard in open court is being taken away. We need to have sovereign parliament rule that the freedoms we won at Runnymead remain in perpetuity here in England at least – right of free speech, right to be given a fair trial in open court and right to justice. Privacy of the individual must be secondary to these universal rights because we are one world, one society and the law should apply equally to all without prejudice.

A thief’s greatest threat is the victim.

2011-05-18T02:38:00.000-07:00

Burglars, we are told, fear disturbance by their victims. They aim to do their illegal work when they know where the victim is, often asleep in bed. An identity thief has the same problem with the exception that the identity still lies with the victim so long as the victim lives, breathes and does what their identity drives them to do. If the identity theft is carried out for money, the theft of credit cards and bank details is enough to get them the money before the thief disappears into the firmament to become anonymous once more. But there are other reasons to steal an identity. Someone who feels so dissatisfied with what they have that they wish to abandon it and take on a new persona. To steal one from another living person.

Imagine a woman whose own life is deeply depressing. She feels small, meaningless and ignored. Imagine one such woman who then takes up the identity of someone she fantasises has everything anyone could ever crave, and talent to go with it. The choice of persona to take on must be made on some basis, maybe an infatuation with a man in the office and whose wife she wishes to be. In the twisted mind of such a hopeless case the target of obsession grows to be a super person, life and soul of every party, wit of the century with perfect mind, body and hair. Of course no such person exists. In real life even Kate Moss has blemishes like the rest of us do. The sad woman takes on the name of a woman she wishes to emulate, maybe encouraged to do so by a group of people to whom the supposed super star is seen as a threat to their aspirations. She proclaims that is her name and pursues a happier life with that name, achieving the acquisition of fame and fortune using that name but one that the original owner of that identity never applied for, having her own reasons for reticence.

The only fly in the ointment, gristle in the pie, is the cold hard fact that the original owner of the identity still exists. The characteristics that made the true person a target remain, she lets it be known that she remains in existence, as she always has in spite of having been diagnosed a serious illness that is mistakenly thought to be fatal. In the twisted mind of the thief the real person is a threat to be erased, deleted, destroyed. The thief could kill of have killed the original and persistent owner of the identity. Like in a plot from an Agatha Christie story therein lies the twist.

Social networking gives raised profiles but also makes it easier to delete an identity. Libel laws do exist. Just as police detectives do catch burglars social network managers do keep records and can prosecute customers who do not give true answers on demand. Extradition to the USA, home of social networks, is a lot easier than it used to be.

Sue Doughty
18/5/2011.

2011-05-16T01:01:00.000-07:00

In every hospital that has special needs baby unit in this country there lies a child whose life depends on a reliable uninterrupted supply of electricity.
The Cutty Sark is famous for being the fastest ship ever built and, like the proposed off-shore wind farms, it was wind powered and "zero carbon", in spite of it being mostly made of steel. The Cutty Sark is in dry dock because it won its accolade on the back of favourable weather on the day and could never repeat it again, being becalmed too often for profit. Given that on land it takes 20 years for a wind turbine to generate as much energy as it took to make even the concrete it stands in I suspect that the off-shore wind generation machines will themselves be scrapped or abandoned as monuments of human folly in trying to catch the wind, their arms wilting in desperate abandonment of a quasi religion that failed to meet expectations. For every generation project dependent on the weather we have to have a back system that automatically steps in to stream on full power immediately and without any noticeable pause because although wind may be tree-hugger friendly but if we depend on it that baby dies.
Coal fired power stations, and waste burning generators have to be lit and got burning well before their power can be harnessed. You cannot switch to a cold power station when the wind drops it has to be already running hot, and if it was running hot that heat was being wasted while the wind was blowing. That cannot be right, we must not allow that waste. Apart from the fact that someone is paying for that fuel and hardware it would be very bad for the environment to just have heat being sent out to no purpose. So we either have carbon burning power stations and use them all the time to the exclusion of all others or we have none. The modern way of thinking is that we should not be sending men to sweat in the bowels of the earth to bring up carbon based fuel – especially since we can get it to come up through pipes more easily.
So if the wind drops we could have the fuel rods of a nuclear power station slide down into business to fill the gap without the lights even blinking. It is a fast switch on and start up system that emits no carbon whatsoever, it makes no smoke.
All of this has been known for decades yet this country is facing power cuts for lack of generating capacity – the baby in intensive care being kept alive with a smoky local diesel powered emergency generator as if in the third world outpost.
People matter, government is set up to make sure people have what they need in order to live and make a living. New Labour failed to believe that and delayed the new nuclear age for Britain. New Labour have departed so why have we still not got nuclear power plants being sorted and brought online?
Chris Huhne, Energy Secretary, has a lot to answer for!

Frequent deaths of socialism and its causes

2010-10-12T02:38:00.001-07:00

Socialism, be it Lib Dem or Labour, will never live up to its aspirations because it attracts people who would take personal advantage of it and allows the many, through dearth of mental strength and confidence, to permit the few to take over. Even Stalin might have started out trying to bring the poor into power, but convinced of his own poverty of birth took all power to himself to the exclusion of all others while speaking the mantra of inclusively.
And after thirteen years of Labour in Britain we see inclusivity being preached and exclusivity being practiced in all walks of life. They even gerrymandered the election constituency boundaries to ensure Labour alone would be included in power in spite of having been awarded fewer votes than another party at the ballot box.
Socialism excludes imaginative wealth creators while pandering to them when in need of second hand glory or profits. It excludes people and ideas of difference and initiative while calling all their little bits of social engineering and meddling initiatives.
Socialism is a beautiful dream described by someone who does not know about humanity by not being in among it and part of it. It is written by observers not by partakers, like the theatre critic watching from the stalls the vagaries of courses and lives being lived out beyond his reach.
On the ground it does not work. It actually makes the poor even more poor than they would have been if socialism had never been invented. It prevents the children of the poor from dragging themselves and their own from the mire of underachievement. It conspires to remove and block any avenues to self-betterment that appeal to their core supporters.
Basically it does not work because it eschews profit making and confiscates any proceeds of work and effort thus cutting off its own supply of capital with which to appease the poor. And it can never be seen to have worked because that would allow for the applauding of success, another dirty word in the dictionary of socialism.
So we see socialism peddled at election time in underhand and devious ways as if it would work if only we all agreed to be poor.
We the people are human and we do not assent to be poor, rather we aspire to something better and strive to achieve it from the cradle to the grave.

The future is dismal

2010-10-12T02:32:00.001-07:00

I was taught that having clawed one’s way to the top it is bad form to pull up the ladder – but Blair and mostly Gordon Brown whisked and pulled that ladder as hard as they could with all the forces they could muster, putting in place enormous barriers to having it ever restored.

Moves to increase tuition fees are putting further education out of reach for anyone whose parents are not in work or who do not have job security. And to anyone whose parents do not own property against which to borrow. The likelihood of employment for boys whose parents are economically weak these days is dismal. Even getting a driving license is now a huge cost and as for insuring a car for anyone under 25 to drive – hopelessly expensive. British boys are disenfranchised at birth thanks to 13 years of Labour government.

There has to be new ways of creating avenues to success for young people. There must be bursaries; there must be fiscal advantages to encourage the creation of new ones that must not be limited to students who agreed to separate to enable access to them. Come to think of it, the tax, grant and other income advantages of being a single parent household should be widened to include stable, two parent, family households.

Making this happen is a huge challenge to any government, and getting elected on a promise to do that would be hard. But now we have a stable coalition government with a promise to serve for 5 years and do the dynamic reforms we need.
First sort out the benefits system to allow the unemployed to do short term seasonal work without the present loss of income that brings. IDS is onto that already. Then sort out avenues to betterment for all through the colleges and university funding fiasco. But most of all we need jobs, we need to make employing people easier in Britain today and tariffs on imports from places that do not pay social costs that we have to pay for workers here, such as for the NHS and for holiday and sick pay. Level the playing field so wealth creation is encouraged, profit is no longer a dirty word and job creation follows.

Vandalism costs me.

2010-09-30T01:08:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I paid out £80 to the company that employs Glen, the very nice and clever forensic computer fixer who found Trojan worms stuck in my computer by someone who wanted to stop me writing anything at all and to stop me putting anything on this blog. Two hours, that is how long it took an expert to find, examine, record and destroy these nasty little objects.
I still don’t know how they got past my firewall. It is not as if I have no firewalls and defence like the people who were robbed by internet bank account fraud Glen and others like him had investigated and arrested. I have lots of anti-viral software regularly updated and run, and yet someone stopped me writing.
Why me? What did I ever write that might have brought such anti-social behaviour? I’m nice to animals, I help old ladies cross the road, and I do unpaid work for the community as a volunteer. I gave up standing outside shopping centres with charity collection boxes a while back - the charity didn’t get much in the box in my hand. I let someone else do those tasks these days. I am no good at standing up for an hour or two.

So having got the “why me” thing done and dusted how many others are being targeted by such malware and how to stop it happening and costing others that £80? Apart from finding out who did it and having them locked up and barred from access to the internet for life as Glen and his team intend. There must be a safe download somewhere that will block Trojan writer stoppers. Maybe an add on to one of the many firewalls I already have ?

Local authority payments system upgrading

2010-08-09T03:57:00.000-07:00

Local government authorities are often hampered by the need to make payments by cheque but this is done for security and transparency reasons. By the need for a vote on council and multiple signatures it prevents unauthorised payments of taxpayers money. But it is out of date. LGA's need to use credit cards to buy things under guarantee and to use internet banking and there are ways of doing that if the law would allow. They need to have a credit card that can only be used after a vote approving its use with a maximum amount that can be spent on each use, (preferably one that gives cash-back). Statements must be presented for approval and voted on at each and every
meeting.
And they need to be able to do internet banking and do direct debits with council voted approval and several signatures approving each payment on a special form the clerk can present to auditors. This protects council officials and taxpayers to the satisfaction of both while enabling the cost effective use of modern financial structures.

Bar codes

2010-06-09T01:24:00.001-07:00

I was sent this in an email and found it interesting enough to post on here.

Bar codes

The whole world is afraid of China-made "black hearted goods".

Can you differentiate which one is made in Taiwan or China?

If the first 3 digits of the barcode are 690, 691 Or 692,
the product is MADE IN CHINA.

471 is Made in Taiwan.

This is our right to know, but the government And related departments never educate the Public, therefore we have to RESCUE Ourselves.

Nowadays, Chinese businessmen know that
Consumers do not prefer products "MADE IN CHINA",
so they don't show from which Country it is made.

However, you may now refer to the barcode
- Remember if the first 3 digits are:

690-692 ... Then it is MADE IN CHINA
00 - 09 ... USA & CANADA
30 - 37 ... FRANCE
40 - 44 ... GERMANY
47 .. Taiwan
49 ... JAPAN
50 .... UK

BUY UK MADE by watching for "50" at the beginning of the number.

We need every boost we can get!

Men’s sheds.

2010-06-04T03:24:00.000-07:00

In one generation the world has seen a technological revolution. The average kitchen, where our mothers and grandmothers would have aspired to have a fridge and an electric washing machine, now has scores of computers built into the microwave, the dishwasher, the washing machine, the fridge, the cooker and endless gadgets we all take for granted. We expect supermarket or shopping mall doors it to open for us automatically. The people on the checkout no longer have to figure out the change or stock levels, the computerised system automatically does all that for them. Even the family car now has an onboard computer silently waiting to tell the garage mechanic what happened to it and what it needs. Car factories are now run by robots, which build the cars and deliver them at the Out Door all perfectly shiny and quality tested. Warehouses serving shops now have robots stacking shelves and sorting deliveries ready for a driver to take to the customer or to retail outlets.
All of this was achieved by people working hard in Silicon Valley USA and in the M4 corridor in the UK, and like the builders who put up St Paul’s Cathedral they are mostly now out of work and kicking their heels or playing games on home PCs. Their enterprise and ingenuity made our lives better and safer but they put many people out of work and have now found themselves out of work.

The last decade has shown growth only in government; obviously unsustainable when so many of those who paid for them in taxes are now out of work or in part time or low paid jobs. The service industry is the only one left, trucking, transporting goods made by robots, selling buying and marketing goods. These are mostly jobs for presentable young women, leaving young men and middle aged people scrabbling around looking for any bit of income they can by any means, all now unable to afford to reskill and retrain for a new career. I.T. specialists can be plumbers but that costs £8000 per annum for each certificate upgrade unless you can claim to have done them cheaper abroad. They need to get together and make things happen together instead of sitting around worrying, lost, broke, bored and lonely.

In Australia they have a problem that had a completely different cause but the same outcome and they have come up with the idea of Men’s Sheds. Women tend to organise themselves more readily than men. Men of all ages seem to need a push to do it. Men’s Sheds are what you would expect of a men’s shed – wooden floors, benches, tools, dust, mugs of tea and only what they have made to sit on. Each has an attendance rate of around 50 men a day dropping in to learn of job news, to exchange ideas and to make things. There are woodworking lessons and other trades to be tried and learned in the shed. Marketable qualifications to be aimed for and relationships to be established.

Here we have Working Men’s Clubs often with little more than a bar and a pool table open on set evenings during the week.
These need to evolve!

Electoral reform was rejected yesterday.

2010-05-07T06:31:00.000-07:00

The only party that presented a policy of proportional representation instead of first past the post was the Liberal Democrats and they were hammered at the polls on May 6th. It is very odd the day after the electorate gave their garbled answer that the issue that will allow us to have a stable government is the one that lost its party so much. It is clear this country wants the policies of the Liberal Democrats less than they want those of the others and yet the merchandise Mr Brown, present leader of the Labour Party, is offering in exchange for a coalition with the Liberal Democrats is the already shunned Proportional Representation. Being worst has made Nick Clegg into the “kingmaker”. And the most favoured bargaining chip is one of the least favoured policies, PR.

That is not democracy as we knew it and desire to keep it. And if we do adopt PR we will have to stomach endless least favoured options of the same ilk.

We need to hold another election and to get it done right this time; no more running out of ballot papers, no more locking people who want to vote out of the polling station for lack of a proper management in place. The senior person in the polling station should have known about the need for speed and for extra staff and have been able to get those staff from less busy stations, as happened in most of the country. There should be no more unequal constituency numbers – they should all be the same size constructed on the basis of the last completed electoral roll, not the last census as it is now.

It could be said that the little hopeless parties promoting a single issue be excluded from this one next snap election to make it fairer, faster and more decisive as the nation requires but only for the one emergency election.

Frequent deaths of socialism and its causes

2010-05-03T04:32:00.000-07:00

The politics of fear

2010-04-20T04:18:00.000-07:00

Election time again and Labour resorts to the politics of fear. I predicted weeks ago that when Brown saw his ratings plummet he would find or create some disaster that would make him appear statesmanlike. It could be said that FMD was deliberately released by the govt to do the same and I really though it would be terrorist activity not a volcano.

The volcano is looking more like an omen, not an opportunity for statesmanlike activity, and anyway, aircraft carriers are too big for Calais Harbour and the sea-lanes to it too narrow.

The closed airspace policy seems to have failed. Brown blew it big time, having promised to sort it all out nothing has happened that would not have been done anyway.

So what next? At least we know it won’t be tanks at Heathrow!

VAT on new homes is an economically illiterate proposal

2010-04-15T01:14:00.000-07:00

Say you chose not to have a second hand home but to buy a brand new house priced at £100,000. Plus VAT at 17.5% the amount you need to part with is then £117.500. On a 100% mortgage you would owe £117,500 but own equity with a value of £100,000 and are immediately in negative equity.

100% mortgages are no longer on offer so you would be paying a deposit of between 10 and 20%. At 10%, that is £10,000, you need to borrow £107,500 against a property worth £100,000 and no bank would allow that. With a 20% deposit, that is £20,000, you need to borrow £97,500 and on selling that house would have only £2,500 to offer as a deposit, to cover legal fees, and tax charges.

So if VAT were to be charged on new houses as proposed by the Lib Dem manifesto nobody could buy a brand new home and no bank could lend on one. When you buy a house you add all costs onto the amount you need to borrow.

They say on Page 81, (that a Lib Dem government would) “Protect greenfield land and our built heritage by reducing the cost of repairs. We will equalise VAT on new build on an overall revenue-neutral basis. This will also reduce the costs or repairs to historic buildings.”

That could not mean both repairs and new builds would be zero rated, the EU would not allow that. It means the full whack on both, or what? They do not specify, but suppose they decided to level the two at 10% of any number between 1 and 17.5 how could that be done? All homes need maintenance money spent on them every year so someone would have to decide what is regarded as part of an established building and liable for a reduced VAT rate. Landlords now know that central heating, secure doors and windows, carpets, curtains, cooker, fridge and washing machine are included in a refurbishment programme as standard. Would they all now be at a reduced VAT rate and at what cost to the exchequer?

They do say they want to retain green land unbuilt on, but what it would achieve is a massive worsening in the housing shortage.

And one point that really bugs me - I object to people regarding all land and buildings in Britain as a national heritage as if belonging to all when I know I am the only one paying my mortgage and repair costs, that farmers are alone in facing the costs of repairing and maintaining land, public rights of way, gates and all trees and buildings thereon.

http://www.libdems.org.uk/our_manifesto.aspx

Letter to Gordon

2010-04-12T04:35:00.001-07:00

12th April 2010
10 Downing St
London

Dear Mr Brown,

You said today in the manifesto launch press briefing that you would make sure everyone has access to a GP, but you must be aware that since the salary of a five year trained Family Doctor is now the same as that of a fully qualified six year trained GP there are very few GPs around.
Last year I found out the hard way that this village has no NHS GPs when I phoned the local surgery asking for the usual treatment for a flare up of my chronic medical condition. I needed two injections as I had received years before on two occasions, always from one of my local GPs. The receptionist said they don’t do injections. I asked to speak to a doctor and she too said that they do not do injections. A doctor called to my house and refused to deliver any treatment because as a family doctor she is not trained to do that. I was not well enough to drive to the hospital and I do not believe calling for a paramedic would bring a fully trained doctor to my home.
So I got no treatment and the flare up was still raging and active when I reported to Moorfield’s Eye Hospital for a cataract operation the following week - it is too dangerous to operate in those conditions so I was sent home without it. Operation cancelled.
I checked, it is true that no doctors at the local surgery are fully qualified GPs so I switched to another surgery in another village who do. But they not do home visits to this village. NICE guidelines clearly say that I was right to ask for those two injections to be delivered in the home environment immediately by a qualified doctor. But under Labour I do not have access to a GP, and neither do the vast majority of British taxpayers living in Britain today - we only have Family Doctors.
Under a Conservative government I had a GP, under Labour I do not. Under a Conservative government I would not still have a cataract, under Labour I do.
You are still in office and depriving me from access to a GP. Do something about that immediately by ruling that all doctors surgeries must have at least one fully qualified GP on the staff and on call.
There is one fully qualified GP in this village but they are for private patients only. If I have another flare up should I phone them and have the taxpayer funded government pick up and pay the bill?

Yours sincerely,

Election 2010, an idiot’s viewpoint

2010-04-07T02:08:00.000-07:00

Having already decided which way to vote in the forthcoming elections I have little or no interest in the election coverage being laid before us. It is as if we are to be subjected to blanket bombing by proxy. The BBC, though, as a wholly owned agent of government, is bound by instructions to serve the many not the few. My contention is that most of us have already decided what to vote and are unshakable in that commitment so only the “few” are interested in election coverage in the media unless it be entertaining. There are some entertaining bits to be found. For instance, the public relations officer of one infamous fringe party has been dismissed for plotting to kill the party leader - not funny in itself but it has its funny side. But no amount of leaflets through my door telling me this is not a two horse race will ever persuade me that this two horse race will be won by one of the two.

What really gets my goat as a TV licence fee payer, and always has, is when you get one TV presenter well dressed and fully made up above the waist being interviewed by her fellow TV presenter. This is to pass information gathered by that reporter into the mind of the viewer. We are paying two for doing what one could be doing straight into camera, leaving the other to do something actually interesting, like reporting on bungee jumping, or the primordial effects of meditation in the Himalayas. They could report on real people doing or failing to do real things. One assumes that would mean using a second cameraman but with so many of the unemployed having shown they are well able to aim a camera from infancy this should not be a deal breaker.

Rows of little skyscraper charts on TV with blue, red and yellow windowless office blocks rising and sinking on command from a man we know has been a dyed in the wool socialist from birth or he would not have got the job do not amuse. Images of a man who bought a bus to match the colour of his new tie are even less amusing after the first few chuckles.

I demand the right to watch Gordon Brown stumble on the sands and get his new suit soaked in the encroaching tide at least once in this election campaign.

2010-04-03T07:17:00.000-07:00

To pay for care for the elderly we should have a scheme whereby everyone is obliged to pay into a sort of professionally managed insurance structure, like life insurance but more like an endowment in that it would not have to wait for you to die before paying out, to be administered in the commercial financial sector. We have the best financial managers in the world in the City of London. All government would have to do be approve each person's scheme and pay tax relief on premiums. That must be the only control the government has in this, the duty to monitor. Then when people need long term care the scheme pays out. Whether or not it would cover the whole of the care costs remains open to debate and always will.
I do not want people's money going into the hands of HM Treasury in this instance, it would perform and grow better in the care of independent specialist fund managers.