the_daily_stirrer-november2010-opinion-comment-controversy-news-events-politics

Ein Volk, Ein Reich, Ein Bureaucratic Dictatorship by John de Roe

This was today's main story.

Germany Faces Dilemma As Spain Falters
The question facing Germany is should German taxpayers alone be burdened with saving the Euro and with it perhaps the future of the E.U. France, though economically stable is not strong enough to stand by the Germans in bailing out not only Ireland and Greece as they already have but Portugal, Spain, Italy and now we har, Belgium.

If the Germans do not step up to the mark it looks like the end of the Eurozone, a result that was entirely predictable to anybody who learned theor economics in the real world rather than in the unrality bubble of the university and political environments. If the Germans can be persuaded by the more Europhiliac of their politicians to support the European project then it will look very much as if Europe is one economic power surrounded by a buffer zone of client states.

That's a long way from:
“France and Great Britain shall no longer be two nations, but one Franco-British union,” read the declaration," the fine words in the first draft plan for a European community of nations.

to:

“All debts of Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Spain, Portugal, and Ireland will be fused immediately with German debt; a single treasury will control spending, and issue euro-bonds for all Euroland,”

In the wake of the Irish bail - out and with Greece in ruins and Portugal, Spain, Italy and Belgium justling for their turn in the financial lifeboat that seems to be where we are heading.

I'm sure that was not the orignial plan however. In fact I seem to remember my Dad telling me he fought a war to preven such an eventuality.

Ein volk, ein reich, ein bureaucratic dictator, as they say in Brussels.

Cancun climate Conference Gets Under Way
by Ed Butt

The number of people killed in floods and drought has doubled over the past year, according to aid agencies, that blame at least some of the extreme weather on global warming.
Oxfam UK said that 21,000 people died in weather-related disasters in the first nine months of 2010, more than twice the number for the whole of 2009.
Although it is impossible to link any single event with rising temperatures, a report compiled by Oxfam pointed out that extreme weather events have been increasing with ...
read full storyCancun Climate Summit told flood and drought deaths double

Nothing to say here that we have not said many times before ...

Climate Scientists And The Honesty Question As the world's media turns its attention to the latest shenanigans of world leaders and climate scientists in Cancun, Mexico, The Daily Stirrer's Ian R Thorpe invites us to look at the basic homesty of the carbon trading industry. In the run up to Cancun there has been a flurry of activity in the climate science community, including contributions from those discredited crooks and liars the University of East Anglia Climate Research Unit trying to push the old line that people who see through the climate science scam "are not scientists and therefore cannot understand the science. Should we take any notice of people who have demonstrated they have serious integrity issues...

Leading Sceptic's Climate Change U Turn?When one of the world's best known climate change deniers starts talking about how we can deal with climate related problems you might expect the climate scienceology cultists to be cheering. They are remarkably quiet however about Bjorn Lomborg's new book because it reveals he has never been a climate change denier as he was dubbed but was merely questioning the shaky science on which the carbon driven AGW case was based ...
Climate Change: Green Energy Meltdown .As the climate science fraud and the case it made that carbon emissions were the sole cause of global warming and carbon taxes, trading in carbon allowances green energy technologies that belonged in science fiction novels were the way to power the future and save the planet comes unravelled: as the great green energy experiments of Denmark and Spain leave those nations shivering in the dark as power supplies fail and subsidies to green generators bankrupt national economies we look at the real state of the climate crisis.
The Rising Seas Are Not Down To Global Warming Alone.Rising Seas Not Down To Global Warming A new study shows that global warming is not the only cause of swelling seas. Much comes from "water mining" – the pumping of vast amounts of groundwater from beneath the earth, mainly to irrigate crops. This inevitably ends up in the oceans after it evaporates from farmland and comes down as rain.
The study which will be published in the next issue issue of Geophysics Research Letters – estimates that extraction of ground water for domestic and industrial use accounts for about 25% of sea-level rise around the world, the same as the melting ice from the glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica.
Vertical Farming: The Looniest Idea Yet For Saving The PlanetClimate Science is a strange discipline. Part trainspotting, part trekkie convention going, it combines an almost autistic obession with collcting details, a very autistic obsession with focusing on a single theme and a fantasist's capacity for self deception and a taste for mutual masturbation. The latest loonytoons idea for saving the planet involves turning skyscraper buildings into farms growing food for urban populations. Apart from increasing the cost of food by 1000% and increasing rather than reducing the carbon footprint of food production the idea is so insane noboy could ever take it seriously. Nobody that is except scientists, politicians, academics and the media.
Climate Change Polulation ControlThe ice caps melt at an accelerating rate, despite all the hand wringing of "progressive" politicians a global economy built on perpetual growth cannot reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and the scientific quick fixes offered by the academic community get whackier and potentially more catastropic. Is it time to say the unsayable?
Climate Change CorruptionThe spiel from the control freak governments of developed nations in the run up to the Copenhagen Climate Conference billed as the last chance to save the planet from a global warming catastrophe went something like this."You must listen to the scientists, you must not think for yourselves, you must never question authority," Luckily we all knew the scientists chanting this mantra were as much crooks and liars as the politicians and billionaires they worked for.
Climate Science LiesThe Copenhagen summit conference on climate change was never about climate change. It was about money, power, control and the need to divert attention from the failure of globalization. Pity the science used to back up the case for action was so easily exposed as fraudulent. Read more...

27 November 2010

Today's News and Comment

Milliband In People's Party Call
Ed Miliband launches a major review of policy, telling his MPs Labour must become the 'people's party' once again.

Sorry folks but we just could not take this one seriously

Milliband Pledges Labour Will Deamand Equal Rights For Toothpaste

Irish Protest against Cuts

Thousands of people march through the streets of Dublin to protest against the Irish Republic's four-year austerity plan
. Protest March Against Irish Cuts

26 November 2010

Today's News And Comment

Energy Price Scam To Be Investigated

British energy companies are to be investigated by the industry watchdog, to gauge if "companies are playing it straight with consumers".

Energy Firms Face Ofgem Enquiry
Energy Profits Prompt Ofgem Review

Met Chief Constable Warns of Civil Unrest

Britain's most senior police officer warned today of a new era of civil unrest as the national campaign against university fee increases and education cuts gathered momentum. Sir Paul Stephenson, the commissioner of the Metropolitan police, said the two large-scale student demonstrations of the past fortnight had been marred by a previously unseen level of violence, adding: "The game has changed."

Met Chief Warns of Civil Unrest

Meat From Cloned Animals Safe
Andrew Wadge, the chief scientist at the Food Standards Agency, said an independent study had shown that there was no difference between ordinary cattle and cloned cattle. His comments paved the way for milk and meat to be made available in British shops and was the clearest indication yet that the controversial

Human Rights Law Reform Urged

David Cameron is under pressure to deliver on a promise to reform the Human Rights Act following the disclosure that the foreign-born murderer of Philip Lawrence has been arrested on suspicion of another violent attack.

(Yesterday Mrs Lawrence told The Daily Telegraph: “I think the Human Rights Act needs revision. It omits the notion of responsibility, without which we are less than human. I don’t think this is a mere philosophical point.” The legislation was introduced by the Labour government in 1998, but has been criticised for providing more protection for criminals and terrorists than law-abiding citizens. Over the past few years, Mr Cameron repeatedly called for the legislation to be reformed, describing it as “a glaring example of what is going wrong in our country”. The Conservatives drew up plans for a Bill of Rights to replace it. The change would have been introduced before the end of the year had the Tories won a majority. Under the Coalition, the reform has been delayed. Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister and a previous supporter of the Act, has been charged with helping to lead a commission reviewing the legislation.)

Is Inlation Out Of Control Is the Bank of England trying to inflate away Britain's debts? To the untutored eye, that's certainly what it looks like. The reality is altogether less deliberate. All the same, such a perception threatens a serious assault on the Bank's credibility as an independent monetary authority, and should be taken more seriously than the somewhat irrelevant row over whether Mervyn King, the Bank's Governor, should have so wholeheartedly endorsed the Coalition's deficit reduction plans.
This latter issue was the talk of the Commons

25 November 2010

Today's News, Opinion and Comment

Bank Of England Governor Criticized For Backing Cuts
Mervyn King, Governor of the Bank of England, has been looking far from comfortable, almost sheepish, during his grilling before the Commons Treasury Committee this morning. But it’s got very little to do with the Bank’s failure to meet its inflation remit. On that the Governor is still robustly unrepentant. It’s part of the Bank’s remit to look through short term shocks to prices, he insists, and to concentrate on meeting the inflation target in the ...

Onliene Bookie Paddy Powers Irish Economy

Paddy Power, the Irish bookmaker, has overtaken Bank of Ireland as the crisis-hit country's eighth largest company – not that many in the Emerald Isle are likely to find it a laughing matter.
Shares in the bookmaker have had a good run since late summer, when Paddy Power said it would beat ...

Irish Bookie Dwarfs Bank of Ireland

more on Euro crisis:
Germany Fuels EMU Crisis

************************* COMMENT AND OPINION Education Reforms - Opportunity and Threat Michael Gove's education white paper puts teachers at the heart of its plans – and teacher education and development at the heart of what it says about teachers. The current structure of teacher education is complex. About 80% of teachers are trained through formal partnerships between schools and universities, in which students spend up to 75% of their time being ...

Things To Give Thanks For On Thanksgiving Day Clancy Seigal: On this Thanksgiving, among the things I'm grateful for are Rush Limbaugh and the Tea Party mad-hatters for injecting a little humour into turkey day. In their madrassa-like study courses and his broadcasts, they accuse the sainted Plymouth Rock Pilgrims of the crime of ...

The Republican Tide Was A Tsunami

In an illuminating analysis of the US mid-term elections, Michael Barone points out that the Republican tidal wave took virtually every section of the electorate – in both geographical and ethnic terms – along with it. Apart from black voters who remained largely loyal to Obama (but who voted in smaller numbers than they had in the presidential election),…

Just A Job And My Dignity Please
A report out Wednesday showed that new jobless claims declined slightly last week, but this is hardly reassuring to the millions of Americans who are spending this Thanksgiving still unemployed. I am one of those who will lose benefits when they expire next week – 5 days after the holiday. As it happens, I am among the lucky ones – I was laid off just under two years ago, and so I was eligible for 99 weeks of

24 November 2010

Todays News

Google Stormtroopers Pelt Homes With Eggs
from BBC News:

German home-owners who have chosen to opt out of Google's Street View service appear to have become the unsuspecting victims of anti-privacy vandals. Local media report that homes in Essen, west Germany have been pelted with eggs and had 'Google's cool' notices pinned to their doors. The properties involved have all chosen to be blurred on Google's Street View service.
The search giant distanced itself. read full story: German Google Fans Pelt Homes With Eggs

See, we told you they were Nazis.

Student Protesters Plan Day Of Mayhem For Liberal Democrats

from Daily Telegraph:
Thousands of activists are expected to target the party's London headquarters a fortnight after rioters trashed the Conservative offices on Milbank.

Police are braced for another day of violence over Coalition plans to raise tuition fees to up to £9,000 a year, almost triple the current rate.

read full story:Student Protesters Plan Day Of Mayhem

Prominent among the protestors will be Labour Party activists...

See, we told you they were Nazis

Aspirin For Everyone

from The Daily Telegraph:
Evidence is building that the benefits for many healthy middle-aged and older people “far outweigh” the side effects, according to the academics. The experts were speaking at the Royal Society of Medicine a month after research from Oxford University published in The Lancet showed that taking 75mg of aspirin daily for five years reduces the risk of getting bowel cancer by a quarter, and deaths from the disease by ...

Aspirin For Everyone

Ian R Thorpe comments: Once again we return to this fascistic idea of medicating the entire population with compliance enforced by threat of legal sanction. Fortunately there has been a mixed response from the more level headed members of the medical establishment to this latest piece of control freakery in support of Big Pharma.

Aspirin can have very adverse side effects. Fortunately these are rare but the scientific trials set up to make the case for this piece of bureaucratic bullying have not considered that those side effects might be rare because people susceptible to aspirin experience a lot of discomfort after taking a couple for a headache and so seek an alternative pain killer. My Dad was such a person and he suffered a lot of headaches but while aspirin was an over the counter medicine he found it easy to avoid them.

If we were to start making people take their daily aspirin by threatening that treatment for heart disease or certain cancers might be witheld from non compliant individuals how many more cases of very serious side effects cases would emerge?

What the government and medical establishment are saying effectively is: "In our zeal to save the many (and to save money on health budgets) we are prepared to sacrifice the few. That is simply not acceptable.

Ireland's Financial Crisis
Ireland's Financial CrisisDublin to announce the details of its four-year austerity plan at 2pm. Bailout package expected to total €85bn. Spain, Portugal and even Belgium come under pressure
Ireland Austerity Plan To Cost Each Household £3000
Anger grows as the country braces for more economic hardship
Japan: The Land Of Rising Debt
Huge deficit and a falling population invoke memories of deflation days.

COMMENT AND OPINION

Cancun Climate Change Conference Half empty or half full? And will the glass grow fuller or drain down even more? These are two crucial questions on the world’s response to global warming which will be addressed, and may well be largely answered, at the next major set of international negotiations on climate change, opening in the Mexican sea-side resort…
Here we go again. Another jolly for the useless fuckers we are told are our leaders. The Bilderberg group make all the decisions behind closed doors of course... Climate Change roundup

. The Trend Of Young Muslim Girls To Take Up The Hijab Is WorryingBaher Ibrahim on Muslim extremism:Anyone walking on the streets of Egypt will notice a phenomenon that wasn't so evident only a year ago: the increasing numbers of little girls (and by "little", I mean as young as eight years old in some cases) wearing headscarves and abayas. While this sight was previously confined to third-class trains and rural areas, it has now become ...

Links: Halal In Harrow ... liberal dilemma

Is Peter Sutherland To Blame For Ireland's Financial Collapse?
Peter Oborne writes: Former European trade commissioner Peter Sutherland is a distinguished man and very good company. But I would argue the Irishman is one of those with most to answer for his country’s financial collapse. Sutherland (who has also served long terms as chairman of Goldman Sachs International, BP and as a director of RBS until its…

Europe Builds Community Of Culture

If you want to know why Europeans belong in a single community, visit any one of Britain's great medieval cathedrals. Walk in the cloisters at Gloucester or pay homage to William of Sens, the Norman architect of Canterbury. Or just tap the stones of this masterpiece – they come from Caen, France.
The modern dream of European political union is entering its darkest days. Eurosceptics say they are vindicated, and are realists – but nothing is less real than the illusion that any European nation, least of all ours, can lay claim to ...

23 November 2010

Today's News and comment

The Ease With Which People Are Hacking Smartphones.

from BBC News:
Many of us carry almost every detail of our lives on our phones - so how secure are we from those who might want to know what we're saying and doing on the move? We know how insecure the voicemail of some famous folk turned out to be a few years back; surely today's sophisticated smartphones ...read full story The ease of hacking smartphones

Ian R Thorpe writes:
Last week we reported on a rumour that the Stuxnet worm was responsible for an unplanned outage at a British nuclear power station:

Cyberwarfare fear and panic rumours that have circulated around the internet unfounded. A British nuclear power station suffering an "unplanned outage" has categorically denied any link to the sophisticated Stuxnet worm. One of two reactors at Heysham 1, owned by French energy giant EDF, was taken offline yesterday. Parts of the site are run by Siemens S7 systems, prompting ... more on stuxnet worm...

Along with the other news, opinion and comment web pages in the Greeenteeeth stable, Boggart Blog and Little Nicky Machiavelli, The Daily Stirrer has always warned against being sucked into the frenzy of fear and panic raised by such rumours about technology. The article we highlight above by BBC Technology correspondent Rory McClellan Jones warns against being taken in by another government / corporate conspiracy, the one which would have us believe we should entrust the whole of our lives, our privacy and our security to machines. Machines that have little security to protect our personal and business data and are connected to a network system developed by a scientists and promoted by stoners and acid heads.

Let me tell you a little history. In the 1980s there was a perfectly good internetworking system. Businesses and organisations could distribute information internally and exchange data with authorised business associates. The system could be made as secure as it needed to be but was also so easy to use that with a little training clerks, sales staff, data inputters, warehousemen and shop floor workers could use their organisation's network to get the information needed to enable them to do their job. The only people who struggled with it were scientists. They could not get their heads round the idea that security was needed.

Unfortunately the information technology business was being taken over by a new breed, those of us who saw computers as a tool to help us do boring number crunching, data filtering and filing tasks were being replaced by nerds who saw computers as gods, intelligent beings that humans should revere and stand in awe of.

What these people had in common with each other, with a lot of the Church of Scienceology science worshiping cult and with politicians was a complete lack of understanding of human nature. Thus when a complete cunt of a scientist came up with a complete cunt of an idea it was embraced enthusiastically.

The idea was that all the data in the world should be opened up to everybody. Science is driven by curiosity, he claimed, and nothing should ever obstruct the curiosity of scientists. Anyone who has ever had a bank or credit card account or done anything they would rather keep from their Dear Old Mum, anyone who earns a wage or has a secret lover they would sooner their partner did not know about, anybody who would rather their colleagues at work did not learn about the weekends spent dressing up as a medieval man at arms and re-enacting battles or whose evenings are spent wearing a cowboy hat and boots while attending a line dancing club; any business that would rather keep its customer database or details of its patents from its rivals will know the importance of privacy.

When it was put to the complete cunt of a scientist by Information Technology professionals that making private information belonging to either companies or individuals was a very bad idea he replied that once all the information in the world was available to everybody online only academics and trusted business people would use it.

There you have the complete failure to understand human nature. Not only are academics the worst back - stabbers, most childish in their cruelty to friends and rivals alike and most selfish and self interested of all human subspecies but also if people can do something they will. And they will pay to be able to do so.

All the warnings did not register however, people were told to put their entire lives online. And then to migrate their most private information from personal computers which have zero security until you have spend a small fortune and even then are less secure than a house with no doors and move it to mobile devices (smartphones, personal organisers, e-readers etc.) There was always a myth among the terminally nerdy that the Linux operating system was more secure than Microsoft Windows. I like Linux (and its big brother Unix) but while Unix computers used in business are secure Linux systems were only judged more secure than PCs because so few people used them it was not worth the hackers while to program the hacks.

Smartphones etc. use a stripped down version of Linux and hundreds of millions of them have been sold. Now it is worth the hacker's while to put in the time on exploiting Linux vulnerabilities.

This obsession of nerds and sciencyheads with the internet led to the stuxnet scare. The worm actually targets a specific microprocessor made by Siemens as you will know if you followed the link in the first paragraph. This microprocessor was built for the sole purpose of controlling certain processes in nuclear installations. It has no operating system as such and therefore no security, zero, zilch. Get into one and you can do as much damage to the world as can be done to an individual by hacking a PC or smartphone and stealing their personal data.

So what kind of person would think of hooking up such devices to a public network and leaving them online and open to everyone in the world when unattended?

Only a complete cunt of course. Or a scientist.

Machines are not smart, you are. If you are reading this you are at least smart enough to use a computer. Do not trust the machines or people who hate their humanity so much they would rather be machines. Think for yourself.

EU Warns Ireland Against Election
The European Union has warned the Irish government that snap elections would be “very irresponsible” as post-bail-out turmoil continues to rock Ireland's political establishment.

Who the fuck do those unelected bureaucrats think they are.

It's Kicking Off In Korea: Artillery Shells Fired Across Border
North and South Korea fire artillery shells across their tense western sea border, in one of the most serious clashes since the Korean War in the 1950s ...

Oh shit.

Memory Wiping Drug On The Way

from The Baltimore Sun:
Soldiers haunted by scenes of war and victims scarred by violence may wish they could wipe the memories from their minds. Researchers at the Johns Hopkins University say that may someday be possible.

A commercial drug remains far off — and its use would be subject to many ethical and practical questions. But scientists have laid a foundation with their discovery that proteins can be ...
Drug To Erase Memory Is On The Way

It has become fashionable for those involved in science at academic level and fir the left wing media to dismiss anybody who questions alleged scientiic advances or expresses the slightest scepticism about "the science being settled" as a right wing nut job.

Stories like this one however justify all sceptics. Everything we are is on our memory and how can these neo - nazi nut jobs be certain their drugs will be smart enough to select only unpleasant memories when we are a long way from understanding how human memory works. OK, scientists would love to reduce humans to unthinking, unfeeling automatons, that is well known. But we must never assist them in their atempt to brainwash us into believing science is omnipotent.

The white coated coneheads seem to be trying to take us closer to the kind of dystopic world depicted in Orwell's 1984 of Huxley's Brave New World all the time. More sceptoicism is what we need, more people prepared to say, "Yes, I can see it is very clever but where's the humanity in it."

After You

Flogging Good With Junk Science Felicity Lawrence: The food industry's health claims regularly get knocked down by Europe. Is Andrew Lansley set to make its life easier?The EFSA panel found that all 12 studies submitted by Yakult for its proprietary strain of probitoic bacteria, Lactobacillus casei shirota, were inadequate to support its claim that its products maintained immune defences against the common cold ...

George Monbiot: The Bill For PFI Contracts Is An Outrage
George Monbiot: The great racket that was private finance now robs the taxpayer of billions that should be spent on nurses and teachers
You've been told that nothing is sacred; that no state spending is safe from being cut or eroded through inflation. You've been misled. As the new public spending data released by the government shows, a £267bn bill has been both ringfenced and index-linked. This sum, spread over the next ...

Are Science And Scepticism Left And Right Wing
Tom Chivers writes: M’colleague Ed West, who I like immensely despite the fact that we disagree on everything, has written a piece about whether scepticism and science are inherently Left- or Right-wing. Perhaps unsurprisingly, he concludes that they are largely the preserve of the Right. Equally unsurprisingly, I’m going to disagree. Not because they’re the preserve of the Left.…

Even Late Developers Are Entitled To A Good Education
The Daily Telegraph: Interesting proposal from the Sutton Trust that children should take GCSEs at 14. The idea is that they could then make an informed decision about which path to follow, an academic, vocational or technical one. I’m conflicted about this. On the one hand, it sounds like a justification for +14 grammar schools, albeit 14-19 grammars as…
RELATED POSTS: Coalition Government Urged To Make PFI Profiteers To Repay Funds The PFI Scrooges
Labour's loony spending on NHS private finance schemes.
Labour's PFI insanity cripples NHS
Cost Of Aircraft Carriers Comes Under Scrutiny
Memory Wiping Drug
Maternity Care On Verge Of Breakdown

22 November 2010

Today's News and Comment

UK Offers Loan To Help The Irish Republic In Financial Crisis

from BBC News:
The UK has offered a direct loan to the Irish Republic in addition to contributing to an international rescue, Chanellor George Osborne has said.
Negotiations are continuing over terms but the chancellor told the BBC Ireland was a "friend in need" and it was in Britain's national interest to help. Asked if the UK contribution would be about £7bn, he said "it's around that".
The Irish Prime Minister has confirmed they and the EU have agreed a ...

read full story: UK Offers To Help The Irish Republic In Financial Crisis

more on this topic:
Irish Bail Out Bad For Britain - The Daily TelegraphGovernment faces questions over the decision to put up more than £7 billion of taxpayers' money – at least £300 per family – to help prevent crisis in the eurozone.

UK To Lend £7billion - The GuardianChancellor confirms UK will help towards international rescue package for Ireland but eurosceptic MPs condemn cost to UK taxpayer

Portugal Will Be Next To Be Brought Down By European Monetary Union
The Portuguese seemed baffled - and pained - that investors should link their country in any way with Greece or Ireland. I am afraid they must come to terms very soon with some unpleasant facts.

How We Avoided Ireland's Nightmare
We all know what has brought Ireland to its knees. An economy growing much too fast on the back of an unsustainable property boom. A government powerless to raise interest rates to calm the economy. Banks lending irresponsibly to borrowers against the crazy value of their properties. But all that and much more would have happened in Britain, too, had our politicians taken us into the euro. And we would be not so much on ...

John De Roe is not available today to give us an expert analysis of this problem but The Daily Stirrer's writers have covered the topic of systemic failure in the global financial system. Below is a large selection of our posts:

Ed Milliband Plans To Change In Labour

"Profound" changes to the Labour Party on the scale of Tony Blair's New Labour reforms of the mid-1990s have been promised by leader Ed Miliband. In a Guardian newspaper interview, as he returns from two weeks' paternity leave, he warned his party that it faced a "long, hard road" ahead. The party would review its policies and its organisation, including the rules for electing its leaders, he said
read full story : Ed Milliband Promises Profound Change In Labour

More on this story: A commission on Labour's organisation will be launched at ...

Milliband's Plans For Labour - The Guardian
Labour leader reveals plans to review organisation and policies in first full interview since winning leadership contest

COMMENT AND OPINION FROM AROUND THE WEB How We Avoided Ireland's Nightmare
We all know what has brought Ireland to its knees. An economy growing much too fast on the back of an unsustainable property boom. A government powerless to raise interest rates to calm the economy. Banks lending irresponsibly to borrowers against the crazy value of their properties. But all that and much more would have happened in Britain, too, had our politicians taken us into the euro. And we would be not so much on ...

Eurosceptics Aren't GloatingGeorge Osborne – who was once a proud Eurosceptic himself – has rounded on the sceptic tendency within his own party. “I told you so,” he says sulkily, “is not an economic policy.” Well, no but it’s a start. It is, in the present crisis, a necessary precondition for any realistic ...

Cuts Might Increase The Deficit
Ha-Joon Chang, author of 23 Things They Don't Tell You About Capitalism, talks about the global crash and why we should treat financial products like new drugs ...

Politicized Science versus the anti - Science Right
It is an article of faith among many conservatives that climate change is sham science. Even worse, it is the nexus of a vast conspiracy involving governments, the UN, and climate scientists that is seeking to destroy the industrial economies of the West, create a one world government, and enrich people like Al Gore who have bet a bundle on a reduced carbon emissions future. They believe that either the earth is not warming at all, or that rising temperatures are the result of ...

20 November 2010

Today's News 101120

Afghan Withdrawal by 2014

leaders are meeting the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to discuss the alliance's troop withdrawal from his country by the end of 2014. The talks today at the Nato summit in Lisbon are aimed at deciding what sort of long-term military presence the alliance should maintain once responsibility for security is handed over to Afghan forces Despite the withdrawal of troops Nato officials stressed the alliance would maintain a military presence in Afghanistan far beyond the end of the transition ...

Afghanistan Withdrawal By 2014

Nine years in and they still don't get it. What the Afghans want, what they really really want, is to be left to the9ir own devices to sort it out for themselves.

RELATED POSTS:

Tenants May Face Eviction

Tenants May Face Eviction After Two Years
New social housing tenants could be evicted after as little as two years under government plans to be formally announced on Monday. In a move that will anger some Liberal Democrat MPs, coalition moves to put an end to lifetime tenancies will go even further than previously indicated.
Prime Minister David Cameron has already said he wants an end to council tenancies for life and the introduction of fixed-term contracts of "five or 10 years". But, under reforms to be detailed on Monday, councils and housing associations will be able ...

This proposal is not actually as bad as the screaming of the left wing media whould have us believe.

With "right-to-buy" laws in place social housing providers can look at tenants and see who are the basket cases who will always need support, who are the people with a track record of trashing houses and ten demanding to be rehoused and who are the people who are more suited to renting than buying a home.

Nobody has suggested tenants will be thrown out after two years only that they may be.

Local Counciles Seek Parking Stealth Tax
Councils Seek Parking Fine Rise

from BBC News: Some councils in England and Wales have been lobbying the government for the right to increase the amount they can charge motorists in parking fines, the BBC has learned. The local authorities want to bring their fines in line with London, which has a higher upper limit of £120. Penalties outside the capital currently have an upper limit of £70.
The British Parking Association is also calling for ...

We told you a long time ago when The Daily Stirrer was Little Nicky Machiavelli that the insatiable appetite of the ever expanding state and its many agencies for money would lead to this kind of stealth tax. We are creeping closer to a tax on breathing all the time.

English Standards In Schools To Be Tightened Up

According to proposals released by the government teenagers will lose up to five per cent of marks in GCSE examinations if they fail to display high standards of written English. The rules, which are likely to apply to all subjects, including mathematics and science, follow claims that thousands of children leave school without being able to compose a sentence, spell difficult words or write a coherent letter or email. The move, to be outlined in an education White Paper next week, would reverse a Labour decision seven years ago to scrap rewards for good ... Pupils To Be Penalised For Bad English

Another positive move by the coalition against the hijacking of the education system and young minds by the wailing-and-gnashing-of-teeth Naziism of the left.

No matter what subject they are working in pupils should be capable of expressing themselves competently (not necessarily eloquently but clearly) in comprehensible terms n not in txt spk.

19 November 2010

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18 November 2010

Todays News

Did China Hijack World Internet Traffic

by Ed Butt

from The Daily Telegraph:

China "hijacked" 15 per cent of the world's internet traffic for 18 minutes earlier this year, including highly sensitive email exchanges between senior US government and military figures, a report to the US Congress said. A state-owned Chinese telecommunications firm re-routed around 15 per cent of all web traffic through its own servers during a brief period on April 8.

The incident has raised fears that China may have harvested highly-sensitive information from re-routed emails.

Another theory is that it could be testing a cyberweapon that could disrupt internet traffic

read full story: China Hijacks World Internet Traffic

The Daily Stirrer's Intrrnet Technology expert Ian Thorpe and science and engineering commentator Xavier Connolly have commented many times on the inherent weakness of the internet as a tool for commerce and government business. Unfortunately the public were seduced by the blandishments of webbyheads and techieheads into believing that a business model based on giving away valuable stuiff like information for free and putting priate and sensitive information into the public domain could lead to a new era of prosperity while politicians were easily persuaded by sly suggestions of how much power those who controlled the information could weild.

In fact a few corporations now exercise some sort of control over the internet, a system on which much of the world's business relies and which has zero security and no fallback. Worse, those corporations are run by nerds whose desire for control makes the average Nazi dictator look liberal while their blind faith in the omnipitence and infallibility of technology puts them on a par with religious cultists in terms of critical analysis capabilities.

It is by no means proved that China did hijack the world's internet traffic. That it is even feasible is a big enough concern to prompt us to demand action now.

More on this issue:

Wikileaks: American President Gave Britain's Secrets To Russia To Secure A Deal
China Denies Web Hijack - The Guardian
Swedish Prosecutors Order The Arrest Of Wikileaks Founder - The Guardian

Immigration Cap To Cut Inward Migration by 25%

The number of migrant workers coming to Britain from outside the EU should be cut by between 13 per cent and 25 per cent next year, an official committee recommends.

Professor David Metcalf of the Migration Advisory Committee, the body asked to recommend a level for the Government's proposed immigration cap, said the that between 37,400 and 43,700 visas should be issued in 2011/12.

This would represent a cut of ...

Immigration Cap To Cut Inward Migration by 25%

With unemploymnt staying stubbornly high and our schools and universities being turned into procuctions lines for dumbos, deadlegs ans semi - morons by the dominance of politically correct thinking in the education system we need to starty setting our own house in order before we make any more efforts to absorb all the problems of undeveloped nations.

In the wake of Labour's ludicrous open - door policy and move to try to stem the tide of immigrants is a step in the right direction.

Ireland Forced To Accept Bailout Worth Tens Of Billions

from The Guardian:
The Irish central bank governor this morning gave the first official confirmation that a rescue package worth "tens of billions" of euros was being prepared to shore up Ireland's embattled banking sector.
Speaking as Ireland prepared to open its books to financial experts from the European Union, European Central Bank and International Monetary Fund, Patrick Honohan said he was expecting a "very substantial loan" from the EU and the IMF.

RELATED POSTS:
Ireland Debt Crisis
The Currency War
Ireland's Euro Crisis
A roundup of our Debt Crisis posts
the political shenanighans Politics Economy
and the human cost of the Jobs Crisis

17 November 2010

Todays News

Ireland's Debt Crisis
Most of the quality papers led on the debt crisis in Ireland today. The UK government has pledged to help the Irish as we should, not in a guilt tripping way but because they are neighbours, we share a language and most of a culture and they mke great music and beer.

Read here how theGuardian sees the crisis

Anther view from the right of the spectrum in the Daily Telegraph.UK Pledges To Help Ireland

The Daily Stirrer's John De Roe has reported many times on the systemic problms in the global finance system. It is hard to justify blaming a small nation like Ireland for its profligacy when the economic giants amng nations and of finance and the multi national corporations forced financial irresponsibility onto governments.

The Currency War
Obama G20 Hopes Hit The Rocks
Ireland's Euro Crisis
A roundup of our Debt Crisis posts
the political shenanighans Politics Economy
and the human cost of the Jobs Crisis

Food Prices Set To Rise

from The Guardian:
Poor harvests put global food reserves under pressure, with African and Asian countries likely to be worst hit. Prices of wheat, maize and many other foods traded internationally have risen by up to 40% in just a few months. The UN today warned that food prices could rise by 10%-20% next year after poor harvests and an expected rundown of global reserves. More than 70 African and Asian countries will be the worst hit, said the Food and Agricultural Organisation in its monthly report.

Food Prices May Rise 20% Slight Fall In UK Unemployment
Unemployment in Britain, measured by the controversial claimant count, fell unexpectedly last month, suggesting that the labour market may be in better shape than feared.

Employment also improved, although this was due to a rise in self-employment and part-time work while the number of full-time employees fell.

The number of people claiming jobless benefits ...

Number of Part Time Workers Hits Record High
Concerns about the economy are making businesses reluctant to take on full-time workers as official figures showed an increase in part-time jobs.

Obama Runs Out Of Hope Obama's Hopes Of Foreign Policy Triumph Fading Barack Obama's hopes of reshaping US foreign policy stand on the brink of failure tonight, after two of his most cherished initiatives — nuclear disarmament and better relations with Moscow — were dealt serious setbacks. According to a leaked Nato document ...

16 November 2010

Today's News 16 November 2010

As Government of Ireland Shows It Is In Denial The Euro Crisis Deepens

Eurozone Debt Crisis
Ireland's minister for European affairs has urged EU finance ministers not to panic over the country's economic problems, insisting there is no need to resort to a bail-out.
Dick Roche said that the markets were "not reacting rationally" to Ireland debt difficulties and insisted that the country's stringent austerity measures were working as planned. He was speaking as Herman Van Rompuy, the EU president, warned that the future of ...

Ireland's Bail Out
Inflation Rises To Four Month High (also Inflation Rises To 3.2%
Pensions Decimated
UK Economy Not Growing
Greek Deficit Much Bigger Than Estimated
Chasing Bubbles

We told you so: RELATED POSTS:

Papering Over The Cracks
Bond Villain Targets Britain
Interesting Times
Chinese Credit Agency Downgrades U.S. Bonds
The Arrogance Of Ecomonists And The Stupidity Of Politicians
Defending Keynes
The Economy Of The Living Dead
Magic Money, The Free Market Illusion
Bilderberg Bastards
The Rise Of The Far Right Shocks Europe
Europe's mainstream political parties are engaged in a worsening feud over how to deal with the growing power of extreme rightwing anti-immigrant movements. Amid a backlash against immigration that has shaken Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Sweden in recent months, governments of the centre-right or centre-left appear at a loss to counter the appeal of extremist populists who have moved from the madcap fringes of national politics into ...

One more time - we told you so:
Cameron Warns Against Protectionism
Immigration - The Elephant In The Room
The Immigration Cap
The Jobless Economy
The Growing Problem Of Rising Food Prices

15 November 2010

BHP Drops Bid For Potash of Canada

from BBC News:
Mining giant BHP Billiton has abandoned its takeover bid for fertiliser group Potash Corporation after it was blocked by the Canadian government. BHP said it had been unable to convince the government of the deal's merits despite "unparalleled" pledges on jobs and investment. Canada rejected the offer on 3 November, saying it was not convinced that it was in Canadian interests.
read full story: BHP Drops Bid For Potash of Canada

We should start to appreciate Canadians more perhaps. A few months ago The Daily Stirrer was praising two Canadian sceptics for exposing the fraud of climate science and "anthropogenic global warming" by analysing the mathematical data on which the case was built and exposing how the academic community had manipulated figures and ignored results which did not fit their expectations.

Now, after the media reported how Austrailan minerals giant BHP Billiton were attempting to take over Potash of Canada and so establish a near total monopoly on potash (potassium) resources essential in producing the fertilizers needed for intensive farming. Had the takeove gone ahead BHP Billiton would have ben able to control food supplies and manipulate the commodities markets trading in essential food products such as grain, beans and coffee.

Fortunately ministers of the Canadian government saw the danger in ths and have blocked the move. It is a victory in the war against corporate fascism but the war will go on.

Iceberg Alley BluesWe must stop using oil say the politicians and scientists as it becomes more imperative that exploration begins in Iceberg Alley off the Canadian Coast, elsewhere in the Arctic and in other sensitive locations. They are just trying to soften us up for carbon taxes of course. Nobody knows better than politicians that the world runs on oil and that alternative non polluting sources are a long way short of being able to supply energy needs
Calorie Offsetting Humour Everybody has heard of carbon offsetting, the super wheeze that will allow those of us in the civilised world to carry on as we are while the people of developing nations sell us their carbon allowances to keep body and soul together. Well how do you fancy our calorie offsetting scheme that allows you to eat what you like and pay a poor person to get fat for you.
Cimate Change Population ControlThe ice caps melt at an accelerating rate, despite all the hand wringing of "progressive" politicians a global economy built on perpetual growth cannot reduce its greenhouse gas emissions and the scientific quick fixes offered by the academic community get whackier and potentially more catastropic. Is it time to say the unsayable?
Cloned BeefRecent reports that cloned beef will soon be on shelves set us thinking is there any point cloning animals for food. Why go to all the trouble and expence of cloning new animals when the animals themselves have a perfectly good way of making new, non clone animals that has woked for millions of years. If it ain't broke, break it seems to be the driving force behind so much science these days.

Internet Anti Virus Scam

from The Daily Telegraph:
Gangsters are tricking internet users into buying anti-virus protection that is actually malicious software in disguise, security experts have warned.
Investigators fear the hacking gangs are pocketing millions of pounds by infiltrating customers’ computers and stealing their banking details.
They said criminals pose as legitimate IT companies who cold call victims offering fake security software that can be downloaded for about £30.
The crooks then combine credit card information from the sale with stolen personal information to defraud ...
read full story Internet Anti Virus Scam

Yet another example of why we should not rely on the internet. The inability of those who allegedly regulate the internet to police it against threats like this, which has been around for several years now, should be sufficient warning to anybody thinking of using a net based service to provide a function vital to their business.

Those who believe in the life enhancing qualities of the internet are however nothing if not sheeplike. Only a couple of days ago while looking at the comment thread on a Daily Telegraph article in which a tablet computer virgin was waxing lyrical about the Apple iPad I joined and exchange in which an Apple geek and a Googlegeek were disagreeing about which technology will change the world.

The Apple geek, displaying all the symptoms of religious cult membership that we associate with Apple geeks, declared the iPad will change computing, kill print for the book, magazine and newspaper market and bring about a cultural shift that will end war, poverty and disease (and when we have all acknowledged Steve Jobbies as our saviour all our clothes will fall off and we will ascend to heaven to dwell in eternal bliss - well OK, maybe that is a slight exaggeration but you know how enthusiastic Apple geeks are.)

"No, no!" protested the Google Geek, Google docs and Google cloud will be the transformational technology. We will all give up using our own software and rely on Google for everything, mail, word processing, html authoring, instant messaging and and and - well everything anyone could want (like my broadcast quality video editing suite for example - not everyone either needs or wants on but I wouldn't be without it.).

The Googlehead went on to babble about how much more efficient it would be if everybody used Google for all their business and personal computing and data storage needs. I guess it would be for businesses that do not mind having their product specifications, pricing structure, supplier and customer files, payroll and personnel details and banking records put in the public domain or details of assignations with their secret lover "shared" with all their Google friends. When I replied to this effect it incurred the ire of both Applegeek and Googlegeek.

Predicatably one defined himself as "a scientist" and said that I do not understand science. Quite what that has do do with my not wanting to let Google, a company whose business model is built on the principle of stealing businesses / individual's private data and selling it is perhaps something only a "scientist" (aka dickhead) could understand but I do not want Google anywhere my stuff which is why I keep it offline.

The other ~~cupid stunt~~ geek then chimed in. Did I think that copies of my e-mails were kept on the service provider's servers? (Yes, but my e-mails are on little consequence) Did I think my PC was totally safe from hackers (Yes it is, I'm a former IT pro and too savvy to leave the PCs in my network on line when nobody is using them) or that my data was safe in the event of a hard drive failure? (Has he never heard of backing up, my important stuff is easily recoverable.)

It was a strange experience because I had not mentioned most of the things these geeks were banging on and accousing me of being paranoid about. What I had cited as an example of why we should not rely on providers of free services to support business or personal data processing requirements was the case of streamload.com.

You will only get a 404 if you try to connect to Streamload now, they set up about five years ago offering stupendous amounts of storage for free to businesses and private users alike. There were pay-to-use services too but twenty five gigabytes storage is plenty for all but the biggest operation. Plenty of people signed up for a free account, just enter a user name and password, no need to prove who you are or supply credit references, no silly, pointless contracts. Away people went, loading their data to streamload, linking to it and relying on it.

There was one thing the ubergeeks at streamload had not thought through, a thing more essential that great ideas, technical wizardry and a "progressive" laid back attitude to life. They did not have a revenue stream. The people behind the venture had believed in the ideas of the illusion dwelling and delusion dwelling stoners and acidheads who promoted the idea that the way forward for a global economy based on perpetual growth was to all get rich by giving everything away free. As business plans go it is not up there with the Wal Mart "pile it high, sell it cheap" model nor even with Senor Ponzi's "promise the earth, then sell them another promise" method.

Streamload diappeared overnight. The web addresses ceased to exist, the servers (which were probably only virtual servers anyway, were reassigned to other users and people who had relied on the sevice lost all their stored data. They had no legal redress of course, no contract existed, the company had never set out in its terms and conditions what would happen to users data in the event of bankruptcy. And no contracts had ever been signed or even clicked to guarantee a service.

What I was trying to point out is that people who rely on Google or Yahoo or Microsoft to provide a free service are putting themselves in a vulnerable position. There is nothing to stop providers of uncontracted services from simply withdrawing from the market.

If we are all to rely on the internet to the extent service providers encourage we should make ourselves familiar with how the net works, what various terms mean and who we can trust (as in real life, nobody, especially those who seem eager to give you a valuable service for nothing.) And we all need to know the most effective was to protect our data and machines so we will understand that the threat from malware and viruses is greatly overstated. Usually the people talking up the threats have a simplke agenda, to sell you expensive software you do not really need.

Really we should be afraid, be very afraid of the blind faith in technology that seems to be spreading among the younger generation of technology professionals. They reckon they are experts but only the very gullible would have such faith in dumb, insensate machines. The very kind of ~~cupid stunts~~ who would fall for a cold callers spiel about virus threats and the need to buy a new security package nobody has ever heard of and install it at once.

Self Driving Cars Are The Latest Dehumanizing DevelopmentDon't be evil, that's Google's job. The world's greatest corporate Nazis are always eager to promote the latest dehumanizing technological advance. The most recent project they revealed from a long line of technologies aimed at cutrailing our ability to think for ourselves and make our own choices is the self driving car. No doubt the Evil Empire will sell this as something to keep us safe and ...
E.U. to investigate Google monopoly
Britain Going Cashless?
Internet Anti Virus Scam
Google Stormtroopers Pelt Homes With Eggs
UK Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threat
Self Driving Cars Are The Latest Dehumanizing Development
Microsoft Billionaire Sues Web Giants Over Patents

Cotton Price Inflation

from: The Guardian
Cotton farmers in west Africa are losing out on vital income because of subsidies paid to rival growers in the EU, US, China and India, the Fairtrade Foundation says.
The continuing struggle of cotton growers in the poorest region of the world is highlighted today by a report which reveals the many billions of dollars paid to rival farmers in the biggest economies since international talks began to make trade more fair.
As the Doha trade talks enter their tenth year ...

Africa's Cotton Plight
opinion: When we protect our trade we harm Africa

RELATED POSTS:
Cotton Price Inflation

13 November 2010

Today's News

obama-china-g20 Obama Takes A Swipe At China US president Barack Obama took a swipe at China's currency policy after G20 leaders failed to resolve tensions running high over global trade imbalances.

The summit in South Korea ended as it began, the row over gaps and surpluses which sees China accused of keeping the yuan artificially low to boost its exports at the expense of American and European jobs dominated discussions .

"It (the yuan) is undervalued and China spends enormous amounts of money intervening in the market to keep it undervalued," Mr Obama said, adding:

No nation should assume that their path to prosperity is paved simply with exports to the US."

However Beijing is furious that the United States Federal Exchange recently to launch a further round of quantitative easing, pumping an further $600bn (£370bn) into the US economy in addition to the $720 billion already flooding the markets. China and other trade competitors of the U.S. view this as an attempt to weaken the dollar. The Obama administration has ben trying to drive down the value of the dollar for some time but because the it is the world's reserve currency, the money international trades are conducted in, other trading nations such as China, India, Japan and the Arab oil states are reluctant to see the value of their holdings fall and are forcing their own currencies down against commodities in line with the devaluation of the $US.

This has seen the price of gold rocket to a ridiculous $1,400 an ounce in international markets while essential food and mineral commodities have also experienced rapid rises.

International support for Mr Obama's attempts to get tough on China was muted. The world knows if Obama is hellbent on a currency war with China and its allies he cannot possibly win they must stand well back or risk their own economies and trading relationships being damaged by the repercussions.

The final G20 communique thrashed out in negotiations saw leaders agree various measures towards economic stability, including a commitment towards market-determined exchange rate systems.

But a pledge to refrain from "competitive undervaluation" – not allowing a currency to rise as China is accused of – was replaced with "competitive devaluation".

This subtle difference was interpreted as being less pejorative about China's chosen course. Commitments to guidelines to rebalancing trade between nations fell far short of US hopes for 4pc limits on surpluses and deficits, due to resistance from China and other big exporters.

The UK's Prime Minister David Cameron said there was never going to be a quick or easy solution to the problem and adopted a more conciliatory tone towards China than President Obama had.

The American President's delusional belief that he was elected President Of The World is now the main obstacle to making any meaningful progress towards workable trade agreements. Obama, a man of very ordinary intellect and a quite extraordinary set of complexes and neuroses, has spent his adult life surrounded by guilt tripping politically correct Americans who, because of the colour of his skin and their own desperate desire to be seen as non racist, have lauded his every banal utterance, praised his faults and massaged the ego that causes him to think he is the only human being who ever understood anything about anything.

Thus when he pontificates to Chinese, South East Asian, Indian, Arab and European leaders he fully anticipates they will agree with him on all points. As long as he persists in this attitude, that is as long as he remains President he will continue to piss off the people he needs to establish a mutual understanding and working relationship with him.

And so long as the mainstream media persists in their sycophantic, politically correct fawning on this weak, ineffectual man because they are afraid to publicly criticise any member of the dark skinned races the flow of power from west to east will continue in a torrent.

Lib Dems Planned To Drop Tuition Fees Pledge

The Liberal Democrats were drawing up plans to abandon Nick Clegg's flagship policy to scrap university tuition fees two months before the general election, secret party documents reveal. As the Lib Dem leader faces a growing revolt after this week's violent protest against fee rises, internal documents show the party was drawing up proposals for coalition negotiations which contrasted sharply with

read full storyLib Dems Planned To Drop Tuition Fees Pledge

The amount of rage being hurled at Nick Clegg and other Liberal Democrat ministers in the coalition government by labour-lefie-loonies and by their own party members is as amusing as it is irrational. The first thing we should note is that none of us at The Daily Stirrer (and we've all been round the block a few times) can recall Labour members ever being so vitriolic towards their own party in government when the wishful thinking of campaign promises has to give way to the harsh realities of government.

The left has a long tradition of hypocrisy of course, look how they rant and rave about abolishing private education and yet how many among the Labour elite send their children to private schools or, every bit as bad, to faith schools in expensive suburbs where the catchment area ensures a large majority of pupils will be from affluent middle class homes, the offspring of professional couples.

The angst of Liberal Democrats, while amusing to behold is worrying for people who wish the coalition government well and are hoping they survive long enough to really stop the tide of politically correct lunacy set in spate during thirteen years of Labour rule. After ninety years of dreaming of power, the Lib Dems, finally having put a fingertip on the levers of government are finding responsibility not to their taste.

When I was an active member of the Liberal Party on of the greatest frustrations for those of us who believed a common sense, non ideological approach to the everyday problems facing voters could really help achieve "the greatest good of the greatest number" was that faction of the party we referred to as the raffia mafia. These sandal wearing, tree hugging, lentil munching wierdies were far more concerned with being seen to be "nice" and "caring" that with facing up to reality, deciding what needed to be done and setting about doing it. Their utopian dreams marginalised the whole party.

It seems too many Lib Dems are still living in that bubble of unreality, to eager to show how much they care about education and the plight of poor students to face up to the reality that Labour's rapid expansion of the higher education system was too great a burden for the education budget to bear. The aim was to have 50% of school leavers going to University. This is a totally unrealistic target. The country does not need and cannot find suitable jobs for so many graduates.

We have to get a sense of reality about this. Yes, the state should fund Uinversity tuition and provide support for students whose parents cannot subsidise them through three years of higher education. Having said that we must set a limit on the numbers we support through higher education so that the financial burden on the taxpayer does not become unsustainable.

It might seem harsh to some but let's remember, Utopia is a fiction.

12 November 2010

Today's News

Papering Over The G20 Cracks Will Not Avert A Currency War.

from BBC News:
Leaders of the G20 group of major economies, including Barack Obama and the UK's David Cameron have agreed to avoid "competitive devaluation" of currencies after a second day of difficult talks in the South Korean capital, Seoul.

Leaders agreed to come up with "indicative guidelines" to tackle trade imbalances affecting world growth.Tensions had been high between some delegations over how to correct distortions in currency and trade.

But the agreement fell short of a US push to ...

read full story at BBC News:G20 To Adress Currency Wars
another perspective at The Guardian:Papering Over The Currency War Crack In The G20

John de Roe Comments for The Daily Stirrer.
The G20 leaders can pass all the resolutions they like and issue joint statements ''til the cows come home, the fact is we have a currency war and until the United States, owner of the world's reserve currency, the US Dollar stops trying to reduce its debt by devaluing the currency the world trades in and starts to work on getting its deficit under control the currency war will go on. The American economy has since the 1970s been both beneficiary and victim of the fact that the dollar is the world's reserve currency. Whatever nations buy from across national borders they must pay for in dollars and whatever they bring to the world market to trade they want to be paid in dollars for. So it does not really matter how big the US deficit on oil, steel, food crops and coffee may be because what Uncle Sam is really selling in the world market is the dollar. This means the Federal Reserve Bank can print dollars to buy whatever the consumers demand.

The situation had persisted since the British economy crashed and burned after World War 2. The pound is still a trading currency but mostly within the British Commonwealth. In the world market a wodge of British wonga no longer begs the question "how much of our stuff would you like, sir?" but "how many dollars will that monopoly money buy us, schmuck?" No matter, we own enough of America to ensure we have a ready supply of dollars flowing in through our holdings in the Caymans, Bermuda, The Channel Islands, The Isle of Man etc. World trade is truly a wonderful thing when a nation does not have to trade in food or manufactured goods using money as the token of exchange but can survive simply by trading in money. London is the largest world centre of currency trading and without that business Britain would have become a basket case nation a couple of decades ago

The happy situation for the United States of dollar supremacy looked set to continue but for the push towards European integration and the resurgence of Arab nationalism. So long as the dollar remained supreme the United States could continue to run up massive debts to support a lifestyle unparalleled anywhere in the world. As long as the world needed dollars Washington could pay the interest on its debts.
After the fall of the Soviet Union certain economists and political philosophers (mostly in France and Germany) decided that to have only one superpower would be bad for the world community. Another trading bloc was needed and the European Union could easily be adapted to fill the void.

It is easy to follow the reasoning, around 70% of the world's currency reserves are held in dollars which of course means that essential commodities, particularly oil, are valued in dollars. While the U.S.A. controls the money supply in effect it gets imports for free. As a bonus most of the dollars that other nations have worked hard to earn have to be invested back in the U.S. economy. It is so smart we should be surprised the Mafia did not think of it first.

At the time this was going on the European Union's collective economy suffered from none of the systemic weaknesses of the American economy. Only the smaller nations of Europe, Greece, Portugal, Ireland, were burdened with the same pro rata levels of debt as America and the stronger nations could easily absorb the problems This being so, the Euro was the only serious competitor to the Dollar as a world currency. There we have one of the true, but unmentionable, reasons why The White House was so anxious to bring about regime change in Iraq, promote the growth of China and other emerging nations and create new markets to trade in the commodities it was thought would farm the basis of the future economy as resources of oil and other basic raw materials ran out. The lesson has not been lost on people who are not friends of America however. Control the money supply and they could control everything

The oil nations of the Middle East do more trade and have better political relationships with Europe than the U.S., the EU imports more oil and the European economies are cashflow based rather than debt based and so are more sustainable in adverse trading conditions. There have already been rumblings from within OPEC (the Organisation of Petroleum Exporting Countries) that a switch from dollars to euros for pricing oil could be a serious option. Should Europe's two main oil producers, Britain and Norway adopt the euro it could well be the tipping point at which a switch by OPEC becomes not possible but inevitable. On top of that there is another risk. Western News Media portray Al Qaeda as an organisation intent upon destroying western civilisation but this is a dangerous over estimation of terrorist ambitions. There are surely terrorist cells around the world who meet in gloomy basements and mutter darkly through beards of mass destruction about the downfall of the decadent west and the triumph of Islam but Osama bin Laden is certainly neither mad nor stupid. He knows well the American collective psychology, the siege mentality that sees enemies (and Satan) lurking behind every rock and tree along the borders. America will be destroyed by fear and panic rather than enemy action.

A shift to a more inward looking stance on foreign policy as the Obama adminitration's domestic problems grow and the obsession with "minority rights" issues in Obie's natural constituency, the politically correct left obstructs any attempt to do what needs to be done could well open the way for a Bin Laden inspired coup in Saudi Arabia, overthrowing the House of Saud and replacing it with an Islamic fundamentalist regime. And with the fundamentalists in Iran and Saudi Arabia pulling the strings in the world's main oil producing area you can bet the exodus from the dollar would be rapid and total.

The American currency is already weak in world markets, the past twelve months have seen first a decline against other major currencies and more importantly against essential commodities and gold. The situation is so far out of America's control that with either a weak or a strong dollar they now must be the losers. The weak dollar mean imports, particularly oil, get more expensive and Americans regard the right to cheap gasoline as right up alongside the right to free speech and the right to have bed dress sense. A strong dollar means America's exports get dearer and a country already up to its neck in debt cannot afford a drop in its income from exports. Driving the dollar down in currency markets as the Obama administration have been trying to do, if successful merely buys breathing space at the expense of destroying the value of savings, pension funds and the buying power of wages. The effect of a lower dollar exchange rate may be felt for six months to a year as contracts made for goods before the devaluation hold prices down. After a certain time though those contracts expire and new ones are negotiated at the new exchange rate. Try to keep devaluing, as the Federal Exchange has and trading partners start to demand settlement in other currencies, commodities or gold. All this is great for the evil bankers but terrible for ordinary people. The final factor in the slow motion train wreck that is happening to American is the domestic economy is very much consumer led. A few hikes in the price of gasoline will cause panic to set in and people will stop spending. Tax revenues will drop even further, bigger borrowing will be required to cover the public sector deficit and America will have to pay more interest on its borrowings. Rating Agencies have already, last week, downgraded America's credit rating. This can only lead to inflation in parallel with which The White House will have to increase taxes. And then the trouble starts.

Central banks have started to shift reserves into more stable currencies and create a snowball effect. With demand for its main trading commodity diminishing the US economy faces possible collapse and America's position as the world's strongest nation looks precarious. Europe may constitute a significant threat to America's domination in trade but whereas the Soviet Union was a military superpower but an economic island, Europe and the U.S.A. are allies militarily but economic competitors that, under the unwritten rules of free market economics, would have go head to head in a trade war like two bull elephants. Meanwhile China and India look ever more ready to step up to the mark as the world's economic superpowers. Free market economics compels all participants to compete for a bigger share of the cake at a time when America is more vulnerable than it has been in well over a century.

And here's an interesting snippet seen in The Daily Telegraph:
Politician Admits Carbon Taxes Are Just Another Revenue Raising Scam
George Papandreou, the Greek prime minister has said that there may need to be new Europe-wide forms of taxation to help pay for the bail-outs that will be needed by the growing number of crashing economies in the euro-zone. His suggestions include “carbon dioxide taxes” which, he says, could provide “important revenues and resouces for funding…

RELATED POSTS:
Chinese Credit Agency Downgrades U.S. Bonds
by John de Roe

One of China’s leading credit rating agencies has downgraded United States of America government debt in response to what it sees as deliberate devaluation of the dollar by quantitative easing and other means. If China, now the second biggest economy in the world, stops buying US government bonds this could have a very negative effect on…

Benefits Review One of the proposals put forward by the coalition for reducing the public sector deficit is reform of the benefit system. Predicatably tis sent the hand-wringers, bleeding hearts and human rights screamers of the 'progressive left' into paroxysms of hysteria. People would be starving the the streets, they wailed, malnourished children would queue for a handful of rice. They wished. Actually the coalitions proposals look quite reasonable.

The Arrogance Of Ecomonists And The Stupidity Of Politicians
by Ian R Thorpe

Don't you just love the arrogance of economists and their detatchment from anything remotely resembling reality. They're all scum sucking crackfarts, they really are. Little Nicky Machiavelli has said this many times and here's a mainstream journalist taking up the theme in response to an economics academic who says that anyone who does not have a PhD in economics should not be allowed to express an opinion on the subject as only...

Defending Keynes
The name of a great Englishman, John Maynard Keyes, is being trashed by that jug eared steak of piss and racist hater of all things British Barack Obama in attempts to give the failing Obama administration's loonytoons economics a veneer of sanity. Keynes recommended governments should use publc spending to sustain their economy during periods of recession. He did not say, as Obama's supporters claim he did, that nations already way past the point of bankruptcy should continue with reckless poublic spending projects.
United In Austerity
Vince Cable on the budget and why the cuts and tax rises were necessary. A quiet but devastating denunciation of Labour's lie that they left the economy in good shape.

The Necessity Of Curbing State SpendingThe left, already laughable styling themselves "the opposition" even as Labour splits into tiny factions including the "old left" the traditional party of the working class, the people with traditional Labour values who recognise there are no magical solution, the "progressive left", the kind of people my colleague Ian Thorpe refers to as The Politically Correct Thought Police, who are currently working themselves into a frenzy about
Where Did All the Money Go

Energy Bills To Rise This Winter
Households will see their gas and electricity bills climb by an average of 7 per cent from December 10 according to news reports. Though Brith Gas, followed by other suppliers, reduced bills by 8% last year that was only a fraction of the average 42% increase in the wake of 2008's financial crisis.

The increase will add an additional £1.50 on a typical weekly dual fuel bill, which equates to £78 a year.

As currency continues to devalue on the international markets and the nations sitting on vast oil and gas reserves sense the west's powerlessness to do anything about price hikes we can expect more increases. Stick up on warn clothes.

read full storyEnergy Bills To Rise This Winter

Ireland Faces New Debt CrisisYields on 10-year Irish Government bonds dipped to 8.787pc in early trading after jumping to 8.929pc on Thursday, the highest level since the euro was created in 1999. Ireland's economic woes have been a cause of ...

We told you it wasn't over.

11 November 2010

Today's News November 11, 2010

Why Can't British Workers Compete With Immigrants For Jobs?
by Xavier Connolly

from The Daily Telegraph
The main controversy in today's news stories is the response of Work amd Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan Smith to the citicisms made by the Archbishop of Canterbury about the government's handling of the long term unemployment problem.

The Daily Telegraph put it like this:

Iain Duncan Smith, the Work and Pensions Secretary, said it was a "sin" that British workers are not capable of competing for jobs with foreigners.
As the Government unveiled the biggest reform of the welfare system in 60 years, Mr Duncan Smith said immigrants had taken 70 per cent of the four million-plus new jobs created in the last 14 years because British workers "weren't capable or able" to take them.
His language answers criticism from the Archbishop of Canterbury that ...
read full storyWhy Can't British Workers Compete With Immigrants
The BBC also led on the story:
: BBC News - New Benefit System Being Unveiled

The situation is an indictment of the failure of politically correct thinking by left wingers in the civil service, local government and education over the past fifty years. The 1945 - 51 Labour government (before my time but I've read history books) made some very important and necessary changes to British society that really transformed the way way people lived and the way they regarded themselves. Unfortunately, like the Liberal governments of Asquith and Lloyd George before them, like the Chartists of the early nineteenth century, like all great reforming movements once they had achieved their main aim (universal health care, the welfare system and the dismantling of the class system in Labour's case) they were effectively obsolete.

New generations of Labour leaders were not content to settle into the role of being part of the political establishment however, they too wanted to go down in history as having successfully brought about major social reforms.

Driven by the left British society moved towards a one-size-fits-all education system, campaigned for equalities for people who were not actually unequal and pushed for the disastrous policy of multiculturalism which has sliced open the belly of British culture and drawn out its guts all in the name of pandering to minorities.

In the employment market The Labour Party and the trade union movement between them replaced the work ethic with a sense of entitlement. "Nobody," went the message "should ever have to do anything they do not want to do, the world owes you a living." It is true to say this was exacerbated by Margaret Thatcher's war on British industry and reforms to the tax system which made it virtually impossible for a family to live comfortably on a single wage.

All the time, from the 1950 through the 1990 to within the last decade the jobs British workers did not want to do, jobs the products of our education system deemed beneath their dignity were being taken by incomers, first from the Caribbean, then from India and Pakistan the Bangla Desh and Africa then Eastern Europe, people who understood what a great privilege it is to live in a society like Britain (or Germany, France, Holland and Italy because we should not pretend our problems are unique. These incomers did not feel they were entitled to a Ford Cortina or a colour television, an iPhone or a foreign holiday. They were happy to have a solid roof over their head, enough to eat, clean water to drink and the opportunity for their children to achieve better lives. We have become accustomed to taking for granted. In short we don't know how well off we are.

One thing we have lost but immigrants still have is the ability to gain their self esteem from the knowledge they have bequeathed to the next generation a chance to do better. Having lost that too many of us in the west can only measure ourselves by our material wealth and the things we possess.

And that, in a nutshell, is why British workers cannot compete with foreigners in the hunt for jobs.

The Government Is Not Introducing WorkfareThe Government’s long awaited white paper on welfare reform is going to be launched tomorrow morning. As well as plans to simplify the benefits system, there is some speculation that the government may require long term unemployed people go on four-week compulsory work experience projects. The Archbishop of Canterbury sparked a row about that over the weekend suggesting,…

David Cameron Waqrns Against Protectionism

World leaders must resolve the trade imbalances that are destabilising the global economy or risk a repeat of the Great Depression, David Cameron warned today.
Speaking at the start of the G20 Summit in Seoul, the prime minister said the real test for the summit would be its ability sort out the big battle between the indebted west and the surplus economies of ...

David Cameron Waqrns Against Protectionism
Bank Of England Chief Tells G20 To Get Its Act Together - The Independent.

We've said it all before on this:

RELATED POSTS:
UK Unemployment Rises Again as part time jobs increase.
Unemployment in the UK rose by 48,000 in the quarter to December 2011. The figure of people without jobs now stands at 2.67 million, a jobless rate of 8.4 per cent, the worst figure since the end of 1995. The number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance rose by ...

10 November 2010

Today's News and Comment 10 November 2010

Higher Tuition Fees Will Keep Costs Down Says Cameron by Xavier Connolly

From The Daily Telegraph
A surprise remark from David Cameron is likely to anger parents who are being forced to find thousands more to fund their children's higher education. The Prime Minister was quizzed on a trip to a university in Beijing about last week's Coalition proposal to raise tuition fees by up to £9,000 a year. A student asked Mr Cameron if he believed the move would restrict the opportunities for Chinese youngsters to gain places on university courses in Britain.

read full storyTuition Fees Will Keep Costs Down Says Cameron
another p.o.v Students Protest Against Tuition Fee Rise - The Guardian

It's hard to see quite what The Prime Minister is driving at here, how can higher fees possibly keep costs down when tuition fees are responsible for the bulk of the debt incurred by students?

Mr. Cameron could of course mean that the prospect of having to pay higher tuition fees and thus leaving University with an even greater burden of debt that students in recent years have been accustomed to will discourage students from taking up University places.

If this kills off some of the courses in bogus arts and pseudo science, examples including "Feminism In Film" and "Evolutionary Psychology" or degree courses in vocational subjects such as our favourite "Waste Management with Modern Dance," it could be positive. If it encourages students to stay at home and take up degree courses on offer in local colleges or to seek out two year courses and opt for serious study instead of partying at the taxpayers expense it could be positive.

And if it reduces the number of students leaving University with degrees in media studies, journalism, fashion design and sociology when there are never going to be enough jobs in those fields to employ them all it could be positive.

If, as I suspect, it is just another example of the spinmeister's art, a catchy phrase created to convince voters the coalition are on the case when in fact they are as clueless as their Labour predecessors about how to tackle the problems the nation faces then Mr. Cameron had better start thinking about where he is going to live when the coalition falls apart and he is ejected from Downing Street. Because it might be sooner than he expects.

Chinese Credit Agency Downgrades U.S. Bonds
by John de Roe

read full story
Chinese Credit Agency Downgrades U.S. Bonds
More on finance from BBC News
Banks Say Inflation To Remain High - BBC News

It's another case of We Told You So. The Daily Stirrer has been warning of the dangers of quantitative easing since we started this website.

If, as the Daily Telegraph story warns and as now seems likely, China now stops buying United States Treasury bonds the Obama administration that in spite of the crushing defeat suffered by the Democrats in last week's mid - term elections shows no sign of deviating from its chosen course of running up insane deficits in an attempt to change the collective psyche of America are going to find it much harder to fund their burgeoning monthly deficits.

Not only will they find it harder to raise money in the markets, the interest due on those debts they take on will rise too. Already unable to meet the costs incurred in the day to day running of the nation, the growing public sector wage bill and the rising cost of unemployment and welfare benefits as unemployment continues to rise they will have to borrow more money. And when they do that interest rates will rise further and more quickly. All this must be paid for out of falling tax revenues or by borrowed money. Thus the Greek style spiral of debt begins to drag the nation down into financial basket case status.

The President is not apparently concerned by this. He is much more eager to further piss off the government by criticising their record on Human Rights. It seems a strange priority when the leaders of China are in the ideal position to hold a gun to his head.

Cervical Cancer Jab To Replace Smear Tests
by Ed Butt

Girls who have the cervical cancer jab may only need screening twice in their lifetime, an expert said today.

Cervical cancer should become a "rare disease" thanks to the introduction of the vaccine, said Professor Peter Sasieni, from Queen Mary, University of London. Prof Sasieni suggests the current smear test programme, which sees women invited for screening every three to five years, could be replaced with ...
read full storyCervical Cancer Jab To Replace Smear Tests.

This is another lie told in the campaign to brainwash us into believing big pharma can create a vaccine for everything.

There are a few things to remember about the HPV vaccine before you get carried away by the hype. As far as we know there are no serious side effects but then neither is it very effective. The Human Papilloma Virus (HPV) which the vaccine protects against is not the sole cause of cervical cancer. Reliable figures are hard to obtain because the medical establishment are more secretive than the climate science community about the data on which they base their claims but it is estimated that as many as 50% of cervical cancers are due to other causes.

The vaccine does not offer lifetime protection, it wears off in about ten years according to independent researchers whose work is not widely publicised (surprise!). This means that as the vaccine is given to pubescent girls it is wearing off by the time they are likely to be at their most sexually active.

The vaccine is very expensive and yet its supporters are not only pushing for legislation to make it compulsory for girls to be vaccinated but also for boys to receive the vaccine as well. How, you might well ask, do they justify vaccinating boys, who do not have a cervix, against cancer of the cervix?

Their case is that boys might be carriers of the virus and infect unvaccinated girls. When sceptics (rational thinkers) challenge this particular piece of illogic, pointing out that if all girls are vaccinated by law there will be no chance of male carriers infecting them the vaccine fascists are ready with their answer. What about women from undeveloped nations where vaccination is not automatic, they wail.

What about them? Why do we not ban all cars from the road in case an Amazonian native on a visit to the west walks in front of one, not being aware of the danger. Why don't we shut down the grids and cut off electricity supplies lest a retard sticks a metal pin in the socket and gets electrocuted. Why don't we erect a giant roof over the world to stop the occasional (once every few million years) rogue asteroid hitting a populated area?

See where these people are headed, these politically correct thinkers who would spend the entire GDP of the developed world on making sure nobody is ever at risk from anything and nobody is ever endangered by anything? They would destroy civilisation for the sake of salving their guilty consciences. And what do they feel guilty about? Being Westerners, that's what. The Daily Stirrer says don't vaccinate such people against anything, they all tend to be militant atheists and voluble supporters of evolution. Deny them medicines and treatment on the grounds that such things mess up the process of natural selection.

Obama Salutes Indonesia As A Deomcratic Example To The World Obama Hails Indonesia As A Deomcratic Example To The World
by Ian R Thorpe

Barack Obama, the great communicator who would reach out to the world and heal its wounds is a bit of a numbskull when it comes to international affairs it turns out.

Barack Obama has hailed Indonesia as an example to the world of how developing countries can embrace democracy. We examine the democratic, social, religious and human rights credentials of the world's most populous Muslim state ...

Well he would say that wouldn't he, being the great uniter, the man of peace reaching out to the Islamic world to reconcile them to the evil west. Pity he did not see fiot to make mention of that democratic, liberal, multiculturalist, inclusive, human rights loving Islamic government in Indonesia is waging a genocidal war against Christians on the remote island of East Timor.
read more on the conflict in East Timor here
and HERE
and HERE

There is little to be found in western mainstream media on this conflict in which about 30% (estimated) of the island's population have died at the hands of Barry's new best friends, the liberal, democratic and politically correct government of Indonesia.

Good work Barry, keep it it. My Pakistani and Bangladeshi Muslim friends here in East Lancashire are all absolutely convinced you are one of them, a Muzza. A few more pronouncements as careless as this and even your supporters, the "liberals" of America's east and west coasts will start to have doubts too,

Firuza Let Your Hair Fall Free

9 Novenber 2010

Cameron Told To Bollock The Chinese About Human Rights
by Ed Butt

Leading Chinese artist and dissident Ai Weiwei has risked arrest by delivering a public call to David Cameron to challenge his country's leadership on their human rights record.

Mr Weiwei, who was released on Sunday from a two-day house arrest, said he feared he would be silenced again by the authorities for saying that Mr Cameron will “commit a crime” if he fails to speak out against human rights abuses.

read full storyCameron Told To Bollock The Chinese About Human Rights

As a result of news reports on this story the radio call - in shoes were buzzing today with the 'rights' lefties demanding David Cameron cut off Britain's business relationships with the Chinese in retaliation for their abysmal human rights record.

Right so. But where the fuck would we get our underwear and shirts and microwave ovens and MP3 players from?

The lefties who are always wailing and gnashing their teeth about the way foreign countries manage their societies never seen able to understand what the Chinese or Russians, Tanzanians, Iranians or any other nation does within its own borders is the business of that nation's people. We may not like the way they carry on. In most cases they do not some of the things that happen in our society. If nations start trying to meddle in the internal affairs of other nations however that road can only lead to war.

The west is heavily involved in military action in Afghanistan, is just now disengaging from Iraq, has the Israeli / Palestinian conflict simmering on a back burner, ready to boil over into full scale regional war at the least provocation and is sitting on the permanent powder keg that is Africa.

And still the human rights whiners cannot get their heads round the first principle of international relation; DON'T FUCK WITH THE CHINESE.

Obama Goes Home To Indonesia
by Ian R. Thorpe

US President Barack Obama made a much-delayed homecoming of sorts to Indonesia on Tuesday, seeking to engage Muslims and cement strategic relations on the second leg of his Asia tour.
read full storyObama Goes Home To Indonesia

Goes home to Indonesia? Really? And we were told by so many people he was a natural born ~~nephew of his Uncle Sam~~ citizen of the United States of America.

Even worse was to befall him in connection with his true nationality however. With doubts about his eligibility to serve as United States President surfacing again in the wake of his party's rout in the mid term elections he was, while preparing to give a speech to Indian businessmen introduced by a former Kenyan Asian who was chairing the event as "a fellow Kenyan."

While most of the publicity surrounding Obama's eligibility has centered on whether he was actually born in the U.S. sate of Hawaii several law suits progressing through the labyrinthine American legal system make clear the issue is that according to Obama's own account his father was a Kenyan national (actually a British colonial citizen at the time of the President's birth) and was never even legally a resident of the USA let alone a naturalised citizen.

This would make Obama a dual citizen at birth if he was in fact born in Hawaii, a fact which is acknowledged in his semi - fictional autobiography Dreams From My Father.

Other accusations centre on the time during Obama's childhood when he lived with his mother and her Indonesian husband Lolo Soetoro in Jakarta. It is claimed Soetoro adopted the boy (a necessary step for him to attend an Indonesian state school as documentary evidence proves he did), making him an Indonesian citizen in the process. If Obama has never been renaturalised and no evidence has been found to suggest he has, this also would render him inelegible to serve as President Of The United States.

As my god friend Jeff Schreiber, a U.S. Lawyer warned in 2008 America would have a constitutional crisis on its hands if Obama was elected. They certainly have one of those now and its a humdinger.

Obama's refusal to show his long form birth certificate or other documents that might be relevant to his nationality give grounds for suspicion that there is some substance in the allegations made against him. It could of course simply be that his father is not the fabled Kenyan goat boy Barack Hussein Obama Snr. but an American citizen. This would settle questions of eligibility in Obama's favour but would expose him as a liar and a fantasist who spun this exotioc backstory for electoral gain.

We eagerly await further developments.

Children Who Have Not Had MMR Jab Should Be Banned From School
by SXavier Connolly
Children who haven't had the MMR jab should be banned from schools, according to Dr Sohail Bhatti, a director of one of the largest health trusts in has said. Oh well, we suppose bureaucratic bullying is the only way to improve uptake of the MMR vaccine which is hitting new lows we hear since the first damages award made in a British court for brain damage incurred as a result of receiving the MMR vaccine. MMR court victory for family.

read full story from The Daily Mail
Children Who Have Not Had MMR Jab Should Be Banned From School Says Doctor

The ploy used by the government and the pharmaceutical industry to sell MMR in the face of doubts is to direct all attention onto the case of discredited Dr. Andrew Wakefield. That is a typical government / corporate diversion. Over the years many parents have stepped forward to affirm that their children had developed serious symptoms comparable to autism shortly after receiving the MMR vaccine and had suffered permanent or long term harm.

It is customary for medical bodies such as the General Medical Council and for respected (but on this issue not necessarily respectable) publications like The Lancet, The Times and The Guardian to dismiss these as coincidence. When a think keeps happening in the course of a pattern of events however it is reasonable to suspect it is perhaps not coincidence.

The official line is predictably that only religious cranks and right wing nut cases harbour doubts about the MMR vaccine. This is not true. There is a significant body of medical opinion which holds that MMR and other multiple vaccines are still in use because of a massive cover up. These people are careful not to express their views too openly because they know that as was the case with Dr. Wakefield, to challenge the official line on this vaccine is to court professional ruin.

One of the reasons we do not take comments on this site is we have experience of web scrubbing campaigns like the one set up to protect MMR by throwing doubt on the sanity of those who question it (hint: the people who write The Daily Stirrer are not right wing neither are we religious) This again is a diversionary tactic so we like people to read our posts and make up their own minds.

Now nobody has ever tried to suggest that ham will come to any child who receives the MMR jab. In all but a very small minority of cases the children are perfectly safe. What gave us grounds to suspect some kind of cover up is exactly the type of official bullying we showed in the lead to this story.

Why this pressure to force MMR on worried parents? Before the introduction of the triple jab and the trickle of cases of the onset of brain damage occurring shortly after the vaccine was administered (a trickle that prompted Dr. Wakefield's misguided research project) there was over 90% take up of the measles vaccine. According to the latest statistics I read the take up of MMR is around 60% and falling. So why did the last government, if they were so concerned about the possibly very serious consequences of measles, not give parents the right to request their children receive the vaccines singly.

Ask that question and you will usually be told you do not understand science. Which is yet another diversionary tactic aimed at making questioners feel stupid and inadequate. WTF has understanding science to do with wanting a single vaccine for your child. It's a perfectly simple question, why can people who are prepared to pay a fair charge not have their children vaccinated singly?

8 November 2010
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7 November 2010

November 7, 2010. Todays News Workshy Will Be Made To Work For Benefits

People who do not try hard enough to find a job will be forced to work for free or lose their benefits, the Government will announce this week. In the most radical clampdown on the work-shy yet, Iain Duncan Smith will announce that the unemployed will be found compulsory 30 hour-a-week work placements and if they fail to turn up they will lose their Jobseekers' Allowance for at least three months.

This would be a better idea if anybody had a clue about how to create jobs for the unemployed to fill.

Cameron Too Late To Stop Brussels Takeover

E U Bill Too Little Too Late - MPs Revolt Over Europe
Dozens of MPs are threatening to vote against the Coalition on Europe this week, as David Cameron unveils new laws ensuring that any future transfer of power to Brussels is subject to a referendum.
The Prime Minister will attempt to reassert his eurosceptic credentials by launching an EU Bill promising MPs and the British people their say on any proposed transfer of sovereignty to the European Union. But the move was condemned last night as a "cosmetic gesture" by ...

The writing has been on the wall long enough. The Bureaucrats of Brussels intend to create a single European state and rule it as a Burteaucratic oligarchy. We must demand that the coalition government make a stand now, Nick Clegg must whip his mealy-mouthed bleaters into line or tell them to fuck off and join the one - worlders of Labour's wannabe authoritarian regime.

Education bias towards islam

An investigation by The Sunday Telegraph has established that the education watchdog has published positive reports praising Muslim schools for their contribution to community cohesion — even in the case of a school which openly states that Muslims “oppose the lifestyle of the West”.

read all:Ofsted Thought Police Praise Islamic Extemist Schools

We really do have to get politically correct thinking out of the education system. We know the left wing mafia hate Chistianity and let's be honest, here in Britain most moderates are not big fans of religion. If leftist militant atheists in local and national government officials are going to persist in attacking Christianity however they must either stop pandering to Islam or hold up their hands and say "Mea Culpa, I'm a bigoted little hypocrite." RELATED: Halal In Harrow
The Pursuit Of Mediocrity by fatsally.
Killing History.
Indian Mosque Controversy Education Menu

6 November 2010
Today's News and Comment

Oil Price Rise Fuels Inflation Fears
Brent crude, traded in London, hit $88.80 before falling back to $88, which is slightly below highs seen in the spring. But New York prices topped their highest in two years, touching $87.22 per barrel at one point, before retreating on a stronger dollar in late trading. Analysts have begun to forecast that ...

Let Them Eat Cheese
The Irish government has risked fomenting revolution by trying to solve the country's dire economic problems by handing out a free block of cheese to every family. Brendan Smith, the agriculture minister, announced yesterday that the government would use European Union funding to buy 53 tonnes of fresh Irish cheddar and distribute it for free from 15 November. But Irish citizens responded angrily to the plan, which was likened to the "Let them eat cake" comment by Marie Antoinette that provoked the

Obama's 10 day Asian Tour
Obama Is Doomed
Four days after the elections, the rage continues. If giving the Democrats a hiding was supposed to soothe the electorate, something has gone wrong. It – or rather the Democrat reaction to it – appears simply to have made things worse.
To the rest of the world, it might have seemed that President Obama’s press conference after the defeat was an admission of personal failure. But it wasn’t: what went wrong was the economy’s fault, he argued – and, by extension, it was the fault of the electorate for not seeing

Coalition Pledge Immigration Crackdown The home secretary, Theresa May, is to end the right to permanent settlement for more than 100,000 skilled workers and overseas students who come to Britain each year.
In her first major speech on migration, the home secretary also disclosed that she intends to drastically reduce the flow of

The Rise Of The Geeks
Microsoft founder Bill Gates is the 10th most powerful man in the world, according to the latest list from Forbes.
Bill Gates, founder of Microsoft, has been named the 10th most powerful man in the world, ahead of the likes of Rupert Murdoch, Hillary Clinton and Steve Jobs.
Gates, who stepped down from his day-to-day role at Microsoft to concentrate on the philanthropic exploits of his Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, is praised by Forbes for his work ...

Is The Music Business Playing Its Last Tune
I have a confession to make. I have been involved with music, as a fan, performer and critic, for most of my life. But I still don’t really understand how the business works. In fact, I don’t think anybody does. Guy Hands certainly doesn’t. I suggested as much when he (over)paid £3.5 billion for EMI in 2007, then set about the great but ailing firm with all the subtlety of ...

5 November 2010
Today's News and Comment

Fears About Obama's Loonytoons Economic Grow

The early verdict is in on the US Federal Reserve's $600bn of fresh money through quantitative easing. Yields on 30-year Treasury bonds jumped 20 basis points to 4.07pc.
It is the clearest warning shot to date that global investors will not tolerate Ben Bernanke's openly-declared policy of generating inflation for much longer. Soaring bourses may have stolen the headlines, but equities are rising for an unhealthy reason: because they are a safer asset class than bonds at the start of ...

You can't say we didn't warn you... debt crisis menu

British Food Prices Soar

Soaring wheat and other commodity costs on world markets have pushed up UK wholesale food prices at the fastest rate in two years, official figures showed this morning.

Prices of food produced in the UK were 9.8% higher last month than a year ago, the biggest annual increase since October 2008, the Office for National Statistics reported. Imported food prices climbed 4.5% on the year, the fastest rate since

Again The Daily Stirrer was first to warn you of this. Hope you stocked up with baked beans, tinned soup and SPAM.

Vince Cable Bottled Out On University Reform
There are three sorts of conservative: a conservative, a fanatical conservative, and a university. Change nothing, it cries. I am poor but perfect. I am special. I am the future. Just give me the money.
The coalition proposals on university tuition fees published by the business secretary, Vince Cable, this week should just about rescue ...

The academic mafia have closed ranks against cable of course. But does the national interest really demand that 50% of the population has University Degrees. After all a degree is no guarantees a person is not a useless fucker. Higher Education Disaster

Why being Green Means Never Having To Say You're Sorry

4 November 2010
News, Opinion and Coment

Document Title
Prison Does Not Reform Criminals

Three in four offenders do not leave a life of crime regardless of whether they are jailed or handed community penalties.
The first long term study of its kind shows that 74 per cent of criminals will commit at least one crime within nine years of being released from jail or serving a community sentence, Ministry of Justice figures show.
The figures show the true challenge facing Kenneth Clarke, the Justice Secretary, to meet his promise to bring about a "rehabilitation revolution".... read all Most Criminals Never Change Career

The Coalition has a chance to take another step in the right direction here and roll back the advances made by The Politically Correct Thought Police under Labour. We need to get back to the idea that prison is a punishment handed out to people whose actions have caused material or physical harm to others. It is not a way of compensating the unfortunate victims of society whose home backgrounds, academic failure at school or status as a member of a minority has complelled them to commit anti social acts in order to draw attention to their need for help.

Prison should be unpleasant or it is not a deterrent. Sure, keep the educational opportunities, they can help those who want to change their lives. But restrict access to TV and get rid of the pool tables, video games and such. Prison should not be like home. The aim is to make people not want to go back.

RELATED POSTS:
Stupid Criminal Of The Month
Bank Of England Decides Not To Print More Monopoly Money. Common sense has prevailed and the Bank Of England will not embark on another round of quantitative easing.

The decision by the Monetary Policy Committee was widely expected following a raft of positive recent UK economic data, including rising confidence in both the manufacturing and services industries as well as economic growth of 0.8pc in the third quarter – double predicted levels. Yields on 10-year gilts rose marginally to 3.05pc following ...read all Bank Of England Resists More Q.E.

The last round of Q.E. achieved little beyong putting taxpayers money in the pockets of the bankers and triggering inflation, thus punishing the people who had been thrifty by devaluing their savings and rewarding the very people and corporate entities whose actions caused the financial meltdown.

RELATED POSTS: Interesting Times
QE the financial crisis panel game
Bond Villain Targets Britain
OPINION AND COMMENT
Vince Cable Challenges News Corp's BskyB Takeover
Vince Cable has ordered media regulator Ofcom to examine News Corporation's £12bn bid to take control of BSkyB, as revealed by MediaGuardian.co.uk last night. Cable has issued an intervention notice under the Enterprise Act ordering Ofcom to investigate the proposed transaction, which would ...

Can David Cameron Turn America's Weakness Into A Strength
Until yesterday, our ministers were under strict orders to avoid all references to America's gargantuan deficit and to Barack Obama's failure to address it. When Mark Hoban, the Treasury minister, dared to suggest last month that the US had taken the wrong decisions on fiscal ...

3 November 2010
News, Opinion and Coment

Bugger all in the news today apart from analysis of the mid term elections results in the USA. Not of much interest to us then, we could say we told you so but what's the point? Anyone who has not seen through Obama before now is never likely to.

Instead let's have a wry little simle.

Most Gobsmackingly Important Scientific Study Of The Month From the website of Live Science comes this shocking revelation:

Oral Sex Leads to Intercourse Among Teens, Study Suggests.

Unfortunately you have to be a subscriber to the site and log in to read the article. But do you need to read it to know that all you will see is another ezample of scientists having to spend huge amounts of money to discover what the rest of us could have told them for nothing.

2 November 2010
News, Opinion and Coment

Austerity Measures Will Cost 1.6m Jobs Says Think Tank
from BBC News:

The government's spending cuts and the rise in VAT to 20% in January will result in more than 1.6 million job losses across the public and private sectors by 2016, research suggests.

The Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development said the impact of the Spending Review had been "understated".

It predicts 725,000 public sector jobs will go - more than 100,000 higher than a government-appointed body.

The left never give up do they? They try to create fear and panic around every issue with the unspoken subtext being "Only more government can save you, you are herlpless, like children. Trust Nanny State.

750,000 public sector jobs need to go. We have six million people employed in the poublic sector (and more if we count consultants etc. That is ten per cent of the population and over 35% of the work force. No wonder the economy is up shit creek. Everyone who has a proper job has to support a passenger.

Prisoners To Be Given Right To Vote

Ministers and think-tanks push for strict limits on concessions to the European ruling that prisoners should be allowed to vote, suggesting that it should only apply to convicts serving short sentences.

read Ed Butt's rant on this topic votes for criminals

Republicans Set For Sweeping Victory In The U.S. Election

Anxiety over the stumbling economy and discontent with Obama and government in Washington have propelled Republicans to the threshold of huge gains that could give them a majority in the House of Representatives and perhaps even the Senate.
Opinion polls and independent analysts project Republican gains of at least 50 House seats, far more than ...

Looks like the end of the narcissist Obama's dream of a world remade in his image.

Perfect Storm For Investors

Never mind what the Bank of England monetary policy committee says about interest rates on Thursday. One of the biggest wealth managers in the world is discretely warning its income-seeking clients to beware of bonds issued by the British Government; generally known as ‘gilts’.
Merrill Lynch Wealth Management fears that despite the apparent security of gilts, a combination of rising inflation – already underway – higher interest rates and the cessation of quantitative easing – both widely anticipated – could create a “perfect storm” for investors who ...

If you have savings be afraid, be very afraid.

1 November 2010
News, Opinion and Coment

Once again, without actually having done very much, Al Qaeda have scored a victory in the so called 'war on terror.' The purpose of a campaign of teror is not to kill vast numbers or to destroy property, industrial installations and military hardware but to disrupt the routines of the nation or organization under attack. The alleged discovery of a bomb disguised as a toner cartridge for a laser printer on a transatlantic cargo flight at Heathrow airport represents a victory for the terrorists.

We say alleged because rumours are circulating that a high ranked executive of UPS, the carrier on whose flight the parcel was being carried, has denied it was a bomb. The conspiracy theorists were on the case immediately, claiming the Obama abministration were behind the story in an attempt to frighten voters ahead of the mid term elections tomorrow.

This can be discounted because Obama is seen by voters as being too sympathetic to organisations connected with terror so and incident or near miss at this stage would be more likely to drive votes towards Obama's opponents.

What an be said however is that with their usual impeccable timing Al Qaeda have managed to cause maximum disruption in the west at a time when tensions are already high. When security services proclaim their success in combating the terror threat after each unsuccessful attack they miss the point. Last Christmas massive disruption was caused by a wannabe suicide bummer whose plan was to detonate explosives hidden inside his own body as the filight from Nigeria he had travelled on was coming in to land at Chicago.

Forget the fact that the guy was so incompetent he only suceeded in setting fire to his own bollocks, his mission was spectacularly successful. Air travel was disrupted for the rest of the holiday period and higher security measures imposed on airlines since his failure have cost western businesses and governments $£billions.

Again the terrorists, whether the bomb was real or there is some substance in the latest rumours, have caused massive disruption.

We do not need higher security on passenger flights. Cargo is a different matter but given the just in time philosophy of modern business, corporate interests are likely to override security risks.

And as for those of us who are not concerned with the air frieght industry, all we need do is heed the words of Winston Churchill, "Keep calm and carry on."

Read news reportPassengers Face Ludicrous Safeguards
"> The Daily Telegraph

29 October 2010
News, Opinion and Comment

New Air Travel Tax
An increase in flight taxes that will add £100 to the cost of many family holidays threatens to end the benefits brought to the British economy and its people by air travel, British Airways has warned.

US Fiscal Trainwreck Fears
The US economy is a "fiscal train wreck" waiting to happen, US economist Nouriel Roubini warned on Friday.
He painted a bleak outlook for the world's biggest economy in a commentary for the Financial Times, saying while President Barack Obama's stimulus package prevented another depression, it was coming to an end with nothing to take its place.
The economist - one of the first to predict the US housing crash and nicknamed 'Dr Doom' - said the likely path of fiscal policy after next Tuesday’s election will mean ...

E U Budget Plans Frighten BondholdersInvestors face large potential losses on eurozone debt under German plans likely to win backing from EU leaders on Friday – risking a boycott of Greek, Irish, and Portuguese bonds.

I'm A Eurosceptic, Says CameronJames Kirkup writes in The Daily Telegraph: I’ll post more on this soon, but I’ve just come out of David Cameron’s press conference here in Brussels. I asked him a question that’s been on my mind (and many others) for some time: Are you a Eurosceptic? Mr Cameron’s answer: “Yes.”

BoJo atacks Cameron's Housing Benefit Cap
Government housing reforms were under attack on multiple fronts as council home associations predicted they would backfire by driving up overall welfare bills and Boris Johnson warned against "Kosovo-style social cleansing" of poorer people from cities such as London. Downing Street moved to squash growing ministerial dissent by signalling there would be no retreat from ...

The Housing Benefit Cut Will Not Be A Vote Loser
Here is my column from this morning’s paper (the printed version has a few sub-editing cuts): There seems, at the moment, to be a competition among the political classes to describe the Coalition’s housing benefit cuts in the most lurid and tasteless possible terms. They are, we’re told, “a final solution for the poor” and a…

Great Forest Sell Off
The government's plan to put half of England's state-owned forests up for sale might raise billions, but what will we lose?

The dog walkers arrive early at Cardinham Woods. It's still another hour before the cafe in the old woodsman's cottage starts serving walnut cake and bowls of stew, but already the car park is filling with vehicles containing excitable dogs yelping to be released on to the muddy forest trails heading up towards the steep valley flanks. The dense rain cloud resting ...

Now They Are Demolishing My Prejudices
From Trafalgar Square walk down Whitehall to Downing Street and stop. From this point on, the government in the 1960s wanted you to enter somewhere quite different, a British Stalingrad of concrete and glass slabs stretching to Westminster Abbey and Victoria Street. It was to obliterate acres of the city where now stand the Foreign Office, the Treasury, Richmond Terrace and New Scotland Yard, as far as the houses of parliament and across to St James's Park.
Perhaps one day a 21st Century Society battling to preserve Canary Wharf will emulate the heroes of our Victorian heritage ...

Modern Fiction Just Not Up To Scatch
The shortlist of titles for the Guardian First Book award has been announced. But even before deliberations reached this stage, the prize has become the source of a debate about the direction the publishing world is taking.

Book competitions have a habit of spawning rows: who should really have won, who should never have been a finalist and so on. But this year's Guardian first book award managed to set off a fierce debate, even before the shortlist had been announced, and it was all down to a tweet from one of the judges...

28 October 2010
News, Opinion and Comment

Could Liberalism Be Genetic
Liberalism may be genetic, according to a new study published by Cambridge University Press: Liberals may owe their political outlook partly to their genetic make-up, according to new research from the University of California, San Diego, and Harvard University. Ideology is affected not just by social factors, but also by a dopamine receptor gene called…

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Biofuels - A Growing Evil
Is the world running out of food, alongside oil, metals, water and much else?

The answer to this question, according to a recent OECD and UN Food and Agriculture Organisation report is a definitive no; global agricultural production is on track to satisfy the expected long-term increase in demand, the OECD reckons.

Yet it's little thanks to public policy, which in combination with the current craze among financial speculators for commodities, seems hell bent on driving up prices to what for millions of the world's poor may be starvation levels ...

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America Like A Ponzi Scheme
US authorities are operating a "brazen" Ponzi scheme in government debt by buying trillions of dollars of bonds to stimulate the economy, according to Bill Gross, managing director of Pimco, the world's biggest bond house.

In a bid to restart the stalling recovery, the US Federal Reserve is next week expected to unveil a second round of quantitative easing (QE) of as much as $500bn, on top of the $1.2 trillion already completed.

You Can't Keep A Bad Idea Down Tom Friedman writes: I confess, I find it dispiriting to read the polls and see candidates, mostly Republicans, leading in various midterm races while promoting many of the very same ideas that got us into this mess. Am I hearing right?

Let’s have more tax cuts, unlinked to any specific spending cuts and while we’re still fighting two wars — because that worked so well during the Bush years to make our economy strong and our deficit small. Let’s immediately cut government spending, instead of phasing cuts in gradually, while we’re still mired in a recession — because that worked so well ...

27 October 2010
News, Opinion and Comment

27 October 2010
Today's News:

Von Rompuy - Pumpuy is trying to fuck us through the back door.

The National Socialist Government of Federal Europe is making another bid to get its hands on the controls of the British state. Yes, that dirty little Belgian bastards Von Rompuy is trying to use the Lisbon Treaty to transfer control of Britain's finances to Brussels. In other words The Bastards of Belgium are trying to stick their Federal superstate ambitions up our national arse.

Now this story comes from the Daily Mail and we normally treat DailyMail EU scare stories with some scepticism. This one does check out however. Well we told you the Bureau Rats would not give up on their dream of world domination - ever.

European President Herman Van Rompuy intends to use a report on the economic crisis to press for sweeping reforms that will ‘strengthen economic governance in the EU’.

"Ah but aren't you over - reacting?" you might well ask. After all Coalition Dave promised us a referendum on any further transfers of sovereignty to Brussels. He did, and that's why Rompuy - Pumpuy is trying to stick it up us the back way.

Mr Van Rompuy also suggests that ministers should sidestep calls for a new treaty and try to force through the new measures using existing powers under the Lisbon Treaty.

Yeah well no worries, if Dave says he will look after us we can relax, he's a much bigger bloke than Von Rumpuy - Pumpuy you are probably thinking. Maybe so but Dave is a former Public School Boy so he will be used to taking it up the arse

You think?

Downing Street has indicated that David Cameron may be prepared to trade agreement on a new treaty in return for a deal to cap the EU’s runaway budget.

Now don't you wish you had taken UKIP a bit more seriously at the election?

Hat tip to the Grumpy Old Twat for pointing us to this one.

UK Airlines Back Changes To Crazy Security Measures

from BBC News

Mr Broughton said some "completely redundant" security checks should go. The Department for Transport said there were no plans to change rules on checking laptops and shoes. Practices such as forcing passengers to take off their shoes should be abandoned, Mr Broughton added.

He also criticised the US for imposing ... UK Airlines Back Changes To Crazy Security Measures">read full story

also reported in The Guardian: UK Should Not Kowtow To U.S.

Virgin Media Ups Ante In Broadband Wars

Virgin Media is set to turn up the dial on its cable network, offering users speeds of up to 100Mbps (megabits per second). It aims to provide the service to over 50% of the UK by mid-2012, beginning in December with 200,000 homes in London, the Home Counties and West Yorkshire. It is the latest move in the race to bring super-fast broadband services to the UK. It will give new impetus to rival BT's ...

OPINION and COMMENT from around the web Osborne Needs Plan B To Deal With Banks
Supporters of cuts can still fear a recession. The lenders will pay no heed: demand and jobs must be kickstarted elsewhere

There must be a plan B. Yesterday's revelation that Britain's economic growth slowed from 1.2% to just 0.8% in the last quarter clearly indicates a stall, when it should be accelerating with the rest of Europe. Despite earlier spin making this rise better than a predicted 0.4%, George Osborne's recovery faces a blazing amber light. With cuts in public spending ahead and a swingeing rise in VAT in January, he needs a course adjustment ready for action. So tribal is British politics that a non-partisan response

Stalking Deer In Thrilling - Killing Them Is Necessary There are more deer in Britain than at any time in the last 1,000 years; the only humane way to manage them is to shoot them The chill of the morning air on your face, the fresh smell of the forest, the sound of the birds as you slowly make your way through the trees in search of a stag. Nothing compares to the thrill of the stalk. The feeling as you select a beast, approach it, take aim and fire to ensure a clean kill is unique, as is the feeling that you are doing something important. Deer stalking is more than simply shooting a deer. Deer can cause considerable damage to habitat, especially where their numbers exceed the available food supply. If the deer are unmanaged, the herd will grow too big and the deer will starve.

Polly Toynbee And The Final Solution

Polly Toynbee finally lost it on Monday. Faced with one of the most progressive governments in recent history, she simply cannot contain her outrage. From Primrose Hill, she looks out across the land and sees nothing but suffering. From next year, the Government will not pay more than £400 a week in housing benefit. That’s only £89 less than ...

Why Magical Thinking Works For Some People
Ray Allen’s pregame routine never changes. A nap from 11:30am to 1:00pm, chicken and white rice for lunch at 2:30, a stretch in the gym at 3:45, a quick head shave, then practice shots at 4:30. ... and though many coaches, teammates and fans snicker and shake their heads, a new study headed by Lysann Damisch at the University of Cologne and recently published in the journal Psychological Science suggests that we should all stop smirking and start

26 October 2010

News Opinion and Comment

UK Economy Grows Faster Than Expected Following the rash of gloomy predictions that followed his announcement, the Chancellor is likely to be pleasantly surprised by the figures, which are the first to reflect the period of the new Coalition Government ...

Fears that Britain is sliding towards a double-dip recession receded today, after the UK economy grew by 0.8% in the last three months.

UK GDP grew twice as strongly as the City had expected between July and September, with most analysts expecting growth of just 0.4%. However this was still slower than the surprisingly robust growth of 1.2% recorded in the previous quarter.

The government also received a boost from ...

UK Economy Grows Twice As Fast As Predicted
GDP expanded 0.8 per cent, well above the 0.4 per cent predicted by economists, as the prospects of a double dip recession receded.

The latest figures improve the chances that Britain will be able to withstand the effects of the Government's austerity package and will reduce the likelihood of the Bank of England pumping more cash into the economy in the coming months.

Just a week ago, George Osborne announced cuts of £81 billion aimed at reducing the deficit and restoring credibility to the country’s finances.

Paul Krugman's Ignorance Of History
Adam Collyer hands the Nobel prize winning economist a lesson in economics.
Paul Krugman reckons the UK government is wrong to cut spending. Mr Krugman is a leading American economist, and indeed a Nobel prize-winner. Here’s what he had to say:

Both the new British budget announced on Wednesday and the rhetoric that accompanied the announcement might have come straight from the desk of Andrew Mellon, the Treasury secretary who told President Herbert Hoover to fight the Depression by liquidating the farmers, liquidating the workers, and driving down wages. Or if you prefer more British precedents, it echoes the Snowden budget of 1931, which tried to restore confidence but ended up deepening the economic crisis.

… The best guess is that Britain in 2011 will look like Britain in 1931, or the United States in 1937, or Japan in 1997. That is, premature fiscal austerity will lead to a renewed economic slump. As always, those who refuse to learn from the past are doomed to repeat it. Amazing that a Nobel-prize winning economist should be so ignorant of the history of a period that was so significant to economics as a discipline. The truth is that in Britain, at least, the real economic pain happened from 1929, when the stock market crashed, to 1931...read all

Jobs Grow Even In Recession The left continues to rubbish the Office for Budget Responsibility's forecast of 2m new private sector jobs by 2015-16. This morning the BBC's Evan Davis described it as "quite a claim", and according to the Grun, Alan Budd is going to be hauled before the Treasury Select Committee to confess his manifest pro-Tory bias.

But in truth - as we blogged a couple of days ago - Budd's forecasts do no more than suggest a return to the same sort of ...

25 October 2010
The Cancer Of Modern Life
Medical research insititutes continue to spend vast amounts of money on cancer research and the less level headed types involved, the boy - scientists twiiter about finding a cure for cancer as if it were one disease with a single identifiable cause. New research however suggests cancer is just one of the hazards of modern life. ( Health Menu )
Today's News

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Just one big crontroversy today but it is one we will be arguing about for years to come.

Coalition Needs To Come Clean About Labour's Failure On Energy
As we gloomily contemplate our present discontents, we should be pleased to learn that, to the outside world, the Comprehensive Spending Review looks good.

In the past few days, I have spoken to several people from America and Australia who are studying it with forensic interest. In France, where the modest suggestion that people should retire at 62 rather than 60 seems to have caused national paralysis, those who worry about deficits look enviously at our apparent readiness to take our medicine.

22 October 2010

Effin Hopeless: A Rant about the internet, ISPs, customer service and the general crappiness of everything.
As we regard the state of western civilisation with it's 'liberating' internet that puts all the information in the world (and fart lighting videos) at our fingertips, lives lived online by increasingly isolated and dysfunctional people, the ability of authoritarian governments to control information and the politicians parallel and contradictory exhortations to reduce our carbon footprint and start spending to get the economy back in growth we are entitled to ask "Why are you telling us everything is great when experience tells us everthing is very, very crappy." - read all Effin' Hopeless

Opinion and Comment From Around The Web

opinion-and-comment-daily-stirrer From: The Washington Examiner

Obama Speech About Car In A Ditch, Opponents Sippin' On A Slurpee Misfires
You've heard it a lot. Barack Obama describes the economic crisis by accusing Republicans of driving the nation's economy into the ditch and then sitting back and watching -- "sippin' on a Slurpee" -- while Obama and the Democrats did the dirty, exhausting work of pulling the car out of the ditch.

Recently, Obama used the Slurpee line at a rally with the First Lady at Ohio State on the 17th. At a fundraiser for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland the same day. At a rally for Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick on the 16th. At a rally for Delaware Senate candidate Chris Coons on the 15th. At a fundraiser in Miami on the 11th. At a DNC rally in Philadelphia on the 10th. At a fundraiser in Chicago on the 7th. At a rally in Maryland on the same day. And so on. (The president seems to always use the image at big rallies, but not always at the high-dollar intimate fundraisers he also attends.)

Many people began rolling their eyes at, say, the 10th time they heard the Slurpee story. And on Tuesday, a reporter asked White House spokesman Robert Gibbs about it. Why Slurpees? Gibbs didn't have ...

We're not part of the American election but we have to say that Richard Pryor imprersonation Obama does is enbarrassingly bad.

The Islamic Republic Of Tower Hamlets
I have received a number of requests for a full transcript of my Channel 4 Dispatches film, broadcast in March, about Lutfur Rahman, just chosen as the new directly-elected mayor of Tower Hamlets. Lutfur was council leader at the time of the programme, a position from which he was subsequently removed. The full transcript is… read all

Bond Markets Have Become The Latest Investment Bubble The benchmark five year gilt yield fell to a new low of 1.43 per cent on Thursday, which astonishingly takes it to a 25 basis point discount to that of its German bund counterpart. The UK Government likes to think of the record lows to which gilt yields have sunk to be a vote of…

Education Gap Widened Under Labour

There’s a laughable headline in the Guardian this morning: “State school pupils do better at GCSE.” Technically, that’s true. According to the latest tranche of examination statistics released by the Department for Education, 53.1% of GCSE candidates in state schools in 2010 managed to get five or more at grade C or above, including Maths…

Savage Cuts And Social Cohesion
Of all the victims of George Osborne's Comprehensive Spending Review, none have more cause for complaint than local government. Councils are facing a 27 per cent cut in central funding, adjusted for inflation, by 2014-15. That compares with a 3.4 per cent cut for education, a 7.5 per cent cut for defence and a real terms increase for health. And thanks to the Coalition's two year freeze on council tax it will be difficult for councils to raise more money themselves to ease the pressure of this squeeze from the centre ...

The Chattering Classes Are Out Of Touch

Oh dear, oh dear. If you want an example of all the selfish little societies that coexist in the so-called United Kingdom, you have only to survey the public responses to the Coalition's "cuts". In how many ways is it possible to say how utterly unjust, disastrous, catastrophic the Comprehensive Spending Review will be for the wealth, health and happiness of everyone, while actually meaning dreadful, disastrous and catastrophic for ...

21 October 2010
Today's News

There Is No Plan B Says Osborne

In a phrase reminiscent of Margaret Thatcher's "no turning back" George Osborne yesterday told MPs there is no Plan B. In other words there are no other options on the table for the economic savation of the country than his drastic public spending cuts and efforts to reduce the budget deficit.

The Chancellor insisted that he will stick to his plan for cuts, even after economists suggested he should be prepared to change course if the UK economy slips back into recession.

Mr Osborne yesterday set out a four-year plan to eliminate the structural deficit in the public finances, cutting welfare payments and Whitehall departments’ budgets.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies, an independent think-tank, has warned that the deficit could turn out to be larger than expected, and suggested that Mr Osborne should review his plans after two years.

also reported in The Guardian The DSaily Stirrer is with Osborne on this. Retail Sales Fall
Retail sales in Britain unexpectedly fell last month as consumers started tightening their belts ahead of the government's austerity measures, fuelling fears that the economic recovery has stumbled. Retail sales have now fallen for two months in a row. Yesterday's spending review set out sweeping cuts to welfare, higher education and social housing which are likely to sap consumers' confidence further. "The second successive fall in retail sales in September is surprising and

Opinion and Comment from around the web
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20 October 2010

Nothing on todays news - we looked at all that stuff about the government spending review and decided we couldn't be arsed.

Plenty of opinion and comment on a wide variety of topics however.

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Quote of the day:
Presenting the climate changes we've been experiencing in the last decades as a threat to the Planet and letting the global warming alarmists use this bizarre argument as a justification for their attempts to substantially change our way of life, to weaken and restrain our freedom, to control us, to dictate what it is we should and should not be doing is unacceptable. Their success in influencing millions of quite rational people all around the world is rather surprising. How is it possible that they are so successful in it? And so rapidly? For older doctrines and ideologies, it took usually much longer to get such an influential and widely shared position in society. Is this because of the specifics of our times? Is this because we are continuously "online"? Is this because religious and other metaphysical ideologies have become less attractive and less persuasive? Is this because of the need to promptly refill the existing spiritual emptiness – connected with "the end of history" theories – with a new “noble cause," such as saving the Planet?

The environmentalists succeeded in discovering a new "noble cause". They try to limit human freedom in the name of "something" that is more important and more noble than our very down-to-earth lives. For someone who spent most of his life in the "noble" era of communism this is impossible to accept.

- Václav Klaus

Rees and the Royal Society are seeking ever greater roles for science in the political sphere. Politicians, who are suffering from a historic inability to define their purpose, take the authority this lends them with ever more enthusiasm. But this has resulted in a qualitative shift in the character of science. Where once it provided the means to liberate human potential, it now exists to regulate it. Instead of ‘speaking truth to power’, science increasingly speaks official truth for official power. The result is bad politics and bad science. - Ben Pile of Climate Resistance asks What's Next for the Royal Society?, the above quote being his concluding paragraph.

19 October 2010

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Opinion and Comment from around the web

[an error occurred while processing this directive] 18 October 2010

Today's big news stories.

Merkel: Multicultural Society Has Failed

Attempts to build a multicultural society in Germany have "utterly failed", Chancellor Angela Merkel says.

She said the so-called "multikulti" concept - where people would "live side-by-side" happily - did not work, and immigrants needed to do more to integrate - including learning German.

The comments come amid rising anti-immigration feeling in Germany.

A recent survey suggested more than 30% of people believed the country was "overrun by foreigners".

The study - by the Friedrich Ebert Foundation think-tank - also showed that roughly the same number thought that some 16 million of Germany's immigrants or people with foreign origins had come to the country for its social benefits ... read full story Merkel: Multicultural Society Has Failed: BBC News.

Angela Merkel's admission that German's policy of multiculturalism has failed will come as a relief to those of us who have been opposing (in the blogosphere mainly - mainstream media is controlled by the Politically Correct Thought Police) the advancing of an agenda aimed at building a homogenous global culture. This globalism, not to be confused with the globalisation of trade, was the bainchild of the 'progressive left' whose political ideologies grew out of new age quasi - philosophies embraced by Californian stoners in the 1960s. The ideas at the core of their thinking always seemed to be based on the notion that if we all joined hands and sang Kumbiya the lion would lie down with the lamb, the hawk would bring (vegetarian) food to the dove's nestlings and rich people would share their wealth with the poor so we could all live in peace and plenty.

Apart from displaying a tragi - comic failure to understand human nature and the realities of the world such thinking is infantile in its naivete.

On the question of multiculturalism it is a basic requirement of successful communities that there is a common culture to bind people together. The common culture leads to common perceptions. Over long periods of time mythologies and folklore develop so that the cultural threads are woven into a single social fabric. Unravel that fabric, the civilisation collapses. Thus the native people resent large groups of incomers, people of an alien culture or religion whose unwillingness to adapt to the ways of the host nation threatens to disrupt the fabric of society.

There is bound to be resentment, there will always be resentment when a way of life is threatened. If people leave an area or nation en masse it implies they are dissatisfied with life in that nation. So why should the people in a society where there is no such mass desire to leave, where people are generally content with their way of life?

Speaking to young members of her conservative Christian Democratic Union (CDU) party on Saturday Mrs Merkel that at "the beginning of the 60s our country called the foreign workers to come to Germany and now they live in our country."

She added: "We kidded ourselves a while, we said: 'They won't stay, sometime they will be gone', but this isn't reality."

"And of course, the approach [to build] a multicultural [society] and to live side-by-side and to enjoy each other... has failed, utterly failed."

In her speech in Potsdam, however, the chancellor reiterated her previous pledge that immigrants are welcome in Germany.

There has been intense debate about multiculturalism in Germany in recent months. Many Germans feel that too many concessions have ben made towards Mulim communities living in Germany, there have been too many istances of the Islam card being played to gain exemptions to German law. People inside the Chistian Democrat party say Mrs Merkel faces pressure from within the party and its allies in Germany's coalition government to take a tougher stance and require immigrants to do more to adapt to German society.

Earlier this week, Horst Seehofer, the leader of the CDU's Bavarian sister party, the CSU, said Multikulti' is dead, it is "obvious that immigrants from different cultures like Turkey and Arab countries, all in all, are not willing to integrate.

Tensions first started to rise in August when Thilo Sarrazin, a senior official at Germany's central bank, said that "no immigrant group other than Muslims is so strongly connected with claims on the welfare state and crime". Mr Sarrazin later resigned in the face of pressure from the 'progressive left'.

Strong anti-immigration stances from mainstream politicians come amid anger in Germany about high unemployment and an exploding bill for benefits as unemployment rises and the age time-bomb, exacerbted by the generosity of Germany's state pension system takes its toll on state revenues, even though the German economy is growing faster than those of its rivals.

He adds that there also seems to be a new strident tone in the country, perhaps leading to less reticence about problems that were not discussed in the the past.

Anti Obama Tsunami of Anger Threatens Leading Democrats

The Speaker of the House of Representatives is threatened with political oblivion as she is demonised by beleaguered Americans who see her as the epitome of liberal elitism pro-Pelosi sentiments are harder and harder to find these days, especially outside her fanatically liberal hometown. Across America, as the fiercely contested midterm elections at the beginning of November draw near, Democrats are on the run from a resurgent and freshly powerful Republican party. Many experts expect the Republicans, powered by a flow of energy from the Tea Party movement, to wrest control of the House which Pelosi heads. A few think they may even win the Senate too.

Homophobic Violence In The USA:- The Guardian

Carl Paladino, a Republican politician running for governor, is calling for gay people to be barred from teaching in New York, where homophobic attacks are on the rise a stance which has horrified liberals but does not seened to have harmed his support among working class voters.

Liberal America has looked on in horror as virulent homophobic prejudice seems to have returned to its streets and cities.Much of it seems to be focused around the New York region where a noisy and highly politicised gay community's demands that they be granted certain 'rights that are simply not extended to heterosexuals have push the limits of tolerance too far. New York, traditionally liberal and usually tolerant in its politics has not been hostile to homosexuals living openly or to their relationships being legally recognised by civil partnerships . The current push for Christian churches to be complelled by law to recognise same sex marriage is a blatant case of a politically correct administration riding roughshod over the feelings of the majority to pander to the demands of a vociferous minority.

Opinion and comment from around the web.

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16 October 2010
Todays News

Paris Charles de Gaulle Airport Runs Short Of Fuel.

Strikes against government austerity meaures aimed at bringing the public sector debt under control are causing significant disruption to business and everyday life in France

Most newspapers today carried reports of a warning from the management of Chartle's de Gaulle airport, France's main international hub:

France's main airport, Charles de Gaulle, has enough fuel to last only a few days, the government warns, as unions prepare to hold another day of strikes against pension reforms ... read full story:Paris Airport Running Short Of Fuel

The French Unions are always good entertainment value when they take on the government, whether they are blockading major ports by setting up a chain of small fishing vessels across the harbour entrance, driving their lorries very slowly, abreast, to obstruct the lanes of main arterial roads, grounding all flights on busy holiday weekends by withdrawing air traffic control services or letting livestock loose in the streets of cities to protest the poor prices being paid to farmers by food cartels.

All good stuff and we can enjoy it because it is not happening here.

Such protests are very effective ways of bringing the nation to a near standstill and the government usually backs down. This time the protesters may have bet on a loser however. While the unions are protesting cuts to welfare budgets, reform of pensions (French pensions are very generous) and the raising on the retirement age among other things. All these measures are necessary if France is to avoid slipping into the same kind of debt trap as the loonytoons economics of Britain's 'progressive' New Labour government steered our nation into.

We in turn are not in as dire straits as the PIIGS nations (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain) but very harsh austerity measures are needed to keep the United Kingdom from going the same way.

It is a measure of how far the left are detached from reality that leaders and prominent supporters of Labour are calling for a return to the days of profligate public spending in spite of their government, before it was thrown out of office, having been warned by the IMF that if the deficit was not reduced the international monetary regulator would have to step in and curb the government's excesses.

Ministers Agree MoD Budget Cuts

Cutbacks in the UK's £37bn annual defence budget have been finalised ahead of the chancellor's Spending Review, the BBC understands. The reduction is expected to be less than the 10% the Treasury had been seeking, possibly around 8%. The Army is not expecting significant cuts in personnel, while the Navy will get two new aircraft carriers ... read full story: Ministers Agree MoD Budget Cuts

The problem of waste and iresponsible financial management is endemic in government, not only in the Ministry of Defence but throughout all departments. One area particularly prone to incompetence and sloppiness in procurement is the National Health Service. In my experience NHS procurement depatrments, with their enormous buying power, have always been able to find ways of paying for Information Technology hardware around four times the price it could be bought for commecially by medum sized firms.

We have to make sure it meets our exacting standards, is the excuse.

Do you remember when mobile phones were banned in hospitals? It was claimed they affected equipment. In fact they never did unless they were very close to small, extremely low voltage devices. What had the NHS wallies in a righteous panic was the 'snow' effect on screens caused by radio fequency interference that could have come from mobile phones, taxi radios, atmospheric static electricty or many sources.

The Snow on screens did not prove patients were being put at risk. What it did prove was that while enormous effort had been expended on ticking boxes, filling in forms and filinfg them, holding meetings going on ~~expensive, unnecessary jollies~~ fact finding missions and finding one thousand and one ways of justifying the existence of their jobs the NHS technical experts had not bothred to make sure the expensive kit they were happy to pay over the odds for had been properely earthed.

Currency War Likely To Escalate As U.S. and China Clash

A long-awaited report from the US Treasury on whether China manipulates its currency has been delayed in a move that will do little to ease foreign-exchange market tensions. (...)The long-simmering tension between the US and China has flared aggressively over the past month. China warned the US on Friday not to use the dispute over the value of the yuan as a "scapegoat" for America's high unemployment and flagging growth prospects.

The Daily Stirrer's John de Roe has predicted a destructive currency war between the US and its trade rivals for over a year. Once again we find ourselves saying: We told so so.

Attacks On Iraq Security Forces Rise

A wave of targeted attacks on soldiers, police, traffic officers and senior officials is steadily picking off the custodians of Iraq's streets at rates that are nearing the darkest days of the insurgency, according to security commanders.

As of last Monday 710 Iraqis had been killed this year with silenced pistols or rifles. At least 600 more had been killed by magnet bombs placed under the cars of officials, according to Baghdad's Major Crimes Unit. Hundreds more have been injured.

The killings have increased sharply in the past four months amid fears ...

They thought it was all over and Obie claimed credit for winning the war. Pity American's don't realise there is a grat big world beyond their borders.

Opinion and Comment from around the web

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15 October 2010
Todays News

Cameron Pledges To Curb Compensation Culture
Today's big story for The Daily Stirrer is the government's promise to end the compensaion culture.
from The Daily Telegraph:

David Cameron has pledged to curb "compensation culture" in Britain and create a new system that "treats adults like adults".

He made the comments in the foreword to a review into health and safety procedures carried out by the former Conservative minister Lord Young.

The Prime Minster said he hoped that the report would prove to be a "turning point" with an end to unnecessary bureaucracy faced by firms as well as "senseless" rules and regulations. read full story:Cameron To Curb Compensation Culture

Compenstation Culture

David Cameron has promised his government will act to end the compensytation culture that has developed in Britain over the past few decades. He said the Government would restrict advertising and marketing campaigns of claims litigation specialists companies which he blamed for encouraging the compensation culture..

"We're going to focus regulations where they are most needed, with a new system that is proportionate, not bureaucratic, that treats adults like adults, and reinstates some common sense and trust," he told journalists.

Unsurprisingly business leaders welcomed the new approach because the draconian penalities imposed under health and safety relguations that place a ridiculous burden of responsibility on em[ployers and businesses have been blamed for causing reluctance to expand busines activity. The Unions argued that the proposals do not contain aany measures which will reduce the high levels of workplace death, injuries and illness. High levels of workplace death? It sounds as if they are talking about the nineteenth century not the twenty first.

A spokesman for the CBI said:

" Public regard for Health and Safety officers has never been lower. Press articles recounting stories where health and safety rules have been applied in the most absurd manner, or disproportionate compensation claims have been awarded for trivial reasons, are a daily feature of our newspapers.

"Businesses now operate their health and safety policies in a climate of fear. The advent of 'no win, no fee' claims and the all-pervasive advertising by claims management companies have significantly added to the belief that there is a nationwide compensation culture.

"The 'no win, no fee' system gives rise to the perception that there is no financial risk to starting litigation. Indeed, some individuals are given financial enticements to make claims by claims management companies who are in turn paid ever-increasing fees by solicitors.

"Ultimately, all these costs are met by insurance companies who then increase premiums."

It is good news for businesses and for lovers of common sense that the coalition government is moving in this direction but compensation culture does not beging and end with workplace injuries. What also needs to be tackled is the politically correct culture that encourages claims for compensation because a person of colour, an overweight person, a disabled person or a member of some crackpot religion claims compensation because "they wrre discriminated against" and their feelings were hurt by some humourous banter, a slightly insensitive remark or bit of plain speaking.

RELATED POSTS:
At Last The Left's Politically Correct Agenda Is Being Questioned - We Can Discuss Poverty, Race and Single PatenthoodWith Germany's leader Angela Merkel and British Prime Minister David Cameron both recently declaring multiculturalism dead and many commentators starting to question the Politically Correct orthodoxy on issues like race, sexuality and single parent families are we al last smashing down the barrier that has prevented the sensible policies on many social problems being adopted.
Universities To Face 4.2 billion Cut - BBC NewsUniversities are facing cuts of £4.2bn in comprehensive spending review, a leaked e-mail suggests.Good, maybe we can get rid of all the University of Usedtobeapoly colleges and the Mickey Mouse degrees in waste management with dance, etc. that they offer.
Racism and Equality

Opinion and Comment from around the web

[an error occurred while processing this directive] 14 October 2010
Today's News

Death Of Quangocracy

from The Daily Telegraph:
Nearly 200 public sector bodies are set to be axed in a “bonfire of the quangos”, ministers will announce today. However they are expected to say that the move will save only a few hundred millions of pounds.

Francis Maude, the Cabinet Office minister, is expected to stress that the move will make the public bodies more “transparent and accountable” in a Commons statement this morning.

Cost savings and job losses are expected to be limited as the functions of some of the bodies are simply returned “in-house” to Whitehall departments.

There will still be high profile casualties as David Cameron attempts to make good his promise in Opposition to have a “bonfire of the quangos.”
read full storyDeath Of Quangocracy

A few hundred pounds might be peanuts to the government but it would make a difference to most people's lives. Still, the economy being as top - heavy with government as it is we need the coalition to start pruning somewhere.

A billion here, a few hundred million there, it all helps. Unfortunately for their next trick ministers have to do something rather more difficult than pulling a white rabbit out of their collective hat. The have to produce a million real jobs out of thin air to get those dependent on benefit back in work and shift some of the tax eaters into gainful employment.

Middle Class Benefits Money Go Round

The squabbling at Prime Minister's Questions yesterday was the latest episode in what is fast becoming the Government's benefits breakdown. The Prime Minister, David Cameron, said to the Leader of the Opposition, Ed Miliband, that it's not fair for his poorest constituents to pay for his child benefit. Mr Miliband told Mr Cameron that the child benefit cut had been a ...
read full storyMiddle Class Benefits Money Go Round

Parliamentary commentators rated this skirmish a win for Ed Miliband but all he achieved was to reaffirm Labour's enthusiasm for taking tax off people with one hand and giving it back with the other. Still, the Conservatives have no room to make use of that. Throughout Margaret Thatcher's time in power the iron - knickered lady, in spite of all her speeches about traditional values was waging war on the family and rearranging the tax system so that any household that did not have two incomes could not expect to have a decent standard of living.

Cyber Warfare Threat This article follows up one we highlighted yesterday.

from The Guardian:
There are 1,000 emails a month trying to penetrate or disable government computer networks. Losses from online banking fraud reached £39m in the first half of 2009, a rise of more than 50% over the year before. Whichever way you look at it, the director of GCHQ, Iain Lobban, was not exaggerating when ... read full story Cyber Warfare

Once again we are threatened by the easily foreseeable unforeseen consequences of scientists arrogance. When Tim Berners Lee, the CERN physicist decided systems clerks, administrators and hop floor staff had no difficulty using was far too complicated for scientists whose minds were on higher things and 'invented' the universal document format that led to the stripping out from carefully designed and constructed networks all the security measures that kept data safe he made possible all the threats we live under today.

We computer professionals, having already experienced the results of letting the public loose on text only bulletin boards in the early 1980s warned of the chaos that would ensue should governments heed the claims of scientists, academics who worked in physics, chemistry, mathematical research must know more about computers that computer specialists because they are "scientists."

BTW how can anyone work in mathematical research? 2 + 2 = 4 end of story. In the name of scientific research there have even been people sitting (drawing bug fat salaries) for 50 years monitoring the radio waves coming in from space and hoping one days to see a message like "Hello Mum" appear on their screens. We know scientists tend to be a tad autistic but one would hope even the most obsessive human being would have given up after 50 years.

Still, so long as the government is willing to keep handing out our money on this crap people will keep doing it, after all it's better than working.

So there we are, saddled with a global network on which government and commerce now rely and which was designed by idiots who hadn't a clue what they were doing and were too far up their own arses to listen to people who had done the job professionally. And now the whole thing, along with your bank balance and private life are up for grabs by anyone who knows how to write a password crackers (about 20 lines of code) keystroke logger (even less) or simply relies on brute force and ignorance to hit you over the head and grab your laptop case as you walk along the street. It would take me about ten minutes to open a stolen laptop, short out the c-mos battery and thus reset the system passwords and get access to your bank account, credit card or investments. It is even easier to hack a system using remote administrator software.

So no matter how much you have spent on security software it is unlikely to be adequately effective against the kind of cyber criminals operating today. Welcome to the Cyber Wars, courtesy of Tim Berners Lee, Bill Gates and a few others who were similarly driven by the two forces that have shaped human destiny since man first stood erect, greed and stupidity..

Opinion and Comment from around the web

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13 October 2010
Todays's News

12 October 2010

Miliband, Cameron Clash On Benefit Cuts

from BBC News:
Ed Miliband has clashed with David Cameron over proposed cuts to child benefits in his first prime minister's questions as Labour leader.

Mr Miliband said it was not fair and would see families on middle incomes suffering an "enormous" financial loss.

He accused the PM of breaking promises to protect child benefit and urged him to "think again" over ...

Miliband attacks Cameron on benefit cuts

Nice to see born again Labour will follow down the path trodden by New Labour and Old Labour before them in arguing for the extension of the dependency culture, the sqeezing of the taxpayer base into an ever smaller sector of the public and the insane beliefs that:

(a) Tax eaters contribute to the economy and appointing public sector administrators somehow creates "growth".
(b) the level of public sector deficit does not matter because governments can always simply print more money.
The coalition are not getting everything right by a long way but at least they give the impression that they understand the nature of the problems.

UK Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threat
Having praised the coalition government for understanding the economic threat we must beat them round the read with a big dead fish for resorting to that old standby 'fear and panic' in order to soften the public up for new taxes to fund the security services and buy very big boys toys for the lids who like uniforms.

from BBC News:
The UK's critical infrastructure - such as power grids and emergency services - faces a "real and credible" threat of cyber attack, the head of GCHQ says. The intelligence agency's director Iain Lobban said the country's future economic prosperity rested on ensuring a defence against such assaults. The internet created opportunities for hostile states and criminals, he said. For example, 1,000 malicious e-mails a month are already being targeted at government computer networks, he said. Speaking to the International Institute for Strategic Studies, Mr Lobban said he did not want to go into detail about ... read full story

UK Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threat

There are inherent weaknesses in systems that depend on the internet. These however are easily nullified by simply not mixing sensitive government or corporate data with the public domain chatter of the public internet.

The reasons we have these problems now is explained very clearly in Andrew Keen's book The Cult Of The Amateur. The reasons for it are also demonstated by the popularity if websites like Wikileaks whose founder Julian Assange clings to the stupid idea that nothing is private and everything should be online and accessible to everybody and the frequent scandals that arise from new media companies like Google and Facebook displaying not just a total disregard for privacy but a failure to understand why anyone would object to personal details being displayed onlines without the person's consent of knowledge.

E.U. to investigate Google monopoly
Britain Going Cashless?
Internet Anti Virus Scam
Google Stormtroopers Pelt Homes With Eggs
UK Infrastructure Faces Cyber Threat
Self Driving Cars Are The Latest Dehumanizing Development
Microsoft Billionaire Sues Web Giants Over Patents

Property Prices On The Edge

from: The Daily Telegraph
The alarming figures show the growing dependency of children on their parents to realize the dream of owning their first home.

A total of 35 per cent of parents with children aged 18 to 24 said they have – or are willing to – give up to £10,000, while a further 18 per cent said they would raise the amount to as much as £15,000, according to the exclusive research by Halifax, Britain’s mortgage lender.

More than eight out of 10 first-time buyers only get onto the property ladder because they receive a cash handout from

read full story Britain's Property Market On A Knife Edge

Our finance expert John de Roe has predicted this many times

House prices will not go to zero, homeowners will simply opt to stay where they are rather than moving upmarket and so while nominal values will be static activity in the maket will come to a near standstill.

The much hyped recovery in the market in 2009 was illusory and illustrated this effect. Few houses of the right kind were on the market because people wanting to move up could not afford the asking price and with doubts about job security and fears of interest rate rises decided not to take a risk. Thus the people who had to move created a recoveryette as they competed for the properties available.

Benefit Claimants Rise Again As Jobless Total Falls

from The Guardian:

The picture in the labour market remains bleak, with the number of people claiming jobless benefits in Britain last month rising at its fastest rate since January.

However, the wider measure of unemployment, which also includes people out of work who are not eligible for benefits or choose not to claim, dipped in the three months to August thanks to 16 and 17-year-olds finding work or training.

The Office for National Statistics (ONS) said this morning the number of people claiming Jobseeker's Allowance climbed ... read full story Jobless Benefit Claimants Rise Again

RELATED POSTS: The Jobless Economy
Jobless People
Jobs Crisis Roundup

Opinion and Comment from around the web

[an error occurred while processing this directive] We start with a new feature today - a roundup of opinion and comment from various blogs and news sites we look at.
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Todays News 12 October 2010

Students To Face Unlimited Fees

Universities in England should be able to charge unlimited fees, a major review of university funding has recommended. Lord Browne's review calls for the £3,290 cap on fees, which students borrow in loans, to be scrapped. Instead it proposes a free market in fees - setting out models of charges up to £12,000 a year for a degree course.

Tuition fees charged by Universities to students was always going to be the first big test of the coalition. While the Conservatives favour a policy of charging economic rates to students depending on what course they take, the Lib Dems favour the current flat rate fees regasrdless of course.

The Daily Stirrer is with the Lib Dems on this one. It is not in the nation's interests to exclude talented young people from higher education simply because they are not from affluent homes.

Having said that, the problem of funding the exploding costs of higher education becomes ever more acute as the economic crisis drags on and becomes depression.

The answer is simple. We are sending far too many young people to University. If higher education is a right as the last Labour government would have had us believe, where are all the plumbers, electricians, bricklayers, machine operators, lorry drivers and warehouse workers going to be recruited from? Unless we make those mundane occupations degree entry as has been done with many very ordinary jobs in the public sector and fill the vacancies for manual workers from immigration..

If the government is to have any hope of getting its head round this problem they must understand one thing. Education is worthless without experience.

The Guardian on Students and Tuition Fees

Strong Must Pay Fair Share Of University Fees Lord Browne defends radical proposals that will see students paying up to £36,000 for a three-year degree course.

More on the Evil Empire of Google
The internet search group is launching its own measure of inflation based on the goods and services people buy online, providing more up-to-date figures than official statistics provide ...

As we told you yesterday in Google Carjack the Internet Giant is trying to insinuate itself into the machinery of government.

UK Inflation Rate Stays At 3.1%

The Daily Stirrer's finance expert John de Roe has warned that inflation was the inevitable result of Quantitative Easing and spelled out its consequences for people with savings and pensions that are not index linked.

UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation remained unchanged in September at 3.1%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).

It means the rate has been above the Bank of England's 2% target for 10 months in a row.

Inflation as measured by the Retail Prices Index (RPI) fell back from 4.7% in August to 4.6% in September.

RPI - which factors in a greater chunk of the cost of housing - is important for wage negotiations.

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Interesting Times

The Future Is Cancelled
Debt Crisis menu

British Media Unite Against Murdoch

This headline from The Guardian made us feel there is some chance of resisting the inexorable march of corporate fascists. We have blogged many times on the takeover of British media by corporations controlled by Rupert Murdoch's News Intrnation, a creping subjugation of the means of spreading information carried out for almost tweny five years with the complicity of governments led by Margaret Thatcher and Tony Blair.

Many people are sure, although it is unlikely ever to be proved that Blair's betrayal of Independent television was nothing more than what was promised to Murdoch in return for delivering Dowing Street into New Labour's hands.

Now it seems the increasingly beleagured companies that must try to compete with the Murdoch monster are at last seeing that their survival depends on collaboration.

Fleet Street's highly factionalised newspaper industry today set aside historic differences to join forces in an unprecedented assault against the power of Rupert Murdoch's media empire. The companies behind the Daily Telegraph and the Daily Mail – both supporters of the Conservatives – united with the owners of the Guardian and the Labour-backing Daily Mirror to petition Vince Cable, the business secretary, to consider blocking News Corporation's proposed £8bn full takeover of the satellite broadcaster BSkyB, which trades under the name Sky . Fearful of the combined might of an integrated News Corp-Sky operation, which would include the Sun, the News of the World, the Times and book publisher HarperCollins, the complainants said the "proposed takeover could have serious and far-reaching consequences for media plurality".

The Evil Empire of The Media is not going to go down without a fight however.

Rupert Murdoch responds to his rivals and appeals to Vince Cable - a reponse printed in The Guardian

11 October 2010

Control freakery, cars and public spending cuts feature today

Self Driving Cars Are The Latest Dehumanizing Development
Don't be evil, that's Google's job. The world's greatest corporate Nazis are always eager to promote the latest dehumanizing technological advance. The most recent project they revealed from a long line of technologies aimed at cutrailing our ability to think for ourselves and make our own choices is the self driving car. No doubt the Evil Empire will sell this as something to keep us safe and protect us from some of the risks and hazards of modern life.

In reality it is another ruse to make us slaves to machines - machines controlled by Google.

Google Tests Self Driving Cars Engineers at Google have tested a self-driving car on the streets of California, the company has announced.

The cars use video cameras mounted on the roof, radar sensors and a laser range finder to "see" other traffic, software engineer Sebastian Thrun said.

They remain manned at all times by a trained driver ready to take control as well as by a software expert.

In reality all Google are doing here is claiming credit for innovations developed by other companies, one of the two things Google is good at (the other being creepy levels of control freakery. Mercedes Benz have had self driving cars for several years but have decided the market is not ready for them. Volkswagen have similar projects in the pipeline.

There can be no doubt what Google's sales pitch will be. They will not aim at drivers directly but at governments. What driver with a pulse would want to hand the controls to a car. Would you want to be confined to a secondary role as your car pootles along the prescribed route. When I drive fifty miles to see my Dear Old Mum I can go the motorway route like everybody else or I can choose the senic routes, through the Trough of Bowland, The Ribble Valley or the coastal route. They are all a bit further and take longer but the journey is pleasurable. With a computer in control and programers taking into account input from government officials you can bet I would be restricted to the safest, most efficient route. And while Google strip me of my freedom the government will wind up the whining from the politically correct 'liberals' who in reality are the most dogmatic, least liberal people in the world. They will bleat about my irresponsibility and selfishness, complain that by choosing to drive myself I am putting people's lives at risk as well as damaging the planet and tell me my 140mph car is racist, sexist and homophobic (it may be homophobic, the contempuous snort from the engine when I get the tachometer into the red zone as I blow away a limp wristed Toyota Prius, Renault Clio or Smart Car would terrify anybody suffering from a testosterone deficiency. (I should say here the makers data indicates my car will go 140mph but to drive at twice the legal speed limit on a public road would be crazy. I've never taken it above 120mph.) Google of course, bunch of berks that they are, will want to be paid for making the roads safer. As nobody would pay two cents to have a remote controlled car driven by a geek for them and the kind of money needed to implement this beeing more stupendous than the Obama administrations annual public secor defecit the G - men must be thinking in terms of getting paid out of tax revenues. And why not. Corporate fascism in the healthcare field having failed to find the promised cure for death has now convinced the politicians that science can find a vaccine for everything except death. To prove their point they are inventing diseases. Remember Swine flu that was going to kill us all if we did not get vaccinated? We did not get vaccinated, we did not die. But that is not the story history will tell. Already, even while the debacle is fresh in people's memories the history is being rewritten and the officisal story being told is that a Swine Flu pandemic and milliions of deaths were only averted by the prompt action of the politicians and the brilliance of the scientists working for Big Pharma.

"If the Party could thrust its hand into the past and say this or that even, it never happened—that, surely, was more terrifying than mere torture and death. And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed—if all records told the same tale—then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past.'"
George Orwell, 1984, Book 1, Chapter 3

Consider some of the schemes aimed at controlling our freedomof movement floated recently in the developed world.

Fitting cars with RFID chips so that journeys can be monitored and charged by the mile. Registration plate recognition so cars can be identified and their owners billed when they enter a congestion charge zone. Adding bio-ethanol to fuel so that less non renewable fuel is used (in fact cars run less efficiently on ethanol so any saving would be marginal) Electric Cars (which are too expensive for most people and need to be recharded every 200 yards)

If anyone was serious about our safety and the environment we would be talking not about Google projects aimed at increasing their control of our freedoms nor government plans for taking 999% of every Pound, Dollar or Euro we earn and giving 2% back in benefits and allowances. They would be talking about a new networks of tramways in urban areas, new intercity rail or maglev links, they would be talking about putting security gusrds on public transport so the ~~thieving, bullying, drunken, drugged up scumbags~~ victims of our unfair society could not make travelling an unpleasant experience for ~~decent, civilized people.~~ the bourgeois oppressors (I'm trying to make this piece politically - correct - fuckwit friendly.

If anyone was serious about our safety and the environment we would not be talking about computer driven cars, we would be talking about making public transport efficient, clean, practical, cheap and pleasant to use.

But we are not talking about saving the planet or keeping driver safe. We are talking about control. We are talking about the war on individualism. Think about that. Oh and before I leave Google's control freakery and move on, Bing and Ask Jeeves are far better seaarch engines if you want information. If you like ads and irrelevance nobody can touch Google.

Polls Show Support For Cuts Voters Support Cuts

An ICM survey for this newspaper shows a clear majority of voters still supports the controversial decision to axe child benefit for higher-rate taxpayers from 2013.

They also back further reductions of the £195 billion welfare budget in preference to cutbacks in defence and education as ministers step up their assault on Britain's record budget deficit.

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that three benefits claimed largely by the elderly and the sick face being cut in this month's Comprehensive Spending Review (CSR) in which all Whitehall departments face reductions in spending of around 25 per cent over four years.

Officials at the Department for Work and Pensions have been ordered to study urgently the overall costs of the Cold Weather Payments system, which last winter paid out £290million. Millions of elderly and ...

Team Obama Hit By Exodus Of Senior Staff
More senior White House staff are to leave in the next few months, adding to the high exit rate from President Barack Obama's administration.

Political analysts attribute the attrition rate to exhaustion, but Republican opponents blame disarray inside the White House, with an insular team responsible for too many policy failures.

The imminent departures include those of ...

Fascistic New Video Underlines Eco - Insanity Of Left

A must watch for all those taken in by the climate science scam. See how close to the techniques of the Church Of Scientology the Cult Of Climate Scienceology are in their efforts to suppress criticism of their dangerous creed of mind control.

9 October 2010
Another crisis (or another scare story) about the NHS and a new slant on rising sea levels today.

The main stories of the day Intensive Care Disaster Warning
The relatively low number of intensive care beds in UK hospitals means it is poorly prepared for major disasters, a report in the Lancet says.

Critical care experts say there may be as few as 3.5 intensive care beds per 100,000 people in the UK, compared with more than 24 per 100,000 in Germany.

The experts from Canada also said demand for intensive care was likely to rise with an ageing population ...

And what kind of disaster are they expecting? One in which the gravy train stops running for consultants hired to dream up scare stories so the politicians keep pumping in the cash?

Nine Arrested After Irish Terror Raids
After reports of Obie's ham fisted attempt to save his Presidency by creating an Al Qaeda terrorist scare here's a reminder that we have plenty of problemes of our own without getting involved in America's.

President Obama may still labour under the misapprehension that he was elected President of the World so we should never miss an opportunity to remind him of the realities of modern life.

Nine men were being questioned by detectives on Saturday after bomb making equipment and handguns were seized in a series of police raids during an investigation into the activities of dissident Irish republicans ...

Rising Seas Not Down To Global Warming

from The Daily Telegraph
Water Mining Prime Culprit For Rising Seas
Nowhere in the Maldives juts more than 10 feet above the Indian Ocean, making it extremely worried about sea level rise. Its president, Mohamed Nasheed, illustrated the point by holding a cabinet meeting under water in the run-up to last year's Copenhagen summit.

But a new study shows that global warming is not the only cause of swelling seas. Much comes from "water mining" – the pumping of vast amounts of groundwater from beneath the earth, mainly to irrigate crops. This inevitably ends up in the oceans after it evaporates from farmland and comes down as rain.

The study which will be published in the next issue issue of Geophysics Research Letters – estimates that extraction of ground water for domestic and industrial use accounts for about 25% of sea-level rise around the world, the same as the melting ice from the glaciers outside Greenland and Antarctica.

Even more disturbing is the theory that increased pumping threatens food supplies. Underground reservoirs and aquifers are shrinking by more than 280 cubic kilometres a day, well over twice as much as in 1960. Nature cannot keep pace with the loss to replenish the levels of water tables. The enormous Ogallala acquifer – which underlies eight states in the USA, helping to grow food on which people in a hundred nations rely – is being drawn down by a three feet a year. How much of that is replenished by rainfall percolation? A mere inch.

Clearly then the blinkered focus of the climte 'science' lobby on carbon driven global warming has only served to divert attention from even more urgent and potentially catastrophic problems.

If the atmosphere does warm by as much as six degrees celsius by the end of the century as the most alarmist of doomsday prophets predict, it will not matter because we will all have died of thirst long before that. On the other hand once water shortages start causing millions of deaths thus relieving the pressure of overpopulation on the ecosystem nature will be able to start restoring the balance and the few humans who survive will rebuild civilisation.

Or we could all get the message now, ignore the scintists who are only the hired lackeys of big food, big oil and big money and all just do our best to consume less. There is nothing wrong with using a computer with a I.6 Ghz CPU if it does the job, we don't have to throw out clothes because they are last year's fashion and we should heed the old wisdom of the thrifty, buy cheap - buy twice.

All the science I have seen that claims to address his issue, all the statistics that are chanted like mantras and said to support the 'science' that was done with made up or manipulated data, all the crackpot geo-engineeering theories and all the carbon trading schemes are aimed at only one thing, not saving the planet but saving the unsustainable perpetual growth economic model.

More NATO Tankers Destroyed In Pakistan

Gunmen in southwestern Pakistan have set fire to nearly 30 tankers carrying fuel for Nato troops in Afghanistan.
Suspected Islamist militants have stepped up attacks on convoys carrying supplies for Nato forces since an air strike in northwestern Pakistan in September, described by the US ambassador as a terrible accident.
About 20 gunmen set fire to around 30 tankers parked outside at a roadside restaurant near the southwestern town of Sibi in a pre-dawn attack, officials said.
The tankers were on their way to ...

We have been saying since we started The Daily Stirrer that our troops should be withdrawn from Afghanistan not just to stop the waste of young lives but to stop the war spreading throughout the reason. Who cares if it embarrasses Barack Hussein Obama who promised his country victory in Afghanistan, he's fucked anyway and it serves him right for trying to be a world leaders without ever having read a history book.

8 October 2010
We focus on two fear and panic stories today:

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7 October 2010
Disheartening economic news continues to roll in as do stories of environmental problems.. Better prospects for high blod pressure sufferers today however.

£6000 wiped off average house price in a month
House Prices fall a record 3.6% in a month

The recovery of UK housing market suffered a big blow when figures from the Halifax showed the average price of a property dropped more than £6,000 in September.

The group said an increase in the number of properties on the market, combined with a drop in demand fuelled by uncertainty over the economy, forced prices down 3.6pc - the biggest monthly fall since figures were first compiled in 1983.

The price of an average house in the UK dropped from £168,124 in August to £162,096, according to The Halifax's figures.

However Martin Ellis, housing economist with Halifax, said it is too early to conclude that September's fall represents the beginning of a sustained period of declining house prices.

He added: "Looking at quarterly figures – a better measure of the underlying trend – house prices in the third quarter of 2010 were 0.9pc lower than in ...

Hungarian Toxic Sludge Crisis - Daily Telegraph

Toxic Spill Reaches The Danube - The Guardian

Hungary's toxic sludge spill, which has killed four people, reached the Danube river, threatening to contaminate the waterway's entire ecosystem, officials have said ...

White the 'scientists' have been blethering about Anthropogenic Global Warming they have completely forgotten the problems left behind by the industrial age that we still have to deal with.

Blood Pressure Breakthrough

A mechanism in the body that causes high blood pressure has been uncovered by British scientists in a breakthrough that could lead to new treatments for the condition.

Researchers have found for the first time a key step in how the body controls blood pressure and so how the process sometimes goes wrong.

By targeting the mechanism they can stop it from malfunctioning and so prevent the condition, known as hypertension, that affects millions of people in Britain and is a major cause of heart disease and stroke.

I can tll them now - from personal experience as the survivor of a massive brain haemorrhage - stress is a major factor in sending the control system haywire.

6 October 2010
No post yesterday sorry, we had connectivity problems all day. Cameron On Fairness

from The Guardian
According to advance notices David Cameron in his keynote speech today will talk about fairness. The Guardian predicted "Fairness means giving people what they deserve, Cameron to tell Tory conference"
from The Guardian:
David Cameron will today say the government's commitment to fairness means giving people "what they deserve" and warn benefit claimants they will not be allowed to live off taxes paid by working families if they are able to work themselves.
Cameron will use his first keynote speech to the Tory conference as prime minister to call for a new debate about fairness as he tries to draw a line under the controversy caused ...

We are so pissed of with hearing politicians talking about fairness we now reach for the sick bucket every time we hear the word. And when he talks of giving people what they deserve we hope Dave includes the administration of a kick up the arse where it is needed.

Light drinking no risk to baby

from BBC News:
Drinking one or two units of alcohol a week during pregnancy does not raise the risk of developmental problems in the child, a study has suggested.

Official advice remains that women abstain completely during pregnancy.

A study of more than 11,000 five-year-olds published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health found no evidence of harm.

So all those articles and reports aimed at demonising women who had an occasional glass of wine while pregnant were just lies backed up by the usual shit science from the poodles of Academia?

Why are we not surprised?

X Factor Gamu To Be Kicked Out Of UK?

from BBC News:
An X Factor contestant who narrowly missed out on a place for the live finals of the show is facing deportation from the UK. Gamu Nhengu, who is originally from Zimbabwe, was controversially eliminated from the ITV show on Sunday. Immigration officials have confirmed that her mother, Nokuthula Ngazana, had been refused permission to stay in the UK after her visa expired in August.

Only one think to say really. While Gamu might be lovely and talented and thoroughly likeable, the kinds of young person we should want to come and live in our country, SAME RULES APPLY. We cannot start making special cases or it is unfair to everybody else.

Currency War A Risk To Recovery Says IMF

from The Guardian
The head of the International Monetary Fund has waded into the growing international row over exchange rates, warning against governments using exchange rates as a weapon.

Dominique Strauss-Kahn said governments are risking a currency war if they use exchange rates to solve their own problems. He told the Financial Times: "There is clearly the idea beginning to circulate that currencies can be used as a policy weapon."

He added: "Translated into action, such an idea would represent a very serious risk to the global recovery …

The warning came on a day when markets around the world fled their positions on currency and the price of gold hit $1330 an while stock markets around the world registered significant gains.

The global currency crisis is not so much to do with nations using currency exchange rates as weapons in a war of commerce as nations and investors looking after their own interests as the U. S. Economy, for so long the powerhouse of the global financial system is progressively demolished by the loonytoons economics and profligate spending of the imbecile President, Barack Hussein Obama.

The idea that Obama was helped into the White House by foreign interests who wanted to facilitate a shift in power from west to east is all the time looking less like a conspiracy theory and more like sound analysis.

4 October 2010

The Conservative led Coalition government's plans to cut child benefits dominate today's media.

High Earners To Lose Child Benefit from BBC News:

Child benefit is to be axed for higher-rate taxpayers from 2013, Chancellor George Osborne has announced.He told the Conservative conference the "tough but fair" move - affecting couples where one parent earns about £44,000 - would save £1bn a year. Labour said the benefit should remain universal and the families who wanted to "get on" were being penalised ...
High Earners Lose Child Benefit

We think it is about time the stupidity of across the board benefits was ended. What is the point in governments levying high taxes and then giving back the money in benefits. We know the Labour movement are paythologically opposed to 'means tested' benefits but if redistribution is to be fair and in any way meaningful it must move money from the better off to the poorest people in society.

Child benefit - and Britain's is among the most generous in the world - is vitally important for the wellbeing of children in a family where both parents work but are only earning minimum wage, even more so in the case of an unemployed single parent. But in the case of a household in which the main earner makes £50,000 a year whiloe the other partner is on £25,000 per year it is irrelevant. To suggest otherwise is typical leftist hypocrisy.

The coalition plan does not propose to abolish child benefit or make across the board cuts but to rationalise the payment. And if that household with combined income of £75,000 can't make ends meet well they shouldn't have taken on such a big mortgage.

Tanker Attack In Pakistan
Militants in Pakistan have destroyed 27 tankers which were carrying fuel for Nato troops in Afghanistan.

The Taliban in Pakistan said it was behind the assault on a depot near Islamabad which left three people dead.

Pakistan has stopped Nato convoys crossing the Khyber Pass in response to a Nato air strike last week in which three Pakistani soldiers were killed.

Nato said on Monday it regretted the deaths but called for the crossing to be reopened ...

read full story: - NATO Tanker Convoy Attacked In Pakistan

In the past year we have commented on reports about NATO supply convoys being robbed, NATO high command in Afghanistan cuting deals with warlords and tribal leaders by which western taxpayers' money was paid to locals in return for them not attacking our installation and convoys, Afghan recruits to the security forces completeing their training and simply disappearing with the weapons they have been given to fight against our soldiers.

Clearly the Afghans do not want us there but have little interest in ending the war as in an impoverished nation many people are doing well out of it.

What the fuck are we doing there after nine years loss of life and great expense have achieved nothing?

Five Times More Americans Than Brits Are Gay

3 October 2010

From today we will not post a Daily Stirrer on Sundays. We have not got religion or anything but there is seldom anything in the news on Sunday that was not there on Saturday.

2 October 2010
After yesterdays's reminder of exactly how appallingly out of touch with reality the Labour government were we are slightly encouraged by news that the coalition are edging tentatively back towards common sense.

Agreement On Benefits Overhaul
One of the big political stories that has been simmering for the past couple of months is the tussle between Chancellor George Osborne and Benefits Minister Iain Duncan Smith over reform of the benefit system. As we understand it IDS was pushing for a simpler structure to state benefits so that instead of claimants claiming many benefits and having to deal with serveral agencies or several parts of the same agency, a single benefit that took in all the claimant's entitlements would be introduced.

It was strange that Osborne was opposing this in view of his enthusiasm for reducing the public sector deficit. Unless of course advisers in his department, The Treasury, were more focused on preserving bureaucratic empires that streamlining the apparatus of government. It now seems Duncan Smith is winning on this one, here's how BBC News sees the situation ahead of the Conservative Party Conference:

from BBC News Chancellor George Osborne has confirmed there will be a major overhaul of the benefits system with a new universal credit introduced.

Mr Osborne told the Daily Telegraph "substantial savings" were to be made.

Details of the replacement for existing benefits are likely to come out as the Conservatives meet for their annual conference in Birmingham on Sunday.

The changes are being brought in partly to tackle perceived long-term welfare dependency by unemployed people.

Welfare reform is also key to plans to cut the UK's deficit, but has been the source of reported tension between ministers ... read the full report Agreement On Benefits Overhaul

Any savings on the benefit system that can be made without making the lives of people dependent on welfare, incapacity payments and jobseekers' allowance unbearable will be welcome. The tootal cost of benefits paid out seems set to rise even further as economic news offers little basis for optimism.

Time the politicians and bankers admitted the world has slipped into depression following the failure of the debt fuelled, consumer led, perpetual growth economic model.

No Real Jobs In The New EconomyGordon Brown's Labour government and the failing Obama administration in the USA, feeling power slipping through their fingers, are trying to lull people into a false sense of security with claims the 'green' and the 'digital' economies will restore prosperity. This as a blatant lie, nobody needs a PhD in economics or Social Science to understand that the "new economy" of green businesses and digital commerce will destroy not create real jobs...
The Real Unemployment FigureNew unemployment figures released yesterday show unemployment fell by 0.1% in the three months December to FebruarY. Contained in the figures was a statistic that undermines government talk of an economic upturn. This is the number of people in work. Headline unemployment has fallen the number of people in work has also fallen. What's going on?

Bond Villain Targets Britain's Future by John De Roe.Bill Gross, the world's biggest bond investor might have voted for Obama hnd has some sympathy for Labour because they talk of creating jobs, but he thinks the British economy is in worse shape than anyone is going to admit and is quite willing to take advantage of our vulnerability."
The Jobless EconomyPoliticians, economists and others with an interest in talking up the economy to get us all spending and taking on debt and mortgage loans again may rave about recovery. With our industrial base so depleted where will the jobs come from that we need to lead a recovery?" They may call it fiscal prudence, we call it loonytoons economics...
Interesting Times - Which Way Will The Global Economic Crisis Go In 2010?Which way will the economic crisis go in 2010? Cracks are apearing in the Europen Single Currency scheme and China which has massive holdings of US treasury bonds is making unhappy noises about the dececits being run up by the Obama administration as they pursue loonytoons economic policies...
Chancellor Darling's PBR Cancels Christmas And The FutureBoth the USA and Britain are in a debt crisis that dwarfs the catastrophe of climate change. Other developed nations are crippled by debt and their Public Sector Borrowing Requirement but not completely hamstrung yet. Read how government borrowing by means of selling bonds to finance out of control public spending is dragging us into the abyss.

The Dollar Is Sinking - Man The LifeboatsAs The Daily Stirrer predicted recently the position of the $US is under attack. Last week a sustained slide in the value of the currency was halted by the smaller Pacific Tiger economies, Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong buying up Dollars that were flooding the markets. So whay is going on and how will it end?
by Ed Butt: 25 October 2009

The Economy Of The Living DeadThough governments talk about recovery we are stuck in the economy of the livind dead, the global financial system as become a zombie. Is there any way out?

Magic Money, The Free Market IllusionNot so long ago politicians and bankers were full of confidence bordering on hubris and they were telling us the good times could go on for ever. So where did it all go wrong. The finance industry blame politicians, politicians blame the finance industry and they all blame us as they try to dream up schemes that will enable the world to carry on prining worthless money and lending it to each other...

QE Quantitative Easing, ...it's the new financial crisis television panel gamehisted by Stephen Fry. A bit like QI but funnier.

The Tyranny Of Bricks And MortarThe word freedom is bandied about recklessly. Have human beings ever truly been free? Even now self hating white middle class guilt trippers blether about the evils of slavery as though the slave trade was an invention of Europeans in the 17th century when in fact it had been around since the beginnings of civilisation. But despite all the posturing and finger pointing are millions of peoplenot living as slaves to their mortgages, unable to get out of bad situations because it may mean losing their home and evrything?

Debt Crisis Roundup

Coalition Ministers Urge Review Of Oppressive Health and Safety Rules
Through the course of Labour's thirteen years in power we became accustomed to bureauctratic dictatorship and politically correct tyranny disguised in the mantle of "Health and Safety." The coalition government had already made a promising start at tackling the Nanny State nd the politically correct bullshit that purported to be protecting us from risk but was really about control freakery and justification of thousands of non - jobs in the public sector.

The latest news we hear from within the government is even more encouraging to those of us genuine Liberals who believe in individual freedom, choice and personal responsibility.

from BBC News:

An end to "excessive" health and safety rules that enable councils to cancel popular activities is being urged by a senior prime ministerial adviser.

An end to "excessive" health and safety rules that enable councils to cancel popular activities is to be urged by an adviser to the prime minister.

Lord Young said form-filling had replaced common sense, and the rules had become "a music-hall joke".

In a government-commissioned report, the Tory peer calls for a clampdown on lawyers who "entice" people to pursue personal injury claims ...read full story Health and Safety Rethink Urged

(also: The Guardian. Review Of Excessive Health And Safety Rules)

From: The Guardian.

Education Minister Promises New Deal On Discipline
The so-called "no touch" rules that discourage teachers from restraining or comforting schoolchildren are to be abolished as part of a "new deal" for teachers, the education secretary, Michael Gove, said yesterday.

In an exclusive interview with the Guardian before the Conservative conference in Birmingham, which starts tomorrow, Gove also disclosed that he will give teachers a right to anonymity when faced by allegations from pupils, overcoming doubts within the Ministry of Justice.

Gove, one of David Cameron's closest cabinet allies, promised to change the rules on discipline. He argued: "At the moment if you want to become au fait with what this department thinks on how to keep order in class you have to read the equivalent of

'Bout bloody time we trided bringing a bit of discipline back into the classroom. Last week in our "Recommended reading" items we featured a story from America in which a teacher had been suspended from work for trying to have removed from class two pupils who wwere having sex during a lesson. That is where the insanity of politically correct thinking espoused by the "progressive left" leads.

1 October 2010
Today we are appalled by the passage of the 'equalities' bill, a legacy of the Labour government which strips able bodied heterosexual sane averagely intelligent white people living stable relationships involving a male and a female of most of their equal rights and grants privileged status to black Irish gypsy one legged gay-lesbian-transgender single parents with mental illnesses and learning difficulties.

The Equalities Bill, passed by the previous Labour government before they were ejected from power becomes law today. This farrago is typical of the imbecilic mindset of the self righteous hypocrites who style themselves the progressive left. Presented as a law in support of equality in the workplace , in this era of pandemic joblessness and perpetual financial crisis it is nothing but an attack on the businesses that provide the real, wealth producing, revenue generating jobs in the private sector.

Ah but the infantile arsewipes of the progressive left will not be happy until we all work for the state, as carers, councillors, equalities trainers or outreach workers.

You may have spotted the flaw in their emplyment policy there. It relies on the Chinese happily continuing to supply us with cheap goods and also lending us the money to pay for them. But the equalities bill is a fitting memorial to the megalithic stupidity and incompetence of the Labour government. The problem is when this stupid, politically correct bowl of bottom gravy starts to destroy real jobs it is the coalition that will get the blame. Here is how BBC News led their report on the story:

New rules aimed at banning discrimination by employers, covering areas such as age, disability and pay, have come into force. The Equality Act covers many workplace areas and draws nine separate pieces of legislation into a single Act. Equalities Minister Theresa May says it will now be easier for firms to comply with anti-discrimination rules. However, some business groups argued the new legislation will impose a heavy burden on employers ... read full story: New Equality Rights In The Workplace Under the terms of the new law the circumstances in which employers can ask job applicants questions about disability or health prior to offering them a position,will be stringently restricted, making it more difficult for disadvantaged people or member of ethnic, sexual or religious minorities to be unfairly screened out.

Conservative Home Secretary in the coalition government Teresa May was stuck with the task of trying to defend the bill. She said:"In these challenging economic times it's more important than ever for employers to make the most of all the talent available."

Supporters of the progressive left might expect me to support the bill, being a disabled person myself. WRONG! While it is a principle of any civilised society that people be trated equally, that everybody is accorded similar worth, trying to engineer the world so that choose with physical problems are no longer unable to do certain things, so those with learning difficulties or social problems are not excluded from jobs requiring certain intellectual or interpersonal skills.

Clearly a person with dyslexia or such severe learning difficulties they cannot read is unsuitable for a job as a radio or television news reader. Under the provisions of the bill it would become very difficult to exclude such a person from a job in which reading ability is essential. That is an extreme example but the progressive left are extremists (and nutters) so you may be sure they will be arguing before long that inability to read does not cancel out a persons 'right' to hold a job that involves reading.

A few years ago a local supermarket employed a young man with Asperger's Syndrome. He was fine, if slow, stacking shelves but all the cans and packets were stacked very neatly. It would be no surprise to learn that he read the bar codes and stacked items in numerical order. Still, no problem if his managers were happy and you can bet they understood the consequences to their career of letting it be know they were not happy with the situation.

The problems began when some bright and beautiful young social science grad. from human resources put the lad to work as a bag packer on the tills. He was slow and he was very pernikertty about how bags were packed. And after he had physically attacked a few customers because they tried to hurry things along by packing their own items he disappeared. Perhaps he was assigned to counting and grading grains of salt or something similar.

It's cruel to mock maybe but hey, I have brain damage so I get a free pass. The point I am making is that some people can never be equal, no matter what laws are passed to try to make them so.

In addition to restricting the questions an employer can ask regarding job applicants' ability to do the job they are allying for the act also incorporates such crackpot provisions as abolishing the employers right to a hearing in many discrimination disputes. It will no longer be necessary for the disabled, ethnic minorities, gay, lesbian and transgender, members of minority religions or women to prove they have been discriminated, they would simply have to complain that they felt they had been discriminated against and the case would be upheld.

A spokesman for The Equality and Human Rights Commission commented: "Everyone is protected by the new law."

"[The Act] covers age, disability, gender reassignment, marriage and civil partnership, pregnancy and maternity, race, religion and belief, sex (meaning gender) and sexual orientation. "Under the act people are not allowed to discriminate, harass or victimise another person because they belong to a group that the Act protects, they are thought to belong to one of those groups or are associated with someone who does."

In other words in the modern workplace nobody is allowed to do or say anything that might upset another worker who can in any way define themselves as a member of a group. The act even extends to cover workplace banter. If future Manks (people from Manchester) cracking jokes about Scousers (people from Liverpool) could face suspension or the sack as could natives of the Wars of the Roses counties Lancashire and Yorkshire and yet playful rivalries like this are part of the fabric of our society and are as traditional as carol singing or or Crowning the May Queen.

While unions, charities, minority group leaders and all the tax eaters in the caring professions are rejoicing as the passing of this bill, business leaders are not so happy. The bill's supporters say it will now be easier for employers to comply with anti - discrimination legislation but bosses say it will impose an enormous additional cost burden on their operations.

Abigail Morris from the British Chambers of Commerce told media representatives "Businesses are really concerned, the government's own impact assessment shows that this is going to cost £190m just for businesses to understand the legislation, and this at a time when we really need them to be concentrating on creating private sector jobs and driving economic recovery."

One example cited was of a single mother who works as a receptionist for a small company. She feels she is being discriminated against because the company cannot arrange for her to work flexible hours to fit in with her child minding arrangements. As a receptionist she needs to be at the front desk from nine to five and this was made clear when she took the job. Her employers say they cannot offer her an alternative position and cannot afford to hire an extra member of staff to cover for the woman. This situation shows very clearly it is impossible to be fair to the woman without being unfair to her employers. So will supporters of the bill feel quite so triumphant if, as a consequence of one person being granted a rather strange version of 'equality' (her employer does not operate a flexible working hours system) the company shuts up shop and all the jobs are lost.

The insanity of the act does not end there however. Throughout the summer concerns have been raised by representatives of shipping companies about the new 'equality' rules. The laws could force them to quit the UK because they would have to pay UK rates to foreign-based seafarers who do not have the burden of British living costs.

The overall consequences of this act are likely to be disastrous for British industry and commerce. We already have a double headed employment crisis with many 'real' jobs being migrated to low labour cost areas and an already bloated public sector (tax eaters) accounting for far too high a proportion of those jobs that are left in the UK economy.

Quite simply the equalities bill is going to make small employers reluctant to hire in case, through restrictions on their right to be sure candidates are suitable, they get an absolutely useless person who it is then impossible to sack while large employers will simply migrate more of the business operation offshore to nations with more rational employment laws.

More on the Equalities Bill

The Equality Act is the triumph of identity politics and possibly the worst law in English history
We’ve finally reached rock bottom, with Harriet Harman’s Equality Act, which comes into force today. Where do I begin? (Quotations are from the Telegraph report.)

“An employee who had been disciplined for taking a lot of sickness leave could also claim they had been treated unfairly.

“The Equality Act will make it easier for staff to claim they were discriminated against because of a disability. This is because they no longer have to prove they were treated less favourably than non-disabled colleagues."

“The new law also stops colleges from preventing teenage girls at school who are pregnant or who have had a baby from taking their A-levels.”

Now I dare say that when historians of the 25th century come to write about the downfall of European civilisation this law will be used to illustrate how Western thinking lost its way, and how a perverse ideology that took hold of universities in the 1960s came to dominate politics.

It is ironic that when anti-discrimination laws were first brought in they ...

We would have liked to bring yo The Guardian take on this bill. As the most left wing quality newspaper one would expect them to be most strident in support of its provisions. The paper did not eature the story on the front page of its web edition. Perhaps the managers thought the recent lurch to the loony left has led to the paper haemorrhaging enough readers already.

Global Concern Over Unemployment
Evan as Britain is implementing laws which will exacerbate our already enotmous unemployment problems, around the world the unemployment pandemic is pushing nations towards civil unrest.

from The Daily Telegraph

UN Warns of Global Unrest Over Unemployment
The United Nations work agency said it was putting back by two years from 2013 its previous assessment of the time needed to create the 22 million jobs still needed to regain the pre-crisis level - 14 million in rich countries and 8 million in developing states.

The global economy has started to grow again with encouraging signs of employment recovery especially in some Asian and Latin American emerging economies, the ILO said in its annual World of Work report.

"Despite these significant gains ... new clouds have emerged on the employment horizon and the prospects have worsened significantly in many countries," it said.

Raymond Torres, lead author of the report, told a news conference that job losses since the crisis started had totalled some 30-35 million. The ILO has forecast global unemployment this year of 213 million, a rate of 6.5 per cent.

For the United States - where persistent unemployment has become one of the main issues in this November's elections - the number of jobs still needed to regain pre-crisis levels is 6.9 million, Steven Tobin, ILO economist, said.

The Guardian does have something to say on this story.

from The Guardian: Job Market Recession Social Unrest

The International Labour Organisation (ILO) has warned of growing social unrest because it fears global employment will not now recover until 2015.

This is two years later than its earlier estimate that the labour market would rebound to pre-crisis levels by 2013. About 22 million new jobs are needed – 14 million in rich countries and 8 million in developing nations.

The United Nations work agency today warned of a long "labour market recession" and noted that social unrest related to the crisis had already been reported in at least 25 countries, including some recovering emerging economies. read full story Unemployment Leads To Social Unrest

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The Ease With Which People Are Hacking Smartphones.

Did China Hijack World Internet Traffic

Wikileaks: American President Gave Britain's Secrets To Russia To Secure A Deal
China Denies Web Hijack - The Guardian
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Daily Stirrer Archives

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