The Daily Stirrer, September 2010 (for breaking news skip to News Feeds)
30 September 2010
A polemic on the folly of pandering to minorities and a story of Africans enslaving Africans and Asians in 2010 to illustrate the hypocrisy of Black American leaders and the weakness of western politicians who will not defend the est against charges that slavery was a crime of Europeans against Africa.
One Law For Them, Another For Us
It is rather irritating to read stories like this one about slavery in Africa when we so frequently have to put up with lectures from American black leaders, semi literate preacher politicians (I include the current Presient among them) about whitel and his evil slave trade for wich all dark skinned people around the world are stiff suffering.
There is only one thing dark skinned prople are suffering from as far as we can see. Other dark skinned people.
Slavery Uncovered On Fishing Boats
Shocking evidence of conditions akin to slavery on trawlers that provide fish for European dinner tables has been found in an investigation off the coast of west Africa.
Forced labour and human rights abuses involving African crews have been uncovered on trawlers fishing illegally for the European market by investigators for an environmental campaign group.
The Environmental Justice Foundation found conditions on board including incarceration, violence, withholding of pay, confiscation of documents, confinement on board for months or even years, and lack of ...
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Indian Mosque Dispute Shines A Light On Ground Zero Controversy
by Ed Butt.
One of the issues that has excited public opinion in America ahead of the mid term election to be held in November is the plan to build a 'Muslim Cultural Centre' close to the site of the World Trade Centre where 3000 people died in the 2001 attack by Muslim terrorists that destroyed the twin towers of the centre. Though the people behind the plan are adamant the development will not be a mosque the planned centre will include a prayer area. That is what has upset many Americans, particularly evangelical Christians.
The Daily Stirrer reported yesterday on a speech by former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a man know for his straight talking, in which he said multiculturalism had been a disaster for Australia. Howard could have gone further because multiculturalism has been a disaster everywhere politically correct elitist governments have tried to impose it on an reluctant population.
Results of failed multiculturalist experiments can bee seen in various places around the world and the simmering grudges that arise from the inability of different cultures to occupy the same geographic space go back a long way, 5000 years in Palestine in fact. In the Balkans the cultural conflicts are at least a thousand years old and in India where Muslim conquest planted a large Islamic minority among the Hindus the disputes have gone on for several hundred years.
The latest act to be played out in one of those conflicts is the legal judgement expected shortly in the dispute between Hindus and Muslims about ownership rights of the site of a 400 year ols mosque demolished by Hindu protesters in 1992. The Hindu claim to the site rests on the fact that the mosque was built on one of their sacred sites, the birthplace, according to legend and belief, of the god Rama.
Here is how The Guardian Newspaper sees to situation:
Hundreds of thousands of police and paramilitaries have been deployed across India to prevent violence following a long-awaited legal decision on the disputed holy site at Ayodhya, in the north of the country, due today.
The judgment will determine whether Hindus or Muslims have the right to worship on the ruins of a 16th-century mosque in the city. In 1992 the mosque, known as the Babri Masjid, was torn down by Hindu extremists, sparking some of India's worst religious violence since independence.
The way communities react to the decision will be seen as an indicator of India's progress in creating an environment in which Muslim and Hindu can live peacefully side by side. With tensions increasing in Kashmir province and along the North West frontier, the border with Pakistan's troublesome tribal areas, the judgement, which ever way it goes, could be the spark that ignites an explosion of sectarian violence that had been waiting to explode in India for a long time.
So why did the Mughal Empire decide to build a mosque on a Hindu sacred site in the first place?
Simple.It was how conquerors did things back then, a calculated insult to a defeated people. The practice was not exclusive to Muslims, Christans of both the Roman and Orthodox churches did the same, Genghis Kahn was a master of the art and there is plenty of evidence to suggest it was common among the paganistic tribal societies of Europe. Alexander the Great and the Romans both managed to work out that the best way to get the local plebs onside was to pay trbute to their Gods although the Romans were quick to burn the Temples and cast down the idols at the first sign of insurrection. That was a good way of getting across the message, "Look, we don't mind you having your culture and rituals and your quaint ways of doing things but we're in charge and your freedoms are restricted by what we will tolerate.
Unfortunately the Politically Correct Thought Police that have hi-jacked western governments and supra - national organisations are so besotted with minorities they are not prepared to recognise the limits of tolerance beyond which the mainstream population are unwilling to go. Thus they alienate the mainstream population and send out messages of weakness to groups whose chosen method of undermining social order or deposing governments is not by force of arms but by force of commerce.
In taking that line the elite who stand outside mainstream society and are sure the consequences of events they set in train will not directly affect them tighten their grip on the financial systems on which the world depends while theirlackeys in business and politics, drunk on distilled delusuions of moral superiority and laying the foundations for dispute which may still from time to time explode into civil untrest a thousand years from now.
The lesson that needs to be learned concerns the futility of trying to pass laws to change human nature.
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Going Halal In Harrow - Going Gay In RomeAs America divides politically again over plans to build a Muslim centre with prayer room (its not a Mosque OK) close to the site of the World Trade Centre destroyed in 2001 by Muslim Terrorists, Britain has a few divisions of its own brewing on a smaller scale of course. One involves Muslims and Halal meat in schools, in the other the gay rights lobby, famed for demanding tolerance, are showing no tolerance towards Roman Catholic religious principles.
Our Debt To IslamShould we let our society be defined by the opinions of a minority of people who, over the past 2000 years have repeatedly shown themselves to be prone to hysteria and far to ready when faced with challenging times to adopt the mindset of the mob. I refer of course to the way in which the events of 9/11 are being written into history as a point in which humanity changed direction. Mistrust of Islam existed before 9/11 of course but since then it has grown out of all proportion to any potential threat. Instead of blaming Islam for all the ills of the world though, we who enjoy the benefits of western civilisation should thank Islam for ....erm, well, ... the benefits of western civilisation or many of them at least....
Mary GypsyChristians tend to get on their high horse when paganism is mentioned. They are wrong to deny the true roots of their own religion though. The legend of Mary Gypsy tells us a lot about the way the Chistian faith developed out of pagan beginnings around the Mediterranean and along the Atlantic coast of Europe and North Africa
Pakistan closes Afghan supply route
Pakistan shut down the main land route for Nato supplies into Afghanistan on Thursday after officials accused Nato of killing three Pakistani troops.
Metropolitan Police To Recruit Only Volunteers
from BBC News
Recruits to the Metropolitan Police (Met) would have to work as volunteer officers before being given paid roles under radical new proposals.
The Met Police Authority is considering the idea of taking on most of its officers from a pool of volunteer special constables.
Other applicants would come from the Met's community support officers, or have law and policing qualifications.
The move which would save Ł20,000 per applicant ...
Flapless plane built by British Engineers
British engineers have developed the world's first plane to rely entirely on tiny air jets instead of flaps to maneuver.
We hope it turns out better than the Segway, the electric scooter that had no steering gear.
The owner of the comany that made them died when he rode his over a cliff.
29 September 2010
Stimulus, equality and dementia on the menu today
NHS Failing The Elderly
NHS Turning Its Back On The Elderly
One of the great problems we face in the immediate and longer term furure is dealing with the needs of an ageing population. Science may have increased lifespan greatly and eradicated many infectious diseases over the course of the 21st century but it has failed to anticipate the needs of an ageing population.
The most obious and perhaps the most costly of the health problems unleashed by this longevity is Alzheimer's disease. Every scientific breakthriugh in the prevention and treatment of this terrible affliction seems to lead up a rather short dead end. As long as dementia remains so poorly understood doctors are often too quick to diagnose Alzheimer's disease when in fact a patient is simply suffering from another frequent cause of demention, the deterioration of the brain, nervous system and circulatory system that is a result of bodies wearing out, we are not likely to make progress in dealing with the problem.
Another frequent problem in the old is cancer. While medicine has made great progress in curing younger patients of many forms of cancer, the cancers of old age continue to be major killers.
There are many other age related problems, brittle bone disease, arthritis, heart problems, all of them debilitating, some controllable with drugs but not curable. So then we face the cost of caring for increasing numbers old elderly, inform people who can no longer live alone. The result is inevitable:
from BBC News:
Vulnerable elderly people are being unfairly forced to pay for health care, the new chairman of the House of Commons health committee says.
Stephen Dorrell said patients with conditions such as dementia used to get free care in NHS geriatric hospitals.
But the number of places has fallen by nearly 80% in the UK over the past 20 years - despite the ageing population.
He said this had pushed people into the means-tested social care system where they were often charged for treatment.
read full story NHS Turning Its Back On The Elderly
In the present economic climate this problem is being increasingly highlighted. The Daily Stirrer, ahead of the games as usual, has dealt with it previously
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Dementia time bomb
Bank Of England Man Backs New Stimulus
After yesterday's idiotic Bank Of England official of the day tried to intervene in the economic debate and derail sensible discussion by suggesting we should all cash in our pensions and investments and start spending to save the economy and even more cretinous overpaid civil servant has emerged. Adam Posen, a member of the monetary policy committee (sheephead faction), has blindly followed those members of the Obama administration in calling for another stimulus or cash-for-failure bonanza.
Well the $trillion stimulus cooked up by the economically illiterate Obama and his cast of idiots, perves, seditionists, shirt lifters and Muzzas failed, pumping the equivalent of 10% of GDP into the US economy produced growth of three percent while the official inflation rate continues at over four.
Gordon Brown's stimulus was an ever more farcical calamity, and equivalent level of cash produced growth of less than 1% while inflation rran at a similar rate to America's.
So why is this fuckwit Posen calling for more of what has already failed:
from The Guardian:
Bank Of England Man Backs New Stimulus
Sterling fell sharply on the foreign exchanges after a key Bank of England policymaker argued the need for fresh action to reduce the risk of a Japanese-style "lost decade" or a return to the slump conditions of the 1930s.
Adam Posen, one of the nine members of the Bank's monetary policy committee, called for ...
Once again it serves to remind us that the people running society live in a bubble utterly detached from reality.
Related to this story is another from Europe
Europe Set For Austerity Protests
Thousands of people from across the EU are expected to march in Brussels to protest against sweeping austerity measures by many national governments.
The European Trade Union Confederation says its protest could be one of the biggest in Belgium's capital for years.
The union says EU workers could become the biggest victims of a financial crisis set off by bankers and traders.
A general strike has begun in Spain and protests are ...
Instead of politicians talking about recovery being under way we need someone brave enough to admit the global perpetual growth economic model has failed, tell the imbecile lefties to shut the fuck up because Marxist stateism failed decades ago and we need to get back to nations runnng theor own affairs for the benefit of their prople and not getting overheated about internationalism and globalisation because that can only ever led to a global oligarchly enslaving the masses.
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Guardian: European Day Of Protests
BBC Chief Says Viewers Not Bothered About Big Salaries
Viewers do not care about the high salaries of executives and presenters, the director-general of the BBC has claimed.
"When you look at the concerns that the public raise about the BBC, when they're given a list, these don't rate high," Mark Thompson told the Royal Television Society International Conference in London.
So how did he get a job running the BBC when he doesn't live on this planet.
Bigoted Britain
by Ed Butt
Guarian writer Hugh Muir is another black metrosexual elitist who thinks he should be lecturing the British on how evilly racist we are. In this article Muir has decided we need to be told by members of monorities what we can and cannot say in private regarding ethnic minorities, gays, members of crackpot religions (I include Islam in that)
There are many derided jobs and Jerome does one of them. Try this for size. "Hi, I'm an equalities trainer." In a Con-Dem world, it won't cut the rug at parties. But, despite what you read about busybodies interfering with normal human relationships and curtailing freedom of speech, how everything would be all right if only ... read full aticle Hideously Diverse Britain: What Bigots Say Behind Closed Doors.
The Daily Stirrer's response is: "Listen Muir, you smug, patronizing littleracist shit, we know you people get pissed off because toutside London the colour of your skin does entitle you to privileged status. Well you can fuck off because up here in the north we say what we like and we like what we say. Try living in the Middle East, Africa, South America, South East Asia or China for a year if you think the British are bigots.
When you have been arse fucked because you are suspected of homosexuality and them thrown in a rat infested jail for complaing that your human right have been violated you might start to realise what an absolute privilege it is to live in Britain or any of the other developed nations.
Until you do understand that you can fuck of and keep your bigoted opinions to yourself. Cunt.
and related to the avove stories here's news from another nation where people are getting sick of the incessant self pitying whines of gays, blacks and Muzzas.
Former Australian PM Attacks Multi Culturalism
John Howard, the former prime minister of Australia, has attacked "multiculturalism" in English-speaking nations, saying that some countries have gone too far in accommodating Muslim minorities.
28 September 2010
Ed Milliband, Economics, not on the global scale but in the way the financial meltdown is affecting ordinary people and the war on western culture are the subjects for today's featured stories
.
New Labour To Be Buried By Ed Milliband's Speech?
by Ian R Thorpe
It was the Union vote wot won Ed Milliband the narrow victory over Blair clone and Tunderbirds puppet lookalike brother David. Now the question being asked is will Ed. M. be allowed to lead accoring to his own political principles or will he be a puppet of the Unions?
Either way it seems the neither right not left so long as we're in power politics of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown's creation New Labour is dead and will be buried today in Milliband's first speech as leader to the Labour Conference. Whether he chooses to be a radical, independent leader bringing his own political philosophy and a new direction to the party or simply the hired help of the Trade Union movement, it is widely predicted Ed Milliband will move the party to the left.
The BBC News says:
Ed Miliband is due to deliver his first big speech as Labour leader, promising "different ways" of doing politics.
He will tell delegates at the party's conference in Manchester that he is part of Labour's "new generation".
In a speech which his aides say will have a "tone of humility", he is set to signal a move away from the policies of the Blair-Brown era.
He is expected to sympathise with "anger at a Labour government that claimed it could ... read full post
Milliband To Shun Blair - Brown Era
As one would expect The Daily Telegraph takes a more questioning line:
What does Labour stand for now?As Labour takes stock at its first autumn conference in opposition since 1996, we ask delegates what exactly the party now stands for.
Though the first poll taken since Ed. Milliband was delared leader last Saturday shows Labour holding a one point lead over the Conservatives, the party is still well behind the coalition parties combined vote.
The Daily Stirrer believes the leadership election result will in the long run benefit the Liberal Democrats by redrawing the line between centre and centre left which had become blurred during the New Labour years. Under Blair and Brown the party had moved so far to the right in pursuit of the Mondeo man and mortgage man vote they had little in common with the Labour movement of the past.
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Mr. Bean Speaks Out On The Economy
by John De Roe
It is absolutely shocking to sombody like myself whose career was spent in finance to hear a senior official of the Bank of England saying the things Charles Bean said yesterday. The nation is in a mess economically, a bigger mess tan anyone in givernment or the finance sector has yet admitted, a bigger mess than I could hope to give a full account of were I to write a book on the subject. And if I did decide to write such a book the first problem would be were to start: our demolished industrial base, the domination of the jobs market by the over-large public sector, hard core unemployment, the disastrous fall out from a debt led consumer boom fuelled by falsely inflated property values, the burgeoning cost of care and pensions as people live longer and society must help them cope with the problems of old age.
It is impossible to untangle this mess and identify a thread along which we can start working our way towards recovery.
And yet here we have Mister Bean, yes that is his name, saying that the only way to save the UK economy is for consumers to start spending again. Then he compunds his insult to the already heavily indebted workers who have little job security and the worry of price inflation which in real terms is running at around twice the official figure by attacking the people who worked hard for many years and saved to give themselves security in their retirement.
Savers Told To Stop Moaning And Start Spending - Daily Telegraph
Savers should stop complaining about poor returns and start spending to help the economy, a senior Bank of England official warned today.
Older households could afford to suffer because they had benefited from previous property price rises, Charles Bean, the deputy governor, suggested.
They should "not expect" to live off interest, he added, admitting that low returns were part of a strategy
His remarks are likely to infuriate savers, who are among the biggest victims of the recession. About five million retired people are thought to rely on the interest earned by their nest-eggs. But almost all savings accounts now pay less than inflation.
Another view on this:
The Guardian:Britons Told To Start Spending
Mr Bean says they should not expect to live of the interest earned by their pension pot but should spend it. Mr. Bean's remarks amount to an admission that low interest rates and poor returns on savings are part of a long term economic strategy. A strategy that in my view has the fingerprints of the Bilderberg Group all over it.
When I think back to all the people that I, in almost four decades, advised to invest prudently, to hear senior central bank officials talking like this makes me feel like a fraud. I cheated those people, the money I advised them to save is now being stolen by the interntional financial community. I shoulf have been advising people, "go out and have a gooid time, blow your money on booze, women and fast cars because we're only here once and what we struggle to save when young will be worthless when the time comes to cash it in.
Is it any wonder people have lost faith in the banks and anybody connected with government. It is any wonder nihilism is the only idea driving secular society. One can understand why people are returning to religion when the alternatives are even more irrational.
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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.
Next Boss Warns On Cotton Price IncreasesAs the boss of a major UK clothing and fashion retailer warns of the likely impact of rising cotton prices on the cost of clothing John De Roe revisits on of The Daily Stirrer's recurring themes throughout the economict crisis, overpopulation.
All The People Who Never Had A Job?Information released by the government shows one point four million Britons have never had a job. A Boggart Blog investigtion shows the unemployment problem is further reaching. Many of the waged do not have proper jobs, they are public sector tax eaters whose candy floss jobs have been created onlu to make the unemployment statistics look better.
Clegg Promises New Global War On PovertyNick Clegg's war on poverty, which he will launch at a United Nations conference this week is doomed before it begins. Once again the arrogance of western politicians in assuming all the people in the world want to be as materially privileged, as advanced in technology and as indebted, stressed out and unhappy as we in the developed nations gets in the way of actually doing what needs to be done. .
Winter Of DiscontentUnions are threatening coordinated strikes, civil disobedience and a campaign of resistance not seen for decades as they seek to increase the pressure on the Government over public sector cuts. One leader warned ...
Property Prices To Fall Again?Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.
Emma Thompson Says Slang Makes Teengers Sound Stupid
Oscar winner Emma Thompson aka Nanny McPhee is getting quite a reputation for being controversial these days. Her lastest outspoken attack is aimed at the slang employed by teenagers who are more concerned with being though 'kewel' by their peers than being understood by people with whom they must communicate.
When she recently claimed the Isle of Wight was a place where homosexuals could expect to be flogged, actress Emma Thompson came in for a storm of criticism.
Things hardly improved when she attempted to apologise by explaining that she had meant to say the Isle of Man.
Now the Oscar winning star has turned her attention towards English grammar - and those who do not speak properly.
The 51-year-old mother of two, who has penned a new version of the classic musical My Fair Lady, said she was being driven insane by youngsters who used slang when communicating.
Sounding like a modern day equivalent of Henry Higgins, she told the Radio Times using phrases such as like and innit made individuals sound stupid.
Ms Thompson, who has an 11-year-old daughter and a 23-year-old adopted son, said it was vital teenagers learned the difference between speaking to their friends and talking to ... read full story Emma Thompson Says Slang Makes Teengers Sound Stupid
The Daily Stirrer has in the past featured articles on the efforts of the Thought Police to alienate the young from older generations. Age is the new apartheid. It is yet another crackpot idea hatched by the lunatics we have housed in our great Universities since Margatet Thatcher's government closed down all the nut houses.
So much of the educaion children re given now is not about teaching them to communicate, calculate and absorb information in order to make sense of the things they will encounter in life, still less is it about familiarising them with the culture of the nation society that nurtured them (culture is a dirty word to the Thought Police inless it is linked to either gay, black or ethnic,) What children are educated in is how to obey the diktat of the ruling elite.
Thus they must be made illiterate because there is a danger they will garner ideas from reading books or talking to those who have read books.
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i hate ol peeps
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And finally:
India Faces Pollination Crisis
A decline in pollinating insects in India is resulting in reduced vegetable yields and could limit people's access to a nutritional diet, a study warns.
Indian researchers said there was a "clear indication" that pollinator abundance was linked to productivity.
They added that the loss of the natural service could have a long-term impact on the farming sector, which accounts for almost a fifth of the nation's GDP.
With its population of 1.2 billion and an exploding birthrate you'd think pollination was the last thing India had a problem with.
27 September 2010
A businessman bricks up the doorway of his bank to suggest bank doors are closed to small businesses. An old British engineering company relocates its corporate headquarters to a low tax environment. Do you get the impression all that politicians' talk of recovery and improving prospects is just so much bullshit?
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26 September 2010
A Sunday hotch potch of the trivial and the irrelevant. We could have conjured something interesting out of all this but we were all busy.
Ed Milliband Is Labour Leader
Labour has elected a new leader and as predicted by most bookies the "anointed one", natural successor of Blair who has now ascended to a higher plane, did not win. It is not surprising, David Milliban not only looks like a Thunderbirds Puppet he talks like a robot, spewing mouthfuls of unintelligible managerialist jargon at his audience.
Younger bother Ed may turn out to be a good leader or he may become Labour's equivalent of Iain Duncan Smith, a nice guy but simply not up to the job. In his first television interview as leader however he was cut to ribbons by Andrew Marr which does not bode well for future encounters with the likes of David Cameron, Nick Clegg, William Hague and Vince Cable.
from BBC News:
Ed Miliband has insisted Labour will not "lurch to the left" under his leadership and he will not be in thrall to the trade unions, despite winning with the backing of their members.
New Labour leader Ed Miliband says the party will not "lurch to the left" under him and he will not be in thrall to the unions.
The problem Labour has now is to get back in touch with its core vote, the working class. There have ben many claims from various candidates and senior figures in the party that they were only narrowly defeated in the election. This is simply not true. The percentage figures look quite close but even if Gordon Brown had managed to secure a deal with all the minor parties (which would have required both the Northern Ireland sectarian parties, Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionsists on board) as well as the Liberal Deomcrats they would still not have commanded a working majority.
How do Labour get back the working classes of the industrial areas without losing the suburban middle class, the minorities? How do they prevent themselves being identified as the party of the metropolitan elite? There is no easy way but Ed Milliband could make a start by giving a prominent role to the only leadership candidate to emerge with his status enhanced in the eyes of the public, Andy Burnham.
The Guardian: Ed Milliban vows to be his own man
The Independent: Union Votes Crucial In Narrow Win
Taxman Targets Swiss Bank Clients
Several reports of a crackdown on tax aviodance by xoalition finance ministers have concerned us.
While it is essential that the government chases people who use illegal techniques to evade tax, tax avoidance id usually about minimizing tax liability by legal means. Therefore if the government wants to stop the exploitation of loopholes they should be announcing punitive crackdowns on the blundering incomptents in HMRC.
Harrassing businesses for obeying they laws created by previous administrations and their civil servants is not going to help the economy in any way.
Hundreds of wealthy UK taxpayers are sent letters by HM Revenue & Customs over possible large-scale tax evasion, the BBC learns.
It is understood HMRC has acquired a list of high net-worth individuals with accounts at the Swiss division of HSBC.The list was stolen by an employee and passed to the taxman by the French authorities. The bank is not accused of any wrongdoing. The campaign comes after the government announced a crackdown on tax avoidance
Chief Secretary to the Treasury Danny Alexander told the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool he hoped closing loopholes and ensuring wealthy people pay the full top rate of tax would generate an estimated Ł7bn a year by 2015 in additional income tax revenue. This comment alone justifies our concerns. Ł7 billion is a drop in the ocean when set against our public sector deficit. It smack of government by bullies rather than realists.
City Life Boosts Disease Resistance
Here's a shock for the tree hugging, lentil munching, sandal wearing limp wristed vegan Nazi conspiracy.
People from traditionally urban areas could be genetically better suited to fighting infection, say researchers.
The University of London team looked at how many people carried a specific gene variant known to give them resistance to TB and leprosy.
It was more common in those from areas with a longer history of urbanisation, where the diseases were more likely to have been rife at one point.
As with all these scientific surveys however we should perhaps not take too much notice. There are plenty of country folk live to a ripe old age.
Patients To Be Frozen While Awaiting Surgery
Surgeons are pioneering a method of inducing extreme hypothermia in trauma patients so that their bodies shut down entirely during major surgery, giving doctors more time to perform operations.
The technique helps to reduce the damage done to the brain and other organs while the patient's heart is not beating. It also reduces the need for anaesthetic and life support machines.
Researchers are now set to begin the first human trials of the technique, which involves replacing a patient's blood with a cold solution to rapidly ...
The Daily Stirrer is sceptical about this. So much emphasis has been placed on statistics and length of time on waiting lists by NHS managers in recent years we suspect it is just a way of improving a hospita's position in the league table.
UN To Appoint Special Ambassadors To Greet Aliens
Mazlan Othman, a Malaysian astrophysicist, expects to be tasked with co-ordinating humanitys response if and when extraterrestrials make contact.
Aliens who landed on earth and asked: Take me to your leader would be directed to Mrs Othman.
She will set out the details of her proposed new role at a Royal Society conference in Buckinghamshire next week.
The 58-year-old is expected to tell delegates that the proposal has been prompted by the recent discovery of hundreds of planets orbiting other starts, which is thought to make the discovery of extraterrestrial life more probable than ever before ...
The only thing this story proves is the people running the world have totally lost the plot. An ambassador for Space my arse. Have these idiots never seen the Tim Burton film Mars Attacks?
25 September 2010
A woldwide crisis of food price inflation, the Labour leadership and David Cameron's promise to cut taxes are the featured stories today.
Harry Potter Lookalike Challenges Thunderbirds Puppet For Labour Leadership
by Ian R Thorpe
The Labour leadership contest has been a dull affair, the Politically Correct Thought Police that run Labour these days have expelled from the party anyone who has a personality. Thus the main contenders, Ed Milliban, the Harry Potter lookalike and his brother David (Bananaman) Milliband the Captain Scarlett lookalike, with the support of the party oligarchs and the big money interests that funded the Bildrberg puppets of New Labour have easily seen off the competition.
from Yahoo News:
Ed Miliband has overtaken his brother David as the bookies' favourite in the race to become the next leader of the Labour party
The overnight gamble that saw Ed Miliband leapfrog brother David to the head of the betting to be the next Labour leader is showing no signs of slowing either.
Gary Burton, spokesman for book keepers Coral, said: "After shortening his price four times in the first few hours of trading, the strength of the support behind Ed suggests that this intriguing race has come to an end, but as the contest nears it's close, it looks like David's supporters are not giving up yet and we are seeing some opposition to the favourite".
Ed Miliband has clawed his way into the race by appealing to rank-and-file party members and seeking to distance himself from ... Ed Milliband looking likely to be Labour leader">read more Milliband and labour leader vote
More coverage of this story:
BBC News: New Labour Leader to be announced
Guardian: Labour leadership contest too close to call
From our point of view as The Daily Stirrer's main wrters all live on the fringe of the Lancashire industrial belt, it is sad to see Lancastrian Andy Burnham squeezed out by power politics. Not only was Burnhan talking the most sense on the problems the whole nation rather than just the London metropolital elite face, he has been the only candidate with genuine working class links. Diane Abbott might try to make a similar claim but she was never a genuine candidate being the token woman, token ethnic minority and token leftie.
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Lack Of Imagination and Merit
Gordfellas
Coalition Will Cut Taxes Says Cameron
from The Daily Telegraph:
Coalition Will Cut Taxes
by Xavier Connolly
David Cameron holds out the prospect of tax cuts for the middle classes as he makes clear his intention to give something back from a stronger economy.
In an attempt to reassure anxious Conservatives, the Prime Minister says the recovery will lead to a time when people can again share in the growth.
Keen to avoid his time in No 10 being defined solely by the deficit and deep cuts, he wants people to know that the country will get through this problem.
He argues that once the deficit is sorted, his government will have the ability to lower the tax burden. In opposition, Mr Cameron talked about wanting people to share the proceeds ...read more on Coalition, taxes
Labour and the left have had a free run of the media throught the summer with the coalition government finding its feet and hacking out a way for two very different parties to work together in a difficult situation. All Labour have shown us in that time is that for all their talk of fairness and equality they have no policy alterntives to the inane tax and spend economics that proved so disastrous for the economy, jobs and business while they were in power and no social policy alternatives to the idiotic, politically correct multiculturalist posturing that panders to every minority and marginalises the mainstream Britons who are their core vote.
Now politics is getting back to normal we are likely to see how short sighted Labour were to dismiss David Cameron as a posh boy, a public school half wit. I'm not a fan of the Prime Minister but he is no dummy and is far better at communicating with ordinary people than any of the jargon spouting McKinsey managerialist clones in the current Labour crop.
The coalition lost a very good minister when David Laws was outed but other names will emerge, people who have run businesses or had careers in the real world. We need to get back to having real people run the nation and not the career politicians and the academics who have dominated in recent decades.
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Attack By Irish Terrorists Imminent?
The threat level to Great Britain from Irish-related terrorism has gone from moderate to substantial, the Home Secretary has announced ...
Though the late Mo Mowlam did an excellent job in brokering a peace deal in Ireland it was inevitable the roubles would return. One only has to read Irish mythology to understand how very dep seated the problem is.
United Nations Warns Of A New Food Crisisby Ed Butt
With food price inflation causing social problems in poor nations already the United Nations, as always slamming the stable door after the horse has bolted, has warned of an imminent crisis.
United Nations Warns Of A New Food Crisis
Environmental disasters and speculative investors are to blame for volatile food commodities markets, says UN's special adviser.
The world may be on the brink of a major new food crisis caused by environmental disasters and rampant market speculators, the UN was warned today at an emergency meeting on food price inflation.
The UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO) meeting in Rome today was called last month after a heatwave and wildfires in Russia led to a draconian wheat export ban and food riots broke out in Mozambique, killing 13 people. But UN experts heard that pension and hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds and large banks who speculate on commodity markets may also be responsible for inflation in food prices being seen across all continents.
In a new paper released this week, Olivier De Schutter, the UN's special rapporteur on food, says that the increases in price and the volatility of food commodities can only be explained by the emergence of a "speculative bubble" which he traces ... read more on food crisis meeting
The Daily Stirrer has been warning of the consequences of food price inflation since we began publishing. Our economics expert John De Roe repeatedly outlined the effects a speculative bubble in food commodity futures was likely to have on the living standards of people in the developed world and the humanitarian disasters that were likely to unfold because of it in poor nations.
In addition to rising prices the effect on food supplies of climate chaos is adding to the plight of the hungry. Once again we have to say that at the root of the problem is over population. Until governments and supra national organisations like the UN understand that current agriculture and technology cannot support a global population nearing seven billion. Instead of G20 leaders blethering about a global economic policy and a global culture and all the rest of their one-world, utopian, oligarchic collectivist nonesense they have to talk about a global birth control policy. In the western nations we, at grassroots level, have a self imposed population control ethic thanks to materialism and self interest. Birth rates are falling in almost all the developed nations.
Somehow our leaders must find a way to overturn the conventional wisdom of ancient cultures that big families are wealth and show people with modern healthcare two or thee children per couple is enough to sustain any society and it is large families that keep people in poverty. It will not be an easy task but if the world leaders fail or try to duck the issue by talking about crackpot 'scientific' solutions we will have to embark on a controlled cull of surplus human beings. Starting with the world leaders.
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Head Of New World Order CAlls For Global Currency
Vertical Farming
Climate Sacred Cow
Cloned Beef
Cotton Price Inflation
Food Crisis Control Freakery
Potash Monopoly Equals Dearer Bread
24 September 2010
Is Nick Clegg becoming a limp wristed, politically correct Obama clone, Quangos facing the axe and tough questions for the banks feature today
180 Quangos Face The Axe In Coalition Cuts
Not before time we have a government that is willing to take action to reduce the size of the bloated public sector:
from BBC News:
Proposals to abolish 180 quangos and merge a further 124 have been seen by the BBC's Politics Show. The Renewables Advisory Board and Museum, Libraries and Archives Council are among taxpayer-funded bodies proposed for abolition.The list, dated 26 August, includes groups linked to all major government departments.
The Cabinet Office has ordered a leak inquiry and says it regrets any "uncertainty" for employees. The list of public bodies up for abolition, mergers or other reforms was included in a letter from Cabinet Office Minister Francis Maude to other ministers.
also on this story from The Daily Telegraph:
Throughout their years in power Labour used expansion of public sector employment to mask the true level of decline in our industrial and commercial base. This employent policy lies behind the structural financial deficit that is dragging our economy from recession into stagnation and slump. Appointing another tax eater does not help grow the economy it helps grow the deficit.
For thirty years under both Conservative and Labour governments, quangos (quasi autonomous national government organisations) have become the personal bureaucratic empires of 'special advisers' costing a fortune to run and achieving nothing except the creation of lots of paper for the recycling industry.
If the coalition can dump a few of them it can only be good. And the tax eaters they employ will cost the nation less on the dole.
Clegg Becomes Obama Clone
UK Must Restore It's Reputation Says Clegg
Nick Clegg is starting to sound disturbingly like an Americal Liberal (i.e. a Nazi) than a British liberal democrat. American liberals, deluded fools that they are, are obsessed with race, sexual preference, minority rights, the idea that if we all join hands and sing Kumbaya we can create a politically correct Utopia and a bizarre belief that the entire world can come together as one nation under one government (led by a black, Muslim turd burglar of course). Look at what Clegg has been saying to those idiots at the United Nations in thios press release issued before he spoke.
from BBC News
The UK must restore its reputation in the world, Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg is expected to tell the UN general assembly in New York later.
He will say that tolerance and fairness are in Britain's "national DNA".
But he will add the UK has learned "the hard way" that democracy "cannot be created by diktat", in comments likely to seen as a reference to the Iraq war.
He will also say the UN needs a "radical overhaul" to tackle the international challenges it faces ...
To be fair to Clegg, Little Black 'Bammy did no better by the nation he leads, seeing the platform as another chance to run down America in an event that will be reported world wide.
Can these thickos not understand Multiculturalism and globalisation are twin disasters. Muliculturalism destroys coherent cultures and leaves in their place a dystopian vaccum. Globalisation is just an excuse for the dark side of capitsalism to export the jobs and industries that stitch together our communities and provide the weft and warp of our cultures. That they have spent all thir adult lives cocooned in the unreal phantosphere of universities and the public service has shielded them from the harsh realities of life so it is no wonder they do not grasp the futility of their attempts top "bring about change."
These stupid, over-educated, over-promoted retards may spout their politically correct banalities but they have no undertanding of how human societies work, how true capitalism functions or how human nature will always trump all their misguided efforts at social engineering.
UK Banks Face Questions About Stability
The five-member Independent Commission on Banking said in its first issues paper on Friday that it would look at separating companies' retail and investment banking arms, limits on proprietary trading and investing, fee structures, competition and reforming market infrastructure.
"The list is not intended to be exhaustive," the ICB said, adding that "the commission has not moved towards any particular options at this stage."
We hope they get asked a few hard questions about crap customer service, they eyewash they pas off as 'online security' but which is only at best a bureaucratic exercise in arse covering and why they are still closing convenient local branches, replacing human staff with automatons who can only work from a script.
We would also like to know why the listening bank does not listen any more and the bank that for years claimed it liked to say "yes" now only likes to say "fuck off."
23 September
Cimate Change supremo Rajendra Pachauri, Obama's war on poverty and the police abandining crime fighting in favour of bureaucracy feature today.
22September 2010
Economic Matters particularly Vince Cable's speech to the Liberal Democrat conference, the recovery and how to prevent an oil rush in the ecologically sensitive Arctic are today's issues.
Vince Cabe Stirs Things Up At The Liberal Democrats Conference
by John De Roe
It is Business Secretary Vince Cable's turn to address the Liberal Democrat conference today and parts of his speech released in advance to the media suggest he is going to use the platform to attack the banking and finance industry
from The Guardian:
Vince Cable Takes On The City
Vince Cable will today launch an aggressive attack on capitalism with a speech that warns the current system "takes no prisoners and kills competition where it can".
In an echo of Denis Healey's famous 1974 pledge to "squeeze property speculators until the pips squeak", the business secretary will unveil plans to shine a "harsh light into the murky world of corporate behaviour".
Cable will announce the launch of a major consultation on takeovers and executive pay, with the intent of ending "corporate short-termism".
"Let me be quite clear," he will tell the Liberal Democrat conference in Liverpool. "The government's agenda is not one of laissez-faire. Markets are often irrational or ... read more
Also:
BBC News Cable hits out at "murky city"Vincent Cable insists he is pro-business and pro-market after criticism of his planned Lib Dem conference speech attacking the threat from "murky" corporate practices.
The Daily Telegraph headlines Cable's Attack On Business Odd And EmotionalIn an outspoken attack that will set him on a collision course with the City and heighten tensions in the Coalition, Mr Cable will use his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference to say the capitalist system is tainted and "kills competition", and that markets are "often irrational or rigged
Having long been a critic of the over-reliance of the UK economy on the financial services sector and the City Of London investment banking and currency / derivatives trading centre Mr. Cable is hardly saying anything that can be considered out of character. Part of the shock at his line is perhaps due to the media and chattering classes having been too willing to believe the suggestions of Labour leadership candidates and the left leaning media that the Lib Dems had gone over to the 'dark side' and lined up with the Conservatives behind a Thatcherite pro - business, anti regulation economic agenda.
The first thing to understand is that David Cameron's Conservatives are not Margaret Thatcher's Conservaties TARDISed three decades into the present. Thatcher won over middle England by promising prosperity based on perpetually increasing property values. New Labour embraced Thatherite economics and took them further than the Conservatives could ever have got away with.
David Cameron is a smart enough operator to know that line is discredited, his core constituency, the small and middle sized business owners and the lower middle and aspirational working class mortgage slaves are feeling the pain of thirty years economic mismanagement.
The whole nation should listen to Vince Cable today or study his speech. I hope to hear him talking about more support for real businesses rather than middle men selling dubious 'services' or trading in things that don't exist. What the nation needs is real jobs that contribute to the production or sale of something with substance. That is the only kind of business that will save the economy and geberate the tax revenues to pay for public sector jobs and services.
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Defending KeynesThe 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.
When The Cutting BeginsAs the coalition settles into its new job and the words of former chief treasury secretary Liam Byrne, 'There is no money left' reverbrate how will the new team set about reducing the deficit and mountian of debt, creating jobs and sorting out the financial mess left by Labour?
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 2010Which 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...
from BBC News:
UK Recovery Slower Than Thought
The UK's economy will recover more slowly than previously thought next year, business group the CBI has predicted. It expects GDP to grow by 2% in 2011, not 2.5% as forecast in June this year.
Spending cuts aimed at getting public finances into better shape had prompted the revision, the CBI added. But it said the prospect of the UK returning to recession was "unlikely", adding it expected growth in 2010 to be ...
Good to see some common sense creeping into government thinking. So far, as the coalition has been finding its feet most of the noise has been coming from Labour whiners and media lefties, the neo Nazi "progrssive left" as they like to style themselves. They wanted to continue with the insane levels of public spending seen under the Labour government claiming this would restart the economy when in reality all it would ever be able to di is inflate another bubble.
The international finance community think deficit reduction is the right way to go so even if Labour had retained power public spending cuts would have been inevitble, imposed on us by the International Monetary fund which would have had to step in to save the economy when the government could no longer service its debts.
Yes we know the cuts will be painful but a moderate amount of pain now is prefereable to having an arm and a leg amputated in a year's time.
Inflation Tax
Osbone and Balls Square Up Over The Economy
Bank Of England Warns Living Standards Will Fall Dramatically
Head Of Major Food Producing Corp Warns Of Food Crisis
Interest Rates To Rise Sixfold
Coalition Fight Over Green Energy
Huhne In Climate Fight With The Treasury
from The Guardian:
Climate change secretary Chris Huhne is fighting to defend his department's funding and independence, fending off a suggestion that his civil servants should be moved to the Treasury to cut costs.
Huhne is having to resist the Treasury on numerous policy fronts. He has rejected the relocation idea, fearing his department's civil servants would "go native" if they moved into offices in the Treasury.
The Department of Energy and Climate Change (Decc) was created in 2008 by combining responsibilities which had been part of the previous business and environment departments. The move was praised at the time as an attempt to connect two areas of policy that had sometimes
(The news came today as Huhne gave his speech to the Liberal Democrat conference. His pitch was that the government wanted to foster a "third industrial revolution" in low-carbon technology. But the techno-optimism of the speech sat awkwardly with the news that he has been forced to contemplate breaking up his department)
Liberal Democrat Engery Secretary in the Coalition government doesn't look like the stereotypical sandal wearing, tree hugging, hand wringing limp wristed vegan Nazi we have come to associate with the green movement but he seems very willing to take on board all their whackiest ideas about how to save the planet.
Fortunately for us wretched taxpayers tightwad George Osborne, thrifty Vince Cable and tightwad Danny Alexander are holding the purse strngs.
Arctic Mineral Rights
The Arctic, for all its bleak tundras and ice bound landscapes is a hugely important area ecologically. It is also vastly rich in vital mineral deposits, chiefly oil. Scottish oil exploration firm Cairn have already announced a siignificant oil find in "Iceberg Alley" the sea channel between Norther Canada and Greenland. Russia has blans to build floating Nuclear Power Stations to provide the energy for mineral exploration and exploitation. So how do we control this mineral rush. Remember this is not a few polar bears and seals we are talking about but industrial operations that could drastically affect population centres in northern Europe, Asia and North America.
from BBC News
Summit Over Arctic Mineral Resource Claims
An international meeting to try to prevent the Arctic becoming the next battleground over mineral wealth has begun in Moscow.One quarter of the world's resources of oil and gas are believed to lie beneath the Arctic Ocean.
Russia, Norway, Canada, Denmark and the United States have already laid claim to territory in the region. Some 300 delegates will discuss co-operation but are also likely to push their claims to the Arctic's riches.
The region's resources are rapidly becoming accessible due to the dramatic shrinking of the polar ice cap. The race for the Arctic centres on ...
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Iceberg Alley Blues
Copenhagen Climate Change Corruption
21 September 2010
A Liberal Democrat fiasco and the social time bomb of caring for dementia sufferers feature in The Daily Stirrer today.
The Liberal Democrats Fall Out Over Whether To Be Reality Dwellers
Even back in the1980s when two of The Daily Stirrer's writers were activists in the Liberal Party the membership contained a very significant proportion of sandal wearers, tree huggers and limp wristed vegan Nazi raffia mafian with wispy beards.
We had to feel sorry for Nick Clagg at the party conference. Having led the party to its first real taste of power in eighty years he faced the anger of the sandal wearing, tree hugging, wispy bearded, limp wristed veagan vegan Nazi raffia weavers because they do not like the fact that having reached a oint where they are so close to power they can stick their tongues out and lick it, the breast milk drinkers do not like the way they are being asked to face some of the harsh realities of life.
Clegg: We Had To Make Early Cuts
Nick Clegg has said ministers had to start cutting spending early because of "perilous" economic circumstances after the general election.The Lib Dem leader, whose party once opposed early cuts, told the BBC Britain had been in the "danger zone".But he also warned banks against "offensive" bonuses saying he would not take another bonus tax "off the table".
The Lib Dem leadership is being urged by members to ensure spending cuts do not hit the poorest disproportionately
Here we have a classic Liberal contradiction. While the leadership accept that public spending cuts were forced on us because of the global recession and reckless overspending by the previous government the hand wringers are full of angst about the poor. One would think with their love of lentils and clotes made from old curtains they would understand poverty is undefinable. A spendthrift may be making Ł1000 a week and falling into debt, some planet lovers may be living very comfortably on Ł100 a week. So where do we start on making sure the cuts do hot hit the poor?
As if to underline the necessity of spending cuts to reduce the deficit this story also featured in most papers and on news bulletins this morning.
Lots of talk of recovery but the economic situation worsens.
from BBC News:
UK Public Sector Borrowing Hits New Record
The amount of new public sector borrowing hit a record of Ł15.9bn for August, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
The larger-than-expected figure came after higher inflation led to a rise in interest payments on index-linked government bonds.
However, the ONS said receipts from taxes were still rising.
The latest figure means borrowing in the first five months of the financial year has reached Ł58.1bn.
The ONS said the rise in the retail price index, which is used to set payments on index-linked bonds, meant interest payments almost trebled to Ł3.8bn last month, compared with Ł1.3bn in for August a year ago
Read more on this story:
UK Public Finances Defecit in The Guardian
Inflation Pushes Deficit To A New High: The Daily Telegraph
As The Daily Stirrer has ben forecasting the inspid stirrings of recovery are being crushed by the growing structural debt (our failure to raise enough in taxes and duties to pay the government's bills) and until we have corrected the negative balance there will be no return to economic stability.
RELATED POSTS:
Interesting Times
Bond Vfillain Targets Britain
Magic Money
Dementia Time Bomb
by Ian R. Thorpe
Dementia Costs Equal 1% Of World Economy
The Daily Stirrer has warned many times of the various time bombs that are ticking in the basement of our bloated society. Forget climate change, it was a diversion, a phishing expedition by scientists and bureaucrats to see how much money they could persuade gullible and fear driven politicians to pump into expensive vanity projects the aim of which was not to save the planet but to win Nobel Prizes, secure other prestigious awards and "secure a place in history."
Climate change is a problem but it is not our biggest nor our most urgent.
The biggest problem is overpopulation, solve that and the climate will take care of itself.
Next on the list is ageing. Medical science expects to be thanked for curing or controlling many potentially fatal conditions enabling us to live longer. Unfortunately they have not cracked the problem of age induced infirmity. The burden of caring for the elderly infirm is straining the social infrastructure of developed societies.
from The Daily Telegraph
The Ł388 billion cost includes that of social care, unpaid care by relatives and the medical bills for treating dementia.
The figure is expected to rise rapidly in the coming years but governments are woefully unprepared to meet the challenge, said the World Alzheimer Report 2010.
Experts at the Karolinska Institute in Sweden and King's College London examined the cost of dementia care and found that, if it was a country, it would be the world's 18th biggest economy.
And if it was a company, it would be the world's biggest by annual revenue, way above Wal-Mart (Ł265.6 billion) and Exxon Mobil (Ł200 billion).
Campaigners already warned that the costs of caring for people with dementia are on the rise, mostly due to people living longer.
The number of people with dementia will ...
In the UK at the moment according to figures quoted in a BBC documentary,
The Young Ones, last week one in five of people over seventy needs either full time or part time care. In the 1980s and 90s the elderly infirm, those not able to live independently, were moved to municipal care homes. These were impersonal and bureaucratic so eventually the emphasis was shifted to one on once care in the home. While better for individuals this was enormously expensive for the taxpayers and also distorted the state of the employment situation by vastly expanding the proportion of people employed by the state as against those working in true revenue generating industries.
The nineteenth century social reformer William Cobbett referred in his writing to tax eaters. It is an appelation we would do well to reclaim. Reducing unemployment by appointing vast numbers of tax eaters. To do that is to merely massage the statistics. We are left then with a conundrum for the science lovers to choke on. How do we now stop people living so long they become a burden on society?
Euthanasia is not going to play well with the voters so the only alternative is rather that governments continuing to promote a dependency culture to return to a social system in which people are not given unrealistic expectations.
As humanist philosopher David Hume said: It is better to die at sixty - five while in command of one's faculties that have a few more years of increasing infirmity.
more on David Hume's life and philosophy
20 September 2010
Afghanistan, Property Prices and the Liberal Democrat Conference dominate the news today ...
UK Troops To Leave Sangin
British troops in Afghanistan hand over to US forces in Sangin, an area of Helmand province which has seen the UK's heaviest losses.
also reported in the Daily Telegraph British Troops Hand Over To US In Sangin
To have to hand over to the Americans is bad news for the British regiments, soldiers never like to experience anything that hits of defeat. Really though our troops have not failed, they have been betrayed many times; first by the Prime Minister who took us into this pointless warfor the sole purpose of boosting his own standing in the international political community by riding on the back of an unpopular American President, then by the Chancellor who squeezed militaty budgets so hard our troops serving in the field were poorly equipped and under equipped for the kind of conflict they were involved in.
When the Chancellor became Prime Minister he betrayed the armed forces once again by stepping up the war effort but squeezing the budgets even harder.
Now it seems the coalition have seen sense on Afghanistan and are backing off gradually, in a way that we must hope will not result in firther pointless loss of life.
Clegg To Reassure Lib Dems
Nick Clegg will try to reassure Liberal Democrat members unhappy with the coalition, telling the party's conference it is "the right government for right now".
also
from the Daily Telegraph Clegg Warned Against Lib Dem Dictatorship
Thanks to the ill - advised merger of the Liberals with the Social Democrats and the plague of sentimentality that is corroding middle class intelligence the Liberal Democrat party was always going to experience this kind of discomfort. Liberals have no business dabbling in the kind of neo - Nazi populist authoritarianism Labour have embraced.
It is fine but empty rhetoric to talk of building a fair society while standing outside the cancer ward of a Chidren's hospital as Nick Clegg did durng the election campaign. What a pity the location, a place that demonstrates life will never be fair, mocked his words. It is fines but empty rhetoric to talk of tolerance while suporting laws that force us to tolerate the most intolerant extremities of alien cultures. It is fine but empty rhetoric to talk of equality and liberty when the government does not understand the difference between equality and uniformity or liberty and freedom.
The Daily Stirrer has been suportive of the coalition government so far, mainly because it did at least reflect the wishes of the voters that one party, one set of interests, should not have overall control of the nation's destiny.
The Liberal Democrats have shown at their conference they are not in the business of solving problems but instead are intent on spoonfeeding bullshit to the gullible. If the hand wringers and bleeding hearts of the Lib Dems can't get their heads round the realities of governing and carry out their threat to bring down the coalition the Conservatives could not govern alone and Labour could not form a ruling coaltion.
We might end up with David Cameron calling an election and campaigning on the slogan "Apres moi, le deluge."
Lib Dems Education Debate Centres On Academies
Grassroots motion urges communities to reject coalition's 'divisive, costly and unfair' schooling reforms
Mortgage Lending Slides To Ten Year Low
UK mortgage lending falls further, reinforcing fears that the recovery in the housing market is fading ...
Again The Daily Stirrer can smugly say "We told you so ..."
REALTED POSTS ON PROPERTY PRICES
Negative EquityThough the government keeps trying to talk up a recovery in the housing sector, the problems are too deep seated for political quick fixes.
Property Prices To Fall Again?Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.
19 September 2010
Not much news but plenty of interesting reading today
Liberal Democrat Confeence: Clegg Not A Tory In Disguise
From The Guardian: Video report on the happenings from the first day of the Liberal Democrat party conference post your thoughts in the thread below the video.
Police Chief Calls For Cannabis Legalization
One of Britain's most senior police officers has proposed decriminalising the personal use of drugs such as cannabis to allow more resources to be dedicated to tackling high-level dealers.
Tim Hollis, chief constable of Humberside police, said the criminal justice system could offer only a "limited" solution to the UK's drug problem, a tacit admission that prohibition has failed.
Hollis's dramatic intervention comes as the government is reviewing ... more >>>
The Daily Stirrer has always supported a less rigid line on cannabis. As with alcohol most people use it responsibly and in moderation. The majority are penalised for the protection of a minority who will always find ways to escape from the unbearable realitires of life.
Get after the dealers, stop wasting time on the users.
Lib Dems In Tax Evasion Assault
The government is pledging to raise billions of pounds by clamping down on "morally indefensible" tax evasion, a senior Lib Dem minister says.
The government is pledging to raise billions of pounds by clamping down on "morally indefensible" tax evasion, a senior Lib Dem minister has said.
Treasury Chief Secretary Danny Alexander announced plans to attack offshore havens and other tax "dodges".
Likening tax evaders to benefit cheats, he told ... more >>>
There is little wrong with this in principle. The problem we forsee is any measures to clamp down on tax evasion will be managed by HM Revenue and Customs.
They of course, small minded bureaucrats that they are, will be chasing the little guy because they know going after the corporate crminals will be difficult.
Britain's Energy Policy In Crisis
Forget the latest proposal by Caroline Spelman, our Environment Secretary, that all hospitals should in future be built on hills, to stop them being submerged beneath the rising seas brought by global warming (even that serial panic-monger Al Gore predicts that sea levels will rise by only 20 feet). A more serious problem is the chaos inflicted on our energy policy by our willing compliance with an EU obligation to cut greenhouse gas emissions by 34 per cent within 10 years.
Behind the fog of official spin, it becomes ever more obvious that the schemes devised to meet the EU target of generating nearly a third of our energy from ... more ...
18 September 2010
The Daily Stirrer is still managing to avoid The Pope. Today we do quite well with the Lib Dem Conferences and strains within the party about ertain coalition policies, the closures of pubs and its effect on community life and a threat to Britain's increasinly technologyu dependnt way of life.
Last Orders in 900 Pubs
Last Orders will be called at another 900 pubs very soon.
One of the social crises facing Britain is the collapse of communities, particularly rural communities. With not just the complicity of the government but its active support big retailers have squeezed out the village shop as local Post Offices have been closed and the salaries shopkeepers depended on to supplement their income lost. As well at the shop another focal point, the local pub has been put under pressure by unfair competition again from big retailers and also by restrictive laws and politically correct regulation.
from Virgin News:
Campaigners said traditional village life is "dying out" after it was revealed that almost 900 country pubs were forced to close last year.
The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) said 893 pubs were forced to call last orders for good in 2009.
The statistics show that key services are disappearing from village life "at an alarming rate", said the National Housing Federation.
About 400 village shops closed in 2008 while rural schools shut down at the rate of one a month in England between 1997 and 2008, said the organisation - which represents England's housing associations.
It said the closures reflected a declining demand for services in villages where local families had been priced out of the area by wealthy commuters, pensioners and ... read more >>>
also read: from BBC News
Village Life Dying Out
RELATED POSTS:
Before The Pubs Close
Solar Flare Threatens UK Stability
from The Daily Telegraph
The Defence Secretary will next week attend a summit of scientists and security advisers who believe the infrastructure that underpins modern life in Western economies is potentially vulnerable to electromagnetic disruption.
Such disruptions, which can shut down electrical equipment and cripple orbiting satellites, can be triggered by man-made nuclear blasts or natural events on the surface of the sun.
Dr Fox will tell the conference he believes there is a growing threat, and he wants to address the vulnerabilities in Britains high-tech infrastructure.
As the nature of our technology becomes more complex, so the threat becomes more widespread, he will say.
While we all benefit from the products of .... more>>>
RELATED POSTS:
Solar Storm Armageddon
Before Big Bang
British Tea Party?
British Tea Party Launches
A British Tea Party campaign inspired by the electoral truimphs of the American movement is launching a series of challenges to the Coalition government.
Activists are hold a rally at next month's Conservative party conference in Birmingham at which criticism of Coalition policies will be aired.
A British division, launched last year by The Freedom Association, has held events including a "Boston tea party" in Boston, Lincs.
It has joined forces with the Taxpayers' Alliance pressure group, which is being advised by Freedom Works, a large Washington-based political group that backs Tea Party candidates.
The organisers, who have already attracted thousands of ... more >>>
The Tea Party has been portrayed as a right wing fringe movement but in reality is a symptom of the alienation most poeople feel from mainstream politcs. This was brought to a head in the UK by the MPs expenses scandal which showed us that right or left, whatever party they are backed by MPs had come to the view that their job is to run our lives on behalf of their party's financial backers, not to serve our interests, the interests of the whole community not just certain noisy minorities whose votes they rely on.
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liberal-alternative
We're not an alternative to Labour
Nick Clegg last night warned that there was no future for the Lib Dems as a leftwing alternative to Labour. He said he understood that some turned to the Lib Dems, particularly during the Iraq war, as a leftwing conscience of the Labour party, but said: "I totally understand that some of these people are not happy with what the Lib Dems are doing in coalition with the Conservatives. The Lib Dems never were and aren't a receptacle for leftwing dissatisfaction with Labour. There is no future for that, there never was."
He stressed, however, that the party was sticking to ...
more >>>
Having been active in he old Liberal Party for many years but never managing to feel comfortable with some of the attitudes that were imported after the merger with the Social Democrats I am happy to see Clegg taking this line. There are many reasons but one of them was the vitriolic hated shown me as a candidate by Labour activists.
They seemed to think nobody had any right to think things through for themselves and hold their own opinions.
Liberals are liberal by definition and should not want anything to do with the paternalistic socialism of old Labour or the populist authoritarianism of New Labour.
Vince Cable Ready To Resign Over Immigration?
The Guardian's Michael White talks to Vince Cable
I was glad to see Vince Cable making waves about the Tory-led coalition's decision to impose a temporary cap on work permits for non-EU skilled workers, which is causing trouble in high-end industries like, er, banking. It's how coalitions should work. Haggling in public, that's the spirit.
Not that I think the country shouldn't worry about levels of immigration. Students who overstay or weren't really students at all, dubious asylum seekers who play the system with help from well-meaning (or do I mean greedy?) British lawyers; there's a host of categories of folk who shouldn't really be here.
Does it matter? Yes. It puts a strain on all sorts of services, mostly obviously housing, schools and the NHS, not to mention the stretched jobs market. Governments of both main parties have failed to ... more >>>
Despite some bad press since joining the governmenyt Vince Cable remains the most experienced and financially astute of all the coalition's ministers with finance or business portfolios. For anybody in business, with investment or simply interested in knowing what the financial prospects are for the UK over the next few years this interview is worth the time it takes to read.
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Interesting Times
The Jobless Economy
Bond Villain Targets Britain
17 September 2010
With luck we are over our technical problems but with the news still focused on The Pope we do not have much to write about again.
New Wave Of Terror Attacks
Britain is facing a wave of terrorist attacks on two fronts from a new generation of al-Qaeda extremists and Irish Republican militants who could strike on the mainland, the head of MI5 Jonathan Evans warns ...
read all>>>
The first thing that occurs to a career sceptic about this story is it sounds like a phishing exercise by the head of a government department who is looking to have his budget increased rather than cut.
We should deal with it by heeding the advice Winston Churchill gave the naton as Hitler's Luftwaffe blitzed our cities, "Keep calm and carry on."
America's Tea Party Coming To Britain
Tea Party Are Not Republican Clones
from The Daily Telegraph
Ive a comment piece in todays newspaper about what Christine ODonnells win, the latest in a string of significant Tea Party victories, signifies for American politics. The standfirst decribes the Tea Party as Sarah Palins angry brigade this was written by an editor and does not represent my view of what the movement is. Heres
Read more >>>
Strange how left and right in the USA cannot see eye to eye about anything except the urgent need to suppress the rise of a new, grassroots political movement. The Tea Party may seem to be of the extreme right to UK voters, this is the way the media and political opponents choose to present it. In reality America has a very different political and social culture to Britain and right or left are not relevant descriptors.
We saw something of the Tea Party effect in the UK 2010 General Election Campaign with the early surge of the Liberal Democrats and minor parties before they faded under scaremongering attacks from both Conservative and Labour and extremely biased coverage from mainstream media.
It will always be beyond the capabilities of a new or fringe party to surge to power from nowhere in a single election in any of the major democracies of the developed world. The Tea Party to their credit have understood this and used the politically diverse nature of American political parties to their advantage. With the Republicans reeling after their defeat in 2008 and a general mood of dissatisfaction with establishment politcs among the electorate the party was ripe for infiltration. The Tea Party is a manifestation of that mood, politically a mish mash of American equivalents of right wing Lib Dems, UKIP, English Democrats, the Libertarian Party and ratepayers association supporters.
Could the same thing happen here? Labour are too authoritarian to attract infiltrators from the Lib Dems or Greens, the Conservatives are too internationalist to attract UKIP infiltrators. What could happen if Labour can remain a coherent party under their new leader is that the more Social Democrat Lib Dems will defect while the mainstream of the party edges right to meet a Conservative Party moving left under David Cameron.
There will be no Tea Party here but though the same names my contest the next election but very different parties.
Spray On Clothing
Scientists have developed a liquid clothing spray that hardens on the body and turns into a reusable garment.
Dr Manel Torres and Professor Paul Luckham have developed a spray that contains small fibres which are mixed with polymers to join them together and a solvent that keeps the fabric in liquid form in the can.
The solvent evaporates instantly as the spray touches a surface, creating a smooth clothing material that can be washed and re-worn.
The spray may in the future be used to create garments, medical dressings or upholstery for ...
read full story with video >>>
Interesting story of a scientific breakthrough here. But a T Shirt or sweatshirt in an aerosol can, what will it be branded as? Clothing by Banksy.
16 September 2010
We did not manage to get today's post online when it should have been in fact connectivity problems were experienced all day. Here is a short summary of things we will be writing about soon that cropped up in the day's news bulletins and papers.
I Want My Analogue Life Back
There is now a generation who do not remember the world before the internet took off, and who live out their lives in a slew of public online arenas. But there is also a growing number of people who feel their life online has spun out of control. Someone born in 1992 will be 18 this year. And in one way or another, their entire life has been lived online.
From birth announcements to e-mails to childhood photos, and now social networks and blogs, traces of a person's whole life could be pieced together online. For many, a limited conception of privacy is normal, but there are some people who are now having second thoughts about how much of themselves to display to the world.
Daniel Sieberg is one of them. As a television correspondent, he recognizes that social networks had taken over his life before he decided to take the jump, and disconnect ...
"Me and my ego got sucked in. Big time. And my relationships suffered," he said in his Declaration of Disconnection posted on the Huffington Post.
"I allowed the passive acceptance of strangers to replace meaningful interaction with the people I know and love. I had become more interested in a wall post here or a ...
Coalition Does God Says Baroness Warsi
The Tories have said that the coalition government "does God", as it launched an attack on Labour's approach to faith.Lady Warsi, the Conservative chair, said Labour acted as if faith was confined to "oddities, foreigners and minorities".
In a speech to Church of England bishops in Oxford, Warsi said the last government was "profoundly wrong" because it appeared to view religion as "a rather quaint relic of our pre-industrial history". She added: "They were too suspicious of faith's potential for contributing to society behind every faith-based ...
15 September 2010
Inflation and commodity prices, public sector pay, the emergence oif the thea party movement as a political force in the USA ans the effect of the internet on society allfeature today.
Libertarianism Comes To Tea
Tea Party Surges In US Primaries
The writing on the wall sems to be increasingy plain for the Obama administration. After the mid term elections on November 2nd the most left wing President the USA has ever had will be a lame duck.
The conservative Tea Party movement has won several victories over mainstream US Republicans in primary contests ahead of November's mid-term elections.
Tea Party-backed Christine O'Donnell beat veteran Congressman Mike Castle for the Senate nomination in Delaware. A Tea Party candidate also won the race to stand for New York governor. People in seven states and Washington DC voted to pick party candidates, in what is seen as ... read more >>>
The Daily Stirrer since its inception and before that Little Nicky Machiavelli have always predicted an ignominious end to the meteoric rise of Barack Hussein Obama. It was quite possible a candidate could emerge from the backwoods with only the sketchiest record as a legislator or public servand and be a good, if not a great leader. In Obama's case however there was always a lack of substance surrounding him.
Many American voters were blinded by his skin colour to the man's very obvious shortcomings and the inconsistencies and blatant lies in his account of his background. Soon it became obvious that to oppose or even question Obama was to invite accusations of racism.
Such tactics by Democrats and Obama's consituencies in the ethnic minority constituencies did successfully deflect at lot of criticism but below the surface an anti-Obama feeling was growing. Why would he not answer questions about hs birth and parentage and end the elegibility issue, why would he not release his school and college records to quash accusations that he had defrauded American taxpayers by claiming student grants available only to foreign students? The only possible reason, many people decided, was that he had something to hide, something so embarrassing, something that would be so debilitating to his Presidency and future career it was less damaging to continue under a cloud of accusation.
The game is almost up for Obama, for the Democrats and it seems for the traditionalists of the Republican Party. Obaa campaigned on a promise that as President he would unite America politically, racially and economically. In slightly less that two years he has completely torn the nation apart.
Incompetence on an unprecendented scale is his only achievement.
Another perspective:
Also:
Obama clone defeated
And it is not just Obama who has incurred the wrath of the voters.
from BBC News:
Not too long ago, Washington DC Mayor Adrian Fenty was considered a rising star, a local equivalent to Barack Obama, celebrated as one of America's most effective mayors.
On Tuesday, he was beaten in the District of Columbia's Democratic primary, his brief mayoral career aborted.
What happened? And can President Obama learn anything from the demise of the political ally he once ate with at DC landmark Ben's Chilli Bowl?
Mayor Adrian Fenty was swept to power in 2006 at age 35, after a traditional pavement-pounding campaign. He visited ... read more ...>>>
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Next Warns On Cotton Price Impact
Throughout the recession The Daily Stirrer has warned of commodity price inflation. Thoiugh on paper theUS$ is valued relatively highly against other currencies in reality all major currencies have lost value in commodity markets. Gold this week has topped $1200 an ounce, oil prices remain high and prices of staple foods are exploding. A dollar may be exchanged for Ł0.65p which is not that diffferent to a year ago but both a dollar and a pound buy less grain, coffee, beans, fuel oil and raw cotton than a year ago.
Cotton is among the commodities that has seen the biggest price rises, the shortage created by increased demand from developing nations has been exacerbated by poor harvests and bad weather. Now clothing manufacturers are feeling thise increases, soon that will be passed on to retailers.
Next has become the latest retailer to say higher cotton prices may lead to customers paying more for clothes.
Devastating floods in Pakistan - one of the world's largest cotton producers - and fears over this year's crop in China have sent cotton prices surging to 15-year highs in recent weeks.
However, Next said it did not expect the impact on sales to be dramatic.
The comments came as it announced its pre-tax profit in the six months to the end of July had ... read more >>>
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Is Cotton Becoming A Luxury?
Follow The Daily Stirrer's John De Roe to be well informed about the current state of the economic crisis and how it affects your business or job and your lifestyle.
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Debt Crisis Menu
Myth Of The Underpaid Public Sector Worker
from The Daily Telegraph:
Public sector workers are paid more on average than those in the private sector, according to the first comprehensive analysis of the pay divide by Britain's national statistician
.
The Office for National Statistics found that full-time public sector staff earned an average of Ł74 a week more than those in the private sector. Once employer pension contributions were included, the gap rose to Ł136, illustrating the generous pay-and-perks deals enjoyed by local and central government workers.
The findings threaten to undermine calls by the Trades Union Congress at its conference in Manchester this week for "civil disobedience" and co-ordinated strike action in protest against the Government's planned public sector spending cuts.
The Internet Threat
Internet Is A Threat To Our Brain Says Top Neurologist
Society should be aware of the potentially harmful effects of the internet, networking sites and computer games on the brain, leading neuroscientist and peer Baroness Susan Greenfield has said.
Lady Greenfield, one of Britain's most prominent female scientists, claimed the issue was "almost as important as climate change".
"I think the quality of our existence is threatened,'' she said. ''We need discussions about this, we need debate, we need more of an effort put in.
We need to recognise this as an issue rather than sweeping it under the carpet ... >>>
In the past The Daily Stirrer has reported on the dangers of the internet and not least (and we went out on a limb on this one) the ease with which governments and unscrupulous corporations can use internet technologies to control what information we see. Only yesterday I was involved in a forum discussion at Web Pro News on the ethicality of Google's techniques for manipulating seach results. This is done not only in service of Google's business interests but also to suppress views and opinions the corporation does not like.
The chatter from the unthinking "me too" sheeple who make most noise in the internet is that the net is the last refuge of freedom and must not be regulated. They do not understand the difference between freedom and dysfunctionality. Fascism (power through strength) is not freedom, lawlessness is not liberty and chaos is not anarchy.
Throughout the twentieth and nineteenth century human scoeities experienced change at an unprecedented and contantly accelerating rate. Human nature does not change that quickly in fact it has changed little since written records first began to be kept. We should acknowledge that technological and commercial advances and the changes they have brought about in the way we live have created many previously unknown stresses in our lives through the way and organise our communities. At some oint we have to take stock of where we are nd what direction western society is heading in and we have to ask are we going towards a place any of us want to be?
Are the changes we have set in train for good or bad?"
There is no doubt some ''very good things'' are emerging from information technology and the intrnet but nothing is without a price and thus far the corportations and agencies driving technological progress have not given us time to pause and consider what price we are paying what price
our communities are paying for our online fun.
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
Van Rompuy Accused Of Power Grab
We told you so:
from The Daily Telegraph
Mr Van Rompuy, the President of the European Council which brings together EU leaders, has been accused of supporting a French proposal to set up a "special task force" on strategic relations that would rival Lady Ashton, who is supposed to be in charge of Europe's foreign policy.
"He tried to overreach himself by getting Ashton and member states to report to him on their strategic relationships with China, India, Russia and the US. Meanwhile preparations for Thursday have not been up to standard," said an official.
BBC News Feed
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CNN News Feed
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14 September 2010
Lively comment today on the idiocies of politically corect thinking, we take our prompt from stories on global poverty and specian needs education.
Special Needs Used Too Much
Special Needs Used To Improve Schools Statistics
from BBC News
by Xavier Connolly
Thousands of pupils in England are being wrongly labelled as having special needs when all they require is better teaching, education regulator Ofsted says. Thousands of pupils are being wrongly labelled as having special educational needs when all they require is better teaching and support, Ofsted has said.
A report stated up to 25% of the 1.7m pupils in England with special needs would not be so labelled if schools focused more on teaching for all their children. The education standards watchdog said the term "special needs" was being used too widely.
The National Union of Teachers said such claims were "insulting and wrong". More that a fifth of pupils in England have been ... read all
Finally Ofsted have caught on to the teachers scam. The boom in special needs education over the past twenty or twenty five years has resulted from a combination of politically correct thinking and bureaucratic empire building in the education system. The politically correct thinkers (which is a polite way of saying Nazis) believe that social engineering and suppression of individualism can produce a standard human being and so are always eager to overlook the basic facts of education, that people have different levels of ability, different areas of excellence and different rates of development. Thus anybody who does not conform to the PC template is quickly labelled 'special needs' and stigmatized for life.
The bureaucracy loves special needs of course, all that administration, reports from shrinks and councellors to circulate and file, boxes to tick, forms to fill in, meetings to attend. The only loser is the child, often a perfectly normal kid who is a bit slow at reading or a numbskull at maths, in some cases even a very bright child who is utterly bored by the banality of lessons and simply refuses to engage.
But perhaps The Daily Stirrer is being too demanding. If the aim of education is to ensure no individuals emerge from the state school system that the special needs programme is working just fine.
Is it any wonder private education is booming and home schooling is on the increase?
other views:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationnews/8000168/Ofsted-schools-exaggerating-special-needs-to-hide-poor-teaching.html
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UK Inflation Static In August
UK Inflation Unchanged In August
by John De Roe
UK Consumer Prices Index (CPI) inflation remained unchanged in August at 3.1%, according to the Office for National Statistics (ONS).
This means the official rate of inflation remains well above the Bank of England's 2% target, and it brings to an end a three-month period during which the rate of increase had been falling. Note the deception in the official figures there. When they announce that inflation has falled it only means it has not risen as quickly as previously.
The unexpectedly high rate was boosted, accoring to government sources, by strong rises in air fares, clothing and food. Fuel prices slightly it is reported. We learn from unofficial sources that food prices, the area of spending that hits the poorest families hardest, continued to rise more quickly than the general rate.
Retail Prices Index (RPI) inflation slowed marginally to 4.7%, down from 4.8% in July. This again goes against economic forecasts, strengthening the position of Bank Of England monetary policy committee members who are arguing for an increase in interest rates to curb the trend to rising inflation.
As long as inflation keeps running at its current rate the long term consequences for people with savings can only be disastrous. On the other hand any rise in interest rates will hit mortgage payers very hard and will almost inevitably lead to another drop in house prices.
Another view of this story: Inflation remains high The Guardian.
Clegg Promises New Global War On Poverty
by Ian R Thorpe
The UK government intends to reorientate its entire aid programme to put the lives of women in developing countries at its heart, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, will tell a United Nations summit.
Government leaders will meet in New York next Monday for a three-day assessment of progress towards alleviating global poverty, poor education and ill-health. They will hear that the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), agreed by the G8 in 2000, will not be met by 2015 without considerably more effort
In this lastest statement Mr. Clegg puts himself in pole position for dickhead of the year award. Talk of global wars on poverty takes us right back to the idiocies of the Blair era, who can forget New Labour's flagship policy committment to "abolish child poverty." Setting such vague and unrealistic goals is a cop out, they appeal to the sentimentality of the hand wringers and bleeding hearts, they are very hard to oppose with argument and they are all completely, utterly, totally a waste of effort and money.
Define poverty Mr. Clegg, come on - I voted for you so I have a right to an explanation of this bullshit. No doubt it will play well to the Obama - led "let's-create-utopia-by-joining-hands-and-sininging-kumbaya" one worlders brigade but other than that it just has no place in reality. Poverty is relative. How do you propose to abolish poverty? By imposing western standards of materialism on people who are quite happy? (Happier than westerners according to anthopological research.) Do flat screen TVs, washing machines andcomputers, play stations, smatphones or SUVs make happiness. Or does happness come from belonging and being loved, from sharing with the other members of one's community the trials and victories of life, the heartache and the thousand shocks that flesh is heir to. Does having our egos massaged by shrinks and counsellors improve our character in a better way than facing and overcoming adversity alone or as part of a group.
What kind of stupidity virus afflicts the politically correct left to make them blind to the Naziism of such unsought interventions as would be part of a war in poverty. So an African tribesman has six wives, such an arrangement would be unnaceptable to we in the west but so long as the wives are treated well and are happy with the arrangement what right have we to interfere and impose our ways.
To talk of a war on poverty when we only define poverty by our standards is an insult to many ancient cultures. One simple rule should cover this, if the people we are trying to help have not asked for our help then we are not helping but are simply meddling.
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Conservatives Plan Immigration CapDuring the election campaign the big issue for voters was immigration. Strangely it was the issue none of the politicians wanted to talk about. Now as unemployment refuses to come down and we face up to a jobless future and the government are looking at limiting numbers of immigrants the left are screaming about the need to ease immigration controls still more.
Poverty: Labour Succeeds Where Thatcher Failed.
At last, a success New Labour can claim as their own. Under the party's rule over the past twelve years the gap between rich and poor in Britain has gone bak to the level of 50 years ago. We get a view from the MP for Rawtenborough since 1832 Hector Gobbett - Broadsides on what this means for unemployment, the revovery and the election prospects of conservative and labour...
Immigation: The Elephant In The RoomThroughout the election campaign the three main parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat have shied away from the immigration issue. How can these charlatans put themselves forward as serious politicians prepared to implement the political solutions needed to deal with Britains problems when they dare not comment on the issue of greatest concern to most voters for fear of upsetting the numerically small but unrepresentatively vocal politically correct "progressive left."
Other News:
Intel Launches Groundbreaking New Chip
Girl not allowed to walk to bust stop
A father has been threatened by a council with child protection issues for allowing his seven-year-old daughter to walk 20 metres from their home to the bus stop unaccompanied.
13 September 2010
Yes, we truly are back to normal, health scares and economic problems dominate today's news.
Colon Cancer Cases Set To Rise By 50%
BBC News
The UK is heading for a 50% increase in the number of new colon cancer cases over the next 30 years, says an international team of scientists.
The forecast, in the European Journal of Cancer, is for 35,000 new cases a year by 2040, compared with 23,000 now. The study used cancer data from seven countries to predict how cancer rates might change with an ageing population ...
Rising obesity is one of the main reasons given for this latest bouth of scaremongering control freakery. The study predics if the UK reached US levels that could add another 2,000 cases a year to the total. What you should notice here is the shifting of blame to ordinary members of the public. It is our lifestyle choices that are causing the rise in cancer the scientists would have us believe.
No culpability on the part of the food industry that laces our diet with a cocktail of harmful chemical (all concocted by scientists of course), not a hint of accusation levelled at the politicians' encouragement of passive consumerism in the service of economic growthy or the promotion of a society encouraged by politicians to live online.
No mention of the role the advertising industry has played in promoting passive lifestyles.
Not long ago everybody used to walk; to the shops, to see friends who lived close by, to work or school, church or to the pub. Now such beneficial and virtually costless exercise is frowned on. Don't waste time, so much to do, so much to cram into each day.
If you do not have a full diary you are a social failure. Need exercise? Get in the car and go to the gym. Look at how good that is for the economy, for the car company, the oil company, the gym owner, the sportswear manufacturers and especially for you. Think of the extra time you spend networking and being seen to be a virtuous person. If you had spent that time walking alone it would have been wasted and you would be identified as a sad act, a Billy-no-mates.
And yet walking is one of the best exercises for prevention of colonic cancer, is environmentally friendly and can be a safety valve in a stress laden world.
on the same topic Physically fit people have a lowrer death risk
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Winter of Discontent?
From The Daily Telegraph:
Unions are threatening coordinated strikes, civil disobedience and a campaign of resistance not seen for decades as they seek to increase the pressure on the Government over public sector cuts. One leader warned that co-ordinated industrial action between unions was now inevitable while another suggested a campaign of civil disobedience.
read all: Winter Of Discontent As Unions Threaten Campaign Against Cuts?
Delegates to today's annual meeting of the Trades Union Congress will vote on joint union industrial action as well as other forms of protest against the coalition government's public spending cuts and deficit reducion measures.
The motion befoe the conference urges the TUC to support and co-ordinate campaigning and joint union industrial action, nationally and locally, in opposition to attacks on jobs, pensions, pay or public services.
Titled Defending public services, the motion is sponsored by most of the countrys biggest unions including Unison, Unite, GMB, the Public and Commercial Services (PCS) union, the Fire Brigades Union and the NASUWT.
More on the threatened strikes against government spending cuts from The Guardian
One would expect the trade unions to oppose cuts to public spending as the deficit reduction programme will inevitably lead to job losses among their members. As the Liberal Democrat Vince Cable, minister for Business in the coalition government commented, the government is aware of the consequences of cuts but has to deal with the realities of the economic situation.
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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? We need to be creating real jobs in the real world rather than candyfloss jobs in the digital economy of the internet if there is to be recovery.
Poverty: Labour Succeeds Where Thatcher FailedAt least, a success New Labour can claim as their own. Under the party's rule over the past twelve years the gap between rich and poor in Britain has gone bak to the level of 50 years ago. We get a view from the MP for Rawtenborough since 1832 Hector Gobbett - Broadsides on what this means for unemployment, the revovery and the election prospects of conservative and labour
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' business and the 'digital' economy will restore prosperity and create millions of jobs to restart the economic cycle and restore growth. This was a blatant lie...
Interesting TimesWhich 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.
Magic MoneyNot 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...
12 September 2010
The holiday period is over, schoolkids are back in class, colleges are ready to accept the new intake of students and news is starting to flow again. Plenty of good reading in The Daily Stirrer today.
Cost Of Aircraft Carriers Comes Under Scrutiny
More than 100 contracts totalling around Ł1.25 billion have been awarded towards the construction of the two new aircraft carriers HMS Queen Elizabeth and HMS Prince of Wales.
Doubts were raised earlier this week over whether the coalition Government will press ahead with a Ł5 billion plan for the two Royal Navy warships being built at Rosyth and on the Clyde.
BAE systems chief executive Sir Ian King told the Defence Select Committee in the Commons on that the company was asked to consider a number of options ranging from "one carrier to no carriers".
There are fears that any downgrading of the programme could cost ...
more>>>
The Daily Stirrer has always argued against deficit spending and the new build aircraft carriers for the Royal Navy were never anything but a vanity project for first Tony Blair and then Gordon Brown. Warships of this type are virtually obsolete because as we have seen in Iraq, Afghanistan and stretching back to Northern Ireland and Viet Nam modern wars are low key affairs waged in the streets and villages. There is no role for giant warships, fighter planes and bombers that politicians so love to spend money on. We should perhaps be grateful the Labour ghovernment did not put the carriers out to PFI contract to be supplied to us as a managed service owned and operated for profit by private enterprise
Vast armies no longer line up against each other on the battlefields, fleets do not engage in seaborne warfare and even air war is no longer acceptable in the international community because of the inevitably high civilian casualty rate. So new aircraft carriers are nothing more than an example of balls out politics. Look at the damage done to America's standing in the community of nation by their bombing campaigns in the two Gulf wars and Afghanistan.
In the current economic situation government spending must be reduced across the board. The obvious place for making savings that must be borne by the armed services is in Afghanistan but that particular mess has entangled us so deeply there is no simple way out that does not involve putting the lives of British personnel at risk. There is no room for reducing what we spend on equipping the front line troops, we have already experienced the consequences of sending soldiers to operate in conditions for which they are hoplessly ill - equipped. Our troops have performed bravely in both Iraq and Afghanistan but have been let down because political expediency always trumps common sense and practical experience.
With those points in mind we have to face up to the fact we are no longer a military power and scale our navy and air force accordingly. As we accept that reality we come up against another, the extent to which, after thirty years of Thatcherite war on British industry under both Conservative and Labour governments, many of our regional economies depend on public sector spending to maintain anything like acceptable rates of employment and living standards among the population.
The Daily Stirrer suggests in the case of the shipbuilding communities in Scotland the government embarks on a programme of modernising the existing fleet. This ought to be more labour intensive and keep more of the work at home in Britain. We are no longer in a position to be worrying about the effects of our actions on the economies of third world nations. Those left wing politicians who think we should give priority to such considerations are not living on planet reality. The Treasury must spend our money on things that really matter to people here in Britain.
More on the coalition budget cuts from The Guardian:
Osborne to slash sickness benefit bill
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Search For English Lake Monster (Sky News)
Monster hunters have used sonar equipment for the first time to search for a mysterious creature reportedly living in England's largest lake.
Sky News filmed out on Windermere with the team looking for proof that the beast exists.
In the last four years there have been seven reported sightings of a long humpbacked animal, now nicknamed Bow-Nessie.
Windermere hotel owner, Thomas Noblett, described his strange encounter in the water, saying: "All of a sudden I felt something brush past my legs like a giant fish.
"And then I was lifted up by a 3ft wave. I've no idea what it was."
During the sweep of the lake, the team spotted a strange 14 metre long disturbance in the water but were ... more >>>
Dangerous Book For Boys Culture Needed
by Xavier Connolly
Schools should adopt a "Dangerous Book for Boys" culture to curb the health and safety paranoia, the Education Secretary has said....
read full story >>>
I am not a fan of Michael Gove, as someone who though past retirement age still works part time in teaching I have often listened to the education secretary and thought he is as crazy as any of his Labour predecessors. It is gratifying to read at long last however of somebody in government who is at least aware that one of the main reasons for the problems we are experiencing with boys in the education system is the feminisation of the curriculum.
Boys and girls are different, let nobody ever tell you otherwise. Fifty years of Politically Correct thinking cannot undo five million years of evolution. Human male and female have evolved a different mindest not just because of their different hormones and body functions but because of the roles imposed on them long ago when life was a daily battle for survival.
Politically Correct thinkers may wish it otherwise and may try, by giving boys doll toys, to curb their aggression and competitive instincts but all experimental attempts to turn young men into soft furnishing specialists have failed miserably. Some have even produced warped serial killers.
So let's have the dangerous book for boys, let us encourage them to build oildrum rafts and light campfires, let us give them ripping yarns to read and interest them in engineering by talking about how racing cars and tanks work, in chemistry by showing them how to make whizz-bangs and smells and in physics by using magnetic fields to levitate a metal object or building a Van Der Graf generator. These things may be old hat to the academics who advise the government but to a child coming to the subject they are new and much more interesting than long talks of particle physics and how the large hadron collider may (or may not) reveal some of the mysteries of the Universe.
All recent education ministers have been hopeless but at least Michael Gove has shown he is not completely beyond redemption.
Wind Fails Denmark
Ill Wind For Denmark's Green Revolution
Denmark has long been a role model for green activists, but now it has become one of the first countries to turn against the turbines.
To green campaigners, it is windfarm heaven, generating a claimed fifth of its power from wind and praised by British ministers as the model to follow. But amid a growing public backlash, Denmark, the world's most windfarm-intensive country, is turning against the turbines.
Last month, unnoticed in the UK, Denmark's giant state-owned power company, Dong Energy, announced that it would abandon future onshore wind farms in the country. "Every time we were building onshore, the public reacts in a negative way and we had a lot of criticism from ...
more >>>
The Daily Stirrer has reported the failure of the Danish and Spanish green energy experiments before. It gives us no pleasure to say "we told you so" because even a fool should have been able to see it was never going to work.
RELATED POSTS:
Will Wind Power Be A Way Of Farming Money For Operators.
Despite the wailing of the Green lobby and the Climate Change evangelists and Science worshippers wind power is a bloody stupid thing to invest money and effort in if we want to create a sustainable, non - polluting energy source to power the nation. If we are simply looking for ways to channel taxpayers money into the pockets of immensely rich and powerful energy corporations and landowners however it is hard to think of a better way to do it.
Theology Is Unnecessary: Hawking
Hawking On How The Universe Created Itself (CNN)
Theology is unnecessary. So says Stephen Hawking, the world-famous physicist who controversially argues in a new book that God did not create the universe.
"God may exist, but science can explain the universe without the need for a creator," Hawking told CNN's "Larry King Live" in an interview that aired Friday.
Hawking, 68, says in his book "The Grand Design" that, given the existence of gravity, the universe can and will create itself from nothing. "Spontaneous creation," he writes, is the reason why the universe and humanity exist.
"Gravity and quantum theory cause universes to be created spontaneously out of
Hawking is talking bollocks of course. Physics cannot explain the Universe unless it uses a totally fictional device to give it the starting point from which all time and space is meaured. When theoretical physicists talk of matter creating itself out of nothing or all the matter in The Universe being compressed into a pellet the size of a rat turd which suddenly, under the immense pressure of its own gravity, began to explode it is a cop out, an attempt to blind people with science.
All you have to remember is time is a human invention. The Universe, in all its infinite vastness and ineffability, does not measure itself by the turning of our tiny, insignificant planet around its tiny, insignificant star, just one of the estimated two hundred billion stars in our galaxy, just one of the estimated 100 billion galaxies in the Universe (or at least the parts we have managed to measure or guesstimate so far).
Does that put things in perspective? Stephen Hawking my arse.
RELATED POSTS:
Before Big Bang - part 1
Before Big Bang - part 2
My Problem With God(Because whenever I challenge science bullshit the science as a religion brigade inevitably demonstrate their stupidity by accusing me of being a creationist. Do they seriously believe there are only two ways of looking at this topic?)
11 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
The anniversary of the World Trade Centre atrocity hits headlines today and inevitably reignites the controversy over whether the pln to build a Muslim cultural centre close to the site of the Twin Towers should be allowed to go ahead. Also making headlines, the row over the coalition government's planned spending cuts and their likely effect on the poorest and most vulnerable groups in society.
Cuts Will Hit Pooor Harder Than Rich say TUC leaders.
Well they would say that wouldn't they?
From The Guardian:
The coalition's spending cuts will hit the poorest in society 10 times harder than the richest as the health, social and education services they rely on are slashed, an extensive new study for the Trades Union Congress has found. The TUC general secretary, Brendan Barber, says the research proves that the Conservatives are ...
According to the research, pensioners and single parents will take the hardest impact of the coalition government cuts in public spending and welfare that have become an urgent necessity in order to get the public sector deficit under control. The cuts, according to Trade Union movement leaders are a 'betrayal' of election promise to make budget cutbacks fair.
It is necessary to point out here that anyone who believed the cuts could be achieved without pain was living in cloud cukoo land. We must keep the carping of the left in perspective by remembering much of the pain that must now be endured is a result of the Labour government's encouraging people to run up domestic debt and take on unnaffordable mortgages in order to sustain consumer led economic growth
during it's thirteen years in power. This growth served to mast the fact that Labour politicians were out-Thatchering Thatcher in laying waste to the UK's industrial and commercial base.
On top of the inexorable rise in unemployment there are the 'false jobs', the vast numbers of jobs for 'outreach' workers, counsellors, administrators and co-ordinators created in the public sector, the huge rise in numbers of students studying for Mickey Mouse degrees which only serve to keep them off the unemployment register for three years and the part time workers who officially are employed but depend on tate supplements to provide enough money to live on.
Thus the cost of the benefit system and the size of the deficit has exploded.
Budget cutbacks will affect the poorest in society most simply because as Charles Dickens' character Wilkings Micawber put it:
Annual income twenty pounds, anual expenditure nineteen pounds ninteen and sixpence, result happiness; annual income twenty pounds, annual expenditure twenty pounds and sixpence, result misery.
The line which people cross to go from just getting by into poverty is very fine. The cuts wil cost some people Ł500 a year and they wil not feel it, others will be five pounds a year worse off and will be badly hit. Unfortunately no government can tailor a budget cuts package for every individual and household. The coalition have an unenviable task in getting the economy under control and The Daily Stirrer team have serious doubts as to whether they are up to the job, particularly after the loss of David Laws following his brutal outing by people who are always banging on about gay right but showed no regard whatsoever for Mr. Laws right to keep his sexuality a private matter.
That might seen to stray off topic but is very relevant. It shows that Labour, the party of the metroplitan elite and that as their agenda, power at any price is built on a belief that the end always jusdtifies the means, having shown they are completely infit to govern are determined by any means available, fair or foul, to destroy the coalition that is our only slender hope of avoiding ecoomic catastrophe.
Having spent thirteen years hammering the poor for the benefit of their finance industry paymasters, the concern now being shown for the plight of the poor by Labour and the Unions can only be describled as the crocodile tears of a gang of hypocrites.
9/11 Anniverary Marked By Row (BB News)
The US is marking nine years since 9/11 amid controversy over plans for an Islamic centre near Ground Zero and a threat to burn the Koran.
The biggest event is in New York, where relatives are reading out the names of those who died when planes hit the twin towers of the World Trade Center.President Barack Obama has urged respect for other religious faiths.
Meanwhile, the pastor behind the threat to burn Korans in Florida has ... more >>>
Why Parents Can't Do Modern Maths (BBC News)
Long division and long multiplication have been replaced in schools by chunking and gridding. While the new methods are meant to make maths easier, parents have been left scratching their heads, writes Rob Eastaway.
I used to think I had a good understanding of maths - until my daughter started going to primary school. That's when I discovered a revolution had taken place in the way arithmetic is taught, and there were techniques and terminology that meant nothing to me.
Let me give you a flavour. In most primary schools, maths lessons are called numeracy. Children work using number lines and learn their number bonds, they fill in Carroll Diagrams, and they calculate using the grid method and something that carries the peculiar
Science : The most exciting times in history?
From The Guardian:
Sir David Attenborough, 84, is a naturalist and broadcaster. He studied geology and zoology at Cambridge before joining the BBC in 1952 and presenting landmark series including Life On Earth (1979), The Living Planet (1984) and, recently, Life. Richard Dawkins, 69, was educated at Oxford, later lectured there and became its first professor of the public understanding of science. An evolutionary biologist, he is the author of 10 books, including The Selfish Gene (1976), The God Delusion (2006) and The Greatest Show On Earth (2009). He is now working on a children's book, The Magic Of Reality.
What is the one bit of science from your field that you think everyone should know?
David Attenborough: The unity of life.
Richard Dawkins: The unity of life that comes about through evolution, since we're all descended from a single common ancestor. It's almost too good to be true, that on one planet this extraordinary complexity of life should have come about by what is pretty much an intelligible process. And we're the only species capable of understanding it.
Where and when do you do your best thinking?
DA: I've no idea. All I know is if I'm stuck with something and go to bed, I wake up with the answer.
Read all of this fascinating conversation ( more ... >>> )
9 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
The Daily Stirrer is back online but we may struggle tomorrow. Ian and John are still away but we have one of the Boggart Bloggers available to help out today. Things will be back to mormal by weekend. Meanwhile here are some interesting posts ad comments on the economic recovery, the collapse of the Obama Presidency, Phone hacking, the slide of the global economy into slump and on a lighter note something for Star Trek fans...
9 September 2010
Today's News
Phone Hacking Row Goes On. (Daily Telegraph)
Authorisation for the Standards and Privileges Committee to launch a probe was nodded through the Commons without a formal vote.
The move followed an hour-long debate sparked by Labour frontbencher Chris Bryant, who insisted that MPs should not be ''supine'' amid allegations that their phones were hacked.
PHONE HACKING ROW STORY ALSO FEATURES AT THE GUARDIAN:
Strage how the Labour Party and the "progressive left" tried to brush this issue aside and trivialise it when they were in power and likely to be embarrassed by revelations of sleaze and corruption in high places. Now the scent a chance to embarrass the coalition they are trying to big up the story with every dirty trick they learned in thirteen years of corrupt, self serving, end-justifies-the-means gpoverrnment.
Even America's Liberals Concede Obama's Presidency Is Crumbling
Now here's an interesting news story from the United States ahead of November's mid term election which will deliver the verdict of the American election on the Presifdency of Barack Obama.
Democrats in Congress are no longer asking themselves whether this is going to be a bad election year for them and their party. They are asking whether it is going to be a disaster. The GOP pushed deep into Democratic-held territory over the summer, to the point where the party is well within range of picking up the 39 seats it would need to take control of the House. Overall, as many as 80 House seats could be at risk, and fewer than a dozen of these are held by Republicans.
Political handicappers now say it is conceivable that the Republicans could also win the 10 seats they need to take back the Senate. Not since 1930 has the House changed hands without the Senate following suit.
One might easily guess this is a piece from National Review, The Weekly Standard, The Wall Street Journal or Fox News.com, all major conservative news outlets in the United States? Wrong. The passage is taken verbatim from from yesterdays Washington Post, usually viewed by conservatives as a flagship of the liberal establishment inside the ...
Here is another quote from a Conservative American commentator who is reminding Obama's supporters that the "beloved President" presented himself as and was acclaimed by America's "progressive left" as a liberal
QUOTE: He (Obama) could not be further from principles of classical liberalism. The principles of our founding and what made us great but it has been deteriorating in the 20th century and virtually eliminated in the 21st. Now we might take this as a comment on Obama's politics. "If classical liberalism spells individualism, fascism spells government."
~
Benito Mussolini, Fascism: Doctrines and Institutions, p. 10
GLOBAL Economic Growth Forecasts Cut:
by John De Roe
In spite of all the optimistic talk coming from politiocians and economic think tanks The Daily Stirrer has been warning that signs of the economic recovery were illusory. The governments of the USA and the UK together with governments in other economically developed nations injested vast amounts of stimulus (aka taxpayer's money) into their economied and achieved derisory rates of growth.
Measures to create jobs only resulted in the appointment of more tax eaters thus increasing deficits and banks remained as reluctant to lend as consumers are to spend. Further "stimulus" could drive the global economy into a downward spiral but at the moment we are in a depression. Inflation is running higher than growth and while interest rates remain rock bottom governments will continue lending money as 0.5% only to borrow it back at 3%. What that situation persists recovery is impossible. To raise interest rates however would probably start another downturn, the fabled double dip recession.
The global recovery may be slowing faster than previously thought, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development warned today as it cut its growth forecasts for the second half of the year. The Paris-based organisation also called for further stimulus measures if the slowdown proves more than temporary.
The G7 industrialised nations are now expected to grow 1.5% on an annualised basis in the second half of this year, down from the . . . more >>>
RELATED POSTS:
Interesting Times
Bond Villain Targets Britain
Jobless Economy
Debt Crisis: roundup of posts
Jobs Crisis: roundup of posts
Spending Cuts Likely To Hit The North Hardest:
Industrial areas in the North East and Midlands are least resilient to economic shocks, BBC-commissioned research suggests.
Teeside is ranked as the most vulnerable, followed by the north Nottinghamshire industrial area and the Potteries. None of these areas have ever recovered properly from the collapse of their traditional industries.
The Experian research on the likely effect of spending cuts suggests how England's regions may cope with further public sector cuts.
Beam Us Up Scotty
And finally today the news all those people who never stopped believing Star Trek was a fly on the wall documentary have been waiting for...
A research team at Australian National University has announced a device that can move small particles a meter and a half using only the power of light. In short, . . . more >>>
5 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
Postings from The DAily Stirrer maybe sparse over the next few days. T
he principle writer and webmaster is taking a break and due to personal commitments his colleagues cannot guarantee to provide cover. Things will be back to mormal in a few days.
Unemployment and the Downward Spiral Into Debt
by John de Roe
US Jobless Not As Bad As Feared
The unemployment crisis on both sides of the Atlantic dominates most serious news publishers and broadcasters today.
From The Guardian:
Barack Obama pledged to bring forward a raft of fresh measures to boost American jobs growth after the White House received a fillip from better-than-expected employment figures for August.
Seeking to put pressure on Congress to provide an additional stimulus for the struggling US economy, Obama said he was looking at tax breaks to encourage businesses to hire labour, as well as infrastructure programmes, investment in green energy and an extension of middle-class tax cuts.
"I will be addressing a broader package of ideas next week," he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after the eagerly-awaited non farm payrolls for August showed a drop of 54,000, half the drop that Wall Street had been fearing.
The fall in payrolls was the result of 114,000 workers hired temporarily for the US census being laid off, with private jobs registering ... more
The Daily Stirrer predicted a jobless recovery with employment in the developed nations of the west continuing to fall as economies returned to modest growth. This is an inevitable consequence of exporting first manufacturing jobs to low labour cost economies and then outsourceing administration and sales / marketing to the same low cost areas.
Over the course of four decades the western economies had become dependent on consumer spending to drive the growth the economic model depended on. In order to spend however the workforce need well paid work. Thus the insanity of government economic policies that encouraged and rewarded the transfer of work that provided the financial fuel for our economic engines becomes clear.
At last it seems economic journalists, commentators and academics are starting to get a handle on this. Who knows, politicians may catch on eventually.
US Joblesssness Part Of A Wider Trend by Larry Elliot, The Guardian
None of the recent surveys yet suggest that the UK has slid back into recession following its strong performance in the second quarter of 2010
Recession alert! That's the obvious conclusion from this morning's news that activity in Britain's service sector has slipped to its lowest level since April last year.
There are two main reasons to be concerned by the monthly health check provided by Markit and the Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply. The first is that the September finding is not a one-off but a continuation of a downward trend that began this spring.
The second is that today's purchasing managers' index for services which accounts for around three quarters of the economy's output is consistent with all the other recent data. Both the manufacturing and the ... more
The rapid growth in the British economy during the first quarter of this year was mostly down to companies restocking after the worst of the recession but it also owed a lot to the Labour government's futile efforts to stimulate the economy with bailouts, quantitative easing, public spending programmes, job placement subsidies, the VAT holiday, cash for clunkers and active intervention to prevent homes being repossessed. Some of these came to a scheduled end, others have been dumped by the new government as it has become apparent a continuation of Labour's insane spending and huge deficits could only lead to the nation's credit rating being downgraded.
This in turn would increase the interest we have to pay on our debt which would increase our deficit which would ... and so the downward spiral gathers pace.
George Osborne has, however, complicated matter both by taking money out of the economy this year and by his blood-curdling warnings that cuts of at least 25% in Whitehall spending will have to be announced in next month's comprehensive spending review in order to tackle Britain's deficit. Public spending cuts were urgent and necessary to get the burgeoning debt under control but at the same time the economy needs jobs, real jobs not candy floss jobs for tax eaters in the public sector.
Eggs Thrown At Tony Blair
by Ed Butt
Violence has broken out at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with anti-war protesters hurling shoes and eggs at the former prime minister.
The projectiles did not hit Blair as he arrived at a bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, to be greeted by scores of demonstrators chanting that he was a "war criminal" and had "blood on his hands" because of the invasion of ...
We're ashamed to admit it but this news drew cheers from Daily Stirrer Staff
Primary Schools Short Of Places
by Xavier Connolly
You may remember the Labour government's boasts about how much extra money they had put into education. Well this story shows how much good it did.
Primary schools will have to find an extra 350,000 places over the next four years despite cuts in education spending, ministers have been warned.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has been told by Whitehall officials that a surge in the birth rate has increased demand for places by about 15 per cent a year, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The average primary school now has about 240 pupils, which means that to accommodate the four-year surge in pupils by building new schools could require the construction of about 375 new institutions.
Some people with good heads for figures said at the time all the government had done was shuffle the same money around within spreadsheets. Rubbish, cried minister, we're honest politicians, we wouldn't to that. Its just a lie spread by the evil Tories.
Well if all the money Labour claimed to have sunk into the education system had been new money one might reasonably expect tem to have created enough space in classrooms to accommodate all the children who would be entering the school system. It has to be said however, the conservative led coalition have got off to an equally disastrous start in their attempts to tackle the problems in education.
So what is wrong?
As usual in British politics it is short termism. Politicians cannot and do not want to see beyond the net election. Until we ditch our wretched first - past - the - post system for fair representation it will always be thus.
4 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
Unemployment and the Downward Spiral Into Debt
by John de Roe
US Jobless Not As Bad As Feared
The unemployment crisis on both sides of the Atlantic dominates most serious news publishers and broadcasters today.
From The Guardian:
Barack Obama pledged to bring forward a raft of fresh measures to boost American jobs growth after the White House received a fillip from better-than-expected employment figures for August.
Seeking to put pressure on Congress to provide an additional stimulus for the struggling US economy, Obama said he was looking at tax breaks to encourage businesses to hire labour, as well as infrastructure programmes, investment in green energy and an extension of middle-class tax cuts.
"I will be addressing a broader package of ideas next week," he told reporters in the White House Rose Garden after the eagerly-awaited non farm payrolls for August showed a drop of 54,000, half the drop that Wall Street had been fearing.
The fall in payrolls was the result of 114,000 workers hired temporarily for the US census being laid off, with private jobs registering ... more
The Daily Stirrer predicted a jobless recovery with employment in the developed nations of the west continuing to fall as economies returned to modest growth. This is an inevitable consequence of exporting first manufacturing jobs to low labour cost economies and then outsourceing administration and sales / marketing to the same low cost areas.
Over the course of four decades the western economies had become dependent on consumer spending to drive the growth the economic model depended on. In order to spend however the workforce need well paid work. Thus the insanity of government economic policies that encouraged and rewarded the transfer of work that provided the financial fuel for our economic engines becomes clear.
At last it seems economic journalists, commentators and academics are starting to get a handle on this. Who knows, politicians may catch on eventually.
US Joblesssness Part Of A Wider Trend by Larry Elliot, The Guardian
None of the recent surveys yet suggest that the UK has slid back into recession following its strong performance in the second quarter of 2010
Recession alert! That's the obvious conclusion from this morning's news that activity in Britain's service sector has slipped to its lowest level since April last year.
There are two main reasons to be concerned by the monthly health check provided by Markit and the Chartered Institute for Purchasing and Supply. The first is that the September finding is not a one-off but a continuation of a downward trend that began this spring.
The second is that today's purchasing managers' index for services which accounts for around three quarters of the economy's output is consistent with all the other recent data. Both the manufacturing and the ... more
The rapid growth in the British economy during the first quarter of this year was mostly down to companies restocking after the worst of the recession but it also owed a lot to the Labour government's futile efforts to stimulate the economy with bailouts, quantitative easing, public spending programmes, job placement subsidies, the VAT holiday, cash for clunkers and active intervention to prevent homes being repossessed. Some of these came to a scheduled end, others have been dumped by the new government as it has become apparent a continuation of Labour's insane spending and huge deficits could only lead to the nation's credit rating being downgraded.
This in turn would increase the interest we have to pay on our debt which would increase our deficit which would ... and so the downward spiral gathers pace.
George Osborne has, however, complicated matter both by taking money out of the economy this year and by his blood-curdling warnings that cuts of at least 25% in Whitehall spending will have to be announced in next month's comprehensive spending review in order to tackle Britain's deficit. Public spending cuts were urgent and necessary to get the burgeoning debt under control but at the same time the economy needs jobs, real jobs not candy floss jobs for tax eaters in the public sector.
Eggs Thrown At Tony Blair
by Ed Butt
Violence has broken out at the first public signing for Tony Blair's memoirs, with anti-war protesters hurling shoes and eggs at the former prime minister.
The projectiles did not hit Blair as he arrived at a bookshop in Dublin, Ireland, to be greeted by scores of demonstrators chanting that he was a "war criminal" and had "blood on his hands" because of the invasion of ...
We're ashamed to admit it but this news drew cheers from Daily Stirrer Staff
Primary Schools Short Of Places
by Xavier Connolly
You may remember the Labour government's boasts about how much extra money they had put into education. Well this story shows how much good it did.
Primary schools will have to find an extra 350,000 places over the next four years despite cuts in education spending, ministers have been warned.
Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, has been told by Whitehall officials that a surge in the birth rate has increased demand for places by about 15 per cent a year, The Daily Telegraph has learnt.
The average primary school now has about 240 pupils, which means that to accommodate the four-year surge in pupils by building new schools could require the construction of about 375 new institutions.
Some people with good heads for figures said at the time all the government had done was shuffle the same money around within spreadsheets. Rubbish, cried minister, we're honest politicians, we wouldn't to that. Its just a lie spread by the evil Tories.
Well if all the money Labour claimed to have sunk into the education system had been new money one might reasonably expect tem to have created enough space in classrooms to accommodate all the children who would be entering the school system. It has to be said however, the conservative led coalition have got off to an equally disastrous start in their attempts to tackle the problems in education.
So what is wrong?
As usual in British politics it is short termism. Politicians cannot and do not want to see beyond the net election. Until we ditch our wretched first - past - the - post system for fair representation it will always be thus.
3 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
US Jobs Market Still Reeling
Markets eagerly awaiting the latest US non-farm payroll data today amid fears of a double dip recession in the world's largest economy
Fresh evidence of the stuttering nature of America's recovery from its deepest postwar recession will be provided by the labour department in Washington today when it reveals the latest figures for job creation in the world's biggest economy.
Always an eagerly awaited indicator of the economic health of the US, this month's non-farm payroll data has attained particular significance not just for the dealers huddled around their computer terminals on Wall Street but also for Democrats facing midterm elections in November...
From James Dahlberg in the United States
The beleagured Obama administration had a respite from the recent sspate of bad news on theeconomy as the latest unemployment figures showed US unemployment claims fell more than expected.
The US government figures revealed 473,000 new claims for unemployment benefit were filed in the week ending 21 August, below a forecast for 490,000 in a Reuters poll of analysts, and a fall of 31,000 from 504,000 the week before. Tis does not take into account to number of long term unemployed slipping off the figure because their entitlement has expired. One on welfare instead of unemployment allowance they are no longer counted as on the claimant register.
Also tempering the administration's claims to success in tackling unemployment, the four-week average of new claims, which irons out some of the volatility in weekly numbers, reached a nine-month high, rising 3,250 to 486,750.
President Barack Obama's government has been battling to bring down unemployment, which remains stubbornly high, amid criticism that the stuttering economic upturn so far has been largely a jobless recovery.
Other recent data on unemployment has not given cause for optimism while weak housing market data and negative feedback from business surveys have increased fears that the US is headed for a double-dip recession.
Prescott Wants Phone Hacking Inquiry
From The Guardian:
John Prescott today called for a judicial review of the conduct of the Metropolitan police force in relation to the allegations of phone hacking against the News of the World. The former deputy prime minister was speaking after the paper confirmed it has suspended a journalist while it investigates new allegations of the unlawful interception of voicemail. The police have come under pressure after the New York Times quoted unnamed detectives alleging they had cut short their investigation because of their close relationship with the News of the World.
Prescott said the police had repeatedly refused to tell him whether his phone was hacked by News of the World journalists ...
Record Fall In Alcohol Consumption
The UK has seen its biggest fall in alcohol consumption in 60 years, according to new figures from an industry body.
The British Beer and Pub Association (BBPA) said 2009 saw the sharpest year-on-year decline in alcohol consumption across the board since 1948.
The figures are compiled primarily from HM Revenue and Customs data for the amount of alcohol sold by producers and importers into the UK market.
They follow recent data from the Office of National Statistics that found 39% of men and 31% of women exceed the daily guidelines on how much they should drink.
The BBPA, which represents the brewing and pub sector, said the data showed a 6% decline in total alcohol consumption in 2009, making it the fourth annual decline in five years.
Put the two together and we can clearly see that while the professional hand wringers and do -gooders are congratulating themselves on their sucess in weaning the public off irresponsble drinking the real reason for the fall is economic. The recession has forced people to cut back
.
2 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
UK Property Prices Continue To Fall
After The Daily Stirrer's analysis of economic data earlier in the week led us to predict a long decline in property prices until there is a batter balance between the earnings / home proces ratio, more economic dats out today shows a continuing slide in property prices.
Blair's Revenge On Brown Splits Labour
The ferocity of Tony Blair's attack on Gordon Brown threatens to plunge Labour into a fresh civil war and send the party into the electoral wilderness.
Published on the day Labour members received their leadership ballot papers, the former prime minister's detailed and sustained criticism of Mr Brown in his memoir was greeted with dismay and astonishment by senior figures in the party.
They said it risked reopening the wounds that scarred the New Labour era and could be "very, very damaging" as the party tried to move on from a general election defeat. Figures close to Mr Brown accused Mr Blair of being "delusional" and warned that the book could unleash ...
read more on Blair - Brown split at The Daily Telegraph
The Guardian: Blair the Zealot
RELATED POSTS:
The Contraltos
Gordfellas
Engaged With Blair
RBS to cut a further 3,500 jobs
Royal Bank of Scotland is planning to cut 3,500 jobs from its technical and back office division in the UK.
The bank has told staff that up to 12 offices could close in England, with some jobs added in Greenock and Edinburgh.
About a third of the job losses are as a result of RBS selling 318 of its branches to Santander, reducing its number of customers and transactions.
RELATED POSTS:
A Jobless Economy
No Real Jobs In The New Economy
Jobs Crisis roundup
Hawking Says God Not Needed
The Big Bang was the result of the inevitable laws of physics and did not need God to spark the creation of the Universe, Stephen Hawking has concluded.
The scientist has claimed that no divine force was needed to explain why the Universe was formed.
In his latest book, The Grand Design, an extract of which is published in Eureka magazine in The Times, Hawking said: Because there is a law such as gravity, the Universe can and will create itself from nothing. Spontaneous creation is the reason there is something rather than nothing, why the Universe exists, why we exist.
When Boggart Blog asked The Almighty for his reaction to this he replied. "Stephen who?"
RELATED POSTS:
Before Big Bang
Dumb Science Story Of The Week: Old People Forget Things
This week's bombshell from the world of science comes in a study of the behaviour of old people. One of the things the study looked as was the way old people repeat the same stories over and over. The scientists concluded this is because as people get older they become more inclined to forget things.
Well fuck me, who would have guessed?
Which brinks us back to the old question science simply refuses to answer, why do we keep paying these people?
RELATED POSTS:
More Mouse Science and More Mouse
Science & Technology Menu
1 September 2010
Today's News and Comment
Brown Was Maddening Says Blair
Main talking point in today's news is the publication of Tony Blair's memoirs of his time as Prime Minister. Everybody in politics has been eager to find out what Blair would say about his successor Gordon Brown and their relationship during the ten years Brown served as DChancellor while Tony Blair was Prime Minister.
From BBC News:
Former UK Prime Minister Tony Blair has said his successor Gordon Brown could be "maddening" and accused him of lacking "emotional intelligence".
In his memoirs, he called Mr Brown a "brilliant" chancellor but claimed he had put him under "relentless" pressure as he tried to over from him as PM.
Mr Blair also revealed his "anguish" over UK deaths in the Iraq war.
Comments made by Mr Blair in an interview were reported by the Daily Telegraph
Blair backs coalition over the economy.
William Hague Denies Relationship with a man by Ed Butt
The Coalition government's first disaster came only two weeks after they took office when the Chief Treasury Secretary David Laws was outed (by people connected to the Labour Party it is rumoured) as gay. Mr Laws who had personal reasons for not wanting his sexuality publicly revealed, resigned over the invasion of his privacy and the contempt shown for his rights by the gay comunity who are the shrillest screamers about their rights.
A couple of weeks ago Tory MP Crispin Blunt came out, announcing he had always know he is gay, was leaving his wife and was in love with a man.
Today we have another story from the political closet hitting mainstream media.
The Foreign Secretary took the extraordinary step of issuing a statement about his links to Chris Myers, one of his special advisers, after a well-known political blogger claimed the pair had spent the night together in a hotel room during the election campaign.
Rumours about their closeness had been swirling around Westminster and the internet after photographs were published showing Mr Hague and Mr Myers walking and laughing together, dressed casually and wearing sunglasses.
In direct response to the claims made on Guido Fawkess website, a spokesman for Mr Hague said: Any suggestion that
Funny, I saw the item on Guido's blog. He did not mention the name of the minister involved in rumours circulating in the westminster Molly House. So why did William Hague feel he needed to deny something he had not actually been accused of?
Recovery In British Manufacturing Loses Steamby John de Roe
From The Daily Telegraph Business and Finance
The slowdown, reflected in the closely watched Markit/CIPS manufacturing purchasing managers index (PMI), was sharper than expected and reinforced the view that the wider economy is likely to grow at a slower pace in the second half of the year.
There is a clear warning here that industry cannot be relied upon to continue to drive the economy forward while the domestic consumer sector is being hit by the coming fiscal squeeze, said Jonathan Loynes, chief European economist at Capital Economics.
Manufacturing output dropped from ...
Coming on the back of warnings from all the Daily Stirrer writers this underlines our message that people should not be taken in by politicians talk of a recovery. What they want to happen is for people to start taking on increasing domestic debt to finance consumer spending that will lead the recovery.
The of course the politicos can claim credit for getting us out of recession while ordinary people face a lifetime of crippling interest payments.
Is There A Need For HD Audio by Ian R Thorpe
The Daily Stirrer and its predecessors have always been sceptical of the rapid advance of technology. There is nothing wrong with gadgets of course it is just the way they are marketed and the planned obsolecence built into them, ensuring each unit sold will need to be replaced in three years or less otherwise the owner will face loss of social kudos and self esteem.
We wrote some time ago on the marketing of HD TV as the latest 'must have.' and on the great internet scam which involves development in internet technologies putting pressure on users to constantly upgrade hardware and software.
Now we are told cellphone network Orange are rolling out HD audio which will vastly improve the sound quality of calls on your mobile phone. This will necessitate an upgrade in people's phone technology and for what benefit?
From Rory McClellan - Jones, BBC Technology:
How much does the audio quality of your mobile phone calls matter to you?
Not much if you are to believe the mobile industry. After all over the last 20 years the operators and the manufacturers have spent billions of pounds upgrading their networks and perfecting their handsets.
But while everything else about the mobile experience has been transformed, there has been no real improvement in the quality of our audio calls.
But now Orange is betting that call quality does matter to a significant number of consumers. It has become the first operator to launch HD voice, which promises the ...
Some of the bigest promoters of new technology in business, politics abd the media are the same people who are whining most about climate change. All these gadgets we are pressured into buying have a carbon footprint so aren't they being a tad hypocritical in encouraging us to buy new kit we do not need while castigating us for our irresponsible attitude to the environment.
How long will it be before people start to realise the technology firms and their public relations consultants are scamming us. If it ain't broke, don't fix it and if it's doing the job don't replace it.
31 August 2010
Court Victory For Anti - MMR Campaigners.
by Ed Butt
It is the medical scandal that refuses to go away. Since its introduction controversy has surrounded the MMR vaccine because in a small number - and we must stress, a small number - of cases children develop serious and permanent side effects after reveiving the vaccine. Now at last, after following a tactic used successfully in the USA and keeping the word autism out of their case, lawyers working for the family of Robert Fletcher have won the first award of compensation for 'brain damage' reslting from the MMR vaccine.
Read allCompensation Victory For MMR Brain Damage Boy
31 August 2010
Today's News
Labour Leadership Soap Opera as Millibands Battle Each Other
As a major union hints that it may withdraw financial support for the party if either David Milliband or Ed Balls is elected as leader Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls has criticised the "daily episodes" of the "soap opera" surrounding fellow contenders Ed and David Miliband.
Calling for Ł6bn to be invested in affordable homes in response to news that house prices are set to fall again because of low demand from first time buyers, Balls said the rivalry between the Milliband brothers "did not do justice to the issues".
Labour dinosaurs Lord Kinnock and Lord Mandelson have also weighed in to the leadership debate following Ed Miliband's criticisms of the New Labour project.
Voting in the leadership contest gets under way on Wednesday.
Milliband Leadership Race
Negative Equity
House Owners In Negative Equity For Another Four Years
Homeowners who bought their houses at the top of the prtoperty boom could face face four more years of negative equity, a housing group said.
The National Housing Federation (NHF) said the average buyer in England paid Ł216,800 for a home in 2007. Those people may now have to wait until 2014 before prices recover enough to make their homes worth more than they paid the federation added.
From what the Daily DStirrer has been hearing, gossip in the finance markets suggests it may be a lot longer. In fact one likely option is that house prices will stay stagnant as inflation rockets, thus in real terms values will fall.
RELATED POSTS:
Property Prices To Fall Again?Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.
Afghan Bomb Attack Kills Four US Soldiers
A roadside bomb attack in eastern Afghanistan has killed four US soldiers, Nato sources revealed yesterday.AFP quoted spokesman James Judge as saying that a home-made bomb, one of the main weapons of the Taliban, was used in the attack.
The attack comes a day after seven US soldiers were killed in two bomb attacks in southern Afghanistan.These deaths add to the rising trend of casualties for Nato's International Security Assistance Force (Isaf). June and July were the worst months for foreign troop deaths since the US-led invasion of Afghanistan in late 2001 with deaths of over fifty US military peronnel already announced in August.
With mid -b term elections to The Senate and the House of Representatives due early in November this news has to be bad for the Obama administration. Opposition to the war has not so far been as important an issue in ampaigning as jobs, the economy and immigration
The decline of American dominance:
Shrunken Superpower
World Markets Suffer As Economy Fears Spread
Fears over the increasing likelyhood that the global economy is heading into a double dip recession sent shares falling sharply around the world early today.
The sell-off was most pronounced in Japan, where a Ł6.9bn stimulus package announced yesterday by the Japanese government failed to impress investors. The Nikkei index shed more than 3.6% in a nervy trading session to close at 8824.06 points, its lowest level since April last year.
In London, the FTSE 100 fell 70 points in early trading to a low of 5129.66, down 1.3%. There were also losses in ...
RELATED POSTS:
Conflicting Views On The Economic Recovery
Greenpeace Halt Drilling On Arctic Oil Rig
The envvironmental group said four expert climbers in inflatable speedboats had evaded the Danish navy to climb up the inside of the Cairn Energy oil rig off Greenland.
The four campaigners are now hanging from the rig 15m above the icy Arctic ocean in tents suspended from ropes, halting its drilling operation, Greenpeace said.
The campaigners, who are protesting against what they claim are the ''huge risks'' energy companies are taking with the environment by drilling for oil in ...
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Iceberg Alley Blues
30 August 2010
Property Prices To Fall Again?
bt John de Roe
Despite government eforts to talk up a recovery the economy remains stubbornly stagnant. It is unsurprising really, the UK economy still relies far too much on the housing and property market and with incomes being squeezed and house prices remaining so high they are beyond the reach of first time buyers there is little change of increased activity while unemployment continues to rise.
Read all Property Prices To Fall Again
30 August 2010
Today's News
Brain Scans Cannot Diagnose Autism
The BBC, the Guardian and Reuters this week widely reported British researchers published in the Journal of Neuroscience have developed a brain scan which can detect autism in adults with 90% accuracy.
Dr Christine Ecker, the lead author, showed her imaging technique was able to detect which people in her group had autism. "If we get a new case, we will also hopefully be 90% accurate," she said.
Pretty simple then, you turn up, have the test, and you have a 90% chance of finding out whether you have autism.
Well, you couldn't be any further from the truth. To determine if a test is accurate, it might appear reasonable to ...
With news yesterday of the first compensation award in a British court for brain damage caused by the MMR vaccine although many such awards have been made in the United States, it has been a bad few days for the autism industry. It was typical of scientists to get over excited about their brain scan 'breakthrough' last week. As The Daily Stirrer remarked a brain scan that identifies autism in adults is pretty useless. If somebody has not ben diagnosed by the time they are an adult, they're probably only marginally autistic
.
House Prices To Fall Further
Only a mug bets against rising house prices in Britain. This is a small island that has a rising population, tight planning controls and a tax system that favours property. Demand tends to run well ahead of supply, and that means bricks and mortar always seems a good investment.
Well, call me a mug if you like, but house prices are overpriced and have to fall. Activity is weak, with the number of new mortgage applications running at less than half their pre-recession levels. First-time buyers, according to a survey from Rightmove out today, account for ...
RELATED POSTS:
Fall In First Time Buyers (BBC News)
Serial Hoarder Found Buried Under Rubbish At Home
A four month search for a missing woman in the US had ended after she was found buried under piles of rubbish at her home. Billie Jean James was found by her husband who had been living in the same house as his wifes corpse. He spotted one of her feet sticking out from underneath the mountain of rubbish and clutter that littered their Las Vegas home.
Friends said Mrs James was compulsive hoarder who spent her weekends buying goods at car boot sales. She also frequented thrift shops and refused to allow anyone into her house because he was so ashamed of the mess.
Police had searched the house several times while looking for the 67-year-old who was known to be a compulsive hoarder.
Sniffer dogs had been sent into the property but were unable to locate the body amid floor to ceiling piles of clothes, rubbish, empty food boxes and other goods that Mrs James had stored. Officials believe rotting food and other pungent smells stopped the dogs from working properly.
Cannabis Can Relieve Chronic Pain
Smoking cannabis from a pipe can significantly reduce chronic pain in patients with damaged nerves, a study suggests.
A small study of 23 people also showed improvements with sleep and anxiety.
Writing in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, the researchers said larger studies using inhaler-type devices for cannabis were needed.
UK experts said the pain relief seen was small but potentially important, and more investigation was warranted.
Around 1 to 2% of people have chronic neuropathic pain - pain due to problems with signalling between nerves - but effective treatments are lacking.
Another case of science suddenly discovering what everybody has known for thousands of years.
Foreign Diplomats Abuse Immunity To Keep Slaves In Britain
Foreign diplomats are abusing their immunity from prosecution to keep domestic workers as slaves in Britain, an investigation has found. The workers, most of whom come from poor countries in Africa and Asia, are forced to work for up to 20 hours a day for as little as 10p an hour.
Their employers routinely confiscate their passports so they cannot run away, make them sleep on the floor and ban them from leaving the house, the investigation disclosed.
Police said that they are often unable to investigate foreign diplomats, or members of often extensive royal families, who are mistreating their household staff because they have immunity from prosecution and the workers they bring to the country have no protection under British law...
The Seven Tribes Of Modern Britain
A team of cartographers have created a visualisation of Britain which makes the traditional map of the British Isles look outdated by comparison.
A team of cartographers have created a visualisation of Britain which makes the traditional map of the British Isles look outdated by comparison. The mosaic-like map beautifully visualises the "Seven Social Tribes of Britain", combining postcode information with demographic data from the Government.
This map emphasises different types of people and their concentration in different areas of the country, unlike traditional maps which highlight geography
29 August 2010
by Ian R Thorpe
A bid by Australian mining giant BHP Billiton to buy Potash Corp of Canada draws attention to food price inflation, rising commodity prices in world markets and an impending global food supply crisis. It is not just potash, essential in food production, but other finite resources like oil that corporate giants are bidding to gain control of that should concern us.
Read allFood Will Cost The Earth
RELATED POSTS:
Vertical FarmingClimate Science is a strange area of human endeavour. Part trainspotting, part trekkie convention goer, it combines an almost autistic obession with collcting details, a very autistic obsession with focusing on a single theme and a fantasists capacity for self deception. 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.
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
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?
29 August 2010
Today's News
A Levels Crush Creativity Says Head Teacher
A Levels Crush Creativity Says Head Teacher
Students are being prevented from showing "originality and creativity" by drilling for A-level exams, a leading headmistress has warned.
Pupils now have access to online model answers, marking schemes and other information that has taken the mystique out of what markers are looking for, according to Cynthia Hall, the headmistress of Wycombe Abbey.
The girls boarding school in Buckinghamshire has topped an A-level league table of private schools for the third year in a row.
More than 50 per cent of the schools exam entries were awarded one of the new A* grades, and the girls notched up 247 A*-A grades between them.
But Mrs Hall said that the amount of easily accessible advice on how to score top marks meant that students had very little excuse for not getting the top grades. We need to have ways of demonstrating ...
The Daily Stirrer and our satirical sister blog have been critical of this obsession with teaching to exam and putting the school's performance in league tables ahead of the educator's duty to offer a preparation for life for a long time now. Take a look at some of these posts including both serious comment and satire on the decline in quality the product being discharged from the education system which follows an opposite trend to the ever improving statistics on numbers of pupils passing exams.
Selection By Stealth Or Simple Common Sense by Xavier Connolly.
The comprehensive education system has become one of the sacred cows of the "progressive left" in spite of its very obvious failure. The old Grammar School system only segregated on grounds of intelligence whereas the system now with its postcode lottery and the growth of private schools for the rich segregates on grounds of parental wealth, social class and geogrphic location. Intelligence does not enter the equation. So the selective way was more egalitarian, what are the leftie whiners on about.
More Graduates, Less Graduate Jobs
Vince Cable the coalition government's minister responsible for business and higher education has kicked off the biggest shake up in University financing in the past four decades. Since the vast and rapid expansion of higher education begun bt the Wilson government in the 1960 there has been constant growth in University funding, the number of University places available and the ...
The Pursuit Of Mediocrity by fatsally.
SATS test, introduced in 1993, were supposed to meaure a pupil's progress through the education system from junior to senior school and ensure every child was fulfilling their potential. Now we see the government constantly lowering standards in order to ensure enough pupils from each school are reaching government imposed targets.
No Child Left Behind - Just Ł800 million
by fatsally
Everybody has been feeling the pinch this past couple of years so just think how well off we would all be if this government stopped wasting our money! Each party is suggesting the other will bring in the more savage cuts to public spending. But they don't have to cut any necessary spending at all, just stop wasting the money we bung into the kitty via our tax on stupid schemes thought up by The Politically Correct Thought Police...
Killing History.
The government constantly whines that not enough pulips in their later school years take up sciences. The government itself however is pushing history off the curriculum. So as they strip the nation's young people of a sense who they are and destroy the national culture inthe name of diversity and multiculturalism can they complain if those young people feel alienated and do not wish to contribute positively to the national community.
SATS - The Science Of Dumbing Down
The government and education academics have been obsessing about SATS tests for a long time, believing intelligence can be measured by examination results. All this pseudo - scientific bullshit has achieved is a meaurable dumbing down through a teaching to test mentality in which exam results give a false impression of school leavers intelligence.
A Clockwork GCSE Exam Paper
by fatsally
Repeated complaints from bosses suggest school exams in English have become too easy. But is this true or are examiners simply testing not so much on formal grammar as English like wot it is spoke?
NVQ In Retail
University education is not for everyone. Some people are not happy in the academic environment and yearn to get into the workplace. Why are such people who have a go - getting attitude rather than a dossing around listening to Coldlay albums attitude treated so dismissively by the careers service and other government agencies then.
Education is important but is too much emphasis now placed on formal qualifications to the detriment of natural ability. The education academic might argue that natural ability needs to be brought to the surface by formal education. This of course ignores the fact that many very successful men and women failed to flourish in the education system for the simple reason they found lessons boring because what they were thinking was far aead of what they were being taught.
That we are now sending pupils to University to take degree courses in creative writing, journalism, theatre and drama and other such wholly non - academic subjects is an indictment of the system. Did Shakespeare have a degree in creative writing, did C.P. Scott have a degree in journalism, did Isambard Kingdom Brunel or Thomas Telford hold appropriate engineering degrees that persuaded investors to take their schemes seriously?
In the posts linked above you will see that the modern education system is not about setting the next generation of great enginers or artists on their way but about expanding the bureaucratic empires of those who teach them.
There is a scene in the Rodney Dangerfield film 'Back To School' in which Dangerfield, a highly successful businessman who lacks formal education returns to college to obtain a degree. In the scene I refer to a young Professor of Business Management is lecturing on the theory of managing a a business. Dangerfield interrupts and delivers a lecture on what happens in the real world.
The scene should be compulsory viewing for all academics. It is a reminder that without practicl experience to anchor it to reality, theory is worthless.
Murdoch Is Too Powerful Says BBC Director
Mark Thompson, the BBC director general, has launched a scathing attack on Rupert Murdoch's media empire, warning that BSkyB is too powerful and threatens to "dwarf" the BBC and its competitors.
Delivering the annual MacTaggart lecture at the Mediaguardian Edinburgh television festival, Thompson rounded on Sky's chairman, James Murdoch, who used the same speech last year to attack the corporation.
"A year ago, James Murdoch fretted aloud about the lamentable dominance of the BBC," he said. "He was able to do that only by leaving Sky out of the equation."
Thompson said Sky was "well on its way to being the most ...
28 August 2010
Today's News
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27 August 2010
Today's News
US Economy Growth Figures Revised Down (Breitbart)
The United States economy was last month reported to have grown at an annual rate of 2.4% in the second quarter of 2010. That figure was today revised downward to 1.6%, well below the rate of inflation. The revision was said to be due to an unprecendented surge in imports...
Stock Markets Face A Bloodbath (Daily Telegraph)
Investors should brace themselves for an equities "bloodbath" and a further fall in bond yields when the current excessive optimism propping up the market seeps away, Albert Edwards, a strategist at Société Générale, has warned.
Mr Edwards said there was too much hope among investors, with excessive valuations in the US, but predicted it would come to an end in the coming months as economic data increasingly pointed to a double-dip recession.
"Equity investors are in for a rude shock. The global economy is sliding back into recession and they are still not even aware that these events will trigger ...
UK Economy Records Fastest Growth In Nine Years (The Guardian)
The British economy grew at the fastest pace in nearly a decade in the second quarter, higher than initially estimated, thanks to a pick-up in the construction industry and strong household spending.
The Office for National Statistics' second estimate for the second quarter showed GDP rose 1.2% between April and June, the fastest growth since the first quarter of 2001. The figure was revised higher from the initial estimate of 1.1% released a month ago and compared with 0.3% growth in the first three months of the year.
Cable Warns Cabinet Colleagues Over Immigration Cap
Tensions over immigration within the Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition resurfaced today, when Vincent Cable urged his colleagues not to introduce new border controls that would harm economic growth.
The business secretary spoke out after new figures showed an unexpected 20% rise in net immigration to Britain: 196,000 people arrived in 2009, up from 163,000 the year before.
The government plans a cap on immigration, but as a European Union member it would only be able to cap immigration from ...
Ed balls Warns Of Economic Hurricane
Labour leadership candidate Ed Balls warned that the Government's deficit reduction plan will leave the country unprotected as it faces an economic 'hurricane'.
Britain Faces A New Terror Wave
Britain faces a new wave of home grown terrorists as 800 radicalised Islamist prisoners are released from jail, a leading security expert warns.
Michael Clarke, a former government adviser and the head of the Royal United Services Institute, says he believes the security services could struggle to cope with a new generation of extremists seeking to carry out ...
How many times in the past few years have British and American security services warned us of "A new wave of terror attacks..."?
Well the Americans can do what they like, America seems to exist in a permanent state of fear and panic. We British however should remember the words of Winston Chuchill, "Keep calm and carry on."
So long as we can do that, the dark forces of terror will never defeat us.
RELATED POSTS:
Wikileaks - New Wave Of Terror
26 August 2010
US Consumers To Be Asked Do They Want GM Salmon.
by John de Roe
Net immigration Into UK Up By 20%
Net migration to Britain rose by 20% to 196,000 last year, fuelled by a sharp increase in the number of overseas students coming to the UK to study and a 13% fall in the number of Britons leaving to live abroad.
The net migration figures, published by the Office for National Statistics, reveal that the number of people coming to live in Britain compared with those moving abroad increased by 33,000 from ...
BP Frozen Out Of Arctic Oil Race
BP frozen out of Arctic oil drilling raceBritish energy giant BP forced to abandon hopes of Greenland exploration owing to tarnished reputation from Gulf oil spill
BP has been forced to abandon hopes of drilling in the Arctic, currently the centre of a new oil rush, owing to its tarnished reputation after the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The company confirmed tonight that it was no longer trying to win an exploration licence in Greenland, despite earlier reports of ...
20% of Seven Year Olds Struggle With Writing
Writing abilities are trailing behind other key skills, such as maths and reading, according to data published by the Department for Education (DFE).
Nearly one in five seven year-olds, around 104,700 pupils, are failing to reach Level 2 the standard expected of the age group in writing. Around one in six are not reaching ...
Taliban Threat In Pakistan Following Floods
The UN says it is reviewing security measures for its aid workers in Pakistan, after a warning of new threats from the Pakistani Taliban.
A US official said the militant group was planning to attack foreigners delivering aid to millions of people affected by the floods.
There have been no such attacks since the floods began.
From a story in today's edition of The Guardian:
US authorities today began the process to approve the first GM animal for human consumption.
The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) announced a 60-day period of consultation and public meetings over whether to permit a GM strain of salmon to be eaten by humans, even though it has been called a "frankenfish" by critics. The approval process could take less than a year, and if it gets the green light the fish could be on the market in 18 months.
Environmentalists and scientists see the decision as marking a threshold. If it is approved it is likely to open the door to a large range of GM animals being raised for consumption. If not, scientists say that will have a negative effect on research, in part because there will be no money to be made from it.
Among the considerations by the FDA is whether, if the fish is approved for consumption, it must be labelled as genetically engineered.
The AquAdvantage salmon a modified North Atlantic salmon has been created by AquaBounty Technologies in Boston, Massachusetts, over 14 years at a cost of $50m. The company says the salmon grows at twice the speed of similar fish, cutting costs for farmers and greatly increasing production.
On its website the company says: "This advancement provides a compelling economic benefit to farmers (reduced growing cycle) as well as enhancing the economic viability of inland operations, thereby diminishing the need for ocean pens." The fish are also sterile, which the company says would prevent interbreeding with wild salmon.
read full story
None of us at The Daily Stirrer are biologists and the others, an engineer and a systems analyst considered this story was beyond them. Thus it falls to an economist to ask the question, is there a need for this? Cui bono. Let me say first to head off any of the usual sneering scientists that yes, we all understand there is minimal risk to human health from eating genetically modified fish. It is not like the technique used in the 1980s by which growth hormones were added to animal feeds, fish are very different. If you want a summary of the biological technique however, read the story we link to.
What concerns me is the economic case for this meddling with nature. As usual the justification is that GM fish will help the productivity and profitability of fish farmers because the GM fish will be bigger and grow more quickly that their conventionally farmed cousins. Also they will be sterile which will prevent them cross breeding with wild salmon should any escape into a non controlled environment.
All that sounds very positive but think more deeply. The genetic modification, I understand, involves taking a growth hormone gene from a north Atlantic salmon and joining it with the DNA sequence from an ocean pout an eel-like creature from a different marine genus. The growth hormone gene is almost identical to the equivalent gene in the salmon but it operates differently.
As I said I am an economist, I must accept assurances that the process works, indeed I have no reason to doubt it. The things that set alarm bells ringing in my accountant's mindset are (a) this sounds like an expensive process and (b) once again we see an alleged scientific advance claimed to achieve the greatest good of the greatest number is in reality handing greater control of a part of the food production system to the corporate interests that control this fish GM technique because you can bet your life a member of the big food cartel has it patented.
We are not short of salmon. Fish farms in Scotland, Canada and Scandinavia have been going bust in recent years because of the glut of farmed Salmon in the world market. Farmed Salmon is tasty and nutritious but does not compare to wild salmon. That is not just my opinion but that of food experts. Wild salmon is always in short supply, is very seasonal and will always command high prices. Farmed salmon is cheap, plentiful and not a viable proposition for smaller operators in the fish farming business. Because of the special feeds needed by farmed fish there are also pollution problems related to fish farms.
So there is demand for wild salmon but GM techniques cannot meet that. There is a surplus of farmed salmon with which the GM fish will compete. Further concentration of production in the hands of large operators will result in job losses in former fishing communities now dependent on fish farming. Thus the only benefit of this 'scientific' advance is to the sectors of society that already control too much of the wealth and wield too much influence. There is no economic justification for continuing this project other than serving the short term interests of corporations to the detriment of individuals and communities.
If only scientists would stop and think things through instead of letting themselves be carried away with the science and ignoring the wider consequences of the things they do.
RELATED POSTS:
Artificial Meat by 2050
Cloned Beef
Cloned Milk
Food Crisis Control Freakery
The Big Carp Diaries
26 August 2010
Today's News
Net immigration Into UK Up By 20%
Net migration to Britain rose by 20% to 196,000 last year, fuelled by a sharp increase in the number of overseas students coming to the UK to study and a 13% fall in the number of Britons leaving to live abroad.
The net migration figures, published by the Office for National Statistics, reveal that the number of people coming to live in Britain compared with those moving abroad increased by 33,000 from ...
BP Frozen Out Of Arctic Oil Race
BP frozen out of Arctic oil drilling raceBritish energy giant BP forced to abandon hopes of Greenland exploration owing to tarnished reputation from Gulf oil spill
BP has been forced to abandon hopes of drilling in the Arctic, currently the centre of a new oil rush, owing to its tarnished reputation after the Gulf of Mexico spill.
The company confirmed tonight that it was no longer trying to win an exploration licence in Greenland, despite earlier reports of ...
20% of Seven Year Olds Struggle With Writing
Writing abilities are trailing behind other key skills, such as maths and reading, according to data published by the Department for Education (DFE).
Nearly one in five seven year-olds, around 104,700 pupils, are failing to reach Level 2 the standard expected of the age group in writing. Around one in six are not reaching ...
Taliban Threat In Pakistan Following Floods
The UN says it is reviewing security measures for its aid workers in Pakistan, after a warning of new threats from the Pakistani Taliban.
A US official said the militant group was planning to attack foreigners delivering aid to millions of people affected by the floods.
There have been no such attacks since the floods began.
25 August 2010
Today's News
Buget Hits The Poorest Hardest Says Left Wing Think Tank (BBC News)
Well they would, wouldn't they?
The coalition government's first Budget has hit the poorest families hardest, a leading economic think tank has said. The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) said the measures announced in the Budget in June were "regressive".
Its analysis suggests that low income families with children are set to lose the most - about 5% of net income - due to benefit cuts announced in the Budget. The IFS had already challenged the government's claim that the Budget was "progressive".Its report was commissioned and part-funded by the End Child Poverty campaign.
The analysis suggests that cuts to areas such as housing benefit and disability allowance would hit the poorest to the tune of ...
One thing that for me always sums up the stupidity of the paternalistic / authoritarian left is their use of sentimentality triggers to hide the negativity of the message. Child Poverty is a favourite. How can child poverty be distinguished from adult poverty. And is it not posssible for the children in high income households to have a poor quality of life because their parents are selfish bastards? ...
read all Budget Hits Poorest
Wave of deadly bombings in Iraq (BBC News)
Another "We told you so" story for the Daily Stirrer. Our commentators have said many times the US 'victory' in Iraq was merely an illusion as the warring sectarian forces waited for Americal operations to be scaled down. Looks like it is kicking off only a few days after the Americans, displaying their usual triumphalism, pulled out their combat batallions. This of course leave the 50,000 American 'advisers' particularly vulnerable to Al Qaeda / Sadr Army attacks
More than 40 people have been killed in a series of apparently co-ordinated bomb attacks across Iraq. Several blasts hit Baghdad, including a suicide car bombing in which 15 people died. At least 15 were killed in another explosion in Kut in the south.
Correspondents say the violence highlights fears about the stability of Iraq ahead of the formal end of US combat operations at end of the month. Nearly all of ... read all BBC News report on Deadly Bombings In Iraq
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Cab Driver Of Mass Destruction
Afghan Exit Is Unrealistic Says Senior US Marines Officer (The Daily Telegraph)
Gen James Conway warned that local soldiers would not be ready to assume security responsibility for "a few years".
His comments were the strongest sign from US military leaders that a major troop withdrawal remained a long way off, despite President Barack Obama's commitment to begin pulling out troops next July and David Cameron's hopes that British troops could start returning next year.
"I honestly think it will be a few years before conditions on the ground are such that ...
And again The Daily Stirrer has to sat, "We told you so." Anybody who has ever in their life picked up a history book will understand would have understood the inevitability of this outcome of the Afghan war.
Southern England Hit Hardest By Recession (The Daily Telegraph)
The North South divide has narrowed amid the recession as latest figures show the South being hardest hit by the economic downturn.
I would like to say on behalf of all my colleagues at The Daily Stirrer, we in the north take no pleasure in this news at all. None whatsoever. Just wait until next time some smug southern twat makes a disparaging remark about northern povs.
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Poverty: Labour Succeeds Where Thatcher Failed
Scientists Attack Court Ruling On Obama's Stem Cell Policy (The Guardian)
American scientists have reacted with anger at a court ruling that strikes down Barack Obama's decision to greatly expand medical research using stem cells taken from human embryos. Scientists described the order by a federal judge in Washington, who said that the president had overstepped a law barring the government funding of research in which human embryos are destroyed as...
Once again a case of Obama bypassing the American elected houses and using executive orders to sign into law measures that would be unpopular and may well be unconstitutionsal will result in a prolonged and bitter court battle.
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24 August 2010
When Cousins Wed
by John de Roe
When Cousins Wed by John de Roe.
When Channel 4 showed a Dispatches doumentary about the problems caused by marriages between first cousins in Britain's Pakistani and Bangladeshi communities it was bound to kick off a few rows. The problem is not confined to Muslim cultures in the UK however, as with some many other social problems at its root lies politically correct thinking whch through the threat of branding people racist stifles intelligent debate.
read the full post "When Cousins Wed"
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Immigration ElephantThroughout the election campaign the three main parties, Labour, Conservative and Liberal Democrat have shied away from the immigration issue. How can these charlatans put themselves forward as serious politicians prepared to implement the political solutions needed to deal with Britains problems when they dare not comment on the issue of greatest concern to most voters for fear of upsetting the numerically small but unrepresentatively vocal politically correct "progressive left.
Immigration CapDuring the election campaign the big issue for voters was immigration. Strangely it was the issue none of the politicians wanted to talk about. Now as unemployment refuses to come down and we face up to a jobless future and the government are looking at limiting numbers of immigrants the left are screaming about the need to ease immigration controls still more.
24 August 2010
Today's News
24 August 2010
Today's News
British Company Confirms Arctic Oil Strike
Edinburgh based oil exploration company Cairn announced yesterday they had struck oil in the sea area between northern Canada and Greenland known as Iceberg Alley.
Environmental charity Greenpeace were quick to protest and one of their vessels had to be warned away from the Cairn exploration rig by a Danish warship. Denmark, the former colonial power is still responsible for protecting Greenland's international interests.
It is widely understood the Arctic waters are a very sensitive environment and a drilling accident there could have greater consequences over a longer period than the recent Deepwater Horizon spill in The Gulf Of Mexico. In the warm waters of the gulf bacterial action helped break down the crude oil leaked from the damaged well. The reality of the situation however is that with the oil lost into the ocean from Deepwater Horizon totalling only a fraction of the quantity burned in the U.S.A. every single day and with no realistic alternatives to fossil fuel energy becoming available the dependence of the developed world on oil makes it necessary to sek new supplies even in the most hostile and environmentally sensitive environments.
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GCSE pass rates rise for 23rd consecutive year
The trend of girls outperforming boys in exams, which has lasted for the past two decades, could be reversed next year, as boys beat girls at GCSE maths for the second year in a row following the decision to drop coursework. This only proves that girls are moe diligent than boys at submitting homework assignments while boys are better under pressure.
The proportion of boys getting grades A* to C in maths rose again this year from 57.6% to 58.4%
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A levels are only for thickos
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23 August 2010
Today's News
Slow news day today, you can read or hear all about the Pakistan fllods elsewhere and the Australian hung parliament is not that interesting unless you are a politics junkie. We found a couple of things we think will interest our readers One amusing story however features scientists who watch for aliens.
Shell Cleared Of Polluting Niger Delta
A three-year investigation by the United Nations will almost entirely exonerate Royal Dutch Shell for 40 years of oil pollution in the Niger delta, causing outrage among communities who have long campaigned to force the multinational to clean up its spills and pay compensation.
The $10m (Ł6.5m) investigation by the UN environment programme (UNEP), paid for by Shell, will say that only 10% of oil pollution in Ogoniland has been caused by equipment failures and ...read all
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Credit Card Debt Boom Fears
The Daily Stirrer's John De Roe has warned governments and banks would try to restart the economies of the developed world by creating another debt bubble. Here we go again saying "we told you so."
Despite warnings of a potential double dip recession, banks are presenting struggling customers with offers of cheaper debt than they made available before the 2007 economic crash.
Experts warned that Britain could face a new credit card boom leaving families heavily in debt as they borrow to make ends meet and struggle to pay off the money.
It comes amid concerns of future job losses, particulary as the Coalition governments spending cuts are due to take effect.
The research, from two price comparison websites, found some banks were offering credit cards with attractive interest free rates for ...
read all
Aliens May Be Thinking Machines
A senior astronomer has said that the hunt for alien life should take into account alien "sentient machines".
Seti, the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence, has until now sought radio signals from worlds like Earth.
But Seti astronomer Seth Shostak argues that the time between aliens developing radio technology and artificial intelligence (AI) would be short ... read all.
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Writing in Acta Astronautica, he says that the odds favour detecting such alien AI rather than "biological" life.
Many involved in Seti have long argued that nature may have solved the problem of life using different designs or chemicals, suggesting
Don't know about you but The Daily Stirrer thinks we should be looking for signs of thinking scientists. These guys at SETI have obviously spent too much time watching Star Trek. Someone will e trying to tell us there is a research tem trying to use psychic powers to walk through walls and kill goats by staring at them next.
23 August 2010
Labour's Loony Spending Schemes Crippling the NHS.
by John de Roe
The nation was given a laugh when David Laws, treaury minister for the incoming conservative / lib dem coalition government revealed his Labour predecessor had left a note saying There is no money. it does not seem so funny now as the true extent of Labours financial profligacy is being discovered. The private finance contracts some NHS Health Trusts were tied into are crippling local hospital trusts financially. read all
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NHS Patient: I Am Not A NumberThe labour government made a huge error in placing targets and statistics ahead of patient care in the NHS. Nurses complained they were spending more times filling in forms and dealing with paperwork than they were on patient care. Now Labour are screaming about the coalition's proposed cuts in NHS budgets. But the cuts will reduce numbers of managers and administrators, not nurses and front line staff.
NHS spening cutsThe labour government made a huge error in placing targets and statistics ahead of patient care in the NHS. Nurses complained they were spending more time bean counting than they were on patient care. Now Labour are screaming about the coalition's proposed cuts in NHS budgets. But the cuts will reduce numbers of managers and administrators, not nurses and front line staff.
Nurses Spend Too Much Time Bean CountingThe labour government made a huge error in placing targets and statistics ahead of patient care in the NHS. Nurses complained they were spending more time bean counting than they were on patient care. Now Labour are screaming about the coalition's proposed cuts in NHS budgets. But the cuts will reduce numbers of managers and administrators, not nurses and front line staff.
22 August 2010
Conservatives Plan Immigration Cap
by Xavier Connolly
During the election campaign the big issue for voters was immigration. Strangely it was the issue none of the politicians wanted to talk about. Now as unemployment refuses to come down and we face up to a jobless future and the government are looking at limiting numbers of immigrants the left are screaming about the need to ease immigration controls still more.
22 August 2010
Today's News
22 August 2010. Today's News
The Strange Death Of Dr. David Kelly
by Ian R. Thorpe
When weapons expert Dr. David Kelly was found dead in a field near his Oxfordshire home it quickly became clear there were a number of things about the 'suicide' version of the post mortem examination that did not add up. Foremost among these was the decision not to hold a formal inquest despite Dr. Kelly having been involved in the Iraq 'Weapons Of Mass Destruction' issue in which then Prime Minister Tony Blair was alleged to have deliberately mislead Parliament about the military capabilities of Saddam Hussein's regime.
Today the BBC News Website leads on:
''Pathologist says David Kelly's death 'textbook suicide'
Dr Kelly was the source of a BBC report casting doubt on government claims about Iraq's weapons The death of Iraq weapons expert David Kelly was a "textbook case" of suicide, according to the pathologist who performed the post-mortem examination.
A group of doctors has questioned the suicide verdict by the Hutton Inquiry in 2004 and called for a full inquest ...
Read full story on Pathologist and the death of David Kelly
Today's news reports tell us the pathologist who carried out the post mortem is sticking by his conclusion that the death was suicide due to cutting the wrists. The effects of the wounds were exacerbated by Dr. Kelly's advanced heart disease. This is rather puzzling as earlier in the week the same pathologist was telling anyone who would listen Dr. Kelley had swallowed 26 Co Proxymol tablets. Co Proxymol is a powerful painkiller that was withdrawn from the market a few years ago because the maximum safe dose is very close to a lethal dose. I have taken Co Proxymol on prescription, the maximum safe dose was 8 tablets in a 24 hour period.
Still the pathologist is sure Dr Kelly's wounds were self inflicted and were the cause of death.
There are other doubts about the medical evidence. Independent examinations of Dr. Kelly's body commissioned by family members reveald a number of anomolies from the official version of events that were not mentioned in the post mortem.
There must be an inquest into this death to end the conspiracy theories. The only reason for continuing to deny an inquest is because there is some substance in the conspiracy theories.
Is it any wonder nobody trusts politicians any more?
Barclay's Bank Customers Hit By Technical Problems
Thousands of Barclays customers were left unable to access their bank accounts after a computer glitch caused the system to seize up
Shows once again the risks to society of over reliance on technology.
See also: Pornographic Videos flood You Tube. People who promote the internet as a way of life forget how lacking in security the medioum is. If only that clown Tim Berners Lee had left thungs to the professionals.
Does Barack Obama Want To Be Relected In 2012
Few Americans consider themselves bigger than the presidency but Obama might be one of them. The man in the Oval Office, argues Toby Harnden, may already be preparing for a role as a post-president in a post-American world...
The Daily Stirrer has always said Obama sees himself as President of the World.
A Levels Are A Mess Warns Top Headmaster
Britain's examinations system is a "complete mess" and A-levels need major reform to allow the brightest students to flourish, a leading educationalist has warned ...
Migrant Cap Will Devastate UK Firms
From The Guardian:
Employers' groups are calling on the government to rethink its immigration cap as figures today reveal that almost one in 10 private sector companies plan to relocate jobs abroad in the next year.
Companies are looking to export call-centre, IT and finance jobs, according to a study by the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) and ...
After all those spurious claims that record A Level pass results year on year show how great our education system is, it is, is it not, an indictment of our education system when British Companies have to rely on immigration to be alble to recruit people with the skills they need.
21 August 2010
Vertical Farming: The Looniest Idea Yet For Saving The Planet
by Ian R Thorpe
Climate Science is a strange area of human endeavour. 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.
Vertical Farming: The Looniest Idea Yet For Saving The Planet
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Climate Change DeniersThere have been calls from the self-aggrandizing wing of international politics (e.g. Obama and chums) to make climate cange denial a crime like Holocaust denial. Having been a climate change campaigner for over thirty years I object to this insanity. Apart from a few cranks nobody is denying something is going on, people are merely asking what is really causing it...
Climate Change Science ScamI have been campaigning about climate change for over thirty years. Now, the more I read of efforts by governments, academics and corporate interests to come up with a quick fix the more I am convinced they are working a scam to make quick, easy money
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.
21 August 2010
Today's News
A wide range of news today, the Australian election features everywhere as does Iran's new nuclear power station. At homre the woes of the Liberal Democrats, still behaving like ravished virgins over their coalition with the conservatives is making headlines.
Australia Set For A Hung Parliament
Australia appears to be heading for a hung parliament, with neither of the two main rivals likely to win the 76 seats needed for an outright majority.
ABC Australia is predicting 73 seats for the opposition coalition, 72 for ruling Labor, one for the Greens and four independents.
PM Julia Gillard vowed that she would "keep fighting".
Opposition leader Tony Abbott said it was clear Ms Gillard's Labor had lost its majority and its legitimacy ...
Having seen pictures of voluteer lifeguard Abbott patrolling a beach in his budgie smugglers we think Australia is headinf for a well hung Parliament ...
Iran Starts Up Bushehr Nulclear Plant
Iran has begun loading fuel into its first nuclear power station in a ceremony attended by Russian officials. Russia will operate the Bushehr plant in southern Iran, supplying its nuclear fuel and taking away the nuclear waste.
Iran has been subject to four rounds of UN sanctions because of its separate uranium enrichment programme.Experts say that as long as the plant is Russian-operated, there is little immediate threat of its fuel being diverted to make bombs...
Iran 12 Months From Nuclear Weapons Says US
Former Lib Dem Leader Kennedy Not Defecting
Mr Kennedy did not vote for the coalition in May Liberal Democrat leader Nick Clegg has denied reports that the party's former leader Charles Kennedy has had talks with the Labour Party about defecting.
Several newspapers carried stories on Saturday that Mr Kennedy had held informal talks with Labour whips. The Lib Dems called the reports "complete and utter fabrication". Deputy prime minister Mr Clegg said: "I don't think I can do better than quote Charles, who said it's the silliest of the silly season stories in August."
He said he had had an e-mail from Mr Kennedy, and continued: "It's just nonsense, and I think we shouldn't waste too much time talking about things which simply aren't true ...
It may be a bit of a conspiracy theory but given senior Labour figures are desperate to split the coalition before electoral reform can go through and the similarities with the way the intensely private Lib Dem MP and Finance Minister David Laws was outed as gay is it unreasonable to suspect that sneaky little turd burglar Peter Mandelson might have been involved in leaking news thaty Mr. Kennedy had met Labour officials.
Clegg Backs Graduate Tax
Nick Clegg has become the most senior member of the Government to endorse introducing a graduate tax for university students.
In an interview with The Daily Telegraph, the Deputy Prime Minister says graduates should face a new levy on their wages that will make the best paid contribute the most.
After adopting social mobility as one of his priorities in government, Mr Clegg says the tax is the best way to encourage more working-class children to go to university ...
The Internet Is Dragging Britain Away From Europe
The EU is being made redundant by technological change. In the 1950s, a regional trade association arguably made sense. But in a world where capital surges around the globe at the touch of a button, physical proximity becomes irrelevant. When deciding whether to ...
20 August 2010
Todays News
Top story today is the pullout of the last US Army combat batallions from Iraq. Amid the usual triumphalism many voices were sceptical about claims that the seven year occupation had brough freedom, democracy, peace and prosperity to Iraq.
.
Elsewhere we have read about numbers of pupils missing out on University places, mortgage payers being ripped off because fanance companies are not passing on the benefits of the ultra low central bank lending rates. We also saw a couple of whacky science stories.
Last US combat Brigade Leaves Iraq
The last US combat brigade in Iraq has left the country, seven years after the US-led invasion.
The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, began crossing by land into Kuwait in the early hours of Thursday, a military spokesman said.
Some 50,000 US troops will remain until the end of 2011 to advise Iraqi forces and protect US interests.
A further 6,000 support troops will be in Iraq until the end of the month, when US combat operations will end.
150, 000 Miss Out On University
The head of the university admissions service has warned that more than 150,000 students would miss out on a degree place this year.
But Ucas chief executive Mary Curnock Cook also said a "very large number" - about 60,000 - had rejected offers or withdrawn their course applications.
It comes a day after students scored record A-level results.
With another record in the A-level pass rate, and 27% of entries gaining As or A*s, the competition is intense.
Tens of thousands of would-be students are still chasing a dwindling number of university places via the clearing system, which brings them together.
Figures out yesterday suggested up to 186,000 were looking for a university place through the system. At about this time last year, about ...
HUMOUR: The Lazy Pupils Exam Guide.
Now Scientists Think The Universe Will Grow Forever
A "galactic lens" has revealed that the Universe will probably expand forever.
Astronomers used the way that light from distant stars was distorted by a huge galactic cluster known as Abell 1689 to work out the amount of dark energy in the cosmos.
Dark energy is a mysterious force that speeds up the expansion of the Universe.
Understanding the distribution of this force revealed that the likely fate of the Universe was to keep on expanding.
It will eventually become a cold, dead wasteland, researchers say.
The study, conducted by an international team led by Professor Eric Jullo of Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, is published in the journal Science.
Dark energy makes up ...
Bank Rip Off Leave Mortgage Payers Feeling The Pinch
Despite receiving billions of pounds in taxpayer support during the credit crisis, high street lenders are refusing to pass on the full benefit of historically low interest rates to customers, figures show.
Instead, they have used the cheap cost of borrowing to drastically increase their profit margins.
Two years ago, the difference between the rate at which banks themselves borrowed money and the rate they offered to customers for fixed-rate mortgages stood at 1.28 per cent.
Today it has risen to 3.29 per cent for a two-year fixed-rate deal, the highest gap since records began 21 years ago, according to Moneyfacts, the personal finance website This has added Ł1,700 a year to the cost of an average mortgage...
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The Tyranny Of Brcks And Mortar
Gay Divorce Rate Doubles
The honeymoon appears to be over for many of Britains same-sex couples as official figures show the number of civil partnerships being dissolved has doubled over the past year.
In addition, fewer homosexuals are now forming the legal unions than at any point since their introduction five years ago.
The declining popularity of the civil partnership could be down to the fact that most of the men or women in long-term same-sex relationships who were waiting for official recognition have now obtained it.
So after all that fuss they made about their rights it turns out they only wanted to put on a show and do a bit of attention seeking.
A Fifth Of Americans Believe Obama Is Muslim
One in five Americans believe Barack Obama is secretly a Muslim and nearly half question his claim to be a Christian, according to a new opinion poll.
The survey by the Washington-based Pew Research Centre reflects a broader questioning among many Americans as to whether Obama is a "real" American also reflected in the significant number who believe he was not ...
Most Amazing Scientific Study Of The Week
A new scientific study published on Thursday (19 Aug) shows children with a condition called strabismus, (cross - eyed little bleeders), may be less likely to be invited to birthday parties than other children.
The question no scientist has yet answered is: Why do we keep giving these fuckers money?
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19 August 2010
Todays News
Another record year for A Level passes is the story dominating the media this morning. Our wonderful education system which manages to turn out innumerate semi literates has now broken the record for numbers of exam passes every year for so many years there must be more pupils gelling a million A levels that are actually attending schools.
Elsewhere there is news on the Americsn non - pullout from Iraq and the success of Poundland shops.
19 August 2010
Today's News
Surprise Surprise - New Record Lavel Of A Level Passes Reached
One in 12 A-level exams (8%) was awarded the new A* grade as pupils scored another record-breaking year of results.
Some 27% of entries gained an A or A* amid a record battle for university places, results show.
The overall pass rate rose for the 28th year in a row, with 97.6% of entries awarded at least an E, up from 97.5%.
This year's results showed girls were more likely than boys to get an A*. This new grade was introduced this year to enable universities to pick out the very best students and provide more challenge.
To win an A* a student has to score an A overall, plus at least 90% in each of their papers in the second year of their course.
Degrees Are For Dumbos - Bright Pupils Shun University
University applications might be at record levels but not everyone is convinced that a degree is the key to future success.
Das Bikramjit Gakhal has three As and a B at AS-level and is predicted to get three As and a B at A-level, but he is not going to university.
He did apply and was offered places but withdrew from the admissions service Ucas when he realised he could pursue his chosen career of accountancy "on the job".
Having done his A-levels this summer, Das will take up a job as an audit trainee with MacIntyre Hudson in September, while studying for an Association of Accounting Technicians (AAT) qualification.
Once that is done, he will study with the Association of Chartered Certified Accountants for his professional qualification.
If Das did three years in University he would still have to take the ACCA course addind at least two years to the time taken to qualify.
Last US Combat Brigade Quits Iraq
The last US combat brigade in Iraq has left the country, seven years after the US-led invasion.
The 4th Stryker Brigade, 2nd Infantry Division, began crossing by land into Kuwait in the early hours of Thursday, a military spokesman said.
Some 50,000 US troops will remain until the end of 2011 to advise Iraqi forces and protect US interests.
A further 6,000 support troops will be in Iraq until the end of the month, when US combat operations will end. Even before American combat operations cease, sectarian violence is on the increase in Iraq and Al Qaeda are said to be recruiting. What the country needs is a strong ruler. Someone like Saddam Hussein maybe?
Catholic Adoption Agency Loses Appeal Over Gay Parents Rule
A Catholic adoption agency has lost its attempt to restrict its service to heterosexual couples after the Charity Commission found there was no justification for barring gay and lesbian parents.
Leeds-based Catholic Care sought exclusion from the 2007 sexual orientation regulations and began legal action to change its constitution so it could continue helping married couples only. The commission initially refused to give its consent, but the charity won the right to appeal against its decision.
Catholic Care told the high court that it would have to stop finding homes for children because Catholic donations would cease if it helped gay prospective parents. Mr Justice Briggs instructed the commission to reconsider the case.
But the commission said today it could not accede to the charity's demands ...
Poundland Profits Double As Appetite For Cheap Tat Grows
Discount chain Poundland is on the hunt for bigger stores after the cut-price chain, which sells everything from washing-up liquid to dogfood and pink cowgirl hats at a Ł1 a go, delivered a 130% leap in annual profits.
Chief executive Jim McCarthy revealed it was opening stores on retail parks outlets which are 30% bigger than its typical outlets as it reported pre-tax profits of Ł19.8m, up from Ł8.6m in the previous year. Sales jumped 28.7% to Ł509.8m in the year to 28 March as it filled the gap on the high street left by rival Woolworths. Like-for-like sales were up 0.7%.
McCarthy said its success was not due to penny-pinching in the recession, although an increasing number of AB shoppers seek out its eclectic wares, but "sustained growth across the ...
We beg to differ. People still like to shop but can't afford to buy good quality. Thus another poverty trap is sprung; buy cheap, buy twice, my dear old Grandma used to say.
Brown To Seek Stand Up Career
Gordon Brown is the last man one might expect to provide a bundle of laughs but the former Prime Minister is to take his dour and curmudgeonly act on the stand up circuit. Not as a comedian but as a public speaker. Mr Brown is hoping to be paid up to Ł100,000 per gig for speaking on subjects related to global economics.
Can't help thinking audiences would have a better time listening to Eddie Izzard if the want to understand the financial crisis. On the other hand Gordon on economics could be very funny...
TODAY'S LINKS:
HIGHER EDUCAION
The Blight Of Education
Devaluation By Degree
Higher Education Disaster
IRAQ
Cab Driver Of Mass Destruction
DANGEROUS ANIMALS
The Drunken Elk Murders
Rat Arsed Badger
GORDON BROWN
Brown: A Lust For Glory
Gordfellas - a story of the labour mob
18 August 2010
Todays News
While the left rages about the coalition government's plans for public spending cuts to bring under control the burgeoning deficit caused by Labour's insance borrow and spend economics, polls show the public broadly support these cuts, particularly the onces affecting universal benefits which see Łbillions being doled out to middle class families on good incomes.
Elsewhere the discovery of a new sar throws into doubt many of the theories on which that loonytoons waste of money project the Large Hadron Collider was justified.
Middle Class Benefits Under Review
From BBC News
The Treasury is reviewing what it spends on welfare for the middle classes, such as the winter fuel allowance and child benefit.
Such payments would continue to be available but future increases could be frozen, the BBC understands.
A spokesman said they were "in the mix" ahead of October's spending review.
Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg, speaking as the coalition marked 100 days in power, said no final decisions had been taken. One option open to the government is to pay the benefits to all, whatever their income, but to "taper" them so that the poorest in society get the most money.
Ministers are already committed to raising the age at which the winter fuel allowance can be claimed from 60 to 65 by 2020.
However, the government has not ruled out bringing this change forward.
The discovery of a rare magnetic star - or magnetar - is challenging theories about the origin of black holes.
Magnetars are a special type of neutron star with a powerful magnetic field.
They are formed by gravitational collapse after the original, or progenitor star, dies and forms a catastrophic supernova.
For this newly discovered magnetar, astronomers calculated that the mass of the progenitor must have been at least 40 times greater than that of ... More at BBC News
We Will Improve Lives Not Offer Handouts Says Clegg
The Deputy Prime Minister accused Labour of spending ''huge sums'' on welfare for low-income households without any ''discernable impact'' on the life chances of their children.
Mr Clegg, the Liberal Democrat leader, confirmed that former minister Alan Milburn has been appointed as the Government's independent reviewer on social mobility.
Speaking at an event organised by the CentreForum think-tank, Mr Clegg said: ''Under Labour huge sums of money were spent pushing low-income households just above the statistically defined level of household income - sometimes by just a few pounds a week - but with no discernible impact on the real life chances of the next generation.
''Tackling poverty of opportunity requires a more rounded approach. Welfare reform, for example, should be based on the need to improve ...
Food Crisis Fears Over Lack Of Bees
Researchers at the University of Worcester analysed the pollen collected by bees from 45 hives on National Trust property around the country.
They found that bees in towns and cities have a much more varied diet, taking pollen from different flowers.
For example at Kensington Palace in London, where the Duke of Gloucester is keeping bee hives, the samples contained large amounts of pollen from rockrose, eucalyptus and elderberry.
In contrast bees in the countryside tended to rely on fields of crops. At Nostell Priory in Yorkshire and Barrington Court in Somerset, the samples were heavily dominated by oilseed rape with little other ...
