Upon hearing a leading politician talk about people treating being unemployed as a 'lifestyle choice', i hope that i'm not the only one who raised his eyes, and released a very slow controlled exhalation of air, and imagining it disappearing into the outer reaches of the vacuum of space before turning ones thoughts back to taking our new chancellor by the head and have him closely acquainted with a nearby batwing table; in the hope some sense seeps from it.
So he thinks that people would prefer to stay on benefits than have a job that pays them a living wage, that enables them to eat good nutritious food, that would allow them to enjoy the odd holiday or "treat", that would allow them to do more than just pop down to a dole office once a fortnight to receive a pittance that would make most people wonder whether that's enough to buy tiddles food let alone more than a couple of days fine food for themselves.
Remember, the odd few that hit the headlines hides the many hundreds of thousands who manage within their means, who play by the rules and who take umbrage at this governments blinkered charge hoeing everything unemployed into the 'wasted chaff' bin.
What they should do is allow people to properly train, to gain and add new skills, even to allow them into education to gain those oh so necessary papers for the 7am to 8pm burger flipping shift.
To once more enable a nation of shopkeepers* to vigorously thrive by utilising truly transformative innovations from whichever arena of life they happen to hail from.
Hope? Hardly.
Not until someone in this government displays more vision than the screaming next victim in a slasher movie can they then truly say they not only have the best interest of the majority of the populace at heart, but they really do have a plan that involves more than just slash or burn.
Sadly, still nothing concrete on the who’ll be holding the talking stick front, but it looks as though nick will eventually cosy up with david, and all that will happen is the lib-dems will be made to look incompetent, another election will be held in the autumn, and the conservatives will emerge triumphant.
And back to boom then bust, then riots in the streets.
However, if we look back to the last conservative administration, they did perfect the art of selling the family silver (better than brown at flogging gold), so now they could have the perfect opportunity to go the whole hog and gamble with what's left of the family fortune... 'a' roads, ' b' roads, the unemployed (as a job-lot they must be worth a pound or two), flog the hospitals to the largest health providers, whilst in the ‘cutting cost for the public good’ bring in the american system of healthcare - every man/woman for themselves (with usa health companies who must be on the look out for pastures new to grow their caring considerate health sca- sorry schemes); or, the conservatives could really push the boat out and privatise the electoral system.
No doubt if it was turned over to the market, just imagine how efficient and productive it would be?
Despite all the yapper about an election year, it doesn't feel like an election year, in fact it feels more like an old grizzly lumbering its way to a scratching post and getting ready to aim a rump at the front row, just in time for the prime-time circus.
With less than four(?) months to go before a swarm of "x's" change the stripe of the same jacket, and despite the continual ya-bo-sucks-to-you politics in parliament, it feels as laden with energy as a fallen yorkshire pudding feeding a family of 20.
I could, however, be mistaken and simply missed the pulsating venom of change coursing its way through the populace with each passing day; a case of casting out the old, by replacing with the same-old.
One day you get into a conversation with a complete stranger, and in passing mention that you believe there could be/has been/is/will be, life elsewhere in this universe; life that exists on at least one other planet circling amongst the trillions of stars, within the billions of galaxies expanding ever outwards, in this marvellous expanse of wonder we love to call home; then a high percentage of those complete strangers — on this particular spinning ball of blue-green luminescence which has (over the eons) contained a morass of life, will laugh at you and walk away shaking their heads in disbelief, wondering how anyone could be so foolish.
Very strange.
Before you dismiss their short-sightedness (or my stupid naivety) however, ask as many people as you feel comfortable asking, how many of them wholeheartedly believe in god(s), angels, demons, the devil, a higher force, a lower force or that crock with a pot of gold. Then, once they nod or shout to the rafters that they indeed do believe, ask them how many times they have seen or heard or had two-way communication with 100% certainty, hand on heart, “yes it was” said entity!
If they don’t hesitate before hitting the affirmative, use that special speed-dial number for the sanatorium and watch as their surprise proudly transfigures into spluttering disbelief as they’re carted off for a good long cooling down stretch.
But with potential planets (whether habitable for us or not) probably numbering in the billions, I think there is something out there, whether at the mindless microbial level or the highly millions-of-years-more-advanced-than-us level and we’re actually in a part of the universe they’ve penned off and designated as a zoo; which, for some bizarre reason, is the one idea which fills me with the sort of desire that would have me wheeled off for my own safety, as I start to roll around banging on the floor in hysterics.
Perhaps if more of us looked up at a clear night-time sky and managed to see the spectacular star strewn ribbon of stars that is our own milky-way backyard, maybe then we’d have a greater appreciation that there is more to experience, more to see, more to positively hope for than our normal isolistic, inwardly gazing, navel-centric point of view, usually allows!
If you were party to a nasty vicious attack on your home, your property, your loved ones and you had the money, wouldn’t you go as far as possible to not only find out who perpetuated the crime, but “why?” Then fall savagely onto the next stage finding out what you could have done to prevent it and take action to the fullest extent ensuring it would never ever happen again?
Of course you would.
So you would have have thought that a government would turn heaven and earth (I can see by that glazed expression starting to fog your forehead that you know where this is going), spend huge sums of money finding out exactly what went wrong and doing all the other things an individual would do? Of course they would, except if that could expose to the light of day a potential dirty underside to 9/11.
Let me say again. The greatest act of terrorism ever to be perpetrated on the ‘land of liberty, the land of the free’, merited only $15 million for an open and shut enquiry.
And, to add more petrol to the inferno (if any were needed), there has never in the entire history of recorded catastrophes, with so many mangled bits of wreckage and twisted pieces just waiting to be minutely poured over; been such a rapid dispersal to smeltering plants around the globe, of as much evidence as this. In relative terms, it was quicker than a corpse been hoiked from a murder scene a second after the coroner’s arrived; in case the body decomposes to quickly. Tell that to people and you’ll generally be met with a blank look zipping from one part of their insides to the other, just waiting to connect to a spare none pre-programmed thought, before they roundly denounce you as an agent of all that’s unholy and in league with socialist scum just waiting to bring everyone down to the levels of animals, after you’ve had your wicked way with them! Which is just a little bit to harsh a reaction when all that’s required is full and frank openness. But as we’ve learned over centuries let alone decades, the terms “full”, “frank” and “government” don’t usually inhabit the same orbits.
What about the uk? We have more cctv’s dotted around taking videos and pictures than any other country on the planet — including the repressive, dictatorial ones. You would have thought with all that surveillance, as well as beat walkers, car drivers, bike riders, special constable dispensers that the crime detection and arrest figures would have made dixon of dock green spin like a dynamo with pride and terrorists arrested within a whisper of breathing a few molecules of c4. Strangely there’s been nothing of the sort. Even on the 6th may 2009 when a question in parliament was asked…
“Mr. Evans: To ask the Secretary of State for the Home Department how many (a) arrests, (b) prosecutions and(c) convictions have been made under the (i) Terrorism Act 2000 and (ii) Terrorism Act 2006 in each year since their implementation. [272196]”
the reply came back.
“Mr. Coaker: The information requested is not currently available…”
Which for a government so caught up with league tables, spin tables, finding the best day to camouflage the worst news, is akin to finding out that one of your ancient school diner ladies, really doesn’t know how to cook lumpity custard!
Because you know that if they had 100% cast-iron, irrefutable evidence, it would have been cawed from the apex of parliaments rafters about how wonderfully successful the many rafted citizen reducing anti-terrorism barrage measures have been. But it’s been somewhat silent on that general topic; either that or i have simply been looking in all the wrong pages.
So what about other measures?
There are now over 500,000 communication (phone and email) intercepts by various uk authorities on the country’s citizens every year, just in case some of those bad apples are thinking disturbing and disruptive thoughts before putting a brick through a window, or stoop to nicking (thefting) a chocolate bar (worth 50p) so forcing the heavies to spend £20,000 in costs, bringing the case to court!
People who diddle the welfare state out of £2,000 are fined and given a record (as they should), diddle over £10,000 and they're more likely to be clamped in irons for half a year if not longer and their assets seized — as they should be. But work in the city and cock something up in the name of trying to make a whopping profit, and not only are you more likely to keep your all-gotten gains (unless you really push the boat out and swindle for two-fingered billions), you'll be head-hunted to repeat the trick of bankrupting your company or at the very least working your way to a position of bringing the nation, the nation’s economy and if you can feasibly help it, the global financial system, crashing to the ground. If that fails, and you just don’t have what it takes, there's always a post in a quango waiting to be filled, so cushioning the hardship of the feral world outside.
In 2008, 1,125 people in the world were worth an estimated $4.4 trillion. Of those, the top 50 had 18% of all those lovely noughts, or just a bit over $792 billion (with the top 3 at about $114 billion). In comparison, the bottom 1,000,000,000 had a net worth of about $365 billion. Or, to put it another way, 1 billion people on the planet were (by 2008 market valuations) worth less than half the accumulated wealth of the worlds richest 50 people. Who said free markets don’t work? They’ve been working perfectly and doing the job they were meant to, for years.
And so, onto…
Hm, climate change! Does it really matter if we've caused it or we’re just helping along a natural process? At the end of the day we'll still be affected. We'll still need some effective way to alleviate effect the entire gamut of change will have. How many of us — apart from the tin-foilers — have food to last more than a week, who have enough food to last for years, let alone months?
When transportation systems, routes, food production areas, are severely disrupted or even 
The arctic is acidifying and is now (according to estimates from the university of alaska) 25% more acidic than 300 years ago, as coastal living inuits start abandoning villages as their land transforms into mushifrost.
Things are happening.
Indeed things always happen, it just depends on the rate of change. With this (so far) not been on the scale of the fictional piece “the day after tomorrow”, which if things were to occur at that pace would — for a while anyway — have lasered all our attention; but drip-by-drip, all around the world, lots of record-breaking weathery events just keep on occurring. Whilst each and every minute of each and every passing day, we continue to generously pump more and more of the environment changing stuff into the atmosphere, worlds oceans and seas.
Yes things are changing, let’s hope our ability to adapt changes just as swiftly, so avoiding a seamless calamity of homosapien proportions.
For those whose knowledge of science is stretched by the “mint in a coke bottle” experiment, believe whatever you want to believe, but always try to ascertain evidence on your physical plane that bears it out, bearing in mind that experiencing something outside of your cumulative experience will immediately be coloured by what you know, what you think you know, your beliefs, your mindset and even by what your peers believe.
How many of us are going to visit alaska over a twenty year period to monitor and see the results for ourselves? Or take out a trusty little chem-kit to test for changing ph levels of seawater, or even regularly monitor the air we breathe — freely flowing around our own back yards?
Maybe cod and haddock fish stocks aren't in major decline after all and we can continue fishing them like there is no tomorrow. I’d so prefer that scenario, as after trying pollock, i’d rather eat slices of old shoe leather that had remained mouldering at the bottom of a compost heap for an epoch; before having another bite of those chewy offerings.
Maybe buildings could incorporate tower high aquariums with 200m+ drops — full to the brim of lovely tasty fish, all ready for frying and eating — whilst acting as giant recycling & solar filtration facilities.
It seems the only other living things which appear to be adapting and contentedly thriving (from reports and statements), are seagulls, jellyfish, cockroaches, mice, rats, feral cats, feral dogs, mrsa, e-coli, salmonella, feral children and lastly cows, pigs, chickens or sheep because we eat or use them for food or clothing.
Many of us have forgotten that there really is more to life than the treadmill of the headlines. We've been so successfully conditioned into what to believe that the treadmill is the only thing many of us accept as real, and will even willingly give our lives for.
Sadly yes monsieur purnell, i finger that label your way.
In this, the day of super-power like computing capabilities, the fact his old service is still unable to provide a honed and targeted individual package for someone to effectively get back into employment, is an indictment of the failure of his tenure in that post.
It’s surely not restricted to the realms of rocket science or polymaths to work out what needs to be done. Or maybe it is, and i'm simply barking at a reflection of myself looking at the moon.
Provide targeted training/courses to the growing ranks of the unemployed and not the mickey-mouse/happy-meal type schemes they're so fond of trotting out just to have a good sound bite come question time.
But that requires, oh, thinking! Thinking of actually improving the lot of other people and not just trying to ensure their own tarnished pots of lucre are full to overflowing.
Over a quick couple of minutes even i popped up with this scatty list.
New technology, new industries are growing whilst the vast majority of growing unemployed are missing out on the benefits these potential avenues could foster, as the country itself loses out, and all whilst the ferrets continue to fight amongst themselves.
It's time the country stopped relying on esoteric services and outsourcing its soul, to once more have another science/industrial renaissance capable of producing tangible decent goods that people can actually use, that has function, reduces our energy hostage value, cuts down our dependence on energy companies; and heaven forbid helps (however belatedly) our environment and makes people net exporters to the nation.
So as the start of this rabid uttering of pitiful rubbish says. Good riddance!
The government's been more than happy to bail out banks to the tune of $2.26*tn, yet they have thousands of people on the streets who are homeless.
Imagine if they took 1 percent of that whopping £1.5tn. They could, at let's say £80k per new built flat (bit more expensive for a house), build at least 187,000 new flats.
But that would hit the housing market, and people would lose money they've sunk into treating housing as just another commodity. But there'd be no homelessness! Everyone, or at least nearly everyone in the country, would finally have a roof over their heads. It'd be cheaper than constantly having soul destroying meeting after soul destroying meeting carping on that there's just not enough housing, what are we to do.
Who know's whole new towns with new infrastructure, new jobs (the new tech's) could be created, and with the mistakes learned from the disasters of the past, perhaps they could be avoided this time around.
Imagine 187,000 new flats, with the fastest easily upgraded broadband service, excellent public transport links, excellent community facilities, excellent green spaces, the latest environmentally efficient technologies, recycling, solar heating, solar powering, if done properly these could be feeding electricity back into the grind, and for how the old pollution ridden cities could be.
But as vision is the one thing seemingly lacking in today's uk, it'll probably only happen when things really freeze over.
Oh yes, how much would 187k homes contribute towards council tax payments alone per year? £172mn.
Sigh. The laudable cry of sovereignty once more rings out as new eu elections are set to take place, in less than three months time.
It's always worrying listening to people who are more intent of talking over and interrupting people to ensure their point is heard when cameras are rolling. But who's interest does the multi-mill/billionaire business leaders serve, since very rarely does it appear to truly benefit the general populace? Oh right theirs. No doubt someone somewhere will believe its a microsoft or chinese or russian plot to derail and destabilise the eu powerhouse from the inside.
There must be many people in constituent countries who are able to name ten members of their parliamentary betters and at least five of their eu reps. Why, here in the uk there's jacqs, gord, vince, dave (at least six of them), and for the eu, there's... er.... where's me list...
But when the time arrives i'll have read the blurbs, gone with me guts and scratched my green name; so later down the line I can say "I was robbed" and "that was a bloody wasted vote" with a modicum of self-righteous contentedness.
Yippee! By 2018 every new built building in the eu will be required to produce as much energy as they consume. 2018? Nine years time? The rise in sea-level will probably have put paid to that, as the mad scramble to build-build-build to relocate coastline refugees picks up a soggy pace, and the last thing people will be thinking about is "does it have a pump!" Just give everyone a windmill-hat and solar powered kinetic boots.
In this day and age you would think the governments "joined up thinking" would have a included the sensible approach to making sure the increasing millions soon to hit the dole queues, would be eligible to have training.
You know, to keep their skills up. To ensure that when the country pops out of the depression, we'll be in fighting fit form to take on the world and hold our own with a huge array of newly trained and qualified people champing at the bit with a new found vigour, highly toned skills and boundless reams of energy.
You would have thought!
Sadly, this government thinks otherwise and from september 2009 are bringing in a bizarre system, where they will provide funds for people to be trained. They will actually provide 100% of the funding. But with one small proviso. They will give the training providers 20% of the training costs up front. And then (and here's the kicker) they will fund the other 80% once (so making the magic sum of 100%), the unemployed person has found gainful employment within 6 months of them finishing the training course and been unemployed for 6 months.
So? I hear the cry go up, they're getting training, providers are getting paid?
Well imagine this scenario. You're at work and your bosses come up with a scheme, where instead of you getting paid your monthly salary all in one foul swoop, they give you 20%, and say that if you do a really good job and bring in outstanding results at the 1/2 yearly review stage they'll give you the other 80% of your salary in six months time, if you can keep it up.
Happy with it now?
The governments cack-handed approach to this has of course meant that meaningful providers who would have given the unemployed meaningful achievable training routes back into employment or self-employment, are now pulling out in droves. Leaving the really bad, or the ones who can use this now endless supply of even cheaper labour (as they'll get even more money into their coffers), as the only things left for those seriously unemployed; who could well end up to be a new underclass, permanently pinned on the spokes of poverty.
This might have worked when the economy was booming and bust defeated, and jobs were like confetti on ticker tape day. But in the current cooling clime, it is one of the worst ideas they have come up and stuck with.
Once people realise it, the ranks of the disaffected and jump-shippers could finally become a stampede.
Naturally when it is brought in and fails, they will blame the providers for not living up to the schemes expectations. Instead of them standing up, throwing their hands in the air and just going "yep, we cocked up."
This is nothing but a rear-guard action, by a rear-guard rump of a government, for which everyone else is to blame for everything's that happening, and they happily waft about losing the precious few tenuous grips on reality that they once had.
The one happy thought which trickles through peoples mind is, like dust in a storm, they'll be summarily kicked out of power come the prevailing electoral wind. Will things get any better afterwards? Oh where is my sick bag.
We are interconnected as never before. Our prioritise used to be small; the family, the village, the town, the city, the county, then the country states. But we've reached a stage where what happens on one side of the world, will in seconds impact the another. We have to think of ourselves as global citizens, and not the old insular back-biting, back stabbing, parochial entities of old. We have to go beyond the "every person for themselves" motto as that's plainly failed, in all its iterations.
"We are a species that goes beyond our limitations," says Ray Kurzweil. A shame governments religions, and fundamental fruitbats try to place so many restrictions hindering the pace of change, pace of development and pace of fairness for the whole of humankind.
And talking of wheels coming off wagons. Oh dear. Is this already the start of the end, of the obama love-in?
And in keeping with the time of diy, here's my wee little homage to the season of happiness.
Perhaps when it comes down to it, it is me and I have missed all the news in relation to oil, energy, gas and electricity. Maybe my half asleep id has missed the huge onrush of ceo's from energy companies parading themselves before the nations press, spouting their concern for the hard-pressed consumer by cutting gas prices by 35-50% and electricity prices by 19-24% . And with immediate effect. I must have overlooked their concerned visages earnestly peering whilst their mouths trot through the latest prepared speech, that it's about either helping or investing; forgetting there are many out there living on a day by day basis, who find themselves having to choose between lighting, heating, or eating.
You can just imagine their voices crescendoing on, “with oil now more than half it's $146 value a year ago peak,” yes it even touched $68.57 for US light crude before closing slightly up. “We feel the time is right that our consumers are given a break and we're glad to announce a 5% cut in gas and 2% cut in electricity prices,” and just as people decide on how to react to such a statement, it's finished by, “which will take place on January 5th 2009.”
Has anyone heard or seen anything like that? Or is the deafening rush of silence, from the absent, off the field utility companies, the only answer needed?
We would like to believe that a brand new bunch of fat cat ceo's will be walking that gold plank of parting, but I somehow feel the public mob mentality for such a public drubbing has, with simmering largesse, snuffed itself out.
What we do have however, is ed miliband announcing that the government will increase their carbon reductions targets from 50% to 80% by 2050 - 42 years time.
If a day's a long time in politics, then 42 years must equate to the universal equivalent of four big bangs. A very long period of time where even the ideology of those holding the power stick will probably have been radically changed by unforeseen events and circumstances.
If they attempt to reach targets by slow-creep taxation, it will be those on the bottom and in the middle who will take the greatest hit – especially since two big polluting sectors (aviation and maritime), look like been strangely absent from the proceedings.
Alternatively the government could consider bringing in effective legislation ensuring that new builds or repairs to existing builds that require planning applications, incorporate some element of renewable's or energy efficiency within there design. Imagine, a whole new manufacturing sector could be opened up, then sold off before the next popping bubble. Not only for the manufacturing of wafer thin etaic cells, but new inspectors – just like the tax collectors of old – will incorporate the curbing of excessive emissions, clamping down with powers to immediately close a business down, to giving certificates to those households and businesses who effectively meet the required standards.
So government might bring its full weight down to bear on the energy companies, under the possibility of talks about legislation “if they don't play ball!” What the bloody heck does that mean? They need to remove their noses from the utilities brown stuff and work to ensure that those unfortunates stuck on prepayment meters don't pay an extra £200 above normal rates. When you consider that prepayment users are actually crediting companies for their usage as opposed to those on monthly or quarterly plans who pay in arrears, then no wonder they find the pp'ers a useful set of cows to milk and not to do anything to truly upset the cart.
A while ago marie-antoinette was made infamous for saying “let them eat cake!” This current government will be famous for so many things, but one of the worst will be their seeming attitude of, more money for heating? Don't they know its global warming out there?
The unfolding saga will probably come to nought but a grubby watery end. As in 38 years time panic will be the order of the day, with the government attempting to ram-raid the law into enactment – to reach the target, or quietly bury it under the table. Let's just hope that in 42 years time that table isn't floating off, somewhere down the thames!
At the next round of world trade meetings (or letting the big multi-nationals get away with it), it will be a new conservative uk government putting it's social friendly policies with a new democratic/republican led government in the us.
But at the moment here in the uk, with all the nonsense wafting in the air of windfall taxes and tinkering about the edges with a stamp duty holiday. People are suffering.
If this winter is really bad, then like the summer of a couple of years ago, the weeks will go by and reports of people dying will flood onto the media networks.
Price increases for energy companies in the home of one of the big energy companies, is limited to 5% per year for its 28m customers. Yes it's edf and that has happened in france. But, give or take a kw or barrel, how can the french president insist on such a small price increase been forced onto french consumers, whilst the uk government bends over backwards; seemingly just waving them through?
In the uk it, along with other energy companies, has been able to get away (like good cowboys laughing off into the sunset) with increasing prices by over 22% year on year, claiming wholesale price increases, whilst making billions in profit. Perhaps my knowledge of the energy industry is on par with that of a gnat and i'm talking nothing but hot air through my other hole.
I'm sure stern words have been flying from ministries to companys and back again. But why in the land of 'easily hire, easily fire', (to make us more competitive, which is why the oecd says the uk could be the only developed country to hit recession), is there such a disparity in energy pricing and pricing increases compared to other members of the european community?
Perhaps big companies are now fully aware they can gouge the uk consumer, without too much interference from a hapless regulator or an inept government.
If you spend more than 10% on fuel, you are classed as been fuel poor. For the many who are spending upto 25% if not more, they must be the new fuelslaves. Doing everything possible to ensure the lights and gas remain on, even to the extent of cutting back on food and other basics. The fates help them if it turns out to be harsh winter as, on current form, nothing useful looks like it will be emanating from this government, in time to stave off the worst.
The government is quick to say how much help it is providing to those over 70. Which is excellent. But what about those who are under that age, who don't get all the handouts - as they're not eligible to under the twisted, warped and convoluted regulations that pass for means-testing?
The dearth of useful information given by ministers is telling, when they make an appearance on television, radio or in the press. That combined with their level of condescension, is simply a sign of a government fully out of touch with the true feelings of many of its citizens.
The way things are currently going, we can just imagine after the winter, with 30% of the population spending 40% of any income they have, just to try and keep warm.
Over the coming weeks, the next good government thought, will be to trawl through historical archives to see how (when the last economic disaster was experienced) we, as a plucky nation, managed to pull through.
And this, no doubt, is probably one of the bright ideas they will eventually come up with....
But work your way further down the greasy ladder of employment, until you reach the heady world of the temp, agency workers and employment agencies; where your current skill-set, reasonable ability to work (or at least shuffle papers around and click the mouse button a couple of times per hour) is all that matters.
It is is up to you, to ensure your skills are better than just up-to-date. To, as week follows week, keep abreast of developments, new legislation, protocols that are produced in any arena of work, but especially in any area where computers play a very big part.
If however, you are unemployed and poor, then your ability to improve your employability decreases at an exponentially marked level.
The job centres are really only concerned that you can read/write/apply for a job (any job), forgetting that having this lowest common line in the sand is damaging in the long term, to the economy, the unemployed person whilst bolstering the how much can we get away with paying mentality.
Case in point been tjk parent of tk maxx, of the losing millions (45.7) of customers banking details and making the uk government look competent in comparison, company based in the us. Yes this company pays a bit more than the minimum wage for its uk staff. But the staff forego overtime pay, easily working an extra 4+hrs over allotted scheduling per week. Breaks are short. Cancelable at short notice, as the one off goods are priced up for consumers to whip off the shelves.
But back to the point.
Colleges, which used to have subsidised courses for those who where unemployed - but keen to re-enter employment by re-skilling - now find they have to scrap particular courses under the current governments "re-balancing" of educational need towards those in the 16-20 year old age bracket. With those over the upper age, considered over the hill and past it!
In today's environment, webdesign, plumbing, engineering, are a few courses of note that would be beneficial to potential employers and to those seeking work. With the added bonus of improving the unemployeds earning potential, way beyond that of the idle giro payout; thrown in.
But the Wisdom of Brown seems to be striking again. As those very same courses have been favourably targeted towards the under 21's whilst those over 20 are forced to consider different courses or learn by themselves as the courses are no longer subsidised, or even worse, have been cut altogether. Sort of when Mrs Thatcher made away with the milk and deprived many growing children (from deprived backgrounds) of a valuable source of daily calcium and nutrients.
Invariably as this carries on, it will mean temp/part-time workers will have to create and fund their own learning map. Which is as it should be, as generally they're financially on par, or better off, in the particular employment situation they currently inhabit than their full-time slave to the boss colleagues.
During my webering (web wondering), bumped across this carton from Paul Toner on his ruebritannia site. Excellent work.
At 01:22hrs (GMT) watched the Constable Savage clip from youtube. Not on the official auntie channel, or any of the other "authorised" terrestrial, cable or satellite channels, but from a link posted on a comment read from the PC Pro website) and remembered just how comically excellent the "Not The Nine O'Clock News" series was. Enjoyed it so much, I will now consider purchasing the series on DVD - if that is, they're out.
It's little things like this which, over the years, enable people to remember things they've forgotten (have I just uttered a bushism?) - which those silly companies that wish to take people to court should consider is actually helping to keep their income streams flapping around in the breeze. People will watch and see far more in the future from the interwebual than by simply sitting in front of a slivering television box watching the latest advert about henna hair.
But then the television box will in turn become even more interactive and replace the noisy PC. We can simply wave our arms in the air (aka the Wii wave) and become even more athletically couch-potatoesque, by waving our arms in the air more vigorously (whilst sweating and obtaining a hernia) in a half-assed attempt to get even more complicated remote controls functions, to do what the old plastic wedge of a remote used to do, so simply and easily before.
In the meantime, the big companies with bosses who make whopping bonuses will instead of properly bearing down on those criminals who repackage the entire DVD for resale at t'pence ha'penny, continue turning their fire and brimstone lawyers onto those people who use these little memory aides to recapture such long lost moments.
So it's a yes to "go after those making millions illicitly copying dvd's/vids etc for resale" in pubs, clubs, on the street, down Mr Parokies cornershop. But think again about the others. The many who will actually buy those overpriced shining tea coasters. For those of us wondering what all the fuss is about, let's just hope we only get that fly on the wall experience by reading the headlines in a Sunday paper; that the judiciary or legislative/lawmakers have finally worked out, who the real cowboys are!
And then we have Alistair Darling saying that the government aren't sure yet about what to exactly do, to help those mortgage buyers suffering from the credit-crunch. Doesn't know what to do? What have the government been doing since all this started so many months ago? If they initially believed what was happening in the US wouldn't wing its way over here and then make plans for it then they don't deserve to be in power, neither do the conservative party as they didn't have anything much better in place or to say either.
"A return to family values", not quite sure how that equates to been better by doing without tv, internet access, mobile phones, consoles. Smacks more of a return to the buggy and cart, quill and parchment, with food been brought in by the servants period. But then caravanning's on the up. More people realise we can do without the latest updated upgrade and it's so much more environmentally friendly.
The olympics... 3 days and counting.
With the ever increasing noise about climate change and how it will affect the planet and all the species it contains, perhaps now is the correct time to think about what comes after.
Imagine all that captured carbon solidified and compressed into a small space then been carted over to mars. With the leaps and advances made in the arena of ameliorating the worst effects our own climate folly could embue upon us, the flip side could be the knowledge to change another worlds atmosphere to one of our own suiting. Yes that wonderful science fiction staple that is known as terraforming.
Egypt, once the bread basket of an empire, is now running short of subsidised bread due to the rising cost of wheat.
But when everything is a commodity, everything has a price. And heaven help those who don't have the ability to leverage, as they'll be squeezed further into the gutter and labelled as terrorists if they complain.
Well the first budget brought into existence by Alistair Darling is a roasted horse chestnuts load of landfill waste. Which will be made ever higher by his inaction.
I imbibe the odd drink and smoke way to much. So yes it's a crap budget for me. More taken out, as ever.
With 'stability' the new watchword replacing 'prudence'; they both appear like pantomime dames. All show but laddered and leaking stockings going as far as the eyes can see.
Can't wait until the next one. When things in the country really do start going downhill.
But on a good note, he's returned to using the old budgetary case that the old chancellor jettisoned. Good to see we're firmly heading back to good old tradition... Oh well boom and bust, here we come!
Often wondered, since watching CSI (only the Las Vegas one - the others are too painful), whether it has an underworld equivalent; perhaps called ICS?
You know, sultry, depressive and bombshell types that go around watching crime scenes and how they're solved. So now we have criminals running around with different coloured lights making sure their tracks are sufficiently covered with a suitably nifty little vacuum cleaner sucking up any stray passing bits of debris and DNA. If not, then they deserve to get caught.
