For the majority of people when they hear the term drugs they are more in mind of those substances which alter consciousness and states of mind, and of course which may or may not be hallucinogenic, make us feel good, love our fellow species members, make us look better, question the bollocks we're fed on a daily basis and realise the nonsense of contemporary power structures and paradigms; and are subsequently banned, excoriated and war'd on.
In our modern society drugs are taken by the majority of people, in one form or another, at some stage or another, for things that are now so routine we forget that only 50 years ago, without them would either mean a certain death or being the recipient of severe life-shortening disability. We’re including vaccinations in that pantheon too, as vaccines are also drugs.
Drugs have had a bit of a mixed audience over the centuries, suffering ups and downs along the way. A way to keep the less fortunate sophomoric and their better offs giddy with delight. But who can forget wandering along the Thames river in the Victorian era and popping into an apothecary to get a vial of cocaine to help with that pesky cold?
Since Jenner and his smallpox vaccinations there have been problems with drugs along the way. With Governments (USA) doing experiments on their third class citizens with STDs, or governments (USSR/Russia) being early proponents of gender swapping, as long as it only (okay mainly) involved sports women! Of course it’s understandable why people would prefer not to have their children vaccinated in the hope of saving them from one of the many dreadful side-effects that may impact them, or saving them from deliberately introduced side effects just to see what impacts there might be. But apart from the few highly reported incidences regarding adulterated vaccines, the improvement in global improved life-span, over only a few decades, hasn’t just being down to improvements in food, nutrition, and improved water supplies, all of which played a huge part, but mainly the ability of medicine to bring to heel once terminal illnesses and diseases.
Getting through the blah blah on the war on drugs in the USA, we quickly realise that it’s not really a war on the perceived horrors that impact poorer sections of communities, but a war on many other fronts to ensure that power remains in the hands of those who believe they know better! A Nixon aide famously said that the reason for the war on drugs was basically to divide and conquer, with a healthy dose of racism thrown into the mix. Three of his colleagues have poured scorn on the whole idea, but as jailed prisoners are unable to vote, what better way of killing many stones with the one policy. That was before gerrymandering really took off, which makes imprisoning an unnecessary throwback to a more barbaric time. Make black people and hippies who consume marijuana appear to be the bogeyman of all that’s right and just, and those who support them being just as bad. So why not help such perceptions along by ensuring gang wars, supplies can get through, and the media reporting like the good boy’s that they are. Once people have a conviction for drug possession they become forever a felon. Felons are not allowed to vote. So the war on drugs disproportionately affects black men, many end up in prison as part of the money making venture that is the prison industrial complex of a privatised prison system. Then when they get out they are not allowed to vote. Which helps with gerrymandering, especially as they would only vote democrat anyhow.
In the 1930’s the drug war was against mexicans, Will Randolph Hurst was a politician, owned a lot of newspapers and also a lot of paper producing companies. The target was the evil hemp, “reefer madness” 1936, with white women being seduced by reefer smoking black jazz musicians. As that was so successful a similar war on drugs was enacted a few decades later, using crack as the weapon of choice for Ronald Reagan, ans targeting the black community because white people tended to do powder cocaine. Before reefer madness there was a campaign against opium because the Chinese were smoking it!
Of course in about 1900 you could legally buy cocaine, morphine, cannabis. Queen Victoria used cannabis for period pains.
Why do we care here in the UK? Well ever since the master and servant roll was reversed, the UK has slavishly followed whatever US policy they can get away with implementing.
Over the years, the US policy has helped limit and hold back research into the use of LSD or molly MDMA for sufferers of post traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Ergo, a lovely catch 22. No research, no proof that it works. So cannot (legally) be used for treatment. Even internationally, politicians prefer people (poor) to die of cancer in Africa and India, than for them to get morphine to relieve their pain.
Hypocrisy much? As society guzzles vast tankers of alcohol with terrible damage to individuals, and a community cost of pub fights hospital bills, prison, it is rarely viewed as a drug that shouls be banned, as it brings lots of money in to the chancellery, and those with power do enjoy the off tiple. Whilst prescribed opiods have more people becoming hooked on them, and deaths from their use increasing. But, have one person (out of millions that week) unfortunately die, who popped a pill to enjoy themselves and it’ll be plastered across the headtops for weeks to come.
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Showing posts with label health. Show all posts
Monday, 16 September 2019
Thursday, 21 January 2016
Pollution merchants.
There are one or more motifs quite close to my increasingly blackened lungs, that i might have mentioned from time to time. Pollution, check. Particulates, check. Noise, check…. So much so that i quite often feel like a broken record, and a particularly annoying one at that.
But you reach a stage when something has to be done, once your friends start to look increasingly askance at you, subtly implying the issue must surely have being resolved by now? I'm sure those people bent over the pollution desk at who, probably feel the same way too. And if they don't, then why bloody not?
It's odd really. On current form humanity is turning out to be just like those science experiments so many of us undertook in our more formative years, and many of those who are currently in their formative years still do, of bacteria growing in a petri-dish. Finite resources, finite energy, only so many hospitable places to live without over running and dying off. But unlike the bacteria we know what potential pitfalls are awaiting us, if we continue down the path that's been taken. Yet so many are still quite happy to put on blinkers waiting to be whisked away in a funnel, or drowned wondering why you can bring a snowball indoors.
It wasn't that long ago that more people started living in, than out of urban environments. All those cars, vans, lorries, buses, aeroplanes, motorcycles, tankers, ships, warships, fighter jets, rockets, bombs, rpg's, satellite launches, mining, pigs, cows, gas burning, electricity production and usage, production of food, transporting food, processing all the waste, waste of food, sewage systems, and fracking are all producing their own bits of pollution, every second of every day, by the thousands, millions, hundreds of millions. So when someone says that humanity's not having any impact, just remember that little list, pick one item, and use it to beat them around the head with.
Back to who. Before the new figures on air quality land on the desks of concerned citizenry everywhere (at least for those living in the 2,000 or so cities that'll be classified as perilous hell-holes for human habitation), who director (dr maria neira) of the department of public health, environmental and social determinants of health basically said, if i can condense her comments into a couple of words, we're fucked!
Imagine if all the conflicts around the world were concentrated into one large-ish area and 7 million people on the losing side were summarily executed in a day? There'd be an outcry. Coalitions coalesce, jihads would be screamed from the tallest minarets. Allies and axis' would form, and before you realised it trillions would be spent as the world beat with one, or probably four, calls to end it – naturally both sides would be given advantageous bank lending rates – until it became crystalline clear which side was going to win, then they'd call the debts in. Currently, however, as with many things which take place and who they mainly impact (baring global extreme calamity), the vast majority of the potential dead and dying will be concentrated amongst the marginalised poor. Those who have to work for employers whose only concerns are about how many filters they can crank out before they're carried out in just a larger box. The skivers. The enemies within, daring to look towards houses filled with filters made of gold; whether in delhi, beijing, new york, or london,
According to the eu public health portal, the annual number of deaths in the region from smoking is approx 700,000. The who's eu estimate on premature deaths from all the other crap we're cheerfully chucking up in the air? That will be 600,000. Of course, it doesn't say if all of those people were lifelong non-smokers; but, that's plenty of citizens who don't put cancer sticks (as an ex-smoker i claim my right to the word use) in their mouths, who prematurely die every year from the rubbish being purposefully dumped into the atmosphere. That's roughly 578,000 more people than are killed in the usa each year, and that's with their particular fondness of guns with everything.
More than half the worlds human population live in urban settings. By 2030, or in 5,095 days time, the global urban pollution will swell to 5 billion from the current 4 billion (a very rough estimate). So just think of your own current sprawling city, or town, and plop in a quarter more people – again roughly. How would your transportation system, health, education systems cope? How will you cope? Smaller places, longer queues, those long thought dystopian idylls of shoe-boxes for homes? If our city air's crap and killing us now, what will it be like in 14 years?
For example, as i sit here (not quite furiously tapping away), at any one time over 21 hours a day there are a number of buses each weighing 11+ tons, anywhere from 9 to 30 ft away. The drivers leave their vehicles engines in one of the following phases – in order of popularity: running, idling revving, off. The drivers (oh you have no idea how much i'm looking forward to driver-less buses) can remain at the stand for anything from a couple of minutes to 20 minutes, and that's 21 hours a day, every day. Of course with a mixture of buses from helicopter-bus-ships, to hybrid-noise-storms there's no end to the delights this little stretch of road dishes out on a regular basis.
I still assert that earlier buses were designed by someone, or a group of someones, who's experience of a bus ended, when they finally grew out of their favourite tonka toy collection phase. But surely after the buses were built, did no one deem it necessary to test them on roads and streets where people actually lived? At least then, the possibility of listening to a bloody bus sounding more like a helicopter parked 9ft from a window, followed by drivers revving their engines and bibbing their horns, slamming doors and emergency exits in faux maintenance walks, would hopefully have created some sort of a spark in someone with a few more spare brain-cells than the average, and caused them to ponder "just how will people react with all that noise and racket at 2am, or 5am, or any other times the things are in close proximity to them? Hm, i wonder!"
From my interactions with tfl, i've come to the conclusion they view the bus department as more of an annoyance. A horrid burden they have to endure, over the wonderful grandiose delights offered by running the tube network; with those glorious sweeping entrances, arched halls, and historic stations.
It probably went like this. At some stage the bus department failed to get the attention the other departments had managed to seize; and so when it came to procuring new buses they grumbled, grudgingly and said “yea, they'll do,” and so the helicopters which drivers think are good fun not to switch off, and tfl would rather not think about, or act on, were born. And in time they spread far and wide, throughout the residential land. Causing grief to anyone unfortunate to think that double or triple-glazing would surely be enough to keep the offending noise away from delicate ears.
A long example i know. But just imagine for a moment imagine, across london there are thousands of the red buggers all at it; despite tfl saying “they shouldn't be doing that. It will be stopped… They will be disciplined… They don't do it, it has been stopped… Is it still going on?"
If tfl, an authority so vaunting of its green credentials and respect for neighbourhoods, fails so dismally, and is incapable of policing it's own operators and drivers, then how will humanity, in any significant number do anything in time to ensure there's a world fit to live in? And don't forget the new watered down aim of cop 21 is to limit any temperature rise to 2 degrees celsius, but aspire to keep any rise to under 1.5. It'll be lucky if the rise remains under double figures.
You might just wonder why i'm somewhat skeptical of our ability to really knuckle down, and forge our way out of this slowly unfurling disaster. Apart from the attitude of tfl, people in general. A few months ago, over food and drinks, conversation with friends turned to money spent on shopping and where to shop. I brought up a shop called the 99p store, which I frequent for household cleaning materials. For those who don't know, it was a retail outlet where most things were going for 99 pence, more often than not for less - until it was acquired by their more aggressive competitors, the £1 shop (otherwise known as poundland). So we argued about the relative merits, until the nugget was boiled down to an issue of pride. Simply put, they would rather travel somewhere and pay £3 for an item instead of 99p at the store, as the 99p store was just far too down-market for them. If you multiply that and similar attitudes across the billions of inhabitants, then where do you see things heading?
As dr maria neira might well possibly say in an unguarded private moment, “we're fucked!”
But you reach a stage when something has to be done, once your friends start to look increasingly askance at you, subtly implying the issue must surely have being resolved by now? I'm sure those people bent over the pollution desk at who, probably feel the same way too. And if they don't, then why bloody not?
It's odd really. On current form humanity is turning out to be just like those science experiments so many of us undertook in our more formative years, and many of those who are currently in their formative years still do, of bacteria growing in a petri-dish. Finite resources, finite energy, only so many hospitable places to live without over running and dying off. But unlike the bacteria we know what potential pitfalls are awaiting us, if we continue down the path that's been taken. Yet so many are still quite happy to put on blinkers waiting to be whisked away in a funnel, or drowned wondering why you can bring a snowball indoors.
It wasn't that long ago that more people started living in, than out of urban environments. All those cars, vans, lorries, buses, aeroplanes, motorcycles, tankers, ships, warships, fighter jets, rockets, bombs, rpg's, satellite launches, mining, pigs, cows, gas burning, electricity production and usage, production of food, transporting food, processing all the waste, waste of food, sewage systems, and fracking are all producing their own bits of pollution, every second of every day, by the thousands, millions, hundreds of millions. So when someone says that humanity's not having any impact, just remember that little list, pick one item, and use it to beat them around the head with.
Back to who. Before the new figures on air quality land on the desks of concerned citizenry everywhere (at least for those living in the 2,000 or so cities that'll be classified as perilous hell-holes for human habitation), who director (dr maria neira) of the department of public health, environmental and social determinants of health basically said, if i can condense her comments into a couple of words, we're fucked!
Imagine if all the conflicts around the world were concentrated into one large-ish area and 7 million people on the losing side were summarily executed in a day? There'd be an outcry. Coalitions coalesce, jihads would be screamed from the tallest minarets. Allies and axis' would form, and before you realised it trillions would be spent as the world beat with one, or probably four, calls to end it – naturally both sides would be given advantageous bank lending rates – until it became crystalline clear which side was going to win, then they'd call the debts in. Currently, however, as with many things which take place and who they mainly impact (baring global extreme calamity), the vast majority of the potential dead and dying will be concentrated amongst the marginalised poor. Those who have to work for employers whose only concerns are about how many filters they can crank out before they're carried out in just a larger box. The skivers. The enemies within, daring to look towards houses filled with filters made of gold; whether in delhi, beijing, new york, or london,
According to the eu public health portal, the annual number of deaths in the region from smoking is approx 700,000. The who's eu estimate on premature deaths from all the other crap we're cheerfully chucking up in the air? That will be 600,000. Of course, it doesn't say if all of those people were lifelong non-smokers; but, that's plenty of citizens who don't put cancer sticks (as an ex-smoker i claim my right to the word use) in their mouths, who prematurely die every year from the rubbish being purposefully dumped into the atmosphere. That's roughly 578,000 more people than are killed in the usa each year, and that's with their particular fondness of guns with everything.
More than half the worlds human population live in urban settings. By 2030, or in 5,095 days time, the global urban pollution will swell to 5 billion from the current 4 billion (a very rough estimate). So just think of your own current sprawling city, or town, and plop in a quarter more people – again roughly. How would your transportation system, health, education systems cope? How will you cope? Smaller places, longer queues, those long thought dystopian idylls of shoe-boxes for homes? If our city air's crap and killing us now, what will it be like in 14 years?
For example, as i sit here (not quite furiously tapping away), at any one time over 21 hours a day there are a number of buses each weighing 11+ tons, anywhere from 9 to 30 ft away. The drivers leave their vehicles engines in one of the following phases – in order of popularity: running, idling revving, off. The drivers (oh you have no idea how much i'm looking forward to driver-less buses) can remain at the stand for anything from a couple of minutes to 20 minutes, and that's 21 hours a day, every day. Of course with a mixture of buses from helicopter-bus-ships, to hybrid-noise-storms there's no end to the delights this little stretch of road dishes out on a regular basis.
I still assert that earlier buses were designed by someone, or a group of someones, who's experience of a bus ended, when they finally grew out of their favourite tonka toy collection phase. But surely after the buses were built, did no one deem it necessary to test them on roads and streets where people actually lived? At least then, the possibility of listening to a bloody bus sounding more like a helicopter parked 9ft from a window, followed by drivers revving their engines and bibbing their horns, slamming doors and emergency exits in faux maintenance walks, would hopefully have created some sort of a spark in someone with a few more spare brain-cells than the average, and caused them to ponder "just how will people react with all that noise and racket at 2am, or 5am, or any other times the things are in close proximity to them? Hm, i wonder!"
From my interactions with tfl, i've come to the conclusion they view the bus department as more of an annoyance. A horrid burden they have to endure, over the wonderful grandiose delights offered by running the tube network; with those glorious sweeping entrances, arched halls, and historic stations.
It probably went like this. At some stage the bus department failed to get the attention the other departments had managed to seize; and so when it came to procuring new buses they grumbled, grudgingly and said “yea, they'll do,” and so the helicopters which drivers think are good fun not to switch off, and tfl would rather not think about, or act on, were born. And in time they spread far and wide, throughout the residential land. Causing grief to anyone unfortunate to think that double or triple-glazing would surely be enough to keep the offending noise away from delicate ears.
A long example i know. But just imagine for a moment imagine, across london there are thousands of the red buggers all at it; despite tfl saying “they shouldn't be doing that. It will be stopped… They will be disciplined… They don't do it, it has been stopped… Is it still going on?"
If tfl, an authority so vaunting of its green credentials and respect for neighbourhoods, fails so dismally, and is incapable of policing it's own operators and drivers, then how will humanity, in any significant number do anything in time to ensure there's a world fit to live in? And don't forget the new watered down aim of cop 21 is to limit any temperature rise to 2 degrees celsius, but aspire to keep any rise to under 1.5. It'll be lucky if the rise remains under double figures.
You might just wonder why i'm somewhat skeptical of our ability to really knuckle down, and forge our way out of this slowly unfurling disaster. Apart from the attitude of tfl, people in general. A few months ago, over food and drinks, conversation with friends turned to money spent on shopping and where to shop. I brought up a shop called the 99p store, which I frequent for household cleaning materials. For those who don't know, it was a retail outlet where most things were going for 99 pence, more often than not for less - until it was acquired by their more aggressive competitors, the £1 shop (otherwise known as poundland). So we argued about the relative merits, until the nugget was boiled down to an issue of pride. Simply put, they would rather travel somewhere and pay £3 for an item instead of 99p at the store, as the 99p store was just far too down-market for them. If you multiply that and similar attitudes across the billions of inhabitants, then where do you see things heading?
As dr maria neira might well possibly say in an unguarded private moment, “we're fucked!”
Saturday, 28 May 2011
Lazy work-shy layabout wastrel
I wasn't going to bite, but sadly i just couldn't help myself.
More than 77% of voters (extrapolated from a 2,203 sampled group) think long-term benefit claimants should do community work in return for their benefits. 69% of voters (again from the same 2,203 sample) think claimants should lose their benefits; yet completely fail to mention buy-to-let landlords making a reasonable earner off the sponging sub-classes. 51% (again of the 2,203 sample, so 1,102 of them) indicated that no-one should get any help unless they had paid into the system through national insurance and tax. There is no mention made of how long those hoping to get help should have paid into the system, or even if there's a lower contribution or time limit to the contributions wastrels have to reach, before been deemed worthy of the splintered crutch.
After some moments pondering on the remarkableness of spinning whilst flying, another thought hit me.
Why leave it at that!
For example, I'm remarkably careful at home - now that i'm more teetotaller than alco-binger. I don't smoke indoors nor do i set fire to pans whilst fast asleep in the bath; so surely now i won't need to pay anything towards a fire-service? I rarely go out at night, and avoid rowdy places - somewhat difficult in one of the most populated boroughs in london. So probably shouldn't pay anything towards the police or ambulance services either. As i have no wish for children of my own, i don't see why anything of mine should be paid towards schools or the education of those who have numerous offspring, or towards those over 18 who should, by then, be able to support themselves in the betterment of their intellect so ensuring they're able to pay into the tax kitty, and so build up a golden-pot for their inevitable frequent bouts of unemployment.
I don't swim in the sea nor do i boat, climb mountains nor walk fells; so lop some off the air-sea rescue services. I don't want trident so cut a few pounds (say one sixty-seven millionth) off that. As for the royal family, if it saves a bob or two, we should use cardboard cut-outs. Do away with parliament (the buildings), and let them set-up a marquee in westminster square - now that the demonstrators for peace have been evicted for making the place untidy. It would certainly cut down on the excessive spendthrift nature of today’s governments. As i'm always in 100% top-tip condition, i shouldn't have to contribute to the health service either!
There must be some other areas ripe for swingeing cuts?
Something else...
Oh yes, why are we paying so much extra on food when the profits are creamed off in bonuses? Why not give small-holder farmers a decent slice of the gold-dust and at the same time reduce the cost of food, so the increasing poor can still afford nutritious fare. We are, after all, supposedly living in enlightend civilised times.
Despite the increase in commodity prices, food companies are still raking in billions of annual profits. So let's do away with supermarkets - apart from the co-ops. All communities should be forced to grow their own food, erect fences around each postcode, to keep out - or in - any trouble and simply use air-drops for occasional essential supplies and those times a swat team are required. Naturally such aid would only be given to those who have paid their full tax whack, everyone else can simply stand by and watch behind electrified barbed-wire laser mounted fences.
Hm, what about the sewage system? Dig up all the pipes. Surely those in cities are subsidising those in rural areas who also have the same access to just as good a water and sewage system?
So that's the first swing of the fiscal-responsibility bat. I presume the return swing should be aimed at those corporations claiming they're not making enough money so need to cost-cut (decimate the workforce) whilst paying less tax towards the country's coffers than one of their cleaners (allegedly), or less tax than someone on the minimum wage, whilst awarding themselves 7 or 8 figure sums. Yes i know they're worth it, after all it takes a certain mentality and group-think to dream up money-making scheme after money-making scheme, gouging the maximum possible cash from the herd - sorry, "customer", without causing a rude awakening in the horde.
But before i continue straying wildly, why are 5.5 mn adults not working? From reading headlines an assumption could be falsely reached that they are all "lazy work-shy layabout wastrels!" Hardly factual, but hawks tend to tread warily around actual facts when defending the indefensible, somewhat reminiscent a vincent price character being forced to suck on something cross-shaped and garlicky!
So why aren't they working, and why do papers like the daily trail happily castigate the unworking trolls in the barbecuing glare of their readers early morning trembling espresso's - like baiting growling lions by throwing rotten meat at them? Plain and simply, money.
Not that many years ago, a brighter future seemed but a blinking dream away - twinned as it was with the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation. A time when computers (all 5 of them) would herald so much free time, that people wouldn't know what to do. That we'd all be working 1 day a week, not only to improve ourselves; but to galvanise society as a whole. An event so grand in our evolution, it would shove humanity eagerly towards the next stage of development.
Quite.
Billions still starve, 1 in 7 of the worlds population live on less than $1 a day. All the while the globes resources are continually plundered to provide those of us who can afford it with 20+ choices of everything, whilst a growing (small) band 'just can't manage' without their 10+ figure bank balances. Millions die of preventable diseases. Millions die from preventable industrial accidents, and let's not talk about the wars fuelled by weapons manufactured in less than a dozen countries, used in wars 99% of the worlds population don't want, couldn't be bothered with, but are expertly manoeuvred into some sort of side by the clarion calls of nationalism.
I believe i'm straying. Back to the uk and the lazy bones.
Does their face fit? Do they have the skills? Maybe not, or maybe there just aren't 5.5 million jobs in the country? After all why pay someone a higher minimum wage, when you can outsource your now flexible and float-able off-shoots to greener luscious pastures with less wages to pay and less requirements when it comes to sacking time?
I noticed a change the other day, when making a call to one of the annoying companies i use. Initially i couldn't quite put my finger on it. Simply thinking that this is new, a well travelled and cambridge educated (drop-out) was now biding his time by phone-answering and waiting for the next torrent of abuse by an annoyed customer. Until somewhere during the course of the conversation his south african lilt finally pierced my perception, and language recognition finally kicked in. South africa is still a functioning country - despite many who said it would tumble into a bonfire of flames; and whilst it might be party to less stringent labour rules, there's a strong possibility it has cheaper labour costs than mumbai.
At the same time that particular penny melted, so did the recognition my monthly subscriptions hadn't reduced to reflect this change (as cost and cheapness is king once a business grows past the 'mom & pop' stage), that it started me wondering where all those fiscal savings, which are now been made, were been shovelled?
I hearby stick my digit in the air and admit to a slight error in my earlier reading of the poll sampling numbers. It wasn't, as i indicated earlier in this ramble, a sample size of 2,203 but actually 2,022; the percentages however remain the same. An area the piece failed to include, which would have been interesting, is where on the disappearing(!) strata of the classless society ruler did the respondents hail from?
A comment from the usa i read in the trial summed it up succinctly:
The number of job hunters to jobs here in the uk is purportedly put at 37:1. What's the betting that if such a move was ever implemented, that orange-suited compliance would be the preferred solution of the day; by those whose idea of a hard time is the bother of finding a crease in their favourite shirt.
I can categorically (ahem, cough) state, my head was in an acid bath for the period as i was trying to clean my tongue, and so played no part in such a silly poll. It's not my fault i have to lay around around all day with my feet up sipping gin through a straw! That's just no fun at all, let me tell you.
More than 77% of voters (extrapolated from a 2,203 sampled group) think long-term benefit claimants should do community work in return for their benefits. 69% of voters (again from the same 2,203 sample) think claimants should lose their benefits; yet completely fail to mention buy-to-let landlords making a reasonable earner off the sponging sub-classes. 51% (again of the 2,203 sample, so 1,102 of them) indicated that no-one should get any help unless they had paid into the system through national insurance and tax. There is no mention made of how long those hoping to get help should have paid into the system, or even if there's a lower contribution or time limit to the contributions wastrels have to reach, before been deemed worthy of the splintered crutch.
After some moments pondering on the remarkableness of spinning whilst flying, another thought hit me.
Why leave it at that!
For example, I'm remarkably careful at home - now that i'm more teetotaller than alco-binger. I don't smoke indoors nor do i set fire to pans whilst fast asleep in the bath; so surely now i won't need to pay anything towards a fire-service? I rarely go out at night, and avoid rowdy places - somewhat difficult in one of the most populated boroughs in london. So probably shouldn't pay anything towards the police or ambulance services either. As i have no wish for children of my own, i don't see why anything of mine should be paid towards schools or the education of those who have numerous offspring, or towards those over 18 who should, by then, be able to support themselves in the betterment of their intellect so ensuring they're able to pay into the tax kitty, and so build up a golden-pot for their inevitable frequent bouts of unemployment.
I don't swim in the sea nor do i boat, climb mountains nor walk fells; so lop some off the air-sea rescue services. I don't want trident so cut a few pounds (say one sixty-seven millionth) off that. As for the royal family, if it saves a bob or two, we should use cardboard cut-outs. Do away with parliament (the buildings), and let them set-up a marquee in westminster square - now that the demonstrators for peace have been evicted for making the place untidy. It would certainly cut down on the excessive spendthrift nature of today’s governments. As i'm always in 100% top-tip condition, i shouldn't have to contribute to the health service either!
There must be some other areas ripe for swingeing cuts?
Something else...
Oh yes, why are we paying so much extra on food when the profits are creamed off in bonuses? Why not give small-holder farmers a decent slice of the gold-dust and at the same time reduce the cost of food, so the increasing poor can still afford nutritious fare. We are, after all, supposedly living in enlightend civilised times.
Despite the increase in commodity prices, food companies are still raking in billions of annual profits. So let's do away with supermarkets - apart from the co-ops. All communities should be forced to grow their own food, erect fences around each postcode, to keep out - or in - any trouble and simply use air-drops for occasional essential supplies and those times a swat team are required. Naturally such aid would only be given to those who have paid their full tax whack, everyone else can simply stand by and watch behind electrified barbed-wire laser mounted fences.
Hm, what about the sewage system? Dig up all the pipes. Surely those in cities are subsidising those in rural areas who also have the same access to just as good a water and sewage system?
So that's the first swing of the fiscal-responsibility bat. I presume the return swing should be aimed at those corporations claiming they're not making enough money so need to cost-cut (decimate the workforce) whilst paying less tax towards the country's coffers than one of their cleaners (allegedly), or less tax than someone on the minimum wage, whilst awarding themselves 7 or 8 figure sums. Yes i know they're worth it, after all it takes a certain mentality and group-think to dream up money-making scheme after money-making scheme, gouging the maximum possible cash from the herd - sorry, "customer", without causing a rude awakening in the horde.
But before i continue straying wildly, why are 5.5 mn adults not working? From reading headlines an assumption could be falsely reached that they are all "lazy work-shy layabout wastrels!" Hardly factual, but hawks tend to tread warily around actual facts when defending the indefensible, somewhat reminiscent a vincent price character being forced to suck on something cross-shaped and garlicky!
So why aren't they working, and why do papers like the daily trail happily castigate the unworking trolls in the barbecuing glare of their readers early morning trembling espresso's - like baiting growling lions by throwing rotten meat at them? Plain and simply, money.
Not that many years ago, a brighter future seemed but a blinking dream away - twinned as it was with the threat of imminent nuclear annihilation. A time when computers (all 5 of them) would herald so much free time, that people wouldn't know what to do. That we'd all be working 1 day a week, not only to improve ourselves; but to galvanise society as a whole. An event so grand in our evolution, it would shove humanity eagerly towards the next stage of development.
Quite.
Billions still starve, 1 in 7 of the worlds population live on less than $1 a day. All the while the globes resources are continually plundered to provide those of us who can afford it with 20+ choices of everything, whilst a growing (small) band 'just can't manage' without their 10+ figure bank balances. Millions die of preventable diseases. Millions die from preventable industrial accidents, and let's not talk about the wars fuelled by weapons manufactured in less than a dozen countries, used in wars 99% of the worlds population don't want, couldn't be bothered with, but are expertly manoeuvred into some sort of side by the clarion calls of nationalism.
I believe i'm straying. Back to the uk and the lazy bones.
Does their face fit? Do they have the skills? Maybe not, or maybe there just aren't 5.5 million jobs in the country? After all why pay someone a higher minimum wage, when you can outsource your now flexible and float-able off-shoots to greener luscious pastures with less wages to pay and less requirements when it comes to sacking time?
I noticed a change the other day, when making a call to one of the annoying companies i use. Initially i couldn't quite put my finger on it. Simply thinking that this is new, a well travelled and cambridge educated (drop-out) was now biding his time by phone-answering and waiting for the next torrent of abuse by an annoyed customer. Until somewhere during the course of the conversation his south african lilt finally pierced my perception, and language recognition finally kicked in. South africa is still a functioning country - despite many who said it would tumble into a bonfire of flames; and whilst it might be party to less stringent labour rules, there's a strong possibility it has cheaper labour costs than mumbai.
At the same time that particular penny melted, so did the recognition my monthly subscriptions hadn't reduced to reflect this change (as cost and cheapness is king once a business grows past the 'mom & pop' stage), that it started me wondering where all those fiscal savings, which are now been made, were been shovelled?
I hearby stick my digit in the air and admit to a slight error in my earlier reading of the poll sampling numbers. It wasn't, as i indicated earlier in this ramble, a sample size of 2,203 but actually 2,022; the percentages however remain the same. An area the piece failed to include, which would have been interesting, is where on the disappearing(!) strata of the classless society ruler did the respondents hail from?
A comment from the usa i read in the trial summed it up succinctly:
"There is very little decent paid work left in the UK now. "Globalization' has put pay to the UK being any way productive. China, India have been given it all. The skills needed have now gone and are lost. Aspirations and ambition are things of the past, like hard work, how can 'hard work' be a means to anything when most of that earned money is taken in taxes to pay for the army employed by the state and local 'authorities' and the remaining wages keep people in poverty? Idiots who shout out "I'd work for nothing because I'm proud" are missing the point. You work to live. There is nothing clever about being a slave. 21st century UK is a disgrace. Over 30 years the dole culture has been allowed to grow because the politicos know the real harsh truth that UK is finished economically. I hear 'training' mentioned. Training for what exactly? Or do they mean those open New Deal prison schemes to 'punish' the unemployed and line the pockets of the private rogues operating them. Appalling."
Gambino, USA, 21/5/2011 03:54"If there's not a revolution soon, we'll all just end up in the drink."
The number of job hunters to jobs here in the uk is purportedly put at 37:1. What's the betting that if such a move was ever implemented, that orange-suited compliance would be the preferred solution of the day; by those whose idea of a hard time is the bother of finding a crease in their favourite shirt.
I can categorically (ahem, cough) state, my head was in an acid bath for the period as i was trying to clean my tongue, and so played no part in such a silly poll. It's not my fault i have to lay around around all day with my feet up sipping gin through a straw! That's just no fun at all, let me tell you.
Saturday, 8 May 2010
Hm, gambling the fortune.
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?
Congratulations to the ferndale labour team for their re-election to office.
Monday, 14 January 2008
PT cough jackers and the Norovirus
Oh, things are looking bad!
Two differing neighbours have so far been laid low by the dreaded 24 - 48hr norovirus and its associated symptoms: heartily throwing up, experiencing severe diarrhea whilst vehemently refusing the offer of a full English breakfast. I ask you, how could anyone refuse?
But they have been sensible, staying in, and eschewing all contact with the outside world, even gone to the extreme of taking a couple of days off work!
In this day and age, when taking more than 30 seconds for a toilet break automatically makes you the number one office "slacker", most people will vainly struggle into their workplace. Thus continuing the effective spread of the virus. Unless, they work from home.
Now, I am a great proponent of public transportation. Use it on a regular basis, travelling up and down the country. Swear by it. When it works!
But there is nothing worse than been on an empty (it does happen on occasion) tube train, or a normal train, when it pulls into a station and someone enters the exact same carriage. Not sure if it is a homing instinct the chronically ill have as part of their genes, or that some memes have taken control, forcing them to sit directly opposite and start coughing all over me; doing their weepy impressions of frog swallowing fly's, mouths wide open, all the way down to their stomachs. But it sure feels like it.
So I end up been fully sprayed with whatever this years version of influenza happens to be! And as the little pests take the option of hurtling across the carriage and down into my passageways, I just know that in a couple of days time, it will be me doing those very same weepy impressions.
Makes me hanker after the Tokyoites very healthy respect for mask wearing when in ill-health, or if anyone else around them is ill, or if they are an anime character!
GP Patient Survey...
When the above popped through the letter box, I thought I'd died and gone heaven.
Perhaps it is me and I have been labouring under a misconception that booking an appointment to see ones GP had been, or is in the process of been, reduced to a week! Perhaps even, at a push two!
So I bite my tongue when I am told the earliest appointment is four weeks away. And bite it even harder when that four weeks have been and gone and I go to find I shall be seeing a locum and not my own regular GP! A Locum in today's parlance, is a professional temp!
They (the government - perhaps more under the previous than current incumbent) have been happy bleating on about the number of billions been pumped into the NHS (National Health Service). But all those billions appear to have been soaked up by the heightened upper echelons remuneration, way before reaching the bottom, in the form of meager scraps.
Would this be a time to mention Consultants, Area Managers, Managers, Secretaries, whose increasing use of days off 'due to stress', must make opening a travel agency within hospital grounds an accountants financial dream. Doctors (not the private - full or partial), Receptionists, Nurses, Security, are more or less front line targets and deserve way more money than they're getting. And of course the humble Cleaners for whom English may be a 2nd or 3rd tongue, a course in English along with a 'how not skimp on the cleaning solution' and report your bosses if forced to' one, would be in order.
On the bottom line - apologises - front-line, it is a shame all those billions spent on the service have proved incapable of ensuring that when your four week wait is over, and you have made it over the threshold (so proving, however tenuous, your claim to be in the land of the living); that the look of disappointment palpably rippling outwards from the front desk - like some bodily emanation as another body hasn't pegged it and manages to stumble through - increases in tedium each dreaded passing visit.
Then the wait to finally see your GP begins. Book an appointment for 10am and if you are lucky, you will be seen two hours later by about 12pm. If anything, you are far better pretending that your body is about to gasp its last and you will be zipped in under an emergency booking. At least then you are guaranteed to walk out in a couple of hours with a printed prescription pre-laden for the next round of pills; praying to which ever god you believe in that you don't have to pay the place a visit, ever again!
If you miss your appointment by 10 minutes or more, you are politely told that you can't be seen. As the Doctor is now busy. And you will have to re-book, for another time! Which is, naturally, another 4 weeks down the line.
How can it be improved? Hard to say. The current economic downturn negates the ability to increase funding. But even then just throwing money at it isn't the right idea; despite the strain it is experiencing, people living longer and having more ailments with increasing age and new forms of expensive treatment coming on-stream.
But what is needed is a root and branch structural review with no sacred cows or white elephants in the closed wing. A review that every citizen is involved with and not just once in a blue moon at election time. The NHS used to work! We just have to find a way of making it work and work effectively (for us all in the UK), over the next few decades!
Are we been well served by the NHS? Only if you're an estate agent, travel company and, with increasing cases of MRSA, MRSi and other yet to be championed unknown bugs around the corner, I have to vouch a no!
One possible view of MRSA infection.
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