Tag Archive: future shock


Safe As Houses – Future Shocks – Part 12 (Orig. posted Blog City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
March 26, 2006

(I decided to rename my series “Future Shock”, had more of a punchy feel to it than “Looking to the Future”, not that I’m pandering to tabloidesque sensationalist headlining or anything you understand!)

So, having had the ‘must buy your house’ idea spoon-fed to us for years and despite the mass repossesion crisis in the late 80s because of the slow-down in the housing market and the rise in interest rates the rate of repossessions is now up 15% and rising. The problem is particularly acute in Ulster and other areas where personal debt is high amongst the working class and lower middle class. Areas where the differential in what can and can’t be bought with a standard workers pay packet is greatest.

You did not have to be an economist to see this one coming. House prices have been rising disproportionately to income for some years forcing people to take out larger mortgages of a higher multiple of their salaries. We have seen the raising of the normal 3.5x annual income as a general rule to anything up to 8x annual income and mortgage periods grow from 25 years to anything up to 50 years. For most the prospect of buying a house is subject to being able to use both family incomes.

Now whilst it is easy to judge in this situation and question the prudence of people taking out such financially punitive agreements one must first look at the fact that house prices in areas like London have gone up by so much as to be unaffordable by any other means. Even in SE London, traditionally the cheaper end a two bedroom flat will still cost you over £150,000. Now you would have to be earning close to £50,000 to be able to buy that under the old rules and most people earning £50k are not the sort of people looking to live in a 2 bedroom terraced in Catford. Furthermore most of the keyworkers: teachers, nurses, fire-fighters, ambulance workers and the like probably will struggle to earn half that amount. It is a well-known fact that fire-fighters in the London area who work 4 days on 3 days off shifts will sleep in the fire station whilst on-shift, then returning to their homes outside London when off. They do this because they cannot afford to buy homes for themselves and their families in London.

As a result people have been forced out of the cities and the surrounding areas prices have in turn risen. Add to this commuter costs etc. and already the problem becomes self-evident. As an alternative to this one can elect to rent (or if you cannot afford a house or have a poor credit rating you are forced to rent) of course renting is not immune from the house price lottery because if people are renting houses out and forced to pay higher monthly mortgage payments they must raise the rents, in turn those who have lower mortgage payments having bought their houses some time ago see the opportunity to make some extra cash and thus the prices rise.

There is another factor here as well, the local council tax, which is a blanket poll tax not charged on an individual or household’s ability to pay, nor even on the local ammenities that a household may receive, is levied based on the value of the property. With property prices inflated the councils are reassessing tax based on the current market value of a house and because the bands are smaller at the lower values the council taxes are rising more for those who can afford it least. This has a fundamental flaw because much like when the Poll Tax was brought in to replace Rates people are going to be expected to pay a great deal more money without any difference in service provision and without a thought for how they were expected to pay the extra. When the Poll Tax was introduced I lived at home with my Mother and Stepfather in a 2 bedroom house. Our rates were approximately £400 annually which seemed pretty fair since we lived in a village with 1 bus a day, no shops, and only refuse collection as a council service. The Poll Tax bill came in at £400 per person and meant £1200 for the household. Longrider writes that he feels punished by the prospected raising in Council Tax assessment values and obviously it is easy to see why. When ones house value goes up it would be a mistake to presume this constitutes in any way an amelioration of income. Naturally were one to sell said house it may be worth substantially more money than one originally paid for it but then so are all the other houses one might be thinking of buying.

As with any flat tax the council tax is based on an unfair premise that somehow one can levy taxation at an arbitrary rate. In this case it is the value of the house that people live in. Of course this neglects to take into any consideration whether the people living in said house are owner-occupiers, 2nd home owners or merely tenants. Whilst it is clear that a rise in house prices does not necessarily benefit owner-occupiers it is in fact quite detrimental to tenants who are likely to see rises in rent coupled with rises in council tax despite this being in no way linked to any changes in income.

The upper and upper middle classes who are better placed to invest in property have now for some time chosen to sink their money into this rather than more traditional savings methods as the buoyancy of the housing market has been seen as offering good capital return. This has meant many more buy to let mortgages as investors have bought houses for their children at university or simply as a means of income. With the pensions system at the moment in a parlous state it is small wonder that many have chosen the property market as their method of safeguarding their future. However many people do not have the initial capital to sink into such investments and therefore once again the deficit between the well-off and comfortably off and badly off widens.

Legislation in this country favours the property owner over the property dweller. As a tenant you can delay the issue but very rarely do anything about things such as eviction orders. Any rent commissions will only be able to assess rental values based on equivalent rents in equivalent properties all of which are inflated. With utilities in private hands there is no control over bills which have risen astronomically over the last few years. For a 2/3 bedroom house outside London you can now expect to pay £500 per month in rent, add to this £100 for council tax, £30 for gas, £30 for electricity, £30 for water, then there’ll be the phone bill which will be around £25 for line rental . This is £715 so far without having paid for any food and clothing and all the other assorted sundries. That translates to £8580 per year net, and add likely associated costs and you have more than £10,000 annual expenditure for the most cautious of households. That translates to around £15k minimum gross income needed just for subsistence survival, now if you take that down to its hourly rate (based on a 40 hour week) that is £7.21/ hour. At present the minimum wage in Britain is £5.05 per hour for workers aged 22 years and older (*£4.25 per hour for workers aged 18 – 21 years inclusive, £3 per hour which for all workers under the age of 18). It does not take a degree in economics to see that if you are losing 25% per hour that this translates to a massive shortfall week on week and year on year. Rents and other costs do not take into consideration what income you are on.

If childcare is added into the mix it makes the situation far more difficult. I used to pay £50 a week for 1 of my children to do 2 half day sessions at nursery a week. Bear in mind this means more than £1 an hour on a working week, and most parents who are forced to work full-time will pay far more than this. Financially-speaking I was not able to afford for my children to go to nursery any more than the 2 sessions whilst it was equally financially impossible for my ex to return to work because it was unlikely she would be earning more than the childcare costs alone.

I firmly believe that one of the reasons that the birth rate in this country and many other EU countries is going down is because of the financial implications of children on many of the couples that might traditionally have families. For example many couples on medium to low incomes have been forced to combine their incomes in order to afford a mortgage. This means the shortfall in income of one partner for a number of months is simply not viable if mortgage payments are to be met. Maternity payments do exist but only generally for people who have been in a company for a number of years, the remainder of mothers will either get incapacity benefit or be expected to live off their partner’s income.

I could go on about families not being able to afford the unpaid parental leaves to allow father’s to spend time with their children etc. etc. etc but I think the point is already made about what a profound effect the housing situaion has on the demographics of the population at large. It would be easy to think that house ownership has always been the norm but in fact in the time of Charles Dickens even the comfortable middle classes would have rented, some of them and the upper classes may have had family seats that had been passed down but certainly amongst those that had to live off income derived from their labour it would have been fairly unheard of to own a house.

It was to house these people that council housing was invented so that all people had the right to live in security. Sadly greed has resulted in a mass council house sell-off fundamentally started by Thatcher in the 1980s but continued by Labour albeit through slighty more covertly by handing over the rights to private companies. However one felt aboutt hat sell-off at the time the fact is that this was a case of short-termism in the extreme. As councils do not anymore have housing to offer the disenfranchised and dispossessed they will remain in temporary hostels, young people will be forced to remain in the family home for longer and couples will struggle to have a mortgage and children and forced to choose one or the other.

At the time of the initial sell-off one can reasonably argue that those in council housing were largely those that needed to be so, however no such guarantee exists anymore and in popular areas, in particular the metropolitan areas, prices of housing has risen to levels far beyond the reach of those for whom the council housing system was designed to protect.

In conclusion then the knock-on effect purely in the housing crisis is a drop in the birth rates, an absence of key-workers, an increase in the homeless, an increase in the number of tenants in rented accommodation, an increase in those living in temporary housing such as B+Bs and hostels, an increase in houses being reposessed at any increase in interest rates, an increase in 2nd housing used for renting out and holiday accomodation by the more wealthy thus fractionalising communities. I can’t see these consequences being positive for any except the most well-off and they have quite enough advantages already. Whilst one expects the Conservative government of the 1980s to have pandered to the well-off, history will show unfortunately that the 1997-2010 Labour government only furthered the cause of the wealthy and simply added a small handful of people to the plutocracy whilst the majority starved.

Song Of The Day – Mistral – The Wanderer

Original Comments:


The Capt. made this comment,
Red Baron: It’s amazing how the two countries mirror each other. You are on POINT! I think a global revolution is in store for the world, coming from those of the working and middle class jointly setting the agenda. There is power there that hasn’t been `self realized’, but it’s gonna come. Folks better get ready.
The Capt.

-Redbaron responds – I sincerely hope you’re right Capt. I fail to see how continuing in the current vein can have a beneficial effect on most of the population of the world and therefore something has to give.-

comment added :: 29th March 2006, 17:31 GMT+01 :: http://thecapt.blog-city.com
john made this comment,
“With the pensions system at the moment in a parlous state it is small wonder that many have chosen the property market as their method of safeguarding their future”…Until they are forced to sell what they have spent a lifetime trying to own when local authorities grab their homes to pay for their residential care in old age. Very interesting post Baron.
-Redbaron responds – Yes indeed it is quite a quandry to which the only answer I can see is for the State to control and administer both housing and care, this way there is no carrot and stick approach where the carrot is taken away just on the point of being captured as there is now.-

comment added :: 31st March 2006, 15:43 GMT+01 :: http://bigjohn.blog-city.com

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Alienation – Future Shocks – Part 11 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
February 10, 2006

The other section hell bent on homogenising our daily lives are the industrialists who think nothing of turning high streets into a thing of the past in preference of the out of town retail park option. Such places tend to be synonymous with the same shop in the same place stocking the same goods. Naturally they do not do this for the good of the consumer, there are tangible business reasons for such a policy. Distribution is generally a lot better with the retail parks being on main roads often near arterial dual carriageways, ring roads and motorways, this means large lorries can easily access and thus maximise the loads that can be carried at any one time reducing the companies costs. In addition to this the transportation costs are borne by the employees and the customers rather than companies having to obtain parking in areas where property costs are high as they may have done previously. Customers are wooed by the prospect of a number of larger shops with greater selection in the one area, meals are catered for and this is all part of ensuring that people “make a day of it”

The effects of such a change are more far-reaching than we might have thought. It is indisputable that modern life has little or no community element to it and the shopping experience is another area where the previously more social way of doing things is replaced by a more insulat one. Most people will travel to retail parks by car rather than by communal public transport like buses. The act of going round these huge multiplexes is also an insular one, faceless sales assistants will serve you one week and may have gone back to college the next. There is little or no continuity of service because individualism is difficult to control and therefore largely discouraged. The days of knowing shopkeepers by name and having “the usual” lined up upon arrival are rapidly receding. We are rapidly losing the interaction that comes with day to day conversation with people we do not know, banter if you like is one of the greatest sufferers from this paradigm shift. Children and adults alike are no longer in situations where they would banter and are starting to lose the ability to do so. The traditional areas of shops and churches and pokey little local pubs and small intimate restaurants are replaced by supermarkets, large chain bars and restaurants designed to pack ’em in and turn ’em round asap. Is this part of the problem of lack of respect that the young now show to those around them? It’s possible, it is obviously not the sole reason and yet it cannot surely be underestimated that the decimation of communal society is a cause for the disassociation of many.

We are all under the impression that we are, at least financially, getting a good deal out of this, after all why would we have left the high street shops if not because supermarkets were much cheaper? To disprove this theory one only needs return to the markets and buy fresh seasonal food to find out how much cheaper it can be. When I returned to London at Christmas I went down one such a market to find that I was able to avail of a bag of bananas for £1 (Supermarket price approx. £1.50-£2), 8 mangoes £2 (supermarket price £1.50 each), 3 small pineapples £1 (supermarket price medium pineapple £1.50 each), 8 romero sweet peppers £1 (supermarket £1.50 for pack of 3), 12 orange capsicum £1 (supermarket £0.49p each), one string of garlic approx 40 cloves £1 (supermarket £1.50 for bag of 3 cloves), a bag of about 100 hot green chili peppers £1 (supermarket £0.50 packet of 4). Now in many respects this was more than I could eat, I gave a load of the chilis away and still have some left, the garlic is now sprouting and I’ve been using stacks of it, the peppers were used in pasta sauces and jambalaya and the quality of all the items I purchased was excellent.

One must look very critically at the supermarket phenomenon and just how they are managing to pervade every form of retail. The loss leader strategy is a well-known one and one the supermarkets use to good effect. By selling milk at less than the cost of producing it and selling cheap bread they entice people in for staple foods, and once you’re in there they’ve got you because like the retail park concept you may have travelled a little further, you’re going to make the most of it and get your weekly shop done at the same time and this “convenience” is the trap. Certain key items are designed to be cheap so as not to make you think whilst other prices designed to be less neticable are comparatively more expensive as I have just illustrated. Interestingly though you quite often get what you pay for, supermarket food often goes off very quickly, partially because it tends to be far less fresh and also in the case of things like bread because things have been added to make it do so. After all the sooner you run out of bread and milk the sooner you’ll be back for another crack.

Just as we cannot go on with our current energy policy, health policy, we cannot go on with this insular existence. We inhabit large “open plan” offices where people feel exposed and vulnerable and go introspective rather than being able to build a rapport with those around them. We sit in little metal boxes trying to get home and shouting at those in front and those at the sides for obstructing our progress. At the weekend we go to retail parks and buy the same items from the same shops regardless of georgraphy. It is a difficult trap not to fall into. The modern way of life is fast-paced and furious not to mention expensive, therefore time-saving and money-saving measures are tempting and almost seem to be the only way.

We all do it, for example spending time talking to people on the internet, where we may in fact know people better than many we know in real life. That wouldn’t be a problem as a compliment to the real world but as a replacement it is worrying. The social exclusion and detachment this forms perpetuates the problem. People may be being increasingly radicalised in their own homes but we wouldn’t know many of them will never come out.

Song Of The Day ~ Del Amitri – Nothing Ever Happens

Original Comments:


john made this comment,
All very true Baron. Until recently we had a local ‘community’ store which helped the many old folk around here by making up small orders and delivering them for free. It closed down due to a bloody Tesco Express opening in the high street. I expect others will follow.
comment added :: 15th February 2006, 16:00 GMT+01 :: http://bigjohn.blog-city.com
april made this comment,
Yes, RedBaron, it is all true. But why bemoan the fact? It is what it is. Change is a constant. If you are unhappy with the large shops, don’t frequent them. There will always be small shops to frequent, you just have to look harder for them. And there are good people everywhere, there always will be, even in the big chain stores, you just have to engage them; a smile usually works.
-Redbaron responds – Hello April, nice to see you again. You are right in part, at the moment there exists a choice but it is becoming at the expense of diversity. The trend is that small shops will cease to exist in many areas especially those where the population density is large enough to merit malls and superstores. Small shops cannot aford to specialist in the range they used to be able to because often the trade is now more sporadic. Furthermore whilst there may be good people in supermarkets they have no influence over the corporate policy. In a small shop if you would like them to tailor-make something to your specifications and requirements they are more able to accomodate. I’ve lived in the US where there was 1 Dairy Mart 3 miles away and the mall 6 miles away. The residential close I lived in had no community at all, when and where would people have any chance to meet?-

comment added :: 7th May 2006, 00:53 GMT+01
april made this comment,
Hi Red Baron, nice to be here. Yes, I agree with you about the workers having no influence over corporate policy. However, if one supermarket doesn’t cater to their customers, won’t they lose business? After all, they are in the business of making money, albeit not much (supermarkets don’t work on a very high markup, I understand) and if the consumer goes elsewhere, they lose money. Corporate policy being what it is, I think the consumer has more power now to get what they want, not less. Corporations are so afraid of lawsuits in the States, for instance, at one of the department stores where I support clients (I work with people with developmental disabilities) store management and staff cannot even stop people from shoplifting!! They can see them do it, yet cannot even speak to them about it for fear of a lawsuit. But I digress. RedBaron, people live by a pattern. What I mean is, we are creatures of habit, going to the same places day in and day out. The grocer, the coffee shop, or perhaps the tea shoppe where you live. Don’t you run into those same people daily? I know I do. I have absolutely no trouble engaging people in conversation. I do see what you’re talking about however. It bugs the crap out of me when someone is walking toward me and they refuse to make eye contact, or don’t return a smile, or indicate in some way that we have shared the same space, but I think that is just selfish ignorance, which exists, but not in as great numbers as some think. Anyway…now I’m just babbling, trying to convince you that life is good…
-Redbaron responds- April I think you are right in theory but I also think you may underestimate the tactics of the supermarkets. I don’t know about the US but over here they have many very clever ways of doing things, it is precisely our ‘creature of habit’ syndrome that can be the problem. Supermarkets work on a small markup in certain areas and even a loss leader in others like milk. However their offers and loyalty cards and extra points etc. are designed to have us buy what they want. If this tactic were unsucessfull then they would be losing money and not reporting huge profits as they are. They rely on us being used to doing a weekly shop in one place and trying to cut down on the need to go to multiple places for specifics. Because of their immense buying power they can buy cheap and sell cheap.

As for people, is it any wonder that in our isolationist world people are retreating into their shells more and more, they have been bred to do so by the constant media message of fear of violence etc. People remain in a heightened state of alert and that’s how the state likes it because it makes them maleable.

Life is good for some people now I do not doubt this, I just think it should and could be good for so many more people than the current system allows.-

comment added :: 10th May 2006, 03:13 GMT+01

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Playing The Transport Card – Future Shocks – Part 10 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
January 8, 2006

I have never exactly shied away from my critique of the fiasco that is current transport policy in this country, and I am fully aware that this country is not on it’s own in that regard. The government’s current stance on the 4%-9% increase in rail fares is a prime example of how the present strategy is simply going nowhere. According to the government’s transport secretary Alastair Darling “It has all got to be paid for and we’ve got to strike a balance between the amount of money that the taxpayer puts in and the amount that the fare-payer puts in as well.” Which is interesting because of course that would appear to suggest that the profit-making company doesn’t put any in at all.

Regulated fares, which cover season tickets and saver tickets, are going up by an average of 3.9%, whilst unregulated fares, including cheap day returns, are rising by an average of 4.5% but with this being a mean figure obviously some rises are much higher, anything up to 9% on some lines and these particularly effect tickets bought on the day rather than in advance. The organisation which speaks for the train operators Atoc said all railways on long-distance routes were winning business back from the airlines. I’m sorry but I don’t see it. Last year I costed up my trip to the G8 Summit in Edinburgh. I wanted to travel by train because I find it the most conducive way to travel both for my conscience and my comfort. The price of a return to Edinburgh would have been well over £100 (luckily I was not planning to travel through London or in the rush hour or on a Friday!) and I would have had to change trains at least twice, the journey taking around 5-6 hours approximately. This compares very poorly to travel by air. I was able to obtain a return ticket from an airport half an hour away from me direct to Edinburgh for £45 including taxes and the journey took 45 minutes. How was I able to justify being a climate criminal in this regard? Simple really, had I had to go by train I would not have been able to afford to go at all. It is rather ironic really. The situation now after the fare increases cannot be any better. For example a standard return ticket bought from Edinburgh to London will now cost £220, that’s hardly a very tempting prospect since I suspect most of the people who could afford to spend £220 for such a journey can easily afford a more luxurious and probably quicker method of transport so I fail to see what demographic is likely to be enticed by such a pricing policy.

Likewise cash fares on the London Underground have gone up to £3 for a single journey. This whole situation is not integrated and it makes a mockery of the government’s claim to Kyoto quotas and luring people out of their cars. For instance in Central London the congestion charge is now £5 but that covers the car for the day and whilst you would not buy a succession of single tickets on the Underground a Travelcard which would provide unlimited travel on trains and buses costs between £4.30 for off-peak not including the Central London zone to a staggering £12.40 for all zones that include travel in the rush hour. How does this compare with other cities? Let’s see:

  • New York: $2 (£1.16)
  • Paris: €1.40 (96p)
  • Russia: 13 roubles (26p)
  • Madrid: €1.15 (79p)
  • Tokyo: 160-300 yen (78p to £1.48)

Is London worth it? Well, for those of you who can come as tourists and enjoy for a finite period of time perhaps, but for those of us who had to live there, no, definitely not, salaries in London are not so appreciably higher to allow for all the excess amount that one has to spend on the cost of living.

On the other hand I have travelled on the very German-like Park and Ride system in Nottingham which involved free parking just off the M1 and a £2.20 ticket which entitled me to tram travel for the whole day. The journey to the city centre was effortless and efficient and took around 15-20 minutes. The journey back was in the rush hour but I still got on the tram, when I used to commute in London I was often not so fortunate. The Nottingham system is a relatively new one that has been in place less than 5 years as part of a limited resurgence in trams in English cities. Most cities here have not operated trams since the 1960s and there are still plenty that do not operate an efficinet park and ride system using the bus services.

In my view there are 2 specific reasons why the transport system here does not and cannot work if things continue the way the currently are. The first is that ownership is currently often in private hands meaning that investment must come second to profit, and the second reason is that there is no significant sign of genuine concerted investment from the Government, in fact quite the contrary if one considers quotes like that of Mr Darling above which suggest that the incumbant administration is as inclined to allow the public transportation system to fall into disrepair as the Conservative administrations of the 1980-90s were. This usually preceeds a move toward privatisation, although New Labour are well-aware of the negative significance of such a word and prefer the term PPP or Public-Private-Partnership. The end result is much the same.

My idea is that all public transport, which should be primarily electric-based and therefore low emission at source such as trams, electric buses/trolley buses and electric trains, should be in public hands. This way it can be run as a service rather than for profit, this means there may be instances where a service is run at a loss because of the necessity of its continuation as a facility. To this end I would advocate the entire renationalision of the entire rail network, tram systems, bus companies etc. This would require a large financial outlay which should be done on a government compulsory purchase order. The less money outlayed at this point the more can be plunged into direct immediate investment into service provision. It is no use having a transport card type system where the transport infrastructure is not already in place to cope with a massive increase in demand.

There should be a levy raised from gross income in percentage form which should be for the transport card. This should be a sum equivalent to basic costs of transportation for necessary purposes based on travel by public transportation. This should be paid by everyone with no exceptions and should be a percentage of income. There should be no charge for public transport at the point of usage tho’ people should be required to have their card read when using public transport. The lack of charge should make public transport an attractive option and have the advantage of providing a fixed defined income for the transportation network and a way of assessing the usage by means of the card.

Everybody’s needs for transport should be evaluated and that amount be put on their transport card. Needs mean just that, for work, school and shopping etc. There should be an ex gratia amount over for use for trips out at weekends and for holiday purposes. There should only be a restriction on private transport methods not on public methods.

Private transport should be thus heartily discouraged, that there may be the need for certain people to have certain access is unquestionable and such allowances can be made on the transport card, enabling the purchase of fuel at a low rate. Other fuel purchases should be heavily taxed so as to make it financially imprudent to have cars that are fuel inefficient. Fuel should only be sold on production and processing of the transport card. Of course fraud in terms of the card and selling of illicit fuel would have to be addressed. To my mind the state must control supply of the fuel in the first place. This is not going to happen with convention oil-based products as the current oil companies have too much lobbying power. Thus less traditional means of fuel need to be used, and this is concurrent with the fact that the oil will run out anyway. I don’t know what would be the best method in this instance, my knowledge of the market is not sufficient but the Brazilian use of alcohol, or electricity, gas, biomass, bio-diesel or some such, should be explored.

People who live in areas not covered by public transport should be given the necessary dispensation on their transport card to allow them enough fuel to get to the nearest park and ride point whence they can continue their journey. The system of park and ride works well in Germany where it is rare for most people to commute all the way to work by public transport. Of course ideally the public transportation system should be expanded to include as many remote areas as possible and if there means of transportation is in public hands there should be no reason why the services cannot be provided.

Transportation of goods should be carried out by train and lorries should only be used when necessary for short haul trips from rail depot to final destination. This would have a catastrophic effect on the haulage industry and I’m sorry for those that would be affected by this but I’m afraid the catastrophic effect that will occur on a pan-global scale if we do not drastically change things far outweighs the needs of the lorry drivers and haulage company workers, they can be retrained, the Earth cannot.

This may sound all very draconian and nanny state but I’m afraid there has to be a paradigm shift in how we look at the energy we consume and we are not simply going to do all the work ourselves, we will have to be prodded to do so. At least if the state is in control and governing properly it should be doing so for the good of the people rather than for profit purposes as if in private hands. Naturally for that a different form of government and perhaps completely different form of governmental system needs to be in place, and we’d have to tackle that in another post.

Song Of The Day ~ Bloc Party – Helicopter

Original Comments:


Jimmy Sunshine made this comment,
leyton orient?
-Redbaron responds – La la la I can’t hear you!-

comment added :: 8th January 2006, 17:09 GMT+01

David S made this comment,
So how do you feel about George Galloway, Respect MP for Bethnal Green using his time for shameless self-promotion instead of working for his constinuents like 95% of other MPs. He is a crook, a joke and a disgrace.
comment added :: 10th January 2006, 11:37 GMT+01

Mark Ellott made this comment,
Years ago an editor of a motorcycle magazine suggested that all long distance freight should travel by train (we’re talking 1970s). He was castigated by… the road haulage lobby (quelle surprise). I agreed with him then and I agree with him now. Rail is a sensible method of long distance haulage and there are still miles of usable paths on the system.
As for the underground in London – even with my preferential rates (being a rail worker) I decided shanks’ pony was the better option between Paddington and Euston.

As for restrictions on private transport, I’d rather see a concerted effort on alternative energy sources. Now, an alcohol burning motorcycle – I’d be interested…

comment added :: 10th January 2006, 20:19 GMT+01 :: http://longrider.blog-city.com

jimmy sunshine made this comment,
RB what the fuck is George doing? I’m embarrassed and disillusioned. How do you feel about all this?
-Redbaron responds – you’ve just beaten me to it mate I’m finishing off an entry on it.-

comment added :: 11th January 2006, 22:56 GMT+01

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Blind Justice – Future Shocks – Part 9 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
January 4, 2006

Frans van Anraat may count himself a little unfortunate to have been given a 15 year jail term for complicity to war crimes particularly in the current geo-political climate. Of course Meneer van Anraat seeking to profit from the sale of constituent components of chemical weapons to Saddam Hussein’s regime is something that he should rightly stand trial for and yet this beacon of world justice seems misplaced and hollow in the light of so much that has been going on in the last 50 years.

The weapons created using the components obtained from van Anraat were part of a “a political policy of systematic terror and illegal action against a certain population group,” namely Saddam’s repression against the Kurds in the Northern areas of Iraq in 1988. A crime widely reported that the US and the rest of the world chose to ignore at the time. Of course one must add the context here that Iraq was the US’s choice in the Middle East power struggle of the 1st Persian Gulf War between Iran and Iraq which ran from 1980-88.

Hmm, interesting, ok fair enough, so how does the van Anraat ruling square with “It is in Britain’s interests that Indonesia absorbs the territory [East Timor] as soon and as unobtrusively as possible, and when it comes to the crunch, we should keep our heads down.” (Former GB ambassador, Sir John Archibald Ford). British Aerospace Hawk aircraft sold to the Indonesian air force were observed on bombing runs across East Timor every year from 1984 until the Indonesians eventually withdrew from the territory after General Suharto (whose regime originally began purchases of the plane from the Wilson government in 1978) was no longer in charge.

How does this ruling square with U.S. covert operations between 1968 and 1975 to destabilize the democratically elected government of Salvador Allende in Chile and, after the violent 1973 coup, to bolster the military regime of Augusto Pinochet, a regime responsible for ‘the disappeared’ accused of state terrorism and genocide and the definite killing of 3,000 people and probably disposal of a further 1,100+ who remain unaccounted for?

How does this ruling square with the Nicaragua contra funded operations of the US that resulted in the destruction both of government and economy in Nicaragua and the loss of 60,000 lives? The Sandinista government had won international acclaim for its gains in literacy, health care, education, childcare, unions, and land reform. The US paid $178 billion to destabilise and eventually bring down the government in 1990.

van Anraat is not the first in the US-led succession of kangaroo trials. Taking things from Nuremburg on, it is worth analysing the actual numbers of those Nazis convicted. It is hardly surprising that Simon Wiesenthal, the Nazi hunter, had enough work to keep him going until his death more than 50 years after the Nuremburg trials. The end of the Second World War maked the shift of the US’s enemy from Fascism to Communism and thus a principle of the enemy of my enemy is my friend has been applied. Hence coutless Nazis were simply overlooked in the quest to rebuild West Germany as a buffer against the emergence of a Soviet-influenced Eastern Europe.

In more recent times one need look no further than the trial of Slobodan Milosevic another case of victor’s justice. The Milosevic trial has gone remarkably silent since the defendent decided he was going to actually stand up for himself and not wallow in the dock in contrite fashion. Time was it was in the news every day and yet a couple of sucessive days of Milosevic’s defence and he was micraculously dropped from the schedules. I can only suspect that the trial of Saddam will go much the same way should the bearded one attempt to put up any sort of cogent fight. It is rather coincidental that his defence team seem to have a life expectancy akin to First World War pilots and yet the prosecutors who one might think would be the targets of the remaining insurgents appear to be either anonymous or adequately protected.

Whilst the world allows one single country to prosecute all others whilst it itself refuses to even subject any of its citizens to international legal scrutiny there can be no justice.

I know there will be many Americans remain in the belief that the US is a force for good in the world. Whatever one thinks of the motives and however naive one may be regarding the involvement take a closer look at US involvement across the globe since WWII, you may find the following a good starting point for research. Take one of these conflicts and research why it happened. Look at why it has been “necessary” for the US to bomb over 50 countries since WWII. Look at how it has been possible for the US to in fact invade a British sovereign territory in 1983 when Thatcher was still in charge. If you choose to you will find twice as much again between the years of 1798 and 1948 so it is hardly a recent phenomenon.

  • 1946 – Iran – troops deployed in northern province.
  • 1946 – 1949 – China – Major US army presence of about 100,000 troops, fighting, training and advising local combatants.
  • 1947 – 1949 – Greece – US forces wage a 3-year counterinsurgency campaign.
  • 1948 – Italy – Heavy CIA involvement in national elections.
  • 1948 – 1954 – Philippines – Commando operations, “secret” CIA war.
  • 1950 – 1953 – Korea – Major forces engaged in war in Korean peninsula.
  • 1953 – Iran – CIA overthrows government of Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh.
  • 1954 – Vietnam – Financial and material support for colonial French military operations, leads eventually to direct US military involvement.
  • 1954 – Guatemala – CIA overthrows the government of President Jacobo Arbenz Guzman.
  • 1958 – Lebanon – US marines and army units totaling 14,000 land.
  • 1958 – Panama – Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
  • 1959 – Haiti – US Marines land.
  • 1960 – Congo – CIA-backed overthrow and assassination of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.
  • 1960 – 1964 – Vietnam – Gradual introduction of military advisors and special forces.
  • 1961 – Cuba – failure of CIA-backed and trained Bay of Pig invasion aimed at deposing Castro.
  • 1962 – Cuba – Cuban Missile Crisis, Nuclear threat and naval blockade (US aggressive tactics met with stonewall from Kruschev who refused to sanction retalitory actions)
  • 1962 – Laos – CIA-backed military coup.
  • 1963 – Ecuador – CIA backs military overthrow of President Jose Maria Valesco Ibarra.
  • 1964 – Panama – Clashes between US forces in Canal Zone and local citizens.
  • 1964 – Brazil – CIA-backed military coup overthrows the government of Joao Goulart and Gen. Castello Branco takes power.
  • 1965 – 1975 – Vietnam – Large commitment of military forces, including air, naval and ground units numbering up to 500,000+ troops. Full-scale war, lasting for ten years.
  • 1965 – Indonesia – CIA-backed army coup overthrows President Sukarno and brings Gen. Suharto to power.
  • 1965 – Congo – CIA backed military coup overthrows President Joseph Kasavubu and brings Joseph Mobutu to power.
  • 1965 – Dominican Republic – 23,000 troops land.
  • 1965 – 1973 – Laos – Bombing campaign begin, lasting eight years.
  • 1966 – Ghana – CIA-backed military coup ousts President Kwame Nkrumah.
  • 1966 – 1967 – Guatemala – Extensive counter-insurgency operation.
  • 1969 – 1975 – Cambodia – CIA supports military coup against Prince Sihanouk, bringing Lon Nol to power. Intensive bombing for seven years along border with Vietnam.
  • 1970 – Oman – Counter-insurgency operation, including coordination with Iranian marine invasion.
  • 1971 – 1973 – Laos – Invasion by US and South Vietnames forces.
  • 1973 – Chile – CIA-backed military coup ousts government of President Salvador Allende. Gen. Augusto Pinochet comes to power.
  • 1975 – Cambodia – Marines land, engage in combat with government forces.
  • 1976 – 1992 – Angola – Military and CIA operations.
  • 1980 – Iran – Special operations units land in Iranian desert. Helicopter malfunction leads to aborting of planned raid.
  • 1981 – Libya – Naval jets shoot down two Libyan jets in maneuvers over the Mediterranean.
  • 1981 – 1992 – El Salvador – CIA and special forces begin a long counterinsurgency campaign.
  • 1981 – 1990 – Nicaragua – CIA directs exile “Contra” operations. US air units drop sea mines in harbors.
  • 1982 – 1984 – Lebanon – Marines land and naval forces fire on local combatants.
  • 1983 – Grenada – Military forces invade Grenada.
  • 1983 – 1989 – Honduras – Large program of military assistance aimed at conflict in Nicaragua.
  • 1984 – Iran – Two Iranian jets shot down over the Persian Gulf.
  • 1986 – Libya – US aircraft bomb the cities of Tripoli and Benghazi, including direct strikes at the official residence of President Muamar al Qadaffi.
  • 1986 – Bolivia – Special Forces units engage in counter-insurgency.
  • 1987 – 1988 – Iran – Naval forces block Iranian shipping. Civilian airliner shot down by missile cruiser.
  • 1989 – Libya – Naval aircraft shoot down two Libyan jets over Gulf of Sidra.
  • 1989 – Philippines – CIA and Special Forces involved in counterinsurgency.
  • 1989 – 1990 – Panama – 27,000 troops as well as naval and air power used to overthrow government of President Noriega.
  • 1990 – Liberia – Troops deployed.
  • 1990 – 1991 – Iraq – Major military operation, including naval blockade, air strikes; large number of troops attack Iraqi forces in occupied Kuwait.
  • 1991 – 2003 – Iraq – Control of Iraqi airspace in north and south of the country with periodic attacks on air and ground targets.
  • 1991 – Haiti – CIA-backed military coup ousts President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.
  • 1992 – 1994 – Somalia – Special operations forces intervene.
  • 1992 – 1994 – Yugoslavia – Major role in NATO blockade of Serbia and Montenegro.
  • 1993 – 1995 – Bosnia – Active military involvement with air and ground forces.
  • 1994 – 1996 – Haiti – Troops depose military rulers and restore President Jean-Bertrand Aristide to office.
  • 1995 – Croatia – Krajina Serb airfields attacked.
  • 1996 – 1997 – Zaire (Congo) – Marines involved in operations in eastern region of the country.
  • 1997 – Liberia – Troops deployed.
  • 1998 – Sudan – Air strikes destroy country’s major pharmaceutical plant.
  • 1998 – Afghanistan – Attack on targets in the country.
  • 1998 – Iraq – Four days of intensive air and missile strikes.
  • 1999 – Yugoslavia – Major involvement in NATO air strikes.
  • 2001 – Macedonia – NATO troops shift and partially disarm Albanian rebels.
  • 2001 – Afghanistan – Air attacks and ground operations oust Taliban government and install a new regime.
  • 2003 – Iraq – Invasion with large ground, air and naval forces ousts government of Saddam Hussein and establishes new government.
  • 2003 – present – Iraq – Occupation force of 150,000 troops in protracted counter-insurgency war
  • 2004 – Haiti – Marines land. CIA-backed forces overthrow President Jean-Bertrand Aristide.

Of course that’s the price of freedom isn’t it? World’s police force eh? Or perhaps more the actions of a country that is hell-bent on completely safeguarding its interests at all costs despite the price in human terms.

Song Of The Day ~ Big Audio Dynamite – E=mc²

Original Comments:


fiordizucca made this comment,
happy new year Barone 😉
comment added :: 4th January 2006, 15:43 GMT+01 :: http://fiordizucca.blogspot.com

John made this comment,
I believe that it was the British who invented ‘gunboat diplomacy’ but the Americans are now the masters of ‘gunpoint democracy’.
comment added :: 7th January 2006, 17:09 GMT+01 :: http://bigjohn.blog-city.com/

The Fat Boy made this comment,
RedBaron, I don’t agree with your political opinions, but you write well. Do you write for newspapers? Have you considered it?
-Redbaron responds – Thank you for the compliment, I do not write for newspapers at least not on politics or the like because I have a fundamental aversion to doing what I am told. I have written on more boring stuff but it isn’t nearly as fun!-

comment added :: 9th January 2006, 13:12 GMT+01 :: http://spongeblog.blog-city.com

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Iraq – Future Shocks – Part 5 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
November 30, 2005

It would be a surprise to most, if not all, the people who know me to hear me agree with George W. Bush but in one instance it is indeed true, however let me qualify that statement before you all pack up in disgust. Bush’s famous “You’re either with us or against us” was something of a defining moment of a president who attempts to make up in sound-bites what he lacks in intellect. Bush attempts with his use of the word ‘us’ to galvanise the Western World into an alliance against those ‘he’ defines as the enemy. The actuality of the ‘us’ he is using is the US corporate political establishment and when one realises this it becomes a lot easier to see how the polarisation that Bush almost prophesied has in fact come true. The Iraq war has had a practically unprecedented unifying effect on people across the world as normally disparate groups are united in their condemnation of US involvement in Iraq.

It has also unified the violent insurrection against the US aggressor in a way that was not the case when they invaded Iraq in the first place. More and more the US has put itself up as a target to be shot at, Blair as Bush’s faithful poodle has been happy to lead Britain down the same path and there are increasing signs in Basra that the attempts to project a harmonious relationship in the British sector are far from the truth.

According to former US diplomat Peter Galbraith – in Jan 2003 Bush invited 3 members of Iraqi resistance to watch Superbowl with him. During this meeting these 3 realised that Bush was not aware at this point that there was a difference between Shia and Sunni Muslims. Whilst this is unsurprising that Bush himself is so ill-informed it seems staggering that none of his advisors had sought to rectify the fact. Galbraith goes on that since most people do not consider themselves Iraqi before they consider themselves Sunni or Shia or Kurd the idea of forming a united Iraq is Mission Impossible. We must not forget that Iraq is a modern construct of territories in Mesopotamia and Kurdistan, their is no sense of long handed-down national identity like we know in Europe. Suffice to say it was a mess the British made last time they buggered about with it. Much the same can of course be said for Palestine and Ireland!

In March 2003 US war planners met to discuss the practicalities of the ousting of Saddam – Phase 4c for reconstruction of Iraq had not nearly as much depth as Phase 3 which was combat, which is curious when you think that the vastly superior US military should have had little problem overcoming the Iraqi resistance in the initial phases of a rebellion, and certainly if the propaganda was true and the Iraqis would be welcoming the US with open arms then there would be little insurgency thereafter.

However it would be wrong to assume that it was only in the US that such idiocy was going on. On the eve of the invasion Toby Dodge of London University gave a likely case scenario to the Labour government which in fact detailed almost exactly what did indeed happen based on the historical precedent as well as the prospected operations. George Joffe of Cambridge University had similar meeting, whilst Joffe tried to explain the potential problems of such an attempt to follow the Americans in their crusade against Saddam, Blair responded “…but he’s evil isn’t he?” And this appeared to be enough justification for him.

Whether simply ridiculous naivety or a calculated facade, US expectation was that they would be met by rejoicing in the streets of Baghdad and Basra according to Cheney. I have already documented a quote that was reported by journalists at the time the US forces moved into Iraq where one Iraqi man in response to the journalist’s question “Are you pleased to see the Americans come to liberate Iraq” stated “Americans, Saddam, we don’t care who as long as you bring peace.” This tempers the euphoria somewhat. It also goes some way to explain the situation now.

The reality in Iraq is not exactly what the US and UK administration flanked by their ’embedded’ media acolytes would have us believe. It is, even now still difficult for non-embedded Western reporters to get around in order to report what is genuinely going on in Iraq, embedded journalists whilst having a greater degree of security by virtue of their military escorts get a state department view of events from Washington and London and not Iraq. Journalists like Robert Fisk who are not embedded illustrate that this state department view is either hopelessly out of touch or criminally negligent to the point of being no better than right-wing state-sponsored agit-prop.

Elections and constitutions are “theatrical events staged for US media consumption disregarding everyday state of Iraq for Iraqis” in response to mass civilian casualties one US source stated “Such tragedies only happen because Zarkawi and his thugs are driving around using car bombs.” This staggeringly insensitive and ill-conceived notion serves only to elucidate the real feeling of US officials as to the state of Iraq.

The news mentions less the situation currently in Sadr City, as if it has all gone rather quiet. The reality is that the US have left Shia militia in charge, Iraqi police and the US army have “reached agreements” with the Mahdi army the group of Moqtada Al Sadr but they claim these are agreements with local representatives as civilians and not as a massed group. The British have done the same in Basra. The result of this has been to allow fundamentalist Shia leaders to create a political theocracy the like of which has not existed in the region in such a way before. The same situation exists with the Peshmurga in Kurdistan. The US is even trying to negotiate with the Ba’athist militia in areas that are still showing signs of resistance in Baghdad and Fallujah, the same insurgents who, according to US military sources in the media are, working with Al Queda. So much for helping bring democracy to Iraq the US is intent on a quick sell-out. The second part really of what has been a simple ram-raid operation for the oil in the shop window. .

For many Iraqi women the current era marks for the first time them being forced to wear veils etc. and be subjected to a fundamentalist interpretation of Sharia law the like of which in Iran has been the subject of much condemnation by the US and UK establishments. Women are being executed for “prostitution” when this could mean nothing more than suspected adultery. These executions are not of course the result of any recognised judicial proceedings but the rough justice that fundamentalists of any variant are likely to favour.

Peter Oborne, political editor of The Spectator, concluded in a problem for the Channel 4 series Dispatches that the invasion of Iraq has failed. I believe this is far from the case because one has to evaluate what the actual goal of the invasion was.

If one believed, like I suspect Oborne does, that the goal was to remove a dangerous dictator and bring about a Western style democracy in Iraq then yes, it is clear this will not be the end result for Iraq. This seems a rather simplistic and establishment viewpoint on the matter though. Contrastingly if one believed, as I do, that US has no desire to have full functioning democracy in Iraq as this would bring about a stable secular country which would unquestionably constitute far more of a threat to the access to oil for the US and its companies involved in Iraq and beyond. Interestingly the US army operatives in Iraq are not permitted to arrest Al-Sadr despite him being wanted for murder. Al-Sadr, is the perfect young pretender to Saddam, left in place just in case the US army should need a bad guy if the whole Al-Zarkawi story ever falls apart.

This sort of conflict is likely to become ever more likely and ever more desperate as it is clear that the US domestic and foreign policy would far rather cling to the old order based on their dominance and control of oil. This means any country that has oil production or is integral to the stability of an oil producing region is going to have to watch itself for a while lest they find Uncle Sam on the borders. However US power is not what it is and it has already over-reached itself by attempting to fight battles on too many simultaneous fronts hence the debacle in Iraq. It would certainly be foolish to attempt any operations against countries such as Venezuela.

Finally one must not forget that the US never signed up to the International War Times Tribunal nor the International Criminal Court. This gives US operatives whether open or covert carte blanche to commit any acts of atrocity necessary to achieve the military objective whilst undermining the legitimacy and efficacy of the 2 supra-national judicial institutions. That is not to say that the US will not use them to moot out its brand of victor’s justice of course as we have seen in the case of Slobodan Milosevic. The US is quite happy to manipulate all sorts of laws to its own ends, for example Rumsfeld was quick to condemn the footage of US captives in Iraq as being contrary to the Geneva Convention. Al Jazeera were quick to point out of course that Guantanamo Bay and the detention of prisoners of war without due process or rights of any kind, the abuses in Abu Gharaib and Baghram, the invasion of a country against the UN security council, if not all directly in contravention of the Geneva Convention they are certainly fundamentally against the very principle.

US operations since the declaration of war on terror have become increasingly more worrying and outside the law. One only needs think of the aforementioned incarceration in Guantanamo Bay, the systematic abuse of prisoners of war in American custody both in Iraq, Afghanistan and beyond and I will be covering the strategy of ‘extraordinary rendition’ later. The CIA operations across the world and the failure of the US to hold any of its active personnel responsible for any conduct is an international scandal. I’m afraid as the US’s grip on power rescinds proportional to the oil reserves left in the world we can expect to see more of the US’s failure to conform to any standards of decency and humanity. The question only remains, which country will be next on their list?

Song Of The Day ~ Editors – Bullets

Original Comments:


Cancergiggles made this comment,
Yes Dom. I’ve been watching extraordinary rendition for many months. George and Tony are war criminals!
comment added :: 1st December 2005, 22:38 GMT+01

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The Health Of Nations – Future Shocks – Part 4 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
November 27, 2005

Yes, another of these thorny issues that we have had under constant scrutiny in the media and government is that of healthcare provision. Whether it be the current Labour government seeking to make Messers Atlee and Bevan turn in their grave by the slow dismantling of the National Health Service the 1946 Labour Government established, or the Conservatives who would in their dreams do away with the NHS entirely and seek an insurance system to ensure that their supporters got the best provision available and those that didn’t support them were slowly killed off, a sort of Tory political darwinism!

One way we can see that governments completely misunderstand what the public want has been graphically illustrated by Tony Blair responding to questions at the House of Commons liaison committee, (which is made up of the chairmen of all its select committees – rather like the Politburo!) Blair recognises that principle voter concern is that there has been systematic under-investment in public services spanning countless administrations, however he makes a serious misjudgement when he continues, “At the same time, the public is saying: ‘If you put more money into these services, we want them to be more responsive to us as consumers’. We should respond to that as a government and do it fairly.” This is not people’s primary concern about public services, responsiveness and accountabilty are all very important but the most important is that public services provide functioning services and that these should be of the highest calibre only after they have suceeded in that endeavour does it become important for the behind the scenes operations to run smoothly. Blair thinks otherwise, his emphasis is made clear by the statement “The idea is to get to the situation where people see that the money we have put into public services is matched by change and reform,” Again this is not the most critical thing in most people’s lives. The fact that there is still a postcode lottery and their hospital does not have an A&E department or the specialists it needs will not be assauged for most people even if the Customer Complaints department is second to none. The same is true of services such as libraries, public transport and the like, it is no consolation if you have a shit bus service if the company running it is accountable and responsive.

Now I’ll grant you what Blair may be referring to is responsiveness etc. to deal with the provision of a service etc. etc. at least I hope that’s what he means beneath that mountain of spin, one can’t really know for sure. But herein lies the problem, what the public want more than anything else is not to have to put up with the political bullshit anymore.

I have never quite understood why the focus for healthcare appears to be with far greater weighting on cure rather than prevention. For all the negative aspects of what people perceive as a nanny state one of the areas that could be most easily justified would be a strong attitude on prevention of disease and malaise. If we take the various notions of drug abuse as a prime example one has to be very careful to draw a line between an individual’s right to choose how they live their life and the potential drain on the resources of healthcare that this person may be. This line is already drawn in society with the outlawing of certain narcotics and the licensing and taxation of others. At the moment though the individual’s right to choose seems more like a euphemism for an abdication of responsibility by the state.

For example, in the case of smoking the government would stand to lose a substantial amount of money were they to genuinely wage war on smoking and treat smokers as proper drug addicts who need to be given rehabilitation. Thus they play a game of cat and mouse whereby tobacco is readily available whilst the areas in which it is permissable to smoke it are whittled down. This is simply unacceptable as it hands initiative to the freedom of choice lobby whilst not offering any defence as to the government acting in the population’s best interests.

Rather like the pensions, education and energy issues we are told that there are tough choices to be made and yet it always seems outlined that there is no actual choice and it wouldn’t be for us to make it if there were. Hospitals and their departments are still being closed and/or moved. Despite huge opposition there appears to be no way of halting the steady progress to foundation hospitals and an even greater postcode lottery than there is now. Foundation hospitals appear to be a way for governments again to avoid the big issue which is that all the NHS needs funding, not just the shiny fashionable parts of it. Whether or not this is intentionally the precursor to the privatisation of the NHS is not important because the end result is likely to be this anyway especially if after the end of this or the next Parliament the Tories were to get in. The Tories are only of the opinion that the NHS should remain free for as long as they feel they cannot get away with dismantling it. Ideologically they do not stand for free public utilities and therefore to make an exception for the NHS is nothing more than temporary political expediency.

What appears no longer to be en vogue is for every person in the country to have local access to all essential healthcare free at the point of use and this should encompass all everyday forms such as access to General Practice Doctors, Dentists, medicines, homecare for the elderly, paedeatric care for children and accident and emergency services. More specialist care should be provided within at least a regional level, it is perhaps optimistic initially to assume that every hospital in the country would have the specialist cardiac units and orthapedics and the like though this should without question be the goal of a state healthcare system. This is most certainly not the case at present. Access to good general practice is often sketchy with patients having to ring up at a particular time of day along with everyone else that wants to book an appointment with their doctor on that day, it is a first come first served basis there is no dispensation for the type of patient or the seriousness of the complaint. Dental care is so prohibitively expensive that it is impossible for most people to even consider all but the very basic of checkups. Prescription charges are such that I have on many occasions decided that I’ll whether the storm of an infection or such like reather than pay £12.50 for 2 sets of tablets. How a parent on low income may cope if more than one child over age 16 comes down with something I don’t know.

Again, though what I have just outlined as a ‘blue sky’ scenario is very much all tailored around a strategy of curing ills rather than stopping them occuring in the first place. Therefore these measures should be in place as a final safety net when all else fails and not an everyday occurance to mop up for the failures in other areas of general health and well-being. It is well known that poverty is a major cause of many very curable diseases, furthermore poor dental hygiene leads to many other problems and general malaise. If poverty is too great a cause for the government to tackle (though heaven knows if the government won’t who’s job is it?) then why not look at some of the other root causes of problems in order to try to stop them before they start. Smoking, obesity, TB, sexually transmitted diseases, heart disease, addiction-related illnesses and some forms of cancer are far better treated by addressing the causes than having to try to address the symptoms.

So why is this not being done? Tobacco companies make large amounts of money and cigarette sales account for a lot of tax revenue. Fast food companies are also creaming large profits at the expense of the taxpayer as the demands of modern life force people to concentrate less on good food and more on the time it takes for them to eat meals before getting back to work. Big business has a knack of being able to ensure they have enough lobbying pressure not to be legislated against so that sorts out why the first two remain a problem. STDs, heart disease and addiction-related illnesses all require effort to ensure that lifestyles are conducive to health rather than problems and this is clearly not being done. Furthermore the sort of screening programs and equipment that would be required to catch many of these diseases in their infacy are high-cost in the initial stages without yielding profit or often tangible results in the short-term. This is exactly why it is paramount that such things stay in public hands without the introduction of the nature of profit which cannnot have any positive bearing on increasing the likelihood of the prevention of disease.

If the nature of the prevention of disease is taken seriously and invested accordingly over time more and more of the budget will be available into medical and scientific research into diseases for which we currently have no cure. At the moment people are dying all over the world both developed and developing of diseases that are perfectly curable and indeed preventable if only the medication and environment existed to do so. Whilst this travesty persists we will be doomed to be fighting the battle from 3 steps behind and never even making it to the front line.

Song Of The Day ~ Good Charlotte – Boys & Girls

Original Comments:


The Fat Boy made this comment,
RB, I love Good Charlotte, too. glad we can agree on something : )
comment added :: 29th November 2005, 09:36 GMT+01 :: http://spongeblog.blog-city.com

baracuda made this comment,
http://ia300836.eu.archive.org/1/items/grapple-in- the-big-apple/grapple-in-the-big-apple_64kb.mp3
Don’t know if you’ve heard this, it’s an mp3 of Hitchins v Galloway in New York.

comment added :: 29th November 2005, 23:07 GMT+01 :: http://blog-chorus.blogspot.com/

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No Exploitation Without Education – Future Shocks – Part 3 (Orig. posted Blog City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
November 25, 2005

No looking to the future series would be complete without a look at the real future, namely the generations to come, our children and their children. The perils that are facing them across the world are magnified by virtue of the fact that even before they have to clean up our mess they must first navigate the education system, and this is for those that have that as an option let alone the millions without adequate food and water.

The Food and Agriculture Organisation has just published a report saying that the 1996 targets of halving the number of the starving by 2015 will not be met. At present 6 million children die every year from malnutrition or starvation, many deaths are actually caused by diseases like diarrhoea, malaria and pneumonia, but victims would survive if they were not already weakened by a lack of food. At the present rate of development only South America and the Caribbean are on course to meet Millennium Development Goal targets. The FAO reports estimate that 852 million people were undernourished during 2000-2002. In fact the proportion of those in sub-saharan Africa has risen from 170.4 million around 1990 to 203.5 million, which makes something of a mockery of the gesturing of the G8 leaders at the summit in Edinburgh last summer.

In Uganda in 1997 primary education was made free and the primary school population rose from just under 3 million to over 7 million almost overnight. However secondary school is not free and costs around 60,000 Shillings (around £20) per term. This is around 6 weeks wages for the average Ugandan, which is more than enough for earning parents let alone parents who are ill with HIV/AIDS or TB and that doesn’t begin to cover the orphans. The fees cannot be waived because if they are the schools do not have the money to pay the teachers who generally are paid months in arrears.

Children not educated in secondary school are likely to become domestic servants. Female “housegirls” are like as not to be used for sex. Ugandan schools therefore witness a sight alien to those of us in the west, where students are trying to break into school rather than out. Hardly surprising when it is considered that school fees not only comprise the access to education and a future but also include a meal at lunchtime, in a country where 23% of the population are malnourished.

To see some of these children talk about how important school and education is for them one cannot help but feel that for every one who is unable to go a spark of hope is snuffed out. It’s not as if children in Uganda don’t have enough to worry about 100,000 children in Uganda alone die of malaria every year. In Africa as a whole a child dies of malaria every 30 seconds. Malaria has killed more people throughout history than all the other causes of human death put together. There may not be a quick fix for such a disease because simple antibiotics and the like will only be effective for a certain period of time before the disease mutates and develops resistance.

It is easy to think that it is just in the developing world where this burgeoning education system requires investment to allow it to benefit the whole population in time and over the generations. This would be a false assumption and either a naive or an arrogant one were one to properly examine our education system in the West. Here the social and financial apartheid of the state and private school systems creates division almost as soon as it is possible to do so. Some local authorities have good nursery education but free nurseries do not start in Britain until age 3. Well-off parents of course have the option of sending children to often facility-rich private nurseries which are often the only institutions pre-secondary school to offer a modern language. At primary school level the postcode lottery comes to the fore again. Offsted reports are scrutinised for every primary school in an area and the good ones affect house prices of the catchment area drastically, once again favouring the more affluent.

Of course results in primary school are seen as the best indication of progress and potential for future direction. Britain’s schools do not respond well to non-conformity of any kind, most of the state schools do not have the resources to, and the private schools can choose children that don’t exhibit it in order to keep the results high and overhead costs low. Of course the better the school the greater the likelihood of a broader range of subjects and sporting facilities etc. The broader the range of subjects on offer the increase in chances that a pupil be given the opportunity to find ones that s/he excels in. Aptitude generally leads easily to success in schools whilst students offered a narrow selection are far more likely to respond with ambivalence.

I have raised the question many times before of who benefits if all children get the best quality of education? It is not just the child nor even the parents but the whole of society, the more children whose aptitude can be assessed the greater the possibilities that they can find a direction that is of interest and benfit to them in later life and this will invariably lead to them feeling more part of society and society gaining the more for such. The inequitous state of education in this country and others like it is a national and international disgrace. That in the 21st century we are unable to adequately guarantee a good and consistent level of education to every child in the land should be something that shames every government that leaves office with the situation unresolved.

In the West currently there is ever more disenfranchisement from society as the education system fails more and more people within it. If one is not of academic normality and this can mean too compentent as not gifted in this area, the education system has little option. To add insult to injury we have been taught over many generations to prize academic excellence above all other and thus for those who fulfill it the possibilities are far greater than for those who do not. One could be the best mechanic in the country but would receive less plaudits from most than a mediocre Dr. On account of the postcode lottery even the academically gifted have no guarantee of receiving the education that will bring out their talents if their parents are not wealthy. The well-off have rather more options, the academic children can be sent to good private or “public” schools to receive a far better level of education than most state schools can offer, whilst the less academically-able child of rich parents can be sent to the sort of institution thaat will look after its own in order that alumnii can rely on a degree of old school tie support to see them right in later years. Private schools are not bounded by the same curriculum restrictions as state schools and therefore have a far greater degree of autonomy to be able to offer that broader range of subjects that can mean so much. Thus even the less well-able can prosper if they are born of the well-off and hedge their bets so as not to come across as ‘unacademic’.

So, as we have seen in both Africa and Britain the differences are not so great, if you are schooled academically you are perceived as being of greater value than if you are not. This must change across the world, there can be no real progress without it. The weighting of the bookish above the dextrous is holding back the progress of human society. Every child without exception must be provided with the best education possible to provide and the broadest range of experiences, only this way can we tackle ignorance and apathy and create people with both social awareness and social responsibility.

In the light of this, to see hundreds of billions chucked on warfare is tantamount to seeing governments dismantle schools that haven’t been built yet. it is our responsibility to reverse that trend.

Song Of The Day ~ Pet Shop Boys – West End Girls

Original Comments:


The Fat Boy made this comment,
NYC has an excellent public education system, except for the violence.
-Redbaron responds – Cuba has an excellent healthcare system except for Guantanamo!-

comment added :: 29th November 2005, 09:42 GMT+01 :: http://spongeblog.blog-city.com

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Energy Matters – Future Shocks – Part 2 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
November 23, 2005

It is November and the weather is getting colder much quicker than anticipated after a fairly mild October by comparison. The cold winter has been forcast for some time so it is not a sudden freak snap.

In spite of this the price of gas per unit has nearly doubled in the last week from 43p to 80p per therm. This is having an obvious knock-on effect to energy companies who will of course pass on these rises to consumers, it is also a potential problem for businesses that rely on gas for production. The chemical industry have already spoken about the possible ramifications of a cold winter meaning jobs will be threatened as production costs rise. Perfect for workers in that industry in the run up to the festive season, there will doubtless be a few parents hoping that their children’s wishes for a white Christmas do not come true, at least not this year.

The reason that this is a particular problem here is that where once Britain had a degree of energy self-sufficiency from the North Sea gas an oil pipelines the reserves have been nearly exhausted enforcing the importation of gas from continental Europe. Britain is now considered a net importer of gas. This situation is not one that is likely to recede it is to increase more and more and prolonged periods of cold weather will only serve to exacerbate the problem. We only need look at the US to see what happens in the case of a country with an energy deficit, were there to be any interruptions in the gas pipeline from Europe for any reason it is difficult to see what course Britain would attempt to take in order to preserve the current energy consumption.

There are of course alternatives to gas as a fuel medium, one set of methods has been on the agenda for some time but it would take time, effort and a lot of research money with initially low chance of return and this is why the cause of renewable energy has been lagging behind for decades. There has been far too much pussy-footing around when it comes to the construction of wind farms and the like due to allegedly “aethesthetic considerations”. This argument I’m afraid is a non-starter, to be honest the same people complaining about the proposed effects of a wind farm on their environment should be given the option of either having said wind farm or being responsible for generating their own power. New homes should all have modern solar panel fitted as standard and that should be a statutory requirement the same way the type of glass in windows is enshrined in legislation. Modern solar panels work best in bright sunshine but not exclusively they also generate energy from light in general.

We are told that there isn’t time to put all the necessary research and development into renewable energies and it has been reinforced by reports this week that in the mind of Tony Blair only nuclear power can best fit the bill in terms of both reducing reliance on fossil fuels and reducing carbon emmissions as per the Kyoto treaty, this is not a very good run-in to the announced review of policy by the government to be completed next year. (The last review was only concluded 2 years ago and had reported that renewable energy and improving efficiency were the best ways to ensure future energy provision was met.) The option of nuclear power seems ridiculous if being discussed for a short-term measure because the costs of building the power stations and obtaining the raw materials are high, it would cost £9 billion to upgrade to retain the current 20% power coming from nuclear rather than ramping down and obviously far more if the percentage is to be increased to lessen the impact of Britain being a net importer of gas. One cannot debate nuclear power without mentioning that the costs both financially and environmentally of the disposal of nuclear waste are astronomical. However the nuclear option does not make sense in the long term either because it too is a power based on the use of a certain material of finite global quantity. Have we learnt nothing from the fossil fuel situation? For us to change from one non-renewable source to another would be a serious policy based on the principle of fingers in the ears and la-la-la I can’t hear you!

According to Labour’s Minister for Energy Malcolm Wicks who claims to be ‘Nuclear Neutral’, renewable energy also has a role to play in New Labour’s vision, in 2020 20% of energy could be provided by renewable sources. This means that in light of the gradual, becoming ever increasingly steeper, decline of fossil fuels we are, like as not, to end up in the situation of France where nuclear makes up 80% of the electricity production.

Why the change of heart from the Labour party? Let’s have a look at some figures and see if we might be able to fathom it: power stations account for 29.7% of the UKs carbon emission (a quarter of this is nuclear) This is only 1/3 of the country’s total emission and whilst it is the biggest single contributor there are others that provide cause for concern such as transport at 22% and there hasn’t been such a furore about reducing the emissions from this source as there is from power stations. Which is interesting because you cannot break the link between transport and fuel. Whilst we may not have oil power stations and coal buses, I cannot see even this ostrich-like government suggesting we embark on nuclear buses. Government carbon emissions targets for 2010 and 2020 will not be met by renewable alone, so purely in order to meet these targets, which are above those required for Kyoto and not for long-term environmental considerations is nuclear being considered. In fact doubling nuclear power provision would only reduce carbon emissions by 8% and so clearly it’s long-term consideration.

Of course Sir Digby Jones and the CBI and Business community support nuclear, let’s bear it very much in the forefront of any study that it is a commodity based form of power production, money can be made in all the forms of the process, the supply and distribution of the raw materials to the disposal of the waste. You cannot sell the wind or the sea or the sun and perhaps this is the true reason why renewables have never really been at the top of the political or economical agenda.

It is all very well to chide and look on the fact that we should have acted decades ago to prevent this from becoming the crisis that it unquestionably now will but that does not remove the responsibility to pressurise those in control to change now to lessen the impact of such a catastrophe. It is also important to tackle the issue of targets. Some may say how could I be against targets that are in excess of those required under the Kyoto treaty? To be honest it is all very well to set targets but this has to be based on sustainable solutions, to be using a form of power that is still heavy on emissions albeit slightly less so than the ones we are currently using but where the flip side is that the half-life of the waste has to be safeguarded for generations to come seems not to be a panacea to me. I would far rather an integrated system where we look at the way we live our lives and acknowledge that regardless of how we might like to dress it up we are going to have to radically alter the way we do things. Yes there may be a country like Iraq to be invaded for the oil reserves, even perhaps Kazakhstan or Uzbekistan for the same, or Russia for the gas reserves but at the end of the day IT IS GOING TO RUN OUT IN THE END. That is irrefutable, I haven’t even heard the trained chimp disputing that one. Surely then the best solution is the one whereby we generate our electricity by renewable sources and run our transportation systems accordingly to bring them into line. This way we drastically reduce both carbon footprint and dependence on finite resource fuel.

As for nuclear, well, I have to leave that debate with the words of Roger Higman of Friends Of The Earth “Until we’re happy to see Iran doing it, we shouldn’t be doing it.”

Song Of The Day ~ The Bluetones – Serenity Now

Original Comments:


Kristie made this comment,
You know, Baron, I have to say, I admire your devotion to the cause, and all its subsidiaries. Just the energy I see you put out to inform on myriad topics makes me tired. But I’m sure as hell glad you do it. Thanks.
-Redbaron responds – And it is the comments of people like yourself that make the effort worthwhile. I hope sometimes to inform, and to provoke, to ferment a little thought in anyone reading would be a decent reward and any response is an added bonus. There will be an unusual breadth of topics covered over the next few entries as the ‘look to the future’ series expanded from 4 to 9 parts in draft!-

comment added :: 23rd November 2005, 07:40 GMT+01

Haddock made this comment,
I definitely agree that all new housing should be fitted with solar (both PV and for pre-heating water). I also think new houses should incorporate rain water harvesting systems for supplying water to toilets and washing machines. This would help eleviate the water shortages every summer and slow the runoff into rivers/flood plains in times of heavy rain. I have such a system and I reckon we save about 40 – 50% on our useage of mains water (sorry to digress from the energy theme).
-Redbaron responds – No, no, you are quite right to bring this up now it is exactly in line with the energy theme and the examples you cite are precisely the shorts of things that we should be implemented.-

comment added :: 25th November 2005, 23:48 GMT+01 :: http://greenhaddock2.blogspot.com/

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Crisis, What Crisis? – Future Shocks – Part 1 (Orig. posted Blog-City)

Filed under: Ex Blog-City, Future Shocks, Political — Leave a comment
November 21, 2005

So there is a pensions crisis over here, there probably is where you are too that is if you are in a country that still has such socially-progressive things and has not some Dickensian workhouse ethic.

It has been reported for some time that things could not continue the way they have been and the options given were simply a) either raise the retirement age, or b) save more money over a longer period of time. Both companies and people are being blamed for not saving enough money, and additionally at fault is the fact that we are supposedly living comparitively longer (as if this is somehow a bad thing) and therefore are more of a drain on the financial resources. Companies are being told to contribute more or the government will be forced to bring in legislation and individuals are being told that they must start saving much more of their income much sooner. It is interesting that the legislative process will clearly be brought into place over the individual before it will be considered for the companies.

OK when it comes to money I have always been kind of short-termist, but then I have never really had the sort of money that would allow me to be otherwise. At the moment I earn what would be classified as a reasonable sum of money for the first time in my life, I am in a job that would be classified as graduate and white collar, it isn’t in a higher tax bracket or anything close but most people would think you’d be alright with that as your salary. Now whilst my situation is a little out of the ordinary in so far as I have both children and ostensibly 2 houses to support accordingly not to mention large debts as a result of tertiary education, it is not so unheard of that I am somehow a special case, in fact as time goes on and the cost of University education increses my position will be seen evermore as moderate. And yet paying 6% of my monthly salary into a pension is almost more money than I can afford to be without. So what about those who have similar outgoings to me and only fractionally less money, it must tip them over the edge. And those who have similar outgoings but substantially less income how the hell are they going to manage to be without more of their money?

As for business, well to my mind not agreeing with private industry myself I can to an extent hold my hands up and say well that is always going to be what happens, companies will siphon off what they can to keep the board of directors and investors happy before employees get anything However clearly in the short-term one must look at provision for those who are going to be retiring from such positions within such companies. Of course there are some who’s pensions are more than ample. Take the former bosses of the MG Rover group who managed to award themselves pension plans in the multi-millions shortly before the company went bust due to lack of funds. John Towers, the Phoenix chairman, deputy chairman Nick Stephenson, Kevin Howe, its chief executive and directors John Edwards and Peter Beale received salaries totalling £9.7m since they bought Rover. They also set up a pension fund for themselves and their families estimated at between £16.5 and £40 million whilst they controlled the company. It hardly takes an economist to work out why the company didn’t have any funds when you look at the salaries of the directors and their pension plans. The workers at MG Rover are in a slightly different state – instead of being offered a share of the assets of £50 million (the pension plan ended £470 million in deficit) they have been offered an ex gratia settlement by the former directors of £5000, however this is not £5000 each which would be precious little enough it is £5000 between them, working out to 82p each. To be honest such a derisory sum is an absolute insult and taken in comparison with the relief package by the taxpayers which is expected to be around £50m one cannot help but think there is something very rotten in the system that this should be allowed to happen.

As I have mentioned in my last post the top 400 company directors in the UK paid themselves £1 billion in pensions last year alone, which illustrates that the Rover example is by no means the exception but the rule. It seems staggering that as the gap between the richest and the poorest continues to grow in the “developed” world the issue of the redressing of the balance by taxation means is not tackled. The same solution exists for the pensions crisis if only the political will did. Ultimately the problem can be broken up as follows: You have a population most of whom will require some form of state pension once they get to retirement age. If as a hypothetical figure we say that of the 75 million in the country 10 million are past the retirement age. If we take as a fair sum to live off in the modern world as £20,000 this would mean one would need £200 thousand million to pay for it. It’s a lot of money and yet this is not money that would have to be found instantly if it were planned for properly. A contribution system which most countries in the West employ would be able to cope with this sort of requirement with some ease. Furthermore it is not as if this sort of money isn’t pissed down the drain into wars and newer nuclear deterrents and yes, religious institutions if you press me. There’s no question the money IS available because if you were to take a simple figure of a working population of 40 million earning an average wage of £10,000 and taxed at 30% this brings in well over £1 billion and therefore more than 5 times the amount needed for pension provision which naturally is just as well for the provision of healthcare and welfare benefits. It is true this is very basic economics using simplified figures for my own understanding rather than any desire to patronise my readership who, I am sure have a greater comprehension of economics than I.

Working longer should not be necessary, even this is an area which fundamentally favours the well-off. Firstly the rich are more likely to have been to university and thus not starting work until their early 20s whilst their life expenctancy is approximately 18 years after the age of retirement whilst in stark contrast the less well-off are more likely to have left school at 16 or 18 and their life expectancy is only approximately 13 years of age after the age of retirement. This means a disparity of anything up to 11 years between the classes. Are we saying in the 21st century that if you are more or not of academic bent that you must work for 50 years until you can rest?

This is not to say that there should not be provision for those that would like to work beyond the age of retirement, it has always struck me as a little ludicrous that I know of many forced to retire against their will whilst the government and financial institutions bash on about us having to work longer in the future. But, sadly in this society we do not see the old as the wizened, experienced mages, holders of our history and what we are indeed to become, instead they are a drain on resources such as the NHS and council housing and national insurance.

It is time now to face up to stark choices. Those in power currently represent the old order, funding fossil fuels, wars to prop up the dominance of the capitalist economic cycle, big businesses and the industrial era. This era will soon be the past the question is will we be ready for it or plunged into chaos due to the inactivity in this area from governments. Whether it be our pensions or energy policy the Western governments have made an error of catacylismic proportions not making any funding or research to safeguard the future. What they seem incapable of grasping is that this is not simply a problem that can be circumvented, the future is going to happen, the question is will we have any idea how to cope with it?

Song Of The Day ~ Sparks – This Town Ain’t Big Enough For The Both Of Us

Original Comments:


The Fat Boy made this comment,
http://spongeblog.blog-city.com/neighborhood/ ur there, check it out. where’s ur link 2 me?
-Redbaron responds – Geezer you’re obsessed, calm down, you’ll find yourself in the Blog Diving section, untill I make a Tories section!-

comment added :: 21st November 2005, 06:54 GMT+01 :: http://spongeblog.blog-city.com/

The Fat Boy made this comment,
“Geezer you’re obsessed, calm down, you’ll find yourself in the Blog Diving section, untill I make a Tories section!-” I’m not a geezer, and I’m sorry for asking. I’m a torie? Tell me more, or make an entry sbout Soviet Russia. i love the subject. i don’t know why you love Comunism if u lived through it. Take Animal Farm, for instance. You have to know about Communism to understand its applications; otherwise, it’s a story book. Love ur site. There’s still a link 2 u on my site : )
-Redbaron responds – Geezer is English slang for bloke, mate or in your parlance dude! Yes I think you are a tory, tory is English political slang for a Conservative. We’ll certainly do the Sov U in due course but don’t make the mistake of thinking I’m a revisionist. Be very careful what you believe about Orwell from what people have told you rather than what you have read. Animal Farm is about totalitarianism using allegory to highlight how it has become in Russia. Don’t forget Orwell was a socialist and his greatest argument with Russia was how it did not represent what it claimed to.-

comment added :: 22nd November 2005, 11:32 GMT+01

john made this comment,
So the government now intends that in a few years time people will have to work until they are sixtyseven before they will receive the state pension.
As one who has already retired I have to ask the question….Who will employ all these older people ?… as very few employers want to employ people in their fifties let alone their sixties.

A few years ago the policies of ‘The Wicked Witch of Downing Street’ ensured that I spent a few months ‘on the dole’ after being fully employed for more than thirty years. I wrote to around seventy companies and applied for many jobs in the ‘situations vacant’ columns and despite being highly qualified and experienced at all levels in my particular industry no one wanted to employ someone who was approaching their half century.

-Redbaron responds – Yes, indeed John this is a fundamentally important point, there’s going to have to be a serious change in working culture for any solution and I don’t see that curently being instigated. Perhaps the government think there are enough vacancies for trolley collectors at Tesco’s for all the qualified, experienced 50-60 somethings.-

comment added :: 22nd November 2005, 16:42 GMT+01 :: http://bigjohn.blog-city.com/

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