Has The World Changed or Have I Changed?

Big brother tells NHS to ban 'mothers' and 'fathers'

2007-02-05T15:58:00.000Z

Big brother is taking over. Now it wants the NHS to ban the use of words such as 'mother', 'father', 'husband' and 'wife', for fear of offending gay people.

Id be scared to step out of the house for fear of offending someone, if I believed in any of this Govt Big Brother crap. They really are trying to coerce the country's minds.

Hat-tip - CatholicactionUK , NHSBlogDoctor

Dixons do the dirty with my personal data

2007-02-03T21:48:00.000Z

I recently bought a digital TV box from Dixons, and whilst at the checkout was asked for my name and address. I volunteered it without thinking - I was already in conversation with the checkout girl, and presumed that it might help be some type of guarantee, or maybe, at worst, Id be on Dixons mailing list.
What I didnt expect was for them to take my personal data and present it to the TV licencing people, the f*cking Judas's.
Now I have had a letter from the TV licencing people stating that they know there is not a license in my name at my current address, and giving various options how to pay. The tone is obvious 'we dont think you've got a license, pay, or else'.
As it happens there is a good legal reason why there is not a licence in my name, but they'll have to come round here first to find out if they cant work it out for themselves. C*nts. As are Dixons for allowing my PERSONAL DATA to be used in this way. They have lost my custom henceforth.

Asbestos Negligence

2007-01-16T14:55:00.000Z

Thousands of council houses in the Portsmouth area have been found to have built with materials containing harmful asbestos.
It has been long known and scientifically proven that asbestos causes cancer, and asbestos use has been banned for some time depending on which type of asbestos they are - amosite (brown asbestos) and crocidolite (blue asbestos) were banned 2 decades ago, though the use of chrysotile wasnt banned until 1999.
The majority of council houses in Portsmouth surveyed have been found to have been built with materials containing asbestos, and I really think it is the governments responsibility to either bulldoze them or to commit to a long-term campaign of informing present and future tenants fully of the dangers. This would need to be done in a high profile way - after all, deaths from asbestos related cancer may well easily exceed deaths from drink-driving.
Despite knowing of the dangers of asbestos and banning most asbestos for decades (actually it is over a century since the British Parliamentary Commission confirmed the first cases of asbestos deaths in factories in Britain), it is only now that relevent government departments feel that they should inform people living in affected homes how to minimize their risks from this, and this is what I find the most distasteful and negligent. The true victims of this story are the generations of people who lived in these houses oblivious to the presence of asbestos, what materials in the house contained it, what dangers it posed and how to minimize the risks from this dangerous carcinogen.
We will probably never know how many have been affected by this, but as many people do a bit of DIY, it follows that there are many that will have unknowingly exposed themselves to this cancer risk, and of these, a percentage may have actually developed cancer.

Britain For Sale

2006-12-19T09:37:00.000Z

Classic keep-the-masses-dumb:
The annual budget, where for the large part the chancellor just pisses about with a few taxes, is given such media reverence, whilst important policies affecting the direction of this country and its people eg allowing British companies to be sold overseas, get buried behind such smokescreens and ignored by the media until such time that it doesnt matter if the great part of the population realises as its too late to do anything about it.

Free pills and immigration ills

2006-11-24T08:15:00.000Z

A new 6 month supply of contraceptive pills came into my household this week, after an NHS doctor visit, and I was surprised to learn that they were totally free. 100% subsided, ultimately by the tax-payer.
It set me thinking. We are told that the reason for needing a massive influx of immigration is due to the declining fertility rates, whereby we are not reproducing enough to maintain the economy. That’s what we are told.
So what impact does free contraceptives for all have on this issue?
Is the tax-payer funding a contraceptive policy that encourages women into lifestyles other than parenting, at the expense of accepting a policy of mass-immigration?

Sure, the free contraceptive policy might save some unwanted pregnancies, but by the same token is it not also true that many pregnancies may have been prevented that might actually have been enjoyed if pill-taking wasn’t such an easy no-cost choice.

If it’s a choice between mass immigration or a baby boom, I know which Id prefer, which makes the active discouragement of a baby boom all the more surprising.

Pre-school learning

2006-11-24T08:06:00.000Z

Is the government scheme to provide pre-school learning at the age of two for ‘poor families’ socially motivated, or economically motivated?
Benefits aside, it also encourages the mother to give up fulltime parenting and instead get a job and become a tool of the economy.

We are a chemical experiment

2006-11-01T11:05:00.000Z

They carry out biological tests on us.
This week revealed e-coli tests in Swindon in the 60’s. Similar experiments, with cancer-causing chemicals were exposed in this 2002 The Guardian article.
Who are they to experiment on our people? And to refuse to say that it might not happen again?
A classic illustration that the club of people that have been governing this country are not ‘of the people’ but instead living in a power-bubble that has given them the impression that the rest of us are merely pawns in their game.
Heads should roll for this crime against humanity. It wont happen. Instead the instigators and perpetrators will be left to live a lie of respectability in their nice big country houses, polishing their OBEs, on a nice fat public sector pension, whilst elsewhere people die of inexplicable bacterial diseases and cancer of the lungs.
More details

Dirty tax revenues

2006-10-27T10:55:00.000+01:00

Is allowing a commodity that is damaging to society but raising taxes from it, really a tactic the Health secretary, or indeed any member of government, should endorse?
This is what Patricia Hewitts suggestion for a higher alcopops tax amounts to. Everybody knows there is a binge-drink epidemic in this country, and that alcopops are heavily marketed towards teenage drinkers, damaging not only the impressionable, but also the rest of society that has to live in the undesirable environment that comes as a consequence of the binge-drinkers ‘fun’.
A responsible government would nip the problem in the bud, not happily raise tax revenues from it whilst feigning to be aghast about it from the other side of their face.
It seems to be all about screwing the maximum amount of money of out us.

Immigrants line their pockets with our taxes

2006-06-07T08:08:00.000+01:00

Hat-tip; NotProudOfBritain(ButWouldLikeToBe).
£6 million in bounties have been paid out by the British govt to asylum seekers in the first 4 months of this year. So thats where our taxes are going. What a joke - when I first heard of the scheme I thought it was a crackpot idea that would never get implemented, how silly of me; this govt knows no limit to how it can piss on the true British people.
They say £3000 is a bargain 'compared with the £11000 average cost of a forced deportation'. Why does it cost £11000 to pick up one of these criminals by the scruff of the neck and put him on the next £199 flight to Africa/EasternEurope/Asia?
Gis a job, I can do that.

NHS fumble into agency nursing ban

2006-05-26T14:12:00.000+01:00

The NHS are running their hospitals using less permanently employed NHS nurses per ward than in the past. But their pride in this 'achievement' ignores the fact that to plug the inevitable gaps that occur when running their business with the bare bones of staff, they used agency nurses who generally earn 2 to 3 times more than an NHS-employed nurse at the same grade (£35 an hour is common).
The use of agency staff has been widespread – infact some wards seem to be pretty much run by agency staff. This has the double-whammy effect of pissing off the underpaid, undervalued permanent nurses, whilst costing the NHS money it hasn’t got and doesn’t need to spend if it managed its resources a bit better.
In recent months the NHS have been making cuts left right and centre to try to stem their increasing debts, much of which was down to mismanagement and poor spending, and have made victims of many innocent nurses who now find themselves redundant.
As a by-products of the cuts, the NHS have been forced into making the decision of freezing the use of any agency staff. It has been an instant success. Former agency nurses have been queuing up to become ‘bank nurses’ ie permanently employed nurses (who have always existed and are used in a similar way to agency staff - to fill-in and cover where there is a temporary staff shortfall).
The agency nurse 'freeze' has had little detrimental effect to the NHS, they simply source the temporary cover from with the expanding pool of NHS ‘bank’ nurses, who are relatively inexpensive as they earn NHS wages instead of commanding the exorbitant agency rates.
Now why did it take a debt crisis before this decision was made? It doesnt take a rocket scientist to work out that by no longer using agency nurses, those same nurses would be forced to become bank nurses and get paid the same as everyone else. This could have been done years ago and saved the NHS a fortune. How can the executives justify their 6 figure salaries when they havent been able to effect a simple but massively beneficial measure such as this until now?

Nurse redundancies

2006-05-26T09:06:00.000+01:00

Hewitt; ‘Despite the headlines the NHS has just had its best year ever'.

Hospital job cuts that will run into more than 9000 have been announced in recent weeks.

The contribution of 60000 overseas nurses (in Britain) is responsible for keeping the NHS afloat.

To me the real culprits of this current wave of nurse redundancies are the Govt NHS policy-makers who set in motion this huge influx of overseas nurses, and now find themselves with 9000 nurses too many. Though most of the redundancies are in senior positions, these are not pen-pushers divorced from real nursing; many are specialist roles, representing some of the cream of British nursing. Most will have worked their way up through the ranks, some having been promoted up, not undeservedly, when the influx of overseas nurses made it possible to progress them and give them further responsibilities.
It is hard not to think that these cheaper, more flexible immigrant nurses have effectively pushed out the 9000 excess NHS nurses. They replaced them in the hands-on roles, but now the senior roles that were used to soften this transition are being taken away. British nurses cannot fail to feel cheated.

Illegal immigrants everywhere you look

2006-05-26T08:04:00.000+01:00

You couldnt make this up. Just when we thought the farcical stories of Home Office incompetence couldnt get any worse, we get the story of a British Immigration official abusing his position by offering asylum visas in return for sex. This disgrace reaches epic proportions with the news that this same British Immigration offical is infact an illegal immigrant himself.
The Home Office should be bowing its head in shame. Either it is incapable of competently doing its job, or it doesnt take seriously its job of keeping illegals out of this country. Either way they are unfit to serve us. Its time to end this farce before the sorry mess they've put this country in gets any worse.

MOD 'extremely pleased' to payout for nerve gas death

2006-05-26T07:39:00.000+01:00

The MOD have paid £100,000 in compensation to the family of RAF man Ronald Maddison, who died in a nerve gas experiment at the Porton Down military centre.
MOD says it's 'extremely pleased that an amicable settlement has been reached'. More like after 53 years of having its arm twisted, the MODs cover-up has been revealed. It has run out of hiding places, exhausted all delaying tactics, and has been forced to take responsibility and pay what I consider to be a relatively measly sum for the death of a man. How about some compensation for the 53 years it took his family to get justice you weasels?

Foreign criminals escape removal

2006-04-25T16:33:00.000+01:00

We knew all along that our ruling classes have no real interest in the social conditions of the proles in Britain. The British immigration policy is a prime example of this. So it comes as no surprise to find out that over 1000 foreign criminals have escaped removal. And what of the ones we havent yet caught them out about? What is the real figure? Heads should role. The Home Secretary is supposed to facilitate in protecting the public, not aiding in the expansion of the cesspool of scum criminals in this country.

Nurse killed

2006-04-06T14:25:00.000+01:00

Its being reported on the BBC that a nurse has been stabbed to death in Essex.
We will all share a sense of shock, distress and anger at this news. However it is not a shock to me that this is happened, and neither will it be a shock to many of the people within the nursing community because WE COULD ALL SEE THE TIME COMING WHEN SOMETHING LIKE THIS WAS GOING TO HAPPEN, and most distressingly NOTHING WAS BEING DONE ABOUT IT.

Without delving into the details of this incident, lets step back and ask ourselves what the f*ck is wrong with our society when frontline services such as nurses, doctors, the police, the fire-brigade, customer-facing civil servants etc etc are working an environment where hate and violence are becoming an accepted part of the job? This is not normal and should never be accepted as normal. If this is a reflection of society in this country as a whole, then its changed from the one I was bought up to expect; its ugly and I dont like it one bit.

Violence against nurses

2006-02-28T09:41:00.000Z

Good to see the issue of Attacks on nurses on the rise being highlighted by the BBC, though the problem should have been addressed before we ever got to this point.
If this is not a wake up call that there is something very wrong with this society, then what is? What a sad sad world. What motivates the pathetic undisciplined scum who perpetrate these crimes?
The above article did not leave me confident that the sad dregs of society who indulge in this violence are being actively discouraged away from behaviour. How about tougher punishments, and less tolerance and respect for violent people, or do we need more deaths first?
Our elected govt are supposed to appoint people to stop this situation happening. Is this another victim of a hidden money-saving cutback?

Cheated at birth?????

2006-02-27T09:05:00.000Z

I don’t know whether to be sick in reaction to the toe-curling 'wimmen' bias, or bust a blood vessel in rage.
I am referring to The Independents 'Cheated at birth' article, featuring an evocative picture of a baby girl and boy, cheaply attempting to play our emotions.
The girl, it claims is cheated, as she will get paid up to a £1 million less in earning in her lifetime. Bollocks. The figure was calculated using a male wage of £53,000. Since when has that been average?? Not in my world. To wake up on a Sunday morning and have the insinuation that everyone else is earning £53,000 does not do wonders for my self esteem or general karma. It’s a f*cking insult to the rest of the country that the Independent seem to measure people against a very narrow profile of a man who could only be a professional type working in London and enjoying success in a highly paid career.
As for the rest of the article, when men have the choices to opt out and raise a family, with 6 months paid paternity to equal the amount women get, and are no longer subjected to antiquated laws which favours the mother in divorce situations, THEN we might be progressing towards equality.

Policewoman shooting - suspect arrested

2006-02-17T15:50:00.000Z

The shooting of a police officer on duty has always been a headline story, and in the past has heralded a time for national reflection. Thats not been such the case this time, I feel. Perhaps it is because we have become desensitized to this abhorrent crime, or maybe the media feels there are more concerning crimes to save playing its pious card for. Whatever the reason, there does not seem to be the sense of national outrage that used to greet such events.
The slightly lower key reporting of this, and the lack of a photofit of the suspect, did trigger a few alerts in my mind. Now I like to think Im a man without prejudices but I did start to suspect an ethnic conclusion
1. Because there have been so many cases of the media down-playing/surpressing a story when it doesnt fit with the happy multicultural society they wish to promote, and
2. The majority of guncrimes in this country seems to have an ethnic element to them.
Maybe its just a coincidence, but I guessed right. Prejudice or an educated guess? Racist or realist?

A tax on the sick and caring

2006-02-16T08:57:00.000Z

Why are hospitals being allowed to use their car parks as a revenue-raiser? Being able to park your car nearby is a necessity for many visiting hospital, yet The Great Western Hospital in Swindon has earned £1.2 million in parking fees since it opened 3 years ago, due largely to an excessive charging policy - £35 for 24 hours.
As my wife is a nurse I happen to know that in every hospital she has worked there has been no free parking, and she has been expected to pay the public rate to park her car when visiting other hospitals as part of her job. Disgraceful. The excuses are lame, and in the case of Swindon Hospital the logic is severely retarded. Its another sneaky cutback by our govt., another means of getting money out of the public, a sneaky 'hospital tax' on people who are sick or visiting or working at a hospital.
We are not blind to it New Labour.

Immigrant rape in Sweden

2006-02-01T09:26:00.000Z

Following on from my last post, heres an excellent detailed article posted by Fjordman about the wave of immigrant rape case in Sweden. Appalling. The longer the authorities surpress this information, the longer these vile crimes will continue unchecked. The public are being misled as to what is the real root of the problem.

Illegal immigrant sex attackers

2006-01-26T12:46:00.000Z

One case of an illegal immigrant engaging in serious crime is one too many for my liking, but we seem to be witnessing an ever-increasing cascade of these cases.
To me its a clear signal that the flow of illegal immigrants must be stopped by all means necessary. Not enough people seem concerned with the serious criminal activity in this country by people who are here illegally. Maybe they'll wake up when a story about an illegal immigrant sex attacker happens to someone they know. Why didnt the judge see it fit to deport this guilty man?? Or how about these 3 illegal immigrants involved in a gang-rape?

Paying asylums seeker to go home

2006-01-13T15:27:00.000Z

Are our polititians really so ignorant to think that paying asylum seekers to leave the country is a workable solution to limit the number of asylum seekers in Britian?
Or are the Asylum seeker measures deliberately ridiculous so that they get plenty of coverage, thereby giving the message to the masses that; 'the authorities are trying to limit asylum seekers/immigrants,' when infact the very opposite is true.

Lies, damn lies and statistics

2006-01-09T08:58:00.000Z

A great example here of how a survey result can be misrepresented to conclude something that was never questioned in the first place. It seems the media never miss an opportunity to distort British views of immigration.

The Telegraph asserts that the ‘British are positive on immigrants’. They came to this conclusion by interpreting a Readers Digest survey, where 70% of British replied yes to the question of whether their everyday experience of immigrants is positive.
So is it not possible to have an everyday positive experience of immigrants but at the same time hold a view that immigration is not for the overall good of Britain????????
The Times goes one step further, and interprets these survey result as meaning that the British ‘believe that immigration has made Britain a better place to live’.

Asylum seekers jailed for running drugs cartel

2006-01-06T16:21:00.000Z

How many more times will the British hospitality towards asylum seekers be abused before the authorites wake up? These 2 former asylum seekers throw the British hospitality and tolerance back in our faces. How can anyone defend opening the British borders carte blanche when this sort of thing is allowed to occur.

Racial etiquette training

2005-12-12T14:39:00.000Z

Racial etiquette training in the UK

Im almost speechless in my contempt for this shit.
Insulted at the idea of ‘etiquette training’,
Insulted that people think we need etiquette training,
Insulted that this shit gets reported by the BBC, who I am forced to fund.

Capital punishment - Good or bad?

2005-11-22T08:31:00.000Z

Provoked by the excellent ATangledWeb discussion on capital punishment, I tend to agree with the view; 'Once you execute a person , they suffer no more.'But unfortunately people have lost faith in the British Prison system as an adequate punishment, and the perceived liberalisation of prison conditions and sentences has led people to react by wanting to see more definite and extreme forms of justice.

For me capital punishment isn’t a black or white issue, there are to many issues to say whether I want it or don’t want it fullstop; If it was applied correctly, then there are many criminals that I would have liked to have seen swing from the rope. But as well as the problem of faulty evidence and miscarriages of justice, the bigger problem for me would be that, like all rules and laws, capital punishment cases will be used by the powers of the day to serve their own political needs: For example there are many documented cases where shellshocked war soldiers suffered an unjust execution in the First World War because of their mental inability to fight on, but the ruling govt of the day had been enpowered to be able to call this slaughter legal.

Victims parents sue over immigration policy

2005-11-09T09:19:00.000Z

The people sueing the city of Austin, Texas have my every support. Could we in Britain follow this precedent? As island we have the natural protection of a seas around us, so I think it is only due to incompetence and the turning of a blind eye by the British govt that we have the great numbers of illegal immigrants in this country, and I hold them fully responsible.

More Asians in football ????

2005-11-07T21:41:00.000Z

Spotted on NotProudToBeEnglish(ButWouldLikeToBe) more PC lunancy. Now they think they have to make efforts to ensure there are more Asians in football. How about letting them get in by merit like everyone else.
What opportunities in practising to become a footballer do they think we are getting that they are not. What are these 'barriers?'
Why does Simon Johnson think he needs to ‘rid the game of discrimination.’ Isnt English football already comprised of players of too many nations – over and beyond a level that reflects society.

Why has Scottish football become relevent to the BBC

2005-10-30T22:42:00.000Z

Every BBC TV news edition broadcast in England today has included as its LEAD sports story 'And Celtic climb to the top of the SPL'.
FFS, since when has any Scottish footie result been more relevent than the top class English football games. A few years ago this never happened, so why is it different now?
My theory is that we the public are being conditioned to the top Scottish clubs in order to make them palatable when the Euro league happens. The top 5 or 6 English clubs will also be part of this Euro-league, and the rest will be cast aside and have as much relevence and coverage as the English 'championship Division' (or whatever they call it these days).
Am pretty disgusted that the BBC seem to be part of this conspiracy. I do not want to see them give a foreign game presidence over a top flight domestic game.

Strangers in a Strange Land

2005-10-24T14:28:00.000+01:00

Frightening. How can anyone be expected to have pride in their community when its history, values and acheivements would be swept aside when a foreign culture takes over? Why are we giving away the advantages our forefathers built for us through their inventiveness, blood, sweat and tears.Immigration in my view is a short-term fix for an economic system that needs always to expand. In the short-term this results in negative social problems, and longer term I can see nothing but social disaster.

U.S. rejects Katrina meals donated by Britain

2005-10-15T08:43:00.000+01:00

The American authorites obviously didnt feel their people were as desperate as we thought they were in the Katrina disaster, when they turned away charity food that was only up to British standard. What a bunch of arrogant bastards!

Does Immigation Cost Jobs? Yes in my view

2005-10-13T09:50:00.000+01:00

This is a reply to Owen Barder a man with an impressive CV who happens to have a differing point of view from me RE the benefits of migrants to low paid natives as seen in article Does Immigation Cost Jobs?

I felt the David Card article concerns itself with the low-skilled college ‘drop-out’ cases, and isn’t really the issue of concern as low paid jobs are not always low skilled jobs.The PIU article, whilst more relevant, is rather generalised in its assertions and I felt it lacked tangible evidence regarding the point why are debating. As stated in 6.29 ‘there is relatively little work in this area{in measuring the effect of immigration on native wages and employment}’, and Zorlu’s figures were not only not relevant, but also so unexplained in this article as to be quite useless.
The ‘lump of labour’ being an incorrect concept may be true as you say (though the PIU article does not give evidence to discredit it), but Id argue that this could only true in the longer terms, after many years. In the real world, I still say that a migrant taking a natives job will cause that native to have a period of unemployment. Additionally whilst there may be some expansion in that sector, I still believe the extra supply of labour will outstrip the expansion, and thus the wages will decrease.
In the PIU paragraph 6.32, the article tries to use particular job sectors to justify its argument – I will tell you the truth of what is happening in those sectors;
HEALTH: Rather than invest in educating British born doctors, Britain has decided it is cheaper to import them. A generation of British have not been given the opportunity to be a doctor. The supply of nurses has been flooded with migrants and their pay and working conditions are much worse than before. Not many English people can afford to study for nursing for 3 years and incur a student debt, only to get poor wages, on top of the undesirable shift patterns, the increasing violence in the workplace and the overall lack of respect or support. The customers (the patients) have no choice but to be cared for by someone who they don’t neccessarily relate to (particularly for older people) sometimes with an inadequate grasp of the English language (My wife who is a nurse has seen people struggling to understand the dialect of a nurse who is telling them that their loved one has died). The answer would be to make the job more attractive to natives by paying them more.
EDUCATION: I think we have plenty of people within this country who would make wonderful teachers, but because a degree is necessary, and getting a degree was often not possible for that person due to economic reasons, they are basically being cast aside for qualified migrants.
IT: My profession. There has been a complete lack of a cohesive training plan in any of the private sector companies I have worked for (something the govt should have encouraged): they see it as far more cost effective to hire already qualified overseas labour. This has resulted in many people being stuck with dinosaur skills, and finding themselves pretty much unemployable. The supply of IT workers by far outstrips demand (talk to any of the recruitment agencies), and yet we are fed this lie that the IT industry is understaffed and we need to import more migrants.
CATERING: Pretty much a minimum wage occupation, the wages will not become decent until the supply of workers in this sector shrinks.
AGRICULTURAL LABOUR: What could be more English than to toil in the meadows. Not anymore a choice, as the wages are now minimum, and it largely given to gangs of Eastern Europeans.
I don’t have a dark political agenda, I am just showing you the honest facts as I see them; I really do not see the benefit of immigrants to the lower paid, and dont like to see this imaginary benefit used as a justification for immigration.

Up to 1,000 nursing posts in England could be lost

2005-10-11T15:55:00.000+01:00

Here we go again. One minute we are told that we need to resort to the desperate method of importing migrant nurses into the country because we havent got enough, then the next minute we have got too many nurses and not enough jobs - Up to 1,000 nursing posts in England could be lost.

Being close proximity to a nurse myself, I was able to ask how true this is, and Yes it is happening. Because of overspending in other areas of the NHS, the powers that be have decided that this money should be recovered by cutting back on the budget for nursing. The fact that the overspend might indicate that the NHS needs to be given more not less money does not seem to have been taken into account. And so the easy target, the nurses, suffer again. Like squeezing blood from a stone, they will be expected to continue the same level of service with less staff, as if they werent overstretched, overworked and underpaid already.

Migrant workers hold down the pay rate for all other low-paid workers

2005-10-11T13:55:00.000+01:00

Noticed on Tim Worstalls and StumblingandMumbling pages, were criticisms of an argument by Polly which I feel I should try to defend.
The ‘They do the job that we are unwilling or unable to do’ argument is rubbish.
I don’t believe in pigeon-holing certain jobs as ‘good’ or ‘bad’. If toilet cleaners were offered a 6 figure salary for their undoubtedly worthwhile services, and if solicitors could only command the minimum wage, I think our perspective of which is the good job would shift.
Unfortunately there is not true laissez-faire in choosing a job or career, or being able to change to another one. Age, education, location, and social background all conspire to restrict the choices. A salary is not rewarded for the value of a profession to society or the effort involved, but rather the market scarcity of the skill needed to be in that profession.
Govt policy has flooded the market for certain jobs with immigrants. People who are trapped in these jobs or who genuinely believe in the value of these careers, DO NOT BENEFIT IN ANY WAY; the extra supply of labour serves only to force their wages lower, creates the need for them to work harder in order to keep their job, and makes similar jobs scarcer. Sure it benefits the people in jobs the next level up, as their service will be cheaper, but don’t spread the lie that theres a benefit to the real front-line workers of society.

Bob Dylan Week!

2005-09-29T17:38:00.000+01:00

Hasnt all this Bob Dylan stuff on the box been just brilliant. Why do people listen to anything else. That Maggies Farm live version just was such a funky take on the song, I guess Im lucky that it was new to me - it was fresher than anything Ive heard in an age.

UPDATE: Saw Lee Scratch Perry at the weekend, and I have now remembered why people listen to music other than Bob Dylan. It was simply superb, music to rock the the nation, and supported by the pumping Mad Professor. A dub revolution.

49 Up

2005-09-22T23:00:00.000+01:00

Fascinationing real life documentary programme following a cross-section of people exploring their life, their aspirations and achievments. The series started when these people were 7 years old and returns to the same people every 7 years. We are now on year 49.
What struck me was the difference in opportunity the posh kids had. Yep, you just knew those snotty stuck up little shit public schoolboys who looked down their noses at the poor kids would grow up to be self-interested arseholes in the legal profession, ripping off another generation of pleb grown-up 'poor kids'.