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Is The Labour Party Going to Devolve Along With Scotland?

30/10/2014

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I covered Immigration recently and will do so again in a few days (probably) as the situation I spoke about seems to have exploded over the last few days.

Instead I’m going to cover something that popped up last week and again yesterday.


Jim Murphy, the shadow Secretary of State for International Development, has thrown his hat into the ring for the leadership of Scottish Labour after previously declaring that he had no intention of leaving Westminster.

Now however, he is officially taking his place in the contest for the leadership of the Scottish Labour party and this has the potential to build on comments made by the departing leader Johann Lamont who said that London treated Scotland like a branch office. She resigned after her general secretary was called down to London to be sacked London without anyone consulting her or even telling her it was going to happen.

She considered her position to be untenable and so she resigned and had a few choice words for Miliband and the London party. Can of worms opened.

The Tories are very much an English party, Labour have a strong showing in Scotland and are running Wales (into the ground), the Lib Dems run my corner of the world though given the way they are falling off the bottom of the polls that will change I hope.

North of the border the Tories have one whole MP, a remarkable fact, I’m sure they remark on it while sipping subsidized Champers with their subsidized lunches (on expenses) in the subsidized eating halls of Parliament.

Labour on the other hand has a sizeable number of MPs up there, enough that they would be facing almost permanent opposition status if they lost them.  Given this the London mob have been keen to keep those MPs in place and this leads to part of the problem. Micromanagement.

The London based Labour leadership MUST keep those Scottish MPs, without them English Labour does not have the numbers to challenge the Tories, even with the Lib Dems though how many MPs the Lib Dems can expect after five years as willing lapdogs to the Nasty party is anyone’s guess.

So London seems to be working hard to keep Scottish Labour following the London agenda, the problem comes when Scotland has very different needs and attitudes to London.

Not so long ago we had the Scottish referendum, the SNP pushed hard for independence, London pushed hard for Scotland to stay in the Union. Which led to a problem, the government who most wanted Scotland to stay is Tory, as much as we dislike and hate the nasty party down here in England north of the border they feel even more strongly. So the Tories could not directly lead the stay together campaign, advisors told them to stay out of Scotland and not add their names to the campaign for fear of driving away supporters.

So the Tories let Brown and Co lead the Scottish referendum fight, Labour have much stronger contacts and could bring in something the Tories did not have, Scottish MPs. A number of well known Scots rolled north and added their voices to the better together case.

Gordon Brown was the biggest fish in this pond but Jim Murphy was very active across all of Scotland though he campaigned alone rather than as part of the London Labour machine.

The votes were counted, a massive percentage of the Scottish voters came out to vote and the majority decided to stay in the UK. A great many promises had been made about devolution of powers to Scotland if they stayed in the UK and to my mind this had an effect in swinging votes to stay.

The Tories let Labour front the better together campaign and promised to support the promises on devolution and more powers. Then blatantly said they were attaching conditions to devolution and rather than meet the promised deadline would in fact consider it sometime later on, maybe, when they had the time, after the next election, in a few years.

So far this has simply bubbled under the surface, people have gone back to their normal lives and the day to day worries of surviving in austerity Britain. But those promises have not been forgotten nor will they be, they will become one more thing that will be added to the pile come the elections next year.

There have been a lot of comments from various Quarters about how the SNP are finished, voters are leaving them, Alex Salmon is quitting and Labour will pick up the pieces. But, and this is a big but, Labour is facing the prospect of a huge backlash when people decide that the English politicians lied to them in order to secure a NO vote.

Enter Jim Murphy.

He has said that he wanted Gordon Brown to stand for the role, then when Gordon declined many MPs and Scottish people called on him to step in.

Labour insiders are talking about Mr Murphy coming in without any New Labour baggage.

Jim Murphy has said the following:

“I will hire and fire who I want. I am big enough and ugly enough and I am not going to be pushed around by anyone. If I am leader it is not for anyone else, in any other part of the United Kingdom, to tell me who I can employ in the Scottish Labour Party.

I'm not saying Johann was pushed around but that is the way it is going to be if I am in charge. I want more autonomy for the Scottish Labour Party.

The House of Commons will always be important but increasingly Holyrood is where the action is going to be and that is why I am making this move.”

Other Scottish commentators are warning of the dangers of ‘Westminster Candidates’ and of London interference.

Counter this with a quote from one of the other candidates for the job Sarah Boyack, “It's absolutely crucial that we get an Ed Miliband government elected”. Not a Labour government but a Miliband government, a man fairly unknown by the majority of Scottish voters and the man who is running the London party that treats Scotland as a branch office.

For years now the complaint has been made, and rightly so, that London and the London Political class is out of touch and disinterested with anything outside of the M25. Scotland is about as far from London as you can get and has very different needs and wants to London. But London seems to be trying to run the Scottish political party in exactly the same way as and following the same agenda as the London mob.

As Scotland waits for the promised devolution of power the last thing they want is going to be attempts to bring them more tightly under control of London. The Tories won’t give Scotland the freedom they want, Labour is afraid to give them that freedom in case it costs them the chance of getting back into government.

So it is coming down to who is looking out for Scotland and its people, it’s not London. With the rise and rise of UKIP I would like to see an independant Scotish Labour party, I would like to see the self serving political types in London having to earn votes and support and not taking voters for granted.

A separate party, looking after the needs and wants of Scotland but willing to stand with the English party IF doing so benefits the people north of the border is yet another step towards breaking the binary political situation that blights British politics.

So will Scottish Labour Devolve along with Scotland. I hope so.







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It's All The Fault of The Immigrants. Isn't It?

26/10/2014

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It's All The Fault of The Immigrants. Isn't It?


I have been slacking with writing and blog posts this last two weeks. I start and then just cannot get anything to make sense, my insanity has gone mad. 


However I'm stocked up on coffee and trying to post today on a several subjects that have caught my eye this week.


Over the weekend I have been having several debates on the subject of Immigration. A hot button issue for so many, UKIPs rallying cry and an area where all three main parties are changing their standing on every other hour.

Cameron and Miliband are head swivelling on the subject so much I keep thinking they should see a doctor for whiplash, Clegg is being Clegg but so few listen to him now that anything he says is not important and generally written off as another idiotic statement from the inconsequential party.



No, it is the three important parties (Tory, Labour, UKIP) that are at the heart of this debate and it is UKIP that are clearly not only leading the debate but winning it hands down.

Yes I did say the three important parties include UKIP.  In terms of this debate it is the Kippers who are leading the debate, setting the pace and making the other two run to try and catch up.

So much so in fact that this morning I watched the Defence Secretary Michael Fallon talking about whole towns and communities being swamped by large numbers of immigrants.

"In some areas, particularly on the east coast, yes, towns do feel under siege from large numbers of migrant workers and people claiming benefits. It is quite right that we look at that.”

 
As Farage said after hearing this comment from the Tory cabinet minister, if he had said that the press would be up in arms.

 
Miliband is both promising strong action to restrict Immigrants such as stopping child benefit and tax credits being paid for children who live abroad, cracking down on illegal immigration by ensuring that everyone is recorded when they arrive in or departed from Britain through electronic checks and making it easier to deport foreign criminals, and to double to six months the period before which EU nationals can claim benefits and tax credits in Britain.

But he is also saying that he will not make any promises or pledges on the subject because he doesn’t want to mislead the public and would not offer policies that endanger the economy. Oh and he didn’t think Immigration was important enough to even bother with during his speech to the faithful not so long ago.

He has also promised that a Labour government would ensure that all public sector workers would have to have a minimum standard of English but only in public facing roles.

Erm, do what. Is he saying that prior to this point Labour has been happy with the fact that Public sector workers in the UK did NOT have to meet standards of spoken English!


It’s no wonder that UKIP are leading the race when Labour and Miliband come out with gems like that one, this being England I would have thought the ability to speak English was required for ANY government job, nope, apparently its a new policy about to be adopted by Labour.

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The problem is NOT immigration per se.

There is nothing wrong with the system of EU citizens travelling across the whole Euro zone to work, the problem is that the UK is one of very few that is seen to go out of its way to give every benefit and advantage to anyone that arrives in the UK job or not.

The problem is how the UK deals with people who arrive here legally and the UK’s inability to deal with people arriving here illegally.

Reality or simply perception, people are crossing the whole length and width of Europe to get to the UK. France, Italy etc push the immigrants north to the channel and across to the UK. It doesn’t matter where these people are coming from, Africa, Eastern Europe or further afield, the destination of choice is the UK or Germany.



Immigrants get into Europe and then charge north to reach the UK, the mobs rioting and protesting at Calais are not trying to live in France or Italy, they are trying to get to what they consider to be the land of milk and gravy, the UK.

This is not something you can dispute. They have been told for years that the UK is the place to come where they will be given homes and money and so they come by the thousands.

 

Hospitals and medical services. Population increase vastly outstripping available medical support and in a number of cases the immigration situation is distorting the medical requirements. Diseases long eliminated from the UK being bought in by immigrants arriving from countries lacking first rate medical facilities putting pressure on British hospitals that no longer have the facilities to deal with numbers of cases of diseases that were thought long gone.

The UK population has grown. In 2000 it was 58.7 million people. As of the census of 2013 it was 64.1 million. That number has increased by 400,000 this year. That makes the population 64.5 million, an increase of 9%. Over that same period have the capacities of our schools, hospitals, utilities etc increased by 9%? This is the problem with uncontrolled immigration, we are not a big island in the scale of things.

Using a very simplistic value to cover a far more complex situation, in 2000/1 the NHS in England had 186,000 beds available. In 2013/14 it has 135,000. An overall fall of some 30% over the same period when the UK population increased by 9% and that despite a steady increase in the money allocated to the NHS. Figures from NHS reports via ONS.
 

Education. Schools with dozens of languages because there is no requirement for immigrants to speak English and legal requirements that schools teach the immigrant children regardless of the fact that there are few if any teachers who speak those languages.

Yes UK schools are managing to cope with the huge increase in non English speaking students, but where are the resources coming from to handle that increase. At a time when just about everyone I know who is in education is unhappy with squeezed funds, lack of resources and government attitude towards schools who do I believe, the teachers that I know or comments from the government that says all the teachers are imagining the problem. Ask people you know who are teachers about the fact that they buy books for their classes because there is no budget for the schools to buy those books.

 
The falling wages as a result of incoming immigrant labour who have lower wage expectations and the corporate attitude towards larger labour pools and higher unemployment as an opportunity to cut wages are part of the problem but not a significant part. The recession and current political attitude towards the poor, unemployed and low paid is responsible for more wage cuts, zero hours contracts and economic exploitation than immigrants are.

Immigrants legal or illegal are part of, but a small part of, the problem. Many of them are happy to take what they see as generous wages and in doing so create a rush to the bottom where employers offer lower and lower wages and people have little choice but to accept them.


Immigration is not the whole problem or even a large part of the problem but it is there and it is involved. Corporate greed and the government attitude towards the poor and towards workers in general is the biggest contributor towards the drop in wages.

 
Housing. People flowing into the UK much faster than they leave, limited house building so house prices have risen to the point where huge sections of the population can no longer afford to get on the house owning ladder.

Uncontrolled and unrestricted Immigration is part of that problem and creates problems when it happens in such numbers. To refuse to acknowledge that there is a problem is to allow the problem to grow larger and to spread to every aspect of our society.

Building 2 million new homes will blight vast areas of our countryside and greenbelts and yet that is how many homes we apparently need right now. Two million new homes will need hundreds of new hospitals and schools, new power stations and water treatment centres, sewage and phones and gas and all of the myriad things that people in this country both need and want.


Without a massive investment in utilities and the creation of several new cities the UK cannot cope and yet there is no money for such investment at a time when despite many promises by the government the UK deficit and national debt continues to rise. There is little investment in building for the future and yet more and more people arrive to place an ever greater strain on what is available for the current occupants of this little island.


The rate of population increase combined with the lack of increase in the utilities needed to support those people leaves everyone suffering. 

The Greater Manchester Built-up area consists of Manchester, Salford, Bolton, Stockport, Oldham, Rochdale, Bury, Trafford and Tameside and has a total population two and a half million. Since 2000 the population of the UK has increased enough to fill two entire Greater Manchester areas plus another a million people. If the population grows by another 400,000 each year by 2018 we will have enough people to fill a third Manchester.

Let’s be honest here, since 2000 has the UK built enough schools, hospitals or power stations to handle another three Manchesters?


Both major parties are unwilling to stand up and try to defend the immigration situation because I feel neither can defend it. Instead they are both rolling our anti immigrant policies rather than attempting to defuse the situation.


Trying to out Kipper the UKIPpers.


The whole situation is crumbling round the edges, we are on a slippery slope towards some dystopian society with a vast gap between the isolated ‘Haves’ and the majority of the population who are ‘Have Nots’. Aside from security concerns in an ever more dangerous world uncontrolled immigration is putting a huge strain on every aspect of our society which simply creates more problems as they begin to fail.

Our politicians are quick to point the finger at enemies both domestic and foreign and send British men and women to bomb people or spy on people while seemingly turning a blind eye to what is both in reality a large problem and in perception a HUGE problem.

Without significant support for every aspect of our ability to cope with children, adults, the sick and the old the UK cannot cope now, bringing in 400,000 people next year as happened this year will lead to more shortages, more failures and ever greater drive by political groups to the right and to oppression and state control.


The Free movement of people in the Euro zone is not the problem, the UKs inability to handle those large numbers of people IS the problem and either we do something to support the people already here and arriving each year or do something to stop the unending flow of new arrivals or we must accept the fact that every resource, utility and service is going to be in shorter and shorter supply as an ever growing number of people fight for less hospital beds, less school places and less electricity.

 

But this is the UK, doing nothing is the Political norm.
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Is the Rise of UKIP Bad? Not in the Long Run.

11/10/2014

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Unless you have been hiding in a cave without access to any form of media over the last week you should know that we have had two by elections recently.

Clacton was one, Heywood and Middleton was the other.

Now Clacton was Douglas Carswell standing for re-election after having left the Tories to join UKIP, the result was expected to be a win for him based on his local popularity. Heywood and Middleton on the other hand was one of those safe Labour seats with a large labour majority and a confident local candidate and party.


Clacton was a crushing victory for Carswell, he took 60% of the vote compared to the previous 53% that he held the seat with as a Tory. The Tories managed 25%, Labour came in with just over 10% and the Lib Dems demonstrated that they are fading into the political twilight with less than 500 votes.

A Ukip / Carswell victory was expected but the scale of that victory was surprising and Call me Dave and his party are in complete denial mode as his comments on the matter reveal.

The other election in Heywood and Middleton was expected to be an easy Labour win. They held the seat in 2010 with a good sized majority, 40% of the vote went to Labour with the Tories on 27% and Lib Dems on 23%. UKIP came in with 3%.

Then the Tory vote more than halved, the Lib Dem vote dropped to a quarter of its previous levels and UKIP got the lot coming within 600 votes of taking the seat. Suddenly that safe Labour seat was looking more than a little wobbly.

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I see what is happening as a positive thing in the long term. No I’m not turning into a Kipper but I see the rising of UKIP as being good for democracy and British politics in the end. Short term we are all going to suffer from it but long term it’s a good thing.

The Tories were, to put it bluntly, given a good kicking in Clacton. UKIP took a large Tory majority and turned it into a larger UKIP majority. The short term effect of this is already being seen as Cameron is publicly urged to move even further to the political right that he already is. Hardly something that is going to be good for everyone in this country that isn’t rich or a Tory politician.

Labour went from a safe seat to just 600 seats in the lead when barely a third of the electorate could be bothered to turn out and cast votes. With both Tory and Lib Dem votes in the area vanishing and seemingly all moving to UKIP that safe seat is suddenly very shaky. I am already seeing comments suggesting that Labour start moving into UKIP territory by making promises on immigration.

So over the next few months until the election is done both main parties are going to be trying to pull UKIP voters back to their parties. 



The Tories have again and again refused to act on immigration and show no signs of doing so now. Instead they are pushing for the removal of Europe wide Human rights and promising to replace them with some fairly vague Tory driven bill of rights which will be flexible and arbitrary. 

UKIP and its followers have a very real problem with the ECHRs and European Human rights legislation being abused to allow murderers, rapists or terrorists to remain in the UK often at great expense.





But rather than sensibly acting to prevent Judges using the rules to abuse UK law the Tories are following their ongoing campaign to turn the UK into a police state by removing all human rights legislation that they do not have control over.


Labour, who to be honest created the whole unlimited immigration mess in the first place are most likely going to swing to the anti immigration side of politics to try and stave off the loss of many vulnerable marginal seats. After all they came within 600 people of losing what was thought to be a safe seat so now nowhere can truly be called safe.

So I suspect that we are going to see a swing towards the anti immigration meme from New Labour.


Neither party seems to be able to stop and ask why voters are leaving them in numbers, because an 'in depth' look at that situation would reveal a few truths I doubt any modern politician wants to hear spoken out loud.

In reality the problem is not immigration, the immigrants are available to be blamed by people who find themselves struggling day after day to manage as wages fall, costs go up, benefits are cut and the gap between the stinking rich and everyone else gets wider. It’s not immigration though it certainly helps push down wages, rather it is a convenient scrape goat to blame when there is a difference between the living wage and the minimum wage and such things as zero hours contracts punish those who have jobs.

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This is the short term consequence of these by elections. The political knee jerk as it were when parties and leaders unthinkingly push into what they think is UKIP territory in an effort to claim back those votes. We have another by election coming up soon, caused by Mr Reckless renouncing his Tory membership and declaring for UKIP.

In 2010 the Tories gained 50% of the vote, Labour gained 28% and the Lib Dems 16%. Given that half the Tory vote and three quarters of the Lib Dem vote in Heywood and Middleton went UKIP it will not take much for UKIP to take this borough as well. A fact that both main parties are aware of.

Given Cameron’s comments about voting UKIP and getting Labour, with the fact that UKIP came so close to beating Labour in Heywood and Middleton it can be said that voting Tory got Labour elected since the Tory minority denied UKIP a win.


So we are looking at ever harsher steps by both main parties to try and attract the UKIP vote while ignoring the fact that it is their own voters who are leaving. More repression of human rights, more effort to stop the ECHRs having any effect in the UK, more anti immigration rhetoric or action.

Nothing that will address the real problem and a lot that will negatively impact 99% of the population.

This and many other constituencies are close or winnable by UKIP, simply because UKIP is motivating its voter base and drawing in thousands of people who are turning their backs on the main parties by either voting UKIP or by not voting at all.

Short term the panic caused by UKIP (and by the increasing number of people who are no longer motivated enough to vote) will leave us with more problems. Politicians are about the worst people ever for long term planning, they don’t care past the next election and if they expect to lose they just don’t care anyway.

So until the next election and possibly into 2020 its going to be a problem.

But in the long term, if UKIP can push themselves into politics and if the Greens can take advantage of the Tory lapdogs, oops sorry I mean the Lib Dems imploding then we can see true multi party politics in Britain.



For too long we have lived with the binary swing between Tory and Labour, modern politics is a choice, which do you hate the least. 

Hold your nose against the stink of corruption, nepotism and the rank smell of out of touch career politicians moving around in tight herds of inbred animals.






Far too many people are what is called ‘Tribal Voters’, they have always voted for that party, their parents voted that way, everyone in the street votes that way. The attitude that says the working class (which ceased to exist other than as a state of mind long ago) votes Labour (who are a bunch of public school educated millionaires) and that the home counties who are all posh middle class types (they aren’t) vote Tory because the Tories support the middle classes (another joke in a long line of political jokes that are too tragic to be funny).

Far too many people do not vote on politics or agendas, they do not vote on the past performances of the candidates or how often they have lied or failed to keep promises. They don’t vote based on the politics or the people, they vote for the tribe, the party, the colour.


That is what we need to smash, the safe seats, the tribal voting, this is what must be stopped long term and this is hopefully what UKIP and perhaps the Greens can start to do.

If we can get to the point where people no longer vote automatically and instead have to have their votes earned them we should see politicians stopping the lying and cheating and behaving as if the electorate are worthless other than in the few months before an election.


But this takes choice and that means multiple parties. The Lib Dems don’t count and never have, they are part of the old system, old school career politicians just as out of touch as the rest and in some cases more out of touch than even the Tories.

That a Labour safe seat came within 600 votes of being lost is a good sign, because the labour vote collapsed, Miliband cannot count of those voters to vote for the tribe or even to bother to vote at all. So he needs to find out what they want rather than telling them what he thinks they want.

Political engagement, politicians and parties having to earn the votes that put them in power and people having a wide choice. Past crimes and lies remembered rather than forgiven because the choice is between Labour and Tory and lies can be forgiven since the other guy is worse.

Despite the fact that many of the UIP people are ex Tories and that their agenda is further to the right than the Tories, in the long term if UKIP can break open the cosy two party system and create gaps that other parties can use to get a foot in the door so to speak they will have done well by British politics.

So I hope UKIP continue to do well, I hope they take more seats and they go on to break the stranglehold that the Tories and Labour have in the two party system. I hope they break things apart and lead to us having half a dozen parties or more.


Yes coalition governments tend to be less powerful and less able to make major changes, but then when it comes to politicians making a mess of things I feel less is better.

So go UKIP, win more MPs, shake up the situation, break the status quo. Short term it’s going to hurt but long term I think it will be good for Democracy and British politics.



Down with the two party system, long live democracy!

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Ebola is Not Scary. The Complacency of the West Toward it is Terrifying!

7/10/2014

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The news today is full of the first reported infection of Ebola within Europe. A Spanish nurse who treated an infected missionary  flown home to Spain for treatment has the disease and her husband and three others are now being tested for presence of the disease with a total of 22 being monitored.

Compared to the numbers of doctors and nurses who become infected because they are treating Ebola cases one nurse is hardly huge. But this happened in Europe, in Western Europe, in a technological first world nation at a hospital that was chosen to treat this Ebola patient because it was considered to be well equipped for such a task.



For months now the world has watched the increase in Ebola cases from a distance. It’s just Africa, far away, backward third world countries who can’t handle a disease. This is Europe say our media and politicians, we have nothing to worry about.



The UK was proudly boasting that it has two, that’s TWO, full lock down contagious disease treatment beds ready for an Ebola victim.

This is one of the two beds, well equipped, everything needed to treat a victim. As long as the UK doesn't need to treat more than two at once we will be fine.



But at the same time the UK is showing its two beds reports from Africa talk of 40 bed treatment centres with people dying on the floors and in the corridors and more dying in the streets because they cannot be bought to the treatment centres. Thousands of reported cases, estimates of four or five times as many unreported cases.

But don’t worry, this is Western Europe, we are well trained and equipped to deal with this problem, its only Africa that cannot cope.

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In the US it was all reassuring words and tones. The CDC are fully prepared, this is America, best medical facilities in the world. Our doctors are fully briefed, our hospitals are ready, the CDC is the best available. Nothing to worry about.



Then Thomas Duncan flew in from Africa by way of at least one stopover in Europe. Despite the fact that he knew he had been in contact with an infectious Ebola case in Africa, he had helped take his landlords daughter to a treatment centre where she was then turned away and nine people including the woman had then died of the disease, he felt it was fine for him to fly to the US via Europe.








Now the case can be made either way for him not knowing or just being poorly educated about Ebola but it is known that when he became ill in the US he DID inform the doctor and medical centre that he was from Liberia. They sent him home with antibiotics. Because, after all, this is America, Ebola is an African problem.


That worked well.


Ebola is an often fatal disease, it requires intensive medical support and hydration to offer any real chance of survival. But it’s not the world destroying pandemic disease, it’s not airborne (yet and hopefully never) and it’s fairly easy to clean up.

If that is you have the basic idea of how to deal with it rather than a staggeringly huge egotistical failing that Western hospitals and staff are all powerful and there is nothing to worry about.

Household bleach is strong enough to kill it on any surface, it doesn’t last long on contaminated surfaces, optimal conditions six days but the warmer it is the shorter it lasts. At normal room temperature if may last no more than hours.

The place you catch it is most often an infected person by coming into contact with bodily fluids which are highly contagious. So simply by using bleach and by not coming into contact with those bodily fluids there will be no problem, right?

Western hospitals are well equipped to handle this; it’s just Africa with dirt floored hospitals and a handful of trained medical people that have to worry, right?


Then we have reality.


The Spanish medical authorities had two incoming Ebola cases, Spanish citizens who were being flown home to be treated. So they picked the best hospital for the job, well trained staff and with all the equipment they needed. Because after all, Western Europe, modern technological nation, nothing to worry about.

Then we have the nightmare behind that arrogance.

Madrid’s Carlos III hospital where the Spanish Ebola cases is now reporting that its equipment is substandard. The Hazmat suits it uses do NOT meet World Health Authority standards and the staff have NOT been adequately trained in using such equipment.

Then on top of that when the Nurse came into contact with bodily fluids from an infections patient it was not noticed. She went home to potentially infect her husband and others before reporting back to the hospital with a fever.

This in the hospital chosen by Spain as being the best available to handle Spanish citizens who had caught Ebola in Africa. Where staff are threatening to strike or are already walking out because of the risk to them posed by poor training and equipment.

Makes you think doesn't it.


In the US when Mr Duncan was finally taken to hospital because he  was displaying clear signs they still didn't start any sort of containment measures. The CDC claims that they were alerted and dealing with the situation within two hours and yet days later the family members who had been caring for him were still on in isolation and his home had not been cleaned.

The family were told to stay at home but nothing seems to have been done to enforce that quarantine and they were seen coming and going from the house several times. In addition by quarantining them in the house where the victim had been they were locking them in with the disease making possible infection from contaminated surfaces more likely.

Now a week later the family and others thought to be at risk have finally been moved to a supposedly controlled environment and a hazmat cleaning crew has finally cleaned up the home.

Compare this with what we see on the news and satellite channels where African teams dealing with Ebola victims spray bleach on anything and everything that may be contaminated and are wrapped up in multiple layers of protective clothing.

But then Africa has been burning the dead for months now and fully understands what they are dealing with, the West, the oh so arrogant west, not so much.

Ebola is NOT a world ender; it is made more dangerous because of its much longer than normal incubation period of up to three weeks before symptoms appear and the victim becomes infectious. So a person can become infected and fly around the world before symptoms appear.

But and this is the big but, ignorance and an attitude in the west that it is not a problem make it far more dangerous make it far more dangerous.


Even now in the 21st century in the information age far too many people, even medical professionals who should have been briefed, do not seem to have a clue. Someone with fever, headache, body aches, cough, stomach pain, vomiting, and diarrhea may have one of a number of diseases, but if they have just come from Africa the one at the top of the list should be Ebola.

After all the world has had months to prepare for this. But then it’s just an African problem, nothing to worry about here in the west. Or bother preparing for or informing people about.

With routine levels of checks and body searches at airports how hard is it to use thermal scanners to spot anyone with above a 97 degree body temperature as a first line of checks. Apparently too difficult or not something that has needed because it will not spot anyone who is infected and not yet showing a fever and anyone who has come into contact with the disease will freely admit so when they fill in the questionnaires, right?

Here is the thing. Ebola can be dealt with by preventing people catching it, household bleach, basic measures to avoid contact etc. African tribal conditions and attitudes are making the problem far worse that it should be because even in the 21st century the number of people lacking modern education number in the many millions in these areas.


But Europe or the US are not Africa. The hospitals are well equipped and the staff well trained. The population knows all about Ebola and how to respond. Right?

I hope that the cases in Spain and the US make our western medical people sit up and pay attention because it’s not Ebola that is going to kill us; it’s the incredibly arrogant attitude that the West can handle it easily so there is nothing to worry about. If the best Hospital in Spain cannot handle two cases without its medical staff getting infected what does that say for the best hospitals elsewhere in Europe? What about the worst hospitals?


When the CDC doesn't bother to quarantine the family of a victim or clean his house for days after a positive diagnosis when they are dealing with just one case how will they respond to two case, or ten or one hundred?



The risk isn't Ebola; it’s the complacence of the West towards it.

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ISIS Are Muslim, To Deny This as our Politicians Do is to Advance the ISIS Cause.

4/10/2014

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OK people. I’m going to be more blunt that normal because I see what is being thought on this matter and to my mind it's part of the problem.

In a recent online post I said this: 


That is why this should be dealt with by the nations of the region NOT the west. Western ground troops would be used to bring in far more Muslim support for ISIS / IS because like it or not and despite the grovelling apologies of our politicians this is Islam and these animals are Muslims.

I got a number of responses that I was generalising, that I was insulting Islam in some way and that I was being unfair to many peaceful Muslims who oppose the atrocities of ISIS.

Our politicians spend 30 seconds in sound bites condemning ISIS and promising to degrade and destroy them then spend many minutes denying that they are Muslim and that their actions are not Islamic. 

Utter stupidity.


The ISIS animals ARE MUSLIM.
 

They follow a version of the faith, it may not be the same one as western born men and women do but it is as much Islam as the Crusades were associated with Christianity. To deny this in a search for votes or political correctness or for some other reason simply makes it more difficult to deal with the problem because you are denying that there even is a religious aspect to the problem. ISIS is not hiring mercenaries or Christians, it is calling Muslims to join it in a religious war and tens of thousands of people are hearing that call and answering. To deny this is happening is madness, or politics.
 

ALL Muslims are NOT Animals.


I never said they were and yet this is how my words were heard and read. Because it is somehow wrong to criticise the religious belief that inspires such savage behaviour in ISIS savages, because linking ISIS to Islam upsets other Muslims. Like it or not ISIS claims to be Muslim, they call others to them for this reason and large numbers of people answer that call.

Between 30,000 and 40,000 thousand people have been drawn to join ISIS and fight what they think is some kind of holy war, they are doing so because they believe rightly or wrongly that this is something they are called to do by their religion.

When they get there they plunge into savage and barbaric action that ISIS justify because it is a holy war and the enemies are non believers, Christians, Shia and others. Then quickly it becomes a matter of anyone who does not follow the same version of Sunni that ISIS does so they can justify turning the animals lose on other Sunni.

The men and boys and girls who flock to join ISIS / IS have been failed by their societies and communities, they have become filled with hate and fear and been isolated from civilisation by their religious beleifs, it does not matter that they have warped and twisted what they believe, they use the same quotes, speak the same prayers and go to the same mosques and it is this fact they seek to use by deliberately provoking the non Muslim world to attack them.

Children, some not even old enough to drive or vote, have been helped to leave the UK and head to Turkey so they can join ISIS where they kill and abuse and perform atrocities because they believe what they are doing is for their faith. 


ISIS are doing everything they can to provoke a holy war between the west and Islam, they will die trying to do this but if they succeed then it will not be tens of thousands joining them but instead it will be millions.

Thanks to the actions of the west over the last two decades there is an undercurrent of thought that the west is anti Islamic and will bomb a Muslim country while ignoring the atrocities of a Jewish one.

This perception is based on reality as reported in our own newspapers, western governments have freely attacked Middle Eastern nations while ignoring others who are as bad or worse. This happened and is still happening; it is a colossal failure of policy and a demonstration of bias.

ISIS / IS are trying to exploit this feeling, they are trying to create fear and hatred among the larger religious organisation. To deny they are doing this, to deny that they are Muslim or to take my comment that ISIS are murderous scum and are Muslims as an attack on all Muslims is to become part of their activity.


The groups and gangs that made up ISIS were, last year, being funded and supported by the likes of Saudi Arabia because they were Muslim groups fighting Assad. Even now Saudi Arabia which has a larger army than the UK does is sitting and watching events rather than moving in on the ground and smashing the IS. The Saudi army has as many soldiers sitting on the Iraqi border as ISIS has in its entirety; they have much better equipment, tanks, support weapons and the like.

But they are doing nothing because of a reported fear of being seen to be fighting against fellow Sunni which would result in extremists becoming active inside their own country.

Fellow Sunni. The nation that has done so much to fund ISIS and has now lost control of the thing that they created considers them to be a Sunni organisation.


To claim, as so many are doing, that ISIS are somehow not Muslims because they are doing things that are not the mainstream Western ideal of Islam leads where? Is it OK to bomb them because we say they are not Muslim, they claim that they are being attacked because they are Muslim.

The Westboro scum were mentioned, Christianity is happy to ignore a dozen of the WB types when they picket a funeral or perform some appalling protest. But if there were 30,000 of the Westboro Christians deliberately trying to provoke a war with Islam and getting killed in what they report to be a war between Islam and Christianity does anyone think there would be any lack of Christians joining them or support for them in the US in a Christian holy war. This is the situation we face and that is what we have to avoid.


Speak out, say that they do not represent your version of Islam, call for the Muslim nations of the Middle East to act, start campaigns to get the King of Saud to start acting rather than just watching.

This is a war within Islam, the modern version that is learning to adapt to modern societies and cultures and the thousand year out of date version that is barbaric and cruel and rules by terror and force,

Christianity has been through this stage and it was bloody indeed.

Want to join the fight, then do so. The hate preachers who act to recruit these tens of thousands of ISIS recruits do not operate in a vacuum, so why are they not being identified and shut down.

Don’t blame the internet, a handful of people can self radicalise on line, when that number is in the thousands we are dealing with a systemic Europe wide failure.

Don’t deny that ISIS are following what they interpret to be Islam, don’t deny that ISIS are Muslims. Instead accept that they are following a wrong interpretation of your faith and work to persuade others that they are wrong.


ISIS are barbaric scum, they are following their version of Islam. They claim that they are fighting a war between the entire west and Islam. If you take offence at my statement that ISIS are scum and are Muslim because you don’t like your faith being mentioned then you are part of the problem and you are helping to perpetuate the concept of war between the West and the East.

Don’t deny that they are Muslim, instead work to isolate them as a mad dog fringe that must be cut from the rest of the religion if it is to survive in the 21st century. If you want to have a religion in this century it cannot be run as if it were the dark ages. Hatred, fear, gender discrimination, mutilations, flogging, beheading, these are from the dark ages and should have no place in the modern world. But they do and they are done in the name of all three of the Abrahamic religions by groups and by nations.


I don't see the need for organised religions in the 21st century but I understand that some people want and need some sort of focus in their lives that a shared faith can bring them. If you want a 21st century religion then it must be able to operate in this century, not cleave to concepts and attitudes that were out of date a thousand years ago.



Change and survive in this century or remain barbaric and be destroyed. If you want a religion you cannot do both.






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‘Prepaid Benefit Cards’ The 21st Century Yellow Star.

3/10/2014

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Once again those veritable champions of the poor, the disadvantage and the unemployed, the Tories, have come up with another scheme that sounds vaguely good and claims some noble ideal but simply serves to keep those dirty peasants in their place.

Prepaid Benefit Cards

 

A few years ago I was taking part in a debate on the future developments of society as AIs and robots made ever increasing numbers of people useless and created permanent ‘Dole’ classes of 50% or more of the population. The measure of state control that arose from that debate was the use of ‘Dole Debit Cards’ that were paid by the state and were then limited in some way.

The more totalitarian the state the greater the restrictions. By limiting where the cards could be used it became possible to trap the Dolee’s into parts of the cities where they were out of sight and out of mind, after all if they didn’t have private transport and the cards didn’t allow them to travel outside of their area you created ghetto’s.

 
Now a few years later I see the Tories are proposing exactly the same thing and it will have exactly the same consequences.

This goes hand in hand with Universal Credit which is slowly arriving and is still packed with technical and implementation flaws. The idea is to take the six different benefits and tax credits that are being combined into one payment by Universal Credit and then paid in the form of a prepaid card that has restrictions on what can be bought and where it can be used.
 

IDS, a well known champion of the poor and the unemployed said:

"I have long believed that where parents have fallen into a damaging spiral - drug or alcohol addiction, even problem debt, or more - we need to find ways to safeguard them - and more importantly, their families, their children, ensuring their basic needs are met.

That means benefits paid, I always believe, should go to support the well-being of their families not to feed their destructive habits.”


All very noble and well intentioned apart from the minor consideration that the number of people who buy alcohol and cigarettes before food is a tiny number and if this card is made universal millions of people will be directly trapped by it.
 

Let me run through a few of the major problems.

 
Firstly there is the social impact, the stigma directly associated with being one of the Tories hated enemies, that is to say poor or unemployed or on benefits. 


Walk into a shop, put stuff in your basket then go to the checkout and pay with your ‘Prepaid Benefit Card’ which is likely to be a highly visible sign that you are some sort of peasant or beggar that depends on the government for money. I am just guessing here but I’m thinking these cards will be run by Visa or some other such company and will prominently display the DWP or government logo and the words ‘Prepaid Benefit Card’ in some gold or high visibility letters just so no one can miss the fact that the person using the card is a benefit grabbing thief or cheat.

Breaking Godwins law here but there was a society and a government some years ago that decided to make people carry obvious symbols of their status in that society. These cards are not as obvious as yellow stars on the clothing but when you are standing in a queue in a supermarket and you get out your ‘I’m a benefit grabber’ card where everyone behind you can see it you are achieving the same social segregation and shaming.

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Next we have the aspect of controlling the peasants. By restricting what can be bought and what cannot be bought by these cards and by removing the freedom of cash the State, that is to say the government of the day, can exercise almost total but very subtle control over the poor and the unemployed.

Which supermarkets and shops can you use the card in? This is open to abuse and corruption since the government can amend this list when it wants, be nice to the Tories or you may find yourself off the list. It’s all very well blocking the purchase of cigarettes or alcohol but what about the occasional user, the person who has a pint or two with their friends on a Friday evening. Or someone who smokes a few cigarettes a week if they get stressed.

What about the hunt for bargains that take those on benefits or restricted income to the car boot sales and markets in search of something that’s cheaper than the supermarkets, sorry luv we don’t take plastic. You have no option but to shop in the approved outlets paying the prices the government forces you to pay.

How far does the restriction go, clothing, toiletries, a book or DVD as a treat once a month. A bag of crisps and a can of drink to go with the DVD, how about sweets or treats for the children. You are totally at the mercy of whatever jack booted fascist is in charge of the benefits card that week and if they are having an eat healthy campaign then so are you, regardless of cost.

How about travel. How far are you allowed to travel, is a staycation considered acceptable this year or not. Can you use the card for bus or train tickets and if so are you restricted as to how far you can go. 


Next we have the usual Tory and Political class problem, greed and corruption. By restricting where the cards can be used and on what the more favoured suppliers gain significant advantage. After all if it is fixed to certain shops or supermarket chains regardless of who offers the best deals then people are forced to pay those prices.


The likes of Tesco’s and Sainsbury’s are right at the top end of costs for products, well not compared to say Fortnum and Masons but I’m guessing that these cards will not work there to keep the dirty beggars out of the rich peoples shop. 


So if the cards cannot be used in the Lidles and ASDAs where prices are much lower the card holders are trapped into paying higher prices.



What about all the small shops that don’t take cards unless you spend £10 or more, they are cut out completely from all small purchases. But then they don’t have much to offer the Politicians so who cares about them.

This is open to huge abuse, has your supermarket chain donated to the Tory election fund for 2015, Oops, maybe you should reconsider that quickly.

I mentioned above that these cards would be run by someone like Visa, the government doesn’t have the ability to run a national card scheme and I’m sure one of the big card companies would be delighted to take this on, for a few hundred million a year.

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Then we have technical problems. This is a biggy, the really huge one that is going to make this idea a multi billion pound waste of taxpayers money and the point where it will fall apart.

Now the stated purpose of the card is to stop the buying of alcohol or cigarettes with benefit money, so how do you do that? You can create a list of approved shops and anyone not on the list cannot access the card for payment. 


So that’s your specialist wine and beer shops done and the few specialist smoking shops. But how do you block the sale of the restricted goods in a supermarket or shop that sells food and beer.

In the big supermarkets with separate smoking sections the staff can be told not to accept the cards and it then becomes incumbent on the supermarket to enforce the use of the cards properly. But what about a self service checkout, half a basket of bread and baked beans and eggs and a six pack. The annoying machine pings as you swipe the shopping and then comes up with a total, the card goes in the slot and the cost of the shop is compared to what is on the card. At no point does the card company become aware of the exact contents of your shop, just the final cost.

So how is this going to work in supermarkets, well that would be where those billions would be thrown away in yet another pointless doomed to tail, government IT project that make some favoured IT company a vast profit. Again.

The supermarket and shop systems would need to check every item on the shopping list and then allow the use of the benefit card, speaking as an IT guy, this is not a simple system, will cause immense problems for the supermarkets and shops who will be forced to adopt new software and procedures of lose the custom of every person on benefits in the UK.

This will be costly in time and money. If it even works, which I doubt.


Then we have one final point which has not been mentioned but which fits well with the current Tory drive to control and monitor everyone who is not a rich or powerful donator or old school chum.

Card purchases can be tracked, every single person on benefits will have their weekly spending logged, how much they spend, when and in which shops. Meta data that I’m sure will be used by the likes of May and the GCHQ for some purpose that will suit them and not the rest of us.

Cash payments are relatively traceless, if you want but something and have the cash that is up to you. Fancy a takeaway, grab that tenner in your wallet and get one. After all once the cash is gone its gone.

With the card, are you going to have someone in the DWP monitor your spending, is your bi weekly walk of shame going to include a review of your shopping habits on the card? Can you be sanctioned for wasting money on a take away form a well known chain of burger or pizza shops when the government thinks that is a waste of money?
 

The reason given for this may be good and helpful but this is IDS and the Tory government behind it so you know full well that the good reasons will vanish and every bad reason will jump out as soon as this begins.

This whole idea is flawed, both technically and from a financial aspect. It is open to abuse, it is ready made for corruption and corporate greed and graft. It will make peoples lives more difficult, more restrictive and more easily monitored and controlled.

 

So a fairly standard Tory idea that will either fail to appear, fail to work or turn into something far far worse.


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