Back in early 2015, PM Cameron, identified child sexual abuse as a 'national threat'. He also called for individuals wilfully ignoring the evidence under their noses to be charged with 'wilful neglect'. As usual Dave came across like a character from a Marvel comic, chest pumped out, primed for action and ready to legislate a new culture into this broken land.
The key to understanding Afghanistan is this - it is not a country harbouring terrorists, it's a place where terrorists are harbouring a country.
In 2011, following nationwide tests in history, the New York Times reported that students were, "less proficient in their nation's history than any other subject". Generally, knowledge was found to be partial, with answers grounded in the notion of exceptionalism. Well, if you are exceptional then everything you do must be right and the past can't teach you anything.
State apologies, that is, sentiments of regret long after the moment's gone, when the public are a bit hazy about the reason for the apology and most of the affected are dead and no compensation is due. (Oct. 2010) (Feb 2012) (April 2013)
It's just incomprehencible how evolution managed to spawn a species called art critic?
It was the crime of the century that no one was punished for...you will find two versions of this sorry tale, a short one and a long one
Aboard the ship of fools the rum was broken out back in December 2019. The Tory crew gained a majority of 80 seats. The Fools had a one party state and a basket of problems which caused them to run aground.
Never mind the Chequers' Plan, there's an election on the way...
Do you want all your medical records held on a massive database that insurance companies, among other interested grubbers, can buy for a small fee. Of course, Mr Cameron has already given the drug companies the green light to help themselves to existing patient records but this new data mining exercise will be like manna from Davos for them. (March 2014)
92 year old Olive Cooke was hounded to death by a host of ghoulish charity fundraisers. Over a one month period Olive received 276 begging letters from charities as well as being bombarded by numerous calls every day from blood suckers, leeching the goodness out of the poor woman. After months of being hounded, she quite simply had enough and decided to throw herself off the Clifton Suspension Bridge
In the 2001 census, 390,000 individuals, (0.7 per cent of total respondents) self-identified as followers of the Jedi faith. The state, however, refuses to embrace Jediism and has no intention of replacing the Anglican church with it. >
This essay tracks the Coalition's performance from 2010 to 2015. It's hilarious!
This page tracks every move the government made throughout the Coronavirus crisis.
The City should be viewed as an alien body, like a parasite feasting on the flesh of its host.
Boy George introduced the world to his comic book creation, Mark Carney, as the soon to be Governor of the Bank of England. Osborne told the press: Carney was the "outstanding candidate" for "avoiding big bail outs and securing growth."
Cars should be considered as 'tools of conviviality', objects that enhance human existence not machines that will add a shine to dull wits.
Scarcity in economic thinking is presented as a given, a constant fact, sent to perplex expert minds. Having swallowed such nonsense, the experts have failed to provide a solution to what they call the 'economic problem' - how to optimise the allocation of those scarce resources between competing ends. Better leave things to the market then!
Our education system misses the mark: the mark is to enable citizens to make a positive contribution to society and enable individuals to live well and flourish as human beings. No one should be surprised by this failure, listening to the voices clamouring for a new generation of grammar schools, selection and a second coming of the meritocracy, that never managed to arrive the first time around to use its specialness to improve the world we all live in - to create a convivial society.
Public Health and Profit in the Food Industry...
On 14 June 2017, a fire broke out in the 24-storey Grenfell Tower block of flats in North Kensington, at 00:54; it caused 72 deaths. More than 70 others were injured and 223 people escaped.
An inquiry was set up by Theresa May because families were “owed an explanation”.
The housing crisis explained...
The Duke of Wellington: back in 1872, is registered as owning 15,800 acres. Today the Land Registry has no record of his holding. The BBC asked the current Duke how much land he owned. He declined to tell. The Duke is not alone, his chums are not keen to let on how much land they own either, just in case someone starts asking how they came by it. (Feb 2011)
Unknown unknowns, only a liar could utter such tosh...
Bill Clinton told a global television audience 'I did not have sexual relations with that woman', responding to allegations from White House intern, Monica Lewinsky in 1998. Even when he was forced to come clean, he still wouldn't acknowledge that he had sex with Lewinsky, instead he called it an "inappropriate relationship", he said "...it was wrong. It constituted a critical lapse in judgment and a personal failure on my part for which I am solely and completely responsible." (2012)
MP Frank Field asked what kind of a person would behave the way Sir Philip Green has in relation to the workers at BHS, the answer's simple - a callous, indifferent sociopath.
"Within the capitalist system all methods for raising the social productiveness of labour are brought about at the cost of the individual labourer; all means for the development of production transform themselves into means of domination over, and exploitation of, the producers; they mutilate the labourer into a fragment of a man, degrade him to the level of an appendage of a machine....... (June 2011)
Jeremy Hunt was in-charge of the Health Service and he didn't have a clue what was going on, no matter, he has no responsibility for anything. The murders, the management failures, the treatment failures, staff shortages, the drug rationing, all nothing to do with him. His job is policy, that is, privatising the NHS.
Olive oil famed for its health benefits may not be all its cracked up to be. You need to know more before you part with your cash. (March 2012)
Basking in the glow of Team GB's Olympic success David Cameron came over all passionate about the need to encourage the young to participate in sport and become the next generation of Olympians. Many newspapers lighted on the closure of school playing fields as an apparent contradiction to Dave's future Olympic ambitions. After all, the media pointed out, 21 school playing fields had been sold off under the coalition government since 2010. (August 2012)
Do you remember when George told us in 2011, "the time for banker bashing is over".
Everyone must work longer and contribute more to their pension pots and they must be satisfied to get less at the end of the day.
And yes, they must trust the financial markets, the pensions peddlers, the regulators, the trustees, the employers, the politicians and everyone else that has betrayed workers' pension prospects over the past decades.
‘Perfect command of temper is indispensable.’ Police training should transform a ‘wild young fellow’ into ‘a machine, moving, thinking and speaking only as his instruction book directs… Stiff, calm and inexorable, an institution rather than a man’
If you encounter this policeman call Crime Stoppers on 0800 555 111... He was last seen in the 19th century
Rotten to the core...
Staff shortages, government cuts, mental illness, self-harm, drugs, particularly, Spice easily available, high re-offending rates, violence and disorder rising, prison education hopeless and rehabilitation a pipe dream - now that's what you call public policy failure…. Liz Truss is in charge and she tells us: "There are no quick fixes".
Wilberforce spent decades raising the barbaric practice of human slavery in Parliament. Today's politicians hardly ever utter the word slavery. Yet, slavery is a fact of life for millions of people in this 21st Century. Two hundred years on from the Parliamentary vote to end slavery the situation is worse today than it was when Wilberforce wept tears of joy. (June 2011,)
British Regulators Are Just No Good at Regulating...
Apparently, we are at war, with terrorists, criminals and drug barons and in order to protect us the government needs to listen to all our conversations, read all our emails and track our web use. All this snooping is designed to protect citizens' cyber freedom, so don't have nightmares.
The number of elderly care places has been falling for several years. There are now 70,000 fewer places available than there were when New Labour came to power in 1997. 11 million of the UK population are pensioners, 1 million are over 85 years old. About 5% of pensioners need a care home. By 2020, three quarters of those in need will not be able to find a place in a care home. Half a million elderly people will be left in their own homes to rot quietly.
"Only the little people pay taxes", tax evader Leona Helmsley
TV companies buy a slice of the broadcasting airwaves and feel the need to fill it. And fill it they do, with vacuous rubbish, 24 hours a day.
A vibrant economy needs to move people and goods around the nation efficiently. Britain does not have a vibrant economy, neither does it have a transport policy. What Britain has is projects and cones. It has a quango, the Highways Agency, responsible for moving the cones around. It has a Department for Transport, responsible for projects. It doesn't have a transport policy.
Water, everywhere, etc., makes a bloody mess of the carpets when the tank in the loft springs a leak, and gets on your nerves famously, when it wont stop falling from the sky. And contrary-wise how marvelous to soak in the bath or feel the revitalizing effects of a hot shower. Without it there would be no life - so why are we not looking after our water supplies - Capitalism, that's why. (April 2010) (Dec 2010)
Food banks are a common feature of the wasteland. The growth in the food bank sector does not signify growing poverty but rather growing awareness of food banks. On another planet such nonsense might have meaning but in the current circumstances its Tory drivel. None of the agencies involved in the troubled families campaign were able to supply the names of a single family that had been turned around through intervention
The common features of the modern workplace are easy to identify; overwork, low pay, no pay, zero hours, low productivity, the rise of distributive working. Hipsters kid themselves that they are like musicians, not working - only gigging, pleasing themselves on the hours they spend working for Uber and Deliveroo, free and flexible with no employment rights, no sick pay, no pensions, no security.
E. P. Thompson, in his The Making of the English Working Class, 1963, observed that the working class was "present at its own making". In the space between then and now the working class seems to have disappeared, present at its own demise, no doubt.
World Wide Web, provides virtually free access to a vast store of information and resources, a fast means of communication and self-publication. Big business uses it to ply its wares but it doesn't like its openness and freedom. Governments publicly applaud its openness and secretly draw up blueprints to use it as a controlling mechanism. (Feb 2020)