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• editorial comment from abelard.org

  Our dear readers may have noticed that, recently, there is rather a preponderance of news and comment items focusing on the state of politics, finance and society in the United Kingdom.

  It is the season of UK political party conferences. In charge of the country is a dishonest politician who is, currently, still managing to lull his electorate into a complacent acceptance of the continuing incompetent socialist political management.

  This is further encouraged by a media entranced by the socialist ‘dream’, who wrap every event in a cloud of pink glory, while burying awkward facts.

  Thus abelard and the yaks are working to display the facts of the current UK situation; the stream of failings and the flummery to hide the grave weaknesses and damaging inbalances in the UK socialist government’s policies and false claims.

  
  • the fight against filthy fossil fuels goes mainstream - the uk clown still drags along way behind
  • the state of the uk national health service after 10 years of socialist incompetence
  • is the uk’s brown the clown ready for a general election?
  • bubbles, debt, borrowing and inflation in the uk
  • on money - northern crock
  • brown the clown true to form over northern rock
  
  
• the Clown’s broken Britain - “roughly a third of all households collect more than half their income from state benefits”
  [This quote from telegraph.co.uk]

  meet the minister for scotland
  
  “A Newsnight survey found that a clear 61 per cent of English voters think they should have their own parliament and that this proposition was supported by a majority of Scottish voters. Another poll revealed that a greater proportion of English voters wanted independence for England than did Scottish voters for Scotland.

  “The English question is the great giant in British politics that is now beginning to awake from slumber induced by the first devolution of power to Scotland. "English votes for English issues" is fed by a number of specific grievances that increasingly grate with English taxpayers.

  “Frail citizens in Scotland do not pay fees for personal care delivered in their home or in a residential setting.

  “Scottish citizens are treated with the drug Lucentis for macular degeneration of the eye, while their English counterparts lose their sight while awaiting action from the National Institute for Clinical Excellence.

  “Scottish university students do not pay top-up fees of £3,000 a year, but English students do.

  “There is talk of the Scottish Executive abolishing prescription charges following the Welsh Assembly's decision to do so. Most English voters pay £6.85 per item for medicines.

  “The sense of grievance will be heightened still further once Parliament begins its new session. The Queen's Speech is likely to contain measures that will apply to my constituents but not equally to the constituents of the Prime Minister, Gordon Brown. And unless the Government changes track pretty smartly, the public expenditure levels for 2008-10 are likely to leave in place an injustice whereby Scottish citizens gain an extra £1,236 a year from the Exchequer that is largely met by English taxpayers."

Word counts from the Scots Gordon Brown’s conference mumble:
British - 29
Britain - 52

From td - comment to The Scotsmen article:

“When Gordon Brown was an ordinary Scottish MP he signed the declaration of the "Scottish Claim of Right". This document was a public oath committing those who took it to put the interests of the people of Scotland before all other considerations.”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#editorial_scots_uk_290907

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the “eu constitution reform treaty” according to nu-labour

[link to enlargeable image]

After a EU referendum rejected the EU treaty, that treaty was ‘revised’. The dishonest UK government is now claiming that this ‘revised’ version is very different to the version rejected by referendum [see blue arrows above]. Other EU countries do not agree, as listed to the right of the image above.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#eu_treaty_270907

the state of the uk national health service after 10 years of socialist incompetence

Collected to emphasise just how incompetent is this socalist government.

“Your chances of surviving cancer in the UK remain below the European average.

“And only in former eastern bloc states are you more likely to die if you develop lung, breast, prostate and colorectal cancer. Why?” [Quoted from bbc.co.uk]

—

“A second article, which looked at 2.7 million patients diagnosed between 1995 and 1999, found that countries that spent the most on health per capita per year had better survival rates.

“Britain was the exception. Despite spending up to £1,500 on health per person per year, it recorded similar survival rates for Hodgkin's disease and lung cancer as Poland, which spends a third of that amount.” [Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

“Almost half of hospital kitchens fail to meet basic standards of hygiene, it has been revealed.

“The catalogue of breaches of food safety rules includes infestations of cockroaches and mice and used needles and syringes left on meal trays.

“Environmental health reports from around the country also describe medicines being stored in kitchen fridges, milk being kept in freezers used for drugs and drinks such as orange juice being stored next to chemicals.

“In all, almost half of the 377 hospitals surveyed failed to meet the most basic standards of food hygiene.” [Quoted from thisislondon.co.uk]

“Elderly people are suffering from abuse, neglect and malnutrition in hospitals and care homes, according to a report by peers and MPs.

“The report, published today by the Joint Committee on Human Rights, calls for changes in the law to safeguard the care of older people, and for a "complete change of culture" in health and care services.

“More than a fifth of care homes have been found to be failing basic standards for privacy and dignity, with the most vulnerable residents struggling to eat without proper help, being subjected to verbal and physical abuse or being left to lie in their urine or excrement.

“Two thirds of NHS hospital beds are occupied by the over65s, while the number of older people in the population is growing such that, by 2050, there will be twice as many Britons aged over 80 as there are today. Although the committee was told that some patients received excellent care, it said "there are serious concerns about poor treatment, neglect, abuse, discrimination and ill-considered discharge".” [Quoted from timesonline.co.uk]

“Forty-one per cent of strains of Staphyloccus aureaus in UK hospitals were found to be antibiotic resistant compared with one per cent in Sweden and Finland and zero in the Netherlands. Israel and Greece were only slightly better than the UK with recorded levels of 44.1 per cent and 38.6 per cent respectively.” [Quoted from direct-healthcare.com]

“Despite improvements in recent years, the number of people awaiting surgery is currently above 200,000 people on the books, 20 percent of whom have been waiting for more than year, despite a maximum five-month period being stipulated by the National Health Service.

“NHS officials are looking to reduce this number to below the 200,000 mark by the end of 2008, though seem to have a considerable battle ahead.” [Quoted fro m google.the-news.net]

“The findings have implications for the UK government's proposals to close local emergency care departments in favour of fewer more specialised centres, in a bid to save lives, say the authors. Local closures will inevitably spell longer ambulance journeys for critically ill patients, they say.

“In all, the risk of death rose by 1% for every 10 kilometres (6 miles).” [Quoted from sciencedaily.com]

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#state_of_nhs_240907

is the uk’s brown the clown ready for a general election?

Gordon Brown’s record, both before his appointment as prime minister and since, objectively is not very promising.

the outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease

Brown did not “tackle” this problem. Rather, he refused to fund the upgrading of a major biohazard unit four years after the report that it was needing improvement.

Meanwhile, foot and mouth continues to spread.

the flooding of middle england

Brown’s irresponsible failure to introduce planning regulations that secure against flooding and reckless building on flood plain caused the flood disasters. Remember that Gordon Brown, as the UK’s finance minister, controlled all government expenditure.

national financial mismanagement

A combination of Brown’s tax policies, an inadequate deposit situation, his splitting of Bank of England functions and his constant high inflation are at the heart of the Northern Crock collapse. This combination undermines Britain’s vital international financial market advantages.

Brown the Clown is showing himself to be a fool, and a dishonest fool at that.

What truly amazes is that each time one of these self-inflicted disasters are visited on the British public, Brown parades before the supine and left-leaning media droning a few mealy-mouthed ‘promises’, the media then tirelessly vaunt him as the great beloved leader ‘taking charge’ of the crisis.

His luck is that uncritical Britons, many of whom receive government alms, will still vote for him, while the brain drain from Britain continues.

Even today, Brown is looking at ways to further undermine the rule of law in his constant prioritization of grabbing still more tax.

end note
From 24 September, 2007, a car owner receiving a speed camera-generated ticket will have the ‘choice’ between

• admitting to being the speeding driver and receiving 3 penalty points on their driving licence, even if they were not the driver (or do not know who is the driver - say the car was stolen or was a fleet car, or driving was being shared at the time),
• or not giving an admission, nor implicating someone else, and receiving 6 points on their licence.

In the UK, drivers receive up to 12 penalty points for driving-related offences before the licence is confiscated. This is in addition to any fine. In general, speed cameras are not used as a safety measure in the UK, but as revenue-generating devices. In France, cameras are advertised hundreds of yards ahead; in Britain, they are carefully hidden behind trees, road signs and around corners. The real reason, as ever with this government, has nothing to do with the rule of law or safety.

related material
bubbles, debt, borrowing and inflation in the uk
on money - northern crock
brown the clown true to form over northern rock

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#uk_general_election_230907

brown the clown true to form over northern rock

True to form, Brown the Clown hides in his bunker while sending out Alistair Sweetheart to blame the mess on David Cameron! The depth of dishonesty and lies put around by the Clown make Bliar look like a boy scout.

So now the Clown’s mismanagement over ten years is really Cameron’s fault.
“It was him what done it, sir - honest.”

Clowning is pathos. Chaos follows the Clown around like a shadow.

“[...] In words cut from the text distributed to the media, but which I heard him deliver, he said this: "The current Conservative leader was the principal economic adviser to the Chancellor of Black Wednesday and he stood alongside Norman Lamont . . .”

“David Cameron was not, of course, the principal economic adviser to the Chancellor of the Exchequer. He wasn't an economic adviser at all. He was a special adviser; there were scores of them; still are. They don’t count for diddly-squat, many are barely out of university, their opinions on big economic decisions are neither relied upon nor, in most cases, even sought, and Mr Cameron, as it happens, was 26, an age at which the young Gordon Brown was still railing against Margaret Thatcher’s legacy.”

related material
on money - northern rock

Foot-and-mouth disease is a very high-level biohazard. Instead of funding the upgrading of one of the most critical biohazard units on the planet, Pirbright in Surrey, the Clown was more interested in buying votes.

Why is Mr. Brown not being charged?

Meanwhile, why is the fossil media instead praising the criminally incompetent Clown for a few insipid camera appearances?

Blithering words trump actions and competence perhaps?

“This summer’s outbreak of foot-and-mouth disease, which has cost the country almost £50 million, could have been avoided if £50,000 had been spent on repairs to a leaking pipe.

“It has also emerged that officials at the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs knew about the poor state of the drains at the Pirbright research laboratory site in Surrey four years ago.” [Quoted from timesonline.co.uk]

“The inadequate maintenance at the Government-funded Institute of Animal Health and the pharmaceutical firm Merial at Pirbright in Surrey was labelled as "incredible and quite indefensible" by Peter Kendall, the president of the National Farmers' Union.” [Quoted from telegraph.co.uk]

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#foot_and_mouth_130907

Unusually, the Crocker analysis was long-term, clearly delineated realism, a thing I see presented far too rarely.
Recommended reading.

“I cannot guarantee success in Iraq. I do believe, as I have described, that it is attainable. I am certain that abandoning or drastically curtailing our efforts will bring failure, and the consequences of such a failure must be clearly understood. An Iraq that falls into chaos or civil war will mean massive huuman suffering - well beyond what has already occurred within Iraq's borders. It could well invite the intervention of regional stsates, all of which see their future connected to Iraq's in some fundamental way. Undoubtedly, Iran would be a winner in this scenario, consolidating its influence over Iraqi resources and possibly territory. The Iranian President has already announced that Iran will fill any vacuum in Iraq. In such an environment, the gains made against al-Qa'aida and other extremist groups could easily evaporate and they could establish strongholds to be used as safehavens for regional and international operations. Our current course is hard. The alternatives are far worse.”

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#crocker_on_iraq_100907

After the suggestion by a ‘senior’ judge that all people in the UK, or visitng for at least a weekend, should be added to a giant national DNA database so that the data held would be ‘fair’, the government said they have “no plans to introduce a universal compulsory or voluntary national database”.

From the judge:

“Where we are at the moment is indefensible. We have a situation where if you happen to have been in the hands of the police, then your DNA is on permanent record. If you haven’t, it isn’t... that’s broadly the picture.”

Sir Stephen said disproportionate numbers of ethnic minorities get on to the database where there is ethnic profiling going on.

Thus, it is unfair that there are people who are not on a DNA database, so everyone should be on one.

Extending this logic:
10% green skinned crocodiles are in prison for eating children.
Therefore, we must also imprison 10% of all turtle doves to make things fair.

Only a crocodile could claim that was ‘fair’.

the web address for the article above is
https://www.abelard.org/news/politics0709.php#uk_dna_050907

email email_abelard [at] abelard.org

© abelard, 2007, 05 september
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