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May 19, 2006
Undoing Thatcherism -one piece at a time.
Oh so the Govt. is going to do something about school dinners is it?
Just as a historical footnote can I point out that we got into this mess only because of a Thatcherite drive to cut public spending way back in the Eighties. Back in the day such essential services as providing school meals was done ‘inhouse’ so to speak, but suddenly schools were given their own budgets and forced to contract out to outside caterers - often going to the cheapest bidder in order to save money. So in came the outside catering business' with their unhealthy but cheap and popular-with-the-kids foodstuffs - thus all the frozen ready meals, the pizza and chips, the burger and chips, the chicken nuggets and chips, all washed down with fizzy cola drinks.
(Mmmmm I'm hungry now.)
I also haven't heard mention in these news items that providing proper decent meals might not be that easy - what with schools tied into long-term contracts with their caterers (to get a better cheaper deal, which they won'tbe able to break without occuring financial penalties) and that the kitchens in newer schools have been built with the thinking that their only purpose to defrost meals -cooking anything from scratch just isn't an option.
It’s notable that the Conservatives of that era weren’t known for their carefully thought-out planning and understanding of possible long term consequences (that quite a few Tories were always 'up before the beak' for various misdemeanours and sometimes even ended up in prison is testimony to that.)
The other great drive to cut public spending that ended with long term consequences that continues to haunt us was that great idea to contract out Hospital cleaning to outside firms…
Another one was the great pensions debacle.
The further irony of this was it was all supposed to save on public spending (IE tax-payers money) - which Thatcher then completely blew for herself by bringing in her pet project -the poll tax. Years later everywhere is still burdened by high local council taxes yet year upon year of endless cutbacks has obviously meant less and less public services and what's left being of a poorer and poorer quality. So, very well done everyone. Well done.
by groc at 08:26 AM | Comments (0)
power
"What is unbelievably depressing about the government’s response is that they see in the evidence about greenhouse gases, or acid rain, not an opportunity to promote the environmental concerns, but a chance to make the case for nuclear power … radioactive waste is itself a major environmental problem and one for which we have no easy answer at the moment."
Who do you think said that?
It was Tony Blair back in April 1989 when the Labour party was in opposition.
Yet more sad proof that what politicians say when they're not in power bears no relation to what they'll say and do once they're in Government.
Now as far as remember from my school days -electricity is generated by spinning a giant magnet inside giant rings of copper wire. Got that? It all amounts to just spinning a few giant magnets around. To do that they burn fossil fuels to boil water to create the stream to spin turbines around to make electricity. When you think about it that's ...pretty lame. As the system stands they could pipe the excess to heat and provide hot water whole towns - but they don't. Wouldn't that help cut emissions? Yes of course it would - but they never think of things like that because - well they want people to pay for their household fuel. After all they need to keep the wheels of the capitalist juggernaut rolling -at all costs.
So now they want to build new power stations which burn radioactive fuel to er, ...boil water to make the stream to turn magnets around?
Which in the end will only leave us with masses of dangerous and costly-to-deal-with radioactive waste. That sounds kinda crazy to me. Looking back the early nuclear power stations only make sense when you factor in that our country wanted it's own nuclear weapons - which were all the rage once (and I assume are about to make a come-back). They sold the idea to the public by claiming that with nuclear energy we'd all have electric so cheap - there wouldn't be any need to meter it! I wonder what happened to that noble idea? Heck - maybe I'd be all for it too if I didn't have the big electricity bills I get now.
(Costs of cleaning up decommissioned power stations is set to cost £70 billion. So nuclear power is far from cheap. Let alone the other concerns -pollution, increased birth defects, targets of terrorist attacks, etc.)
I think the main problem is that everyone's got so wedded to the idea of hulking big power stations pumping out big power that they can't think of anything else. Anything requiring a wholescale rethink on how and what we use electric power for. With the domestic household user if only people thought 'smaller' there's already hydrogen fuel cells - solar cells - small wind turbines - whatever, which could go a long way to meeting their needs. We haven't even begun to scratch the surface of what's possible and R&D into these areas is always desperately short of funding.
Update: we could even use spuds in a pinch.
by groc at 04:30 AM | Comments (0)
May 11, 2006
Wasn't Eastern bloc communist Germany awful?
No, really it was. They had the Stasi - the secret police who spied on everyone - they had massive files on every person who they thought might be a enemy of the state.
Hey - trust America (Home of the Brave, Land of the free) to go one better.
by groc at 09:47 PM | Comments (2)
May 09, 2006
Be seeing you
Who watches the watchers?
It's busy-body TV.
They don't really need to remake 'the Prisoner' - everyday we get closer and closer to living it for ourselves, and most people seem happy with that.
Yet I wonder how they'll feel about it all when it gets to the point where we all -each and every one of us have to stand in a huge long, long line with all our papers (all the things we already happily use for ID) to have our photos and fingerprints taken, and irises scanned and have to fork over a wad of cash for the privilege just to get an ID card?
I’m sure that one of the reasons why those people who say they won’t mind having an ID card is (aside from the fact they obviously haven’t even thought about it at any length at all) - is that they’re just expecting one to just pop through their letter box one day without them having to do anything about it. Like a bank or supermaket loyalty card or something.
by groc at 04:29 AM | Comments (0)
May 06, 2006
Feh - bloody politics
So Clark has been sacked then, the cabinet reshuffled, Prescott kept on but had his responsibilities stripped from him (meaning his job essentially. Which surely can only mean he now has even more time to chase after even more skirt) and so Blair clings onto power for a little bit longer.
But one thing remains the same, mainly that the country is still being run by a bunch of politicians. Haven't we learnt anything by now? That the whole current system is totally inadequate to that very task? That of running a country. I can't but help think that such vitally important things such as the whole Welfare system, pensions, education, and handling the infrastructure etc. should be left to the whims of people who think in such -frankly childish terms as 'left wing' and 'right wing' and I’m constantly horrified when any genuine improvements which are made one year can easily be undone by a whole new party the next simply because it doesn't suit the ideology they’re purporting to follow. This perpetually tinkering with things because they’ve got to be seen to be doing something to earn their grossly bloated salaries*. That’s when they’re not in the pockets of one big business or another of course. “Give us some funding Guv‘nor - there’s a peerage in it for yer.”
There's another issue that needs to be addressed -isn't it clear to everyone yet that the career of politics itself only attracts exactly the sort of person who shouldn't ever be given positions of authority?
Every one's currently appalled at the Labour Party - but only a few weeks ago we saw the Lib-Dems implode in a rather ugly cloud of confusion and corruption. As for the Tories -it’s now taken the best part of two decades before people have started to forget the giant mountain of sleaze and corruption they had mired themselves in before the people finally twigged they were unelectable. (It took them long enough to realise.)
But it’s all exactly the same thing over and over and over again. When are we going to learn? These are not the sort of people we can trust to run anything important. They’re invariably stupid, usually greedy, certainly hypocritical, always self-serving, not to mention downright weird and once in any position of power ridiculously easily prone to corruption.
It’s long overdue that we begin to think up better ways of running the country than this continuous farce.
(*If I had my way - all politicians would be put on minimum wage. 1. Because if they think ordinary working people can live on that amount - then they should be able to too. 2. Think of the money it would save the taxpayer. 3. It would help it stop attracting the wrong sort of person for the job.)
by groc at 04:44 PM | Comments (1)
May 05, 2006
Eccleston is not a number...
by groc at 10:28 PM | Comments (0)
May 04, 2006
Arf Affirmative
hello - how did I miss this. Another Doctor Who spin-off? K-9 gets a second attempt at his own series.
Have you spotted the spin-off sites and the games you can play there over at Deffrey Vale School website and the Torchword House holiday site yet? There's the Leamington Spa boathouse too. Mickey tells you what you're supposed to do here.
by groc at 04:24 PM | Comments (0)