Messages

I will be writing to my MP about this first thing tomorrow. Rest assured it won't happen again

Heh, I wouldn't worry about it. Me and Her Maj will probably both be disposed of cheaply and efficiently by certain "dark forces," so it won't cost you a penny! 

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/uk/article823072.ece

UK Tax income 2009-2010 = £519.8bn


UK new borrowing 2009-2010 = £159.8bn (not including existing deficit of £1000.4bn)

Uk Government spending 2009-2010 = £669.26bn



159.8bn + 1000.4bn + 669.26bn = 1829.46bn

1829.46bn - 519.8bn = 1309.66bn

Therefore, more is owed than can be paid back through taxation, leading to more borrowing, leading to higher taxation, leading to more borrowing, leading to higher taxation... This is the real driver behind inflation.

Most taxes go towards paying off the national debt. Virtually none of the money you pay in taxes goes towards actual services like the NHS. It's all paid for out of interest bearing, privately created loans - hence the need to return to socially created, interest free money.

It's not rocket surgery.

Ordered mine!

The NHS has saved my life at least twice.

Never once was I presented with a bill. Never once was it even considered too expensive to save my worthless hide.

Efficient or not, what more could I ask?

"According to the Guardian and others, minister Ed Vaizey is still considering web blocking as a serious option to tackle copyright infringement..."

http://action.openrightsgroup.org/ea-campaign/clientcampaign.do?ea.client.id=1422&ea.campaign.id=9984

How are we doing, guys?

Don't forget, you'll need to posting your pages to me probably tomorrow or Tuesday if they're going to arrive in time... PM me for my snail-mail addy when you're ready.

*cracks the whip*

Save the NHS campaign:  http://38degrees.org.uk/

I too heard some of the BBC's coverage yesterday. Several times I heard reporters, upon interviewing members of the crowd, say stuff like "but, there is no alternative to cuts, is there?"

Yes, BBC, there is an alternative. A huge great stonking alternative that would solve not only public service cuts but reinvigorate every area of the world. It's an alternative that isn't new and has been proven to work. The alternative that allowed Caesar to build a world-spanning empire. The alternative that allowed Abraham Lincoln to fight the War of Independence.

It's simple: Take away from the banks the power to create and control the money supply and return that power to the people via their governments. The only people who will lose out under this system are a handful of bankers and hedge fund managers - and I think they're already rich enough to cope with being forced to exist on a couple of pounds less caviare a month. It's not as if using public money instead of private money will throw anyone into poverty, for Christ's sake - just the opposite.

http://www.positivemoney.org.uk/

Blood pressure returning to normal. Soap box sagging. Frustration easing...

Grow your own spuds!

Good luck to everyone involved in the march.

I'm with you in spirit.

Watch out for those agents provocateurs and try not to get kettled!

Planet Earth has been engineering crops for billions of years. We have everything we need on this planet, and more. The Earth is abundant.

It is mankind who squanders these resources, as Ush points out.

Another major reason behind world hunger is the misuse of the world's water. Europe, for example, is stealing water from Africa at a terrible rate. (This may not sound right, but what makes up 90% of any living organism? This includes all the cheap crops, livestock, flowers we make the poor bastards grow for us for pennies. Any water left is than contaminated by our industries, which would rather pollute Africa than Sussex or Wyoming.)

There is no food shortage in the world. It's an uncomfortable fact that we in the "civilized" world take way more than our fair share - in all things except responsibility.

I'm reading, and thoroughly enjoying, The Monkey Wrench Gang (1975) by Edward Abbey.

The book's four main characters are ecologically-minded misfits — a Jack Mormon river guide (Seldom Seen Smith), a surgeon (Doc Sarvis), his young assistant (Ms Abbzug), and a rather eccentric Green Beret Vietnam veteran(George Washington Hayduke). Together, though not always working as a tightly-knit team, they form the titular group dedicated to the destruction of what they see as the system that pollutes and destroys their environments, the American West. As their attacks on deserted bulldozers and trains continue, the law closes in.

Here's an extract I just read that made me smile (the book's full of 'em!):

***

     "You had your chance, Hayduke, and you blew it. Now sweat."
     "Sweat? I never sweated over any woman in my life. I never knew a woman that was worth the trouble. There are some fucking things more important than women, you know."
     "If it weren't for women you wouldn't even exist."
     "I didn't say they weren't useful. I said there are some things more important. Like guns. Like a good torque wrench. Like a winch that works."
     "Good God, a whole nest of them. I'm surrounded by idiots. All three of them would-be cowboys. Nineteenth-century pigs. Eighteenth-century anachronisms. Seventeenth-century misfits. Absolutely unhip. Out of it, nowhere, just simply nowhere. You're obsolete, Hayduke."
     "Like a decent valve job. Like a decent - well, I mean, like drawing trips to a pair. Like-"
     "Unhip. Unhip. An old man at twenty-five."
     "-like a good coon dog. Like a cabin in the woods where a man can piss off the front porch - wait a minute - where a man can piss off the front porch anytime he by God fucking well feels like it!" He stopped, unable to think of any more withering similes.
     Abbzug smiled her specialty, the scornful smile.
     "History has passed you by, Hayduke." With a fling of her wonderful hair she turned her back on him. Crushed and silent, he watched her walk away.
     Later, crawling into his greasy fartsack under the blinking fiery stars, he thought (too late) of the right rejoinder: Today's hip is tomorrow's hype, kid.

***

I saw my MP tonight.

She promised to help with our village's inadequate drains.

Woop de doo doo, pass her a shovel.

I wonder if the bankers call the banking crisis a banking crisis, or do they call it a banking bonanza?

If I choose to smoke knowing the health risks, then that's my responsibility. If, on the other hand, I buy a sandwich that I assume to be made from safe ingredients but it turns out that the tomatoes used contain largely untested chemicals or genetic modifications, whose fault is that? Does slapping a GM TOMATO label on the sandwich constitute fair warning when the full effects of GM tomatoes on the human body have never been fully tested?

"Where do you think I get my information from?"

From more than one source, I assume.

I just believe that before any chemicals are added to foodstuffs they must be thoroughly tested. It's not good enough to perform a few cursory tests on rats and then mix the chemicals in anyway thinking that, if it makes anyone's liver melt then we'll think about taking those chemicals out at a later date if a court tells us to. No, I don't think that's good enough at all - and I assume that many people would agree with me on that.

Just look at the aspartame debacle. From laboratory testing of the chemical on rats, researchers  discovered that the drug induces brain tumours. On Sept 30, 1980 the Board of Inquiry of the FDA concurred and denied the petition for approval.

In 1981, the newly appointed FDA Commissioner, Arthur Hull Hayes, ignored the negative ruling and approved aspartame for dry goods. As recorded in the Congressional Record of 1985, then CEO of Searle Laboratories Donald Rumsfeld said that he would "call in his markers" to get aspartame approved. Rumsfeld was on President Reagan's transition team and a day after taking office appointed Hayes. No FDA Commissioner in the previous sixteen years had allowed aspartame on the market.