Strangely Perfect

How Bad was Thatcher’s Recession compared to the Current Economic Slump? Q. Well, how would you find out, exactly? A. Surprisingly easily.  This graph here compares historical economic slumps with the current one, on a month by month basis.  It’s taken from the “National Institute of Economic and Social Research” (NIESR) website here.  Notionally, it’s [...]

Jillian has made an excellent post yesterday that marvellously ties in with the heavy-handed police tactics in London at the weekend G20 protests – whose chickens are now coming home to roost; and also, it ties in with our (the West’s) recent (and continuing) history, AND a bit of encouragement, calendared for today, by Daisaku [...]

Initial Story First Part Initial reports from the demos were that a middle-aged man had died.  “Aha!” I thought.  “Heart attack”.  Just like the Great North Run. Second Part Then it turned out that he’d been hit by a bottle and died as police medics were protecting him from the crowd. Third Part Later news [...]

Yet Another Reason Why We Don’t Kill Murderers in Britain Sean Hodgson could be the latest person to benefit from the pure goodness of science and knowledge.  His DNA, apparently, isn’t the same as that of the person that killed Teresa De Simone way back in 1979! Tragically, he’s been locked up all that time [...]

Introduction Following up an earlier post of mine “Use the Green Stick, Mr Postman!” and how unfriendly competition in the delivery market actually is from the point of view of the environment and the actual service to the customer (us!), the recent news of a  Delivery firm’s 686 jobs at risk should be taken with [...]

Just like the ant, Obama has the high hopes of the nation on his side today.  We just hope that the Rubber Tree plant of in-equality that starts in the USA and cascades down across the world like Thatcher’s trickle-down economics, can finally be moved. Two recent posts amplify this disparity that exists across the [...]

I just hope that the leaked plans of tax increases for the “better off” aren’t deferred until some future date as the leaked whispers are saying.  The “plan” as it is, is to increase top tax rate to 45% after the next election – or something. All this will do is fuel a massive rush [...]

Some wonderful news this week for people worried about the real future of our world. The EU are hammering down on car emissions! EU rejects efforts to delay CO2 limits on cars RPT-UPDATE 2-EU lawmakers snub big carmakers over carbon curbs Blow to carmakers Climate package: Carbon-free cars? (pre-vote EU Parliament post) Reducing CO2 emissions [...]

US Nationalises Banks Well nearly – but they’ll never admit it.  The headline news in financial markets today (a Saturday! – no co-incidence there then?), is: Key US lenders to face new curbs BBC News U.S. Nears Rescue Plan For Fannie And Freddie Washington Post, source story The two psuedo-companies called Freddie Mac and Fannie [...]

Ironically, in the same week that it was announced that the Orgreave Coke Works site is to be redeveloped into a housing estate, Thatcher’s daughter, Carol, announced that her mother has dementia.  In Buddhist terms Thatcher is now in the hell of incessant suffering. Now, who is, “taking liberties”. Thatcher committed the sin, in 1984, [...]

US anger at Russian Georgia vote The only thing going on here is that the Bush administration are still being outplayed, double footed and body swerved out of the game.  See my earlier post on the USS McFaul. The lack of coherence in policy and the willingness for confrontation as an alternative to dialog as [...]

This post, http://globalvoicesonline.org/2008/08/06/arabeyes-mauritanian-president-ousted-in-military-coup-detat/ ,and it’s associated comments provide a lot of extra information on the recent coup d’etat there.  This comment by a Mauritanian is totally in line. Check out Jillian Greenwood here, http://jillrees.com/articles/our-reputation-abroad/ ,for her personal view of the country as she passed through last year en route to Mali. The country is primitive [...]

You have to be careful with statistics. (especially when you are trying to deceive!) The graph shown at the left appears on the BBC website alongside the panic and doom inducing headline; UK house price fall ‘at a record’.  It was repeated many times, even on national TV news on all stations. The thing is [...]

A bit ahead of their time, Crawling Chaos in the song “Newspapers” nearly got tonight’s news release right. Jobless to work ‘clearing litter’ ………trumpets Work and Pensions Secretary James Purnell, neatly post-empting the angst-ridden rhetoric about Thatcher’s Britain and the cow-towing newspapers. Profitability is a sign of the times You’ve got to keep on working [...]