NHS Catering

Anyone who reads the newspapers recently will have noticed that there seems to be quite a few stories knocking the NHS.
The Government know that privatisation of the NHS is the golden goose but there would be riots of they tried to go ahead and sell the thing to the highest bidder wholesale so they are lopping off little bits at a time and selling those, things like catering.
The strategy is to put out frequent stories knocking the NHS and the drip-drip effect of constant bad news means that at some point the public will be satisfactorily buttered up enough to accept the privatisation plan.
Of course, as we find out again and again and again, privatisation doesn't work, it's a often repeated myth that a private company can do better than a public service for the same price and standards and workforce, it can't without putting up prices, reducing standards or sacking employees.
Today's look-how-bad-the-NHS- story is over how 82,000 hospital meals go uneaten and wasted each day due to the terrible quality of hospital meals but the own goal here is that, as Alex Jackson, coordinator of the Campaign for Better Hospital Food, points out: 'The problem is the huge amount of money paid to outside caterers who inflate their costs and use the cheapest ingredients'.
I suppose some people may be shocked to realise that privatising the food in hospitals to the lowest bidder has in many cases resulted in terrible, unhealthy and poor quality meals but that won't derail the Governments scheme.
Instead of returning to in-house catering without half the funds having to be syphoned off to pay profits and dividends and what's left being spent on actually what they are paid to do which is provide meals for hospital patients, it will be ignored as other stories are found to replace it and the process of softening us up for the sell off continues.   
Privatisation doesn't work and should have no place in the NHS especially where the ability to turn a profit should not even be in the equation

Here Comes The Sun

As i whinge here every year, Summer is my least favourite season but as this is Britain we don't often get the high temperatures of some of the other places on the globe but my thermometer showing around the mid 20s in mid-summer i can handle for a few days and worth it if we get a huge thunder storm out of it.
Spare a thought then for the people in Western USA as the weatherman is saying the mercury is expected to hit 54C or 130F this weekend in California and the officials have set up a number of safety measures such as cooling stations for the homeless and elderly.
200 people were treated for heat problems at an outdoor concert and another 30 hospitalised for heat-related injuries at an outdoor concert in Las Vegas yesterday and rangers took up positions in Nevada to persuade people not to hike.
Zookeepers in Phoenix hosed down the elephants and fed tigers frozen fish snacks. Dogs also treated for burnt paws on scorched pavement and airlines kept close watch on the heat for concerns that flights could be delayed as high temperatures make it more difficult for planes to take off.
National Weather Service meteorologist Mark O'Malley said: 'This is the hottest time of the year but the temperatures that we'll be looking at for Friday through Sunday throughout a lot of the southwestern United States is going to be baking hot.'
I don't know if 'baking hot' is a proper meteorological term but it is something -ing hot anyway.
Stay cool, slap on the suncream and if you are one of those people who insist on asking 'Hot enough for yer?' to everyone, don't, because it is really, really annoying.

Not Reading The Guardian

Those limey pinkos at the Guardian newspaper can't really be surprised. Not only did they publish all the Wikileaks secrets a while ago but now they have been spilling Edward Snowden's beans on the US PRISM spying program so in retaliation the US army has blocked access to the Guardian website for its personnel across the country to preserve 'network hygiene'.
Looking at the Guardian newspaper they are missing out on such limey news as Prince Charles funding falls by 50%, David Cameron is off on a jaunt to Kazakhstan and how the NSA collected US email records in bulk for the past two years under Barack Obama.
Can see why that would be embarrassing so the best way to maintain the land of the free is by denying freedom of the peoplecharged with maintaining their freedom from reading about how their Government is denying their freedom. Or something along those lines.
In my dictionary a tyrannical government is described as 'a Government that uses arbitrary or unrestrained exercise of power; abuse of authority, an oppressive or unjustly severe government'. Hard to argue that Obama and his pals are not abusing their authority by secretly going through your emails, photographs, e-mails, mobile calls and texts.
Obama better hope that the NRA and the second amenders don't get their collective brain cells excited and decide that the bit about everyone being armed to the teeth as 'necessary to the security of a free State' has come to pass because he could be in a bit of trouble with the well regulated militia that has decided they are not as free as they thought.
If it does happen, us limeys will read about it first as your internet will be blocked.

Voyager-1 Has Left The Solar System

It has taken 35 years and over 11 billion miles but the Voyager-1 spacecraft is set to leave our Solar System and become the first man-made object to leave our stars domain. 
Using the technology of 1977, Voyager is on course for a star called Gliese 445 but as that trip is another 40,000 years at the present speed of 38,609 mph and Voyagers plutonium batteries are only expected to last for another decade, it probably won't be able to let us know in 42013 if it made it there.
For some reason there doesn't seem to much excitement about Voyager-1 leaving our solar system despite it being a magnificent achievement of the human race.
The Voyager space probe carries a gold-plated audio-visual disc in the event that either spacecraft is ever found by intelligent life-forms from other planetary systems. The discs carry photos of the Earth and its lifeforms, a range of scientific information, and a collection of Earth sounds including a baby crying and Chuck Berry's Johnny B. Goode.
Kudos to the scientist who decided to include that particular song to showcase us humans to our alien cousins, excellent choice Sir.

It's Good To Talk

A special mention and a glass of lemonade to State Senator Wendy Davis who filibustered a bill to restrict abortion rights in Texas by talking for over 11 hours, therefore preventing the time for the bill to be passed.
The bill would ban abortion at 20 weeks gestation, place limits on abortion-inducing drugs and introduce other restrictions that advocates say would close 37 of the 42 clinics that provide abortions in the state.
She had initially intended to speak for 13 hours but with less than two hours to go before the midnight deadline, she was finally silenced when Republicans silenced her on a three strikes and you're out rule, claiming she had violated regulations by straying off-topic three times.
To speak for 11 hours with no sitting, food or water or any leaning on a desk or even toilet breaks is some achievement although she did come prepared by wearing sensible footwear, a pair of pink trainers.
Falling short of the required time span, the baton was picked up by hundreds of protesters who cheered and jeered and successfully stalled the bill.
The record for the longest filibuster goes to U.S. Senator Strom Thurmond of South Carolina, who spoke for 24 hours and 18 minutes.
How risking laryngitis and a burst bladder became a genuine, official political technique is a bit of a strange one though.

Fracking Is Good For The Economy

I can't believe that all those environmental types are complaining again after the Government announced tax breaks and fast-track permits for shale gas exploration in the UK.
As the Government explained patiently yet again: 'The measures would kick-start the industry in a way that protects the environment and supports communities'.
Fracking will boost tax revenues, create jobs, reduce energy imports and drive down household bills so everyone wins.
Granted fracturing rock with high-pressure liquid to release the gas causes earthquakes, pollute water supplies, blight the countryside, causes buildings to subside and affects house prices but cheaper bills.
Again i grant you that it was said that when oil was discovered in the North Sea energy would be so cheap it wouldn't be worth printing energy bills but that was in the 60s, this is the 21st century.
Of course i also concede that in America where fracking has been going on for over a decade it has led to air pollution and chemicals leeching into the water table and polluting peoples tap water and yes, it has led to seismic activity and subsidence in homes that you cannot insure or sell but consider the profits of the energy companies.
Great news for energy firms and their share holders then, tough on everyone else but if we just keep repeating it will be good for the economy i think we can get away with it.

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

You would have thought that a country that has words such as Wienerschnitzel and Götterdämmerun would welcome a few sensible words from the English language but it seems the Germans are trying to wipe out the use of English in their language.
'To help employees we have given them a glossary of Anglicisms so that they can take a critical look at their everyday speech and put a brake on the inflationary use of English and pseudo-English' said the top knockwurst of Deutsche Bahn, Germany's train operator who has produced a handy guide for its employee's.
We could of course retaliate and throw out all Germanic words from our language but i can't think of many German words that have made the trip across the Channel to infect our language so i will just enjoy the schadenfreude of watching them try and stop the march of the English language.
It almost took off in America (they have a few problems with vowels) and the Australians almost have a basic grasp of it but seem to name things when they are drunk (billabong, dunny, chook) but it may have better luck in Germany where fine English words such as diesel, doppelganger, hamburger and glockenspiel are already ingrained.
Good luck trying to find German words to replace them with. Dummkopfs.

The Elusive Edward Snowden

The US has called on all countries in the northern hemisphere to surrender Edward Snowden to US jurisdiction if he turns up there. Translated it means they don't have a clue where he is.
If only they had some way of tracking and intercepting the messages of everyone in the World. Oh, wait a sec, that's what caused all the problems in the first place.
You can taste the bitter irony.
Keep going Edward wherever you are.

Watching You Watching Me

There is a lot of stuff on this blog, over 1650 posts with a bit of this and that but mostly me moaning and bitching about the sort of things that Governments don't like us bitching and moaning about like dodgy war in the Middle East and how capitalism sucks, what a con Democracy is and how corrupt our Governments are.
Yep, there is quite a bit of that like the fact that Britain has the most CCTV cameras anywhere in the World, 4.2million of them watching us which equates to one per every 14 people.
Of course sitting in your home you are safe from the prying eyes of the cameras up on the roofs, fixed to walls and halfway up lampposts.
Then we found out that the US and UK Governments are listening to all your telephone calls, reading your emails and texts and checking your facebook and twitter pages and logging all your internet activity so you are not even out of range of Big Brother in your home.
Why, we must wonder, is the Government so interested in little old us? Why are we the most closely monitored nation in the World, even more than places like China and North Korea who we like to think of 'authoritive' regimes that keep their own people on a tight leash?
We baulked at the idea of ID cards and a NHS database because we would be giving too much information away but they had it all anyway but this is different, this is all in the name of fighting terrorism. GCHQ need to know that your telephone call to Granny wasn't actually a call to an arms dealer to bid for a sniper rifle and if it really was just a call to make sure Granny didn't need any bread picking up on the way home, you have nothing to fear from the people we voted in to represent us. Still, no harm they check your emails and texts just to make sure though because we can't be too careful these days.
My point is that somewhere there is a list of people who have said less than flattering things about David Cameron, Barack Obama or any of the American or British Governments and as i have said many unflattering things, i wouldn't be surprised if FOAB has a small box ticked against it's name which of course means that your internet log will show you have been here which will get a small trick beside your name also.
Rather annoying if you stumbled across this blog just trying to find out how to ease a bruise (ice pack the affected area, wrap in a bandage and elevate above level of the heart to minimise blood flow apparently) but there you go, you are on a list somewhere along with a tick for that time you took that Michael Moore book out of your local library and another one for when you emailed your pal saying George Osborne was a massive dick for slashing your nan's cold weather payment.
You are, i'm afraid, embroiled in the war on terror and a file has been opened with your name on it just by virtue of PRISM and GCHQ clocking you reading this blog so i'm sorry about that.
Probably best you don't linger and you move slowly away to another website. That's it, click the homepage icon on the top of your browser but be careful as they will be interested to see where you go next, another left wing blog and that's another page in your file so better be safe and Google something like one of the Main Stream Media pages. Not Fox News or The Sun website though, you don't want them to think you are an idiot.   
Okay, good luck, i hope you may have got away with it but to be honest if you got down this far then i'm afraid it's too late for you anyway, Obama and Cameron already know you where here.
Better arrange those mass demonstrations against our over authoritative Governments by snail mail from now on.

Run Snowden Run

Hong Kong flicked America the finger and then Russia and China told it where to go and meanwhile Edward Snowden sneaked further away from the cell beside Bradley Manning.
I'm hoping that soon we will be seeing pictures of Snowdon waving to the cameras from the tarmac of a runway somewhere in Ecuador or Cuba but hopefully the whole Hong Kong to Moscow thing has been a diversion and he's already safe somewhere else.
A for John Kerry sending a threatening warning to China and Russia warning of consequences if they help Snowden escape the punishment the US reserves for speaking out on the evils America does, what are they going to do? Invasion, drone strikes, Putin and Xi Jinping in Guantanamo? After being exposed as engaging in spying on all and sundry, John Kerry really thinks he can make demands of China and Russia?
Obama is possibly finding out that after Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, PRISM, extraordinary rendition, drone attacks and Guantanamo Bay, their clout doesn't run as far as it used to.
You know you are in trouble when most are the World are on the side of Russia, China, Cuba and Ecuador. Keep going Edward and look forward to a Cuba Libre and cigar with the Castro's on the terrace of the Presidential Palace in Havana.