The Furrowed Brow
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Fifi,
I have just read your concerns on the previous 'brow', and think you should read this.
(Name link)
Heard Jims interview with a woman form the EA and I felt that he could have given her a harder time on Urban run-off issues, as all she was doing was reciting the aims of the water framework directive which the EA are doing any way because of the legislation change and to be established in 2015, what you lot should have been asking her was why the EA are not trying to look at issues that effect rivers and their surrounding flood plains using hydraulic models like water companies are obliged to do.
Pacem,
Thanks for that. Appropriate, as usual, and thanks for the notes .
Another squirrel with a blonde tail and eartufts is enjoying the rich diet of imported peanuts as I type
;-)
ed
Is 'Fifi' one of your tags, Ed I?
>;) Have a good Frog!
PEACE XX
Donna,
I'd love to play tag with Fifi or to have her word skills. I admire her but she's only a soul-sister and not a pseudonym.
Namaste
ed
How terrible it was to read that Pius Ncabe the Archbishop of Bulawao called on Britian to invade Zimbabwe and topple Robert Mugabe because millions face death from famine. I wish this would happen to aleviate this unimaginable suffering.
Is RNIB getting anywhere re the lucentis treatment and a certain pct near a famed university?
Re that cycling thingy on Sunday. I could not get out of Ashford to visit my elderly parents near Maidstone.All the roads out of my area were closed.I found a lone WPC at one road block. I asked her how I could get out of Ashford to Maidstone.She told me the whole area was 'sterile'!Surely someone somewhere could have set up diversions.I phoned the Police who said I should contact KCC.The Council said no information as to alternative routes was available,they could only tell me which roads were closed!As a result chickens were not fed,eggs not collected,elderly parents had to cope alone.
HERE are some quotes from One Wales, the policy statement agreed by Wales Labour and Plaid Cymru in the new government of the Wales Assembly.
"We firmly reject the privatisation of NHS services or the organisation of such services on market models. We will guarantee public ownership, public funding and public control ... We are resolved to keeping the NHS publicly owned, funded and managed ... We will move purposefully to end the internal market ... We will eliminate the use of private sector hospitals by the NHS in Wales by 2011 ... We will rule out the use of private finance initiative in the Welsh health service ... We will end competitive tendering for NHS cleaning contracts ... We will maintain free prescriptions ... We will build on existing workforce plans to include all care staff, with a strong emphasis on work-based training to enable individuals to gain qualifications on the basis of their practical skills and to develop those skills further..."
If First Minister Rhodri Morgan had gone into the recent Wales Assembly elections with this programme and if Tony Blair had not invited himself to come and blight its campaign in the eyes of Welsh voters, Labour might still have a majority.
But then we wouldn't have entered this exciting period of new opportunity, bringing together the real socialists to be found in both Labour and Plaid Cymru. This has thrown some of their more fossilised members and more lickspittle MPs into confusion.
Something similar is happening in Scotland, where the Scottish National Party's new health minister Nicola Sturgeon told the NHS Confederation annual conference: "Before the election, a poll showed that voters' top concern was of creeping privatisation of schools and hospitals.
"The Scottish public expects public money to support public services rather than the private sector. They believe that public services should be delivered by public servants ... we reject the very idea that markets in healthcare are the route to improvement.
"We believe, instead, that it comes through the collective energy and ideas of committed staff working with patients and the communities they serve."
The Labour-Liberal Democrat government in Scotland had already ended the purchaser-provider split, the foundations on which all plans for NHS privatisation rest, but still loudly proclaimed loyalty to Blair and all his works.
So, as in Wales, Labour's traditional voters were determined to teach its representatives a lesson. Proportional representation helped them to do so without handing power to their oldest enemy, the Conservative Party. One-party rule is finished in Celtic Britain and good riddance to it.
Meanwhile, the NHS in England is falling apart. The promise of greater efficiency has not been delivered. The profitable procedures contracted out to private companies have not been profitable enough to satisfy investors and, even after trebling NHS spending, there's not enough left to pay for the unprofitable emergency and chronic care which the NHS will never be able to evade.
A new study by the NHS commercial directorate shows that private-sector hopes are receding. For the NHS to attract the big multinational corporations that Blair wanted, between 450,000 and 500,000 procedures needed to be contracted out from the NHS each year.
Even if contracts still under negotiation are included, this figure now seems unlikely to reach even 300,000. This is because most doctors and most patients want to use the local NHS hospitals that they know and which operate as public services, not what many see as slick new operators working for profit.
But new Labour's electorally disastrous policy of privatising public services won't go away by itself. Desperately trying to hang on to private investors with growing doubts about quick profit from this field, the government is now subsidising bidders.
A disappointed bidder for a private finance initiative contract for work on two hospitals for the North Bristol Trust complained that the company would lose millions that had already been spent in preparing its bid. Interviewed by the journal Health Matters, a spokesperson for the trust said that compensation of around 拢6m was being considered to offset this loss.
Interest in PFI has been declining steadily over the past three years for similar reasons. To maintain this originally Conservative policy, the government must steadily shift the financial risks of competitive investment away from investors back to the taxpayer. This will continue until the policy itself is abandoned.
Wales and Scotland are highlighting the fact that the marketisation of health care and education was not just unprincipled for leaders who claimed to be socialists but grossly inefficient, because it assumes that the only reason anyone does anything is to make more money for themselves.
This is insulting and demoralising to health workers and teachers. At its worst, it becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Above all, it ignores the huge, still largely unused, contributions to health and education which can be made by patients and students themselves once they feel that these services belong to us all, rather than to remote officials from some other planet.
We know this is true, because we see it every day, in the NHS and in schools and universities still struggling to uphold the spirit of public service. In this respect, Wales and Scotland, with their loosened-up parties and politics, promise to become liberated areas. When will England follow?
...any ideas what happened to my reply to Stewart M @7..?
The entry's shown on "Recent Comments" but not on the Blog
I imagine that's this thread done for then :-/
Aye to that, Doc!
Slainte
ed
Stewart M @ 7
...part of the answer you seek can be found here:
I had actually posted the complete text earlier today, which was published on the "Blog" but then, mysteriously disappeared. Don't know why. The posting didn't infringe any 'Independent" newspaper copyrights.
Hope this helps
Piper (13), Thanks for the link. My interpretation is he should be considered for treatment as he lost vision in one eye but due to other complications i.e Diabetes he may not benefit from lucentis or macugen.
Diabetic eye disease can also affect the macular so there is a possibility he has other pathology making the progsosis poorer.
Never the less the treatments do appear to work for some Wet macular. Good luck to him and the RNIB
Doc;
"Lickspittle". Give it a rest.
This kind of language belongs to the good old days of the People's Revolutionary Party of Albania, which nightly across the airwaves used to promote it's "Marxist-Leninist policies" which were, naturally, the fount of all good in the world. And simultaneously lambast "The CIA and the lickspittle lackies of the Capitalist West" which were, naturally, responsible for every evil committed on the face of the planet. I used to listen to it every night if I needed something to chuckle at. I mourn the passing of Enver Hoxha and the other Warsaw Pact dictators, life has less comedy since all the old Eastern Bloc radio stations stopped transmitting.
Don't abuse people this way, it's unbecoming of a man of learning, education and skill. Use the force of your argument to make your points. If your argument is strong enough then there is no need to abuse 'the other fellow', it just makes you look like a loser, who has to resort to personal attacks because he can't win any other way.
I note that your Wikipedia entry has you down as a Professor, but you blog as Doctor. I'm confused.
Si.
But what about the service in England, Si. That is the content. We know you don't like Socialism, and have bought fully in to the nusery tales, but don't let that distract you from his points. Hear, Hear, Doc.
Have a good frog.
I'm impressed that you guys (Si and JPA) appear to have read it all. It's awfully long.
We're a couple of anoraks, Appy. We deserve each other.
x
JPA,
Thanks for , he's one of the best!
Salaam/Shalom
ed
Ed I,
Moi? I've been keeping my head down. Have a good frog. >;)
JPA (18), One man's anorak is another man's fabulously trendy all-weather sports jacket.
JPA;
It's not a question of nursery tales, speaking of which I'd like to know what you mean by that, 'cause I'm unsure. And if you think that I'm an irredeemable right-wing Tory read below...
As it happens I agree with the substance of the Doc's complaint 100 percent, just not the unnecessarily abusive language he used and his proposed solution. I think that people these days ARE in it substantially for the money. I don't see any teacher, nurse or doctor working for the love of the job and waiving their salary.
There is creeping privatisation in the health service, driven not by our departed and unlamented Great Leader but by the current Dear Leader whilst he was at the Treasury. In order to avoid borrowing shedloads of money and sticking to his own self-imposed Golden Rule he has outsourced the construction and management of new hospitals, prisons, schools, NHS computer systems etc. to the private sector, who are in it, let's be honest, to make a buck or two. Don't blame them, it's what they do. Blame Brown for giving them the opportunity.
And to get these deals through the bidding the books have been cooked with artificial risk factors added in to make the PFI deal look *just* cheaper than the public sector doing it in house. That is certainly the most scandalous part of PFI, the sheer bloody lies told to cook the books. The late (and certainly lamented) Paul Foot never missed an opportunity to highlight these matters and Private Eye continues his campaigns to this day.
And for this Brown has mortaged the future of the public sector for 35 years worth of Hire Purchase repayments. He has 'done an Enron' keeping the assets off-book. He has allowed the PFI partners to do the same, each party claiming that the other owns the asset, so the PFI company can write their expenditure off as a tax loss and pay less Corporation tax to his own Treasury. Meanwhile they then claim ownership of it when refinancing the loans, thereby making a killing on the difference in their borrowing margins.
The DoH wants to outsource GP services in Buxton to United Health of the USA. The local GP's undercut them and put in the best bid. Patsy Hewitt awarded it to UH anyway, but had her decision overturned by the High Court for not conducting a proper consultation with the locals. So she agreed to do the consultation, all the while making it clear that in the end UH would still get the contract.
All this is merely the tip of the iceberg on PFI. I want this lot out for the sheer hypocrisy and lies told by them which so many have blindly swallowed when voting them back in. We are told that there is a substantial movement towards the Tories amongst health sector workers, fueled by utter disillusion at the way that the NHS is run and funded. Long may that trend continue.
You're right, I don't agree with Socialism because in practical terms when it fails to raise everybody up equally to the highest standards it aspires to, it then reduces everyone equally to the lowest standards and deals with the politics of envy. "If I can't have one of those then I will take yours away, so we're equal". That kind of thing.
Nor do I agree with the dictatorship of the Proletariat. Red Robbo had a good go at running the British car industry in the 70's, taking the lads out twice a day on some occasions. He was so effective as a business leader that we no longer have a car industry worth speaking of.
State-owned monopolies were a disaster, uniformly badly run by political placemen who had not the foggiest idea what they were doing, greedily swallowing every penny proffered to them without delivering any benefit at all. A bit like the modern state sector, now I think of it.
Socialism has been largely abandoned in Europe. It failed. The Wall came down. The East of the continent embraced forms of free-market capitalism. It would be well to figure out why that happened before criticising it, because it was the expressed will of the people.
There is no credibly large and truly Socialist Party in the U.K. anymore, just fragmentary small movements with no hope of electoral success. Footnotes in political history, doomed to live on as mere shadows, lamenting their decline and fall, wondering why the people they claimed to represent rejected them. All that's left to them is the bitterness of uncomprehending failure, blaming the people rather than looking at themselves and analysing why they were rejected.
Si.
Si,
It's scary in here. Try this.
Simon (15)
A few months ago there was a fascinting programme on R4 about Russian (Soviet) radio stations that used to be employed entirely to jam 大象传媒 transmissions.
With the change of attitudes, these powerful transmitters are now being used to relay 大象传媒 programmes to the former Soviet bloc countries.
Haven't had time to read your long posts, but I'm sure I'd agree with most!
JPA;
Thanks for that, I did read it.
The problem, as I see it, is that the social conditions which brought about the creation of Trades Unions and their child the British Labour Party have been very largely ameliorated, ironically by capitalism and the free market.
Capitalism has given them a lifestyle which is largely free of the appalling conditions of the 18th and 19th Centuries. Sanitation, diet, education, healthcare, dwellings have been transformed beyond all possible belief.
With those pressures abated the need for Socialism has gone. The reverse to that is that the pressures which gave rise to Fascism and Nazism have also gone. Politics has become less harsh and polemic. People are bored with politics. With their conditions acceptable there is no need for them to engage.
Mobility has led millions in Britain alone to relocate for work, retirement and other reasons. With that happening the social bonds which formerly united communities are broken. Society has fragmented. Cut adrift from the local community roots which used to sustain them people have had to become more self-reliant. That partly-fuelled the 'Me' generation of the 80's, commonly laid purely at Maggie's door, like one person can alter the destiny of the entire British Nation against its will.
I see no pressing requirement from the British people for a Communist Party to represent their interests.
Anti-globalisation can be fuelled by many things, it is not the same as anti-capitalism. A worker whose job is offshored to India may resent this aspect of globalisation. he may move towards racism at jobs being sent abroad and demonstrate against globalisation, then go home to his three-bedroom home, widescreen TV, decent food and a comfortable bed. He still enjoys the creature comforts of capitalism.
The essay you pointed at was muddled, confused and difficult to read. It was also entirely analytical and theoretical. Where is the beef? What connection does this have to modern Britain?
What I would prefer to see is your own personal opinion, not cut and paste articles from other people. Please don't merely parrot the party line and the opinions of others. You plainly care enough to paste here and get involved in the debate, even if neither of us will ever move from our positions. Put yourself into the Blog, not quotes from the Morning Star or Marxism Today.
The principle questions which this raises for me is; What is the point of the CPGB today? What do they stand for and how do they hope to achieve it? Enlighten me.
Si.
Si,
One of the most expressive words for what has happened to our culture through hypermobility is "atomised". I learned it at Human Ecology classes.
Kinda says it all, don't it?
Mere ...
xx
ed
Is David Cameron (or is IDS) determined to make people who have never been married feel substandard? I can鈥檛 understand why any party would think it wise to offer a financial incentive to try and get people to conform to a stereotype. People are different in many different ways...
Who has an alternate, more workable approach to discouraging marriage break-up?
Correction: It was J.M. Keynes, not Galbraith!
Both ended up dead, anyway.
xx
ed
Dear Simon,
Just for you, here I am 'blogging, which the first time I did it on the 'brow' back in early May, I did say did not come easily to me. Then, I discovered it was a frog! I tend to "put myself" in to painting, and not 'blogging, but how could I refuse such a kind offer fom yourself? And one small point; please don't associate me with the CPGB!!!
The social conditions that brought about Marx(ism) are still with us. Most of our commodities are produced abroad, and that is were must look for the exploitation and pollution involved. Much has changed since the 19th and first half of the 20th centuries, and in that sense, we live in a Marxist influenced world, rather than a Marxist world. Marx's legacy is all around. Free state wide education for children, votes for non-property owners and women, a National Health Service. All of which had to be fought for, and many sacrifices were made by many people. It involved mass civil disobedience, other protest, and resulted in people cut down by cavalry in the street and deportations. But, with persistence and determination, many gains have been made. Contrary to the way you expressed it, these were not delivered to them by capitalism, but were reclaimed as their right- capitalism had taken these dignities away from them when workers were originally pulled into the cities. And as for Scientific and medical advances, the soviet and Chinese systems were no hindernce to their own Scientists, or Artists for that matter.
Marx gave us a way of looking at history, fusing Hegel's dialectics with a materialists understanding. That will always be relevant and it explains the world around us. It explains the individual and humanity. His ideas on communism, the conditions for which are created by capitalism, do not begin and end with central planning. He's the world's most read economist, and I came to him very late having had little faith in 'politics', but if you seriously want to be a critic of his, then you must read 'Capital Vol.1', available in the Penguin Classics series. Marx saw human beings as inherently social. What had made humans distinct from other species was their ability to revolutionise their knowledge and production. This is because of our capacity to work together and pass this knowledge on. It is because of this social interdependence that we can therefore specialise as individuals, but within a more complex interdependence.
Class societies are recent in historic terms, whether slave, feudal or capitalist. They all involve the surplus product of the subordinate class being extracted and controlled by a ruling class. They all alienate the subordinate class from real control over their labour and, in consequence, from their full and equal human right to determine their societies development. Marx said Capitalism was the most developed form of this society. Workers- whether engineers or scientists- have no control over the purpose of their labour- whether for peace, war, luxury or social need. Their value is only as long as that labour contributes to profit.
Therefore, the first stage of communist society would be restoring workers control over their labour, initially by organising the working class as the 'state', as the ruling class. This revolution would be brought on by workers, you and me, understanding the relations between us, our exploiters and all humanity; our ability to determine our collective work for the benefit of society. This involves a mass change in human consciousness, and therefore why we need a movement- the only practical way of organising this change. And this, Simon, is why society will always need those who challenge the status quo; the agitators, defenders and proclaimers of human rights and democracy now and in to the future until all slave societies, all exploited people of the world are history.
JPA and Si,
And I would recommend The Theory of the Leisure Class, by
So much to read, so little time....
xx
ed
JPA;
I read The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital over ten years ago. I'm still not convinced (but then you didn't expect me to be).
And I do appreciate you taking the time to explain that to me. The reason I asked the question was that the article which you linked to was essentially a propaganda piece for the CPGB, so I assumed (wrongly it seems) that you were an adherent. Sorry if I got that wrong.
Ed;
So you're suggesting (or Veblen does) that the classification of human society goes back to the earliest eras of our existence, that it is inherent in our nature? Seems right to me.
I would tend to agree with a pack analogy with a modification. Normally a pack exists to further a mutual goal. My contention is humans seek to band together, not for the benefit of the whole but for our own benefit.
Actually it's consistent, because every pack has a leader and the nature of a pack is that each member seeks to advance through the pack to leadership. In any agglomeration there has to be a controlling mind shaping the destiny of the pack. Animal Farm showed how high-minded principles of absolute equality are corrupted by individuals bent on acquiring absolute power within the pack.
Si.
Si,
I do commend a reading of Veblen (available in a very cheap paperback edition) He is the one who coined "conspicuous consumption" and is highly amusing. He was thrown out of at least one academic institution for persistent promiscuity...
The full text is
I recommend Chapter 3 for a taste.
From the introduction:
xx
ed
;-)
ed
(It disappeared! Good job I copied it it)!
Ed I,
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS.
This, or any other 'blog, is not big enough! Consequently, Iain Duncan-Smith escaped my clutches yesterday. Thanks for the reading, and check once per day! Have a good frog to one and all.
XX
(Last try. Previous attempt arrived and then disappeared. And then nothing!)
Ed I,
ARS LONGA, VITA BREVIS.
This, or any 'blog, is not big enough! Thanks for the reading. A good frog to one and all.
xx
Ed I (33) It is neither my daughter's bonnets, nor the higher degree of her skirts, nor her high heels, nor her long hair which render her incapacitated and incapable of productive employment - rather, it is her ridiculously long, beautifully-manicured, highly-polished fingernails! Needless to say, mine are worn down to the quick! ;o)
Gillian,
Thanks for that. My nails are rarely long enough to trim, and my hands, shins, etc., are rarely without bruises, cuts, bramble tears, or such. My clothes are usually somewhat tattered and frayed, and I often can't be bothered to put in the denture which replaces the five missing front teeth. My usual footwear is one of several well-worn pairs of 'rigger' boots, and my beard is the result of an attitude of minimum maintenance.
All of this is, of course, merely an affectation intended to create an impression opposite to that to which Professor Veblen refers: That I am not in fact a creature of leisure and . ;-)
What's your pleasure?
xx
ed
All,
Some on graduation:
-- Wendell Berry at Bellarmine University, Louisville Kentucky
I second all of that!
xx
ed
I have become aware that the word "immigrant" seems to have disappeared from the vocabulary of 大象传媒 journalists. "Migrant" appears to have replaced it. I don't understand why this might be, but I smell a whiff of political correctness somewhere. Has anyone else noticed this, and can anyone in the 大象传媒 explain it?
Ed I (38) Thanks for that, Ed - that's a fabulous introduction to the Real World, and I'll make Big Un aware of it when our worlds collide next week!