religious thoughts

Well I'm none of the mainstream religins, or of most of them, depending on your point of view, and view your choice of belief as your given right. I was brought up as a christian, so this is sort of christo- central
That said , a few observations, today and over the next few days.
Judaism : their 'book' has been shown to be historically false- do a google on it if you dont believe me
Christianity : I know there is a section which repudiates this in revelations(?) , but if the only way to get to heaven is through Jesus, then before he came down all the population were never going to be allowed into heaven . The revelations bit sort of backdated it- but this is inconsistent.
Hinduism: at first sight , the only main belief that has multiple gods- sort of stands out- till you look at angels etc, which are sort of gods - if not think about Satan, for instance.
Buddhism: you can achieve 'nirvana' just by crossing a bridge , i think was one statement.
Islam: God is great, jesus was not a bad prophet neither.

These are primarily ramblings - they hopefully will come together over the next few posts.

democracy afghan style !

http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=3281317
And these are said to be democratic ?
Where most of the coiuntry is run by warlords - how can you have proper law and order ?
Sorry Bush - you're hoodwinking the world on this one

US elections draw nearer

Yes folks even if you aint living in the good old US of A , you probably know its on soon.
With all the problems from the last election, redrawing polling boundaries,chards and all the other 'democratic' fiddles that goes on in that country , shouldnt the UN have observers in to check that polling represents as real a facsimile of its electors' intents as is possible in its rigged election ?

politicians never say what they mean ?

Lets look at Pres Blairs' news this week.
Firstly he buys a house for £3M- is he thinking of moving ?
Secondly he has an artery scraping session.
Thirdly he says he will stand down after the end of the next parliament.
Fourthly his chief oppo says nowt.

Its a no- brainer that one of the above isnt correct ........
Looks like labour may win the next election ...

games children [aka politicians] play

news today in the local rags says employers are up in arms about the minimum wage level rising yet again.
UK citizens should know that a labour government is in power and with enough nous to lie + lie well enough to fool the media [its still questioning whether 'New' Labour is working when 'New' Labour died at the last election and Old labour [tax and spend] rose out of the ashes ] .

When it brought in the minimum wage in 1999 at a level that people thought was fair - we all breathed a sigh of relief . [ was roughly the US minimum wage rate]

Then president Blair, started his wage inflation and that rate has risen by 8 % a year since then.
Thus the minimum wage has risen by 40% in 5 years. Unfortunately people do like to have a wage heirarchy so this was always going to increase wage inflation for the country as a whole or to do other macroeconomic stuff.

The other macro stuff is largely complete [ staff buying own uniforms,unpaid breaks, redundancy, shorter hours etc] and so look out for inflation starting to rise again - thanks to our glorious leader- its allready about 40% above the warning point [ although HM govt changed the goalposts by changing the way inflation is worked out which miraculously hides it ].

If you are wondering how many employees I have - its now just me , [ seemed the easiest way to get around the regulations]
Sorry folks , but you cannot hide something this large indefinitely. Employees are ong to be asking for 8 % increases shortly - cos they have to , not cos they need to ...... whence Tony is going to say 'this is the fault of the last Tory government' or ' its Gordon Brown's fault'

Next year should be interesting as this unravels

20 Sec world viewpoint of a goldfish - well...

This is a personal observation....
I have tropical fish and they're smaller than a goldfish, so presumably commensurately smaller brains. When I open the lid of my 5ft tank, most know exactly where the food is going to hit the water first and swarm [school?] round there.
On the other hand , people wax lyrical about how intelligent birds are? We have a fatball feeder in the back garden ,just bits of plastic coated steel wire as a holder for the feed. Our tits dont know when theres food or not and constantly fly/perch to it- whether food is there or not.
On the other,other hand , we have a very young 2yo ? vine which has loads of small grapes at present. One [or more] blackbirds has found that these are rather tasty , but the vines wont hold the weight of such a lummox. So this bird has developed a rather funny humming bird hovering system whilst it grabs a grape.
Unfortunately , blackbirds cant hover, but can move back? and forward ? for about 1-2 secs before cartwheeling and crashing , so maybe all birds aint built like goldfish ?

active passive smoking

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040909/325/f28my.html
Looks like the smoking ban in public places in the UK is happening voluntarily slowly.
In terms of protecting employees, it's sensible I reckon, but in pubs etc, you should be allowed to smoke outdoors [ hopefully the beer garden is gonna get resurrected big time ]
Let's hope HM Govt doesnt get involved or it'll get gold plated as usual....... Lets see, smoke travels, so we must ban it for half a mile from any business premises ...... would be the sort of thing ?????

speed trap stealth tax !

The news today is that there will be a grading of speeding offences caught via speed traps.
At least that's what the newspapers trumpet.
In reality , there will be a £20 fine for people who travel at up to 39mph in a 30mph zone with ONLY 2 points on your licence [you need 12 to lose your driving licence]. Sounds great uh ?
As I understand, the speed trap system is set up as follows :
30 mph - fine. Then there is a 10% allowance for the speedometer being faulty/tyres not inflated properly, then there is a further 10% allowance for the camera [not the doppler] and its associated white lines for the photographic evidence, then finally there is a nominal x for 'luck'.
Thus cameras in a 30mph zone are set to click at about 37-39mph.
Hence we have another stealth tax coming in , but portrayed as a 'present' to the victims.
I find it very hard to keep under 30mph except in built up areas, so its gonna clobber me quite badly, and I suspect lots of others.
Last year apparently those metal monsters caught 3 million vehicles and I reckon this new measure will double it to 6 million. That would make 10% of the population of the UK being fined each year, and assuming there is 1 car/2 people in the UK, thats a fifth !

Something is seriously wrong with this system

Violence in Iraq

Well US/UK got into a right mess, and got out of it , sort of...
Unfortunately the violence doesnt seem to be dying down.
You have to ask yourself why are the people of Iraq messing with their own country ?
I don't believe its because US guys over there are seriously sodding it up- although that jail takes some beating [bit like the inmates]-else only US companies would be getting into trouble.
So what's left?
1. The new provisional government is too US oriented ? Very likely as it was put together by the US. As there is gonna be an election though, they could get booted then- so possibly but unlikely
2. Another country is happy for Iraq to be in chaos? Well, yes....... Israel would love a disfunctional Middle East and has been engineering it since 1967. Iran would love a neighbouring country that recently tried to take it over [albeit under old management] to be at civil war. Saudi Arabia would love a tentative muslim representational democracy to fail [sort of stops it's own population wanting to play].
Wonder if Saudi and Israel are co-operating on this one ?

uk annual school grades row update

Well , if you aren't in the UK, you wont know about this, but every year more guys pass their school exams and every year there are more and more people who say its a swizz. This year was different, examiners 'came out' and exposed what they had to do in marking. Grammar incorrect in an English exam - so what, you cant mark it down, only up it seems-

It was in the news about grade inflation - see my entry of a cpl weeks ago.
Anyway it seems that no-one trusts the grades anymore, so theyre thinking of having a new exam or increasing the no of grades above A*

It used to be said that exam results were so that you could grade within a batch of students.. weird that they may be coming back round to that.....

legalise cannabis for medical useage?

There was an article in the Times today about dope being legalised for medical use in Holland [ yes it did acknowledge that its very easy to obtain it illegally there] and that it wasnt working because the cost was too high vs the competition [coffee shops] amongst other things.
Strikes me that human adults have the right to expect to be able to obtain and use (whether via the NHS or privately ) the best medicines/treatment for any illness/disorder he/she may have .
Its bad enough having a nanny state, but it should not be allowed to stop you having drugs to help your medical condition . ...........................
I know that doing this would probably make obtaining cannabis much easier, but even so , a person's health is a top priority .

UK Annual school grades row

Well nearly time for the above,.... again.
I think it's time the world knew about this problem.
The problem with exams is that it's impossible for them to be equally hard.....
Thus in the 70s and before , as well as pre checks on the exams, after the results were in, the pass marks were established - it used to be 45% as a pass mark.
Then someone in government decided to show how good their education [ whatever] policy was and the pass marks started to creep up which has continued to the present day.
Of course, allowing up to 50% of students into unis has inevitably dumbed down the average input - sorry HM , but if the 'elite' already went there, if you increase the intake further, you MUST get less than the elite by definition, and at 50% you are getting totally average guys attending [again by definition !].
Time to come clean I reckon you lot................ Its probably inevitable that the present exams should be scrapped as they are useless as an indicator of prowess, but dont let the 'new' ones go the same way - ie same as the old , but with a lower pass mark.

world speaks with forked tongue

Oh well, not forked but too many tongues.
I think the world would get on much better if we had a world language.
It would take time of course, but being able to understand every person would have immense pluses for everyone.
Choices would be a problem but it would come down to either French or English. Chinese,Arabic and Spanish are probably non starters.
The final choice would be which country/organisation moted it first. If EU or USA , then time to get out the French dictionary. Else the golden land beckons. Come on Germany, get the ball rolling , or Russia or ......
Just wonder - you could understand the menus in every cafe you visited ! WOW :)

you heard it here first- nanotechnology

Hi,
see previous entry on asthma incidences.
The government has just brought out a reveiw which states that nanotecnology can have serious problems when 'normal' chemicals are used as very small particulates, sort of what I said about platinum in vehicle exhaust systems. Hope its wrong cos its affecting the entire world's health ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3930179.stm

Iraq,Iran,.... Germany

Sounds stupid. It is, well....
Unfortunately the US has declared war on any country/individual/industry that it thinks may harm its interests.
I agree with invading Afganistan [that was ostensibly done to catch the perpetrators of 11/9 ] , but Iraq was hit cos of dubyas dad. Iran is next in case it gets the bomb and could harm Israel . After that a few years down the line it could be any country that gets up the US nose that couldn't hit the States hard. So n.Korea, Israel,UK,France,Russia, S.Africa and a few others are safeish, but watch out Germany .........
It's a frightening thought, I think we should surrender now .  May have said this before, but talking of Iran makes it worth saying again.

Lets have Pax Americana for the world or impose serious sanctions against it by every other country in the world, something is gonna have to give ......

global warming heard it here first !

news item :    http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040722/12/eyl8u.html

US States are trying to sue power companies over global warming ! isn't the government the responsible party here ? Oh well, at least it's started .......

Well i  was wrong , sort of : see my entry of
http://www.blogger.com/app/post.pyra?blogID=7188645&postID=108668904430465785

MRSA

I started this blog with the intention of not putting personal stuff into it. Last week there were reports of an item that could kill MRSA contamination , but the NHS werent interested. Then a couple days later there was a report saying that they'd found a way of disinfecting areas from MRSA [ apart from the usual idea of cleanliness]. So maybe the NHS was right ?????
Then Sunday I read a report that a major source of MRSA contamination is via ballpoint pens ![passing from nurse- nurse] and that cleaning up can help this deadly problem. [ wow thats a novel idea about health matters- cleanliness helps :~ ]
Meanwhile a friend dies from MRSA. Apparently it affects 8% of patients in the UK- sort of thing you dont want to get if you are so sick you need to go to hospital- especially as 5000 people in the UK die from it .........../ year
http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040714/140/exz0i.html is some of it
Grow Up Please our health service- not read reports from other countries about this - is it a problem ?