Bill Gates never expected this...

Windows 10 is the biggest pile of poo since computing started.
I was early into this stuff: After playing with Dragons and Commodores in the... was it the late 70s - I got serious on a Mac SEII in the 80s and for commercial reasons also used MS kit on what we called IBM machines - specifically Windows 3.1 for work stations. So I have enjoyed/suffered Windows 95, 98, 2000, NT and 7, 8 and now 10. Updates have become a way of lie. But not as we know it Jim. I have just suffered the update to end them all - Win 10 does an update and it takes over an HOUR! I have 50 meg so it not the connection. And it doesn't say it will take some minutes as usual. Oh no - its honest and say "It will take a while" Oh sure it does. And yes my PC did re-start several times. (Exactly why?) And then I got to actually use the machine I have bought and paid for but which Win 10 has decided is theirs. not mine!
And what does it do - it lies. It says it is all to keep me safe on line. Lie - I use a proprietary software security package that makes Win Defender look like toffee on a battle tank. And updates in minutes.
But worse - it tell me how to start my machine - Go to Start! And then it tells me to check out all the wonderful apps - bugger off; apps are what you get on mobile crap and are cut down progs designed to do little stuff on small memory. I use program(me)s like I always have. And then it has the cheek to say "Let's get started" - bugger off Microsoft - I'll do what i want on my kit; YOU are the servant her - read it, learn it and do IT!" Oh yeah - and who asked for EDGE? I hate the stupid prog - when i want it I'll seek medical help.
Now, where was that stuff on switching to LINUX...

We've already told a chunk of universe that we are here...

HUMAN beings are fascinated by the idea of alien life. Me included. So the discovery, albeit a bit hypothetical so far, of a rocky, earth-like planet orbiting our nearest celestial neighhbour inevitably caught the headlines and the imagination.

Proxima Centauri is, as the name implies, quite close to our star, Sol. A mere 4.3 light years away. And inevitably the speculation has been about 'going there' or 'sending a probe'.

Thing is we have already arrived in a sense. In fact we have been arriving in increasing strength every year since the first radio transmission on earth (in the 1890s thanks to Marconi and a shack in Chelmsford, Essex). Whether Marconi's signals had the strength to reach Proxima is not clear.

But by now we are at the centre of a bubble of radio waves some 200 light years in diameter, and this is 90 plus light years beyond the new planet. Does that tell us anything?

Well maybe that the planet does not contain any advanced technological creatures since they would probably have heard us and responded by now. Or of course that it does and they are so smart and so appalled by what they hear and see that they have, perhaps wisely, decided NOT to pick up.

The point here is that what we ordinary mortals think about as alien life is very, very different from what our learned scientists expect. We might have little green thingies in mind; they have anything remotely capable of replication in their minds.

For that surely is the nature of life – replication to survive in the given environment. In fact when dear old Darwin postulated 'evolution' as the cause of all we see he had no idea what the mechanism might be. It took a long time and a lot of science to arrive at the gene and DNA. And oddly the idea of bits of something being passed from generation to generation had been talked about 2,000 years earlier by the Greeks. But nobody listened because, to be frank, the idea was, let's face it, preposterous!

So what do we really know? Well that lots of stars have planets. Frankly that should not be a surprise as our best theory of early celestial conditions virtually guarantees stars have planets and asteroids, stuff collides, some planets have satellites. And our chemistry tells us that things happen in an ordered way. So if just once out there the conditions are right then life is a given. Of course then it has to survive but that's a whole other ball game. Literally.

So some 4.3 light years away there is a red dwarf (not the best candidate for life giving properties) which is being orbited by a large lump of earth-like rock that is very close and may be so close it is trapped into having one face permanently facing the dwarf. While the other faces bleak, silent and very, very cold space.

Frankly it is not the best candidate for little green, brown or even grey men. But life? The kind scientists talk about? Maybe. After all it has twilight zones, between the scorch and the freeze. And scientists can theorise how good conditions can propagate there.

But get there? Send a probe? Its 4.3 light years away. It is just possible to imagine travelling at 1% of the speed of light. That's about 1,860 miles a second or 2,991 kilometres per second. But that's still going to be 4,300 years. When it arrives it will take 4.3 years for a signal to tell us it has arrived. Or did arrive. Anyway...

The problem is not whether we could accelerate to that speed. Or control our ship that long and that far. Given the right propulsion and long enough the answer is simply yes. But space is not empty and at those speeds it is actually quite crowded. Not big stuff (maybe?) but lots of dusty stuff. Fancy hitting a grain of dust at that sort of speed? Reckon we could build something to survive it? And do it again, and again, and...

So I'd say we are not going and indeed cannot, short of finding the wormhole solution (Mind you I keep reading about cranky stuff in the quantum physics environment and sometimes I do wonder...)

If we are not going then: Do we need to worry about 'them' coming to us? Well let's put it this way – if they are coming shouldn't we get some interesting radio stuff ahead of their arrival?

And won't they be batting off the 'stuff' of the universe all the way? I'm cool on this one. Our earth-bound problems are much more immediate.

Anyway, what do we do when they turn up in a burkini?

Coming to cross words with puzzles, I am...

It is about 55 years since I did my first crossword. I blame dad. He had a passion for crosswords which infected me. His special joy was the Daily Express (Mail?) Skeleton. Not only were the clues cryptic but the grid was incomplete. You had to fill in not only the lights but the blanks!

Anyway I had a try at slightly less challenging examples and that was it. Since then I have solved, or attempted to solve, thousands of puzzles, all of the cryptic nature. I graduated to the Telegraph, the Guardian and, back in the day, EVEN the Times.

I sometimes shared the task with others but not often. Jeremy Deedes (yep, that one) taught me a trick with anagrams (write the given letters in a circle to break the pattern) and Ernie Metcalf (no not that one) showed me a trick with long solutions – use word knowledge to settle on bits before attempting the whole.

But back then and until about 10 years ago one thing was always true – when I failed and looked the following day at the solution my response only fitted one of three forms. The first was the inward groan which said loudly “what a fool for missing that”. Then there was the outright guffaw – that showed just how clever and witty the compiler had been.

And then there was the snort – that revealed a clue so impenetrable that I had to check out the sections to be convinced it was correct - even when it was blindingly obvious from the puzzle pattern.

But now there is a new response and I do not like it one bit. It is a gasp of sheer derision at the cheek of the compiler. For a while I thought it was just me being wildly older than the young breed of compilers coming through. Then I took a longer look at some puzzles and figured it out – and it is not nice. And it certainly isn't fair (if such a concept exists today).

You see before the arrival of the computer the compiler depended on their word knowledge and perhaps a dictionary or thesauraus. And if they had a set of letters that left them stuck with a letter sequences that defeated them they would adjust the existing clues and solutions to produce a credible alternative. Given even the best compiler was unlikely to have a vocab beyond twice mine I was still in with a chance.

Not any more. Now they just pump the letters and spaces into their PC and lo – a deeply obscure word pops out. Maybe its from a forgotten language. Or an era so long ago the word has fallen into disuse. Or it is a 'jargon' word from some ancient artisan skill that has no relevance today.

These are Scrabble words and they have wrecked Scrabble for us ordinary folks. There are even words in which Q is NOT followed by a U. That's not English and it certainly isn't cricket! There have been a couple of rotten examples recently (ninon serves to make the point – look it up; it was N-blank-N-blank-N easy peasy in a PC).

Thing is that when we started playing Scrabble in the late 50s (oh yes, a gift from Canada) we followed a common practice among crossword compilers – agreeing on the dictionary. A one volume Chambers or Oxford sufficed. I have a big two volume Shorter Oxford which would probably suit a crossword compiler. But the word being used require a multi volume Complete OU - and even then I am not wholly convinced.

So I am coming to hate crosswords and the compilers. Bring back Lavengro I say, and those two brilliant ladies on the Telegraph Oh yes and Alan Cash, who I think was dad's favourite man with the skeleton!

Today Sid (remember him?) told me things would not be the same again...

TODAY I received a letter which raises to a new level my hatred of all things Tory and especially Mrs Margaret Hilda bloody Thatcher. And this is made worse by the fact that the cause of my rage - and fear - is yet another example of how the capitalist system she so admired cannot be trusted with the security and prosperity of its very own workers.

Today I learn that the National Grid, which has become my pension payer (more on that anon) is to salami slice its pension members into three buckets and distribute them willy nilly to a new bunch of as yet un-named and unattested corporations. This is because they have decided to reap the profits they have accrued by building up various bits of the business. Not you will note for my benefit at all.

Today they assure me that my pension is as safe as ever, regardless of which bunch of capitalist thieves my pension has been unilaterally dumped with. And I have no choice. And I will be told which bunch BEFORE the value of their bids is known! And they assure me I am safe because each third will be ring-fenced! What? I used to be assured by the whole business; now it just a bit of it.

Today for the first time in over 10 years of drawing my pension I am afraid. For myself and my wife, or as she may one day be, my widow.

Today I would willingly dis-inter Mrs Thatcher and hang her head from one of the lamps on Westminster Bridge. But enough about how I might enjoy myself.

For it was she, and her lap-dancing lackeys, who decided to sell off the family silver, as Haroold MacMillan called it. Each of the utilities on which the people of Britain depended and for whom thousands worked or were dependant were flogged off to the highest bidder. Oh yes she made sure the bitter puill was sweetened by Telling Sid and all the other greedsy ones who sucked up her share-owning democracry claptrap. Me included to a degree, though I missed out on two by being silly enough to be an adviser! Well-paid of course but ultimately robbed like the rest of Britain.

Worse was to come however. Mrs T understood that her decision was not actually all that popular for many reasons and especially not with some of her own. So she instituted the Golden Share, by which ownership althugh up for grabs,would remain in British hands. Not ideal but something to cling on to. And especially after she also instituted in the City the Big Bang, otherwise known as the first step towards fiscal armageddon in 2008.

But the Golden share had a time limit and when they expired takeover fever struck. Today hardlky any utilities are actually owned by British interest, certainly not in total. Worse still the Rolls Royce Golden Share attracted the attention of the EU and was ruled illegal in 2000 with inevitable results. I voted remain but if there was a reason not to this may have been it.

Now let's back up a bit. I will be the first to say, from experience, that the utilities were not perfect. They were not as efficient as they might have been. Some failed to 'wipe their faces' and relied on Government subsidies. But they and their workers all paid their taxes. And their workers were well paid and cared for, requiring little if anything during or after work from Government.

Some utilities did all that and made a profit, which went into the Treasury coffers, leaving the utility to beg money back for capital investment. That rule was actrually used asd an xcuse by Thatcher for privatisation – to 'free them from the shackles of Government'. That would be you then Mrs T?

Now every utility worker paid in to a big pension pot, along with contributions from the 'company'. They worked for up to 50 years and got decent pensions based on the decent pay they had received, mostly, during their working years. These pensions were in no way Government subsidised and indeed were good for the country as the recipients continue to pay tax and spend money of their own.

We all know about BHS and the Greening of their pension fund. And the Mirror Group and how Maxwell sank their pension just ahead of sinking himself. There have been others and Tata is bleating on right now about the steel poension fund.

The point here is that unlike the state pension all these pensions are wholly-funded. Indeed back in the days of sanity most of them carried surpluses which were used to lend to insdustry and the Government o pay for projects. The idea was that in the good years the pot got bigger than nmecessay to cover the bad years when it shrank. But caropetbaggers and other greedy bastards decided that ws not the way to do it. Instead in the good years they awarded themselves – the fund – and the pension contributors a 'pensions holifay' Guess what? Suddenly the lean years were really lean and a black hole started to develop.

Not satisfied with that Gordon Brown decided to dip into the funds generated by pension relief and robbed the entire syetm of billions of pounds.

Add Brown's buggeratioin factor to the purblind fools and their pensiun holidays and now most pension funds are actually UNDER-funded. And given the state of the investment market that uis not likely to change any time soon.

So the bigger the pension fundl. The more security we the pensioners have. And this matter todasy be=cause som,ething else happened to clobver pensions.

Back in the days of the un-privatised utilities they employed thousand, often more than perhaps wer entirely needed. But along come the sharop eyed accountants serving their sharp tongued bosses and productivity slashes the workforce. Great you cry – our bills will go down. Oddly enough not only have they not fallen, they have risen but that is another can of worms.

But see here – back then the number of pensioners was LESS than the number of contributing members. Not any more. Oh no. Today really rather small numbers of contributors are watching huge numbers of pensioners depleting the pot. Add to that the fact that us pensioners are now living longer than ever and a bit of snag emerges.

And so I worry when my pension fund trustees assure me I will be entirely safe when they chop me into salami slices and stuff me into a smaller bag.

And I worry more when they assure me, as if it were a good thing, that this smaller bag will be ring-fenced so it cannot infect the other bags (the ones we used to be able to rely on).

And I really worry when I realise that they are arbitraily slicing us into mixed packages to suit the new smaller bags.

See, I know how that will work and I don't like it. I don't like it one little bit.

For someone just turned 65 and starting to draw their pension is a much higher actuarial risk to the fund than the chap who is already 75 and had 10 years of pension.

And he or she is in turn more of a risk than the person in their mid-80s and starting to live on borrowed time (that is not a joke!).

And each of these is a greater or lesser risk depending on their gender since women live longer than men. Oh and there is the white-collar versus blue-collar thing as well.

So here we go – when the bids come in for the chunks of National Grid that are being sold one of the issues will be the exposure of the new company and its owners to the pension fund.

Now you know whay today was a very bad day for me and a vast number of National Grid pensioners.

And of course for the Government too, who may have to pick up the bill when one of these shiney new owners goes tits up and has robbed the pension fund blind.

NOTE: I worked for British Gas and they were my pension fund holders. Then it got taken over and various things happened and finally the electricity power people came along and gobbled it all up. Yum Yum, lovely.

BROKEN BRITAIN

Broken Britain** 

Age has already wearied, and too many years condemned, our youth to an uncertain future

DURING the mendacious and malevolent campaign for the referendum, from both sides, the fear was expressed that it placed at risk the social cohesion of Briain. And it sure has but not only in the way that had been predicted.

For today not only do we have heightened sensitivity to race, colour and even creed. Not only do we have an acute awareness of how the vote varied region by region and the 'blame' that can be attached to it.

And not even only (ouch!) do we have the expected outcome that Scotland stands separate and independent from all of the UK bar the London bubble.

Worse by far, we have a generational divide that some fear may not even be bridgeable.

For it is clear for all to see that while many of my age and older voted to remain in the EU very large numbers of Baby Boomers voted to quit. And pretty few young voters wanted out, seeing their much longer future better within.

Beyond that too is not just the inevitable aggravation of these young voters with their elders for 'letting them' down or simply being selfish. There is beyond them another huge tranche of youngsters who could not vote and who it seems would certainly have helped to reduce if not destroy the OUT majority.

And if we might hoped that some midway could be found then the mighty if dubious cry of “democracy, we must accept the verdict” probably destroys such hopes. Even if the EU might concur. Instead they, smarting at the rebuff, finally convinced of the perfidy of Albion and equally terrified lest the contagion spread have made it very clear indeed – you want to go so GO NOW.

It hurts me to say it but a lot of us told you so. And a lot of us were a great deal less sanguine about the Remain vote than too many in power.

We have ended up here due to the internal machinations of the Conservative and (dare I say it?) Unionist Party. Yet somehow it is the Labour Party tearing itself to pieces – and even that exacerbates the generational split. For many youth wanted another way and Corbyn seemed to some to be it.

There is little comfort in watching Clammy and Ozzie falling on their swords. It was the least they could do. But given the hovering horror of BoJO a MiGo and the bizarre aggrandisement of the chump Hunt things can indeed only get worse. It grieves me to say it but on this reckoning Theresa May is our ponly hope!

Why? Because if she gets to be PM the chance that Margaret Hodge could be leader of the Labour Party recedes – and while I back Corbyn I do NOT back any of the other candidates at all.

But back to the yoof situation. Not only are they going to spend a lot of time in the coming years on recriminations against us oldies – even their parents if anecdotes are even close to true – but they are about to find themselves further alienated. For there is scant chance that far right twerps who will rule the Tories for the next 5-10 years will take youth seriously. And if the Blairites have anything to do with it the young left will be strangled at birth.

The time has indeed come for electoral reform in the hope that Broken Britain can be mended:

• First of course must come Proportional Representation, to give value to each vote.
• Then some sensible rules to shunt referenda into their proper place – advisory.
• Then a lowering of the voting age to 16 to re-balance a bad equation.
• And finally and most controversially a cap on the qualification to vote at 80 years of age.

Most of those I know in that cohort are not frankly to be trusted with the honour. And I doubt I will be in a few years time. if now...

**Broken Britain is often attributed to The Sun and the Tory Party in 2007 but it has a longer and slightly more honourable past. It certainly started out in the later 1990s as Broken Society as in Britain is a... And it appears the BB version may have surfaced soon after. In about 2002 Ian Duncan Smith appears to have used it . Blair gets given it in 1995. My own recollection gives it to Michael Heseltine when he visited Toxteth after the 1981 riots and found himself once again a One Nation Tory, much to Margaret Thatcher's aggravation. But I could be dreaming. He was – the Treasury scuppered his plans.

Be careful what you wish for

(or I remember, I remember the place where I was born)

Reading the comments of a very large number of those who voted for BREXIT, especially those of my years, I note they often hark back to the past. And especially in terms of making Britain, Great again.

At the same time the younger generation, and especially perhaps the millions who could NOT vote, are beginning to blame us oldies for what has now happened and the risk it poses for the future of the younger generations.

Now I voted remain, worked to persuade others, put up my posters and am devastated at what has happened. I believe it can come all right but it will take time and time is the one thing I and orhers, even the Baby Boomers of which I am older by a tad, do not have For us this could be a grey end to an otherwise good life.

But then I started to think what this 'Great' Britain was all about. And I realised it is just about as credible as the 'facts' of the BREXITers.

It starts with what we are lot were taught at school in the 40s, 50s and into the 60s – all about the pinik bits. How we were great because we had 'Empire'. How we were improving the whole world through our own success and achievements.

But then I grew up a bit and looked closer. True, Britain did become Great by being first in a lot of things. And in having a lot of stuff in the ground to use. But that soon ran down, And then like the rest of Europe we started exploring and plundering. The Germans did it, the Spanish did it, The Portuguese did it. The Dutch did it, The French did it. Everyone wanted a bit of the globe – and we got most largely due to having the Royal Navy to make sure what we took, we held.

Of course we were not there just to deliver clergy and bibles. Nor even to trade stuff for slaves. We were there mostly to plunder. And we went on doing it right through to the Second World War. We did get Great but it was by climbing on the shoulders of millions of little people.

Gold, diamonds, precious stones and metals, spices and herbs, and cotton and silk and actual plants and... well you get the picture.

Some got hacked off early and dumped us – the Americas got fed up with being taxed without any representation and told us to sling our hook. Given their own treatment of native Americans we should not have been surprised. Oh no, that was us really.

.Canada kind of tried with the help of the French but, basically we locked down. Down under, the natives of New Zealand and Australia were either slaughtered, ignored or corrupted and we took what we wanted. Then we took the land, feeding up sheep on the grasses that once sustained genuine aborigines. What would you do for a spadeful of earth...

Then, as the world began to wake up to what Europeans had done, Europe managed to shoot itself in both feet. Twice. And both times they ended up being bailed out by, guess who? One of our old colonies. Ain't that sweet?

And so the sun began to set on an empire that once spanned the globe. One by one the pink bits went out to turn green, and orange, and blue and black and very, very fed up with the UK.

But Europeans are not so easy to get away from. They gave up the ideas of war-war and went for jaw-jaw. The Common Market, European Free Trade Area, The EEC and finally the EU. Peace, tranquility, free travel and a modicum of prosperity reigned. Not like the old days – after all little of value was left in the ground in Europe and the days of daylight robbery abroad were over. Deals, agreements amd tariffs were the drivers.

Most of Europe settled in to the idea but the sceptered little islands of Britain were never totally convinced that they were part of Europe. That fortress channel (La Manche to others) had grown a callous skin that would not fully yield. The good old days, the good old days. We don't want or need Europe. Fog in channel, continent cut off. Little Englanders.

Rose tinted our view and it saw a brave world of green fields, waving corn, stooks and hayricks, doughty drifters bringing in the little darlings, tough blackened miners hewing the stuff raw to the hearth. This was the place. Mine's a pint.

Only of course it wasn't like that. What I remember is cold houses, curtains frozen to the window pane, crippled kids with polio, suddenly absent school chums who vanished during various outbreaks, steel calipers on ricketty limbs, plenty of those most distressing things like Spasticism as we called it then. And pretty grils who suddenly got a bit fat, then vanished, never to be talked of again. The lady in the next street suddenly in prison for her nasty little sideline.

Open razors, bicycle chains and knucke dusters in the street. Queues a mile long for almost everything. Horse shit along every street. Smog that killed friends andf family and very nearly my mother. No fridges – rancid milk. Daily shopping. Queues again.

And then, just when we thought we were getting out of the mess we found we had too few workers for the hospitals, trains, buses and tubes. So we shipped them in from our former and few existing colonies. Our West Indian friends, our Carribeanm chums. Except no homes for 'Blackies' (forgive me) or even Irish actually. And conspiracy theories about successful black pianists buying houses all over London for her Jamaican friends. Actual fact – she bought two houses in Brixton for her father and mother and her aunt! Because we loved her jangly piano and laughing eyes.

And spivs in the street who ran at the sight of a 'bobby' – and women who would warn them voluntarily. And pavements made narrow by the crushed legs of our heroes from the front, dumped and scrapped by a grateful nation and now forced to beg, The stink of horse meat stalls to feed our pets. The embarrassing farce of Suez. The threat of the bomb in every towering cloud.

Cars that killed – with dumb iron bumpers, wicked mirrors, hopeless brakes, tyres that skidded if it even looked wet (assuming they had not punctured). And no home heating so you could die as quick as a wink with blue or pink paraffin heater that would burst intio flame at a knock. And if it all got too much you could pop your head in the gas oven and drift off to a quiet death, always hopeful that your body would be found before someone lit a match to look for you. Kaboom. Always assuming the un-earthed electrics had not got you first.

And prefabs that looked OK but froze in winter, leaked like sieves and lasted way, way into the 60s before homes fit for heroes were built.

Oh yes and farm workers paid so little and treated so badly they genuinely used hay in their trousers for warmth. But food was pricey even so.

Yep – it was indeed a Golden Age and those who voted for it may well prove the old saying – be careful what you wish for...

What we need now is some guts in Number 10

The barney over what to do now and who to blame will roll on but a couple of points may be worth thinking about.

Referenda are not about democracy as such since they are not about Government - not yet anyway. What they do is test public opinion. And that informs or should what Government does next. In this case we know that the majority of elected MPs - who really are part of our democracy - are not in favour of leaving the EU. And we also know, or should, that they are charged with doing what is best for Britain - all of it. We can - and clearly are - as cynical about that as we want to be but its is their job and for the vast majority of the time and the members it is truism.

So what do they do now? They have been handed a surprise rejection by it is said 52% to 48%. But if democracy means anything we do need to remember that MORE people failed to vote than voted either way - some 22m sat on their hands. What do we make of that?

Well first, just like our current Government this not a MANDATE from the people - just a very strong view expressed by a very large MINORITY. In fact there has never been a Government elected with more than half the electoral population in support, let alone those who cannot vote.

And that is the really big point here - not only did 22m who could do so NOT vote and may thus be seen as apathetic about IN or OUT but a further 14 million could not vote due to their age. But all of these must live with the result. And that means our elected Government must decide what to do and NOT slavishly follow the referendum vote. That would be gutless, unreasonable and utterly unfair on the non-voting generation.

So the first step MUST be to recall Parliament and start the debate where it matters.

The next is to make clear that while the PREFERRED option by a significant section of the British people is to leave the EU as it now is that is not a mandate to simply cut and run.

With the rest of Europe also at a crossroads the British Government has a strong bargaining position to win the sort of changes in the EU that have long been wanted and frankly needed. Now is the moment to drive for those changes. And when they have been determined may be the moment for a second referendum that is set up in such a way that is can be binding - a 75% turnout and a minimum 60% in favour of one side or the other.

The British people deserve better than to have a relatively small cabal of right-wing and disaffected people decide the future for the vast majority of ordinary, middle of the road people - never mind the 14 million under 18s coming up behind with their future in jeapardy. 

Now is the time for some guts in Number 10.

After BREXIT, the apocalypse....

I just put this on Facebook.

So the bugger Britain BREXIT brigade is gaining traction. The FTSE is already down £20-30bn, London house prices have already slipped, inflationary pressures are growing and Russian hooligans are targeting Brits. And we haven't even voted!
Can they not see that, while given a fair wind and two decades GB might just float in this hostile world it is a huge gamble and short term pain is a certainty.
It goes like this: The FTSE crashes on June 24, vast sums are taken out of the pound and it falls like a stone, inflation builds and interest rates go up. Meantime the rich sell off their houses in London and other capitals - but there are no buyers and prices plummet. That takes all prices down and repossessions soar as interest rates continue to rise. In urn renters are chucked out to make houses more saleable - but with interest rates up no one can buy... Christmas is cancelled.
Investment returns crash and pension black holes of enormous size open up. The possibility of retrospective reductions looms. The beleagured Government tries for a massive austerity budget but the red necks vote them down. The Government falls in 2017. At the election the far right become the second largest party (or group of) and GB swings to the right. But Scotland and maybe more did not want OUT so they want to secede. The EU sees its chance and coddles up to them. The UK splits.
The now desperate England (and?) coalition of right and others decides to attempt to re-join the EU, possibly with ANOTHER referendum! But the terms are impossible. Farm subsidies have been withdrawn. Attempts to build good trade outside has been mixed - imported raw materials are too costly to be competitive. The immigrants who propped up health, catering and tourism all leave and the NHS becomes unworkable. The brain drain begins again. Tourism dies and food prices soar. Wages have stagnated, imported goods are unaffordable.
Never mind 2020 - cane we even get there if we leave? I doubt it.
So think before you vote.

The truth about the doctors' dispute

This article was cut and pasted from a Facebook share - I am very happy to give my space to Dr Ravi - it is all you need to know but are not being told about the doctor's dispute:

Dr Ravi Jayaram

17 April at 23:41 · 

I have kept quiet on here until now about the junior doctor's strike but the time has come to stand up and say what needs to be said. Apologies in advance for the long essay, I will try to keep it simple. This is aimed at those of you who are not medical; those who are will know exactly what I am talking about.

If you simply believe what is said in the media, you might think that this is all about Saturday pay or even that junior doctors don't want to work at nights or weekends. It is depressing to overhear people express these views but hardly surprising given the public coverage of the issue.

So what exactly is going on? A junior doctor is any doctor who is not a GP or consultant who is in training to be one of those two. Most doctors spend 8-9 years as a junior but many stay as juniors for longer, especially female doctors who may take time out for families, academics who take time out to do research and doctors in specialities where training in two specialties is needed such as paediatric intensive care. I myself spent 14 years as a junior doctor so was still one aged 37. Junior doctors are the doctors you will see first when you go to A&E or get admitted to a ward and will be responsible for delivering your day to day care when you are in hospital. Junior doctors are covering the hospital 24/7, 365 days a year and always have done. And contrary to what you might believe from the papers, they don't have any choice in the matter, their contracts say they have no choice in working evenings, nights and weekends.

So what is all the fuss about? Well it is about being able to be safe. When I was a JD, I used to work ridiculous hours. In one job in my 1st year, every 3rd weekend I would go to work at 9am on a Saturday and leave at 5pm on a Tuesday. That was 80 hours in a row with sleep grabbed when the chances arose. It was dangerous and dehumanising and the even crazier thing was that I was actually paid at a lower rate for the unsocial hours than basic pay (1/3 of basic in fact).

Fortunately my generation of juniors was amongst the last to have to do that and things slowly changed. Now junior doctors get paid at a higher rate than basic for unsocial hours, that rate determined by the intensity of work in that specialty e.g. emergency room work would be a higher rate than dermatology. Standard hours are defined as 7am-7pm Monday to Friday (which are not exactly standard working hours for most people) and there are rules on the maximum number of hours per week and consecutive hours that can be worked. There are also safeguards in place so that if employers are consistently making juniors work beyond these rules, they can be fined; hence there is a disincentive for employers to overwork junior doctors, therefore they are not tired and dangerous 1990-style.

But work done outside standard hours is NOT overtime. These hours are contracted hours and have to be worked and, quite rightly, are paid at a higher rate than basic pay. In specialties where there is not a lot of emergency work, the majority of work is in routine hours, but areas like A&E, paediatrics, intensive care have a lot of work done in unsocial hours and attract a higher rate of pay for those hours. I stress again that this is not overtime; overtime is work done in addition to contracted hours. All doctors and nurses do overtime - staying late to complete work and ensure patient safety and very rarely if ever does anyone claim for these overtime hours.

But Jeremy Hunt wants to change the contract for junior doctors, his logic being that doing this will help to deliver the “7-day NHS”. Nobody is really sure what exactly this means. It may mean that he wants routine services such as outpatient clinics and planned surgery or scans for non-urgent problems to take place on Saturdays and Sundays, not just Monday to Friday. If this is the case then changing the juniors’ contract is not going to make this happen as without doing the same for (deep breath) consultants, nurses, porters, receptionists, pharmacists, operating department assistants, radiographers, physiotherapists and many other staff these things won’t be able to happen at weekends.

The 7-day NHS may refer to emergency work. If this is the case then it already exists. Junior doctors are already there at night and at weekends. The proposed contract changes are not going to change the numbers who are there as there is no plan to increase the total number of junior doctors. What is proposed is that the definition of normal time changes from 7am-7pm to 7am-10pm Monday to Friday and from 7am to somewhere between 5pm and 10pm on Saturday. This means that employers could make junior doctors work more unsocial hours as they have redefined as standard hours. It is true that the basic rate of pay for standard hours will be increased by 13%, which sounds great doesn’t it? Except that for the emergency specialties as above that routinely have a lot of evening, night and weekend work, what is currently paid at an enhanced rate will be paid at standard rate; even at 13% higher for standard rate, total pay for junior doctors in these specialties will drop considerably, maybe by as much 30% for some. Doesn’t sound so good now really.

And, of course, there will be the same number of doctors but spread over 7 days rather than 5 so there will be weekdays where there will be fewer juniors than there are now. A great analogy I heard was to imagine that you have a 10-inch pizza cut into 5 slices. You decide that 5 slices isn’t going to fill you up so your mum cuts the same pizza into 7 slices and tells you that you’ll be full with that. But she won’t get you a bigger pizza.

So same number of junior doctors spread more thinly is going to reduce cover on weekdays as compared to now. And weekdays are when not only emergency work but also routine planned work that also needs input from junior doctors takes place so this will have a detrimental effect on waiting lists for clinics and operations as well.

Junior doctors with children will be hit particularly hard, especially those who have junior doctors spouses, as more unsocial hours will be worked. Childcare is generally difficult to get hold of outside of 8-5 on weekdays; the department of health have actually said (with no hint of irony) that in this situation, family members who are non-medical and don’t work evenings or weekends should be asked to provide child care to get over this problem! It is very likely that couples could go several days without actually seeing each other or their families if rotas do not coincide.

But what about the increased deaths at weekends we have been hearing about? Actually, the statistics have been completely misrepresented and even the authors of the research paper that gets quoted regularly have pointed this out. The statistic was that if you are admitted to hospital on a weekend, your risk of dying within 30 days of that admission was higher than if admitted midweek. Your risk of dying is very low anyway and that very low risk is marginally higher (but still very low) if admitted on weekends. This is probably because admissions to hospital in the week consist of not only sick people but also well people coming in for routine things, whereas at weekends you would tend to avoid hospital unless you were desperately unwell and most likely would leave things as long as possible and so be sicker when you got there. Interestingly they also showed that if you were already in hospital on a weekend, having been admitted in the week, your risk of death within 30 days was lower than it would have been. Either way, there is no evidence of cause and effect in terms of numbers of junior doctors around at weekends. The so-called weekend effect has also been seen in the USA and Australia too so it isn’t peculiar to state-funded health as opposed to private insurance-based systems.

Interestingly the misrepresentation of this study has led to ill people actually avoiding hospitals on weekends and delaying presenting till Monday with potentially devastating consequences. Have a look online for the ‪#‎hunteffect‬. Scary.

Another worrying thing about the proposed new contract is that it takes away the safeguards against juniors being made to work ridiculously long hours. Whereas currently there is a mechanism that makes it in the interests of an employer to ensure the hours are not exceeded, the new contract removes these safeguards. It does suggest that each hospital trust has a “guardian” to whom junior doctors can flag up concerns about their hours but this “guardian” will also be a senior member of the trust who has no obligation to actually do anything about these concerns. I think back to my days as an exhausted junior doctor and it scares me to think that such unsafe and dangerous hours could make a return.

The pay scales are also changing. There has been automatic pay progression as you gain experience and seniority until now. The new system means that there are fewer points where pay is raised. This is not necessarily a bad thing as it can be argued that you shouldn’t get a pay rise unless you deserve it. But remember that over 10 years can be spent as a junior doctor in which time you are likely to acquire husbands, wives, children and mortgages; many existing junior doctors have made their financial plans for the next few years based on the expectation that there will be pay progression. One part-time junior doctor who has worked with me told me that if the new contract came in she would no longer be able to pay her mortgage and would have to sell her home. Bear in mind that these are young people who have spent at least 5 years at university accruing debts from both student loans for living expenses and now also £45000 in tuition fees before even starting work. The new pay scales do not reflect the levels of responsibility taken by junior doctors at different stages of their training at all which makes no sense whatsoever. For female doctors who are likely to take time out to have children and then return to work part-time, the consequences on their income will be huge. The department of health actually acknowledged that women would be hit unfairly but suggested that this had to be accepted as an unfortunate consequence.

The BMA junior doctors committee walked out of talks with the department of health because the DH’s definition of negotiation was that they would reserve the right to do what they wanted if they didn’t agree with what the committee was suggested. In other words, they did not want to negotiate so there was not point in the BMA trying. This is why industrial action was proposed because there was no other way to try to get Jeremy Hunt to talk. Sadly, even when negotiations restarted, he could not see that without a bigger pizza nothing was going to improve patient care and in fact things would be worse and so talks stopped. He has now said he is imposing the contract and that is that, he won’t talk anymore. When a strike ballot (of, let’s face it, intelligent reasonable and educated people) has a 75% turnout and 98% vote in favour, it is clear that there is a serious problem with the DH’s thought processes and they need to listen. It is highly improbable that a small bunch of radical lefties have brainwashed 50000 intelligent doctors who have been trained to analyse information and draw conclusions, much as the press like that idea.

If you have read this far, please take it on board and share with your friends. I’ve tried to keep it simple (even though it may not seem that way!) The public is not getting the full story from the TV and newspapers and if this contract is imposed then we will all be on the receiving end of the consequences eventually.

I’ll stop there for now but will write some more about what will happen on the days of the full strike (April 26th and 27th) and why you should not have to worry about what may happen on those days if you or your family have to come to hospital.

When is a wealth creator actually a thief?

WHEN does a wealth creator become a wealth thief? It's an important question because just now the very people who have been telling us how much we need wealth creators are furiously defending the very same people for stealing away with the wealth they have created.

For context remember this – all those tax haven customers include the same people whose various activities led to the Great Crash and the same people who called, regardless of politics, for the government of the day to bail out the banks. And all those trillions of pounds of national cash disappeared into the same buckets as started the rot in the first place. Ask yourself how much went into offshore tax havens and private (secret) bank accounts.

So let's examine the idea of the wealth creator. This propaganda seeks to encourage us all to admire 'entrepreneurs'* and similar 'investors' for the fact that, it is said, we would not be so well off without them. But the reality is a long way from that simplistic approach.

A wealth creator is someone who employs other people to make or do things that earn money. In return the workers get paid and the wealth creator takes the profits. Properly organised there is nothing wrong with that. A bit of regulation to protect the workers and consumers and some taxation to provide the education, health, welfare and transportation that workers and consumers rely on and all is well. But it costs and everyone needs to pay according to their ability and needs.

The workers and the consumers have little choice or method for not paying their taxes, whether income or expenditure based. Not so the 'wealth creator' whose taxation is complex and capable of adjustment or even avoidance.

Now we come to the crux – these wealth creators as they are miscalled - choose to live and do their stuff in Great Britain because they see it as either a good place to live or to do business – or both.

The people they employ depend upon the infrastructure that taxation pays for. The wealth creators benefit directly from all this infrastructure, even if they have private schooling, private health and a private jet. And their wealth creating activities demand ever better4 educated, ever healthier workers and place every heavier burdens on transportation, environment and even the air we breathe and the water we drink.

If they avoid paying their share of that and squirrel away their wealth they are thieves. Worse, because they bang on about how important they are to the rest of us, they are liars and hypocrites.

On top of that we are governed, currently in particular, by politicians who want us to believe we need these people for the wealth they create. No we don't. If they quit Britain they will end up NOT paying taxes in another country and what would we care?

Of course, amongst these shysters and crooks are some good people – wealth creators who see to it that they share the wealth they create with their workers. Who do pay most if not all of the taxes they owe. And who don't lecture the rest of us from beneath their slimy stones from which, to be frank, emergence is too good for them.

The majority of the 'wealth' we the workers have created has been stolen, secreted away in secret banks and vaults, turned into promissory notes, fiddled into piles of gold and diamonds and silver.

Do not be in doubt – if they all left tomorrow we would in reality be a lot better off. To hell with the lot of them.

*By the way an 'entrepreneur' is the first into something – Marconi counted; Dyson just about counts; most of the rest do not. The majority are just people starting businesses – good for them if they do it right.