Breaking News, debate and opinion

Speaker to be dragged away

2009-05-20T21:15:00.000Z

The big issue this week is still Mp's expenses. The focus has been on the Speaker of the House of Commons. For those who don't know, the Speaker is like the leader of the House. Maybe somewhat like Nancy Pelosi. The Speaker presides over and keeps order and in the debating chamber. I say 'keeps order' simply because MP's behave similar to children in a playground. They jeer, heckle, and interrupt each other. It is a very undignified place. The crime of this Speaker, apart from having his own snout in the trough of taxpayers money, was that he spent hundreds of thousands of pounds in the courts trying to keep secret MP's expenses. When they were leaked and published in the media, he called the police to investigate the leak, rather than the fraudelant claims made by MP's, He was so out of touch with public opinion, he was forced to resign.
Now they are looking for a new Speaker.
A funny and possibly silly tradition comes into play. Anyone interested in the job has to declare disinterest. Presumably if you actually were disinterested, then you would need openly declare an interest! And when the Speaker is finally chosen, he she has to be dragged to the seat in the chamber.
What if someone didn't know the rules, really didn't want the job. They'd be wondering why people weren't taking 'no' for an answer. And why people then the physically dragged him to the seat. Bizarre. Maybe these people should move into the real world!

Snake in Taiwan

2009-05-20T21:09:00.001Z

A man in Taiwan has been bitten on his 'private-part' by a snake which was hiding in the toilet.
Her says' I felt a really sharp pain and looked down and saw a snake between my legs'.
I know there is a joke in this but I'm going to
A spokesman for the hospital has said the snake isn't poisonous, the only danger is of infection because the snakes mouth might not have been clean.

Marks & Spencer boobs

2009-05-20T21:06:00.001Z

Another big story has been a newspaper campaign to stop Marks & Spencer (a popular department store chain) selling larger bra's for a higher price.

"Do they charge people with bigger bottoms more for pants? No, so why discriminate against women with large breast".

M&S has nobly backed down. It has taken full page advertisements out announcing the fact that it will women with large breasts can now better afford their bra's. And this has given newspapers even more opportunity to show pictures of larger breasts. So it's been really pleasant reading the papers this week.

MP's have claimed it.

2009-05-20T21:04:00.001Z

This has been the big news story this week.
Our MP's are allowed to claim expenses for all sorts of thing under rules which they set for themselves and has no one policing them. Little wonder that they abused the system. The details -every receipt has been leaked to a newspaper which is releasing snippets of information day-by-day. I've never bought the paper before I've bought it on two days and have been shocked. Their standing in the eyes of public has never been lower. We're like some of the developing countries with endemic corruption.

Lentils keep the world alive. My recipe

2009-05-20T20:11:00.003Z

Lentils, or Daal, as known in the Indian Subcontinent keep the world alive. Simple, nutritious and surprisingly tasty, daal is the staple of India and Pakistan.

Here is my mother recipe.

Ingredients:

One mug of Urid daal (with or without skin)

Two cloves of garlic

Four mugs of water.

Half a tsp of chilli powder.

One tsp of coriander ginger and turmeric powders.

Half an onion.

Half a pepper.

Two chopped tomatoes.

Instructions
1) One mug of Urid daal. Soak for a couple of hours. Drain the water and rinse a couple of times. Discard the surplus skin which is washed up.
2) Add two cloves of garlic. 4 mugs of water and simmer for about an hour.
3) During the hour, add 1\2 tsp of chilli powder, salt to taste, 1sp of coriander powder, 1sp of ginger.
4) Separately, chop half an onion, half a pepper, (and if you like, some carrot & spring onion).
5) Fry this. When almost cooked, add 2 tomatoes and 1sp of Haldi (turmeric), pinch of salt.

Once the daal is cooked, add the contents of the frying pan to the daal.

Enjoy.

Dog bites man.....Fiat and GM

2009-05-06T19:22:00.003Z

A few years ago when GM was flush with money and was looking at expanding abroad, it bought a 20% share of Fiat. Someone very clever at Fiat -I hope they have been well rewarded- inserted a clause which meant Fiat could force GM to buy the rest or Fiat shares at a set date.
Then Fiat become the sick man of Europe with massive losses and GM entered one of its frequent money haemorrhaging periods. As the time approached it was obvious GM couldn't take on another loss making company so they had to buy themselves out of the clause. For $1bn.
Fiat invested that money in new efficient cars and is now hugely profitable. It is going to end up with a majority share of Chrysler and looking to buy GM's profitable European division.
And all because of that clever person inserting that clause and GM's stupidity for not realising.

Faactory farms and swine flu

2009-05-06T19:12:00.002Z

This is largely copied from this article by Johann Hari in the Independent.

Factory farms: They manufacture low-cost flesh, with a side-dish of viruses to go.

To understand how this might happen, you have to compare two farms. A pig farm in the Swiss mountains, with around 20 swine at any one time. What happened there if, in the bowels of one of their pigs, a virus mutated and took on a deadlier form? At every stage, the virus would meet stiff resistance from the pigs' immune systems. They were living in fresh air, on the diet they evolved with, and without stress – so they had a robust ability to fight back. If the virus did take hold, it would travel only as far as the sick hog could walk. So if the virus would then have around 20 other pigs to spread and mutate in – before it would hit the end of its own evolutionary path, and die off. If it was a really lucky, plucky virus, it might make it to market – where it would come up against more healthy pigs living in small herds. It had little opportunity to fan out across a large population of pigs or evolve a strain that could be transmitted to humans.

Now compare this to what happens when a virus evolves in a modern factory farm. In most swine farms today, 6,000 pigs are crammed snout-to-snout in tiny cages where they can barely move, and are fed for life on an artificial pulp, while living on top of cess-pools of their own stale faeces.

Instead of having just 20 pigs to experiment and evolve in, the virus now has a pool of thousands, constantly infecting and reinfecting each other. The virus can combine and recombine again and again. The ammonium from the waste they live above burns the pigs' respiratory tracts, making it easier yet for viruses to enter them. Better still, the pigs' immune systems are in free-fall. They are stressed, depressed, and permanently in panic, making them far easier to infect. There is no fresh air or sunlight to bolster their natural powers of resistance. They live in air thick with viral loads, and they are exposed every time they breathe in.

Is it time we re-examined our eating habits. I remember as a child we ate meat once of twice a week. We need to go back to that time. And if, as a result of increase cost due to much better animal welfare, we see a reduction in the number of fast food outlet -well that would be another good reason.

Next week: the world lives on pulses. I will post my mothers recipe.

Used car market

2009-05-05T16:48:00.000Z

The used car market and the economic crisis

So, we sit here with the Budget predicting the optimistic resurgence of our
flailing economy, and yet us, the people in the street, still find it hard to
see any real light. Everything has gone up, as the value of our own hard work
goes down. In short, the selling market, although needed to stimulate our
economy again, is drying up, across all sectors. One of these sectors is the
used car market.

You only need to glance at the magazines specifically for the purpose, to the
advertising sections of local newspapers, to the websites to see just how
widespread the used car market is and was. Many people prefer the wheeling and
dealing of seeking out a bargain of a car overlooked by many than paying through
the nose for a brand new car all the time. Another reason is very simple - a lot
of people need transport, but can`t afford to buy a new car.

So, as mentioned, the market used to be a bustling one, with sales made up and
down the country every day. However, with this recession, the purse strings that
would be periodically be loosened to grease the wheels (no pun intended) of this
sector have been tightened. There is not the money to be spending the sums on a
car, making it a nightmare to sell them.

It is also particularly difficult as the new cars, with their special credit and
pay-monthly options, tend to turn the head. With us weathering this difficult
time, the idea of having a brand new car and paying for it over the course of a
few years, when hopefully the economy will have an upturn, and not upfront
straightaway, is very tempting. However, this is often offset by the fact that
it is often false economy; that is, paying the interest on the car will often
mean you spend way more than you initially intended.

And it also comes down to us, the sellers. Even accounting for the problems
enumerated above, you have to realise that, due to the economic climate, if you
manage to sell your car you will often find yourself out of pocket. With people
not willing to spend a penny more than they have to, and even though you have
brought the asking price for your car down to the smallest level for it to be
worthwhile, you will not be receiving anything like what you would expect at any
other time.

Having said that, it wouldn`t do to give up. I`m still going to carry on with my
sale as if everyone just stopped we`d never get out of this! Regardless of how
bad the overall situation is, you have to keep going as, when it comes down to
it, anything you get for selling your car is more than you will have with a car
you do not want or need. Holding on to it in the hope that tomorrow will be
better is a little short-sighted I feel - but that`s just me.

In summary, regardless of the financial situation, there will always be cars for sale in the UK. What you have to
do at this time is lower your expectations a bit. Be prepared to go a little
cheaper, expect to wait longer to sell your car and just stick it out; even
though all seems a little rubbish now, what goes down must go up! I wish you
luck with your car buying and selling.

Brown and pigs flu

2009-04-29T18:14:00.002Z

The weeks big thing is swine flu’.

The media are in a frenzy.

The government love it because it takes media attention of the economy and they can spin it to make themselves look like saviours.

They have ordered an information leaflet to be delivered to every household in Britain. In it they will give us some ‘facts’ and tell us not to panic.

Not to panic!What are we supposed to do when they embark on a mass leafleting campaign? Actually they really want us to panic. Then Brown can call a quick election and hope people will overlook his complete incompetence and vote for him. Because only he can stop us getting pig-flu.

Brown denies the old Gurkhas

2009-04-29T18:06:00.003Z

There has been a long running dispute between this government and practically everyone else in Britain about the rights for retired ghurkas to settle here.

Gurkhas are Nepalese soldiers who fought in behalf of Britain for over a hundred years often with great distinction and plaudits. They’re a legacy of the British Empire and the practice of recruiting soldiers from colonies because they were cheaper and often more effective.
Many of them want to retire and live in Britain after their service. They can do so unless they retired before 1997.

There are about 15,000 caught up in limbo and they have great public support with the general feeling being that if they were prepared to die for Britain, they should be allowed to live here and we should support them in their old age.
The government however takes a different view and doesn’t want to take the cost. The costs they have mentioned are of £1.5bn. They didn’t clarify that this was over the cost over 10 years (and presumably the worst case scenario). Even still the view is that if you can throw countless billions at the banks in an instant, why these brave dignified people have some. And even that will be greatly exaggerated by the government.

The other thing which get to people is they have they can’t deport terror suspects who continue to live at taxpayer expense; so why should they be so mean to these people.

I guess t comes down to this, if your decent and law abiding, the government will screw you because they can. If you’re a criminal, you will screw them because they can’t be bothered to go after you or they’ve allowed to many concessions on ‘rights’.

Cut price...er....sex

2009-04-29T17:59:00.003Z

German brothels are having to take action in the recession. 'Yes, Sir' brothel in Hanover said revenue had fallen 30% and at some other places by as much as 50% “you can’t charge for extra’s anymore”.

Some brothels have cut prices, others have introduced promotions: Free shuttle busses, discounts for seniors and taxi drivers, and ‘day passes'.

Between 10am and 4pm on weekday, you can have unlimited food, drink and sex, all for a flat rate of 70 euros. This has kept 30 women in work and fully employed.

Other ideas being used are loyalty cards, groups sex parties and discounts for golf players!
How do they know you play golf? Do you have to take the golf clubs with you?

Highly intimate Bruni

2009-04-29T17:50:00.004Z

Carla Bruni has had some ‘highly intimate’ pictures stolen. A computer, camera and video were taken on Sunday, from the house of the younger brother of a previous lover.

What does 'highly intimate' actually mean? How is it different to just intimate? And if they were so 'highly intimate', what were they doing with the brother of a previous lover?

Any way, she is stunning. I look forward to them being posted on the internet. Especially the videos!

Publish Post

Sinners and MP's

2009-04-22T20:16:00.002Z

Apparently at Sinners bar in Newcastle, they've had a promotion recently where anyone showing their breasts to the bar staff get a free drink (female only).
An MP has made a speech in parliament condemning this type of promotion for being degrading for women and encouraging drinking.

I read this on a local newspapers website and the comments to the article made interesting reading. Most people were more annoyed with the politician for wasting his time in such trivial matters. One said the MP was annoyed more because he himself couldn't claim the freebie (a reference to the uproar here about MP's expenses). And yet another said, they better watch what they wrote otherwise they would be smeared in the media (a reference to another recent uproar about the PM's back-office running a smear campaign against the opposition).

My view: ordinary backbench MP's have no power, can do no good for the people, they should all be sacked and money saved on their rediculous expenses should be put into the deficit. And any bar jobs going at Sinners?

More rules...special advisors need rules

2009-04-15T21:25:00.002Z

Typical response from Gordon Brown to the political scandal of his special advisor trying to rake up muck on the Opposition.
As per usual Gordon decided the reason must be because the rules aren't tight enough and more are needed. Surely not that Gordon himself has created a culture where this sort if thing is acceptable...until someone gets caught. No. And not that the people involved shouldn't need rules to stop them lying or writing hurtful and personal things about peoples families, especially when untrue.
In Gordon's world, no one need take responsibility for their own action. No one need ever say sorry because they can't be at fault if the rules didn't specifically forbid what they did. The lack of strict rules are always and only to blame.
I hope Gordon is going to include in his revised rules, that people should flush the toilet after use, then wash their hand, and they shouldn't carry a machine gun to work and shouldn't spray passers by with bullets........
I mean what if he didn't put these in the rules and someone committed mass murder, then he would look a right fool for not having rules tight enough.

Gordon Brown is true to his pledge...

2009-04-15T20:26:00.002Z

...for a change.

A women from Brazil was denied entry into Britain from Newcastle airport because all she had in her luggage was three t-shirts and lingerie. The immigration officers thought she might be coming here to work as a prostitute. So he turned her back. After all, Gordon did promise British jobs for British workers!
I'm wondering there must have been another reason...surely many women go through Newcastle airport with little more than underwear in their luggage. Watch the flight to Magaluf.

As an aside; last year my wife booked a holiday to Majorca. Yes to the resort of Magaluf. I looked on the internet for information about the hotel, and was horrified to find it was a swingers hotel. Stories about naked people running around, having sex in the corridors, all night blaring music, throwing furniture from the balcony into the pool and pissing on the poolside.
We have too young children and I thought it completely inappropriate, even dangerous to take them there. I went back to the travel agent and cancelled it.

Fairy tale, women in business and cup sizes

2009-04-15T20:10:00.002Z

The Fairy Tale
Do you follow Formula 1 racing?
Honda who had spend about a billion dollars over the last few year, pulled out of Formula 1 in December.
They had had a very poor return for their money and decided with the recession they could be seen to be funding something so extravagant. The wanted to sell the team or if no buyer could be found, they would shut it down. Making all 700 staff redundant including a genius of an engineer called Ross Brawn who they had hired a few months before.
A couple of week before the start of the season, when other teams had been testing their cars for months, Brawn persuaded Honda not to shut the team, but to sell it to him for $1 AND give him $100m to run the team.

With that, the team now renamed to Brawn GP, began testing 2 weeksbefore going to Australia for the 1st GP of the season. The two Brawn drivers finished 1st and 2nd. Last weekend, they finished 1st and 5th.

This really is a fairytale story, a new team hasn’t won the first 2 races since 1950.

Women and commerce
Listening to the radio about a poor women from Africa who started a business using her one asset, a gifted cow, I was reminded of the Asian schemes where the give out micro-loans to women to start a business.
They don’t give them to men only women. They say they have a much better chance of getting the loan back, better chance the women will start and work hard to create a successful business and when they do and have money, they will make better use of the money buy helping their children rather than men who were more likely to buy some gadget or drink it away.
If women had been predominant in the management and control of Wall Street, would we have had the same problem. Probably not. We should learn from the African and Asian experiences. I know in the UK and some other countries we have had female leaders. But just below them it’s been all men. I would be interested in seeing how a country or big corporation would be with female domination in terms of numbers and hierarchy, would be like.

Cup size grows
It has been reported in an annual survey of 1000 women below the age of 30; that bust size if going down from 36 to 34 but cup size is going up from C to D.A spokeswoman put the changes down to women taking more exercise, cutting down on booze and fast food — and simply buying the correct bra size.
I have to say, I did some research when I was at university, but never anything this interesting!

Wild animals

2009-04-15T20:07:00.002Z

Several wild animal stories in the news....
First there is this story on the BBC site about a snake which coiled itself around a fully grown man and then dragged him up a tree so it could eat him. The man used his shirt to smother the snakes head and managed to use his mobile phone to call for help. Thank god for the spread of the mobile phone because otherwise this guy would have been eaten by the snake.
Fascinating story, that must have been some strong snake, dragging him up a tree like it did.

Women like bears

The other storey is of this women in Berlin who decided to jump into the polar bear enclosure at the zoo. Obviously out of her mind...

Supermarkets, summits, water and condoms.....

2009-04-01T18:26:00.003Z

India to allow in the big supermarkets?
Big mistake.
The likes of Wallmart will devastate the millions of 'mom & pop' shops and suck huge amounts of money out of the local economy.
We in the UK didn't have the foresight and allowed supermarkets to get out of control.
They not only create unemployment, but the jobs they create are low value. They kill town centres and reduce the variety of good available.
France has big supermarkets but has kept them from killing the thousands of small shops. It's a pleasure to shop in France with the huge number of specialist shops where you can have a conversation with the shop keeper, who knows and is passionate about his speciality.
Don't do it India.

G20 summit in London...
Is costing millions of pounds in security. And what for. So politicians can look good on the 'world stage'. Nothing meaningful comes from these summits which couldn't be achieved otherwise. And France has threatened to pull out if it's agenda isn't met. Sarkozy is in London with his sexy wife, Carla Bruni. Surely he has punched well above his level here? What does she see in him? Maybe the reputation of Frenchmen as lovers is true and Sarkozy compensates in other areas what he lacks in looks.

Contaminated water in the US
Here are some quotes from WDDTY magazine (What Doctors Don't Tell you)
"millions of Americans are regularly drinking water....contaminated by 12,000 military bases where fuel seepage goes unchecked"."The water supply in 22 states contains perchlorate, a toxic chemical found in fuel. Farms and dairies near these bases are shipping contaminated produce across US. A FDA survey found 93% of all lettuce and milk sold in the US is thus contaminated"

The pope doesn't like condoms
The pope has again criticised birth control unless it is by not having sex. Shouldn't he, at least in a recession, lighten up, when other forms of entertainment are too costly. In fact you can even save money by cutting the gym membership!

tata nano and the environment

2009-03-24T21:56:00.001Z

Tata Nano, the cheap Indian car

This is the new car, available in April in India for $2000.

This is half the price of the next cheapest car and until production is ramped up, potential customers will be entered in a prize draw. The prize is: the right to BUY the car. That is how much demand there is. This is going to change people life; families will be able to travel together in a way they couldn’t do on a motor bike.

I have travelled in India and the subcontinent. Public transport can be very poor; dirty, cramped and unreliable. Now many millions of people have another choice.

Environment

The Nano has again bought up the debate about millions of poor people trading a motorbike for a car and the consequent environmental ‘damage’.

This fitted well with another story I read about overpopulation in the UK. Due to the energy usage of the average British person, the UK would need to cut half its population to make it sustainable in the long term. And by extension, the USA would need even greater reduction.

So essentially it doesn’t matter so much if Indians are moving up to a new car. Since Asians and Africans use so much less of the worlds resources, they can afford it.

End of the road for the Dollar?

The Chinese are looking to move their massive foreign reserve to a new currency which they want the IMF to set up. They will then shed the dollar, which is losing value. They’ll need to do it very slowly otherwise the dollar will collapse together with their investment.

If I was China, I would move out of the dollar and buy assets at rock bottom prices –they could practically buy the world at prices today.

The question is: will they (or anyone else) buy more debt which US (and UK) governments are creating by the bucket load.

Oil from a plant

Exxon are developing a very fast growing plant which yields oil. Something like this would change the world. The whole debate would change – these plants eat co2, so the oil would be co2 neutral. Energy security and reliance on the Middle East would change. And environmentalists, the anti-car lobby etc would all have to be quiet. It would open up a new ways to generate money, with lots of new opportunities. It would kill the hybrid car, battery powered cars and stall the hydrogen car –because hydrogen isn’t anywhere near widely available, is produced from oil (otherwise costs too much energy), and is awkward to store & transport. I look forward to this becoming reality.

Green shoots of recovery?

The stock market is at last rising. Obama has finally unveiled a way to bring confidence to the financial sector – buy toxic assets. This has been called for, for some time, but is hugely expensive.

Now, with some private money, he plans to bring it about.

And with some surprising good house price data, is the recession starting to bottom out? Can we look a year into the future and see a little sunshine? Wouldn’t it be great to have a time-travel machine?

I would probably go to the 70’s and stay there. Not that I enjoyed my time in the 70’s. I was too young to enjoy it. I liked the music, the distinctiveness of the time. Example: the massive barge-like cars in the US. Do you see cars like that now? I wouldn’t buy one, but I love looking at them.

Taking responsibility...

2009-03-03T14:17:00.003Z

One year on from the death of my cousin, I went to a prayer meeting to pay my respects. The priest gave a sermon with which I disagreed: he said you should treat your children to pray because it might be their prayers which take you to heaven. Nothing wrong with that, I hear you say, and taken at face value its a good sentiment.
However.
I disagree with the other sentiment profoundly. Why should you rely on anyone else? Should he have said, you need to do so many good things in life to make sure you get into heaven? I think so.
So why didn't he? I think it is a 'religion' thing. He wanted a populist message.

Which is more appealing:
(1) You can live as you are doing and rely on someone else to get you to heaven.
(2) You need to sort yourself out. Cut the bad things and only do good things. You may not have many years, don't leave it too late. Only YOU can get you there.

The first one. Populist, maybe, but I think people shouldn't rely on anyone else.

Why some people may dislike the US and will Obama change this?

2009-01-28T20:50:00.005Z

Some of the feedback I get from American listeners (of WRPBradio.com) is about how other people from the world see the US. And why some people may dislike Americans.

In this context I've came across an interesting article by Johann Hari in the Independent newspaper. The article is called: “Is the US about to treat the rest of the world better?”

It say that Obama’s election does nothing (in the short term at least) to change the structural pressures on American foreign policy.

Here are some quotes (with a little of my editing). You can read the full un-edited article here.

“Bolivia is the poorest country in Latin America.

The President of Bolivia, Evo Morales, has a story strikingly similar to Obama's. In 2006, he became the first indigenous [Black or Indians] president of his country – and a symbol of the potential of democracy. When the Spanish arrived in Bolivia in the 16th century, they enslaved the indigenous people and worked millions to death. As recently as the 1950s, an indigenous person wasn't even allowed to walk through the centre of La Paz, where the presidential palace and city cathedral stand. They were (and are) routinely compared to monkeys and apes.

Morales was born to a poor potato-farmer in the mountains, and grew up scavenging for discarded orange peel or banana skins to eat. Of his seven siblings, four died in infancy. Throughout his adult life, it was taken for granted that the country would be ruled by the white minority; the "Indians" were too "child-like" to manage a country.

Given that the US is constitutionally a democracy and its presidents say they are committed to spreading democracy across the world, you would expect them to welcome the democratic rise of Morales. But wait. Bolivia has massive reserves of natural gas – a geo-strategic asset, and one that rakes in billions for American corporations. Here is where the complications set in.

Before Morales, the white elite was happy to allow American companies to simply take the gas and leave the Bolivian people with short change: just 18 per cent of the royalties. Indeed, they handed almost the entire country to US interests, while skimming a small percentage for themselves. In 1999, an American company, Bechtel, was handed the water supply – and water rates for the poor majority doubled.

Morales ran for election against this agenda. He said that Bolivia's resources should be used for the benefit of millions of bitterly poor Bolivians, not a tiny number of super-rich Americans. He kept his promise. Now Bolivia keeps 82 per cent of the vast gas royalties – and he has used the money to increase health spending by 300 per cent, and to build the country's first pension system. He is one of the most popular leaders in the democratic world.

I suspect that a majority of the American people – who are good and decent – would be pleased and support this process if they were told about it honestly. But how did the US government (and much of the media) react? George Bush fulminated that "democracy is being eroded in Bolivia", and a recent US ambassador to the country compared Morales to Osama bin Laden. Why? To them, you are a democrat if you give your resources to US corporations, and you are a dictator if you give them to your own people. The will of the Bolivian people is irrelevant.

For these reasons, the US has been moving to trash Morales. By an odd quirk of fate, almost all of Bolivia's gas supplies are in the east of the country – where the richest, whitest part of the population lives. So the US government has been funding and fuelling the hard-right separatist movements that want these regions to break away. The interference became so severe that last September Morales had to expel the US ambassador for "conspiring against democracy".

Enter Obama – and his paradoxes. He is obviously a person of good will and good sense, but he is operating in a system subject to many undemocratic pressures. Bolivia illustrates the tension. The rise of Morales reminds us of the America the world loves: its yes-we-can openness and civil rights movements. Yet the presence of gas reminds us of the America the world hates: the desire to establish "full spectrum dominance" over the world's resources, whatever the pesky natives think.

Which America will Obama embody? The answer is both – at first. Morales has welcomed him as "a brother", and Obama has made it clear he wants a dialogue, rather than the abuse of the Bush years. Yet who is Obama's Bolivia adviser? A lawyer called Greg Craig, who represents Gonzalo Sánchez de Lozada – the hard-right former president of Bolivia who imposed some of the most extreme privatisations of the 1980s, and is now wanted on charges of genocide.

The structural pressures within the US system that drove hostility to a democratic civil rights leader like Morales have not dissolved in the cold Washington air. The US is still dependent on foreign fossil fuels to keep its lights on, and US corporations still buy senators from both parties. Obama will still be swayed by those factors.

But while this is a reason to be frustrated, it isn't a reason to be cynical. Why? Because while he will be swayed by those factors, he will also subtly erode them over time. Obama has made energy independence – a massive transition away from foreign oil and gas, and towards the wind, sun and waves – the centre of his governing programme. If the US is no longer addicted to Bolivian gas, then its governments will be much less inclined to topple anybody else who wants to control it. (If they're off oil, they'll be much less invested in Saudi tyranny and petro-wars in the Middle East too.)

Obama also says he wants to peel back the distorting effect of corporate money on the US political system. He is already less slathered in corporate cash than any president since the 1920s. The further he pushes it back, the more breathing space democratic movements like Morales's have to control their own resources.”

I'm writing a book

2009-01-28T16:50:00.002Z

I've decided to write a book about how to solve the big problems.
Here are roughly the chapters inside it.
1) Here is the solution to the Arab-Israeli conflict.
2) How to bring (decent levels of) democracy to Britain.
3) Solving the drugs problem.
4) How to sort out non-performing schools.
5) Tax and spend politics. What we need instead.
6) Underclass and lack of respect.
7) Kashmir, Pakistan or India.
8) Terrorism and how to defeat it.

Each chapter will be about 5 pages long so maybe the title should be, How to solve the worlds problems in a short read.

Balance of payments

2008-12-10T20:56:00.002Z

I have one question?

Why is it cheaper for a Chinese person make a product, ship it all the way to the US (or UK) ..... than ...... an unemployed person in the US (or UK) to make the same product?

This is the reason for the massive imbalance of trade between our countries and China. Even though we have possibly millions of people who are unemployed, we can't mobilise them to make some of the simple products which are shipped all the way from China.

Until we change this -or until the Chinese become like us, we are going to find it difficult to balance our trade.

This explains the economy.

2008-12-10T20:31:00.003Z

I saw this great article on the BBC site by Robert Preston.
He explaims what is happening, what will happen and why it has happened.

Click here to read it.

Below are interesting quotes from the article.

...some of the numbers that tell us what’s gone wrong. For the UK, if you aggregate together debt (consumer, corporate and public-sector), the ratio of our borrowings to our annual economic output is a bit over 300%, or over £4000bn.
That’s a similar ratio of debt to GDP as that of the US, and it’s a record. Over the past decade, we borrowed and we borrowed and we borrowed: we assumed that the day when we had to pay it back would never arrive.

One of the best ways of understanding how all our debts were accumulated is to look at the gross foreign current liabilities of our banks. These rose from £1,100bn in 1997 to £4,400bn this year (again, about three times the size of our annual economic output).

.........for much of the past decade, millions of Chinese slaved away on near subsistence wages and still managed to save, both as a nation (China swanks £1,400bn in foreign exchange reserves) and as individuals. And to a large extent they were working to improve our living standards, because they made more and more of the stuff we wanted at cheaper and cheaper prices - and clever bankers took their savings and lent the cash to us, so that we could buy the houses we cherished, the cars we desired, the flat-screen TVs.

So the big question is how much debt will we have to repay until our economy is returned to some kind of stability.
This is tricky to calculate.
One important number, which gives us a clue, is the difference between what our
banks have lent and what they've borrowed (from savers). It's what the Bank of England calls the customer funding gap. And it matters because it's a guide to the dependence of British banks on funds from overseas that are diminishing and could well, over time, drop to zero.

This customer funding gap was nil in 2001. But by the end of June this year, according to the bank of England, the gap had soared to £740bn.

British taxpayers have provided loans, commitments, guarantees and capital to our banks in excess of £600bn (in the US, the equivalent figure for taxpayer support is around £5,500bn). Which is probably just the beginning. In the UK, taxpayer funding for our banks is very likely to rise, probably to more than £1000bn, perhaps more still.

This rise in the value of assets sparked yet more lending, often at higher ratios of the loan to the value of the asset, to do more deals – which in turn pushed up asset prices further.

There were twin connected bubbles in assets and credit. Both of those bubbles have burst. Falling asset prices are leading to losses for those who borrowed to buy those assets. And as they struggle to pay their debts, they sell other assets, driving down the price of those assets and causing losses for other borrowers. And when they can’t repay banks, the resources of banks are
depleted, which means there's less credit available which drives down asset prices further, which leads to a further contraction of lending, and so on in vicious cycle of decline.

So it is unrealistic to expect our banks to cease the insidious process of contracting the volume of credit they'll provide - whatever the coaxing and bullying of politicians - unless and until the price of property, shares, commodities and other assets stops falling. Or to put it another way, asset prices have to find a floor – and they haven’t found the floor yet – before the financial economy can rebuild itself and the real economy can receive the necessary finance that will allow the recovery to begin.

Who's to blame? And where will all this taxpayer support for banks - and probably, before long, for real companies and the real economy too - lead us?

It takes a whole book to assign culpability. But the short answer is that we’re all at fault to varying degrees.
The authorities in the US and the UK were aware of the dangers of allowing the financial and trade deficits with China and other exporting nations to persist. They could have corrected these deficits by using tax and interest rate policies to reduce our rampant consumption. But they chose not to do so, because it all looked too difficult.

Terrorism again and what to do

2008-12-03T18:09:00.002Z

Terrorism has again hit the headlines with the attack in Mumbai.
What can we do to stop these attacks?
Of course better policing, more security, more intelligence etc etc. These are all needed especially in the short term but what about stopping people becoming terrorists? What about longer-term strategies which might prove more effective.

I can see no evidence of progress on these fronts.

The two front-line states which need to be confronted are Saudi Arabia and Pakistan.

The focus on Iran is both counter-productive (because it takes the focus away from the above) and unnecessary. Why? Because if the world has learnt to live with a much-more-dangerous Pakistan going nuclear, it will learn to live with a nuclear Iran. Iran, after all, is a democracy and despite what it's President Ahmadinejad has said regarding Israel, he wouldn't and couldn't launch any unprovoked attacks (he is not the most powerful man in Iran and has checks and balances to his power).

A friendly Iran can actually be a benefit. If the Clinton Administration had engaged with Iran and helped it fight the Taliban when it first was rising to power, I don't think we would have a problem in Afghanistan today (or not the same problem). And maybe...maybe 9/11 could have been averted. At the time Iran was looking for help and was looking towards the US.

There have been times, opportunities, in history which had they been recognised and acted upon would have changed the whole Islamic terrorism situation for the better. Are these opportunities even recognised today?

One was when the Russians pulled out of Afghanistan. The US had pumped billions of dollars into the war and then for the sake of another few million didn't provide schools, help with rebuilding infrastructure etc. This point was pointedly made in the film Charlie Wilson's war (with Tom Hanks). That investment would have taken boys who knew nothing other than war, off the streets and given them a trade with which to make a living. There would have been no Taliban and probably no Al-Queda.

Another missed opportunity is the failure to recognise how corrupting Saudi Arabia is to the rest of the Muslim world. Islam has traditionally been a very progressive, forward looking and always-questioning religion. There traditions contradict the Saudi's extreme version of Islam and since it became wealthy, it has been buying influence in poor Islamic countries and promoting it's own toxic values. In my lifetime I have seen a sea change in countries such as Pakistan and Egypt with regards to tolerance (of women, other cultures and religions). I have seen people dress habits change (purdah and hijab), levels of crime increase and development of society retarded. How they have achieved much of this and especially the latter is through paying for free education in religious schools (madrassas) and sermonising priest in mosques. The madrassas are the biggest tragedy; they don't teach children maths, science, geography, how to be a builder, become a plumber, how to make a decent living. The just teach them about religion (intolerant Saudi version). They don't teach them something more traditional like always questioning and looking wider for answers; then the children might question them! Also, these so-called schools have, according to anecdotal evidence, high levels abuse of the children.
When Saudi Arabia started doing this, it should have been forced to stop and democratise.

What to do now? It's better to spend a few dollars now then later. Pakistan is on it's knees financially. Give it some money in return for closing all madrassas, fund normal schools for children instead which teach normal subject as well as tolerance and are secular. Force them to disband it's intelligence service and reduce it's military. Subsidise their grain and oil (so they have electricity all day) and publicise it as a gift from US, UK, Germany etc. Let the people know they are being helped in and in-time the extremist will be weeded out.

Saudi Arabia rulers need to shed their brutality and allow freedoms. Make the ruling family confront and eradicate the religious rules and authority. They depend on the US for survival and so can be persuaded. The goal needs to be to make Saudi Arabia itself secular, tolerant and promote those values.

These are long-term objectives but can have a big impact on reducing, maybe eliminating, Islamic terrorism.

Third World in 2020: US & UK?

2008-11-26T14:13:00.002Z

I watched with horror the program I.O.U.S.A.

The US and UK have very similar structured economies and very similar problems both today and awaiting us in the future. The problems today, exasperated by the credit-crunch, are underlined by the inability of successive governments and to live within their means. As a result the debt just goes on increasing. And increasing....

Who is lending this money to us? It used to be the countries' own population, but since we also don't save anymore, it has to be foreign countries. China predominantly. And what does this mean in terms of our security?

Suez
What if the creditor country disagree with the debtor country? This happened to UK in 1956, when it was attacking Egypt over Suez against the wishes of the US. The US President threatened to sell the British pound which would have devastated the UK economy. The UK backed down and withdrew. That is the point when the UK ceased to be a world power. China could use this against the US.

What happens is no one is willing to lend the country anymore money. This could happen when (like now) so many western countries are selling debt. Then the government shuts down.

Why are we even in this situation, why don't we balance our budget?

It may be that politician who are always looking towards the next election won't make decisions which will bring benefit in 20 years. In a democracy that really means, we the electorate, aren't sophisticated enough to be able to demand this from our leaders. In the 1996 US election Ross Perot was running as an independent presidential candidate. He bought this firmly into the political agenda and subsequently Bill Clinton balanced the budget. And then Bush got re-elected and created more debt than all the previous 42 presidents put together.

The really worrying thing is that at this time, we should be running massive surpluses to save for the aging population with the baby boomers about to retire. The US debt is $11 trillion, and unfunded obligations which will be needed in the next 10 to 20 years amount to another $42 trillion!

The UK is in a similar catastrophic position.

What to do about it
It would take a miracle.....I feel sorry for Obama, because he has really taken on a poisoned chalice. But we have to try. Here are some of the things which will be needed:

The first thing is no more deficits. The constitution needs to be amended to demand this from any future 'George W Bush'-type free spenders.
The trade balance needs to be addressed. Not by putting up barriers or devaluing currency (China would probably not allow these). We have to start producing things which we can export.
We have have to get the millions who are unemployed working and producing things which are presently being imported. I can't understand how China can produce and ship over great distances a product which a local unemployed person can't produce cheaper. In countries like the US and UK, with our infrastructure and educated population, why can still developing countries be so much better at so many things.
We will probably have to massively raise taxes and be much more modest in our material desires.
We need to be radical in how we can care for our elderly. We still need to look after them and provide for their well being. We might not be able to do this in care homes in California; but if massive care homes in developing countries might be the best way we can continue to look after our elderly. This isn't ideal..but what is? At least with modern communications we can still 'see' and talk to our elderly relatives without having to travel.

See the program which triggered these thought.

New Labour and pimps

2008-11-19T18:55:00.003Z

A new government initiative has been announced today where they will make it illegal for a man to knowingly pay a women for sex if she is looked after by a pimp or is being forced into prostitution against her will. And the ignorance isn't considered adequate defence.

I appreciate and applaud their aims, but the means is the most ridiculous thing I have heard in a long time. It is completely unworkable. How can it be proved that the man knew. He might have asked before engaging in the act but what if the women didn't tell him the truth. Since a women in that situation will be frightened, she is hardly going to confess all to every punter who comes through the door. And if the police could prove a women is being pimped, why don't they just go ahead and lock the pimps, the gangs, and free the women.

Basically this is a typical New Labour headline grabbing initiative, without any regards to effectiveness or making life easier for the victims or the Police. The one and only aim is to be seen to be doing something. Not to actually doing something good, because that take too much time and intelligence. Being seen is good enough.

And that again tells me (as a Labour supporter) that we need a change of government.

Baby P shines the light on Britains underclass

2008-11-19T13:40:00.005Z

There has only been one story in the UK in the last week. That of Baby P, whose real name we can't be told for legal reasons but who's life story makes us weep at each mention.

I won't mention any details but this is a story of a baby who lived with his cruel mother, her sadist boyfriend and their paedophile lodger. He had a cruel 17 month life. He was seen by social worker 60 times, medical professionals many times and at least on one occasion by the Police. All were concerned about his abuse, some tried to prevent him being with his mother but all were ultimately overruled, which allowed the cruelty to continue.

One of the big debates which has come out of this is regarding an underclass of people. These are people who don't work, don't expect or desire to work, probably their parents didn't work and children are unlikely to also. These people live on money from government.

Whereas the traditional working class might have been poor, they wanted to better themselves, wanted their children to be educated and through work were connected with society. The people in the underclass find themselves cut off from mainstream society and so they can have extreme views and society cannot moderate their actions.

What to do about this; how to bring them into society?

Possibly the only way is to link benefit with work. People on benefit (living money from the government) need to put in 40 hours a week doing work for civic benefit. They can continue to get help in trying to find a job but until they do, they can be given work; this will help them get work and make them more motivated to find and keep a job. And it will re-connect them with the wider community.

Obama optimism. I remember....

2008-11-12T14:52:00.003Z

...Tony Blair.

I remember voting and then staying up all night when one result after another pointed to 'a change'. A new era was dawning; the old would be swept away and new would arrive in a sea of optimism.

No, I'm not talking now about Barack Obama, I am recounting May 1997 when Tony Blair came to power in Britain. I felt good, life was going to be great......

There were a few events soon after where my confidence was shaken, but I kept on believing. Then in October 1998 General Pinochet landed in Britain for some medical treatment. A provincial judge in Spain issued his arrest warrant on charges of murder. We were required to arrest him and then hand him over to the Spaniards.

This was the great test. We had been promised that we wouldn't be turning a blind eye to tyranny, we would be following an ethical foreign policy. Now was the time to show it.

The Blair government was procrastinating, they put him under house arrest and then started looking for excuses to release him. The rumour was that the Americans didn't want him standing trial in case he mentioned CIA involvement in the coup and subsequent tyranny. To me the easy and ethical thing to do was to deport him to Spain and the let the Spanish deal with him. But the Blair government used dubious and since discredited 'medical' advice to release him.

That's when I knew a new era hadn't dawned, and there was no real 'change'. And since then I have had only more reasons to be disillusioned. I have met Tony Blair twice, but I've always felt disappointed.

I hope the parallels with Barack Obama's new dawn don't go the same way. I don't think they will. Whereas Blair was obsessed with media and soundbites, Obama has a much more focused and longer term view. His campaign showed that.

But only time will tell.

British Shame of battered Baby P

2008-11-12T14:36:00.003Z

I have cried, I have wanted to do something, anything to help that poor little baby.
Known as Baby P, he was used as a punchbag for most of his young 17 month life.

This is the story which came out yesterday about the death of the baby which has been seen 60 times by the social services or health professionals, but still lead a tortured life. I can't even to listen to the radio news... I want to cry....how can this happen?

How can people who will do this to a child be allowed to have children.

This is a day of shame for all of us, for living in a society where this can take place. For the pain and misery of that poor child. For the mother who allowed her boyfriend to do such things. It just makes me sick...

President Barack Obama

2008-11-05T16:27:00.004Z

Congratulations, Mr President-elect Barack Obama.
When he won the Iowa primary, over a year ago, I showed a picture of Mr Obama to my wife and announced him as the next US President. My wife said, "Barack Obama, what a nice name". Although my announcement was very premature, I thought he had much more to offer than Hilary Clinton and couldn't see a Republican being elected in the light of approval ratings of GW Bush.

I can see his colour but I can also easily see past his colour. That makes him different to the likes of Jesse Jackson.

I really like Obama. I like his demeanour and his calmness in the face of chaos. I think he is supremely intelligent, he can see the bigger picture and navigates the kind of obstacles most people wouldn't even see (beating the Clinton showed all of these qualities). I don't buy this 'lack of experience' argument. I don't believe sitting in Washington for 20 years or running a company will give you the kind of experience which is useful. That, only comes from living a reasonably ordinary life. You need to have experienced the same ups and downs which the average person feels and this only comes from being ordinary for most of your life. Clinton had forgotten that. McCain has been in Washington too long. Bush was born to privilege.

Today is an extraordinary day; Americans have looked past the colour and seen the man. In a country which a history of slavery and relatively recent segregation, this is a momentous achievement. How many other countries would look past the colour and elect a similar black man?

Here in the UK, he wouldn't have even got to the stage where the public could vote. In Spain when the English football team played, the black English players were subjected to monkey noises and bananas were thrown at them. Would Spain look past the colour? I doubt it.
Pakistan would rather elect a thief (like Mr Zardari is widely thought to be) than a black man. What about Russia? No.

The United States were presented with this extraordinary black man and should be commended that they looked at the man, where many other counties would have only seen the colour.

Difference in living costs: UK and USA

2008-10-29T14:28:00.003Z

I have had an email from a listener asking to make a comparison of living cost between the USA and UK.

It's difficult to make like-for-like comparison. There is a huge variation in living cost in each country. And I haven't lived in the USA so can't compare directly.

However, as most listeners and readers are in the USA, I will list some general living costs in the UK and people can compare with their own experience.

Tax
UK Sales tax is 17.5%.
Annual Road Tax on every car varies between 0 and £400 (US$600): Toyota Prius is zero, and a Honda Accord 2.4 is £400 ($600) per year. Many people opt for Diesel powered cars which reduces this cost and increases fuel efficiency (even better than Hybrids).
Income tax. Someone earning a reasonable income of £30,000 ($45,000) per year can expect £2000 ($3000) per month in their pocket. In my example, about 60% of this then goes into my mortgage and child care (1 child is in a private nursery and other in a state school).

Property
A reasonable sized house in a decent area would cost about £200,000 ($300,000). In London and the South-East, that would probably double. Renting the same property would cost a little more than the monthly mortgage.
Council tax and utilities £2000 ($3000) per year.

Other expenses
Petrol £5 per gallon ($8), and this is after a recent reduction of about 15%.
My monthly groceries for 2 adults and 2 children cost about £400 ($600).

Benefits
Health care is free. Unemployed people get housing and living expenses. Old aged people get a state pension and some help with living costs (although if you only relied on state help, you would be very uncomfortable).

European Comparison
I have direct experience of living and earning in Netherlands and Paris.
I found Paris to be very similar to UK, although I was being paid in the UK for my work there so I don't know about the tax system. But in Netherlands, I found the tax to be so high as not worth working there. Other expense in Netherlands are also very high and I found it a relief to get back to the UK.
A country I would really like to have experience of is Norway. Probably very expensive but with very evenly distributed wealth and apparently very good quality of life.

Summary
I believe generally, the living costs will be lower in the US, especially with regards to tax. Generally in Europe people like (and vote for) big government and socialism, whereas US prefer the opposite (although G.W. Bush has spent time reversing this).

When we from Britain come to the US, we can't believe how cheap prices are and many turn up for a shopping spree especially near Christmas. And similarly Norwegians come to UK to grab the bargain!

Coming to Edinburgh...

2008-10-28T13:27:00.003Z

I have been given a two week Lotus Domino assignment in Edinburgh beginning 17th November.

I have places and advert on Gumtree for accommodation. See here

Lotus Notes Domino

2008-10-28T13:16:00.007Z

I am again, through my company, pursuing Lotus Domino assignments.

Works undertaken are Administration, Training and Infrastructure Development of Lotus Domino.

In particular I can leverage an existing Domino installation give greater returns by using Workflow to increase efficiencies in your business and also reduce the running costs of domino itself.

Workflow is when a Lotus application uses Domino databases combined with email to streamline a business procedure and communication.

I might be able to help you fund this work with European Business funding, please enquire.

If anyone is interested, please email me on n.ash@usa.net. I can undertake work anywhere in the world with suitable remote access.

John McCain rises above politics. And Palin for 2012? I don't think so.

2008-10-13T19:25:00.006Z

I've found the mud slinging by the Republicans really distasteful. Palin is the worst offender by far. She's really getting down-an-dirty.

I always liked John McCain but recently he's disappointed me. I didn't like the rhetoric or the ugliness of his campaign. However he's now risen above it when he corrected a women for calling Obama an Arab. Good on ya' John.

If Sarah Palin has an eye on 2012 as President, she can forget it. She will be badly beaten by the other Republican candidates. See, then she won't have the party machine protecting her from the press and her gaffes will give the other candidates all the red meat they need.

What is a 'hockey mum'

2008-10-13T19:22:00.002Z

Is it a mum who plays hockey?

Does that make me a 'sqaush dad'? Or maybe a 'really-bad-at-squash dad'.

Lending money to banks

2008-10-10T09:49:00.003Z

I watched This Week on BBC last night.
Andrew Neil said we've lent the banks £500bn so they can lend it back to us at 7%.
Putting it that way made me think; why don't they just lend it direct to us?

Cut out the middle man and let the banks fall, we can have a super-dooper Peoples Bank.

Any thoughts?

BTW: This Week is my favourite program and I really like Michael Portillo. Maybe he should have been PM after all -and I say this as a Labour Party member.

Investing in property

2008-10-09T09:11:00.003Z

Another report about massive house price deflation by the Halifax. Why and how did we get to this stage where property investment means so much?

What about this scenario: people view property as places to live in and not to invest or make money out of. If prices hardly rose ever and rental property was cheap, plentiful and good quality. Then no one would bother buying property unless it was for a buy-to-let business. And such businesses wouldn't make capital gains, but rather a reasonable return via rents.
Then we would be free from property boom & bust. People would be much more mobile and could easily follow work. Any spare money wouldn't be invested in property but rather could go into industry and enterprise. This could potentially create a lot more work and people might even be employed by private companies rather than government. This would lower government spending and the new companies' provide extra tax revenues. So the tax rates could plummet and the government could run a surplus.

Wouldn't that be great. Would it be possible?

Germany (or rather West Germany) was run somewhat along similar lines. They had strong tenant rights and low house inflation. Before reunification they had strong industry and low unemployment. Some of these have since changed due to the problems of reunification but we could still look and copy some parts of their system.

Presidential Debates

2008-10-08T14:11:00.002Z

I saw Senators Barack Obama take on John McCain in the town hall debate, last night.
Both made a good account for themselves but I couldn't help focus on John McCains comb-over. For those not familliar with the phrase, it's when a bold man grows his side hair so long that it can be combed right over his head. Unfortunately it doesn't hide the boldness, rather draw attention to it. And looks ridiculous. Maybe someone should have a word with him....

I also saw the VP debate last week. What that needed was BBC Newsnight presenter Jeremy Paxman to moderate it. Paxman would have stopped Sarah Palin regurgitating memorised stock answers, even when they didn't address the question asked. The moderator asked several questions in one question, allowing the candidates to pick and choose which part to answer and which to ignore. This then made it relatively easy to give (or read out) a stock answer. In Britain we prefer the interviewer to really grill politicians. If they don't answer the question or give a stock answer, we like them to be taken to task. It's like a sport.

I have attached a link to the infamous Paxman interview of Michael Howard. I wonder how Sara Palin, Biden, McCain and Obama would have liked him!

Rescue package for banks

2008-10-08T13:28:00.003Z

Today Gordon Brown the unelected PM of Britain unveiled a comprehensive rescue plan for most high street banks. The banks can apply to the British Treasury for money in exchange for shareholding. As well as taking a share in them, the government will force them to moderate executive pay and bonuses. That all fine, however we taxpayers want more.

Banks have recently been massively increasing interest rates for overdraft and charges for loans. This is putting businesses and ordinary people in difficulty.
The issue of potentially illegal bank charges, which has been rumbling for a few years now is with the lawyers. They collected billions in charges which could be declared illegal.

Now that we ordinary taxpayers partially own these banks we want them to stop fighting and pay those charges back, and stop taking advantage of the credit situation to rack up interest rates.

Unfortunately we only have Mr Browns toothless government looking after our interest so we're not likely to.

On the radio.

2008-10-07T14:41:00.004Z

Tune in to listen to me on wrpbradio, every Wednesday. At 4pm US East Coast time, 9pm UK time.

I talk about topical items. This week I want to again touch upon the banking problem and then talk about my experience in Bradford.

Also to remind everyone to listen in on 14th October when I will be unveiling my Middle East peace plan.

Marketing Ozonology.....

2008-05-15T09:59:00.002Z

I've been pondering exactly how to market the Ozonology sanitisation service (see www.proqul.com). I put this question on LinkedIn social network site. I have some very good replies, but one was a little more exiting.

I got an offer to co-present a radio show where I can talk about my work, product and things which interest me. OK it's a small internet radio station rather than BBC Radio 2, but I get to promote my products AND I might be able to get PR because of this. I'm quite excited.

Ozonology sanitisation freebie

2008-05-12T10:00:00.003Z

I offered the Labour Party a freebie sanitisation service for their summer conference. So far they haven't responded. Maybe I'll try approaching another person (the person I sent an email to is 2nd in the hierarchy, I used to work with him).

If anyone other company or organisation wants a freebie in return for some leveraged PR, please contact me; ash@proqul.com

I think I might try and contact the Conservative party and the Lib Dems. That would be a great promotion if I could bag all three!

Labour Party rout

2008-05-05T02:53:00.002Z

I've was a Labour Party candidate for councillor in Newcastle. As expected I came third out of 3. I enjoyed the experience and I'm pleased that the government got a big enough shock that they now know they have to change. Big. A smaller loss would not have been explained away with usual political gibberish (mid term blues etc). But they can't ignore this.

I've offered the Labour Party a freebie to sanitise their conference hall for annual conference in the summer. I will be using Ozonology from Proqul.com.

I've been bidding on some old Motor magazines from the 60's and 70's and lost out since bid was too low. Now someone else has bought them, I feel I should have put up a higher bid.

Publish Post

2008-04-25T13:49:00.002Z

My Proqul Ozone Store website is up and running.
Here are some link: Proqul Ozone store who supply the Ozonology Sanitisation service.

Amistad articles you may enjoy.

About life:
Climate change is a natural phenomena,
Green tax or just plain tax?,
Was passing the EU budget good for Britain? I think not.

About Cars:
Honda Accord 2008 is no looker,
W124 E-class is still the best Mercedes,
Takeover of Land Rover & Jaguar,
Jaguar for sale,
Mercedes and Chrysler divorce,
Ebay addiction, can I make a profit?,
My list of most beautiful cars,
Volvo's not-so-floating console,
Why rare cars or exclusive cars will lose you money,
Honda FRV review,
Toyota IQ to help Mercedes' profits,
Ferrari F599: Motoring Porn,
Peugeot enter the SUV market,
Honda Jazz report,
Eulogy for Rover SD1,
BMW 535D is a colossus,
Honda Fit in the USA,
Ford Focus is the perfect second hand car,
The Honda Legend returns,
C6: the new DS,
Is Audi going RWD?,
The smarter Smart,
What happened to the promise of active suspension,
Honda Civic ishift.

USA pre-election elections.

2008-01-08T09:12:00.000Z

Like many Europeans, I am intrigued watching the US pre-election. Ordinary people get to choose which individual will stand for election. And they get to see suitors from the same party fight each other in public. Practically anyone can run at this stage and anyone can run for the real election (as an independent). Compare and contrast this with Gordon Brown's uncontested shoe-in after Tony Blairs departure.
Britain might be the mother of democracy but the children have left it behind. The US system is far from perfect but still much better than in Britain. All they need to do in the US is remove lobbyist and corporate funding, and have a much lower cap on campaign funding and individual donations. That would probably make it as good as it gets....oh and remove Jim Crow laws and practices (you know the ones I mean Mr Bush).

Ghandi said, the vote is only the first step to democracy. In other words, there are many ways which democracy level can be improved and those should be sought. Funny why this never gets mentioned, when the great and the good start preaching democracy to the third worlds. As Gordon Brown and George W Bush have recently done to Pakistan.
Gordon Brown said cowards who feared democracy killed Bhutto. Well Mr Brown, 1) Bhutto is no great lover or democracy - did she get elected to lead her Party. No, she is an aristrocat who saw it as a right to lead the party and country (largely for own benefit). And Mr Brown, 2) did you also not fear democracy when you cowardly cancelled elections at the last minute, late last year. I'm thinking of a phrase with stones and glass houses, Mr Brown.

I have another blog about the US candidates.
See here: Amistad

Starting Busines

2008-01-07T07:24:00.000Z

Hello
I haven't posted for months. I'm going to change that. I'm going to post 5 times a week.
Changed have occurred in my life.
I've finished consultancy work for others, this month I will be launching a new business.
I'm selling a sanitisation (sanitization) service using ozone gas. And I will be selling ozone household products (more about these later). Ozone is a fantastic gas. It is a very efficient and powerful oxidizing-agent. This makes it very good for sanitising and sterilising, killing odour, bacteria, fungus, mould and viruses.. And it doesn’t leave chemicals or smells, only oxygen. I will offer a service to businesses (restaurants, care homes, nurseries, taxi’s), public sectors (NHS, schools, ambulance) and houses.

At the moment I am trying to find ways to cheaply market the service. The website will be up in about a week (www.proqul.com). Please check it out.

Porsche 928

2007-07-05T21:43:00.000Z

I've always loved this car. To my eyes it is the 2nd most beautiful car I've seen (after Citroen DS). I know that the prices of these are now super-affordable but until now I've been afraid of potential of them to hemorrhage money. I've been reading www.928.org.uk for a few weeks now and have changed my mind.
Now I think it is possible to buy one for modest means and spend only modest means to run it also. This has got me seriously excited. I'm not right now in a position to buy one, but I will be in a few months time. But I have to choose the right one. For that I need to choose one which has been inspected by a 928 expert; the most respected one is Paul Anderson of Stroud.
For now, more reading about the Porsche.

Leaky toilet

2007-06-26T11:06:00.000Z

Not quite as disgusting as you may expect... the leak was where clean water went into the toilet for flushing. It was only a small leak. Initially. I thought a compression joint would just need tightening. Well, I never quite got round to it and on Friday, water was spraying out soaking the bathroom. 'er Indoors was going nuts.
I turned the water off. I tightened the compression joint and released the water. Even bigger spray of water. Tightened more. Same result. By now I thought it might be more complicated. Marvelous, I now would be at the mercy of rip-off-plumbers! But no.
I got a replacement kit for the cistern, some PTFE tape and a leak blocking paste. Applying them all, the original leak disappeared, but a new one appeared in the cistern itself. Not quite as bad, but it would mean water was overflowing constantly. So I removed the new cistern kit and tried to work out how it was supposed to work and why it wasn't. An astray o-ring. (My Engineering MSc coming in useful). Fixed and all happy. I'm really pleased.

Is Soy cancer on a plate?

2007-06-19T20:49:00.000Z

This is the article title in What Doctors Don't Tell You magazine. Basically Soy (soya) isn't as good for us as we thought it was. Although no definitive proof, allot of evidence to suggest Soy should be avoided.

Teflon (PTFE) coating on cooking pans is also not good. Best to choose Glass or Iron.

Just been watching Gordon Ramsays F word. He has lambs in his back garden which he is rearing to eat. I couldn't do that. Yes, it is hypocritical as I eat lamb -but not having seen it as an animal seems to make all the difference.

I'm going to New York for work. Booked my flight today- business class. I've never been business class before -I'm quite looking forward to the flight. Normally I absolutely hate flying. I can't stand the cramped-cattle conditions. But this will be something else.

Reading What Doctors Don't Tell You

2007-06-13T20:44:00.000Z

I'm reading old back copies WDDTY. This is a magazine which explores health issue which go over and above that your GP will tell you. GP's have a strict template to follow -given from NHS. I'm interested in flouride-free, electro-sensitivity, ozone benefits, and magnetic thereapy. Proqual will start selling products linked to each of these. I'm using these and other litrature to research.

Proqual online store progress

2007-06-09T00:35:00.000Z

I have decided to go with Google Checkout for payment collection. Initially just for a few months. I'm having problems with getting a merchant account, or at least one at a competitive rate. And Google is very competitive. My Web developer says I will loose some functionality unless I choose a more traditional account with processing gateway. However this functionality is only useful when shipping volumes increase.

I still have to provide Terms and Conditions and a name graphic. Then I can try get the look just right. Still looking to launch in August.

It's late now and I really should go to bed. Please read my other blog and articles on Amistad the Online Car Magazine

Searching for Mercedes E320 estate 1994-1996

2007-06-08T12:15:00.000Z

Do you know anyone selling a W124 Mercedes E320 estate in the UK. Please ask them to constact me through http://www.amistad.co.uk/blog.asp

The one I was after has been sold.

Best looking cars

2007-06-06T21:28:00.000Z

These are the best looking car as chosen by me, in my Amistad Online Car magazine article. Please read it here.

Welcome to the Blog

2007-06-03T16:00:00.000Z

This is a blog linked to www.amistad.co.uk and www.proqual.eu.
Amistad is a online car magazine which promotes my opinions and Proqual is an online store which isn't yet live.