Sim-O

As part of Channel 4’s ‘Lost For Words’ series, tonight 9pm:

“This section looks at Monteagle’s year-long mission to eradicate illiteracy in their school…”

I thought that’s what schools were supposed to do all the time.

Comments

Labels: Education

From Counterpunch:

Over the past several weeks, the United States has gone out of its way to offend, irk and otherwise provoke a select group of leaders and nations. Through a series of deliberate and calculated actions intended to purposefully estrange those most likely to succeed at diplomacy with Iran, its failure has been ordained and the stage for military action set. For those who think the upcoming war will be another Bush-Cheney folly (as they believe Iraq to be), the collusion of the Democrats in the process again belies that assumption.

Rest of article here.

Labels: USA

Talking about not being fired for being crap/misconduct, why is it, if you’re a director/chief exec/MP or similar, why are you asked to resign if you’re rubbish and run the company/country into the ground and get a golden handshake, while the worker if he’s not up to the job gets the boot?

Labels: Odds and Sods

BBC:

Heroin and cocaine addicts on the government’s treatment programme are being given drugs as a reward for clean urine samples, the BBC has learned.
The National Treatment Agency (NTA), which runs the £500m-a-year scheme, admits the practice is “unethical”.

Its own survey of almost 200 clinics in England found users were being offered extra methadone, a heroin substitute, or anti-depressants for good behaviour.

Good behaviour? What is this? Prison?
Either the addict wants to get off the junk or not. If not, fuck ’em off out of the programme because they are just wasting everyones’ time and effort.
If an addict really wants to beat their addiction (and it’s not a habit, ffs) then being clean is reward enough in itself.

More needs to be done for addicts that genuinely want to get clean, including getting their head sorted about it.

The classic case of a drunk. You’re always a recovering alcoholic.
No you’re not. Stop counting the days that you’ve been ‘dry’ and get on with your life. Stop waiting to have the drink that you don’t want. Waiting for something that isn’t going to happen. Going 400 days, or whatever, without a drink/hit. If after that time you still want a drink/hit, then the programme hasn’t worked, cos it’s sure not a physical addiction after that time is it.

Labels: Drugs

Picture from Iain Dale.

Update: It looks like a hat-tip is due to Kerron Cross for originally posting the pic.

Labels: Odds and Sods

Picture from Iain Dale.

Update: It looks like a hat-tip is due to Kerron Cross for originally posting the pic.

Labels: Odds and Sods

The Foresight report on why we’re getting fatter:

The central message of the Foresight report, put together by a team headed by Sir David King, the government’s chief scientific adviser, was that there was no simple answer to the problem. The nation had “sleepwalked” into it because our hunter-gatherer biology was out of step with the technological convenience age; we were programmed to eat as if we did not know where the next meal was coming from. “If we just behave normally we will become obese,”

I would argue that it isn’t our biology that is wrong, but the food chain that has been developed by capitalism, with intensive farming and processed factory foods that contain the cheapest ingredients and loads of additives.

Labels: Health

Don’t help Burma, help China.

How does the “Saffron Revolution” affect the China and the US?

First it’s a fact which few will argue that the present military dictatorship of the reclusive General Than Shwe is right up there when it comes to world-class tyrannies. It’s also a fact that Myanmar enjoys one of the world’s lowest general living standards. Partly as a result of the ill-conceived 100% to 500% price hikes in gasoline and other fuels in August, inflation, the nominal trigger for the mass protests led by saffron-robed Buddhist monks, is unofficially estimated to have risen by 35%. Ironically the demand to establish “market” energy prices came from the IMF and World Bank.

The UN estimates that the population of some 50 million inhabitants spend up to 70% of their monthly income on food alone. The recent fuel price hike makes matters unbearable for tens of millions.

Myanmar is also deeply involved in the world narcotics trade, ranking only behind Hamid Karzai’s Afghanistan as a source for heroin. As well, it is said to be Southeast Asia’s largest producer of methamphetamines.

This is all understandable powder to unleash a social explosion of protest against the regime.

It is also a fact that the Myanmar military junta is on the hit list of US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and the Bush administration for its repressive ways. Has the Bush leopard suddenly changed his spots? Or is there a more opaque agenda behind Washington’s calls to impose severe economic and political sanctions on the regime?

Read on…

Labels: Burma, China, USA