Equal Education for All ?

Only seven children from the poorest areas in Edinburgh got grades last year that could place them at St Andrews University or other very competitive courses at Edinburgh and Glasgow. Figures released by the Scottish government under freedom of information legislation also revealed that only 220 of the poorest children within Scotland, who are defined in their background areas via postcode, achieved high grades. Just 2.5 percent of the 8,842 fifth year students from the poorest areas got three or more As in their higher exams. Edinburgh’s state schools are falling behind far more poorer areas in Scotland, as only 1.4 percent of children from its most deprived neighbourhoods are achieving the minimum needed grades for universities or degree courses. As few as 50 got grades good enough to compete for places at Oxford.

Professor Lindsay Paterson, professor of educational policy at Edinburgh university, said "It's not just that Edinburgh's figures are extremely low but that the inequality in Edinburgh is extremely high."

SOME STAGGERING STATISTICS

The basis of capitalism is the working class producing a surplus value over the cost of their wages that allow the owning class to live in ease and luxury. How great that surplus value has become in modern capitalism was recently illustrated by some American statistics. "Just how rich are the Waltons? According to the latest edition of the Forbes 400, released yesterday, the six wealthiest heirs to the Walmart empire are together worth a staggering $115 billion. ..... The average Walmart worker earns just $8.81 an hour. At that wage, the union-backed Making Change at Walmart campaign calculates that a Walmart worker would need 7 million years to earn as much wealth as the Walton family has (presuming the worker doesn't spend anything)" (Mother Jones, 20 September) RD

A FRUIT AND NUT CASE

Capitalism is a social system based on class ownership and sections of the owning class are always in disputes over this ownership. They have legal battles sometimes leading to military battles over the ownership and access to sources of raw materials and markets. Recently there has been a legal dispute over the ownership of a particular colour. "Is chocolate the first thing you think of when you see Pantone 2685C? It might be if I tell you that it is the technical name for Cadbury Daily Milk's distinctive purple. And it does indeed "belong" to Cadbury, after a decision in the High Court yesterday that the confectioner's purple packaging constitutes a trademark." (Times, 2 October) This dispute arose over Cadbury's rival Nestle objection to Cadbury registering the colour as a trademark in 2004. Nestle had already lost in 2008 but decided to appeal the judgement of the Registrar of Trade Marks. Only capitalism with its emphasis on ownership could have highly trained legal minds battling for years over who "owns"a colour. Madness. RD

Fact of the Day

India's health Minister Ghulam Nabi Azad said 39 million Indians are pushed to poverty because of ill health every year and around 30 per cent in rural India did not go for any treatment due to financial constraints. 60 per of total health expenditure in India was paid by the common man from his own pocket in 2009. The report states that about 47 per cent and 31 per cent of hospital admissions in rural and urban India were financed by loans and sale of assets.

Slaving away in the hospitals

Fears that patient safety may be put in danger by overworked and tired staff were raised today amid warnings that some surgeons and nurses in the Lothians have been working seven days a week solidly for three months. Staff are said to be clocking up 72 hours every week.

Some NHS Lothian staff members – such as surgeons, anaesthetists and  theatre nurses – are being offered extra shifts at evenings and at weekends, as part of the effort to reduce the number of patients waiting longer than the target of 12 weeks for treatment.

NHS Lothian employee director and former vice-chairman Eddie Egan, who raised the issue with the board. He said: “We need to get the waiting list numbers down, but I’m speaking to people working seven days a week and they’ve been doing that for three months in high-pressure environments. I am concerned that staff are being put under pressure. People are feeling  morally obliged to turn up, even if they’re exhausted, because they know patients will be cancelled if they don’t. It’s  potentially putting patients in danger. If you’re working seven days a week, in evenings and are possibly on call, it  reaches a point where you have to query – are people safe?”

 MSP Margo MacDonald said "Think of people with driving jobs who are not allowed to drive for too many hours because they need sleep and rest. If that’s true for drivers it’s certainly true for surgeons and nurses.”

Tom Waterson, Lothian branch chairman for Unison, said  “No-one should be working more than 48 hours in one week,” he said. “The working time directive was not brought in to save money, it was brought in to protect health.”

desperate and in despair

Researchers say a “hidden” population of people refused asylum have been allowed to live on Scottish streets with zero benefits and no right to work in the UK. Hundreds of failed asylum seekers are living in Scotland on less than the UN’s global poverty target of £0.77 ($1.25) a day. Pregnant women, children and people with disabilities are among those who have been left destitute on Scotland’s streets, according to the Scottish Poverty Information Unit. The independent study was commissioned by the British Red Cross, Refugee Survival Trust and the Scottish Refugee Council.

Morag Gillespie of SPIU, said the levels of poverty she found were “dreadful” and that many interviewees were literally penniless with no legitimate means of income. The report states that 1,849 destitute people were given emergency grants from a charity called the Refugee Survival Trust from 2009 to 2012. Almost half (49 per cent) were homeless, including families with children, 26 people with mental health issues, four disabled people and five pregnant women and two new mothers. The asylum seekers came from 67 countries, most often Iran, Iraq and Eritrea. Some interviewees had been in the asylum system for more than a decade.

Gary Christie, of the Scottish Refugee Council, said: "We see people who have been tortured in Iran yet have been refused protection; others fleeing for their lives from the violence of war in Somalia but who don’t meet the terms of the refugee convention or pregnant women whose cases have been turned down and don’t qualify for any support until they reach 32 weeks." He goes on to explain “People are literally being starved into leaving Scotland. People have lost their asylum cases but are left in limbo as there is no way of returning them to their countries. Either the person will not return voluntarily or there is no practical way of achieving the return, as the country won’t accept them back or there is no safe passage to get there. These people are left with no accommodation, no right to work, no benefits and no food. Some people can remain in such a situation for months or years, which is a disgrace.”

The richies of Arabia

 Saudi Arabia has 1,265 wealthy people with a total net worth of $230 billion. The United Arab Emirates ranked second with 810 with a total net worth of $120 billion, followed by Kuwait in the third place with 735 individuals with a total net worth of $125 billion and Qatar in the fourth place has 300 with a total net worth of $45 billion. Syria has 215 people whose total net worth was $23 billion.

 Overall, the total number of the wealthy in the Middle East reached 4,595 people (population of the Arab world over 367 million in 2012) with a total net worth of $710 billion.

The overall number of millionaires around the world has risen to 18,738 with a total net worth of $25.8 trillion.

Against all this wealth there are millions of people living in extreme poverty. On a global level, the World Bank estimates published at the beginning of March 2012 indicate that the proportion of people living on less than $1.25 per capita/day amounted to about 1.29 billion in 2008, which is equivalent to 22 per cent of the population of the developing world. 43 per cent exist on less than $2 a day

As the old sayings by Imam Ali bin Abi Talib, cousin of Prophet Mohammed, says: "The rich are fortunate at the expense of the poor"

Quote of the Day

Ryanair's Michael O'Leary said  that being paid his €1.2m (£1m) pay, 20 times more than his average employee,  is too little, claiming to work "50 times harder".

Fact of the Day

Bill Gates is in possession of $60,000 million. If he sat perfectly still and did nothing, his income at a nominal 5 per cent a year would equate to $3,000 million a year. That’s roughly $8 million a day.

who owns the north pole - part 53

In August, China sent its first ship across the Arctic to Europe and it is lobbying intensely for permanent observer status on the Arctic Council, the loose international body of eight Arctic nations that develops policy for the region, arguing that it is a “near Arctic state” and proclaiming that the Arctic is “the inherited wealth of all humankind,” in the words of China’s State Oceanic Administration. Its scientists have become pillars of multinational Arctic research, and their icebreaker has been used in joint expeditions. In Canada, Chinese firms have acquired interests in two oil companies that could afford them access to Arctic drilling. During a June visit to Iceland, Premier Wen Jiabao of China signed a number of economic agreements, covering areas like geothermal energy and free trade. In Greenland, large Chinese companies are financing the development of mines that are being developed around discoveries of gems or minerals by small prospecting companies, said Soren Meisling, head of the China desk at the Bech Bruun law firm in Copenhagen, which represents many of them. A huge iron ore mine under development near Nuuk, for example, is owned by a British company but financed in part by a Chinese steel maker. Chinese mining companies have even proposed building runways for jumbo jets on the ice in Greenland’s far north to fly out minerals until the ice melts enough for shipping.

High-level Chinese diplomats have visited Greenland, where Chinese companies are investing in a developing mining industry, with proposals to import Chinese work crews for construction. Greenland’s minister for industry and mineral resources was greeted by Vice Premier Li Keqiang in China last November. A few months later, China’s minister of land and resources, Xu Shaoshi, traveled to Greenland to sign cooperation agreements. Western nations have been particularly anxious about Chinese overtures to this poor and sparsely populated island, a self-governing state within the Kingdom of Denmark, because the retreat of its ice cap has unveiled coveted mineral deposits, including rare earth metals that are crucial for new technologies like cellphones and military guidance systems. Michael Byers, a professor of politics and law at the University of British Columbia, said“Despite the concerns I have about Chinese foreign policy in other parts of the world, in the Arctic it is behaving responsibly,” he said. “They just want to make money.”

European Union vice president, Antonio Tajani, rushed here to Greenland’s capital in June, offering hundreds of millions in development aid in exchange for guarantees that Greenland would not give China exclusive access to its rare earth metals, calling his trip “raw mineral diplomacy.”

“We are treated so differently than just a few years ago,” said Jens B. Frederiksen, Greenland’s vice premier, in his simple office here. “We are aware that is because we now have something to offer, not because they’ve suddenly discovered that Inuit are nice people.”

Thomas R. Nides, United States deputy secretary of state for management and resources, said the Arctic was becoming “a new frontier in our foreign policy.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/09/19/science/earth/arctic-resources-exposed-by-warming-set-off-competition.html?pagewanted=1&_r=0&nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20120919

Who owns the North Pole - Part 52

A Russian Orthodox bishop has lowered a "holy memorial capsule" into the sea at the North Pole in an attempt to "consecrate" the Arctic and reassert Moscow's claims to the territory.

The service was held by Bishop Iakov on the ice alongside the nuclear icebreaker Rossiya during a polar expedition titled "Arctic-2012", organised by the country's Arctic and Antarctic Research Institute.

The metal capsule carried the blessings of the church's leader, bearing the inscription: "With the blessing of Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Russia, the consecration of the North Pole marks 1150 years of Russian Statehood." Bishop Iakov, who is thought to be the first Russian priest to visit the pole, emphasised that the consecration symbolised efforts "to restore Russia's position and confirm its achievements in the Arctic".

 A conservative Moscow think-tank suggested in July that the Arctic Ocean should be renamed the "Russian Ocean" and this week it was announced that MiG-31 supersonic interceptor aircraft will be based in the region by the end of the year.

 http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/russia/9571743/Russia-consecrates-North-Pole-to-reassert-ownership.html

The climate change death toll

Findings contained in the “Climate Vulnerability Monitor”—a study sponsored by 20 nations and conducted by the humanitarian and development research organization DARA—point to unprecedented harm to human society and current economic development if runaway carbon emissions are not contained and new models of energy generation and consumption are not pursued. The study estimates human and economic impacts for 184 countries in 2010 and 2030 across a wide range of separate effects. Indicators of impact range from issues such as hunger and skin cancer, to permafrost thawing and sea-level rise, indoor and outdoor air pollution, and fisheries, biodiversity and forest deterioration.

 The cost will be 100 million dead.

workers health and safety - not a priority

Thousands of people are being killed or seriously injured at work because of drastic cutbacks at the UK Government's Health and Safety Executive (HSE), experts are warning. An 80-page report by Stirling University blames a steep rise in major workplace injuries on deep cuts in funding, staff, inspections and enforcement. Just one in 20 major injuries are now investigated by the HSE, and only one in 170 results in prosecution.

Over the past five years the number of major and fatal injuries at work in the UK has increased by 2700 per year, the report says. In the same period, the proportion investigated by HSE has fallen from 8% to 5%, while those prosecuted dropped from 1% to 0.6%. Scotland suffers higher workplace sickness rates than the rest of the UK, yet only 1% of the 2500 fatal and major injuries per year results in prosecutions. The HSE has only one part-time medic to cover Scotland's 2.5 million workers

The HSE's budget has been cut by 13% from £228 million in 2009-10 to £199m in 2011-12, with further cuts planned. Its staff numbers have been reduced by 22% from 3702 in 2010 to 2889 in June this year. The Sunday Herald reported that the number of industrial sites inspected by Scottish Environment Protection Agency had been cut by one-third in a year.

 The HSE is becoming a "threadbare" agency, say the report's authors, Professors Rory O'Neill and Andrew Watterson, from Stirling University's Occupational and Environmental Health Research Group: "Workplace safety inspections are now so infrequent it is unlikely most workers will ever encounter an inspector in a working lifetime...Between the catastrophes, the slow disaster of more routine environmental and workplace harm continues unabated and largely unpoliced" 

Prospect, the trade union that represents HSE inspectors and specialist staff, has warned that cutbacks have reduced proactive inspections of high-hazard sites by one-third, while most workplaces are exempt from unannounced, preventive inspections.

 Efforts by the health and safety watchdog to prevent the 8000 deaths caused each year by work-related cancers have been condemned as "feeble" according to Professor Andrew Watterson. An HSE board meeting report said cancers were to blame for 8000 of the 12,000 deaths a year due to occupational illnesses.

In addition, there were 14,000 new cases of workplace cancers registered every year. By far the biggest killer is asbestos, which is responsible for nearly 4000 deaths a year. Up to 1.8 million tradespeople are at risk of getting mesothelioma and cancers of the lung, larynx and stomach from exposure to asbestos in buildings. But the HSE, a government body, has recently ended its "hidden killer" campaign aimed at highlighting the dangers. Up to 800 deaths a year are caused when stonemasons, quarriers, foundry workers and others inhale silica dust. More than 600 deaths are attributed to exhaust emissions from diesel engines, including of drivers, miners and construction workers. There is evidence that the stress of prolonged night shifts can trigger more than 500 fatal breast cancers a year. Other major causes of occupational cancers are paints, welding, a toxic chemical used in dry cleaning and radon, a radioactive gas.

 Watterson wants the HSE to crack down on companies that expose workers to cancer risks. He accused the HSE of failing to respond to repeated calls for action since the 1980s, saying: "It appears to lack expertise and staff to address this subject, partly due to the rundown of its occupational medicine staff and the massive Westminster cuts that it has received." Inspectors are being pulled back from checking on plants packed full of cancer-causing chemicals, Watterson alleged.

second class citizens

A committee of MSPs has said it is "appalled and horrified" by the discrimination suffered by Gypsies and travelling people in Scotland. The Equal Opportunities Committee said there had been repeated failures on access to health and social care for the travelling community. Many encampments were of poor quality and located beside landfill sites. Its report said very little had changed for travellers over the past 15 years.

The committee's convener, Mary Fee MSP, said: "If we were to substitute any other ethnic minority instead of Gypsy/travellers in our report there would be uproar at the obvious racial discrimination."

dirty glesgae

Glasgow is the most polluted city in the UK – and the fifth worst in Europe – for key traffic-related emissions, according to a new report.

It was the only city in Britain, except Leicester, shown to be failing European standards on nitrogen dioxide, which is caused by exhaust fumes and industrial pollution. The report from the European Environment Agency (EEA) ranked Glasgow at No5 for the toxic gas out of nearly 400 cities assessed. It is one of only ten places that breached the NO2 limit in 2010, the year it was supposed to be met.

The deadly dioxide exacerbates lung disease and related respiratory problems. The EEA warned that poor air-quality levels were wiping two years off people’s lives in the most polluted cities. WWF Scotland director Dr Richard Dixon said: “This report identifies that nitrogen dioxide is causing health problems for people in Glasgow and bringing forward their deaths. It is killing people."

health rationing

Heart attack patients in Scotland are repeatedly being denied the latest life-saving treatments to save money, a leading cardiologist has warned.  Professor Keith Oldroyd, director of research and development at the flagship Golden Jubilee National Hospital in Clydebank, said Scotland lagged years behind the rest of the UK and Europe when it came to introducing new drugs and techniques.

Professor Oldroyd said cardiologists had been waiting for 18 months to start using a drug called ticagrelor, which has been shown to increase the survival chances of heart-attack victims. NHS Greater Glasgow and Clyde has only agreed to its use in a small number of exceptional cases. Professor Oldroyd explained : "There is a single reason for this restriction and that is cost containment..." (our emphasis)

the poison of nationalism

Thousands of people took part in a pro-independence march and rally in Edinburgh yesterday. In response Socialist Courier posts some relevant quotations from various famous figures.

"Nationalism is an infantile disease. It is the measles of mankind."  -  Albert Einstein, The World As I See It, 1934

Political scientist Benedict Anderson describes nations as socially constructed "imagined communities," because "the members of even the smallest nation will never know most of their fellow-members, meet them, or even hear of them, yet in the minds of each lives the image of their communion."

"So it is the human condition that to wish for the greatness of one's fatherland is to wish evil to one's neighbours. The citizen of the universe would the man who wishes his country never to be either greater or smaller, richer or poorer." - Voltaire, "Fatherland" in "Miracles and Idolatry" (Selections from the Dictionnaire Philosophique (1764)

"It is not easy to see how the more extreme forms of nationalism can long survive when men have seen the Earth in its true perspective as a single small globe against the stars" - Arthur C. Clarke, "The Exploration of Space" (1951)

"Our true nationality is mankind." - H.G. Wells

"I have no country to fight for; my country is the earth; I am a citizen of the world." - Eugene V Debs

"The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The workers have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got" - Communist Manifesto

“A nation is a society united by a delusion about its ancestry and a common fear of its neighbors.” - W.R. Inge

"The love of one's country is a splendid thing.  But why should love stop at the border?"   - Pablo Casals, Spanish cellist and composer

If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country." - E.M. Forster

Dr. Samuel Johnson said "Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel."

Oscar Wilde said "Patriotism is the virtue of the vicious."

"Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it." - George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism is a pernicious, psychopathic form of idiocy” - George Bernard Shaw

“Patriotism is as fierce as a fever, pitiless as the grave, blind as a stone, and irrational as a headless hen” - Ambrose Bierce, American writer

“Patriotism is a kind of religion; it is the egg from which wars are hatched.” -  Guy de Maupassant, French writer

"Patriotism is a lively sense of collective responsibility. Nationalism is a silly cock crowing on its own dunghill and calling for larger spurs and brighter beaks.” - "The Colonel's Daughter" by Richard Aldington

"Tell people that patriotism is bad and most of them will laugh and say: ‘Yes, bad patriotism is bad, but my patriotism is good!’ ” - Leo Tolstoy

“Patriotism is a superstition, one far more injurious, brutal and inhumane than religion.” - Gustave Herve

Conceit, arrogance and egotism are the essentials of patriotism. Let me illustrate. Patriotism assumes that our globe is divided into little spots, each one surrounded by an iron gate. Those who have had the fortune of being born on some particular spot consider themselves nobler, better, grander, more intelligent than those living beings inhabiting any other spot. It is, therefore, the duty of everyone living on that chosen spot to fight, kill and die in the attempt to impose his superiority upon all the others.The inhabitants of the other spots reason in like manner, of course, with the result that from early infancy the mind of the child is provided with blood-curdling stories about the Germans, the French, the Italians, Russians, etc. When the child has reached manhood he is thoroughly saturated with the belief that he is chosen by the Lord himself to defend his country against the attack or invasion of any foreigner. It is for that purpose that we are clamoring for a greater army and navy, more battleships and ammunition." -  Emma Goldman, "What is Patriotism?" (1908)

"Humans fighting over who owns the land is like fleas fighting over who owns the dog" - Crocodile Dundee.

Fact of the Day

Men from low socio-economic backgrounds living in deprived areas are ten times more likely to die by suicide than men from high socio-economic backgrounds living in the most affluent areas.

 Read more at: http://medicalxpress.com/news/2012-09-uk-middle-aged-men-die-suicide.html#jCp

the capitalist myth

 America is famed for its principles of equality but researcher Richard Florida says America is plagued by wider class divisions than many other nations. "The likelihood that a person will remain in the same income bracket as his or her parents is greater in the United States than in France, as well as Denmark, Australia, Norway, Finland, Canada, Sweden, Germany, Spain, Singapore -- and even Pakistan," 

 A report by United for a Fair Economy on the 2011 Forbes 400 rich-list reveal 40% of the individuals received a "significant economic advantage in their lives by inheriting a sizeable asset from a spouse or family member." Strikingly, more than a fifth received sufficient wealth to make the list from this inheritance alone. The truth is that Americans have never had an equal opportunity to become wealthy. Too much attention is paid to stories of personal success, without noting that these are the exception, not the rule.

"Each story calculatedly glamorizes the myth of the 'self-made man' while minimizing the many other factors that enable wealth, such as tax policies, other government policies that favor the wealthy, and the importance of being born to the right family, gender and race."

According to the report: The net worth of the Forbes 400 grew fifteen-fold between the launch of the list in 1982 and 2011, while wealth stagnated for the average U.S. household. The richest 0.1% receive half of all net increases in capital gains. The racial wealth divide is starkly apparent from the overwhelming whiteness of the list. The 2011 Forbes 400 had only one African American member. Women accounted for just 10% of the 2011 list, and of the women on the list nearly 90% inherited their fortunes.

 Behind every great fortune lies a great crime. If a poor guy robs a 7/11 for $20, he'd get 20 years in jail. If a Wall Streeter, steals a billion through fraud; he'd get special tax breaks! In the early days of the American Civil War J.P. Morgan purchased 5,000 dangerously defective Hall's Carbines being liquidated by the U.S. Government at a cost of $3.50 each. The rifles were later resold to the government as new carbines at a cost of $22.

The SNP - Tories in Kilts!

The SNP finance secretary John Swinney confirmed civil servants and NHS staff would have to accept another year of real-terms pay cuts, as he unveiled his spending plans to the Scottish Parliament. The Scottish Government deal means a third year of falling salaries for many public sector staff, who have already endured a two-year freeze imposed by ministers and local government chief

Unions accused Mr Swinney of “slavishly” following the Tory-Lib Dem coalition’s austerity plans, saying he could have juggled his spending priorities to give public-sector workers in Scotland a better deal. Lynn Henderson, the PCS union’s Scottish secretary said his proposals made him look like “George Osborne in a kilt... It is time for Mr Swinney to pay up and time for the Scottish Parliament to utilise the powers it has to invest in the economy and protect public services, not rob Peter to pay Paul.”. He sought to sugar the pill by guaranteeing he would commit to the £7.50-an-hour living wage but that extra help for low-paid workers was given short shrift by union leaders. They said it would probably affect only about 15,000 people out of more than 500,000 who work in Scotland’s public sector.

The 1 per cent pay deal is set to be a focal point for an anti-austerity march organised by the unions next month in Glasgow and London. Union leaders said strike action would then be considered in Scotland, as in the rest of the UK. The leader of Unison, Dave Prentis, has already warned that, if negotiations to boost pay and conditions are not successful, there will be “co-ordinated action”.

 Local government chiefs, who set pay for teachers and other council workers, said they were to begin talks on their 2013 pay package, with no guarantee even the 1 per cent deal could be matched.