What a world this is

Nearly a third of newly qualified nurses had not found a job six months after qualifying, figures show. And over half of physiotherapist graduates were unemployed, along with one in five midwives, according to a government census in March 2007.

9,000 nurses qualified between May and September 2006, but only 69% were employed six months later, meaning nearly 3,000 were unemployed.

Dr Peter Carter of the Royal College of Nursing, said: "I am hearing worrying stories from recently qualified nurses who are unable to get jobs because trusts are freezing entry level posts to save money...it is a waste of new and much needed nursing talent."

Meanwhile,

A group of stressed-out people in Spain have been given a chance to let off steam by demolishing a hotel in Madrid. The 30 winners of a contest were given sledgehammers to smash up the bedrooms and bathrooms of the 146-room hotel in the capital. The participants were selected by psychologists from more than 200 stressed applicants.

And our Fly the Flag Prime Minister

Elsewhere

Under the five-year plan, initiated by EU Agriculture Commissioner Mariann Fischer Boel, winemakers in EU countries will get cash rewards for producing less wine by abandoning some or all of their poorer quality vineyards.

Money goes to money

We have already mentioned the good fortune of Brian Souter of Stagecoach but lo and behold The Herald reports he has added a further £6.4 million to his vast personal wealth after exercising share options in the Perth transport giant. Souter this week bought 4.36 million shares at between 27p and 85.75p apiece under options granted between 2002 and 2004. The exercise netted Souter a paper gain of £6.4m, this being the difference between what he paid for the shares - £2 million - and the value of that holding now, which is £8.4 million .

He recently pocketed more than £100 million when the company returned £700 million to shareholders, and was last week granted deferred bonuses worth nearly £800,000.

Souter retained the shares bought this week and now holds a 14.72% stake in Stagecoach worth £201 million. Souter's sister, fellow Stagecoach founder Ann Gloag, has an 11% stake in the company and pocketed more than £70 million from the recent return of cash to investors .

Souter and Gloag rocketed from ninth to fourth in the league table of Scotland's wealthiest individuals, with an estimated combined fortune of £770 million.

More migrants die at sea -and ignored

Further to an earlier story , an UN refugee agency official has said 210 illegal migrants were reported drowned or disappeared in the Strait of Sicily in June while attempting to cross from northern Africa into Europe. Migrants from northern and sub-Saharan Africa often attempt the treacherous journey in small, rickety boats after paying large sums to smugglers.

Paolo Artini, an official with the UN High Commissioner for Refugees office in Italy stated:-

“When it is a matter of saving lives at sea, a narrow interpretation of what constitutes a distress call, and any protracted discussion on search-and-rescue responsibilities should not be considered ethically acceptable,” .

He criticised “gaps in the legal framework concerning rescue at sea, and insufficient cooperation among states who often hold different views.”
Disputes have erupted recently over which country should take responsibility for migrants rescued in the international waters between Italy, Malta and Libya.

House Prices

Savills , the estate agent and consultancy group said demand for “super prime” houses continued to rise strongly, with interest coming from international as well as UK purchasers.

The super prime residential market – houses costing £5m or more in London and large country houses – was continuing to benefit from City bonuses but was also “heavily influenced” by international buyers who accounted for about half of purchases.

They are , of course , the people who are largely unaffected if the interest rate goes up . But for the rest of us mere mortals there has been a “a cooling of the UK mainstream” market and some oversupply of new homes, especially flats, in provincial cities .

For a fuller analyse of the property boom and the probability of the bubble bursting read here

THE FAILURE OF REFORMISM

"Social mobility is more difficult for children in Britain than for those in most other wealthy countries. A study by the London School of Economics found that poorer children born in 1970 had less opportunity to improve their economic and social status as adults than those born in 1958." (Times, 3 July) Fifty years of reforming British capitalism and the end result is abject failure! RD

BIBLICAL WEATHER FORECASTING

The owning class spend a great deal of money in keeping the Meterological Office running but a reverend gentleman has come up with a super wheeze to save that expenditure."The floods that have devastated swathes of the country are God's judgment on the immorality and greed of modern society, according to senior Church of England bishops. One diocesan bishop has even claimed that laws that have undermined marriage, including the introduction of pro-gay legislation, have provoked God to act by sending the storms that have left thousands of people homeless. ... The Rt Rev Graham Dow, Bishop of Carlisle, argued that the floods are not just a result of a lack of respect for the planet, but also a judgment on society's moral decadence." (Sunday Telegraph, 1 July) Simple really - read your bible, do what the bishops say and you can close the metrological offices! RD

And not before time

A memorial to workers killed during the construction of the Forth Bridge is set to be officially unveiled. Work began on the one-and-a-half mile bridge in 1883 and at its peak 4,600 worked on it.

The memorial will honour the known 71 men and boys who died during the seven years it took to build the bridge. It is believed the actual figure is much higher. Research into the exact number who lost their lives is still being carried out. The Queensferry History Group has been working to uncover the true extent of the death toll.

MISSION IMPROBABLE

John Travolta and Tom Cruise are famous film stars who are Scientologists. This is a religion dreamt up by former science fiction writer and con man Ron L. Hubbard. It is difficult to deal with their ideas as they keep them a secret. "Since the full knowledge of the faith is reserved for those who complete the course, there can be no official confirmation to outsiders of what they ultimately believe. According to popular culture Scientology teaches that 75 million years ago the intergalactic tyrant Xenu brought millions of space aliens to earth." (Times,23 June)
It isn't only poor exploited workers that are victims of religious nonsense, even well-heeled people can be conned too! RD

Terror at Glasgow Airport

No matter how much Socialist Courier condemns such indiscriminate attacks as the attack at Glasgow airport , we cannot simply resort to the hypocrisy of the tabloid and broadsheets and condemn without endeavouring to understand the motivation of why members of our own class are prepared to slaughter their fellow workers .

This month's Socialist Standard just happens to carry an article called Suicide Bombers - Heroes or Villains .

We can only paraphrase its conclusion :-

That those behind the terror , have their sights on political power and are intent upon replacing the existing elite , encourage and facilitate others to carry out acts of murder which they themselves are unwilling to undertake.
In effect they are attempting to emerge as a new ruling class by clambering through the blood and over the bodies of our class.

Stagecoach Returns

Brian Souter of Stagecoach pocketed another £100m recently following the company's decision to return cash to investors is on his way to making another £1m. Souter was yesterday granted deferred bonuses worth nearly £800,000 at last night's closing share price of 182.75p. Souter had been granted 141,526 deferred shares under the 2005 executive participation plan with a paper value of £260,000. He also got 294,129 "incentive units" under the firm's long-term incentive plan.

Another beneficiary of awards granted yesterday was Martin Griffiths, the finance director. He got 70,677 deferred shares under the EPP, notionally worth more than £129,000, plus a 199,170 LTIP units worth nearly £365,000. These awards also vest in 2010. Four other executives, including rail chief Ian Dobbs and Les Warneford, managing director of Stagecoach UK Bus, were granted deferred shares under the EPP plan. Dobbs got 42,710 and Warneford 39,501.

Education and class division

Dr Elliot Major said: "This analysis shows that the school you attend at age 11 has a huge impact on your life chances, and particularly how likely you are to reach the top of your chosen profession. We are still to a large extent a society divided by wealth, with future elites groomed at particular schools and universities, while the educational opportunities available to those from non-privileged backgrounds make it much more difficult for them to reach the top."

Lee Elliot Major of the Sutton Trust, an educational charity, compared the school and university background of 500 people currently at the top of their fields with 500 similarly successful people 20 years ago.

Tesco - greedy , miserly and indifferent

Tesco at its AGM today had Ben Birnberg, company secretary for the anti-poverty charity War on Want, put forward a resolution calling for Tesco's supplier factories to undergo independent auditing to ensure decent pay and conditions for developing world workers.

Birnberg, however, said Tesco's opposition to the resolution reflected badly on the top retailer.'There's nothing that lowers a company in the estimation of right thinking people than a public display of executive greed in the affluent world going hand-in-hand with a public display of corporate miserliness and indifference to those at the bottom in an impoverished world, who contribute so magnificently to corporate wealth,'

Garment workers in Bangladesh, the majority of them women, were being paid just 5 pence an hour and regularly worked 80 hours a week to make cheap clothes for Britain's largest retailer, Birnberg said. His resolution called on Tesco to take appropriate measures, independently audited, to ensure workers in the developing world are guaranteed decent working conditions, a living wage, job security, freedom of association and collective bargaining including the right to join a trade union.

'The irony of the board recommending shareholders vote against our resolution to increase the meagre pay of its outsourced workers while recommending they vote for an incentive plans which will augment the already absurdly generous re-numeration packages of its top executives -- boosting the chief executive's take-home pay by up to £11.5 million on top of last year's £4.62 million-- may be lost on the board..." said Susan Seymour of the Joseph Rowntree Charitable Trust

THE WEALTHY GET WEALTHIER

"The 2007 World Wealth Report, from Merrill Lynch and Cap Gemini, indicated that the number of ultra high net worth individuals - with $30 million or more to invest - in Britain rose by 10 per cent last year to about 3,750. About one in six of Europe's 23,460 super-rich now hails from the UK. ... Globally nearly 10,000 more individuals joined the ranks of the super-rich, taking the total to about 95,000." (Times, 28 June) So much for the Labour Party's promises about a more equitable society! RD

Money worth more as scrap value

Millions of Indian coins are being smuggled into neighbouring Bangladesh and melted down and turned into razor blades according to a BBC report .

"Our one rupee coin is in fact worth 35 rupees, because we make five to seven [razor-] blades out of them,"

In Calcutta alone, India's central bank - the Reserve Bank of India - has distributed coins worth nearly six million rupees ($150,000) to overcome the shortage in the last two weeks . Long queues form outside the bank's regional office in the city centre every time this happens.
Unscrupulous touts set up makeshift shops and collect as many of the coins as they can, only to sell them later at a premium. The coin shortage is most acute in the north-eastern frontier town of Agartala, right on the border with Bangladesh and believed to be a major centre for contraband trade with Bangladesh. In Guwahati, Assam's capital and the business hub of India's northeast, small coins like 50 paisa have completely dropped out of circulation.

We can only say , ...Oh , for that day when all the world's coinage is turned into something as socially useful as razor-blades .

Scotland's Weather Forecast for Tomorrow ?

While doing the previous blog posting Socialist Courier came across research describing the possible local effects of climate change upon Scotland , a report by the Scottish Environment Protection Agency .

The weather will become more erratic and therefore less predictable, with a greater likelihood of extreme events.

More frequent and severe river flooding, affecting 77,000 properties
Increased likelihood of summer droughts leading to river water quality problems and disruption of water supply
Periods of reduced river flow providing less dilution for discharges with increased sewage treatment costs
Increased treatment costs to provide water supplies
Increased run-off impacting on bathing water quality
Enhanced plant/algal growth due to increased temperature
Increase run-off increasing nutrient loading in water
Changes in abundance and distribution of species and length of growing season
Higher temperatures less favourable for native species
High intensity rainfall causing destruction to river habitat
Increased erosion and siltation with consequences for fish spawning
Disruption to food chain with potential catastrophic loss of species (e.g. island breeding sea bird populations)
More frequent and coastal flooding affecting 93,000 properties
Higher sea level, increased wave height leading to coastal erosion and loss of habitat
Loss of traditional commercial fishery
Drying out of soils combined with higher intensity storm events causing landslides, with potential disruption of transport links
Accelerated decomposition of peaty soils resulting in increased emissions of carbon dioxide and methane, fuelling further climate change
Increased soil loss through water and wind erosion
Changes to agricultural practice and crops
Increased flood-related stress, illness and economic costs
Increased respiratory illness and heat-related distress
Local and regional ozone air quality goals probably more difficult to achieve in the future
An increase in summertime photochemical smog, linked to increasing temperatures and small reductions in cloud cover

The future indeed looks bleak . Left unchecked, climate change will accelerate with significant consequences for Scotland’s environment and society. It is time for a real change of the political climate . Scotland and the world needs Socialism .

Its going to get hotter

Global warming may reduce the number of people who will die from the cold each winter , In the UK for instance, there are 20,000 cold-related deaths but researchers in America claim that this will be off - set by an increase of deaths resulting fro heat-waves ( at present, about 1000 deaths a year are related to heat in the UK ).

Researchers at the Harvard School of Public Health looked at the deaths of more than 6.5 million people in 50 US cities between 1989 and 2000. They found that during two-day cold snaps there was a 1.59% increase in deaths because of the extreme temperatures, but during similar periods of extremely hot weather death rates rose by 5.74%.

The 2003 European-wide heat wave and its associated fatalities ( nearly 15,000 deaths in France ) , can be expected to repeat itself .

Not just deaths but economic effects such as reduced crop harvests , too , Wheat had an overall short-fall of 10% .

Professor Bill Keatinge of Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry in London said about the report :-

"In the long term we may have to make some lifestyle changes - working at different times for instance, but nothing that is not manageable."

Socialist Courier believes that the change which is necessary is one of social systems , a change from Capitalism to Socialism , not simply a switch to siestas in the mid-day sun .

Elsewhere on the BBC website we read a study was produced by more than 200 experts from 25 countries predict tens of millions of people could be driven from their homes by encroaching deserts, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and Central Asia ( this supports earlier research ) . 50 million people could be displaced within the next 10 years. Desertification is an environmental crisis of global proportions, and one third of the Earth's population are potential victims of its effect. Over-exploitation of land and unsustainable irrigation practices are making matters worse. Climate change was also a major factor degrading the soil.

Zafar Adeel, the lead author of the report, said: "...we need to provide alternative livelihoods - not the traditional cropping based on irrigation, cattle farming, etcetera - but rather introduce more innovative livelihoods which don't put pressure on the natural resources. Things like ecotourism or using solar energy to create other activities."

In a sane , rational , logical society indeed that is what would probably happen , but we live in a market -dominated , profit-motivated world where such decisions are made by partisan politicians at the beck and call of businessmen and accountants and not by sober-minded scientists and other experts .

The Tragedy of the Irish Travelling Folk

Life expectancy of Irish Travellers still at 1940s levels . Back in the 1940s, the life expectancy of Irish Travellers was the same as that of the settled population. Now, it is 65 for men as against 75 for settled men, and 65 as against 78 for settled women. There has been no improvement in life expectancy for travellers in 20 years.

Findings show that seven in 10 travellers die before reaching the age of 59. Half die before the age of 39. In the total population, 2.6% of all deaths are for people aged under 25 years yet the figure for the Travelling community is 32%.
Such statistics put the estimated 30,000 Travelling community well outside the health norms of Irish society.

Infant mortality is 10 times higher among Travellers. 10% of children die before reaching the age of two - compared to just 1% in the general population.

Suicides are also more common than among the general population.

It follows decades of campaigns for Travellers' rights. The only possible conclusion is that these campaigns have failed. Prejudice and exclusion remain sharp, and living conditions have actually worsened. The report points to Traveller reluctance to use the State services, including hospitals. That will not end while what it calls the "begrudging" attitude of government departments continues.

Advising or pulling the strings ?

Gordon Brown is creating a special council of business leaders to advise him directly as Prime Minister. It will meet two or three times a year and will advise Mr Brown on whether government policy is helping or damaging Britain's competitiveness. Members will be available to Mr Brown to give him advice as and when needed.

BUSINESS COUNCIL MEMBERS
Damon Buffini, Permira
Stuart Rose, Marks & Spencer
Tony Heywood, BP
Sir Terry Leahy, Tesco
Arun Sarin, Vodafone
Stephen Green, HSBC
Sir John Rose, Rolls-Royce
Mervyn Davies, Std. Chartered
J-P Garnier, GlaxoSmithKline

Gordon Brown - muppet and puppet

Who Owns the North Pole - Part 2

Further to this earlier blog on the newly discovered economic and strategic potential of a warmer Arctic region , Russian geologists now say they have data that would support a claim to about 1.2m sq km (463,000 sq miles) of energy-rich territory in the Arctic .
The Russian team, from the Oceanology Research Institute in St Petersburg, estimates that the Lomonosov ridge area in the Arctic contains oil and gas reserves of up to 10 billion tonnes. The geologists spent 45 days studying the Lomonosov underwater ridge.

The Law of the Sea Convention allows states an economic zone of 200 nautical miles, which can sometimes be expanded. To extend the zone, a state has to prove that the structure of the continental shelf is similar to the geological structure within its territory.

Needless to say , when it comes to a scramble for the natural wealth and riches of the world there are rarely no competitors and in this case Denmark are laying their claim to sovereignty to parts of the region also . Science Minister Helge Sander said that success would give Denmark access to "new resources such as oil and natural gas".

"First, we have to make the scientific claim. After that, there will be a political process with the other countries," science ministry official Thorkild Meedom said.

In the past , such political process between capitalist nations over raw materials has included war and invasion . It is not beyond the bounds of reason to expect a militarisation of the Arctic Circle and possible armed conflict as competing nations vie for control .

Crime Pays for Some

A junior barrister was handed more than £1 million in legal aid last year, it was revealed yesterday. Balbir Singh, head of Birmingham’s Equity Chambers, was paid £1,116,000 in 2005/06.

The second-highest paid was Nigel Lithman, QC, who received £978,000 in legal aid, followed by John C. Rees, QC, with £947,000.

Four of the 10 top-earning criminal barristers were from the same chambers: 2 Bedford Row in London. Mr Lithman, William Clegg, QC, Jim Sturman, QC and Howard Godfrey, QC had a combined pay-out of £3.3 million.

Tuckers Solicitors was the highest paid criminal firm, receiving £8.5 million in the year from the legal aid purse. They were followed by Irwin Mitchell (£5.3 million) and Burton Copeland (£5 million).

In a separate list of community legal service firms - carrying out non-criminal work - the highest paid was Duncan Lewis Solicitors with just under £7 million, followed by Irwin Mitchell with £5.2 million.

The law is an instrument of the owning class, that pretends to be for everyone, but is only for the rich. It's an instrument of class domination.

Shakespeare's Henry VI — “First thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers” - Perhaps , on reflection that maybe a sanction a little bit too severe .