PROMISES, PROMISES

Politicians all over the world are renowned for making electoral promises which they later have to renege on, but usually this is sometime after they have been in office. Barrack Obama must have created some sort of speed record in the withdrawal of electoral promises annals - he hasn't even taken office and has reneged! "President-elect Barack Obama has quietly shelved a proposal to slap oil and natural gas companies with a new windfall profits tax. An aide for the transition team acknowledged the policy shift Tuesday, after a small-business group discovered the proposal — touted throughout much of the campaign — had been dropped from the incoming administration’s Web site. “President-elect Obama announced the policy during the campaign because oil prices were above $80 per barrel,” the aide said. “They are below that now and expected to stay below that.” (Houston Chronicle, 2 December). RD

THE INSANE SOCIETY

Inside capitalism it is commonplace to learn of workers trying to survive on an income of less than £1 a day, so think of our repugnance on reading how much one parasite gets in a fortnight. "Sir Phillip Green sold his 28 per cent stake in Moss Bros, the gentlemen's outfitter, yesterday, locking in a profit of £1 million in just over a fortnight. The news came the day after the BHS, Top Shop and Dorothy Perkins tycoon said that he had decided not to bid for the company." (Times, 29 November)
A man or a woman struggle all their live to raise a family on a pittance of a wage but a millionaire can get £1 million just by making two telephone calls. Capitalism is truly an insane society RD

LONELY IN THE CITY

Edinburgh's Holyrood district is among the loneliest places to live, the study
says.

Community life in Britain has weakened substantially over the past 30 years, according to research commissioned by the BBC.
The study ranks places using a formula based on the proportion of people in an area who are single, those who live alone, the numbers in private rented accommodation and those who have lived there for less than a year.
The higher the proportion of people in those categories, the less rooted the community, according to social scientists. They refer to it as the level of "anomie" or the "feeling of not belonging".

POVERTY KILLS

"Charities for the elderly predicted that deaths from the cold would rise in the months ahead as temperatures fall. An extra 25,3000 people died in England and Wales between December and March compared with the non-winter average and Age Concern says that this winter is predicted to be especially cold. Gordon Lishman, the director general, said: "We have a higher number of excess winter deaths than every other country in Europe." Help the Aged blamed fuel poverty and urged the Government to act to "prevent the nation's grandparents becoming casualties of winter" (Times, 28 November) RD

THE LEGACY OF WAR

Cluster bomblets are destroyed at a farm in Xiengkhuang

"Imagine growing up in a country where the equivalent of a B52 planeload of cluster bombs was dropped every eight minutes for nine years. Then imagine seeing your children and grandchildren being killed and maimed by the same bombs, three decades after the war is over. Welcome to Laos, a country with the unwanted claim of being the most bombed nation per capita in the world. Between 1964 and 1973, the U.S. military dropped more than 2 million tons of explosive ordnance, including an estimated 260 million cluster munitions -- also known as bombie in Laos. To put this into perspective, this is more bombs than fell on Europe during World War Two. The U.S. bombing was largely aimed at destroying enemy supply lines during the Vietnam war that passed through Laos. The war ended 35 years ago, yet the civilian casualties continue. According to aid agency Handicap International, as many as 12,000 civilians have been killed or maimed since, and there are hundreds of new casualties every year." (Yahoo News, 26 November) RD

GOOD BUSINESS PRACTICE

"The European Union accused drug companies on Friday of adding billions of dollars to health care costs by delaying or blocking the sale of less expensive generic medicines. One common tactic, said Neelie Kroes, the European competition commissioner, was for drug companies to amass patents to protect active ingredients in the medicines — in one case, 1,300 patents for a single drug. Another tactic, she said, was for pharmaceutical companies to sue the makers of generic drugs for ostensible patent violations, which tended to delay the availability of the lower-cost products for years. Ms. Kroes made her comments Friday while presenting the preliminary findings of a broad investigation into accusations of anticompetitive practices in the drug sector. She also turned her sights on the generics companies, which she said had received $200 million from pharmaceutical companies over seven years in exchange for holding their products off the market."
(New York Times, 28 November) RD

NOT SO NICE

"Patient groups will tell a committee of the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (Nice) that there should be more leeway for the approval of drugs which cost more than the approved limit. Nice has asked its Citizens Council to consider in what circumstances it should go over its threshold for drug costs, currently set at around £30,000 a year per patient. Just weeks ago the Government ordered the body to look more favourably on expensive drugs which prolong life for terminal patients. Nice has faced criticism in recent years for denying drugs deemed not “cost effective” or for restricting them to patients in the later stages of their condition. The organisation was forced to overturn a decision to deny Herceptin, the breast cancer drug, to women in the early stages of the disease after a public campaign. More recently Alzheimer’s patients protested against a decision on the drug Aricept, which can slow down the progression of their disease, means that they have to wait for their condition to worsen before they can receive it."
(Daily Telegraph, 27 November) RD

NO THERMOSTATICALLY CONTROLLED BEDS?

"Fears are being raised there could be a jump in the winter death toll. An Age Concern poll of 2,300 people found many over 60s were worried about being able to heat their homes because of soaring energy prices. And with a one of the coldest winters for some years predicted, the charity said the death toll could rise. It comes after figures for England and Wales suggested there was a 7% jump in extra deaths last year despite a relatively mild winter."
(BBC News, 27 November) RD

MORE MADNESS FROM CAPITALISM

"A wealthy female surgeon has commissioned a £1.4 million kennel for her two Great Danes, next to her second home on the exclusive Lower Mill Estate, near Circencester. The kennel has a Jacuzzi, a plasma screen TV, thermostatically controlled beds, a £150,000 music system and a security gate with retinal scanner." (Times, 26 November) RD

REVENUES AND RELIGIONS

"In recent years, dozens of religion-based and guru-led Indian organizations got into the business of making and marketing offerings, be it health tonics, DVDs or education. Now, amid rising competition, including from those trying to piggyback on these brands, these organizations are realizing that they can’t just rely on a wing and a prayer. And, for starters, religious organizations are increasingly applying for a raft of trademark protections and initiating legal action against copycat websites. The International Society for Krishna Consciousness (Iskcon), Divya Yog Mandir of Baba Ramdev fame, and Bochasanwasi Shri Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) that manages Akshardham and other temples in various countries, have all filed for hundreds of trademarks in recent years as they look to protect their growing brand recognition and revenues, and eye new franchise extensions."
(Wall Street Journal, 26 November) RD

MORE RELIGIOUS NONSENSE

"Mobiles are bad for your soul, the Vatican warned yesterday. Phones and computers are making the world so noisy and hectic that people cannot cultivate their spiritual dimension. And without a spiritual life 'you will lose your soul', said Father Federico Lombardi, the Pope's spokesman. The Jesuit priest, who is the director of the Vatican press office, made his remarks on the weekly Vatican TV programme Octavia Dies. He said that modern advances in technology had made the world so noisy and hectic that many people were now in danger of allowing their souls to perish." (Mail Online, 25 November) RD

ANOTHER "EXPERT" RECANTS

"Alastair Darling will be forced to admit tomorrow that the credit crunch has plunged Britain into a deep recession, and the economy will contract for a full year in 2009, for the first time since the early Nineties. As the credit crisis ravaged the world's financial markets earlier this year, the Chancellor insisted repeatedly that Britain's `economic fundamentals` were sound. In the budget six months ago, he pencilled in a strong recovery for 2009."
(Observer, 23 November) RD

DOLE QUEUE DICTIONARY

Everyday you can read about the mounting figures of the unemployment. This used to be called "getting the sack", "getting the bullet" or in Scotland getting "your jottters", but we live in more sophisticated times so they sugar coat it with terms like "being surplus to requirements" or some such business-speak. We think that Nokia must take the prize though. "Is your firm experiencing a "synergy-related headcount restructuring"? This, probably the most ghastly euphemism yet encountered for mass sacking, has been invented by Nokia. Indeed, so proud of it are they that they repeat it, or different versions of it, nine times in a comparatively short announcement." (Times, 22 November) RD

ONLY INSIDE SOCIALISM?

"For a company whose business is rocket science Lockheed Martin has been paying unusual attention to plumbing of late. The aerospace giant has kept its engineers occupied for the past 12 months poring over designs for what amounts to a very long fibreglass pipe. It is, of course, no ordinary pipe but an integral part of the technology behind Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), a clean, renewable energy source that has the potential to free many economies from their dependence on oil. "This has the potential to become the biggest source of renewable energy in the world," says Robert Cohen, who headed the US federal ocean thermal energy programme in the early 1970s." (New Scientist, 19 November) RD

GOOD NEWS FOR SOME

"Pawnbrokers in the Russian capital are enjoying the global credit crunch. The world's worst economic crisis for 80 years has hit Russia hard. Its stock market has dived by over 70 percent since May and the government has promised to spend $200 billion (135 billion pounds) propping up its main banks and businesses. But for Vadim Karashuk, head of Moscow's 16 state-owned pawn shops, business is good. "We're lending out more cash now than ever because the banks are giving less credit," he said, flicking a gold cigarette lighter between his fingers during an interview at his spacious central Moscow office. He estimated his shops now loan around $200,000 a day -- about 15 percent of the total for all Moscow's state and private pawn shops -- compared to about $130,000 two months ago." (Yahoo News, 16 November) RD

A SOCIETY IN CONFLICT

"Eighteen months after the US troop surge aimed at creating the security necessary for Iraqis to resolve their political conflicts, those political conflicts are threatening to become even more complicated. Besides the Arab-Kurd and Sunni-Shi'ite divides, there has long been a struggle among rival political parties for supremacy among the Shi'ites. Shi'ite Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki recently called for amendments to Iraq's constitution to strengthen the central government's power at the expense of the country's 18 provinces. This week, Maliki's rivals in the southern Shi'ite bastion of Basra submitted a petition demanding a referendum in the oil-soaked province aimed to turning it into a semi-autonomous federal region akin to Kurdistan. Federalism is a deeply divisive issue among Iraqis. The Constitution adopted under U.S. occupation stipulates that any of the 18 provinces, except Baghdad, can combine to form regions similar to the northern Kurdish-run zone, which has been semi-autonomous since 1991. While the Kurds insist upon the principle, the Sunnis have traditionally been strongly opposed."
(Yahoo News, 16 November) RD

ANOTHER EXPERT SPEAKS

"This week Citigroup’s already depressed shares have lost half their value, and shares of Bank of America and JPMorgan Chase are down 30 percent. Those declines have come despite reassuring comments from Treasury Secretary Henry M. Paulson Jr., who told National Public Radio a week ago that people were no longer worried about the possibility of a major bank failure. “I’ve got to tell you,” he said. “I think our major institutions have been stabilized. I believe that very strongly.”The Standard & Poor’s index of 500 stocks fell by more than 6 percent on two consecutive days, Wednesday and Thursday, something that had not happened since July 20 and 21, 1933, in the midst of the Great Depression, when panic was brought on by collapsing commodity prices. Such prices have fallen rapidly this week as well, as evidence mounted of a world recession." (New York Times, 20 November) RD

THE COST OF WAR

When governments count the cost of war they use dollars and pounds and figure what strategic gains or losses have been made, but workers have a much more brutal and realistic way of accounting. Here it is."As of Monday, Nov. 17, 2008, at least 4,200 members of the U.S. military have died in the Iraq war since it began in March 2003, according to an Associated Press count. The figure includes eight military civilians killed in action. At least 3,392 military personnel died as a result of hostile action, according to the military's numbers. The AP count is the same as the Defense Department's tally, last updated Monday at 10 a.m. EDT.The British military has reported 176 deaths; Italy, 33; Ukraine, 18; Poland, 21; Bulgaria, 13; Spain, 11; Denmark, seven; El Salvador, five; Slovakia, four; Latvia and Georgia, three each; Estonia, Netherlands, Thailand and Romania, two each; and Australia, Hungary, Kazakhstan and South Korea, one death each." (Associated Press, 17 November) RD

BUSINESS AS USUAL

Many workers in the USA believe that with the election of a new president all their troubles are over, but the realities of capitalism will soon shatter that illusion. The US must compete in the world-wide struggle for markets and raw materials and to do so they need an immense military budget. How immense was recently revealed. "As President-elect Obama plans for his first budget early next year, the Pentagon is asking for a record amount, according to a senior Pentagon official. The official said the Pentagon's baseline request being sent to the White House will be $524 billion for fiscal 2010, $9 billion more than last year's $515 billion baseline request." (CNN.com, 19 November) RD

Asbestos compensation ruling due

Insurance companies try to wriggle out of compensation claims.

A ruling is expected later that could have profound implications for asbestos-related cancer victims and their families. The High Court is due to give a verdict in a case between victims' families, employers and insurance firms. The hearing has hinged on when an insurance firm was liable - at time of exposure or when a worker becomes ill. If it is ruled the policy in place at the time of illness is the relevant one it may make it harder to get a pay-out. This is in keeping with many claims against employers,.despite reforms over a century for negligence, neglect and just plain poor safety standards,employers attempt to wriggle out of paying high insurance premiums and insurers out of paying compensation claims. By the time some settlement is made in a lot of cases the worker is dead and buried,their families exhausted with the care of them and the employers have taken off to pastures new, their profits intact. It can't even deliver compensation. (As if we can compensate for a life ruined) Capitalism is bad for our health ,the environment,the planet. Lets get rid of it,its wage-slavery and its monstrous legal and financial spin-offs, such as insurance and courts, deciding on the very relief of its victims and establish a sane system of society with' free access' to all we need and require to live a fulfilling and useful life. From a BBC News item