Newel News-round Up, Week 3

Week three has been dominated by the death of Margaret Thatcher which must mean there has bee plenty else going on around the rest of the globe.

Health and fitness

In some ironic and comically morbid twist, Thatcher who is known by some for stealing milk from babies, her death coincided with the UK having to ration the amount of baby milk formula sold due to an issue with a surge in demand in China. First signs of a trade war or more worryingly a sign of the dependence families have on corporations to provide our children with nourishment. Let's face it, if Tesco or Sainsbury's disappeared tomorrow the population in the UK would halve within months.

Wonder drug Prozac has been in the news again and is twenty-five years old. Quite how a drug that has so many side affects has been championed as a saviour in mental illness is open for debate. Anyone who has seen the BBC documentary, Pill Poppers, will know what I mean and if you have not seen it? Take an hour and get informed on the great pharmaceutical company con.

Environment

The government and their scientists are still trying to persuade us that fracking will solve all our energy crises needs. With an up coming Matt Damon movie, The Promised Land, which seems set to light up the debate again the government and all vested stake holders seem to be pushing the message out that fracking is safe. If only honesty, health and safety did not suffer when profits rule I would not be so concerned. Fracking as an alternative energy does not solve the issue that everything we have or use is made from oil.

Science and Technology

Nanoscience has shown us another amazing development with the latest creation a new material. For those of you with science minds the more in depth information can be found here.


Education/Welfare

Unicef, the charity that champions children's rights, something that currently the U.S and Somalia do not, have reported that the current UK austerity measures have set our children back behind the majority of the so called civilised world. Aspiration nation? More like dream snatcher nation.

The academy debate is over (so much for democracy) as the new child chief says it is time to be concerned about what kids are taught rather than where they taught, except that when a school is privately owned and run then it becomes a results driven basis to provide profit for shareholders. This can not be to the benefit of the children can it? Particularly if children are subsequently taught what to think and not how to think.

Not content with dumbing down the nation via grade inflation, now they want to remove the climate debate from the curriculum. It must be that those with the disillusionment of power have fallen for the "Climate change? What about all this snow?" Argument that seems to be doing the rounds. Like I have told my esteemed colleagues; climate and whether is like class and form in sporting terms, form is temporary and class is permanent. So it is with weather (form) and climate (permanent) so to speak.

Politics

Aside from the Thatcher fiasco we have war monger and criminal, Tony Blair, causing a disturbance in the force and a rift in the Labour Party with his comments about their 'move to the left'. The fact that Stalin was further left than Tony Blair and the position of this current Labour lot is no different to that of his blood stained time in Downing Street seems to have been lost on him. He must be setting himself up for a shot at 2015 or beyond.

The young girl who would be Youth Police Crime Commissioner has also stood down. If she had lied to 60 million people and been responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands of people, including fathers, mother sons and daughters, she would have been given a multi-million pound deal working for J.P. Morgan.

The ministers from the G8 met to talk about North Korea (I feel safer already...) who have now upset their Chinese neighbours with their latest comments and actions.

World

Angelina Jolie has been schmoozing the G8 by saying that wartime rape is preventable. She must have missed the bulletin from Theresa May when she said that a woman's human rights is only applicable during a period of peace time and not during war time, to coin a phrase from her "I am not making this up."

America as usual is a basket case. This week a man was gunned down by S.W.A.T for holding firefighters hostage in his house (that was to foreclose) as he asked for his utilities to be switched back on. Police said they had no other option.

Another man has been arrested and is suspected of over 1000 thefts in the area of Maine. I am surprised he has not been deemed a terrorist as one of the stipulations in various different terror acts that the U.S. have now is that you cannot have more than 7 days worth of supplies.

And finally Barack Obama has been back to his acting best by making more inroads into the removal of guns from the streets of America. He did not make any comment about the number of families he and previous governments have torn apart by their use of arms and policies for supplying arms to the first sign of insurgents in a country that they want political control over. No he didn't.