Union's Greed

Len McCluskey, of Unite, told the Guardian that civil disobedience could be timed to disrupt the 2012 Games.

Now, this is completely irresponsible, as it would be disrupting one of the greatest sporting events this country has seen in years. It is completely ridiculous for someone to suggest something like this. It would not only damage Unite's reputation and the workers reputation but it would be detrimental to how the world views the UK. It would ruin chances of us ever hosting the world cup or hosting massive international sporting events ever again.
This selfish attitude of the unions is part of the problem with the UK. Always pushing for more and more benefits for its workers with no improvement in the service that we (the public) receive. Taking more and more and insisting they deserve it, well with actions like this you deserve nothing.

From the BBC

"At a time when we can showcase to the world that we are positively and optimistically putting on this fantastic event, he wants to bring people out on the streets."
The Liberal Democrat leader said to "mess up the Olympics to prove a point" would be bad for the country and called on Labour leader Ed Miliband to "rein in" Mr McCluskey, whose union is Labour's largest donor.
And Mr Cameron also told MPs that Labour "need to condemn this utterly and start turning back the money" from Unite.
Conservative co-chairman Baroness Warsi agreed, calling the comments "an appalling display of naked self-interest".
"It is disgraceful for a trade union boss to be calling for mass disruption when the eyes of the world will be on Britain," she told the BBC

Len McCluskey further went to say that the cuts are too deep and that everyone who comes to watch the games should be aware of the strife that the public sector workers are facing.

Well I don't think they should at all. Why should the rest of the world be made to suffer for what the politicians of this country have done to it? By that I mean over spending so much that we have a deficit over 900 billion pounds. By that I mean creating a system where it pays to be lazy and to not work as hard as you can. And finally by that I mean creating a culture where it is okay to be greedy and selfish, and take everything you can but then still complain at the state the country is in.

I am fed up of hearing the unions complain. The private sector is taking cuts as well. Workers in the private sector are having their pay froze and being kicked out of their jobs. Stop acting like your suffering is so dire.

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Discrimination and Compensation

 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-leeds-16224062

A hospital trust has been ordered to pay nearly £4.5m in compensation to a doctor who was hounded out of her job after deciding to have a baby.A Leeds tribunal found Dr Eva Michalak, now 53, suffered race and sex discrimination at Pontefract General Infirmary.It said colleagues mounted a "concerted campaign" to bring her employment to an end while she was on maternity leave.The Mid Yorkshire Hospitals NHS Trust has apologised to Dr Michalak.The trust and three senior staff members have been ordered to pay Dr Michalak £4,452,206.60 for the sex and race discrimination.

Okay. This may seem a bit harsh to the feminist movement or equality for all, but I do not believe that anyone should receive this level of compensation citing Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). Now why do I not believe that this individual should receive this? Look at our military. Does any sane person on this planet honestly believe that she has gone through the same ordeal as the soldiers who fight in Afghanistan, and other war stricken areas? Yet we pay them no where near the same amount in compensation for their PTSD. Now honestly ask your selves this question, Does the woman who was discriminated against deserve approximately £4.5 million or the soldier who has had his arms removed by an IED on the roadside in Afghanistan doing what his government has told him too?


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'A seat at the table'

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-16209414

Ed Miliband said in the house of commons that David Cameron had failed because he failed to be part of the discussions and failed to gain allies to defend British interests.

Well I don't see how we could have got a better outcome from David Cameron's actions. We now 'have a seat at the table' although we will not be voting we can affect policy, but we can do this without any obligations from the UK, Meaning we can protect the city of London from unfair policies and centralisation but also have a say in implementing policy in the EU that will help it regain stability. How could we have hoped for a better response. Congratulations David Cameron, your balls have paid of.

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Copenhagen just got a lot closer to legalizing the sale of pot

 http://www.globalpost.com/dispatch/news/regions/europe/111201/win-win-drugs-fighting-gangs-legalizing-pot

MALMO, Sweden — Copenhagen just got a lot closer to legalizing the sale of pot.
If approved by the Danish parliament, next year the city could grant licenses to individual marijuana growers. City-owned shops would then sell their crop to the public.
That prospect was deeply amusing to Israel, a burly dreadlocked Cuban in Christiania, the city’s self-declared “free town.”
"I will grow it!" he said with excessive zeal. "I’ve got this big bag of seeds."
Israel was sitting outside a cafe near Pusher Street, the area’s open-air cannabis market, rolling a succession of monster joints for the locals and tourists who drop by for a smoke.
Copenhagen’s city municipality voted in recent weeks, 39 votes to 9, to empower its social affairs committee to draw up a detailed plan to legalize cannabis.
If that plan is approved by Denmark’s new left-of-centre parliament next year, the city could become the first to legalize marijuana, rather than simply tolerate it, as police do in the Netherlands.
“We are thinking of perhaps 30 to 40 public sales houses, where the people aren’t interested in selling you more, they’re interested in you,” Mikkel Warming, the mayor in charge of social affairs at Copenhagen City Council told GlobalPost. “Who is it better for youngsters to buy marijuana from? A drug pusher, who wants them to use more, who wants them to buy hard drugs, or a civil servant?”
Judging by the good-natured way Israel joshed with one of the day’s customers — a teenager whom he appeared to have reduced to an incoherent, pale-faced stupor — he’s not exactly threatening.
But the same cannot be said for the gangsters on Pusher Street, whose crew cuts and bulky jackets make them look more like nightclub bouncers. They are a far cry from the hippie idealists who founded Christiania in a disused army barracks 40 years ago.
It is these people, the biker and immigrant gangs who manage the city’s drug supplies, that Warming wants to cut out.
"People who use marijuana are paying money to criminals, mostly to gang members, and it’s a market that every year, is worth up to two billion Danish kroner ($350 million). That’s enough to fight for, which is why we’ve had a war between the gangs in Copenhagen," he said.
That’s why he doesn’t want to institute a system where smoking marijuana is tolerated in cannabis cafes, but officially illegal, and therefore profitable for criminals to grow and import.
Copenhagen effectively operated such a system in Christiania until 2004, when the police moved in and shut the district’s thriving cannabis cafes, forcing the trade into street stalls.
And it still exists in the Netherlands today, although Dutch authorities are tightening up.
“We don’t want an Amsterdam model," Warming said. "We want a way to make it legal to import or grow marijuana."
The details still must be ironed out. But Warming imagines a system similar to the state-owned alcohol monopoly that operates in neighboring Sweden.
The government would either grow marijuana itself or license growers, as already happens in countries that allow the drug to be used for medical purposes.
The Danish parliament voted down a similar proposal submitted by Copenhagen City Council three years ago, but since then a new left-of-centre government has come in, giving it a better chance of getting through.
In a sign of the changing times, some in the ruling Social Democratic party are beginning to support the idea.
Lars Aslan Rasmussen, the party’s official spokesman on cannabis, believes it is only a matter of time.
"If you look at Copenhagen city, at first it was only the Socialists, then it became the Red-Green Alliance, then it became the Social Democrats, and now we’ve got some of the Liberals," he said. "I think we are slowly getting there. Around the world, people are changing their opinions on this. The war on drugs, it didn’t really work."
Many in his party disagree, not least Ole Haekkerup, the legal spokesman.
"If we make it easier to get marijuana, we expect that more people would end up on hard drugs," he told Ekstra Bladet, a Danish newspaper, after the vote.
The Danish Socialist People’s Party quietly dropped their support for legalization when they joined the Social Democrats’ coalition in June in the run up to September’s election.
But support is nonetheless building. Lars Kragh Andersen, who was sacked as an assistant policeman earlier this year after refusing to arrest cannabis users, has become a prominent campaigner.
The law student this week sent a statement to the Copenhagen police announcing that he had begun dealing small amounts of a cannabis from his home. To prove his point, he included a marijuana joint in the letter.
Israel, seemingly oblivious to the possible loss of earnings, agrees that Warming's plan is the only sensible way to go.
"The government created the gangs," he said. "They have to open up, because every drug in this town is legal, even if it’s not legal. You can find hash and cocaine on every street corner. Eighty percent of the population here in Copenhagen are smoking. But if I smoke some stuff, I’m a criminal."

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Were the British riots down to a lack of courtesy?

Well this issue of what caused these terrible riots keeps popping up so I thought I would blog about it.

Here is a link to the article which prompted this blog - http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16035543

We hear reports from interviews with the rioters that the main reason that they rioted were because they feel like society doesn't recognise them, they are given no chances in society or that it was the police's fault for performing unfair stop and searches.


Today's Guardian /LSE Reading the Riots research reflects on how a "discourteous manner" from officers conducting stop and search in many of the districts where rioting occurred was a "significant factor in sparking the disturbances". (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-16035543)

Could it not be that they were searching youths in the areas because these were the people likely to be rioting, or could it be that they thought that these people posed a threat.

Well i say this is complete rubbish. The riots were pure criminality and the way that the police dealt with these people during the riots was perfectly acceptable. I quite liked it when we heard statements like 'police tonight will be allowed to use what ever tactics they deem necessary to ensure the safety of the general public.' It is no less than we expected. During the riots we never heard support for the rioters from anyone but the rioters. we heard calls for rubber bullets and water cannons. Which were eventually listened to and perhaps were one of the major deterrents which eventually stopped the riots.

It is only ever after events such as these that we hear people piping up that we are 'oppressing youngsters', or 'we are not giving them a level playing field, we should listen them.'
No one should defend these riots. They were wrong. That is it. It was down to pure criminality and lack of respect for society. If they had an issue with the police as they all say, take it to the police. Don't run around cities looting. Which is what the majority of them did. The rioters just took this as an opportunity to get things they wanted.

I remember hearing reports that rioters were telling reporters that they were only taking what they needed, however, the items the reporters filmed these people carrying whilst giving these statements were 40' Televisions. I cant see a television as a necessity. Perhaps we could condone stealing food to eat as it is your  only way to survive. But a TV? This is why I cant see that any of this behaviour can ever be explained by anything but criminality. A bunch of opportunists running around and ruining other peoples lives and livelihoods just to claim something that inst theirs.

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NUS and Student Politics

Okay this post is about the incredibly left wing world of student politics.

At the NUS national conference 2011 i felt extremely marginalized. by this i mean everyone else who spokes view seemed to be incredibly left wing. Now this honestly is for one reason. Left wing people by nature are more active and tend to argue for their points more hence running for their positions in their unions. But why is it believed widely that all students by nature are Left wing. I sat in the audience at this conference and was called 'Right wing scum' and a 'Tory millionare' now these are incredibly rude but also totally against the right wing views. Now these statements received cheers from the mass audience and applause.
I think this shows the wrong side of student politics. Well i think most of the world of student politics is wrong right now because of pure bigotry and complete lack of understanding of compromise.
But really how can an organization such as the NUS expect to be taken seriously as a political body fighting for the rights of other students when it has no representation from a proportion of the student body. No one should feel like they are a minority and can not have their voice aired which a student like myself actually feels in the conference with Hundreds of other students. I thought it was part of the NUS's statute that no member may be discriminated against because of beliefs, views or creed. And it is a blatant violation of this statute when I am member and delegate walked back from giving a speech on a Motion for Censure on Mark Bergfeld and was told i was a w****r, had the middle finger put up at me and had someone try to trip me. Now i realize that this happened in April and i am not one to hold a grudge (well i am) but this should not be accepted in any political forum. Which is what the NUS is. I just felt appalled by this... And this is what people view students as... firstly apparently we are all exclusively left wing, well that is wrong... here i am a right wing student. I am for the cuts! I am for £9000 tuition fees!

Now away from slating the NUS for being one sided and not listening to right wing views, All students around the world are always said to be against austerity well i think it is high time that people listened to the views of students like me and especially politicians.

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The so called 'Geek'

Now this can apply to most of the stereotypes of today. But seriously i hate this stereotype of a geek.

For me this stereotype means people who play lots of games mainly MMO's or MMORPG's or lots of 'geeky' strategy games. Yet the cool kids seem to just play first person shooters... well actually they only really seem to play CoD. What is it with CoD? Is it just me or is it really not a good game?

I am going to go out on a limb and say that without a doubt Battlefield is a completely different league.

Now to the issue of 'Geekyness' By the definition i have given i am a massive incredible geek. I play a lot of games and always have. Most of these being MMORPG's or Strategy games. This ranges from HoN to WoW.

Now i cant say a single person i know would say i am an A class geek (or even a geek in this sense at all), but i am exactly like everyone i play games with essentially. They all seem to have the same interests as me, talk like me, don't sound overly obnoxious, or in any case no more than me, and actually all seem to be pretty all right guys.

So where does this stereotype come from? Well in my opinion it is from the old school media. You know the Jock and geek era of Hollywood movies... but in this day and age when everyone seems to spend more time on a computer than on a field couldn't we dispense with this ridiculous stereotype? Come on... Seriously.

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