Month: February 2012

Slave Labour

You may recall hearing of Cait Reilly, an unemployed recent graduate who worked stacking shelves in Poundland, and subsequently is challenging the policy of Mandatory Work  Activity in the High Court. This predictably caused a furore of scorn in the popular press, the Daily Mail version is here.

The original concept of MWA seemed to be quite sound, in exchanged for Jobseeker’s Allowance which seems to be the PC term for unemployment benefit, the young jobless would toddle off to work for a short period to gain “fundamental work disciplines, as well as being of benefit to local communities”.

Continue reading “Slave Labour”

Youth

Northland College (NZ) principal John Tapene has offered the following words from a judge who regularly deals with youth.

“Always we hear the cry from teenagers ‘What can we do, where can we go?’
… My answer is, “Go home, mow the lawn, wash the windows, learn to cook, build a raft, get a job, visit the sick, study your lessons and, after you’ve finished, read a book.”

“Your town does not owe you recreational facilities and your parents do not owe you fun. The world does not owe you a living, you owe the world something. You owe it your time, energy and talent so that no one will be at war, in poverty or sick and lonely again.”

“In other words, grow up, stop being a cry baby, get out of your dream world and develop a backbone, not a wishbone. Start behaving like a responsible person. You are important and you are needed. It’s too late to sit around and wait for somebody to do something someday. Someday is now and that somebody is you…”

Oh what a breath of fresh air!

That’s rich!

As far as I know, the USA has exploited China’s low-wage economy for decades, sourcing every conceivable consumer product via its mammoth retail businesses like Wal-Mart, to satisfy its people’s insatiable appetite for throw-away possessions.

On the back of this trade, which has allowed Chinese workers to improve their own standard-of-living and save money, Chinese  banks have become major lenders to the creaking US economy, with dollars earned quite legitimately, and arguably saved the USA from serious embarrassment during the latest credit crisis.

Now Obama has the nerve to lecture Chinese leaders on their moral obligation to do ‘fair trade’, to allow their currency to float up to its ‘real’ market value! Otherwise the USA can’t export its cars to China.

Excuse me if I find this hard to swallow.

The pleasures of the Chariot

(As cherished colleagues must have noticed, Backside has now had his gadfly clamped and impounded far away from the the Colosseum where these games are played.)

Our daily visits here bring us all enjoyment far beyond the allure of panem et circenses or Androcles and the Lion or Spartacus. And it was a local Roman playwright, Terence, who wrote a play called The Eunuch, in which one of his characters explains that a love-affair is ruled by its own illogical laws:

“All these vices are in love: injuries, suspicions, enmity, offenses, war, peace restored. If you think that uncertain things can be made certain by reason, you’ll accomplish nothing more than if you strived to go insane by sanity.”

Doesn’t that describe our correspondence on the Chariot? Debates about the uncertainties of life? And most important: a good larf! As WS remarked, “Present mirth hath present laughter. What’s to come is still unsure.”

So I do hope we can all continue to come here, taste the wine, hear the band, blow that horn – and generally be entertained!

I have been saying it for a while..

and now the first shoots of evidence are begining to poke through.

Football is as doomed as epilectic octupus at a gelignite juggling jamboree!

Recently we had the Quakers, (Darlington) go into administration. They had a last minute reprieve courtesy of a 50k bung from fans and local busnisses but they are surely on their way.

Now one half of the Weegies are being advised to seek refuge from it’s creditors.

Just like the banks, these self absorbed ‘sportsmen’ have been riding the wave of their own ridiculous publicity.

Continue reading “I have been saying it for a while..”

Call me Charlton Heston

A hysterical female voice was on the end of the telephone line that, because of her high-pitched alarmed tone, I couldn’t make out who it was. I passed the receiver over to my wife to see if she could decipher the caller’s problem.

I miss the old original phones. The ones with the huge round dialling face. It was an effort trying to ring an 8 or a 9 number on one of those cumbersome machines. Your pointer would trail round the track with a NASCAR’s differential until it reached the end of the line. Then you let go and the wheel spun back. Pure bliss. Continue reading “Call me Charlton Heston”

Græcia delenda est

I’m borrowing a thought from the insightful Ambrose Evans-Pritchard (to name but a few!) in today’s DT, where he describes the German proposals for Greece as ‘Carthaginian’. (Google, if you will.) The point is that when Carthage lost to Rome in 146 BC (3 – 0) the ensuing ‘peace’ settlement was unforgiving and ruinous. (Not unlike Man Utd’s moral defeat of Liverpool after Suarez-gate.)

The facts indicate that since Greece has never been able to implement any plan involving the collection of taxes and control of its civil service, yesterday’s ‘approval’ by the Parliament is worth less than the paper the local Hansard will waste on recording it. If the Troika of money-lenders (sinners that they are) decides to drop further trillions down the Hellenic drain, it will precipitate revolution in Greece: a phenomenon which has relatively frequently been the result of any attempt at government there.

Better by far, if like a parent out of patience with a profligate teenager, the Troika says no. Then the Greeks can find out what their economy is worth, as opposed to what it costs the rest of Europe.