sparrow chat

In Cyprus, they stole the savings of private citizens to cover their own bad debts.^[1]

In Britain, they are stealing the pensions of the wives and widows of expat UK citizens, under the guise of ‘austerity measures’.^[2]

In America, they are stealing from the pension funds of government retirees, to stave off their own self-induced default on the national debt.^[3]

Do you think your savings are safe?

When will they be coming for yours?

^{[1] “Bank of Cyprus depositors could lose up to 60% of their savings” Guardian, march 30th 2013}

^{[2] “Expat Wives and Widows to be Stripped of their UK Pension Rights” Fabulous 103Fm, May 2013}

^{[3] “US Treasury secretary says he has begun tapping federal retiree pension fund to avoid default” Star Tribune, May 20th 2013*}

^{*My thanks to WiseWebWoman for the ‘heads-up’ on this one.}

Take a look at this latest news item from the BBC. The headline reads:

According to this latest ‘British study’, we all need to go on working till we drop, because if we don’t, we’ll become sick, depressed, and in the long term there’ll be a ‘drastic decline in health’.^[1]

Could that be because, in the long term, we all die?

It all seems a bit disconcerting to us older folks, till we read that the study was published by the Institute of Economic Affairs. The BBC merely describes the IEA as ‘a think tank’, and then devotes a page of its website to the results of a study that becomes progressively more dubious as one investigates its authenticity.^[2]

Apparently, the ‘study’ was published in conjunction with a rather shadowy charity known as the, “Age Endeavour Fellowship”. This organization has no website, but is listed on “OpenCharities.Org” as, “a grant making charity for the elderly”. The name, Dr Edward Datnow, is listed as a contact, and the address as, 130 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UE.^[3]

Most interesting are the incomes and expenditures for this charity over the last few years. Since 2008, its income has dropped steadily from 34,000 GBP to less than 8,000 GBP in 2012. In fact, for the first time in five years their 2012 expenditure outweighed their income by 800 GBP. That’s bad news, particularly as Zoopla lists 130 Holland Park Avenue, London, W11 4UE as: a 6 bed freehold terraced substantial Victorian House (Circa 3800 Sq Ft) Arranged Over Five Floors And In Need Of Refurbishment. Apparently, it was last on the market in 2008 when it was offered for 2,300,000 GBP. Today’s mean property value for London W11 is a paltry 1,500,000 GBP.^[4][5]

Is the Age Endeavour Fellowship in desperate need of funds? If so, how could it possibly finance the study so lavishly publicized by the BBC?

The ‘study’ is entitled, “Work Longer Live Healthier – The relationship between economic activity, health and government policy”. Its author is one Gabriel H. Sahlgren.

It begins, as is usual, with the credits:

This paper is published by the Institute of Economic Affairs in association with the Age Endeavour Fellowship. The Age Endeavour Fellowship is a charity that has provided financial support for this project and the author would like to thank senior IEA staff and Edward Datnow and Andy Mayer for their initiative and support.” [my bold]

As already noted, Dr Edward Datnow is listed as a trustee of the Age Endeavour Fellowship, though he remains fairly anonymous to the internet.

Andy Mayer appears to be a relative newcomer. Here he is in an image from the website, ConservativeHome.blogs.com ^[6]

He’s not listed on OpenCharities.Org, but the Charities Commission website lists him, along with another anonymous individual, Ms Valerie Kent, and a Robert Datnow – presumably some relative of the doctor’s – as charity trustees.

The ‘study’ itself is long-winded (40+ pages), filled with an abundance of technical diarrhea, and comments such as…

…mortality is a rather crude
measure of health…”

Surely, mortality is a highly exact measure of health? Unless, of course, the author, Gabriel Sahlgren, considers being dead a measure of vitality?

He doesn’t stop there…

It is quite possible that retirement may benefit health at first due to a reduction in stress levels and an ability to undertake enjoyable and fulfilling activities: this might be termed a “holiday effect”. As time goes on, however, other influences may lead health to deteriorate. These may include the lack of social interaction and physical activity. Also, the initial psychic benefit of retirement might fade away. In general, furthermore, behavioural changes take time before they affect health. For example, if an individual starts eating, drinking and smoking more because they retire, or in anticipation of retirement, the health effects are not going to appear until some point in the future.”[my bold]

For what is supposedly a ‘scientific’ research paper, this paragraph (and many others) is littered with ‘may’, and ‘might’, and the odd, ‘quite possibly’. Not to put too fine a point on it, the whole paper is bullshit from start to finish. To intimate that the freedom felt by those fortunate enough to retire before ill-health and old age incapacitate them is mere ‘holiday effect’, smacks, at best, of ill-thought-out ignorance, and at worst, of a calculating deviousness designed for nefarious purpose.

One can only ponder on how many individuals eat, drink, and smoke to greater excess as the proximity of retirement looms. Experience suggests it is the young who abuse themselves to excess; the more mature realize the dangers of such habits and take steps to curb them in order to enjoy the rewards of much deserved retirement.

Who, then, is the perpetrator of such a set of ideas so wanton they scarcely merit the description, ‘research’?

Sahlgren’s had a varied career, which has given him little opportunity to study the needs of the elderly. He hasn’t yet made Wikipedia, or any similar journal, so his exact age remains a mystery, though he’s obviously still somewhat damp behind the ears.

Follow his career back far enough and the name Koch rises from the depths. Sahlgren was a ‘Koch Fellow’ at the Competitive Enterprise Institute (a US think tank founded by Fred L Smith, a big buddy of billionaire and right-wing plutocrat, Charles Koch. Koch and his brother fund the US ‘Tea Party’ movement).

Later (2009),Sahlgren worked as a research intern at the Cato Institute, an American libertarian think tank founded by Charles Koch.

Since January 2012 he’s been working as a research fellow at the Institute of Economic Affairs.

So where does this all leave us? Andrew Marr, in his 2007 BBC documentary, “A History of Modern Britain”, describes the IEA as:

…undoubtedly the most influential think tank in modern British history”

This begs the question, ‘influential’ to whom?

Think tanks are not devised to assist the masses. Their influence is aimed at government. US and UK government policy requires some degree of evidential credibility if it is to pass scrutiny with the electorate, particularly if said policy is detrimental to ordinary folks.

Since the (probably) devised financial crash of 2008, ‘austerity measures’ have been the policy of both European and US governments (remember the US ‘sequester’?) and Tory policy in Britain is set to systematically destroy the socialist system and replace it with a US-style, de-regulated, capitalist, society. This is already far advanced in the destruction of the National Health Service and its privatization.

The pension systems in the UK and the US are viewed by politicians as unwelcome financial burdens they would dearly love to do away with. They conveniently forget the basic fact that workers pay into these funds all their working lives to finance their retirement. The money belongs to them, not the government. But governments would like to steal that money, then shift the whole pension system into private (corporate) control.

The background to this sordid saga is a right-wing, corporate-controlled, free market think tank of enormous political influence. Their aim is to provide ‘evidence’ to government, supportive of a substantial rise in the retirement age of British workers (US workers, beware!). What better way to achieve it than by presenting it as entirely beneficial, nay, necessary, to the health and well-being of the working masses?

Of course, the IEA is hardly a concern likely to evoke a positive response from ordinary people, so they roped in a near-defunct, anonymous, London charity with a sympathetic name -the ‘Age Endeavour Fellowship’ – to front the show.

We know from the records that Dr Edward Datnow and his associates were incapable of funding Sahlgren’s research. No doubt IEA footed the whole bill.

Quite what the trustees of Age Endeavour Fellowship got out of it, one can only speculate.

In September 2011, the Guardian columnist, George Monbiot, wrote an article condemning free market think tanks and the secrecy surrounding those who fund them:

…whenever you hear the term free market thinktank, think of a tank, crushing democracy, driven by big business.”^[7]

The Institute of Economic Affairs is hell-bent on crushing the democratic right of every citizen to a long, happy, and healthy retirement.

^{[1] “Retirement ‘harmful to health’, study says”BBC, May 16th 2013}

^{[2] “Work Longer Live Healthier” Institute of Economic Affairs, May 2013}

^{[3] “OpenCharities.Org No: 209489}

^{[4] “Charity Commission – Age Endeavour Fellowship” Charity Commission Website}

^{[5] “130 Holland Park Avenue, London W11 4UE” Zoopla.Co.UK, Undated}

^{[6] “Andy Mayer: A longer working life means a healthier life – policymakers should take note” ConservativeHome.blogs.com, May 16th 2013}

^{[7] “Think of a Tank” George Monbiot, September 12th 2011}

It’s time to call it a day
They’ve burst your pretty balloon
And taken the moon away
It’s time to wind up the masquerade
Just make your mind up – the piper must be paid…

The ongoing squabble about climate change has become so immature and simplistic that it’s truly hard to find anything worth saying on the subject anymore. Homo sapiens is such a narcissistic creature, the idea it might destroy its own habitat begets every excuse under the sun for not taking responsibility and doing something about it. We are so totally absorbed with ourselves and how wonderful we are – the ‘pinnacle of creation’ – that any suggestion we might be slowly annihilating ourselves is treated by most with utter disdain.

We couldn’t ever exist without our smartphones, tablets, Facebook (even the Queen of Britain tweets, you know)…

…and our plethora of petroleum products – all necessary attributes of our collective egocentricity. Anyone born after 1980 just couldn’t imagine ever being without them.

Yet there was a time when we lived quite happily without them. And, there was no reason why we would have had to do without them in the future, or, at least, similar alternatives, had governments taken their responsibilities seriously and concerned themselves with the welfare of their electorate, rather than those who bribed and corrupted them.

It’s too late now. Don’t let anyone tell you differently. Oh, they will. They’ll laugh and snigger and snort derisively at the very idea of man-made climate change. They’ll still be doing so when their house is consumed by the next mammoth forest fire, or tornado, or catastrophic flood. Only, then, the sniggers will be a trifle more forced.

Those who must carry a heavy burden of responsibly for the imminent downfall of the human race are the religious. No, not your Auntie Edie who plays the organ at the chapel down the road every Sunday. The true politico-religious bigot. The one who stubbornly believes the Bible is the only history of mankind. The one who is convinced, despite all the evidence, that his “God” will save him at the last moment.

America has more than most. In fact, religious bigots in America are rather like its nuclear weapons. If you stacked them all up in a big pile there’d be more than in all the rest of the countries of the world put together.

Here’s one…

…John Shimkus (R-IL) doesn’t believe man is causing climate change. Here’s why:

“Never again will I curse the ground because of man, even though all inclinations of his heart are evil from childhood and never again will I destroy all living creatures as I have done.

“As long as the earth endures, seed time and harvest, cold and heat, summer and winter, day and night, will never cease.”

“I believe that’s the infallible word of God, and that’s the way it’s going to be for his creation,” Shimkus said.

Then he quoted Matthew 24:31.
“And he will send his angels with a loud trumpet call, and they will gather his elect from the four winds from one end of the heavens to the other.”

“The Earth will end only when God declares it’s time to be over. Man will not destroy this Earth. This Earth will not be destroyed by a Flood,” Shimkus asserted. “I do believe that God’s word is infallible, unchanging, perfect.”^[1]

This, from the Chairman of the US government’s Subcommittee on Environment and Economy. What chance did our environment ever have when its guardians believed they could do what the hell they liked, and “God” would always make it alright?

Here’s another:

Paul Broun (R-Ga) is another Bible thumper. Here’s part of his Wikipedia page:

2009 Global Warming controversy
In June 2009, Broun received a standing ovation when he said that global warming is a “hoax”. He said “Scientists all over this world say that the idea of human induced global climate change is one of the greatest hoaxes perpetrated out of the scientific community. It is a hoax. There is no scientific consensus.”

2010 Global Warming controversy.
When Broun explained in June 2010 to the John Birch Society that the entire concept of man-made global warming is a conspiracy perpetuated by certain members of the scientific community to “destroy America.”

2012 Evolution controversy
On September 27, 2012, in a speech at the Liberty Baptist Church Sportsman’s Banquet, Broun stated that the sciences of embryology, evolution, and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the Pit of Hell … lies to try to keep me and all the folks who are taught that from understanding that they need a savior.” This position is in support of his stance supporting Young Earth creationism. In the speech he also said that, “Earth is about 9,000 years old,” that “it was created in six days as we know them,” and that mainline Christian denominations are “going to send their people to hell”

Paul Broun serves on the United States House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

Yes, it does seem incredible, but it’s true. These are the very people we elected to watch out for our interests. These are supposed to be our friends in high places. Perhaps, we should reconsider who our enemies are? With hindsight, alongside these guys Osama bin Laden may prove to have been a puppy.

Not that it matters anymore because the Shimkus’s and the Broun’s won’t be going away. Because of them, it’s too late. This month the CO2 in the atmosphere passed 400ppm. We have enough fossil fuel reserves at present to double that figure within sixteen years. Yet, we’re pumping, blasting, drilling more out the planet than ever before; like our lives depended on it. In truth, the exact opposite is the case.

If we stopped emitting any greenhouse gases from this moment in time, the earth would continue to heat up for the next thousand years. We have witnessed – many have already fallen victim to – the drastic changes in weather patterns that have occurred over the last twenty or so years. Take a moment to imagine how the weather will be in a thousand years time. And that’s if we stop now; this instant. No more oil, no more coal, no more belching factory chimneys.

It’s not going to happen. Messrs Shimkus, Broun, and their political pals will guarantee that.

That’s why it’s already too late. Think it out for yourself. How could it possibly be otherwise?

Remember…the piper must be paid…

^{[1] “God will save us from climate change: U.S. Representative” Toronto Star, November 10th 2010}

^{[2] “Wikipedia, Paul Broun”}

It’s a Friday night. The world is in turmoil. America is on the rocks. Millions of US citizens are out of work. What’s the headline that leads virtually every news media outlet this evening?

Was the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi carried out by terrorists, or not? And, did the Obama administration cover up that fact?

What the hell does it matter? Four US citizens died that night. They died because they were in a foreign country, a nation in turmoil, armed gangs of extremists roaming the streets, Islamists whipped into fury by some fool of an American posting anti-Muslim films on the internet. Ambassador Stevens and his party just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

They died partly due to American arrogance. An arrogance that assumed US citizens, and in particular diplomatic personnel, could be fully protected by the long arm of US power wherever they happened to be. Well, guess what? They can’t. People get killed every day throughout the world and being American doesn’t necessarily protect them one iota.

The craziest part of this whole business is that those who are kicking up the dirt the loudest are the very people (politicians) who voted to cut the security funding that paid for diplomatic protection overseas, as Rep. Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) admitted to CNN one month after the Benghazi attacks. ^[1]

The reason this matter has become headline news so long after the incident is due entirely to media hysteria, no doubt whipped up at the express demands of those who control CBS, ABC, NBC, and others of their ilk, to deliberately stir the populace into believing the story has some sort of relevance.

Of course, it hasn’t. The idea that another 9/11 terrorist attack on US citizens somehow parallels the original is absurd, as anyone pausing for a moment to consider the implications would immediately appreciate. To suggest the present administration was failing by not preventing the events that transpired in Benghazi on 9/11/2012, is surely achieving no more than to highlight the far greater failings of the Bush administration in 2001, by failing to prevent the terrorist attack that murdered three thousand innocent people.

It’s time our politicians learned how to run this country, and left the party games to the kiddies.

^{[1] “Jason Chaffetz Admits House GOP Cut Funding For Embassy Security: ‘You Have To Prioritize Things’” Huffington Post, October 11th 2012}

The NRA annual get-together this week appeared like a Who’s Who of the top idiots in America. Topping the bill was the United States’s second favorite, right-wing, nutty talk-radio host, Glenn Beck.^[1]

Hasn’t the, “From my cold, dead, hands…” bit, been done already?

It might have passed off like most other NRA conventions – that is, hardly noticed by the saner elements of society – had not the whole show been eclipsed by one five-year old from Kentucky who chose just the right time to shoot dead his two-year old sister, with his very own .22 caliber rifle.^[2]

Surprisingly, it’s illegal in America for a toddler to walk into a gun store and purchase a firearm. It’s perfectly acceptable, though, for an adult to purchase a rifle, or, conceivably an AK47, and present it to a five-year old as a birthday gift.

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Whether or not parents who give toddlers lethal firearms to play with should be certified as criminally insane and locked away forever in a mental asylum is not for discussion here. Suffice to say, if you’re any nationality other than American, the answer to the question is patently obvious.

Remember a time when this was the birthday present of choice for a toddler?

Now, it’s been replaced by this:

Keystone Sporting Arms, makers and marketers of Crickett and Chipmunk firearms for toddlers (available in certain Walmart stores) have remained silent about this latest killing. Much was made of the company pulling its website after the event, but it’s now up and running again.

Obviously, the owners – Bill & Steve McNeal of 155, Sodom Road, Milton, Pennsylvania (no comment on the aptness of the address) – have no further wish to lose sales.

The NRA failed to officially recognize the incident in an attempt to make it go away and not spoil their little gathering. One guy determined to help this happen is Cody Wilson, founder of Defense Distributed in Texas (where else!) who chose this week to announce his latest invention: an all-plastic, thoroughly lethal handgun fashioned on a 3D printer. Cody intends to publish the plans on the internet.^[3]

“I recognize that this tool might be used to harm people,” Wilson told Forbes. “That’s what it is — it’s a gun. But I don’t think that’s a reason to not put it out there. I think that liberty in the end is a better interest.”

Liberty? The freedom for any terrorist to carry one of these non-metallic weapons through airport checkpoints unnoticed, board a plane, and commit another horror like that of 9/11/2001?

That’s just the kind of liberty Cody Wilson, Bill & Steve McNeal, and the NRA strive to achieve in today’s America, and they begin by brainwashing the youngest and most vulnerable.

Perhaps the next invention of liberty might be printed, plastic, pressure cookers – an ideal device for the would-be, home-grown, terrorist bomber?

^{[1] “Glenn Beck and stagecraft wizardry: Why his NRA talk trumped all” CSM, May 7th 2013}

^{[2] “US reels after five-year-old kills sister with ‘my first rifle’” NDTV, May 3rd 2013}

^{“Shots fired from world’s first 3D-printed gun” Fox News, May 6th 2013}

Corporate control: we see it everywhere. Can any of us be blind to the ‘take it or leave it’ attitude that passes for customer service these days? It’s not just technological advancement that’s resulted in every large corporation greeting our telephoned requests for attention with some digital menu that spins us round in ever decreasing circles, and eventually spits us out, dissatisfied, at the other end.

Not that you’d recognize this utter lack of concern for customer satisfaction from the glossy advertising and blurb that is the staple of all corporate marketing strategy.

Perfectly manicured females, with their photo-shopped smiles, are the norm when we’re being seduced with empty promises of wondrous goods on offer, in exchange for our hard earned dollars. It’s not until the newly acquired washing machine floods the laundry, or the super-size TV puffs smoke from its rear, that we realize this delicious doll is no more than a digital mp4 file droning out monotony down our ear-hole, and leaving us with about as much chance of connecting with a real human being as Kristen Stewart has of winning an Oscar for ‘The Twilight Saga’.

It’s all a result of perfectly acceptable companies growing so huge – often due to take-overs or mergers with larger corporations – that they no longer see the necessity for a personal service. It’s more important to divvy out a few more dollars to the shareholders, than pay a living wage for someone prepared to answer a telephone and provide some genuine customer satisfaction.

“Too big to fail” has become the catchphrase of corrupt politicians and bent Wall Street economists, who realize any such ‘failure’ means they’ll become drastically poorer very quickly. It’s come to signify the awesome power of the banking sector, but applies equally to other, overly-gigantic, corporate establishments.

While corporate and political corruption in so-called ‘Western democracies’ has reached levels on par with dubious African and Eastern European dictatorates, far more disturbing is the degree of control this corrupt association of political and corporate power has unleashed on us – the people.

As competition is swallowed up wholesale by the mighty jaws of corporate monstrosity, not only are we denied choice, but the very way we live our lives and conduct our business is being dictated by those anonymous corporate controllers who have gained the power to decide our future.

Nowhere is this more obvious than in the technology/internet industry. Microsoft’s control of the commercial computer operating system market is just one example of we, the people, losing control of our computers. Microsoft dictates how we operate our virtual lives (unless, of course, you’re running a Mac, in which case, it’s Apple).

Then there’s Google. This mammoth’s top man, Larry Page, (worth around $23 billion) is constantly striving to tell us how jealously his company guards our privacy, while doling out our personal information to the US government at the rate of 5,900 instances in 2011, and rising every year. It can be argued that Google’s cooperation with crime fighters helps keep us safe, but it’s a short step from there to spying on all our internet activities. We have no way of knowing if Microsoft, or Google, is recording our website visitations, and where that information may be ending up, but we do know it’s used to benefit the bank balances of other corporations, who pay well for the information.

Google is also dictating our preferences with its software. Only recently we learned ‘Google Reader’ is to be discontinued in favor of its latest creation, ‘Feedly’. Is ‘Feedly’ better equipped to record our RSS interests? Perhaps not, but we have no way of knowing.

It all begs the question: what can we do about it? After all, these corporate monsters are in control and have the politicians in their pockets. It’s not easy, but there are ways. The Achilles heel of all capitalist corporations is their bank balance. We, the people, make them wealthy. Isn’t it time we looked at alternatives?

Whether it’s Walmart or Microsoft, Goldman Sachs or Google, it behooves us to kick them into touch, if we can, and seek out alternatives that might help whittle these behemoths down to a more manageable size. After all, without we, the people, Walmart would still be a struggling grocery store somewhere off main street.

There are alternatives to Microsoft and Google. Linux is still a pain in the butt to install (as I’ve found out to my cost), but it’s getting better all the time, and above all, it’s free! As is all its open source software.

There are now Coop stores in most towns throughout the US, stuffed with fresh organic foodstuffs, and lacking the chemical fertilizers so beloved of Walmart produce. It is more expensive, but with careful shopping the weekly bill may not prove too disastrous to the bank balance, and it’s healthy, nutritious, and great for the environment.

As for Goldman Sachs, and all the many other financial institutions grown fat and wealthy from our hard-earned dollars, the choice is between them and a Credit Union run not-for-profit, with better dividends, virtually no fees, and staff that don’t look down their nose at you when you dare ask them to part with a few of your own dollar bills.

There are times when the monolithic corporations seem much too powerful to ever be thwarted, but it pays to remember that it’s we, the people, that made them that way. Without our money none of them would exist. And, just as we created those monsters we, the people, have the power to shackle them, tame them, and, if necessary, bring them down.

The corporations don’t own this world. We do. Isn’t it time we said enough is enough?