Your glasses are most certainly rose-tinted Jimjam!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Islamist_terrorist_attacks

Having said that I don’t think for one moment that the majority of people now see muslims as the enemy, or at least I hope not. What’s required is a coming together of those who have moderate tolerant views (i.e. the whole of society excluding the extremists) and a shared effort to root out and deal with extremists.

Jus5mins are you saying that all Muslims are as extreme as ISIS? coz if you are you are just very misguided,

It’s very clear that I’m saying nothing of the sort, not least as muslims are more likely to be killed by ISIS than any other single group.

All I’m saying is that narrative that the brutal behaviours described above are some how the whole fault of the non islamic world overlooks the overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Most of the current extremism is Sunni and if you look at the pipeline of radicalisation there has been a long standing effort for the last 20+ years to radicalise young men enough to get them to leave their countries for Jihad training abroad.

The events in Syria were largely fuelled by the number of trained jihadists that were already there – the seeds of the current conflict can be seen in the “preachers” who were teaching hatred in the streets in Europe well before 9-11. The collective failure to tackle the extremist preaching and tolerate open threats of murder (e.g. salman rushdie) just created the conditions for these people to fill the jihadi pipeline required for future discourse. If as a society we believe that public death threats to Jews / Homosexuals / Christians are unacceptable we should prosecute those who do this irrespective of their belief in religious doctrine in exactly the same way racist beliefs have been tackled over the last 20-30 years. Pretending these things aren’t happening won’t make the problem go away.

Would you rather have your head cut off, or your house blown up with you and your family in it, your country destroyed and raped of it’s natural resources and a foreign company profit from the rebuilding?

If you treat people like monsters, they’ll become monsters.

So how do you explain that these “behaviours” have been present for around 1,400 years now – pretty much since the Shia and Sunni split?

That’s a good 1,250 years before oil was even discovered, let alone foreign companies profiting from it – it also doesn’t explain why these same extreme / medieval behaviours are to be found in more than 40 countries now, even those in which oil has never been found and which have never been involved in western military action.

I just watched the whole vice news report posted by jambalaya above.

It’s one of the most sickening and depressing things I’ve ever watched – how can anyone corrupt the minds of children like that?

I’ve read and watched quite a few things today that gave me pause for thought.

The first is a BBC interview which I think was recorded some time back – it reflects a balance of views from young british muslims but two of the participants are quite comfortable articulating views that to me at least are fairly abhorrent and not compatible with the secular democracy that most people in Britain value. My concern isn’t whether their views are representative – surveys have already told us they are, more what kind of future is in hold for our society if we continue to allow these views to propagate:

The second thing I wanted to share is an audio blog from atheist journalist Sam Harris who appears to be well respected and writes for many of the world’s best news publication. His analysis IS not of the last week’s outrages in Paris, Kenya or Lebanon but again poses some very difficult questions that I’m not sure we as a society are necessarily ready / willing to answer:

https://soundcloud.com/samharrisorg/still-sleepwalking-01

The audio blog is quite long but well worth a listen and I’m genuinely interested in any reading any reactions from STW, either for or against the argument he’s making

Are we completely sure it’s only 0.03% though?

Take a look at this video – it’s quite interesting. The audience view themselves as “moderate” but how compatible are their views with a stable society in Britian?

The interesting questioning starts about 1m 45 in – have to admit I was quite surprised.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bV710c1dgpU

Think about it for a minute. Imagine 8 idiots wanted to pull this off. What are the chances of 8 idiots going out and planning this and getting the materials without:
a) One of the 8 idiots letting slip to one of his mates / mum / dad that he was up to something and the word getting out to the authorities or someone alerting them. 8 + supporting people means a lot of folk knew about this in advance

This overlooks the act three of the idiots were brothers, their dad took them to Syria, the immediate family have already said one of them was radicalised and the mum has been arrested this morning because she knew about it and failed to alert the authorities.

The biggest mistake being made is to think of the event in Paris is a one off – it’s not. It’s part of the new norm sweeping across Kenya, Nigeria, Morrocco, Algeria and many parts of Europe as well . It’s name isn’t terrorism – it’s just a more aggressive and intolerant version of Islam, which itself is not at all tolerant of any other beliefs and is effectively a political, economic and social system designed to require complete unquestioning support from its followers.

just something to think about – although BT does use EE’s network the services available aren’t the same. BT doesn’t support a couple of things:

– tethering
– wifi calling (built in to iPhones and quite a lot of other phones)

BT also won’t be able to offer use of EE’s 800Mhz VOLTE network that will be launched in the next few weeks (possibly as early as this Tuesday). The VOLTE network is much lower frequency and allows voice calls over 4G – it will significantly improve indoor and rural coverage – three launched there’s a few weeks back and the coverage improvement is significant.

This will change when BT and EE are integrated but that’s a good 12-18 months away.

Just about everyone in the liberal left rounded on the author of this book when it was published 9 years ago – it was described as wildly inflammatory. Now it just looks conservative in its prediction of what might happen in the future of the U.K. and Europe.

Europe needs to wake up – this is very much the ghost of Christmas future.

The tragic events unfolding this evening in Paris and the evacuation of the French President from a stadium with bombs going off all around is terrible news for La France and the French – but this is a long overdue reality check on the compatability of political Islam with modern democratic secular society.

the vigorous social media campaign waged by the BMA and the Junior Doctors themselves looks completely farcical now it’s emerged that the endless examples of pay cuts were all calculated with a calculator that the BMA put on their website and which used numbers that were reportedly completely made up by the BMA. The calculator has been removed now so maybe some common sense has been found in Tavistock Square.

grum, doesn’t that rather depend on the amount working capital that Arriva had to employ and the cost of financing that?

I don’t shop in Aldi for 2 reasons:

1. their own brands are complete rip offs of other companies’ products – simply ripping off a brand that someone else has designed and in most cases heavily invested in the promotion of is unethical.

2. Aldi take up to 120 days to pay suppliers. It’s not difficult to run a low cost business when your suppliers (in many case small companies) are effectively providing your working capital.

that selle italia is almost fit for purpose as a commode saddle

went to see Bond last friday.

A couple in their late 20s sat down next to us and as the “how to behave in a cinema” instruction film came on the woman commented on the “Please – no talking” bit of the film with “that must be aimed at the Asians” and laughed – they were both Asian so no casual racism on their part.

This seemed quite an odd response under the circumstances… right up to the point the opening credits started rolling and they started talking very loudly, joking, texting, checking voicemail… after about an hour I asked the bloke to cut the chit chat because it was ruining the experience – got a mouthful in response from him and his Mrs and then had to put up with them deliberately talking even more loudly for the whole of the rest of the film.

I can’t be bothered going to the cinema again – it’s the same pretty much every time we go now – I don’t get why people don’t just wait and see it on iTunes at home if they don’t actually want to watch the film, not least when they’ve paid extra to sit in the nice seats and make a night of it.

It’s good value and has excellent outcomes.

Good outcomes apart from the 25% of people who are dead with cancer within 6 months of diagnosis due to the fact the diagnosis was too late. We’ve got some of the worst cancer outcomes in Europe and we’re not much better on Chronic Disease or mental health.

The leader in the Times today (see below) would seem to be a reasonably balanced appraisal of the current stand off… a lot of people seem to think Jeremy Hunt is actually the negotiator. He isn’t – it’s NHS Employers and the DH.

Not that anyone appears to be terribly interested in the underlying drivers for the new contract (not least the Junior Doctors themselves) but for those who are they are set out in considerable detail here:

http://www.nhsemployers.org/~/media/Employers/Publications/NHSE-DDRB-submission-Dec-2014.pdf

From The Times today:

Barring an unlikely climbdown by the government or the British Medical Association (BMA), England’s hospitals are heading for some form of doctors’ strike. Queues at A&E departments will lengthen. Promises of better care will be broken. Taxpayers who have helped to fund the NHS throughout their working lives may die avoidably.

This is an inexcusable prospect in an advanced 21st-century economy and no one emerges with much credit from the mess that has led to it. Jeremy Hunt is a diligent health secretary with an unenviable task (and an impeccable bedside manner) but he has allowed trust between his department and the BMA to evaporate on his watch.

For its own part the association has been unremittingly shrill in its rhetoric and unreasonable in its tactics. As the 50,000 junior doctors in its membership consider a proposal for strike action over the next two weeks they should bear in mind a few home truths. The seven-day NHS, towards which Mr Hunt is working, is not a luxury but the least patients deserve and the government has a mandate to make it a reality.

An overhaul of junior doctors’ complex and costly weekend overtime rules is one of many reforms that Mr Hunt cannot afford to sidestep. Throwing money at the problem is not a solution. Health spending is already ringfenced with a guarantee of an extra £8 billion a year by the end of this parliament, despite abundant evidence of waste. In these circumstances taxpayers will quickly lose patience with a doctors’ union that appears to prioritise its members’ pay and conditions over their Hippocratic Oath.

The new contract outlined yesterday by Mr Hunt would, he claims, give most junior doctors an 11 per cent rise in base pay. The increase would be paid for with a 25 per cent overall cut in hours classed as unsociable and therefore paying overtime. As a pre-emptive concession to the BMA the point at which overtime begins at a weekend would be brought forward three hours, compared with Mr Hunt’s initial proposals, from 10pm on Saturdays to 7pm.

Young doctors heeding the BMA’s exhortations took to the streets yesterday to accuse Mr Hunt of megaphone diplomacy. Indulging in the very same thing, one called the proposed contract “terrifying”. It is nothing of the sort. It replaces one complicated slab of smallprint with another, but it simplifies base pay and rewards proven progress rather than merely seniority. This is progress. The Department of Health maintains that the contract would deliver a modest overall pay rise for most junior doctors, although as things stand many of the pay safeguards offered would expire in 2019.

In defence of junior doctors it must be said that they already work longer weekend hours than consultants, and it is a shortage of specialists and support staff that is mostly responsible for poor care in hospitals at weekends. Junior doctors’ long weekend shifts are, however, a factor behind this pattern, and the new contract addresses it.

Mr Hunt has allowed a showdown with junior doctors to develop where none was necessary and he should have been clearer, sooner, on the details of the new contract. Yet his errors pale beside the association’s gratuitous yearning for confrontation. It demands negotiations without preconditions while holding patients’ health to ransom with a strike threat. Enough already. It is past time for the BMA to sit down with Mr Hunt and strike a deal.

The government released the details of its new proposals to the media without bothering to consult with the doctors. Let’s not pretend that they’re negotiating in good faith.

The BMA have refused to meet NHS Employers (the negotiating body) since June. They are still refusing to meet them.

So how exactly is a “negotiation” supposed to happen?

For example the Norwegians used their oil money to build a productive society, not piss it up the wall on tax cuts for the rich.

Where are these “tax cuts for the rich” then?

The highest marginal rate of tax on earnings in the UK is 62% excluding employer NI payments. The highest in Norway is 53.7% – and that includes a 14.1% social security contribution by employers.

Most households (62%) in the UK are net recipients of the state – the proportion of tax paid by the wealthy and ratio of households that are net recipients from the state has probably never been higher.

I’ve ditched my work smartphone altogether. If people need to get hold of me they can do so through Lync Audio or they can email – if I’m not in work it’s never going to be mission-critical if I don’t respond for a day or two.

I do have my work email on my personal phone – but set up on the default mail app which is set to “fetch” email only when I check it… so no constant buzzes to tell me a new mail has arrived.

My personal email is on an outlook app and again set up to “fetch” only so it’s not constantly annoying me with email alerts. I’ve got my work calendar on my personal phone but when I’m on leave it gets deleted and work email is turned off altogether so I don’t see any calendar appointments coming in – Exchange just accepts them for me whilst I’m offline and when I’m back from Hols my diary is pretty much up to date.

The biggest change in the way I use my smartphone is that I pretty much have the “mobile” bit turned off all the time. Wifi / Wifi Calling is turned on which means when I’m in a building phone calls come through as normal but the moment I leave work the phone bit doesn’t work – so no interruptions cycling home, whilst driving or when out with mates unless I’ve logged into wifi first.

I’ve had this set up for 6 months now and not being “always on” provides many more opportunities for some basic mindfulness stuff when out walking / out on the bike etc.

I’m avoiding the static trainer boredom with an iPad on the bars – slowly working my way through the box sets on Amazon Prime… by the time I’ve finished watching / riding the Walking Dead I should be fit for spring rides…

Where’s the proof then, or it is just the opinion of a presumably well educated person who would make sure their own kids wouldn’t fall behind after a week out of school for whatever the reason?

Is the effect the same for children that are already behind and have parents who don’t give a monkeys if they fall even further behind?

“Another example of a minister spouting nonsense when the rules and the way schools apply them are quite reasonable.”

Time for a verbal reasoning test:

Speaking on Radio 4’s Today programme Mr Gibb said: “

The rules say you can’t take leave from school during term time except in exceptional circumstances

.

Nick Gibb has warned that children can’t have extra days off school after a funeral…

“If it’s something like a funeral or something, then the head teacher would be able to give permission to attend the funeral, but not to have an extended holiday on the back of that funeral or other compassionate circumstances

.”

So which bit of the above is nonsense then?

our vet charges £56 for a box of 6 x Advocate flea / worming treatments. The best price on line (including someone else’s margin) is £24, which presumably puts the trade price Ex vat around £15 (if that). So the vet is charging a £30 margin on something that costs them £15.

Why not just scan it (make sure you have backups sorted for your pc ) and bin the paper altogether?

There are loads of apps round now to photograph receipts and file them in categories straight away

“right, just checked with my pal next to me, his girlfriend is a junior doctor.
among other things; They’re planning to remove the restriction on how many hours doctors can be asked required to work.”

This is complete nonsense and reflects the fact the BMA have obfuscated the actual proposals in order to increase public support / leverage on NHS employers.

The National Doctors and Dentists Review body have made it very clear that the maximum number of hours in any one week (including overtime and being on call) will be reduced from 90 to 72 – it’s here in black and white:

http://www.nhsemployers.org/~/media/Employers/Documents/Pay%20and%20reward/Post%20report%20DDRB%20guidance.pdf

In addition to the legal safeguards the working time regulations (WTR) provide, NHS
Employers proposed:
— an absolute limit on weekly hours of 72
— no shift to exceed 13 hours
— no more than five consecutive long days or four consecutive night shifts
— no doctor to be on duty for more than seven consecutive on call periods

The analysis by NHS Employers (amongst other things the NHS Employers negotiating team includes Doctors) is here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/213214/FINAL-PDF-revised-for-DH.pdf

The latest update from the NHS Employers negotiating team says:

“We are incredibly disappointed that [the BMA] continue to stand by their decision to walk away from the talks. We firmly believed that by working together we could have ensured safer working hours for doctors in training, as well as provided them with the stability of pay and agreed work schedules that took account of their educational commitments and needs.”

The BMA aren’t willing to even talk to NHS Employers and are just using us / the public to negotiate by social media.

May be wrong on this but if the graph above is just for American companies it may be distorted by the tens of $trillions that US companies are holding offshore from wholly their owned operating companies – until the profits are repatriated to the US no tax is paid, so companies just hold the reserves out of the country. I think that’s just the way their tax system works i.e. profit can be booked but isn’t taxed until the money is bought onshore… hence the increase in profit and decline in tax paid.

In our tax system, I think a different accounting treatment applies whereby company profits from offshore subsidiaries are subject to UK tax irrespective of whether the money is brought back to the country and disbursed to shareholders or not.

check if Wifi Assist is turned on – it was enabled by default in the ios9 upgrade and will happily sit there slurping on cellular data when the user thinks the phone is using wifi

there were two facts on Radio4 this morning that surprised me:

1.the proposed cuts don’t actually “hit the poorest hardest” as they will impact on working families not families where the parents are unemployed.

2. Even after the cuts, the total spending on tax credits will still be significantly above the level of 2003 in real terms – so according to Labour, the Tories will be “hitting the poor” but will still be spending more than Labour did.

According to IFS and BBC figures when Labour left office more than 90% of families were receiving tax credits and 60% of households were net recipients from the state i.e. received more than they put in. Which is pretty good evidence of the need for reform.

Do you think if other graduates regularly worked the weekend and nights they would be content with putting it down as overtime and doing it for the basic salary?

The point is that the BMA are making comparisons to other graduate jobs like law, banking etc. In those jobs very long hours are also common but there is no such thing as “overtime” and there are no routine supplements and allowances.

Yes but the average “salary” for the junior doctos is only part of a remuneration package that typically includes an additional 30-50% of supplements and allowances on top of the salary, and a pension scheme that would equate to an employer contribution of around 25%. So the average junior doctor actually earns twice what the average graduate makes in salary. That’s not to say this is wrong, more that a sensible discussion should at least include relevant facts.

The BMA have consistently made their comparisons on base salary alone which says a lot about the level of integrity and ethics behind the current “campaign” which is precisely why they’ve refused to even discuss it with the dept of health since June.

So no responsibility on the part of the person using a vehicle that’s actually only permitted for use on private land?

I encountered one of these mono wheel things today whilst out with the dog. The walk was in a very large public park which has about 6 miles of paved paths and hard tracks. Being a nice quiet place the park was full with loads of visitors all having a nice time – walking or slowly cycling, dogs running round… Happy times all round.

Then we stopped for a coffee – more of the same people and dogs all relaxed and ambling around and some idiot and his son come flying round the blind corner into the cafe bit on their airwheel x5s. We’re not sure if it was a sound from the monowheel motors that we couldn’t hear or the humans moving at speed whilst appearing to be stationary but quite a few dogs started barking and as the closest dog to the bloke’s direction of travel ours landed up barking then leaping up at him as he leant forward to slow down – there was a sickening moment where he was leaning forward with his hands out and the dog obviously thought he was going to hit her because he was right on top of her so she jumped up and nipped him – no blood drawn thankfully.

Anyway, we were mortified that the dog had nipped him, apologised profusely and then left but I’m not sure what we could have done to avoid the situation. When people are effectively using silent vehicles in spaces where everyone else goes to walk and get away from vehicles it’s surely going to result in conflict and if hate to think what might have happened if someone with a visual impairment was using the park.

Watched 20 minutes then went outside to sweep the leaves up in the dark which was actually much more enjoyable than watching Channel 4 reprising something that was tired and well overdue for a change the last time round.

It’s all right, apparently he (McDonnell) has “changed tactics, not policy”.

With this kind of “new politics straight talking” it’s a wonder that anyone’s confused what Labour do / don’t stand for… it’s crystal clear isn’t it.. although it may well change again when the wind changes direction.

Commonwealth fund have some nice data on this – we spend some of the lowest amounts per head in the developed world on healthcare. And overall get some of the best outcomes.

Equally there are countries that spend less and get better outcomes – Cancer being a particularly good example of this.. despite the tens of £billions poured into “improving” cancer services in the English NHS the outcomes remain poor and in many cases extremely poor compared to other countries in the EU. So it’s not just about the level of funding, it’s about how the funding is allocated and spent.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/health/news/11490398/Cancer-survival-rates-in-UK-are-a-shameful-decade-behind-Europe.html

I have only skimmed through comments here. But can clearly see most comments are very ill informed!
My son is in his 5th year of medical degree. That’s 5 years s of racking up debt. When he starts as junior doctor next year … he starts on £22k a year, then something like £25 the following. And he apse has to pay around £2k a year out of that for professional membership and exams.
To get to the £56k a year I read quoted here will take a very long time.

But this is only half of the facts isn’t it?

Junior doctors earn allowances of between 1/3 and 1/2 of their “salary”. Professional membership is fully tax deductible, and on top of this they will be effectively earning around 25% of their salary via the defined benefits pension that everyone else would have to it for as an employee contribution.

So the £22k is actually around £35-40K of effective remuneration and the £56k is close to a £100k – both of which put a very different light on the “we strike you die” threat.

The public has been pretty successfully hoodwinked by the BMA’s latest piece of cynical campaigning.

Contrary to what’s being reported Junior Doctors aren’t getting a pay cut or being asked to work 70 hour weeks – they are simply being asked to accept the same working patterns as Nurses and Paramedics. They will still work 40 hours a week but will have to work one weekend in four as part of contracted hours rather than on the voluntary basis that makes no sense at all in health system that’s supposed to work 7 days a week. The principle of a contract that covers 7 day rostering was something that was first accepted by the BMA in 1999 but 16 years later they are still using delay tactics to stop it.

oh, and russia’s accidentally dropped 4 cruise missiles on Iran tonight….

thegreatape – erm, it’s a pretty nice bike and one I’m unable to ever be able to afford again… I’ll leave it at that 🙂