A Leap Too Far

Sapolai Yao, the Steeplechase champion of  Papua New Guinea was disqualified from this years Commonwealth Games Steeplechase race .....


First you climb ....

.... after he was caught by 50,000 spectators, and a world wide TV audience, using the nearest pot plant to get over the steeplechase barriers.

Two Faced Hypocrite

Harriet Harman is in my opinion the most detestable woman in British politics .... she was a key player in many of the New Labour Party's most divisive policies, from open Non EU immigration, to unequal 'Equality' measures, but always claimed that her anti-white, anti-male (white) laws were because she was fighting "Racism and Inequality" ..... even if it was all in her left wing PC head.

So she talked the 'equalities talk', and walked the 'equalities' walk while she was in in power ..... she even brought in "Quota" lists for the shadow cabinet .... only gender and skin colour, not abilities will count for the selection of the next possible Labour Government ministers ...

But now, after forcing us to use PC new-speak (under threat of criminal action or sacking if we spoke our minds), she suddenly calls a Scottish Liberal Coalition Minister and MP, Danny Alexander a "Ginger Rodent" ....

Now that's not only an nasty little insult, but an ethnic slur on rodents ...... but of course we can only hold her to a different set of values than she would apply to me or you, or Tory MP's. Of course she later apologised ..... later being the operative word, but then the mud has stuck by then.

How The Benefit Trap Works ....

Amongst all the rows over who has been most affected by the public sector cuts introduced by this Government there was a couple of nuggets that simply had to be rehashed and mulled over. These were the impact that capping at state benefits at £26,000 (net!) may have on those on long-term welfare claimants.

Now lets start with a few points .... most unemployed benefit claimants don't get much more than the basic benefits, plus housing benefits .... so a man, wife and two children, living in a local authority rented accommodation, in the North West of England, might be on £100.95 (Couple Allowance) + £17.40 (Family Premium) + £115.14 (£57.57 per child) ..... a grand total of £233.49 pw or £12,141.48 pa in benefits plus an average of £84.24 per week in housing benefits paid direct to the landlords. This represents a net income of £16,521.96 pa (the housing benefit element will differ in areas, but the main benefit income will not).

Now in order to 'earn' that amount net, a 'worker' would have to be on a salary of £21,291 pa ..... i.e. a starting salary that is higher than that offered on many non skilled jobs ..... and this is where the 'benefit trap' starts, because in reality no one is going to get up every day, pay for transport etc without being a lot better off, so a salary of at least £500 pw (£26,000 pa) is the realistic figure that would get this particular claimant back to work (but note: If they are in expensive accommodation they may never want to come off welfare benefit payments, which is why housing benefits will be capped at at £400 a week).

For single people the incentive to work is greater as they are on either (£51.85 and £65.45 pw ... under or over age 25).

You, like me, may think that these levels of benefits for people with kids, represent a quite high hurdle against finding work, when they are set above the lower levels of wages currently paid in the UK, so imagine what happens when they have large numbers of children or like Kellie-Ann Cottam, who apparently suffers from a painful disability called Ehlers Danlos syndrome, and needs help to care for her four children (to three different fathers) ..... to maintain the same lifestyle, she said she would need to earn £60,000 (£41,710.40 net) a year to meet her family's needs.

Now let us be honest, she is basically unemployable, she has no skills (psychology graduates litter the lower levels of many offices .... salary around £18k, so no good to her with her lifestyle), that could ever give her a career that would give her the £60,000 a year, which she considers to be the reasonable equivalent to living off the back of those of us who have to get to work everyday for a lot less than that.

Through the government's motability scheme she has also been given a specially adapted people carrier for herself and her children, who are aged between seven months and 14 years of age, oh, and she also gets free prescriptions, school meals for the children and free trips to the dentist and the optician .... she has been on the Benefit System for ten years, so she has managed to have relationships that produced at least two children, but somehow not ever managed to come off welfare payments.

She in fact epitomises all that's wrong with the benefits system .... "I am so grateful for the benefits system, I don't have a husband, I don't have a breadwinner - the state is my breadwinner," she said. Well I didn't get asked if I wanted to be her and her broods 'breadwinner', and nor did anyone else ..... still in all fairness this lady has admitted that the 'Benefit Trap' exists for her and that shes in it, and she has tried to launch a self help scheme called “Challenge Britain” to try to end people’s reliance on handouts ...... presumably not for herself though.

Final word on this benefit system to a woman from Grimsby ... A pub regular called Amanda said: "Don't cut the benefits for the people who are really, really struggling. I don't think it's fair - we are struggling enough as it is. I live on £174 a fortnight and it's not fair." ....... the keys to this statement is that the interview was 'lunchtime' in the pub where 'Amanda' was 'a pub regular' ..... and she thinks she is 'really struggling'.

She should read the diary of an unemployed family from living in York in 1910, where a Mr Nevinson was having a very hard time..... if he didn't find a job, he and his family didn't eat. From his diary its apparent that the family were only eating about a third of the calories they needed.

"Up at five, walked round and round the town until 12. Nothing doing anywhere, so I was fairly sick of walking about. No breakfast, no tea and no supper. Went to bed around 7.30."

The Watsons - Victorian Poor

The diaries reveal that in one week the family had just tea and bread for most meals. Occasionally they could afford margarine or jam as well. Sundays seemed plentiful in comparison.

Monday:

• Breakfast - Tea, bread and margarine
• Dinner - Tea, bread and margarine
• Supper - Tea, bread

Tuesday:

• Breakfast -Tea, bread and jam
• Dinner - Tea, 3 stale buns
• Supper - Tea, bread

 Sunday:

• Breakfast - Tea, kippers, bread
• Dinner - three pennyworth of meat pieces boiled with potatoes
• Tea - bread and margarine, onions

PS: If you agree with me that the "Benefit Trap" has to be addressed, before Britain can ever tackle the welfare culture, then email this article or a link to your MP or your representative in Congress (the problem is the same in much of the US) .... China, India and Brazil don't have this problem, and people work.  

True Democracy

US dollar notes to be phased out? In vaults across the country, the US government is building a stockpile of $1 coins.

Dollar Pile Would Reach The Space Station

The hoard has topped $1.1bn an amount that if stacked would reach almost seven times higher than the International Space Station, and the piles have grown so large the US Federal Reserve is running out of storage space.

Another Day, Another Dollar ....... Stolen

Corruption is the biggest handicap to development in the third world  ...... the scale of it is mind blowing, and I have touched on it before, but occasionally I am still reminded of how massive it can be.

 

The Face of Corruption


Equatorial Guinea President, Teodor Obiang Nguema is as bad as any dictator on the continent .... in fact he may well be the most corrupt of them all, and that's some claim considering the opposition. 

Nigerians Do What They Are World Beaters At .....

By some strange quirk of fate, immediately after I blogged on the countries 50yrs of achievements, Nigerians excelled in their national pastimes of corruption, cheating, and drug dealing .....



Would You Buy A World Cup from This Man?

 ..... and all in connection to sports events.

 

Civil Service Cuts - Your Joking .....

In October a 'Public Spending Review' is meant to 'slash wasteful expenditure' in the Civil Service etc especially on the IT projects, which are very expensive in the 'Public Sector'.... it's not going to work, and I will illustrate why.

A mole in the local civil service I.T. development centre, informs me of all the waste and scams (which often leave them open mouthed) they come across, and its on the other side of 'a joke'. I was aware of these scenarios myself, as I had left the public sector over a decade ago, but theirs is a more recent account.

Before I can start exposing the lengths they go to to avoid reform or work, I need to first give a few brief technical terms of explanation:

• BA - Business Analyst - A specialist business user, who analyses, defines, documents, and propose solutions for large and/or complex business areas and prepares functional specifications of what the business want from an application or piece of software to be developed.
• PM - Project Manager - A manager, usually but not always from the business who co-ordinates all the work activities required to produce and deliver the required application or piece of software to be developed.
• Other - System Testers, System Analysts, Programmers / Developers, Project Office Management (POM) - other roles - some of which would normally come from within the business, but may come from contract workers e.g. System Analysts,and Programmers / Developers would be contracted in if there were not enough within the business - however the lead in each role should be business provided.

Now we come to the Civil Service I.T. sector .... my mole works on a high profile government project, for one of the major government departments .... as a contractor of course.

The mole reports that :-

• In the face of the department facing 20% to 25% budget cuts it has been busy extending all the contracts until next year, AND recruiting more contractors - apparently this so that they can then 'sack' all these additional contractors, and thus tell the government minister that they have made 20% to 25% budget cuts without actually cutting anything.
• On most of the projects, the Civil service is, through lack of anyone capable, unable to provide even BA's .... so the departments application requirements and development decisions are created by private contractors, who are not specialists of that departments needs.
• This complete lack of Civil Service talents or skills, even extends to not being able to staff the POM - a series of roles which are simply handling paperwork sign off, library functions, time-sheets etc .... very basic administration skills.
• When they tried to use Civil Servants on project tasks, the project immediately fell into arrears and chaos because they were totally incapable of performing any of the tasks - they were replaced with contractors, at four times the costs.
• The contractors are all provided by just one supplier, so its more expensive than the going rate for the same roles in private industry .... also its effectively a closed list of the same faces moving around the sites.
• The mole reports that you can usually spot the Civil Servant desks on site because there are rows of empty desks come 3 pm - they are also the ones who organise round after round of 'meetings' which perform no function other than to stop the civil servant organiser from actually having to do any work. 

Finally the mole told me a story which sums up why the Civil Service is never going to be reformed - recently, in anticipation of the 'cuts' the contractors have been shadowed by a Civil Servant who is to take over from them ..... what a laugh.

The 'shadow' assigned to the 'mole', came in on the Monday and was unhappy with their desk location (it was in the centre where the computer screen could be seen by everyone - so misuse i.e. cruising the Internet all day would be spotted) and went off sick for three days.  When the 'shadow' turned up again at 09:30am on the Thursday, they refused to listen to what the 'mole' was trying to tell them, and kept trying to query old 'signed off' work, instead off dealing with current matters, then they went home at 3pm .... on the Friday they sat with the 'mole' until 11:20am when they announced they were going on an early lunch.  'Mole' asked if they would be back at 12:20pm and was told not until 2pm - the 'mole' finally reported that the 'shadow' failed to turn up at 2pm and had gone home - they had said that they had 'done their weekly hours and had taken 'flexi time' for the afternoon.

Project Management Team



And this shambles is why the Civil Service can't run or deliver any I.T. projects - they have lost any skill base for even the most basic of the functions required to run or deliver a body of I.T. work (the destruction of ITSA, its own IT department was the initial cause of this).

But more pertinently, they have in many project areas, largely lost any culture of work ethic or responsibility, and that's the most damaging loss of them all .....    

Dancing Cabin Crew

A well publicised story, but still funny ..... the Philippine budget airline Cebu has introduced dancing air stewardesses to give the safety demonstrations.

This is to make them 'interesting' ........ But in these PC times we live in, it meant that they had to make the 'Boys' do it as well ........ Hmm!

Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder

Now I am collector (or 'hoarder' as one ex girlfriend said) .... I like old coins, because when you handle them, you know that they were handled by human beings when they were minted until they were lost. I have coins (in reasonable condition), going back the the Pre-Roman, Greek Empire and Macedonian conquest  periods ..... running through Roman, Medieval, English Civil war and up to late British Empire dates.  It's a cheapish way of owning a bit of history ......

Anyway, imagine my envy at the find by a metal detectorist in the UK of this ....

Roman Cavalryman's Ceremonial Helmet

A Roman Cavalryman's ceremonial helmet ..... worn as an award for skill or bravery and possibly silvered (although that's gone if it ever existed).

Roman Cavalryman's Ceremonial Helmet Full Head

It sold after an anonymous phone bidder bought it for £2m...... which I hope is still in the UK (I certainly would block its export if I was the secretary of state involved).

I heard a radio presenter query why anyone would want to buy this outside of a Museum ...... he has no collectors soul. If I had won the Euro lottery £112m (its not been claimed yet, and I haven't checked my ticket yet LOL), I would buy this, and not even blink, its beautiful!

Ah well, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but I find it hard to imagine how anyone can't see the magic in this mask!

Complete Silence .... How Strange.

When an American pastor threatened to burn a copy of the Quran, all of the Muslim world went loco (as usual), with protests and mobs, and burnings ....

Another Peaceful Protest - Only Five Died

.... and also as usual in a 'peaceful Muslim protest', a few protesters died.

A Real Hero .....

Staff Sergeant Salvatore "Sal" Giunta is a brave man ..... he's the first living recipient of the Medal of Honor (The US's highest military award), since the Vietnam war. He is cited for saving members of his squad in October 2007 while fighting in the war in Afghanistan.

Staff Sergeant Salvatore "Sal" Giunta

In October 2007, Giunta's eight-man squad was moving along a wooded ridge-line in the Korangal valley  when at least a dozen Taliban fighters mounted an ambush that was coordinated from three sides at such close range that close air support could not be provided to Giunta's unit. Sergeant Josh Brennan, who was walking point, suffered at least 6 gunshot wounds. Giunta, then a specialist, was the fourth soldier back and was shot in the chest but was saved by his ballistic vest.

Another bullet destroyed a weapon slung over his back. Moving, firing and throwing hand grenades, Giunta advanced up the trail to assist Staff Sergeant Erick Gallardo and, later, Specialist Franklin Eckrode, whose M249 machine gun had jammed and who was badly wounded. Continuing up the trail, Giunta saw two Taliban fighters, one of whom was Mohammad Tali (considered a high-value target), dragging Brennan down the hillside, and towards the forest. Giunta attacked the insurgents with his M4 carbine, killing Tali, and ran to Brennan to provide cover and comfort until relief arrived.

"I ran through fire to see what was going on with him and maybe we could hide behind the same rock and shoot together ... He was still conscious. He was breathing. He was asking for morphine. I said, "You'll get out and tell your hero stories," and he was like, "I will, I will." ..... sadly Brennan died receiving medical treatment. But according to his father, Michael Brennan, "not only did [Giunta] save [my son] Josh ... He really saved half of the platoon."

Why we are fighting in Afghanistan with one hand behind our back is because the 'human rights lawyers' have set the rules of engagement in order to get brave men killed, and give the scum 'human rights' if they are captured...... they wouldn't last 30 seconds out there where the bullets fly.

We should salute those brave men and women who risk everything on behalf of the desk warriors of the left who do everything to make sure that they fail.  Yesterday another brave soul was killed after being taken hostage by the Taliban, she was called Linda Norgrove and was an aid worker. She had been taken 'hostage' by people she had been helping, and when US forces were close to rescuing  her, she was killed in the fighting (possibly by a grenade thrown by the allies, although reports are somewhat confused).

Linda Norgrove - aid worker

Meanwhile in Iraq, the murderers of five british military policeman have been freed by an Iraqi court because of 'lack of evidence', its believed that two accused are politically 'connected' to a local warlord/politician, and are therefore effectively untouchable in the legal system we have installed in 'democratic' Iraq.

Murdered Military Policemen

If we capture any of them, and then try to prosecute them over here, they have been briefed to claim mistreatment, torture, rant in court and generally play to the world Muslim population, who all too readily believe any shit put in front of them, as long as it includes the idea that they are under attack. 

There are lawyers in the West falling over themselves to prosecute soldiers like "Sal" Giunta for 'human rights abuses'.... we are the authors of our own downfall.

The House That Money Built

Princes and Princesses of the Royal House of Saud have long had a reputation for violence towards us 'mere mortals', as well as hypocrisy over their 'religiousness'. For the record there are about *22,000 royals in Saudi Arabia, with about 7,000 classed as 'Princes' — making the ratio of about 1 royal per 1,000 non-royals, and with total control over the media, this means what happens abroad stays abroad. 

 

House Of Saud

But as they don't yet control the western press, we can still follow their global indiscretions with some glee:

Fifty Years Of Independance?

Apparently, its fifty years since the independence of Nigeria. According to some, its been a very good thing, and Nigeria has boomed in those fifty years.

Fifty Years Since Nigerian Independence



• Average life expectancy up a whopping 10 years from 38 to 48 ...(wow! .... I'd be dead in Nigeria).
• Infant Mortality down from 165 to 98 per 1000 births.
• Average births per female down from 6, to 5.
• Number of doctors per 1,000 up from  0.017148 to 0.40.

However looked at another way, Nigeria remains one of the worst performing countries in the world even on these measures of 'success'. I might add that outside of these official measures of success, Nigeria is also renowned for its total corruption, Internet scams, and racial and religious genocides (Remember Biafra?).

I blame us British for some of this failure. We should have split Nigeria into two countries for independence: A Muslim Northern state (which could retreated into ignorance and backwardness by itself - widespread suspicions over Western morals in schools, mean that girls in northern Nigeria rarely go to school), and a Christian / Animist Southern one, which might have made some progress.

Instead, we hitched separate tribes, languages, and religions together, and hoped to 'make a country'  out of this hodgepodge. Instead we got, well a mess. But there our blame ends, the incompetence and corruption they created all for themselves ....  It's estimated that in Nigeria, more than $400 billion was stolen from the state treasury by Nigeria's leaders between 1960 and 1999.

It is interesting to note that Indonesia is also celebrating fifty years of independence ..... they started from around the same base level of measurements, but look at the figures now.

Nigeria and Indonesia compared:

Life expectancy

• Nigeria: Men, 47. Women, 48
• Indonesia: Men, 69. Women, 73

Gross national income, per capita

• Nigeria: $1,160
• Indonesia: $2,010

Gross domestic product

• Nigeria: $207.12 billion (mostly oil revenue)
• Indonesia: $510.73 billion

Population below poverty line

• Nigeria: 70%
• Indonesia: 17.8% 

Tells you everything about both Africa and Africans ......