Liberal Lessons From Kuwait

In Kuwait, the country that we trashed Iraq for in order to defend it as a bastion of rationality and liberal values (well they have oil and US President Bush was a friend of the ruling family) .....

Kuwaiti MPs Osama al-Shahin (L) and Shaaya al-Shaaya
arrive hand-in-hand to attend a Parliament session. Nice.

... there has been another bout of modernism.

 

Paraplegic Cure Hope

Maybe those rather snide jokes made about Christopher Reeve trying to convince himself that he could regain his ability to walk, with little actual results, were in fact misplaced. A recent study in Switzerland by the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology has discovered that rats, with completely severed, but otherwise still whole spines, could, with a mixture of drugs, electrical current and mental stimulus,  completely regain the use of their motor functions below the spinal breakages.

Walking Rat - Hope For Millions

So complete was the recovery, that there must be renewed hope for millions of people around the world who have spinal injuries. One leading specialist has been quoted as saying that "We are on the edge of a truly profound advance in modern medicine: the prospect of repairing the spinal cord after injury" .... although another urged caution, and warned that in the "real world", the injuries might be "more complicated, with less tissue for new nerves to grow through" ... but even so, its a nice righteous story to end (or start) the week on.

Hungry Hungry Homer

Homers odyssey for a double gulp cola, just became a bit further than before  ...... well if he lived not in Springfield, but in New York, where there are proposals by the mayor to ban them on health grounds.

The Sugar Content Of US Drink Sizes

When you consider the sugar/calorie content of these US mega drinks - A 64-ounce (1.9-litre) Coke has 765 calories.

So does:

• 3.8 pints of Guinness.
• 10 hard-boiled eggs.
• 47 teaspoons of sugar.
• A 14-ounce sirloin steak.
• 24.5 cups of air-popped popcorn.

You can see why they might be classed as a serious health risk  - originally intended for construction workers to take on to building sites and last all day (where they also burnt off the calories), then you can see where those extra few pounds that many Americans carry come from.

Those Big Gulps Soon Pile On The Pounds.

Somali Pirates In Suits

Shock, horror - $130m (£85m) of aid to the interim Somali government has gone 'walkies' i.e. missing, aka 'stolen'- taken by 'pirates in suits'.

• This is Africa, these are amongst the most corrupt of all the peoples in Africa and yet people are surprised. 
• This is after all the land where piracy has become a scourge and yet people are surprised. 
• This is the country where kidnap and extortion are a way of life, and yet people are surprised. 

Would you give your taxes to these men? Our politicians do.

Personally I would have been shocked if the money hadn't been stolen by the officials. But then I live in the real world and not the PC La La land that most Western politicians apparently inhabit ... especially when they are handing out our taxpayers money.

French London

The French generally look down their Gallic noses at the 'Anglos' or 'les rosbifs' as they sometimes call us. However the last few years have seen wave after wave of French economic colonists arrive in the UK, to take advantage of the fact that the UK economy has generally been more dynamic than the French at creating jobs.

It seems that the French state socialism model gives perks to the few, but little to the young educated elites leaving the higher education system. In the streets around the French embassy you will find French bookshops, patisseries and pavement cafes, all patronised by parents dropping off their children at the Lycee Francais Charles de Gaulle in South Kensington. But the newcomers are not these diplomats and industrialists, but rather those who have fled France to get freedom from French bureaucracy.

Many of these economic migrants say that London's employers are more willing to give young professionals a chance ..... "If you want security and nice holidays you stay in France. If you crave adventure and want to get new skills, you come here", says the editor of www.bealondoner.com. 

The thing that highlighted this point was the news that London is officially France's sixth biggest city by population ..... yes a greater population of French than Bordeaux, Nantes or Strasbourg. The French consulate estimates that anywhere between 300,000 and 400,000 French citizens now live in London. The last such influx of French into London was the arrival of around 50,000 Huguenots fleeing religious persecution in the 1680's. Now it appears to be economic persecution that they are fleeing in even greater numbers.

French economic migrant Huguenots arrived on beaches in the 1690's

It would be nice if the French politicians who preach about the superiority of the French system over that of the Anglo-Saxon one, would occasionally consider that 'La Gloire' might shine just a little bit more brightly in the world, if the brightest and the best of the French world were not all flocking to Londres to make their mark in the world.