"… it is an end result which is achieved by a collective vision, detailed planning and organisation and nigh on perfect execution... " The Guardian
Sunday 30 September 2012
Saturday 29 September 2012
Home thoughts from ... well home actually!
Finished a 12 week nursing practice placement - so sad to finish, I have loved it. Now I am worried (a little) about having chosen child nursing. This last placement was on an elderly orthopedic ward - hip fractures. I LOVE working with the elderly - I have found I have endless patience for their care. I think I feel the same about caring for children (well I know I do for my own) but have yet to put this into practice. Child practice starts mid October...... watch this space.
On an different subject, entirely, my 16 year old daughter went to London with a friend today: afternoon in London and then train to friends house north of London. They went to Hyde Park to attempt to see Tobuscus - a YouTube 'celebrity'. 'YouTube celebrity' is an idea that is rather new to me and I thought I was fairly 'with it'. Anyway, a little scary checking out twitter feeds about a near riot at this 'meet-up', demanded immediate reassuring txt message from daughter and luckily got one!
I have met, in person, quite a few people that I originally got to know on the internet and find that to be quite a normal process, so it is maybe odd that I haven't really taken in the whole media revolution - probably why it has taken me 25 years of internet usage to get round to writing a blog!
On an different subject, entirely, my 16 year old daughter went to London with a friend today: afternoon in London and then train to friends house north of London. They went to Hyde Park to attempt to see Tobuscus - a YouTube 'celebrity'. 'YouTube celebrity' is an idea that is rather new to me and I thought I was fairly 'with it'. Anyway, a little scary checking out twitter feeds about a near riot at this 'meet-up', demanded immediate reassuring txt message from daughter and luckily got one!
I have met, in person, quite a few people that I originally got to know on the internet and find that to be quite a normal process, so it is maybe odd that I haven't really taken in the whole media revolution - probably why it has taken me 25 years of internet usage to get round to writing a blog!
Tuesday 25 September 2012
From the Guardian: the myth of self-created millionaires
Mitt Romney and the myth of self-created millionaires
The
parasitical ultra-rich often deny the role of others in the acquisition
of their wealth – and even seek to punish them for it
We could call it Romnesia: the ability of the very rich to
forget the context in which they made their money. To forget their
education, inheritance, family networks, contacts and introductions. To
forget the workers whose labour enriched them. To forget the
infrastructure and security, the educated workforce, the contracts,
subsidies and bailouts the government provided.
Every political system requires a justifying myth. The Soviet Union had Alexey Stakhanov, the miner reputed to have extracted 100 tonnes of coal in six hours. The US had Richard Hunter, the hero of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches tales.
Both stories contained a germ of truth. Stakhanov worked hard for a cause in which he believed, but his remarkable output was probably faked. When Alger wrote his novels, some poor people had become very rich in the US. But the further from its ideals (productivity in the Soviet Union's case, opportunity in the US) a system strays, the more fervently its justifying myths are propounded.
As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people's wealth.
The crudest exponent of Romnesia is the Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart. "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she insists. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourselves – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising and more time working … Remember our roots, and create your own success."
Remembering her roots is what Rinehart fails to do. She forgot to add that if you want to become a millionaire – in her case a billionaire – it helps to inherit an iron ore mine and a fortune from your father and to ride a spectacular commodities boom. Had she spent her life lying in bed and throwing darts at the wall, she would still be stupendously rich.
Rich lists are stuffed with people who either inherited their money or who made it through rent-seeking activities: by means other than innovation and productive effort. They're a catalogue of speculators, property barons, dukes, IT monopolists, loan sharks, bank chiefs, oil sheikhs, mining magnates, oligarchs and chief executives paid out of all proportion to any value they generate. Looters, in short. The richest mining barons are those to whom governments sold natural resources for a song. Russian, Mexican and British oligarchs acquired underpriced public assets through privatisation, and now run a toll-booth economy. Bankers use incomprehensible instruments to fleece their clients and the taxpayer. But as rentiers capture the economy, the opposite story must be told.
Scarcely a Republican speech fails to reprise the Richard Hunter narrative, and almost all these rags-to-riches tales turn out to be bunkum. "Everything that Ann and I have," Mitt Romney claims, "we earned the old-fashioned way". Old fashioned like Blackbeard, perhaps. Two searing exposures in Rolling Stone magazine document the leveraged buyouts which destroyed viable companies, value and jobs, and the costly federal bailout which saved Romney's political skin.
Romney personifies economic parasitism. The financial sector has become a job-destroying, home-breaking, life-crushing machine, which impoverishes others to enrich itself. The tighter its grip on politics, the more its representatives must tell the opposite story: of life-affirming enterprise, innovation and investment, of brave entrepreneurs making their fortunes out of nothing but grit and wit.
There is an obvious flip side to this story. "Anyone can make it – I did without help", translates as "I refuse to pay taxes to help other people, as they can help themselves": whether or not they inherited an iron ore mine from daddy. In the article in which she urged the poor to emulate her, Rinehart also proposed that the minimum wage should be reduced. Who needs fair pay if anyone can become a millionaire?
In 2010, the richest 1% in the US captured an astonishing 93% of that year's gain in incomes. In the same year, corporate chief executives made, on average, 243 times as much as the median worker (in 1965 the ratio was 10 times lower). Between 1970 and 2010, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, rose in the US from 0.35 to 0.44: an astounding leap.
As for social mobility, of the rich countries listed by the OECD, the three in which men's earnings are most likely to resemble their father's are, in this order, the UK, Italy and the US. If you are born poor or born rich in these nations, you are likely to stay that way. It is no coincidence that these three countries all promote themselves as lands of unparalleled opportunity.
Equal opportunity, self-creation, heroic individualism: these are the myths that predatory capitalism requires for its political survival. Romnesia permits the ultra-rich both to deny the role of other people in the creation of their own wealth and to deny help to those less fortunate than themselves. A century ago, entrepreneurs sought to pass themselves off as parasites: they adopted the style and manner of the titled, rentier class. Today the parasites claim to be entrepreneurs.
Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com
Every political system requires a justifying myth. The Soviet Union had Alexey Stakhanov, the miner reputed to have extracted 100 tonnes of coal in six hours. The US had Richard Hunter, the hero of Horatio Alger's rags-to-riches tales.
Both stories contained a germ of truth. Stakhanov worked hard for a cause in which he believed, but his remarkable output was probably faked. When Alger wrote his novels, some poor people had become very rich in the US. But the further from its ideals (productivity in the Soviet Union's case, opportunity in the US) a system strays, the more fervently its justifying myths are propounded.
As the developed nations succumb to extreme inequality and social immobility, the myth of the self-made man becomes ever more potent. It is used to justify its polar opposite: an unassailable rent-seeking class, deploying its inherited money to finance the seizure of other people's wealth.
The crudest exponent of Romnesia is the Australian mining magnate Gina Rinehart. "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she insists. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain; do something to make more money yourselves – spend less time drinking or smoking and socialising and more time working … Remember our roots, and create your own success."
Remembering her roots is what Rinehart fails to do. She forgot to add that if you want to become a millionaire – in her case a billionaire – it helps to inherit an iron ore mine and a fortune from your father and to ride a spectacular commodities boom. Had she spent her life lying in bed and throwing darts at the wall, she would still be stupendously rich.
Rich lists are stuffed with people who either inherited their money or who made it through rent-seeking activities: by means other than innovation and productive effort. They're a catalogue of speculators, property barons, dukes, IT monopolists, loan sharks, bank chiefs, oil sheikhs, mining magnates, oligarchs and chief executives paid out of all proportion to any value they generate. Looters, in short. The richest mining barons are those to whom governments sold natural resources for a song. Russian, Mexican and British oligarchs acquired underpriced public assets through privatisation, and now run a toll-booth economy. Bankers use incomprehensible instruments to fleece their clients and the taxpayer. But as rentiers capture the economy, the opposite story must be told.
Scarcely a Republican speech fails to reprise the Richard Hunter narrative, and almost all these rags-to-riches tales turn out to be bunkum. "Everything that Ann and I have," Mitt Romney claims, "we earned the old-fashioned way". Old fashioned like Blackbeard, perhaps. Two searing exposures in Rolling Stone magazine document the leveraged buyouts which destroyed viable companies, value and jobs, and the costly federal bailout which saved Romney's political skin.
Romney personifies economic parasitism. The financial sector has become a job-destroying, home-breaking, life-crushing machine, which impoverishes others to enrich itself. The tighter its grip on politics, the more its representatives must tell the opposite story: of life-affirming enterprise, innovation and investment, of brave entrepreneurs making their fortunes out of nothing but grit and wit.
There is an obvious flip side to this story. "Anyone can make it – I did without help", translates as "I refuse to pay taxes to help other people, as they can help themselves": whether or not they inherited an iron ore mine from daddy. In the article in which she urged the poor to emulate her, Rinehart also proposed that the minimum wage should be reduced. Who needs fair pay if anyone can become a millionaire?
In 2010, the richest 1% in the US captured an astonishing 93% of that year's gain in incomes. In the same year, corporate chief executives made, on average, 243 times as much as the median worker (in 1965 the ratio was 10 times lower). Between 1970 and 2010, the Gini coefficient, which measures inequality, rose in the US from 0.35 to 0.44: an astounding leap.
As for social mobility, of the rich countries listed by the OECD, the three in which men's earnings are most likely to resemble their father's are, in this order, the UK, Italy and the US. If you are born poor or born rich in these nations, you are likely to stay that way. It is no coincidence that these three countries all promote themselves as lands of unparalleled opportunity.
Equal opportunity, self-creation, heroic individualism: these are the myths that predatory capitalism requires for its political survival. Romnesia permits the ultra-rich both to deny the role of other people in the creation of their own wealth and to deny help to those less fortunate than themselves. A century ago, entrepreneurs sought to pass themselves off as parasites: they adopted the style and manner of the titled, rentier class. Today the parasites claim to be entrepreneurs.
Twitter: @GeorgeMonbiot
A fully referenced version of this article can be found at www.monbiot.com
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/sep/24/mitt-romney-self-creation-myth
Sunday 23 September 2012
Tonights Dinner: Tomato and Anchovy Sauce with pasta
Serves 6
Adjust anything to taste and always, always taste as you are cooking (including the wine!)
Olive oil & butter
3 Medium Onions
1 small bulb of garlic
1 red chilli de-seeded
Herbs - I used basil and a Herbs de Provence mix today
Red wine
10 anchovies in oil (drained)
2 x 200g tins of Italian tomatoes I used organic tomatoes from Suma (bought on Amazom!)
Fresh basil leaves to serve - though I have a thing for rosemary atm and might add some whilst cooking tonight and a sprig on serving :)
Use a nice wide, thick based, shallow pan with neatly fitting lid if possible. I use a risotto pan for most pasta sauces.
Cook pasta of choice 'al dente'
Adjust anything to taste and always, always taste as you are cooking (including the wine!)
Olive oil & butter
3 Medium Onions
1 small bulb of garlic
1 red chilli de-seeded
Herbs - I used basil and a Herbs de Provence mix today
Red wine
10 anchovies in oil (drained)
2 x 200g tins of Italian tomatoes I used organic tomatoes from Suma (bought on Amazom!)
Fresh basil leaves to serve - though I have a thing for rosemary atm and might add some whilst cooking tonight and a sprig on serving :)
Use a nice wide, thick based, shallow pan with neatly fitting lid if possible. I use a risotto pan for most pasta sauces.
- Melt 1oz of butter in pan with large slug of olive oil
- Fry roughly chopped onions till starting to brown (add more oil/butter if needed)
- Reduce heat and add roughly chopped garlic
- Add finely diced chilli (Tip: if it's a hot chilli try adding half then taste after tomatoes have been in for 15mins before adding rest. You can always add more, you can't take it out!)
- Add about a table spoon of your chosen herbs
- Continue cooking for a few more minutes.
- Add about a glass (old style not new style... Ok! About 125ml) of red wine followed by the anchovies.
- (Look in pan and think 'that could do with more wine and add a slug for good luck - well that's what I always do anyway)
- Turn up heat and cook for 3 minutes, stirring all the time, allowing anchovies to breakdown into the sauce.
- Add the tomatoes, bring to a simmer and put neatly fitting lid on pan.
- Simmer for up to an hour
Cook pasta of choice 'al dente'
The drugs don't work
It's hard to comment on this apart from to say: READ IT! NOW!
The drugs don't work: a modern medical scandal
The doctors prescribing the drugs don't know they don't do what they're meant to. Nor do their patients. The manufacturers know full well, but they're not telling.
by Ben Goldacre
by Ben Goldacre
Carrots
Dreamt of having a phone where the messages were stored on carrot sticks. Unfortunately the carrot sticks in question were really yummy and I ate them all rather than reading my messages. Al was very cross. . . .
(edit)
This happened in the most fantastic steam-punk railway station a cross between Hugo and Steamboy only problem is now every-time I think of the dream I can still taste the carrots and they tasted better than any real carrot ever will....
(edit)
This happened in the most fantastic steam-punk railway station a cross between Hugo and Steamboy only problem is now every-time I think of the dream I can still taste the carrots and they tasted better than any real carrot ever will....
Sunday 16 September 2012
Roller-blading!
No not me, Rob and Oli - at least there's a decent wifi connection :) Easy to spot the York roller derby girls - they are wearing the coolest clothing :) and look relaxed and not perpetually, petrified of falling! When I see them all relaxed and cool I briefly think 'I could do that' then sanity reasserts itself and I stick to my computer!
Wow! I have adverts!
Quite worrying that that makes me excited! I don't like adverts, they are intrusive, materialistic, mind-numbing, etc, etc. But in this case it means my blog has been approved! Yay!
I won't be asking you to click on them (I'm not allowed to) - if there is a 'you' reading this rather than just a me writing this and I'm not allowed to click on them even if I, the writer, am the only reader. Becomes a bit of an existential conundrum, what is the point of their existence? Well today they made me smile.
Tomorrow I might hate them!
Tuesday 11 September 2012
Life on the ocean wave river. Our old home :(
A wonderful life but not always as convenient as needed and very small when filled with a mixture of adults and teenagers!
In winter we were warm and cosy and it was often beautiful - even when the river didn't freeze like this but the field we had to walk across was very, very muddy - think festival mud then times by 3!
And here's a few more pictures of Elbrich
And here's a few more pictures of Elbrich
Maths....
One of those maths questions doing the rounds on facebook:
of the over 170,000 responses it looks like over 70% of them are wrong (no I didn't check!) While many people are likely to forget school maths lessons I find the number of incorrect answers quite worrying.
of the over 170,000 responses it looks like over 70% of them are wrong (no I didn't check!) While many people are likely to forget school maths lessons I find the number of incorrect answers quite worrying.
Monday 10 September 2012
Hat trick of a day
Today really should have been cancelled.
(substance abuse workshop was the high point, compared to the rest it was a veritable Everest)
(substance abuse workshop was the high point, compared to the rest it was a veritable Everest)
Today's essential reading
Spoon theory by Christine Miserandino
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/
http://www.butyoudontlooksick.com/articles/written-by-christine/the-spoon-theory/
Monday morning...
Surely the week can only get better.......
Monday morning...
Monday morning...
There are no words to think of, no
words to say
for how do I know if you'll 'take' them
'my' way
all words have two meanings or three,
four, five...more
I can't numerate each and decide for
sure
So I'll stay quiet and think and ponder
too much
Thinking this way or this, maybe this
and such
and so the time for talking passes by
all unsaid
with everything bottled inside my head.
Sunday 9 September 2012
The fault in our stars
So on the advice of Pe33les I read a book this weekend, made me cry lots, well written, insightful, made me think about how I'm going to cope as a children's nurse......
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars
well worth the tears :) thank you John Green!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Fault_in_Our_Stars
well worth the tears :) thank you John Green!
So.....
poetry the odd picture.... the odd link
Well we're not really going that well yet but exams, essays and festivals have interrupted:
:-(
:-/ and :-D
Talking of festivals new(ish) post by Pe33les:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL036B7AF691780036
(I being the briefly mentioned beer serving 'rent)
Well we're not really going that well yet but exams, essays and festivals have interrupted:
:-(
:-/ and :-D
Talking of festivals new(ish) post by Pe33les:
http://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL036B7AF691780036
(I being the briefly mentioned beer serving 'rent)
Deviant Spirit
Deviant Spirit
Deviant, not fitting in,
walks the edges, smiles on a whim.
You give me a label, a badge, a name;
it doesn’t matter I stay just the same.
I never needed your rules, your code;
never heeded the looks you showed.
And yes how it rankles to see me so free
and all you can say is you wouldn’t be me!
It’s you who miss out it’s you who is sad
with your prim ways that label me bad!
Where does it get you, this convention of yours,
that treats me like a rag to wipe floors?
A threat to your peace, to your safety too,
is how you view me and all that I do.
And you think I care when you express your disgust
of the things that I care for, of those that I trust.
And never by look or by deed have you shown
that I also have rights, that I also own,
a right to be happy, a right to have fun
and to pass on these joys to my daughter, my son.
You want for them what you wanted for me,
to be blinkered, be blind to what they can see.
But no, I won’t do it, I will not fit in
to make you feel comfortable within your skin.
So "Fuck you world, I’ll go it alone."
I don’t care at all for the things you have shown
to me as reasons to behave, to conform,
I really don’t want to fit to your 'norm'.
So let me be me and you be you
and lets get on with the things that we do.
And if I pity you each day that goes by,
at least you'll never understand why!
walks the edges, smiles on a whim.
You give me a label, a badge, a name;
it doesn’t matter I stay just the same.
I never needed your rules, your code;
never heeded the looks you showed.
And yes how it rankles to see me so free
and all you can say is you wouldn’t be me!
It’s you who miss out it’s you who is sad
with your prim ways that label me bad!
Where does it get you, this convention of yours,
that treats me like a rag to wipe floors?
A threat to your peace, to your safety too,
is how you view me and all that I do.
And you think I care when you express your disgust
of the things that I care for, of those that I trust.
And never by look or by deed have you shown
that I also have rights, that I also own,
a right to be happy, a right to have fun
and to pass on these joys to my daughter, my son.
You want for them what you wanted for me,
to be blinkered, be blind to what they can see.
But no, I won’t do it, I will not fit in
to make you feel comfortable within your skin.
So "Fuck you world, I’ll go it alone."
I don’t care at all for the things you have shown
to me as reasons to behave, to conform,
I really don’t want to fit to your 'norm'.
So let me be me and you be you
and lets get on with the things that we do.
And if I pity you each day that goes by,
at least you'll never understand why!
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