Tip:
Highlight text to annotate it
X
Highlights
of the news today Friday 20th September 2013 Short-staffed hospitals forced to recruit
nurses from overseas after axing 5,000 jobs Privatisation of probation service will 'put
public at risk' Give up work... you'll be better off on benefits:
What council officer told single mother with a part-time job
Scotland Yard to 'Downgrade' Police Entry Tests to Allow for Ethnic Minorities
Greek Government Hints at Golden Dawn Ban Jihadists Threaten Catalonia, Spain Over Burqa
Ban Kenya poachers to be named and shamed online
Indian terror suspect escapes from Mumbai court
Thought for the Day -- Fracking or just fracking awful?
And finally -- a joke for the weekend!
UK NEWS Short-staffed hospitals forced to recruit
nurses from overseas after axing 5,000 jobs A quarter of hospitals are being forced to
recruit nurses from overseas after being left short-staffed from job cuts, it has emerged.
Approximately 5,000 posts have been axed in the last three years leaving many trusts struggling
to fill staffing gaps.
Under a Freedom of Information request, it emerged that 37 trusts out of 172 have sent
managers to a recruitment event abroad. A further 12 admitted they were planning to
hire from overseas, figures obtained by The Times show. The chief executive of the Royal
College of Nursing, condemned NHS trust bosses for their 'short-sightedness' in firing staff
to make short-term savings.
It comes after analysis by King's College London found almost half of hospital wards
have less than one nurse per eight patients. Committee chairman Stephen Dorrell MP said:
'It's the whole issue in the health service about recognising good practice.'
W@8 Says it is not just hospitals firing nurses. It is the government and nursing colleges
who have cut training placements by 25% since 2009. Almost 200,000 nursing hopefuls applied
for less than 18,000 training spots in 2013 and we have to bring in foreign nurses to
meet the shortage. It is in fact legalised job genocide against our own people. Shame.
Privatisation of probation service will 'put public at risk'
Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, signalled his determination to push ahead with the £800m
privatisation of the bulk of the National Probation Service, which traces its roots
back to 1907. He will publish advertisements Thursday inviting bids to take over around
three-quarters of the service's current workload.
Under the moves, the 35 existing regional probation trusts will be replaced by 21 government
companies which will tender out the work of supervising more than 200,000 offenders each
year considered to present low or medium risk. Those regarded as high risk will continue
to be monitored by a slimmed-down national probation service. Potential bidders include
such firms as G4S and Serco, which are both being investigated over alleged fraud in Ministry
of Justice contracts.
Probation staff demonstrated against the moves across England and Wales Thursday in action
being jointly organised by the National Association of Probation Officers (Napo), Unison and the
GMB.
Give up work... you'll be better off on benefits: What council officer told single mother with
a part-time job * Chelsea Press, 23, told she was £54 a week
worse off by working part-time * Basildon District Council said she would
have an additional £2,850 a year * Miss Press gets by on £650 wages, £81.24
child benefit and £454 working tax credits and child tax credits each month
* She often waits for Lacey to finish food before she knows if she can eat
* She refuses to quit and doesn't want to set a bad example for her daughter
As an unemployed person, she would not have to pay rent or council tax and would be £238
a month better off.
However her daughter Lacey knows her mother works and helps old people. Ms Press just
hopes her daughter is proud of her and in her own words Ms Press says "I want to set
her a good example and show her that you don't just sit at home expecting everything to be
given to you on a plate."
This presenter says 'When I was bringing up my children alone-I went through a period
of not being able to work and appealed to the local council for temporary help. I was
told then in the late 80's that I should not pay my mortgage and get thrown out, not try
for any jobs and then I would get a council house locally and all the benefits, otherwise
there was nothing they could do for me. Clearly this thinking has not changed'.
Scotland Yard to 'Downgrade' Police Entry Tests to Allow for Ethnic Minorities
SCOTLAND Yard wants to downgrade the importance of written English tests at police recruitment
centres to make it easier for candidates from ethnic minorities to join the Met.
Bosses believe people who do not have English as their first language are being discriminated
against under current assessment rules. They have recommended the weighting placed on the
"Written Communication" section of the Metropolitan Police's tough entrance exam is lowered.
W@8 states 'This is the worst example of racism -- I know for a fact that the Police are not
recruiting British men for a British institution -- so they are having to dumb down the entry
levels to attract yet more ethnics. It is a national disgrace'.
EUROPEAN NEWS Greek Government Hints at Golden Dawn Ban
The Greek government has hinted that it will seek to ban Golden Dawn after the far-right
party was linked to the *** of a leading leftwing musician in Athens.
As violence erupted on the streets and demonstrators protested after the fatal stabbing of Pavlos
Fyssas, a prominent anti-fascist, the public order minister, Nikos Dendias, cancelled a
trip abroad saying the government would table emergency legislation that would seek to outlaw
the group. Amid renewed political tensions between the extreme left and right, the new
law would re-evaluate what constituted a criminal gang, he said. "Neither the state will tolerate,
nor society accept, acts and practices that undermine the legal system," the minister
told reporters, adding that the attack showed "in the clearest way the [party's] intentions".
Earlier in the day, police raided Golden Dawn offices across the country, with media reporting
running street battles outside branches in Crete, Thessaloniki and Patras.
W@8 comments 'Do the authorities know for sure that a Golden Dawn member did this killing?
Or is it rather like Syria? You know that Sarin was used just as you know that this
guy is dead but the whole point is at whose hands did he die and who used the Sarin? Are
people dense or what? Governments don't make a fuss when a so called right winger is stabbed
to death in public do they?
Jihadists Threaten Catalonia, Spain Over Burqa Ban
A jihadist group affiliated with Al Qaeda has threatened to carry out terrorist attacks
in Catalonia, an autonomous region in northeastern Spain that is home to the largest concentration
of radical Islamists in Europe.
The threats were issued by a group called "Africamuslima" in response to efforts by
Catalonian lawmakers to increase surveillance of radical Salafists seeking to impose Islamic
Sharia law in Spain and other parts of Europe. Many of the Muslims living in Catalonia are
shiftless single males who are unemployed and "susceptible to jihadist recruitment,"
according to diplomatic cables obtained by Wikileaks and published by the Madrid-based
El País newspaper. Spanish authorities are especially concerned about the threat posed
by Salafism, a radical strain of Islam that seeks to re-establish an Islamic empire [Caliphate]
across the Middle East, North Africa and Spain, which Salafists view as a Muslim state that
must be reconquered for Islam.
W@8 says 'We need Ferdinand and Isabella back in Spain or Franco'.
WORLD NEWS Kenya poachers to be named and shamed online
About 100 elephants are killed each year in Kenya. A website to name and shame poachers
in Kenya - PoachersExposed.com - has been launched by wildlife campaigners. Those charged
or convicted of links to poaching will be listed, Kenyans United Against Poaching (Kuapo)
said.
"This is not just about the poacher who is shooting the bullet but the middle man and
the average Joe caught trafficking rhino horn or ivory," Kuapo's Salisha Chandra told the
BBC. It is also hoped the data will reveal trends to help fight poaching. Meanwhile,
a similar project to track corruption in Mali has been launched by the French government,
which has given more than 100,000 euros (£84,200; $135,400) in aid to the West African country.
W@8 states 'I think you all know exactly what I would do with the vile men and it wouldn't
be too quick either'.
Indian terror suspect escapes from Mumbai court
An Indian terror suspect accused of involvement in deadly bomb attacks five years ago escaped
from a court in Mumbai on Friday, sparking a massive manhunt, police said. Afzal Usmani,
allegedly a member of a home-grown Islamist group known as the Indian Mujahideen, was
appearing in court to hear prosecution charges against him, according to local media reports.
"He has escaped. The police, everybody is looking for him," Mumbai's anti-terror squad
chief Rakesh Maria told AFP. Usmani was arrested in 2008 for his alleged involvement earlier
that year in serial blasts in western Gujarat state which killed 56 people. He is accused
of being part of another attempted bombing in the same state, reports said. It was not
immediately clear how Usmani had escaped amid heavy police security at the court.
Thought for the Day-Fracking or just fracking awful?
The subject of fracking is rearing its ugly head yet again and bringing discord to what
should be a fairly straightforward thing, but is it? As usual the two sides are vehemently
opposed to listening to each others' side of the argument and the telling factor is
that the United States is almost self contained for its energy needs mainly due to fracking.
But as usual there are two sides to every tale and we have to take into account that
the shale beds in the States are generally much nearer to the surface than in the UK
and a factor that has not hit the media is that to do what the Americans have done even
in a lesser quantity would take hundreds of digs and sites not just an occasional one
in every region, even getting the 10% energy which would keep us going for around 40 years
would take many more digs than just a couple -- in fact hundreds. The whole of our countryside,
already under threat from over building, new railways and new airports -- would be even
more decimated.
Now I am a tree hugger, to me trees make the land, I am a tree person I'm afraid but this
doesn't blind me to the fact that we in the western world need to find an alternative
source of energy to that of oil and we need to find it quickly.
Cold fusion is a passion of mine, I don't have the brains to know ;much about it or
do anything about it but if I had large amounts of money this is what I would fund, nationalism
and cold fusion! I know that nuclear power plants are a horrible necessity because our
civilisations have become totally dependent on energy of one form or another and indeed
in Europe especially we are becoming so overcrowded with immigrants and their birth rates -- we
are in sense funding the third world as well.
It needs pointing out that all governments are frantically backing practically any new
potential cheaper sources of energy for their new people not us. Our birth rates are diminishing
-- so it is obvious our government and the rest of the Europe are worried about future
immigrant needs, not ours. So you might say why should we have our countryside destroyed
just to keep immigrants warm and you would have a point. It may not be so cut and dried
but it is the truth in a nutshell -- our government is only too happy to fund anything that will
bring energy prices down -- as it is a good election ploy for a start.
Believe me despite the future designated use of new energy sources I for one would welcome
a cheaper form of energy, especially for our elderly and infirm and to help lift the yoke
of OPEC from our shoulders -- but the arguments against fracking in the UK are becoming noisier
and more understandable.
What goes on in Vegas stays in Vegas and the same applies to fracking. The idea is a simple
one but it all depends on the depth of the rock to get to the shale beds underneath.
This is the main fact which remains solid, the more depth you have to drill the more
the earth is displaced and other gases like Methane can be allowed into the shale beds
or beyond. Fracking sites also do not handle localised flooding very well.
Now this is happening in the States -- there are many cases of a displacement of tanks
on the fracking sites which have suffered with the floods in Colorado and tons of oil
have been dispersed into the water and grazing lands of cattle. The US media is very quiet
about this and the main information has been from social networking sites. I will read
a few samples to you now:
I see you've noticed the underwater wells in Weld County, Colorado. Amazing; we've emailed
the Denver TV stations, other media, and state and local politicians. We've sent pictures
that our members have taken. It's like the media and politicians have been TOLD not to
say anything about it. There has been no mention of the gas wells on the Denver newscasts either
last night or this evening although all stations have had extensive and extended flood coverage.
You can see underwater wells in the background of some of the newscast videos, and yet the
reporters say absolutely nothing. Here's a picture one of our members took yesterday
in Weld County, Colorado. We've got tons more on our website. Check it out. The tanks are
tipping and, in some cases, have fallen over. They have to be leaking toxins into the flood
waters. There have to be hundreds if not thousands of underwater well pads in Weld County as
a result of the flooding. Please publicize this in Texas since our media people and politicians
have gone silent! People living in Weld County contacted me a few minutes ago and they are
now receiving many press calls about the underwater, leaking oil and gas facilities
Lafayette-based anti-fracking activist Cliff Willmeng said he spent two days "zig-zagging"
across Weld and Boulder counties documenting flooded drilling sites, mostly along the drainageway
of the St. Vrain River. He observed "hundreds" of wells that were inundated. He also saw
many condensate tanks that hold waste material from fracking at odd angles or even overturned.
"It's clear that the density of the oil and gas activity there did not respect where the
water would go," Willmeng said. "What we immediately need to know is what is leaking and we need
a full detailed report of what that is. This is washing across agricultural land and into
the waterways. Now we have to discuss what type of exposure the human population is going
to have to suffer through." A spokesman for the Colorado Oil and Gas Conservation
Commission said the agency is aware of the potential for contamination from flooded drilling
sites, but there simply is no way to get to those sites while flooding is ongoing and
while resources are concentrated on saving lives.
Now you will know that there are hundreds of fracking sites in the US and that is the
only way this works, the more wells and the more drilling that is undertaken the more
plentiful the results of so called cheaper energy -- only if we listen to what is happening
in the US we can gauge that it isn't quite so free as is advertised. You cannot say in
all honesty that the less desirable side effects both on man and beast won't happen here -- as
our shale beds are deeper and our countryside cannot accommodate hundreds of wells -- those
that are in place will have to go deeper than in the States and no one, let alone our government
or privately funded corporate scientists are able in all truth to look into the future
-- just into a future of large financial kickbacks and potential freedom from international rigging
of oil prices and the dominion of black gold.
Apart from the fact that no one really knows what the effect will be on the environment
from fracking long term -- there is always the problem in this country of just too little
space to operate sufficient sites to make it worthwhile. For many years our farming
industry has been pushed further and further into concentrated battery farms for cattle
to accommodate more building yet at the same time trying to provide more food for more
people at more affordable prices and I personally don't think that our farming industries can
get much smaller without having a very serious impact on both the animals, their husbandry
and the product.
Even now -- we are feeding cattle non vegetarian foodstuffs, which is in another word the slurry
off the slaughterhouse floor and because of this the poor beasts are being shot full of
antibiotics and God knows what -- all to produce hopefully more meat for the growing population.
Just imagine the impact of a horde of fracking sites surrounding various farms as well -- and
the already ghastly lives of our cattle will be even worse -- as even the so called fracking
experts cannot predict the effect of sustained drilling on an environment that hasn't been
open to this sort of large scale invasion of drill sites before.
Our Party is not against progress or the feeding of the 5 thousand of preferentially our own
tribes, but when something is desperately needed, it is only too human to grasp the
first straw handed to them without really thinking about it and dismissing adverse stories
as bunkum and Luddite.
Personally I think that it looks good on paper- in fact it looks marvellous on paper -- and
if you think about it, it reads like a very few drilling sites are needed for the most
return when in fact it is the reverse. One drilling site may prove fruitful for a while
but then the need will increase and so will the drilling sites, until our previously green
and pleasant land and already fragile eco system will be dominated by large drilling
sites, which are not in themselves vast but the sheer number of them will be just that,
vast.
Fossil fuels are just that, fossils holding up something else and we know to our cost
of the many collapses and falls during the times of the coal mines. In fact why not open
the coal mines again? All the new machinery from the 80's is down there and there must
be many seams of coal that have not run out or the mine flooded? Why don't we stick to
what we know for a time and just see how fracking works in other countries -- but bear in mind
all countries have a different network of rock and different depths and to be honest,
different needs.
And finally The Mayor of London was very worried about
the plague of pigeons in the City. He could not remove the pigeons from the city.
All of London was full of pigeon poop, The good people of London could not walk On
the pavements nor drive on the roads. It was costing a fortune to keep the streets
and pavements clean. One day a man came to the Town Hall and offered
The Mayor a proposition. 'I can rid your beautiful city of its plague
of pigeons Without any cost to the city.
But, you must promise not to ask me any questions. Or, you can pay me one million pounds to ask
Just one question.' The mayor considered the offer and accepted
The free proposition. The next day the man climbed to the top of
Nelson's Column, Opened his coat and released a blue pigeon.
The blue pigeon circled in the air and Flew up into the clear blue London sky.
All the pigeons in London saw the blue pigeon and Gathered behind the bird.
The London pigeons soon followed the blue pigeon As it flew eastwards out of the city.
The next day the blue pigeon returned alone to The top of Nelson's Column.
The Mayor was very impressed. He felt the man and his blue pigeon had performed
A wonderful service to London By getting rid of the pigeons.
Even though the man with the blue pigeon had charged nothing,
The mayor presented him with a check for 1 million pounds and
Told the man that, indeed, he did have a question to ask and Even though they had agreed to
no fee, He decided to pay 1 million pounds just to ask ONE question.
The man accepted the money and told the mayor to ask His ONE question.
The mayor asked: 'Do you have a blue Muslim ?
And this presenter makes no apologies to any Muslim in the UK whatsoever.
Get a sense of humour my friends, get a sense of humour!
You have been listening to the W@8. I am Lynne Mozar and I and the team at W@8 and Radio
Britain wish you all a very happy and safe weekend.
W@8.20.09.13.