Leatherhead Matters

Earlier this week Melanie Phillips (Mail Online) wrote an excellent article on the epidemic of youth, knife crime & the deluded response from the Children’s Commissioner, Sir Al Aynsley-Green.

The outbreak of knife attacks by teenagers is just the tip of the iceberg. What it confirms is that carrying a knife in many urban areas has become common place. The solution to the problem is crystal clear to all, including the Government. It’s “Stop & Search”. The liberal, left will scream but, they offer no alternative.

We now live in a world of “health & safety” where both national & local inspectors roam the land banning all sorts of activities because there may be some minor health & safety risk. Insurance premiums for all sorts of previously normal activities have rocketed because of a surge in compensation claims.

And yet, the Government sits on its hands while youngsters are assaulted & murdered with knives on a weekly basis.

The police have been politicised by this government so, they can’t unilaterally initiate  “stop & search” without a nudge from the government.

How many more teenagers have to die before the government stop posturing & take effective action?

Top German soccer clubs have become the most profitable in Europe, overtaking England’s Premier League despite the latter’s growing lead in revenue, a report said on Thursday.

The German league, which includes teams such as Bayern Munich, earned 250 million euros ($393.1 million) in operating profit, or 18 percent of its revenue, in the 2006/07 season, compared with the Premier League’s 141 million euros, giving a margin of 6 percent, the report said.

Read More HERE

H/T Last of the Few

if anyone had said fifty years ago, that the people of this country would be:

1. Staked out by their local councils to make sure they actually lived where they said they did;
2. Have small computers secretly planted in their waste bins to spy on their rubbish;
3. Routinely photographed everywhere they went, and the resulting information kept for ever, in secret;
4. Would be required to carry ID cards;
5. Would have to have passports to move from one part of the UK to another;
6. Could be held without charge for two weeks (soon to be six weeks);
7. Could have their assets sequestered by the state on being arrested (not convicted) of certain offences;
8. Could be arrested for buying a pound of bananas;
9. Could be cautioned for displaying the English Flag of St George
10. And have 80% of the laws of the land made in a foreign country by unelected officials who cannot be removed

Would anyone have believed it?

Source: An Anonymous post on Mr Euginedes

Every day Gordon Brown wakes up he looks for more ways to spend our cash. He is addicted to debt and like any addiction, it’s a pathological state.  Addicts typically “progress” through 3 stages, characterised by:

1. constant cravings and preoccupation with obtaining the substance;
2. using more of the substance than necessary to experience the intoxicating effects;
3. and finally ….experiencing tolerance of the addictive substance, withdrawal symptoms, and decreased motivation for normal life activities.

After a decade of bingeing on debt, Gordon is certainly showing sign of withdrawal from normal life activities and his normal sources of supply are deserting him.

The Guardian today says:

Senior officials in the Labour party, including Gordon Brown, could become personally liable for millions of pounds in debt unless new donors can be found within weeks

The party has five weeks to find £7.45m to pay off loans to banks and wealthy donors recruited by Lord Levy, Tony Blair’s former chief fundraiser, or become insolvent. A further £6.2m will have to be repaid by Christmas - making £13.65m in all. The sum amounts to two-thirds of the party’s annual income from donations.

The figures are a conservative estimate as they do not include interest that will also have to be paid. A Labour source said that although the total debt was listed as £17.8m on the Electoral Commission website, the true level, with interest, was nearer to £24m.

And on the economy, the National Statistics Office says:

The UK net debt was £526.8 billion at the end of April, compared with £495.9 billion a year earlier. The Budget forecast for net debt at the end of March 2009 is £581 billion (Source: National Statistics Online). Government net debt has been steadily increasing as a proportion of gross domestic product (GDP) as shown in the chart on the right. (Note:The National Statistics data probably understates the real picture since, their data excludes Northern Rock)

Poor Gordon! How can we help him start to kick the habit? Perhaps he should start by calling the National Debtline on 0808 808 4000. Or, perhaps he should look at the DirectGov web site on “Ways Out of Debt“. This helpfully explains 

If you’re struggling with debts, they may seem impossible to manage. However, there are ways to get out of debt, no matter how bad the situation seems. And there’s plenty of free advice available to help you.

The most important step to take is to “Face up to your debt problem. Almost everyone owes money - bills are a fact of life. But sometimes you may find you’re swamped with debts and can’t see a way of paying them all. The worst thing you can do is to ignore the problem - it won’t just go away”

Gordon is most likely to confront his addiction by seeking financial advice & assistance from the National Unity Bank & the Cooperative Bank (otherwise known as the Trade Unions)….. although the terms of further loans are unlikely to be declared to UK citizens!

Or, finally, if things get totally out of hand, Gordon would be well advised to go to the National Debtline  web site page on “Managing Bankruptcy“, while the rest of us leave the country!

“Thatcherism” and “Blairism” were easily defined but what exactly is “Brownism”?

Obsessed that the state knows best, Brownism can best be described by its dubious achievements:

• record taxation
• hyper-regulation
• the biggest debts in Europe
• the destruction of private pension schemes
• post office closures
• appalling public transport
• and a looming energy crisis.”

H/T James Forsyth

High energy, super-caffeinated energy drinks, with names like Red Bull, Monster, Full Throttle and Amp, have surged in popularity in the past decade. However, new research suggests these drinks are associated with a health issue far more worrisome than the jittery effects of caffeine.

The Journal of American College Health has published a report on the link between energy drinks, athletics and risky behaviour. The study’s author, Kathleen Miller, an addiction researcher at the University of Buffalo, says it suggests that high consumption of energy drinks is associated with a constellation of risky and aggressive behaviours including unprotected sex, substance abuse and violence. “It appears the kids who are heavily into drinking energy drinks are more likely to be the ones who are inclined toward taking risks,” Miller said.

It’s not clear, yet, whether individuals who exhibit risky behaviour are drawn towards high energy drinks or, whether the drinks trigger the bad behaviour.

In the USA, the drinks have been linked with reports of nausea, abnormal heart rhythms and emergency room visits.

In Colorado Springs, several high school students last year became ill after drinking Spike Shooter, a high caffeine drink, prompting the principal to ban the beverages. In March, four middle school students in Broward County, Florida, went to the emergency room with heart palpitations and sweating after drinking the energy beverage Redline. In Tigard, Oregon, teachers this month sent parents an e-mail alerting them that students who brought energy drinks to school were “literally drunk on a caffeine buzz or falling off a caffeine crash.”

Another worry is the increasing popularity of mixing energy drinks with alcohol. The addition of caffeine can make alcohol users feel less drunk, but motor coordination and visual reaction time are just as impaired as when they drink alcohol by itself, according to an April 2006 study in the medical journal Alcoholism: Clinical and Experimental Research.

Mary Claire O’Brien, associate professor in the departments of emergency medicine,  Winston-Salem, North Carolina, surveyed energy drink and alcohol use among college students at 10 universities in North Carolina. The study, published this month in Academic Emergency Medicine, showed that students who mixed energy drinks with alcohol got drunk twice as often as those who consumed alcohol by itself and were far more likely to be injured or require medical treatment while drinking. Energy drink mixers were more likely to be victims or perpetrators of aggressive sexual behaviour. The effect remained even after researchers controlled for the amount of alcohol consumed.

H/T Herald Tribune

A new report on drugs in society by the Academy of Medical Sciences suggests there are increasing similarities in the future use of cognition enhancers by students with the current use of performance enhancing drugs in sport.”

The report discusses emerging classes of chemicals, as well as currently available drugs and their increasing use. The attention deficit therapy Ritalin is often used by college students to increase their powers of concentration. A recent survey also revealed that many competitive scientists themselves buy medicines online to allow them to work longer and harder.

The President of the AMA said:

It is likely that the use of cognition enhancers will increase, so an assessment of the social and economic impacts now will allow Government and others to consider ‘localised’ regulation around use in schools, universities and the workplace.

The use of psychoactive drugs by patients and healthy individuals will become an increasing feature in all our lives. Society must be prepared to respond to these developments. We must act now to harness the opportunities offered by advances in brain science to treat and prevent disease, but also to reduce the harms associated with drug misuse and addiction.”

The report’s authors fear that if left unchecked, drug users could obtain an unfair advantage in examinations. They note that plastic surgery is increasingly accepted as normal in society. Research among members of the public indicated that currently most view cognition enhancement with suspicion, drawing a distinction between caffeine and the narcolepsy treatment Modafinil, on grounds that coffee has been part of society for generations.

Public suspicions of cognitive enhancement fall into five categories according to the AMS:

• Unwanted or unknown side effects, related to a general fear of addiction and the absence of information about their long term effects.
• Devaluation of ‘normal’ achievements and the potential reduction in the intrinsic value of the effort and motivation involved in learning.
• Inequality, particularly if such drugs were expensive. Pressure to use and exacerbation of an already over-competitive culture.
• Control of people’s behaviour.
• Personality change, perhaps resulting from long-term use.

As the exam season looms, one of the examination boards, Edexcel, is gearing up to introduce James Bond style gizmos to detect exam cheating.

Schools’ names will be invisibly written within single letters of exam papers using “microtext”, effectively watermarking them to prove they are genuine because the microtext cannot be photocopied.

24 Hours style radio tracking technology will be fitted to the courier bags in which exam papers are sent to schools. Bosses will be able to scan exam papers remotely to make sure they have not been tampered with.

The board will continue to use sophisticated anti-plagiarism computer software to analyse pupils’ written answers and detect whether they have copied each other’s work, or if a whole class’s answers are suspiciously similar.

According to Edexcel’s managing director, Jerry Jarvis, 80% of children that cheat get caught and the chances of them getting away with it have fallen dramatically. (How does he KNOW that 80% get caught if he admits some don’t get caught???)