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Eulogy for NHS: Heath care act to usher in two-tier health care system

Harry Leslie Smith
© Sarah Lee for the GuardianHarry Leslie Smith: 'The ­creation of the NHS made us understand that we were our brother’s keeper.'
In 1926, Harry Leslie Smith's sister died of TB in a workhouse infirmary, too poor for proper medical care. In 1948, the creation of the NHS put a stop to all that. In an extract from his new book, Harry's Last Stand, he describes his despair at the coalition's dismantling of the welfare state

A midwife with a penchant for gin delivered me into the arms of my exhausted mother on a cold, blustery day in February 1923. I slept that night in my new crib, a dresser drawer beside her bed, unaware of the troubles that surrounded me. Because my dad was a coal miner, we lived rough and ready in the hardscrabble Yorkshire town of Barnsley. Money and happiness didn't come easily for the likes of us.

Considering the hunger, the turmoil and the squalor in Britain during the early years of the 20th century, it was miraculous that I lived to see my third birthday. That I survived colic, flu, infection, scrapes and bangs without the benefits of modern sanitation, hygiene or health care, I must give thanks to my sturdy peasant genes. As a baby, I was ignorant of the great sorrow that enveloped England and Europe like a damp, grey fog. The nation was still in mourning for her dead from the world's first Great War. It had ended only five short years before my arrival. Nearly a million British soldiers had been killed in that conflict. It had begun in farce in 1914 and ended in bloody tragedy in 1918. In four years, that war killed more than 37 million men, women and children around the world.

Comment: It appears the UK is moving toward a disastrous system similar to the USA where 'health care' will only be available for those wealthy enough to afford it.


Bad Guys

Tensions brewing in South Yorkshire: Angry villagers warn of riots due to clashes with immigrant population

hexthorpe shouth yorkshire
Trouble brewing: Residents of Hexthorpe, South Yorkshire, said people would take the law into their own hands unless the authorities step in to combat anti-social behaviour they blame on Roma immigrants
Angry villagers yesterday said riots could break out if police do not deal with hundreds of Roma immigrants who they claim have ruined their community.

Residents of Hexthorpe, South Yorkshire, said people would take the law into their own hands unless the authorities step in to combat anti-social behaviour.

At a public meeting yesterday, emotions ran high as 120 locals confronted police and council officials.

Hexthorpe has a population of 3,300 and 500 Roma residents, most of whom are said to have arrived since January when entry rules to the UK were relaxed.

Villagers claim Roma groups are fly-tipping and leaving litter in the streets. They say they make so much noise at night that elderly residents have to sleep with ear plugs, while others are scared to go outside.

The meeting also heard allegations of assault.

Handcuffs

Police departments target low-level drug arrests to get millions in funding from the federal government

marijuana drug money
A new report revealed that state and local police departments make low-level drug arrests, such as marijuana possession, to get millions in funding from the federal government.

This little-known funding channel is called the Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant Program, which awards federal money to state and local police who are willing to join the failed and never-ending "War on Drugs."

"This money has helped reshape policing strategies and policies in major cities and a lot of rural areas throughout the United States," Harry Levine, a sociologist at Queens College, CUNY, told AlterNet.org.

"Although the government claims [Byrne grant money] goes toward apprehending high level traffickers, it's often very low level people who get arrested," added Levine. "It targets low-income people and people of color much more than anyone understands."

Comment: This may be one reason police departments are able to afford high tech military gear:

The militarization of US police continues...Machine guns, grenade launchers, silencers and more

Why Do the Police Have Tanks? The Strange and Dangerous Militarization of the US Police Force


Airplane

Dozens of aircrafts briefly vanished from Europe radar

air-traffic controller
© Alex Grimm/ReutersAn air-traffic controller watches his screen at a German air-traffic control centre in Langen near Frankfurt.
Dozens of aircraft briefly vanished from air-traffic control radars in Austria, Germany, the Czech Republic and Slovakia over the last two weeks in incidents that Slovak authorities blamed on military electronic warfare exercises.

Air-traffic controllers in Austria and Germany said data about the planes' position, direction, height or speed went missing on 5 and 10 June, but the outages posed no serious danger to aircraft travelling at high altitude.

Their Czech and Slovak counterparts also encountered cases of vanishing aircraft on the same days.

"The disappearance of objects on radar screens was connected with a planned military exercise which took place in various parts of Europe ... whose goal was the interruption of radio communication frequencies," the Slovak air traffic services said.

"This activity also caused the temporary disappearance of several targets on the radar display, while in the meantime the planes were in radio contact with air traffic controllers and continued in their flight normally.

"Immediately after the identification of the problem with the displays, the side organising the exercises was contacted and the exercise was stopped."

Question

Green puppies shock Spanish dog breeders

Green Puppies
© Aida Vallelado Molina The animals, born on June 3rd, were smaller and weaker than the other pups in the litter.
A pair of dog breeders in the Spanish province of Valladolid were shocked recently when two pups were born green.

"I couldn't believe it when I first saw them," Aida Vallelado Molina told The Local.

"I thought the puppies were dirty and tried to clean them, but the colour wouldn't come off," said Molina, who breeds hunting dogs with her father in the town of Laguna de Duero.

The animals, born on June 3rd, were smaller and weaker than the other pups in the litter. One of them, a female, died shortly after birth while the male pup is still alive, but very weak.

He is now beginning to lose his pigment.

Stormtrooper

The police will kill your dog

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© cesarsway.com
Flipping on the radio during my early commute Monday landed me smack dab in the middle of one of those morning zoos which instantly reminded me why I never flip on the radio during early commutes (and especially not on Mondays).
The debate centered around cops shooting dogs. Apparently police officers from Round Rock, Texas had responded to a burglary alarm at a private residence, and arrived to find the front door ajar. They went inside to sweep the house, only to be confronted by the home owner's eight-year-old, 120-pound rottweiler with hip dysplasia.

The officers proceeded to reportedly shoot the animal a combined total of seven times; one officer firing one round, while the other fired six.
The debate centered around what people thought. One of the deejays argued that the Round Rock PD had already offered to buy the owners a new dog, so it was ridiculous that "some ambulance chaser" would wind up getting them an additional 100-500k for pain and suffering on top of it. The seemingly obligatory female deejay played the sympathetic role, talking about how the pet was the residence owners' baby. Then some guy called in with the rebuttal that a dog "can't make no woman pregnant" so therefore it doesn't count as family (couldn't make that one up if I tried).

Officers killing dogs in "the line of duty" - how common is this becoming in modern America? Seems like no more than three days go by before I hear about a new pet dog slain at the hands of police who, in most cases, were called for help.


Comment: According to these guys a dog is shot by law enforcement every 98 minutes!


Comment: And why are police shooting dogs instead of using less-than-deadly force? Are they trained to do this? Do they not understand that dogs are beloved members of people's families?

Related...

Photos of Dogs Shot by Police

Puppycide: A Documentary


Eye 1

World Cup scandal: French team spots drone spying during practice

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© Screenshot/Evan Woodbery on Vine
Scandal has already taken hold of the World Cup on the tournament's first day of matches.

After spotting a drone hovering over its practice yesterday, France's team manager Didier Deschamps has called for an investigation into the possibility that the team was spied on, according to Yahoo Sports.

Deschamps told Football Italia the drone's operator was likely one of France's potential opponents, or a French news agency. France is in Group E with Switzerland, Honduras, and Ecuador.

USA

Ponerized judge: Woman sentenced to prison for son's school absence dies in jail cell

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Eileen DiNino, a 55 year old mother of 7 was sent to prison because she couldn't afford to pay for her children's truancy fines. Tragically, after serving half of her two day prison sentence, she was found dead in her cell.

District Judge Dean R. Patton of Reading, Pennsylvania sentenced Ms. DiNino to two days in prison to erase roughly $2,000 in fines.

Patton sent the woman away to prison against his better judgement, but as with most government jobs, Patton is required to ignore his own conscience to abide by federal and state laws.

Frog

Monsanto nightmare: Thai military coup ushers in organic farming

Organic farming in Thailand
© Unknown
After the May 22 coup in Southeast Asia's Thailand, the new military-led government has revealed agricultural reforms based on sustainable, organic agriculture - an unprecedented and progressive departure from the unsustainable populist subsidies that proceeded it in Thailand, and that can be found in various degrees of failure around the world. The Royal Thai Army's General Prayuth Chan-ocha gave a basic summary of the reforms in a speech made before the nation late May, stating:
We are trying to find measures to fix the prices of agricultural products without bringing more problems like those that happened in the past. Some of these measures include cost reduction such as costs of fertilizers and seedlings, increase productivity while reducing areas being used, employ natural fertilizer and reduce chemical fertilizers, use of local raw materials, and increase product cost and quality in order to compete with other countries. At present, NCPO has giving priority to paying the rice farmers. The Bank of Agriculture and Agricultural Cooperatives owes the rice farmers a large sum of money. BAAC is now in the process of trying to solve this problem.
The plan seeks to immediately relieve farmers cheated by the ousted regime's failed subsidy program that left nearly a million farmers unpaid for rice they had long-ago turned in to government warehouses. To replace the subsidies, General Prayuth intends to implement a version of self-sufficient, localized agriculture that replaces big-agri with local and sustainable solutions.

Comment: See also:


Chart Bar

Conspiracy theory? Half of Americans doubt official stories

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© AFPAstronaut Edwin E. Aldrin, Jr., lunar module pilot of the first lunar landing mission, poses for a photograph beside the deployed United States flag during Apollo 11 Extravehicular Activity (EVA) on the lunar surface area called the Sea of Tranquility in this 20 July 1969 file photo.
If you've ever doubted any sort of official narrative, then you're far from alone: experts say that more than half of the people in the United States believe in at least one so-called conspiracy theory.

Recent studies suggest that around 50 percent of the American populations subscribes to at least one conspiracy theory, National Public Radio social science correspondent Shankar Vedantam told NPR's Morning Edition this week.

Whether it's concerns about the true nature of the moon landing, the Kennedy assassination or just about anything imaginable - experts say at least half of the US isn't so sure what to think about some of the most controversial topics of the last few generations.

Vedantam told NPR that researchers Eric Oliver and Thomas Wood at the University of Chicago have come up with the latest staggering statistic, which relies on data recorded by four nationally representative surveys conducted between 2006 and 2011.

Comment:
And they have good reason to. Updated, revised and extended:
33 'conspiracy theories' that turned out to be conspiracy facts