Royal Mail, UK in Debt and the legalization of a plant

Well that’s it folks. George Osborne is set to sell off the governments final 30% share of Royal Mail, raising £3 billon of the £30 billion the government needs to find. Now apparently the NHS and schools are protected from cuts but when you can amend laws like…erm I don’t know the human rights bill, I guess you can do anything. I mean it’s not like human rights are important, they were only set up to stop things like WW2 happening again, but who cares about 6 million dead Jews, right?

Now on the front end of this I can see that the government need to raise some funds and selling Royal Mail is going to have a lot less backlash than selling the NHS, which I’m still convinced the Tory party will try and do at some point in the next 5 years. But have the government explored other options? Or have they acted like the ignorant, narrow minded, middle aged white men that they are and decided that the only way to raise money is the tried and tested “sell off government shares” method, allowing for the privatization of industries, the same one that brought this country to its knees in the 80’s (thanks Thatcher).

Now I think the problem here is stuffy nosed, upper class British tradition. The same one that makes the rest of the world look at us and think of afternoon tea and cricket not forward thinking politics. Well okay I guess the U.S.A look at us with their two party system and their privatized health care but they only see those things at face value they don’t see the NHS cuts that cause the 8 hour waits in A&E or the fact that the majority of the country could be left wing inclined but have their votes spread across three parties and go on to elect a right wing majority government.

But back to the subject at hand this £30 billion deficit that needs reducing in three years and the measly £3 billion that the sale of Royal Mail will gross. It seems to me that an answer to our problems lies just across the pond, and then across some land and mountains to finally arrive in Colorado. Yes, Colorado U.S.A. home of the Denver Broncos and the Denver Omelet/Omelette and John Denver… well actually not John Denver. But Denver is in Colorado, which is what I was trying to get at.  

Colorado amendment 64 is what we are talking about here, which allowed the legalization of cannabis/marijuana/weed/pot/wacky backy meaning that in January 2014 shops opened that sold drugs legally. What idiots, making drugs legal would lead to vast crime and chaos and have no possible positive effects at all...apart from the $53 million that was raised in taxes from the first year of sales. Going on today’s market that’s nearly £35 million from a state with a population of 5.3 million people less than 10% of the population of the United Kingdom.

I truly believe that this may be the fastest way to clear that £30 billion. And for anyone who thinks that it’s a bad idea I leave you with this. People will do drugs whether they are legal or not, but this way drugs can be taxed the same way alcohol, tobacco and caffeine, aspirin or whatever are. As well as this I believe it’s the perfect way to cheer up this pretty hostile little island.

Pot cookies for everyone!

Further reading:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-33004664

http://www.drugpolicy.org/blog/colorado-and-marijuana-legalization-one-year-later-what-has-changed

http://www.wired.com/2015/06/ben-rasmussen-mixed-bag-exhibition/

http://www.ibtimes.com/pulse/colorado-marijuana-legalization-2015-fighting-black-market-everyday-challenges-1913431

www.thecannabist.co/2015/05/29/telluride-mountainfilm-weed-marijuana-cannabis-conversation/35524/

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/jun/04/human-rights-convention-appeals-uk-cameron

Revolution & a bit of Music

I always like the word Revolution. It makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand to attention and my ears prick up with the intent to be inspired. I also like protest and it always makes me hum “power to the people”. Yet modern revolution seems to be in vain, long gone are the days of the civil rights sit-ins and the gay pride marches both of which got results. I can’t help but wonder why? Modern protests aren’t really doing anything different so why is there no change? I think a recap of worldwide protests is in order, along with the music that helped inspire them. After all every great movement had an accompanied soundtrack.

The 1960’s were all about peace, free love, anti-war and expanding your mind. Fueled by the music of two of the most inspirational music artists ever to live, Bob Dylan and The Beatles. Bob Dylan especially did a lot for the civil rights movement in America very often playing these pro civil rights gigs which being a very popular white act at the time brought white media and focus to the movement this along with many sit-ins, protests, demonstrations and courage from beautiful beings such as Rosa Parks who inspired the 1955 bus boycott made The Civil Rights acts of 1964 & 1968 happen, outlawing discrimination of people based on color or creed and allowing people from all walks of life to have equal opportunities (except the gays we’ll have to wait another 20 years and then some for that to get moving but we’ll get to that). All cogs in the civil rights machine, all of which had an equally important job to do.

Then on to the 70’s, which did not disappoint in the U.K. with the punk movement inspired by The Sex Pistols, The Clash and in America The Ramones and New York Dolls. Although I think that U.K. punk was more punk than American, America sort of glammed it up a bit and wasn’t as anti-establishment as its English counterpart. This was music that inspired a generation of people to say; “Fuck you government!” which can’t be a bad thing can it? And this all from a corporately put together band like The Sex Pistols that were seen as a money making band rather than a revolutionary.

To the 80’s and to the ultra camp, cross-dressing, make up wearing revolution that was all in the name of gay. Boy George with his long dreadlocked hair and colorful make up made the world sit up and take note. Gay was the thing to be in the 80’s music scene as well as Boy George’s Culture Club there was; Frankie Goes to Hollywood the leather wearing, moustache having gays who were very much the stereotype for gay men, David Bowie’s androgyny (even though he’s only half gay), Bronski Beat and their lead singer with the very high voice who if you were hearing it on the radio for the first time would swear it was a woman singing, as well as acts like Erasure and not forgetting the closeted George Michael from Wham! And Freddie Mercury of Queen. I believe that if aids hadn’t turned up to ruin the party that this would have lead to the legalization of gay marriage. Its almost as thought aids turned up on purpose to stop the gay revolution in its tracks, as though someone didn’t want this to happen and wanted to stamp it out. Best I don’t say anything more about this or men in black coats may appear at my door to take me away where I’d disappear off the face of the earth, kind of like that scene in V for Vendetta when Stephen Fry gets kidnapped by the mental right wing party in power.

The 80’s also saw the Brixton riots where people pissed off by the recession decided to protest, which with the arrival of the police turned ugly (as it always does) and there was “Panic on the streets of London”. This seems rather similar to the 2010 riots although the recession was an after thought in that instance but we’ll get to that.

1989 also saw student-lead protesting in China’s Tiananmen Square where they dealt with things calmly and rationally by running people over with tanks in a massacre that lead to 241–2,600 deaths and is still being covered up to this day (if you didn’t get that from the ambiguous numbers of the death toll).

The 90’s were interesting in America with cops kicking the shit out of Rodney King being seen by millions worldwide as though it was the first ever viral video. This lead to riots in L.A. mainly by African-Americans, who were outraged that the “protect and serve” police of the LAPD would brutally beat a man due to the color of his skin. N.W.A’s “Fuck tha police” was never more poignant and these events would inspire Body Count and their song Cop Killer. Yet these riots were somewhat futile as although they drew focus to the events not much has changed as still to this day cops worldwide get away with murder (sometimes literally).

In 1999 anti-globalization activists protested at the World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference in Seattle, Washington causign the conference to end early by taking direct action. Infact there’s was even a film about this made called Battle in Seattle, which I have been meaning to watch but have never got around to. On the music side of things we had Rage Against the Machine one of the most pollitically charged bands ever with songs like Take the power back and Sleep now in the fire.

In the 2000’s everything changed when in 2001 we all had a common enemy in the form of Al-Qaeda, a terrorist organization that attacked the twin towers on September 11^th. What an odd thing to bring everyone in the western world together until the war on terror took hold and the people protest both George Bush and Tony Blair for taking us to war with Afghanistan then Iraq. No more blood for oil was the chant on many American’s lips along with “Fuck Bush!” which I still am not sure as to whether this was a tongue in cheek pun or just a coincidental bit of innuendo. Bush would not be president for much longer as America seemed finally ready to have a black president and one with and Islamic middle name at that. Tony Blair stepped down as prime minister in England and let Gordon Brown a Scottish man who nobody voted for run the country for a bit, unsuccessfully but still he had a go before the next election when the British people in what can only be described as an act of naïve nostalgia decided to bring the 80’s back to Britain with a capitalist, right wing government who would run things into the ground even more. I’m getting ahead of myself a bit there so lets move swiftly on to the ten’s, the ten-ies, the worst decade we’ve had for giving an abbreviated shorthand nickname.

The 2010’s opened with The Arab Spring in 2010 a political movement that soared throughout the eastern hemisphere. The Arab Spring started as the people were pissed at their own governments. These protests were a triumph of the modern day revolution and by December 2013, rulers had been forced from power in Tunisia, Egypt (twice),Libya, and Yemen as well as civil uprisings erupting in Bahrain and Syria; major protests had broken out in Algeria, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Morocco, and Sudan; and minor protests had occurred in Mauritania, Oman, Saudi Arabia, Djibouti, Western Sahara, and the Palestinian territories.

A year later in the west we had the Occupy movement which started as OWS (occupy wall street) in September 2011 but then spread through America and even the U.K. Very little was reported about why this movement started the media instead focused on the fact that there were people camping out on wall street. This was an anti-capitalist movement that used the term “we are the 99%” which referred to most of America’s wealth being held by 1% of the population. Unfortunately unlike the Arab Spring governments didn’t seem to take any notice of this movement, which is still going on as we speak. I find it odd that such a leftwing anti-capitalist movement such as these seems to have had no effect especially not here in the U.K. where things seem to be getting more and more radical rightwing due to immigration and failed attempts at benefit reform. To be honest I think it’s amazing that there was a movement at all due to awful musicians that stand for nothing but still some good ones such as Tom Morello from RATM inspired and joined the fight. Hell the next generation are fucked based on what they listen to Justin Bieber and One Direction, wouldn’t surprise if this shit was made with the intension of dumbing down a generation, making them melancholy and boring. I think we may have just hit something their folks, this shit music is a government funded fight back to insure a generation of stand for nothing brain-deads.

The reason I felt the need to right about any of this if I’m honest is due to the anti-austerity protests here in the U.K. on the 21^st of June, which was in fact just last week. These protests took place in London where tens of thousands of people marched along with Russell Brand to show their anger at the austerity measures introduced by the government. 50,000 people were there none of which were the British media, who at the time were busy reporting Kate Middleton’s son walking at Wimbledon. That right there is real news folks some rich baby walking, good job BBC, ITV etc… you really know how to keep people informed about the real things that matter.

As much as I like Bob Dylan and everything he stood for I do not believe that “the times are a changing” at least not any time soon.

England, Idiots, Immigration, People & Politics - Surviving Over Living

Every man and woman has his or her own idea of “the right way to live life”. Most people I know work jobs they hate to be able to afford lives I wouldn’t thank you for, these same people put themselves on a pedestal, a sort of plateau for the high and mighty. They think that every view or opinion they have whether political or general lifestyle choice is gospel and if you think otherwise you are a buffoon, a lesser being, a good for nothing moron. They think that your life consists of huffing paint and trying not to eat your own shit.

Most of them are right wing loons who feel hard done to by the world, nay by their fellow human beings. They vote for politicians whose views align with their own, yet still complain about the choices made by them. They think that every person on benefits is abusing the welfare state, which makes them bitter. Their opinion is that these people don’t want to work and although this is true in some cases I don’t believe that it is necessary to tar every unemployed person with the same brush. These naive beings think that if every person in the country had a job the government would lower taxes instead of raising them when all they really do is line their own corrupt pockets no matter what.

The other major problem that divides this country (England) is immigration. After two world wars this small island was under populated to which we repopulated using people from Jamaica, India, and Pakistan among others. Since then we have been populated with eastern Europeans, Bangladeshi and hell anyone who wants to come here. At last check the percentage of foreign-born people living in the UK is 12% (based on 2011 census).

On the surface I would say that this is a good thing. It adds culture and that seems like a good thing to me. Unfortunately it’s not that simple as it rarely ever is. London is rife with none English speaking people, and the rest of the country is divided we have communities of people not integrated. How I wish black, white, brown, Christian, Muslim, Sikh, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu, Jedi, Scientologist or whatever else people may be, could live side by side and learn from each other instead of harboring hate for one another in some sort of segregated community reminiscent of America before the civil rights movement.

I have no solutions to this but I don’t think that ultra-rightwing political parties are the answer as they breed hate. These same parties see women as lesser beings and hate anyone who isn’t a white middle class middle manager at some bullshit company that rapes the world of good (or at the very least rips people off).

People are selfish and want what’s best for them regardless of what’s best for everyone. They care about their money and their house and their car and their life. If they want an extension on their house best believe they are voting for the party that will make it easier for that to happen regardless of if that’s the party most likely to go to war for no good reason. I mean who gives a fuck how many innocents die in the Middle East if you get to add another few square feet to your property to increase its value, hey?

These people are not living, they are surviving and believe me there is a difference. People who merely survive work 9 to 5’s or even worse shifts to afford the lives they have been brainwashed to think they want/need. They have kids, have the occasional drink but don’t do drugs. They look after their bodies, probably going the gym a couple of times a week so that they can be healthy, grow old with their families, and so that when they are incontinent and demented in the twilight years of their existences their kids can wipe their asses as they continue on the same surviving cycle as their parents before their kids have to do the same for them and so on and so on. Living on the other hand is being who you want to be, doing what you want to do and answering to nobody. To do a job not because of the amount of money you’ll make doing it nor for the ease of which the job can be done but because you want to do it, you enjoy doing it. Living is not being bound by laws created by another man, for other men. God, I sound like some sort of hippy-anarchist, time to wrap this one up. All I wanted to really say is do whatever suits you whether that’s working in a store, being a doctor or whatever else you may want to do, as long as it suits you that’s all that matters. Fuck the system.

KFC at closing time. Food waste, HS2 & Scottish Independence.

Last night after a night spent at a function and a day spent barely eating I was starving and decided at 10.45pm to call in at a KFC not too far from where I live. I assumed the Drive-Thru part of this place was closed as there were huge industrial bins blocking the entrance to it. So I pulled onto the nearly empty car park where the only other beings were a middle-aged man in a small white Vauxhall Corsa, who was fidgety as though he had lost something and a couple of teenagers in a shitty Peugeot 106 which sounded like it had a massive hole in the exhaust. Needless to say I took down my satnav (which had tried to take me down a closed road on my way home and then decided to take me on a ten minute detour so was not in my good books) and I headed inside.

On entering the “restaurant” I noticed that there was a small queue consisting of two drunk men, one of them was clearly Scottish and was reading the menu out-loud to himself, the other was from Manchester and was ordering his food while getting confused when the woman serving him was trying to explain that his order would be cheaper as a meal rather than as separate items. Eventually she gave up confusing him and just put his order through. The Scottish bloke was mumbling something about deep fried Mars bars before ordering. The Manc then turned to me “Do you work here?” “No” I replied before a few moments of silence. He then turned to me again “you know they throw all the already cooked stuff away, right? Into those big bins and they’ve got padlocks on so no one can steal it. Why don’t they just give it away for free? Or give it to a homeless shelter?” This drunkard lunatic had a point. I took a second to think and replied, “its stupid isn’t it? There are hungry people worldwide who are crying out for some MSG” (Monosodium glutamate, if you don’t know what it is look it up, its not good). He looked puzzled, he wasn’t sure if I was being sarcastic or not so I decided to jump back in with a less cocky response “Surely it wouldn’t hurt them to give it to homeless people. Wouldn’t cost them anything to do it, would it?” He nodded, realizing we were on the same page.

By this time the Scottish bloke and finally got through to the woman behind the counter, I felt sorry for her as I couldn’t understand much of what he was saying, it was though he was speaking some sort of foreign language with the odd English word chucked in. It was my time to order, which I did more elegantly than the drunks before me, I paid and all that was left for me to do was stand around with these drunks until our orders were complete. It never occurred to me at the time what a Jock (colloquial term for a man from Scotland not a teenage American boy who was into sports) and a Manc were doing in the middle of England on a Wednesday night but looking back it was sort of peculiar, I assume that they were here on some sort of work although in the current climate that in itself also seems a little odd as this area isn’t a hotspot for work.

The Manc who ordered first got his big bag of food and stood away from the till distracting a KFC employee who was trying to mop the floor, still going on about them wasting food while also trying to score freebees. The Scottish bloke then got his slightly smaller bag of food and was just waiting on his Coke, which he repeatedly harassed the woman who took his order about, but she was either ignoring him or didn’t understand a slurred word he was saying. “Ess’cuse me love? Wha aboot mee coke? Missy? Yee’d be a shite drug dealer, I jus want me coke.” My order then came as well as the drink I ordered while the woman then explained to the man that he never ordered a drink in the first place. I exited as he fumbled round in his pocket for some change to buy a coke.

I got in my car, checked my phone and started my engine. I pulled off and as I turned out of the car park I noticed the two men walking towards the town, I remember thinking they must have sprinted out of the store to be ahead of me. I then pulled up at a red light, I could see the two men in my rearview mirror walking along the path in the same direction in which I had just come. They seemed to be wondering the streets with no direction just enjoying what was a mild night while enjoying their genetically modified mutant fried chicken. Carefree full stomached fools of the night.

I drove off and all I could think about was the food waste from that particular KFC that night, damn drunk Manc got in my head. So I decided to look up KFC’s food waste policy and after a quick Google search I found a statement on their own website which read:

“We work hard to minimise the volume of food waste our restaurants generate and in 2014, some of our restaurants will pilot a food reuse scheme that safely distributes unused cooked food to local charities. We will work through the operational and health and safety hurdles of the pilot in partnership with Harvest, they have successfully helped us to implement similar schemes with KFC in the US and are also testing with KFC France. We will report progress in the next CSR update.

From January 2014, 80% of all food waste from back of house areas in Scotland will be recycled via Anaerobic Digestion. Our plan is to roll-out back of house food waste recycling to all other restaurants throughout 2014. We will report progress on this scheme in the next CSR update.

Food waste in Scotland

In line with the requirements of the Waste (Scotland) Regulations 2012, we will:

• Minimise food waste and exceed voluntary targets currently requiring that at least 70% is reused, recycled or composted, and none is sent to landfill. Our own target is at least 80%.
• Provide effective education and publicity about waste and recycling.

One requirement is to provide collection points in our restaurants for customers to dispose of food waste. We are currently trialling ways for customers to recycle rubbish, and the solution we choose will ensure the maximum amount of rubbish is recycled.”

http://kfc-csr.co.uk/environment/food-waste.html

Seems like Scotland have got something right, so if they can do this for some restaurants in England why not all? They are after all doing this in Scotland (80% of at least and I’m guessing there are some bits that aren’t fit for human consumption which I’m guessing is that other 20%).  Then it dawned on me the later part of that statement, The Scottish government have put regulations in place to stop unnecessary waste while the English government are busy planning a railway line from London to Manchester that will only benefit people going to/from London, Birmingham and Leeds. Which believe it or not there are trains that already do that on existing lines (just a little slower than the proposed HS2, and never mind that traveling across the country is a nightmare as the lines that used to run from east midlands to west midlands have been closed since I can remember, which if reopened would surely benefit the country and be cheaper than building a new unnecessary railway).

So props to Scotland in addressing another real life issue as they’ve previously done with university fees rather than the bullshit English government worrying about how fast yuppies can travel the length of the country. Jesus, no wonder they want to be independent.