Ideological austerity: London fire service cuts vs huge bonuses at publicly owned banks On Thursday the 8th of January hardened London firefighters wept as their fire stations were shut down. Ten stations were closed down simultaneously in a desperate Tory attempt to save £45 million. To put this figure of £45 million into better perspective it is useful to look at the bonuses that were paid out at the taxpayer backed banks RBS and Lloyds. Despite making a £570 million pound loss, Lloyds - which is 43% owned by the taxpayer - handed out £365 million in bonuses for the 2012-13 economic period. RBS fared even worse, losing £5.2 billion (making total losses of £34 billion since the 2008 bailouts), but they handed out £607 million in bonuses to their staff. An apologist for the Tory cuts might try to deflect from the issue by asking what these extravagant bonus handouts at loss-making banks have to do with the government. More articles from ANOTHER ANGRY VOICE
4 Step Guide to Building a Herb Spiral | Want to make your own vertical herb spiral garden? This compact space saving design can be made with just a few basic steps. Construction materials and methods vary so after deciding on the best position and gathering your materials, you can have one built the same day. Depending on your budget and taste, herb spirals can be made very economically or be quite elaborate like this one with stone filled gabion walls. * [The original link to this image (via Cara-Ornamentals) is no longer available. If you like this particular design and want to learn to make the curved wire baskets, see the end of this post for videos & wire basket suppliers for Gabion Herb Spirals. Materials you’ll need Cardboard (without ink or tape), weed mat or gravel – optional but useful to kill weeds if building your spiral straight on top of lawn. Gather edging materials e.g. bricks, pavers, stones, rocks – choose long-lasting materials for a permanent structure. Location Herb spiral with compass points.
Cameron's internet filter goes far beyond porn - and that was always the plan There is no porn filter, and blocking Childline is not an accident The idea of an internet porn filter has always been a political fiction, a conveniently inaccurate sound bite used to conjure images of hardcore fisting and anal rape in the feverishly overactive imaginations of middle Britain. What activists actually called for - and ISPs were forced to provide - is an 'objectionable content' filter, and there is a vast, damp and aching chasm between the two. The language of the mythical 'porn filter' is so insidious, so pervasive, that even those of us opposed to it have been sucked into its slippery embrace. But this was never the case. "As well as pornography, users may automatically be opted in to blocks on "violent material", "extremist related content", "anorexia and eating disorder websites" and "suicide related websites", "alcohol" and "smoking". And the restrictions go further still.
How I'm heating a room for 8p a day Rising energy bills are a hot topic at the moment. So it’s no surprise that a video showing viewers how to make DIY heater on the cheap has proved popular. The rather aptly-named Dylan Winter first posted the clip on YouTube under the name KeepTurningLeft. The journalist and boat owner says the heater is an alternative way to heat both his boat and home office. He reckons the DIY heater can keep a room warm for just 8p a day if it’s used in conjunction with the heat generated from a computer. At the time of writing the clip had 2,455,677 views. But the big question is: does it work? Setting up the heater As a freelance journalist who works at home, keeping warm is a big issue. I found I had all the components of the DIY heater already. Winter’s video shows how the tea-lights are put inside a bread tin, lit and covered with a small upside-down flowerpot. The small flowerpot is covered by a second, larger pot and the hole in the bigger flowerpot is left uncovered. My heater How does it work?
Did Hyman Minsky find the secret behind financial crashes? 23 March 2014Last updated at 21:14 ET American economist Hyman Minsky, who died in 1996, grew up during the Great Depression, an event which shaped his views and set him on a crusade to explain how it happened and how a repeat could be prevented, writes Duncan Weldon. Minsky spent his life on the margins of economics but his ideas suddenly gained currency with the 2007-08 financial crisis. To many, it seemed to offer one of the most plausible accounts of why it had happened. His long out-of-print books were suddenly in high demand with copies changing hands for hundreds of dollars - not bad for densely written tomes with titles like Stabilizing an Unstable Economy. Senior central bankers including current US Federal Reserve chair Janet Yellen and the Bank of England's Mervyn King began quoting his insights. Here are five of his ideas. Stability is destabilising Minsky's main idea is so simple that it could fit on a T-shirt, with just three words: "Stability is destabilising." Ponzi schemes
Kepler Team Announces Discovery of Earth-Sized Planet in Habitable Zone Since its launch in the spring of 2009, NASA's Kepler Space Telescope has been hunting exoplanets. The holy grail being a planet that is essentially like ours in terms of size, composition, and habitability: an Earth-twin. While we still haven't found a planet that exactly fits that bill, Kepler has now confirmed the discovery of an Earth-sized exoplanet in its star’s habitable zone. The announcement was made at a press conference and the findings have been published in Science. Kepler-186f is about 10% larger than Earth and orbits an M dwarf star around 500 light-years away in the constellation Cygnus. Life as we know it requires the presence of liquid water, so a planet with the potential for life would be not too close to the star (which would be too hot and the water would be vapor) yet not too far away (where it would be too cold and the water would be ice). "We know of just one planet where life exists -- Earth.
Early schooling damaging children's wellbeing, say experts More than 100 teachers, writers and academics have said the government's early years education policies are damaging children's health and wellbeing. The education specialists have written to the secretary of state, Michael Gove, to demand that children be allowed to learn through play instead of being prepared for formal lessons at such an early age. Signed by 127 senior figures including Lord Layard, director of the wellbeing programme at the London School of Economics, and Sir Al Aynsley-Green, the former children's commissioner for England, the letter in the Telegraph says current research "does not support an early start to testing and quasi-formal teaching, but provides considerable evidence to challenge it". It says: "Very few countries have a school starting age as young as four, as we do in England. Children must be receiving education by the age of five, and by age seven they are subject to three Rs assessment. • This article was amended on 16 September 2013.
How to read and understand a scientific paper: a guide for non-scientists « Violent metaphors Update (1/3/18) I’ve been overwhelmed with requests for the shorter guide, and the email address below no longer works. So I’ve uploaded a copy of the guide for anyone to download and share here: How to read and understand a scientific article. Please feel free to use it however you wish (although I’d appreciate being credited as the author). I apologize to everyone who emailed me and didn’t get a response! If you would like to let me know who you are and what you’re using it for in the comments below, I’d love to hear! Update (8/30/14): I’ve written a shorter version of this guide for teachers to hand out to their classes. Last week’s post (The truth about vaccinations: Your physician knows more than the University of Google) sparked a very lively discussion, with comments from several people trying to persuade me (and the other readers) that their paper disproved everything that I’d been saying. It’s not just a fun academic problem. “Be skeptical. What constitutes enough proof? 1. 2.
Ukip founder Alan Sked: 'The party has become a Frankenstein's monster' | Politics The founder of Ukip is trying to prove to me that, when he was in charge, the party wasn't racist. He's also trying to demonstrate that his Ukip wouldn't have had its snout in the European parliament's expenses trough, unlike its 2014 incarnation. "I had one here not so long ago," says Alan Sked, professor of international history at the London School of Economics, as he searches for a membership application form as evidence. It's a tough task: his office, the LSE's Room E503, is a stranger to the declutterer's art – it's not so much overwhelmed with books and papers as booby-trapped by them. Room E503 is historically significant for modern British politics. But, first, where is that piece of paper? He hands me the form. "They got rid of all that after I left," says Sked, who resigned the leadership shortly after the 1997 general election. But those changes alone don't make 2014 Ukip racist, do they? Farage has denied that he said these words and always insists that he is not racist.
Dear parents, you are being lied to. Note: The content of this article was written by Dr. Jennifer Raff for her blog, Violent Metaphors. It is being rehosted here with permission. You can click on the above hyperlink to view the original and engage in the lively discussion in the comments section. In light of recent outbreaks of measles and other vaccine preventable illnesses, and the refusal of anti-vaccination advocates to acknowledge the problem, I thought it was past time for this post. Dear parents, You are being lied to. They say that measles isn’t a deadly disease. They say that chickenpox isn’t that big of a deal. They say that the flu isn’t dangerous. They say that whooping cough isn’t so bad for kids to get. They say that vaccines aren’t that effective at preventing disease. They say that “natural infection” is better than vaccination. They say that vaccines haven’t been rigorously tested for safety. They will say that doctors won’t admit there are any side effects to vaccines. Why are they lying to you?
Gove tells teachers to do more to instil respect in pupils in bid to stop cyber-bullying Teachers have to give the 'right behaviour and discipline policies', he saysEducation Secretary also says that websites must be held to account By Tamara Cohen Published: 23:32 GMT, 27 August 2013 | Updated: 23:32 GMT, 27 August 2013 Call for action: Education Secretary Michael Gove said teachers must do more to stop the 'viciousness and personal cruelty' of online bullies Teachers must do more to stop the ‘viciousness and personal cruelty’ of online bullies such as those who taunted teenager Hannah Smith to death, Michael Gove said yesterday. The Education Secretary suggested not enough was being done in the classroom to instil ‘respect for other human beings’ and teach pupils ‘the right values’. He said cyber-bullying was a ‘huge problem’, but that as well as those who run websites being held to account, teachers had to provide the ‘right behaviour and discipline policies in schools’. This included tolerance of difference and also respect for other human beings, he said.
Unconventional Portrait Project Captures A Different Side Of Homelessness When we think of a photography series capturing the faces of homelessness, a few very specific images come to mind. They usually involve black-and-white photos of subjects in their makeshift homes or on the city streets that give a dark but realistic impression of homeless life. Photographer Jan Banning wanted to separate himself from this style of portraiture, choosing to focus on the person rather than their living situation. "I wanted to photograph them in a studio setting, against a neutral backdrop, focusing on their individuality rather than on stereotypes," Banning writes on his website. "In essence, I want to show who they are rather than what they are labeled." Banning captures close-up shots of his diverse subjects -- people he encountered in South Carolina, Georgia and Mississippi in 2010 and 2011 -- set against the neutral screen of a photography studio. Banning has a knack for sharply communicating difficult topics with his imagery.
Child poverty in Britain is causing 'social apartheid' | Society | The Observer Britain risks "sleepwalking into a world where inequality becomes so entrenched that our children grow up in a state of social apartheid", according to a leading charity. In a damning report to be published next week, the National Children's Bureau finds that, in many respects, child poverty is now a bigger problem than during the 1960s, when it carried out a seminal study, Born to Fail?. The report compares aspects of children's lives today to data from the Born to Fail? It adds: "Today, although there have been some improvements, overall the situation appears to be no better, and in some respects has got worse." The report finds that: ■ A child from a disadvantaged background is still far less likely to achieve a good level of development at four than a child from a more privileged home. ■ Children living in deprived areas are much more likely to be the victim of an unintentional injury or accident in the home. The co-author of the original Born to Fail? "That cannot be denied.
CraigCoops: This is brilliant. Genuine...