The Solution to the Credit Crunch?

Independent groups, associations and organisation

or

Government, Big Business, Banks?

surely

We shall have to do it ourselves.

Governments, Big Business, and Banks should be serving us not the other way round.

Come on Waitrose Stop the Rare Breed "Spin" and TELL YOUR CUSTOMERS THE TRUTH

Fast from Jamie Oliver's programme on the "Pig Industry" - bringing to light the atrocious husbandry and conditions that most pigs are kept in a friend emailed me their latest "e" campaign cleverly worded to make it seem they are helping to keep "rare breeds" of pigs in the UK.

From their Website :

Waitrose Hampshire Sired Free Range Pork

Waitrose Hampshire Sired Free Range Pork is found in a selected range of Waitrose stores in both pre-pack assortments and on the Service Meat Counter.

What is different about Waitrose Hampshire Sired Free Range Pork?

Waitrose Hampshire Sired Free Range Pork is reared on a limited number of specialist farms based in Norfolk, Suffolk and Wiltshire.

The piglets are born to a specially bred sow, which was specifically developed for outdoor production in the UK. The Hampshire sireline used was chosen for its breed traits which include hardiness and vigour for growth in the outdoor environment and for its superb eating quality.

So what they are saying here is they use the same genetic freaks as the female and then cross breed with a "Hampshire" boar.

The thing is the Hampshire breed IS NOT RARE, AND IS AN AMERICAN BREED.

In other words this is marketing speak which sounds great unless you know what they are actually talking about.

See for yourself the REAL RARE BREEDS by visiting the site of the Rare Breeds Survival Trust http://www.rbst.org.uk/watch-list/pigs

Or see http://www.britishpigs.org/breed_hp.htm

The Hampshire

The first line from this website of the British Pig Association says;The Hampshire Breed has been developed in the United States of America and is now one of the World’s most important breeds.

Boar		Sow

And if you read the articles below what next?

Essential Reading - Thanks Sam!

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/surveillance-idcards

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2009/jan/27/house-lords-scandal

Caption Competition

Yes We Can

So Obama has the crowds chanting. Change you can believe in?

Do we need a messianic leader to rebuild society?

Can we re-build local economies and better communities ourselves?

Do we really need a ruthless all powerful state to keep us safe?


Some thoughts from people cleverer than I;

"If the Nuremberg laws were applied today, then every Post-War American president would have to be hanged."

— Noam Chomsky

Anarchism is not a romantic fable but the hardheaded realization, based on five thousand years of experience, that we cannot entrust the management of our lives to kings, priests, politicians, generals, & county commissioners."

— Edward Abbey

"The people have only as much liberty as they have the intelligence to want & the courage to take."

— Emma Goldman

All our political forms are exhausted & practically nonexistent. Our parliamentary and electoral system & our political parties are just as futile as dictatorships are intolerable.

Nothing is left. & this nothing is increasingly aggressive, totalitarian, & omnipresent. Our experience today is the strange one of empty political institutions in which no one has any confidence any more, of a system of government which functions only in the interests of a political class, & at the same time of the almost infinite growth of power, authority, & social control which makes any one of our democracies a more authoritarian mechanism than the Napoleonic state.

— Jacques Ellul, Anarchie et Christianisme

"Many people say that
government is necessary
because some men cannot
be trusted to look after
themselves, but anarchists
say that government is
harmful because no men
can be trusted to look after
anyone else." -- Nicolas Walter (1924-2000)
British journalist, philosopher, atheist, anarchist

"The Revolution evaporates, & leaves behind only the slime of a new bureaucracy. The chains of tormented mankind are made out of red tape."

— Franz Kafka

"In a time of universal deceit,
telling the truth is a revolutionary act."

— George Orwell

Blues go Green ? Greens go Blue?

The third runway is the final betrayal

A Labour government approves the expansion of Heathrow – why, it's almost enough to make you vote Tory

It's almost enough to make you vote Conservative. When I read this afternoon that the government had decided to approve a third runway – and sixth terminal – at Heathrow and that the Conservatives are still promising to ditch it if they win the next election, my first thought was "I hope the Tories get in". My second thought was "What the hell am I saying?" My third thought was "What other reaction could the government expect?"



So says George Monbiot in the Guardian Today - full article here

Readers of this Blog

Thanks for popping by.

Shocked today to find through Google Analytics there are nearly a 1000 visitors !

Red Cross stopped from saving children

Team Building

Great teams change things . A great core team can overcome huge odds.

Seven is a good number but maybe 4 maybe 11..

Great teams consist of people who trust each other.

Trust deepens and strengthens with time.

Team trust grows with time spent together, working, talking, bonding, supporting, planning and especially time jointly failing and dealing with failures, disappointments and hard times.

> Time = > Trust = > Team ?

Israeli Voices for Peace

Amy Goodman’s New Column, “Israeli Voices for Peace”

Israel’s assault on Gaza, by air, sea and now land, has killed (at the time of this writing) more than 600 Palestinians, with more than 2,700 injured. Ten Israelis have been killed, three of them Israeli soldiers killed by friendly fire. Beyond the deaths and injuries, the people of Gaza are suffering a dire humanitarian crisis that is dismissed by the Israeli government. There is, however, Israeli opposition to the military assault.

Listen to this Column

Time to March

For the real news - http://www.democracynow.org


Emergency national demonstration: Saturday 10 January

This is what Israel's barbarity looks like Anyone with a semblance of humanity who watches this video and hears what this doctor in a Gaza hospital says will know the extent of Israel’s barbarity and why this has to stop now. “This is Dante’s Inferno, hell. There are injuries here you just don’t want to see in this world. Children coming in with their abdomens open and legs cut off. We just had a child and we had to amputate both legs and an arm. Their only crime is that they are civilians, Palestinians, living in Gaza. The bombing has to stop immediately. This cannot go on. Anyone who portrays this as a clean war against another army is lying. This is an all out war against the civilian population in Gaza. They cannot flee as other populations can in war time because Israel has them trapped in a cage. Israel is bombing one and a half million people trapped in a cage.” National Demonstration: Saturday 10 January Stop theMassacre : Israel Out of Gaza Assemble 12.30pm Speakers Corner, Hyde Park March to Israeli Embassy, High St Kensington, London

Terrorism done in our name? UK Breaks International Law

An SAS Man Speaks Out

Happy New Year

Those who dream by night in the dusty recesses of their minds wake in the day to find that all was vanity; but the dreamers of the day are dangerous men, for they may act their dream with open eyes, and make it possible.

T. E. Lawrence