Glasgow is dying
The last couple of times we’ve gone into Glasgow on a Saturday, we’ve noticed how Sauchiehall Street and Buchanan Street have been half empty. We were wondering whether it had anything to do with the recession.
However, the Silverburn shopping centre was so crowded that the cars were almost blocking the motorway exit.
So it’s the combination of more and more expensive parking charges in central Glasgow and more and bigger shopping centres surrounding the city that is finally taking its toll.
It was probably not obvious during the boom years when there were enough consumers for both, but now people are having to make a choice, and they’re opting for the shopping centres.
It’s made worse by hospitals and other organisations leaving the city centre, too.
It’s really dangerous. If the trend is not reversed soon, we’ll end up with cities without centres, a bit like Los Angeles.
It’s important to make the city centre the centre of the conurbation, placing all the important institutions there, and to provide plenty of cheap parking spaces in the centre.
Of course shopping centres have a role to play, but if they start taking over as the primary shopping location, it’s time to change track.
The Republican Waterloo
Ever since the Democrats managed to enact the big American health reform, I’ve been wondering why the Republicans have been so vociferous in their opposition.
It’s not like it’s a very radical reform – it doesn’t even get close to creating a public health system like the UK’s NHS and Denmark’s similar institution.
I finally found a Republican blog posting that made it all click into place for me.
Do read the whole thing, but here’s a few paragraphs to whet your appetite:
At the beginning of this process we made a strategic decision: unlike, say, Democrats in 2001 when President Bush proposed his first tax cut, we would make no deal with the administration. No negotiations, no compromise, nothing. We were going for all the marbles. This would be Obama’s Waterloo – just as healthcare was Clinton’s in 1994. [...]
This time, when we went for all the marbles, we ended with none. [...]
[W]e do know that the gap between this plan and traditional Republican ideas is not very big. The Obama plan has a broad family resemblance to Mitt Romney’s Massachusetts plan. It builds on ideas developed at the Heritage Foundation in the early 1990s that formed the basis for Republican counter-proposals to Clintoncare in 1993-1994. [...]
We followed the most radical voices in the party and the movement, and they led us to abject and irreversible defeat. There were leaders who knew better, who would have liked to deal. But they were trapped. Conservative talkers on Fox and talk radio had whipped the Republican voting base into such a frenzy that deal-making was rendered impossible.
Brown the bully
The revelations of the past few days that Brown is a paranoid bully cannot have come as much of a surprise for readers of this blog – this is exactly what I surmised nearly two three years ago.
Some people have come to his defence saying that he’s just forceful, or troubled, or focused.
I’m sure most bullies have psychological issues, but that doesn’t excuse them. A bully is defined by their acts, not by their mental health (the CED defines a bully as “a person who hurts, persecutes, or intimidates weaker people”).
As former Father of the Chapel at Collins, I can only condemn those who think they need to intimidate their staff to get good performance – in my experience, the opposite is true.
Divorces and the happiness of children
Conservative politicians often claim that kids are happier when they grow up in strong families with both parents, but they often conveniently forget that for many parents, the alternative to a divorce is staying in an unhappy, rowing relationship, and is that really better for the kids?
Finally a study on this topic has been released.
The results are very clear:
Young people who reported that their family “gets along well together” are on average 20 per cent happier than those who do not, regardless of whether they live with a single parent, a step-parent or both their birth parents, the study found.
The impact of family conflict on children’s happiness far outstripped family structure, with a child in a lone parent household just 2 per cent unhappier than one living with both birth parents. Children were on average 10 per cent more unhappy in the immediate aftermath of a family break-up or another change in family structure such as gaining a step-parent.
But after a year happiness levels then recovered to almost the same levels as for children who had experienced no family problems.
Hopefully studies like this will eventually make the Tories realise that giving tax-breaks to married couples is probably not the best way to increase child happiness.
Will there be a mass exodus of doctors?
As far as I remember, doctors’ salaries were bumped up a few years ago because it was shown that they could earn so much more abroad that more and more were emigrating, so it was agreed that higher salaries were the only way to retain and attract doctors here.
However, now that the pound has fallen dramatically against most other currencies, I presume this means that their salaries are again far too low compared to other countries.
So should their salaries be increased by 30% or so?
Given how much more a medical doctor already earns than most other people with equivalent education levels, that would be hard to swallow for most people.
And indeed the Treasury recently announced a pay freeze for GPs and other senior medical staff, so they’re clearly not seeing any need to keep doctors here at the moment – perhaps they’re hoping they’ll all emigrate so that the cost of the NHS will come down?
Four nations, one debate?
Filed under: Cons, England, Europe, Lab, Lib, NI, SNP, Scotland, Wales, election, health
It sounds like such an obvious idea to have a televised debate with the leaders of the main parties before the next general election. Indeed, such a debate takes place in many, if not most, democratic countries.
However, as Alex Salmond has now pointed out, it’s not as simple as that.
In England, the three main parties are the Conservatives, Labour and the LibDems. Yes, there are other parties, e.g., UKIP and the Green Party, but they’re not standing in all constituencies, and it’s well-known that they don’t have a chance to gain more than a couple of seats.
However, in Scotland the largest party is the SNP, and of course they would feel disadvantaged if they were excluded from the main event in the election. However, including the SNP wouldn’t make much sense for viewers in the rest of the UK.
For Wales, something similar can be said about Plaid Cymru, except that they’re not the largest party.
And finally, in Northern Ireland none of the British parties contest the election, in which only by local parties take part. A debate between Clegg, Cameron and Brown would therefore not really put any parties at a disadvantage, it just would seem a bit irrelevant, perhaps.
Add to this mess that the subject matters that are devolved vary from nation to nation.
For instance, I’m sure English viewers would want to see the party leaders discuss schools, hospitals and policing, but all of that is devolved to the Scottish Parliament, so the debate on these areas would be of no interest to Scottish viewers.
Perhaps the best solution would be to have one debate about devolved subject matters including only the English party leaders, and broadcast this only in England, and another debate about reserved matters, such as the EU, Afghanistan and terrorism, and to include the SNP and Plaid Cymru in this one.
McCain’s irrelevance
8-9 years ago, when McCain and Bush were fighting it out in the Republican primaries, I was strangely attracted by McCain.
It’s not that I consider myself a Democrat in US terms – I tend to disagree with both parties – but most Republicans are very far from my own political position.
It’s not that I agreed with all he said, but you somehow got the impression he would make up his own mind on issues, even if it meant agreeing with the Democrats instead of his own party.
In the primaries this year he appeared to have changed a bit. He was far too positive of the Iraq war for a start, and singing about bombing Iran made me convinced he is far too relaxed about the human cost of war.
However, I’m sure that one could imagine a Democratic candidate that would make me prefer McCain on his own.
He’s not on his own, though. Afraid that he was losing support amongst the Republican activists, he picked a vicepresidential candidate with the intelligence and curiosity of George W. Bush, and they loved her.
Palin reminds me of Pia Kjærsgaard from the far-right Danish People’s Party. She sounds innocent and down-to-earth, but she has horribly extreme opinions.
Given McCain’s age and health record, she really could become president, and that would be a disaster.
Also, if McCain can really pick a person like her, he must be far more comfortable with the far right than he appears.
So by picking Palin, McCain has ensured that only the party activists are happy, but what was the point then of picking McCain instead of Huckabee?
As a presidential candidate, you can either try to aim for the centre (as Clinton did), or you can try to energise the base (like Dubya). You can’t do both, or you’ll drop both groups of voters.
So in effect, Palin has neutralised McCain’s appeal as surely as a base neutralises an acid.
One member, five votes
Labour is a bizarre party:
If you are seeking a source of innocent merriment, ask your Labour MSPs how many votes they have in [the Scottish leadership] contest. The top total I’ve discerned so far is five.Here’s how that breaks down. Labour MSP – one vote. Co-op MSP – one vote. Union member – one vote. Party member – one vote. Affiliated society, such as the Fabians – or the Socialist Health Association – one vote. Five in total.
Bristol’s first or second child?
Sarah Palin’s announcement that her daughter Bristol is pregnant seems to have convinced some bloggers that Trig must then have been Sarah’s, not Bristol’s, as many used to think.
However, Phyllis and I have been discussing this a lot, and we think the following points need to be addressed before we are convinced:
- Why were all family photos of Sarah and Bristol taken during the pregnancy leading to Trig’s birth removed from the servers over the weekend?
- Why are there no photos or videos of Sarah Palin at the conference in Dallas that she attended after her waters broke on the 17th of April?
- How did she manage to have a 22-hour labour with her fifth child (that weighed only 6 pounds)? Subsequent babies are normally fast.
- Why is Trig’s birth not registered at the hospital where he was reportedly born?
- Why has Sarah Palin not put an end to all the gossip by releasing complete birth records for Trig?
- Why are there no medical witnesses, for both amnio and birth?
- Given that she knew that the baby had Down’s, why was she willing to take the risk of travelling while in labour? Down’s babies are often born with heart defects and need resuscitating.
- Phyllis’s fourth pregnancy was noticed around 18 weeks (4½ months) – why wasn’t Sarah’s at 7 months, especially given that she was huge during earlier pregnancies?
- Given Trig’s weight when he was born one month prematurely, it sounds odd that Sarah Palin should have been smaller this time than during earlier pregnancies.
- Why was Bristol away from school for five months? And if she wasn’t, why hasn’t there been an official statement from her school to confirm her attendance?
- If she really had glandular fever, why was she involved in car crashes (including one outside the maternity clinic)?
- Down’s babies tend to be smaller than average, so Trig does not appear to be one month premature based on his weight.
- How pregnant is Bristol at the moment? The official statements have been very vague, although it would be so easy to give the gestation in weeks. Given that they’re using this pregnancy to say that she can’t have been pregnant before, this is important. For instance, if she’s only four months pregnant, that matches her first ovulation after an 18th April birth. Especially for young women, getting pregnant again almost immediately after birth is not rare.
- Bristol went from being flat-chested to having a fertile pair of breasts in a few months. Breasts grow during pregnancy.
- Current photos of Bristol show her to be incredibly big for a first pregnancy, especially for a teenager. On the other hand, a second pregnancy within one year wouldn’t let the body get any chance to get back in shape.
- Going back to work on the third day after birth stretches the imagination. It’s the day the milk comes in, and most women would still be hæmorrhaging substantial amounts.
It would be so easy to make everybody stop speculating by releasing birth certificates and a few statements from people involved. Then the election could get back on track instead of focusing so much on Sarah Palin’s trustworthiness.
Either bad or mad
There’s an important article in The Times today about how to deal with pædophiles.
It basically argues that we normally either punish criminals and then let them get back to normal life afterwards (even though we know they might reoffend), or we decide they’re ill and offer them treatment (possibly for the rest of their lives) instead.
However, we seem to want to do both when it comes to pædophiles: First we punish them, and we then stigmatise them for the rest of their lives because they’re sick.
I had never thought about this before, but I think it’s true.
When it comes to deciding whether to opt for bad or mad, I think we should split the group into two.
An 18-year-old who had consensual sex with a 14-year-old is not a pædophile in my book, and if we think it’s not OK, it’s definitely a crime, not an illness, and when he’s completed his punishment, he should be free to live a normal life afterwards.
On the other hand, middle-aged men raping small kids are in a very different category. It makes much better sense to try to cure them of their urges in high-security psychiatric hospitals and only release them back into society when (or if) the psychiatrists think they have been cured.