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Posts Tagged 'Football'
38 Degrees Petition to Get Jeremy Hunt to Provide Free School Meals to Children on Universal Credit
I got this message yesterday from the internet petitioning organisation objecting to Jeremy Hunt's apparent refusal to provide free school meals to four-firths of a million children on Universal Credit, but who currently don't qualify for free school meals. I've signed it, and if you feel as strongly about it as I do, I hope you'll do the same. Because this is obscene. Britain is one of the richest countries in the world, and millions of working people and children are going hungry. They have to use food banks to stave off starvation, and now there are warm banks to make sure they don't die of hypothermia because they can't afford to heat their homes. Marcus Rashford, God bless 'im, managed to shame them into providing fee school meals to deprived kids during the holidays. And they hate him for it. They published hit pieces afterwards lambasting him for being rich and having more than one house. Guess what? That's irrelevant. The Fabian Society rejected class war, and so, I think, did the Labour party in general. They fought for the working class but saw socialism as such an eminently reasonable social system of society that everyone would benefit. This is where Labour differs from Communism. The only people who are fighting a class war, and exploiting class resentment, are the Tories in order to keep the workers firmly in their place.
'Dear David,
800,000 vulnerable children are going to school hungry and missing out on free school meals – yet Chancellor Jeremy Hunt had nothing to say about it in last week's budget. [1] He's happy to leave hundreds of thousands of families, on Universal Credit but not eligible for free school meals, to struggle to feed their kids. [2]
David – we won't let the Government get away with this. Our petition to expand free school meals is over 90% of the way to 100,000 signatures – but your name is missing. [3]
We MUST push this up the Government's agenda if we're to protect families struggling this winter. [4] That's why we have BIG plans to expand this campaign – and it all starts with ramping up names on this petition and handing it in to Rishi Sunak to put child hunger firmly on his radar. As for the next stage of the campaign… watch this space!
So David, will you add your name to show Rishi Sunak he can't get away with letting kids go hungry?It only takes a few seconds to sign!
I'LL ADD MY NAME
I'm not signing because…
It feels like we're getting close to a breakthrough, David. Supermarkets, local councils, and celebrities are piling on the pressure to expand free school meals. [4] But time and again, the Government has failed to give critical support to families most in need – which is why we need your name, and your support.
So David, will you sign today to urge this Government to expand free school meals and keep this country's children fed?If each of us reading this signs, we'll smash the 100,000 target!
Flo, Tash, Siobhan, Angus and the 38 Degrees team
[1] The Guardian: 'It would mean so much': parents on the need to expand free school meals
The Independent: Feed the Future: Jeremy Hunt ignores pleas to expand free school meals in autumn Budget
[3] 38 Degrees: Rishi Sunak: don't let kids go hungry by ditching the free school meals expansion!
[4] Evening Standard: UK supermarkets join calls for expansion of free school meals '
Tags:38 Degrees, Class, Conservatives, Evening Standard, Fabian Society, Food Banks, Football, Free School Meals, Internet Petitions, Jeremy Hunt, Labour Party, Marcus Rashford, Rishi Sunak, Starvation, The Guardian, The Independent (newspaper), the Poor, the Rich, Universal Credit, Warm Banks, Working Class
Posted in Charity, communism, Democracy, Education, Politics, Poverty, Sport, The Press, Welfare Benefits | Leave a Comment »
Avaaz Petition for FIFA to Compensate the Families of Migrant Workers Who Died Building Stadium in Qatar
This is another internet petition I've received and signed. As many people have pointed out, the conditions for migrant workers in Qatar is very much like real slavery, and it is only just that the families of those who have died building the multi-million dollar footie stadium for the coming world cup receive their proper compensation.
'More than 6750 modern day slaves have died preparing Qatar for the 2022 World Cup. Hundreds of thousands more still toil for as little as a dollar an hour. FIFA stands to make billions of dollars in profit, but refuses to compensate workers or their families fairly. Sign now to demand that FIFA pay these workers and their families what they deserve! #PayUpFIFA
Imagine being so desperate for work that you left your family behind to live in a squalid camp thousands of miles away and toil in the desert heat for as little as $1 an hour. Then you died, alone, and your family got nothing. This was the terrible fate of more than 6,750 modern-day slaves who died preparing Qatar for the 2022 World Cup.
Now imagine that those who exploited and abused you were set to rake in billions while the family you left behind spiraled deeper into poverty.
FIFA chose Qatar's despotic regime to host the World Cup, well aware of reports that forced labor and abuse of poor migrant workers was a common practice in the country. As a direct result, more than 6,750 vulnerable migrant workers have died building the glitzy stadiums and posh hotels that will be filled with football fans in a few weeks.
That's 40 deaths for every goal expected at this year's World Cup.
Don't let FIFA profit off of abuse!
FIFA is under pressure to set aside $440 million for these workers – the same amount that will be awarded to the winning teams. Rights groups, footballers, and even some of the World Cup's top corporate sponsors are part of the push. But with less than four weeks until kickoff, we need to amplify this call to force FIFA to do the right thing. So sign now and we'll deliver your voices straight to FIFA's front door in Zurich.
Avaaz stands up for human rights and workers' rights around the world. Already in 2015 Avaaz urged Qatar to end its modern slavery ahead of the World Cup, receiving almost a million signatures. In the years since, the Qatar government has taken steps to address these issues, but more can be done!
With hope and determination,
Bieta, Nate, Christine, John, Laura, Miguel, Marta and the rest of the Avaaz team
Revealed: 6,500 migrant workers have died in Qatar since World Cup awarded (The Guardian)
England's FA calls for Qatar's migrant workers to be compensated (Reuters)
World Cup Abuses Harm Children, Families of Migrant Workers (Human Rights Watch)
Qatar: Global survey shows overwhelming demand for FIFA to compensate World Cup migrant workers (Amnesty International)'
Tags:Amnesty International, Avaaz, Children, Deaths, Football, Human Rights, Human Rights Watch, Migrant Workers, Qatar, Reuters
Posted in Arabs, Democracy, Justice, Slavery, Sport, The Press, Working Conditions | Leave a Comment »
Did Barbados and Jamaica Really Appeal to Us to Take their Workers to Prevent a Political Crisis?
Here's another unusual claim from Simon Webb of History Debunked about the origins of the first wave of Caribbean immigration here in the 1940s and 50s, if some of the great readers of this blog will indulge me talking about him once again. I know how he and his very right-wing views really annoy some people. This morning Webb put up a video repeating the claim once again that the Windrush migrants hadn't been invited by the British government, but instead took advantage of the cheap cabins available on the Empire Windrush to come to Britain to seek work. He then moved from this claim to discuss the advertisements London Transport had placed in the Caribbean for men willing to work as bus drivers over here. Citing the Runnymede Commission and something they say on their website, to which he provides a link, Webb claimed that this had been done, not because Britain needed the Labour but for the benefit of the Barbadian and Jamaican authorities. At this period in the 1950s, there had been high unemployment and civil unrest in those colonies, and the British government had made the appeal for workers their to relieve the political pressure by taking the hotheads to Britain. He also stated that the West Indian nurses that came over here were intended simply to study, then go back to their own countries taking their skills with them.
I'm not an expert on immigration or immigration policy, and this occurred well before I was born. But history matters, even when some of the claims about it come from people like Simon Webb. I always understood that there was a labour shortage, and that some sort of appeal for commonwealth workers had been made. Though this wasn't necessarily for Black workers. I therefore left this comment on the video:
'I've seen several stories in the press about the appeal for West Indian workers to come to Britain. Yasmin Alibhai-Brown in the Independent a decade or so ago claimed that the British government had put out such a call, but that five Labour MPs had joined the opposition in voting against it. Another version I've heard is that the British government had put out a call for commonwealth workers, but were expecting them to come from the White colonies like Australia, New Zealand and Canada. They weren't expecting the mass influx of Black and Asian migrants. Is there any way to get to the bottom of these stories and see whether they're truth or myth?'
Webb claims that the story that Caribbean immigrants were invited here is a myth created by Blacks a little while ago, and uncritically adopted by Whites because it made them feel 'warm and fuzzy'. But from pieces like Alibhai-Brown's in the press, it seems to me that some kind of appeal had been made. I suspect that you would have to read through a lot of books and documents looking for the truth of these claims. However, I do wonder if any of the readers or commenters here know anything about this issue and so may be able to correct or refute it.
Some of the comments to Webb's video are interesting as personal reminiscences of meeting Caribbean immigrants and hearing from them why they came here, as well as seeing films in the Caribbean advertising for workers.
53supermojo said:
'n 1964/5 I went to Football Matches and stood generally in the same place and by same people at every game. Amongst them were a group of Bus Drivers and Conductors from Barbados. Sometimes they came to the Match in their work Clothing , having worked the Morning Shift. They were all friendly and well mannered. They told my older Cousin and his Workmates, that they came here because they were unemployed , they saw advert in local newspaper for people to come and work here. So someone must have known about that in Home Office ? They said they had been here for 3 to 4 years at time and moved from London Area up to West Midlands , they lived in ' Digs ' and had Girlfriends. If they are still here , they would be in their late 80s or 90s now !'
Gary Dennis commented
'My parents and many of her friends and associates from Jamaica recalled seeing what that called 'propaganda' films encouraging them to come to Britain. It painted a romantic and quant image of Britain, which did exists but not for most people. If you know any elderly Caribbean people ask them about these films and adverts. When Jamaicans came they actually had not intent of staying beyond five year, they wanted to make a bit of money then go back. Life was not as they expected and most were unable to leave and therefore settled in and made the best of it. My suspicion was that my parents generation had been 'invited' – or more perhaps more accurately 'an opening made' – to undercut the cost of local labour. I believe this was the origin of racial tension but I have no evidence. I remember reading an article in Lobster Magazine where Harold MacMillan was heard to have said in conversation that he didn't expect so many to come. I began to question the need for immigrants from the Caribbean when I began to take an interest in basic economics and started to question the premise that there was not enough labour available after the second world war. Obviously many people died but I understand that women had already taken up much of the slack in the workforce. I don't claim to know the truth but there are some of us descendants of immigrants that also question the official narratives about immigration. We need to remember that some of these countries were British territories and these policies and actions would have been arrangements between Parliament and the Governor Generals of the countries and I suspect that the trigger for the movement of immigrants originates from these parties with Barbados only having got it's independence in 1966 and Jamaica in 1962; well after Windrush. Jamaica had turned violent because of militant unionism during the 1930s and 40s escalating significantly in the 60s so I suspect the worry expressed by the governments was less to do with the welfare of the locals but the stability of the territory. The European Coal Community also took advantage of massive movements of cheap labour after the second world war. Is cheap labour the common theme here?'
I've heard that many migrants from what is now Pakistan and India also originally came here to work for a very limited time before going back to their home countries. It was chain migration, in which one set of migrants would move in after the last set had returned. According to this view, the great surge in Black and Asian immigration came after Powell's 'Rivers of Blood' speech and the imposition of limits on immigration by Ted Heath, as there was a rush of people to come to this country before the gates were closed. So many migrants from south Asia came here with the intention of making enough money to go back to Pakistan or India again that one ethnographic study of the British Asian community I've come across was called The Myth of Return.
As for women taking on male jobs during the War, I understood that there was the expectation that after the War women would return to their domestic role, just as they did after World War II, and that this is largely what happened until the rise of second wave feminism in the 1960s.
Also interesting is this comment from david c:
'Back in the 60's, I worked at a well known clothing company, who were praised for their charitable efforts to give employment, to about 300 people from Mauritius, with an agreement from their government, so they could work in the basement of the shop, making clothes. Nobody mentioned that they were being paid about 50% less than the the rest of us.'
This looks like a nasty bit of exploitation under the cover of humanitarianism, which makes you wonder what else was going on.
Tags:53supermojo, Asians, Blacks, david c, Enoch Powell, Football, Gary Dennis, Harold MacMillan, History Debunked, Immigration, Independent Newspaper, jamaica, Lobster, London, London Transport, Simon Webb, Ted Heath, The Myth of Return, West Midlands, Windrush Migrants, Women, Yasmin Alibhai-Brown
Posted in Anthropology, Australia, Barbados, Canada, Caribbean, Charity, Coal, Education, European Union, India, LIterature, Mauritius, Medicine, New Zealand, Pakistan, Persecution, Politics, Sport, The Press, Trade Unions, Unemployment | 10 Comments »
Tory Comedian Gets Frightened by Prospect of the Return of Corbyn
I found another highly amusing video from GB News on YouTube the other day. It was so amusing I didn't watch it, but just enjoyed its title. Because it was about the Scots comedian, Leo Kearse, getting terribly 'frit' as Thatcher would have said, about the possibility that Jeremy Corbyn might make a bid to be mayor of London.
If only.
This seems to follow a story in the Depress which came up on my internet news page last week, reporting that Corbyn's supporters were urging him to try to return as party leader or something. It wasn't clear quite what, but obviously all good, virtuous right-wingers who hate Mayor Sadiq Khan because he's some horrible anti-White, anti-British leftie Muslim supremacist are also alarmed that Corbyn might try for the job. And evening more frightening, he might just get in.
Kearse himself has appeared on a number of right-wing media and news outlets. He's been a regular guest on the Lotus Eaters and GB News, where he frequently appears on a spot where they analyse what the papers are saying. Sometimes there's a point to what he's saying, such as when he appeared in mock Nazi uniform as a representative of the 'Love' party to confront Scots minister Humza Yusuf. Yusuf and the SNP had passed legislation banning hate speech, but the boundaries of the law were set so wide, and the types of individual and groups so numerous, that Kearse and others took it as an assault on free speech. They saw it as totalitarian, and hence Kearse turned up as a Nazi to protest it. He marched around, stating that no-one could possibly object to what he and the 'Love' party stood for, because they represented love. Of course, the Love party didn't exist, and this was a piece of satire directed against Yusuf and the SNP. Whatever you feel about the intention of the act – and I doubt very many decent people really want to tolerate abuse aimed at people simply because of their sex, gender identity, race, religion, sexuality, or disability, I do think he had a point in that legislating against hate speech really does threaten free speech. There's the question of who defines what hate speech is, and that reasonable discussion and criticism of vital issues is limited and curtailed by well-,meant, but badly framed laws.
He also had a point when he attacked the Scottish university and its students, who had a young student of international law disciplined and attacked because she dared to question whether transwomen were women and stated that sex and gender were defined and based on biology. It might not be a point of view that the pro-trans lobby agrees with, but it is a reasonable one, and in my view, not bigoted, but simply common sense. Her freedom of speech and belief should have been protected, and I think that Kearse was right to defend her and mock the academics and students who tried to make her life a misery.
At other times Kearse is just boorish. He had some kind of debate on GB News with a young, feminist comedian, Smurthwaite. I forgotten what the subject of the debate was, but he peppered whatever he was saying about the topic with gibes about how nobody watches women's football. It's almost certainly true that the audience figures for the women's game are lower than the men's, but some of that is probably because it's only within the past decade or so that the women's game has been a broadcast sport on British television. It really took off in Italy back in the 1980s, when women's games, according to a Beeb documentary, attracted crowds of 30-40,000. Also, the size of the viewing audience doesn't actually say anything about the quality of the game itself. When women's football began being broadcast, Private Eye's TV critic remarked that the quality of the football was just as good, but with fewer ponytails. Other people have commented that while women don't have the same physical power as men, they make up for it in being more skilled. Another comment I've heard is that they play a better game 'cause there's less showing off. Having seen some prize examples of this during previous World Cups, I can believe it.
Eventually, Smurthwaite allowed that people weren't watching women's football, at which point Kearse cried exultantly, 'At last, some truth!' Which isn't an argument, just boorish needling and sneering.
I've got a feeling that Kearse, like the Lotus Eaters and the rest of the lamestream media, including Private Eye, believes that Corbyn really is an anti-Semite and 'far left'. The truth is 'no' on both counts. Corbyn wasn't and isn't anti-Semitic, just pro-Palestinian. He also had a proud record of standing up for Britain's Jewish community and had a sizable number of Jewish supporters in the Labour party. But these were outside British Jewry's right-wing establishment – the Chief Rabbinate, the Board of Deputies of British Jews and the United Synagogue – who all took it upon themselves to vilify Corbyn as the latest incarnation of Nazi evil. As for being 'far left', Corbyn really stands for a return of the post-War consensus: nationalised public utilities, a properly nationalised and funded NHS, strong trade unions and a proper welfare state that gives people what they need to live on, instead of leaving to food banks or choosing between whether they want to eat or heat their homes.
This strikes me as far more frightening to the Tories than Communism or Trotskyism because it's far more realistic. It gave the British people a rising standard of living for three decades until the election of Maggie Thatcher. And if it returns and shows itself to be popular and successful. it will have shown the Thatcherite experiment to be what it is – a dismal, malign failure.
And that scares the living daylights out of the political, economic and media elite. Hence the desperate scramble to vilify Corbyn in any way possible, and the absolute terror in right-wingers like Kearse that he might return.
And worse, become mayor of England's capital. Where he actually would do something for the working man or woman, rather than deceive them with lies about Brexit and cutting taxes.
Tags:anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Chief Rabbis, Feminism, Food Banks, Football, Freedom of Speech, GB News, Homophobia, Humza Yousaf, Islamophobia, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Leo Kearse, London, Margaret Thatcher, Mayor of London, Nationalisation, NHS, Private Eye, Public Utilities, racism, Smurthwaite, SNP, Starvation, the Elite, The Lotus Eaters, Transgendered People, United Synagogue, Universities, Welfare State, Women, Youtube
Posted in Arabs, Charity, Comedy, Democracy, Disability, Economics, European Union, Health Service, Industry, Islam, Italy, Judaism, Law, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Radio, Scotland, Television, The Press, Trade Unions, Welfare Benefits | 7 Comments »
E. Nesbit's Proposal to Tackle Crime: More Schools and Fewer Prisons
A few days ago I put up a post about how very relevant some of the concerns and causes taken up and championed by children's author and Fabian Socialist E. Nesbit are. For example, she was appalled at the poverty and hunger among the children at a local school near her in Deptford, so she organised work parties held every Saturday in October, November and December to make clothing for the children, as well as provide them with a Christmas party. Each child was to have a cake, plentiful bread and butter and a toy. Her husband, Hubert Bland, went to frame legislation, passed by parliament, that provided free school meals for children in council schools. The parallels to today, with increasing numbers of people forced to use food banks to keep body and soul together and the campaign by footballer Marcus Rashford to have schools continue to provide free school meals during the summer holidays to feed needy children are very striking.
But I was also struck by a passage in Eleanor Fitzsimon's biography of her, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit where she describes how Nesbit was also deeply impressed by a visit to a jail while staying with Welsh friends. This prompted her to write an article arguing that it would not only be cheaper but more effective for the government to provide more schools with better funding rather than more prisons in order to combat crime.
One of the characters in Nesbit's book, The Incredible Honeymoon, Colonel Bertram, was based on Colonel Arthur Ashley Ruck Chief Constable of Caernarvonshire and father of her friend, Berta. The book states
'While she was staying with them, he arranged for Edith [Nesbit] to tour a Welsh prison. This experience appears to have affected her greatly. As she left, she turned to one convict and declared 'I wish you well'. In 'Cheaper in the End', the remarkably progressive essay she wrote for Cecil Chesterton's magazine, the New Witness, she declared 'we4 want more money spent on schools and less on jails and reformatories'. She believed education was the key to avoiding incarceration and she explained her reasoning.
'It cannot be put too plainly that the nation which will not pay for her schools must pay for her prisons and asylums. People don't seem to mind so much paying for prisons and workhouses. What they really hate seems to be paying for schools. And yet how well, in the end, such spending would pay us! 'There is no darkness but ignorance' – and we have such a chance as has never been the lot of men since time began, a chance to light enough lamps to dispel all darkness. If only we would take that chance! Even from the meanest point of view we ought to take it. It would be cheaper in the end. Schools are cheaper than prisons.' (pp.187-8).
It's not exactly the same situation as today, but close. Successive right-wing governments, including that of Tony Blair, hate spending money on state schools. Funding has been repeatedly cut, even as the amount teachers are expected to do has increased, and the education privatised as far as possible by the transformation of many state schools into academies, run by private companies for their own profit. The academies are not more efficient compared to state schools, just better funded. Thatcher tried to set up a similar system with her wretched 'city academies', but these were a complete failure and we actually being wound up by her education minister, Norman Fowler. Then Blair got in, fished the idea out of the bin, and pushed them through as academies.
But the Tories also haven't been keen on funding the prison service either. A few years ago there was a crisis in the prison sector with massive overcrowding. So much so, in fact, that they were considering housing criminals in ships, like the historic prison hulks. And like everything else, Blair and the Tories tried to push prisons and jails some way towards privatisation by outsourcing them to such brilliant, superbly performing companies as G4S. Or as Molesworth would sa, 'Hem hem, I do not think'.
Part of Black Lives Matter's programme was to defund the police. A few days ago its leader, Patrice Cullors, stated that what she meant by that was the complete abolition of the police, the judiciary and the prison system. It's a completely insane idea that would undoubtedly result in utter chaos and crime rates rocketing, with Black people among the victims. But others involved in the organisation merely said that they wanted police funding cut and the money spent instead on programmes that benefit and uplift the Black community. I don't believe in cutting police funding, as after Priti Patel under Tweezer removed something like 20,000 police officers from the force crime, not unnaturally, increased. But increased funding for schools and genuine change and improvement in the education system still seems the best way of preventing some children turning to crime.
I'm very much aware that education has very much become a political football, with demands that schools teach ethical issues quite apart from formal academic subjects, like stopping misogyny and racism. But it seems to me that much good would simply come from simply reforming schools so that teachers have enough funding and resources to provide effective teaching that would prepare pupils to become worthy citizens, and allow them to avoid being forced or sucked into offending.
I also feel that to cut down on crime, there needs to be general changes in society so that people are able to get suitable jobs and the gang culture that infects some of Britain's cities smashed. That's a tough task.
But we can begin by building more, and better funded schools.
Tags:Academies, Arthur Ashley Ruck, Black Lives Matter, Caernarvonshire, Cecil Chesterton, E. Nesbit, Eleanor Fitzsimons, Football, G4s, Judiciary, Marcus Rashford, Margaret Thatcher, Misogyny, New Witness, Norman Fowler, Outsourcing Companies, Patrice Cullors, Police, Prisons, Priti Patel, Privatisation, racism, Schools, Starvation, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit, Theresa May, tony blair
Posted in America, Charity, Crime, Education, England, History, Justice, LIterature, Politics, Poverty, Socialism, Sport, The Press, Wales | Leave a Comment »
W.L. Phillips, Working Class Socialist and Anti-Slavery Activist, and E. Nesbit's Work for Deprived Schools
I've been reading Eleanor Fitzsimon's biography of E. Nesbit, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit (London: Duckworth 2019). Nesbit's best known for her children's books The Railway Children, Five Children and It, The Story of the Amulet and The Treasure Seekers, but she was also a prolific poet and writer of short stories. But she and her husband, Hubert Bland, were also committed socialists and members of the Fabian Society. She and her husband would have been pilloried by the right-wing media today, because they lived very unconventional lives. Her husband put it about a bit, and she ended up sharing her household with his mistress and raising their child, Rosamund, as one of their own. She also mixed with members of the literary and artistic set of the time, including, obviously, leading socialists like George Bernard Shaw, William Morris and Eleanor Marx. Fabian meetings tended to be genteelly middle class, and Hubert remarked that they were sneered at as armchair socialists. If they were around now, the Tories and their lapdog press would be screaming that the were members of the 'liberal elite' and 'champagne socialists'. But the Society also included working people, who not only talked the talk, but walked the walk. The first Fabian pamphlet, Why Are The Many Poor?, was written by W.L. Phillips, a housepainter who, when he was in America, had been active aiding escaped slaves. (p. 73). Unfortunately, that's all that's said about this fascinating and courageous figure.
Nesbit and Work Parties for Deprived Schools
And there are other passages in the book that are interesting because of the vile way the Tories have dragged our great and noble country back to the deprivation and poverty of the 19th century. Nesbit, her husband and their friends and family were active organising work parties to provide food, clothes and Christmas presents for the children at Hughes Fields school, in a particularly deprived area near where they lived in Kent. The book states
'The London School Board had designated Hughes Fields primary school a 'specially difficult school'. Pupils were withdrawn as soon as they were capable of earning a wage and the attendance rate was just sixty-five per cent. It was reported that one kindly school inspector purchased food for the children out of his own pocket. The dire poverty they endured was highlighted in an appeal carried in the Blackheath Gazette
"In this very poor school a large proportion of the children are either shoeless or very badly shod and clad, even during this inclement weather, and the teachers would gladly welcome any gifts of old boots and clothing – no matter how old they may be."' ( p.127)
She organised Christmas parties for the children. One of these was described by the Kentish Mercury in this passage from an edition from 1896
'Following her usual custom, Mrs Hubert Bland, of Lee, assisted by several friends gave a tea and entertainment on Saturday afternoon to between 300 and 400 of the poorest and wretchedest of the little ones who attend the Hughes Fields Board Schools, Deptford. The whole of the children were first mustered in the infants' class-room, and eventually divided into batches and served with tea – which included a plentiful supply of bread and butter and cake – in the four classrooms… each child was made the recipient of a warm garment and a toy.' (p. 129).
The book goes on to describe the work parties she organised to provide the fare, clothes and toys, which also included a fair bit of fun for those attending.
'She raised funds and hosted working parties every Saturday for three months leading up to each party, at which family, friends and and neighbours made warm, practical clothing; they knitted hats and comforters, and, on one occasion, made trousers for the boys from blue corduroy that had been supplied to Saretta's (Nesbit's half-sister from her father's previous marriage) husband, John Deakin. Edith's neighbour Ada Moore described these gatherings
'I shall never forget our Saturdays during the winter of 1890-1 (I think). We worked at all kinds of things for the very poor of Deptford for some hours, then a supper of, probably, herrings, cheese and bottled stout, followed by a dance." (p. 130).
Now we have children and families only kept from starvation by food banks, and charities appealing for clothes for the poor. And the situation is going to get worse thanks to the cost of living crisis. As for the school inspector buying food for the kids out of his own pocket, there are stories that some teachers in British schools are also doing that.
But the passage also reminds me of Marcus Rashford and his campaign for schools to provide free meals to children during the summer holidays. He suffered terrible abuse for this, because, obviously, as a millionaire footballer he couldn't possibly demand such state provision for children without being a massive hypocrite. But Rashford had endured similar poverty when he was a sprog, and the real reason for the Tory ire was that he had exposed the callousness and real deprivation behind their policies. And I'm very sure that if she lived today, Nesbit and her friends would have been similarly attacked.
Nesbit herself comes across as fascinating figure – highly intelligent, and extremely mischievous when a girl, who based many of the incidents in her books on her own life. She clearly had a deep sympathy for the poor and children, and was a woman of very strong principles, expressed in her literary work and social activism. She definitely earns her place as one of Britain's great literary heroines.
And it is utterly disgusting that similar conditions are now returning to the UK, thanks to the Tories. Thatcherism is a failure and they and the Blairites should be thrown out of power as soon as possible.
Tags:Conservatives, Deptford, E. Nesbit, Eleanor Fitzsimons, Eleanor Marx, Fabian Society, Five Children and It, Food Banks, Football, George Bernard Shaw, Hubert Bland, Kentish Mercury, Marcus Rashford, Margaret Thatcher, School Meals, Schools, Slaves, Starvation, The Life and Loves of E. Nesbit, The Rai8way Children, The Story of the Amulet, The Treasure Seekers, tony blair, W.L. Phillips, William Morris, Working Class
Posted in America, Art, Charity, Education, History, LIterature, Politics, Poverty, Slavery, Socialism, Sport | 1 Comment »
A Black Woman Visits Qatar's Museum of Slavery
Very interesting video posted by Angela B. on her channel on YouTube. It was posted five years ago for Black history month. The hostess is an English-speaking Black woman, who lives in the Middle East. One of her parents is African, while the other comes from the Virgin Islands, which gives her a personal connection to the history of slavery. The video is her visit to a museum of slave trade in Qatar. This covers the history of slavery from ancient Greece and the use of enslaved Ethiopians in the bath houses, which understandably chills Angela B on what they saw and what they were used for – through the Atlantic slave trade and then the Arabic slave trade. It has animated displays and the voices of the enslaved describing their capture, the forced march through the desert during which many were left to die where they fell before arriving in Zanzibar, Kilwa and other east African islands under Arab suzerainty. The museum describes the enslavement of boys as pearl fishers and the abolition of slavery in Qatar in 1951. It also goes on to discuss the persistence of slavery in the modern world. Angela B is personally chilled, as someone with ancestors from the Virgin Islands, by the sight of the slave manacles in the museum. Interestingly, the explanatory panels in the museum also talk about serfdom in medieval Europe, which she doesn't comment on. Serfdom is one of the numerous forms of unfree labour that is now considered a form of slavery by the international authorities. It's interesting to see it referenced in an Arabic museum to slavery, when it is largely excluded from the debate over slavery in the West, which largely centres around the transatlantic slave trade. The recorded speech and voiceovers in the Museum are in Arabic, but the written texts are bilingual in Arabic and English.
The video's also interesting in what the museum and Angela B include and comment on, and what they omit. There's a bias towards Black slavery, though how much of this is the museum and how much Angela B obviously attracted to the part of the slave trade that affected people of her own race is debatable. Slavery was widespread as an unremarkable part of life in the Ancient Near East long before ancient Greece. There exist the lists of slaves working on the great estates from ancient Egypt, some of whom had definite Jewish names like Menachem. Slavery also existed among the Hittites in what is now Turkey, Babylonia and Assyria, but this isn't mentioned in the video. If the museum doesn't mention this, it might be from diplomatic reasons to avoid upsetting other, neighbouring middle eastern states. Or it could be for religious reasons. Islam regards the period before Mohammed as the 'Jaihiliyya', or 'Age of Darkness', and discourages interest in it. This is perhaps why it was significant a few years ago that the Saudi monarchy permitted the exhibition in the country's museums of ancient Arabian pre-Islamic gods, except for those idols which were depicted nude. If the museum did include that era, then Angela B may have skipped over it because her video is concentrating and Black slaves. At the same time, the video doesn't show the enslavement of White Europeans by the Barbary pirates and other Muslims. This may also be due to the same reason. The ancient Greeks used slaves in a variety of roles, including as craftsmen and agricultural labourers. Some of the pottery shows female sex slaves being used in orgies. There's also a piece of pottery in the Ashmolean Museum in Oxford in the shape of a sleeping Ethiopian boy curled up around a wine pot. I wonder if the piece about enslaved Ethiopians serving as bath attendants was selected for inclusion in the museum because it was similar to forms of slavery they would have been familiar with.
The video's fascinating because it, like another video about the Arab slave trade I posted and commented on a few days ago, it shows how the issue of slavery and Black civil rights has penetrated the Arab world. The other video included not only discussion of Libya's wretched slave markets, but also covered modern Afro-Iraqis and their demand for civil rights and political representation. These are issues we really don't hear about in the west, unless you're an academic at one of the universities or watch al-Jazeera. But there's also an issue with the museum. While it naturally condemns historic slavery, Qatar and the other Gulf Arab states effectively enslave and exploit the foreign migrant workers that come to the country. This has provoked protests and criticism at the country hosting the World Cup and one of the Grand Prix'.
Tags:al-Jazeera, Ancient Egypt, ancient greece, Angela B, Ashmolean Museum, Assyria, Babylonia, Barbary Pirates, Blacks, Civil Rights, Football, Hittites, Jews, Kilwa, Middle Ages, Migrant Workers, Mohammed, Motor Racing, Oxfprd., Qatar, Serfdom, Sex Slavery, Universities, Whites, Youtube, Zanzibar
Posted in Africa, Agriculture, Arabs, Archaeology, Caribbean, Education, Egypt, Greece, History, Iraq, Islam, Judaism, Justice, Libya, Persecution, Politics, Saudi Arabia, Slavery, Sport, Television, Turkey | Leave a Comment »
A Black Conservative's Demand for the Return of Traditional Morality and against the Condescencion of Affirmative Action
Shelby Steele, White Guilt: How Blacks and Whites Together Destroyed the Promise of the Civil Rights Era (New York: HarperCollins 2006).
Shelby Steele is a Black American literature professor. A conservative, the blurb states that he is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution and Stanford University and contributing editor of Harper's Magazine as well as a multiple aware winner. This is his view of the failure of the movement for Black uplift, ultimately caused by the loss of traditional, conservative values through their association with White supremacy after the ending of segregation. It's also an account of his journey from childhood growing up in the south under segregation, to angry student radical, disaffected employee, and finally conservative intellectual. During his time he also worked on the Great Society programmes initiated by Lyndon Johnson in some of the worst Black communities and become increasingly disillusioned with them and succeeding programmes as they failed. This last week we had a mixed-race footballer demanding the inclusion of ethnic minority culture and history in the British school curriculum. But Steele rejects this and another initiatives, arguing that despite the implementation of such policies in America, Blacks are still performing poorly at school and elsewhere. Worse, the American public school system, which he boasts was the greatest in the world, has been destroyed by them. What Black America needs, according to Steele, is a return to the traditional capitalist, bourgeois virtues, such as entrepreneurialism, as well as stable two-parent families and a genuine meritocracy, where people are rewarded according to their talent rather than the colour of their skin. In short, he wants Blacks to stand on their own two feet and argues persuasively this is possible. Black children perform badly at school, despite affirmative action programmes to help them and the lowering of academic standards in their favour. But they excel in sport, music, literature and entertainment, where there are no such programmes and only the best is required of them. Thus, leading Black sportsmen emerge through long, demanding practise on the baseball pitch, for example. Great Black musicians come about through kids practicing long and hard on cheap keyboards in their rooms, demanding the best of themselves. But the Black community has been deprived of this spirit of initiative and excellence when it turned away from the liberalism of rights and personal freedom to demand positive measures by the state through exploiting the guilty feelings and loss of moral authority experienced by Whites as they ended segregation and came to terms with the history of racism and Black oppression.
But this has not just damaged Blacks. It has also damaged general American moral authority. White guilt helped the 60s counterculture to emerge and flourish, as well as the new feminist and environmental movements. He states at various times that the attitude now is that if you fail to be properly environmentally concerned, you must be some kind of racist. He's fully behind the Iraq invasion, which he genuinely believes was an attempt to liberate the country and create a genuine, liberal, democratic order. But it has been hamstrung through comparisons to past American imperialism and exploitation. He celebrates George W. Bush and the new American conservatives, who at one level seem liberal. Bush is comfortable with ethnic minorities and has appointed a number to positions of power. But they are not encumbered by White guilt, and so can exert the traditional moral authority America needs and used to have when White supremacy was unchallenged. As for the inclusion of Black writers on school syllabuses, he feels that the current policy of promoting them simply because they are Black is damaging. It means that genuinely talented writers are put in the same category as the mediocre and so discredited by association, simply because they're Black. He also condemns a system that imposes higher standards on poor White university applicants simply because of their colour in favour of children from rich Black families. And throughout the book there is a feeling of outrage at such affirmative action measures because of their patronising attitude and apparent condescension.
He also argues that Black anger and militancy was due to the collapse of White confidence and authority due to the end of segregation. During segregation peaceful protests, intended to show Black moral superiority, such as the civil rights demonstrations led by Martin Luther King were the only way to stand up against it. And in cases where nothing could be done, because that was just the way society was, the only things Blacks could do was move on. Such as when he tried to get a job when he was a youngster for an all-White baseball team as their batboy. He was eventually dropped because he couldn't travel with them to segregated matches. But, as disappointed as he was, by the next day he had moved on to other things as there was absolutely nothing he could do. This is contrasted with the situation a few years later when he led an angry delegation of Black students into his college principal's office to make what he now regards as outrageous demands. He showed his own personal disrespect by dropping cigarette ash onto the principal's carpet. The principal received them graciously and gave in, despite appearing initially shocked an angry. This happened because he had lost his moral authority along with the rest of the traditional American order, tarnished by its link with White supremacy.
There's a wealth of information on the lives of ordinary Blacks under segregation and how, despite its constraints some of them where able to achieve a modicum of prosperity. His father was caught between the unions and his employer. The unions wouldn't accept him because of his colour, while he had to keep from his employer the fact that he owned his own house. But his father, clearly a man of great entrepreneurial talent, was able to purchase three houses, which he renovated using slightly worn, but still perfectly serviceable furnishings. His parents also set up a free mother and baby clinic. When it came to their son's schooling, they moved heaven and earth, practically setting up their own civil rights movement, to get him into an all-White school. Unfortunately the area declined due to 'ghetto blight' and his father was glad to sell the last one. He describes how, when Blacks travelled to other towns the first thing they had to do was a find another Black to inform them what hotels and shops they could use. This also gave them a kind of secret knowledge and collective identity against that of White America. Some Blacks miss this sense of community and solidarity, hence the proliferation of all-Black groups, societies and professional associations. He talks about working on the Great Society programmes in a truly horrendous town. One morning he woke up to hear the sound of his neighbour trying to shoot his own son in the stomach. Fortunately the man just grazed him. The bookish, nerdy kid, who should have done well at school, and whose mother attempted to protect him from the horror and violence around him by keeping him heavily involved at church, was shot dead in a drive-by gang shooting. The homecoming king at the local school was arrested as a violent thug. His job was to improve this community with the funding they had, but they had no idea what they were doing. They experimented and made stuff up, like the line that Blacks differ from Whites in learning experientially.
But as the years rolled on he became inwardly more conservative while maintaining an outward appearance of left-wing radicalism. Finally this became too much, and he came out as a conservative at a faculty meeting where they were discussing setting up a course on 'ethnic literature'. Steele, who had already been teaching a course on Black literature, objected. He asks what the label would mean – would it include Philip Roth as well as V.S. Naipaul? He was also angry at being taken for granted when it came to voting, as the proposer of the motion stated she didn't need to ask him, because she knew he'd vote with her. But he didn't. He objected, shed his left-wing mask, and came out as a conservative. He now gets abuse as an 'uncle Tom' but says he feels better.
In an interview in the back, Steele talks about what got him interested in literature. At his new, all-White school, the English teacher gave him a copy of Kit Carson and the Indians. He was practical illiterate after the appalling education at his former all-Black school. But he so wanted to read the book he spent the next 9 months teaching himself to read. He then moved on to other children's books, sports stories before tackling Dickens and Somerset Maugham.
Steele is wrong about American conservatism having abandoned imperialism. Bush's invasion of Iraq was definitely a piece of imperialist conquest, designed to rob the Iraqi people of their oil and state industries. The only difference was the presentation. It was disguised as a war of liberation. But that ruse is almost as old as civilisation itself. When Alexander the Great took a town, he didn't exact tribute from its ruler. No, what he demanded was 'contributions to the army of liberation.' Because he had liberated them from a tyrant. Steele states that the campaigns against sexism and the environmentalist movement are right, but he does have a point when he states that they were also enabled by a reaction against traditional White authority. Some radical writers and activists I've come across do seem to present them as in opposition to the White social and economic order carried to the New World by the first European colonists. And I agree with him about the breakdown of the traditional family that came as a result of the sexual revolution of the 60s. This affects Whites as well as Blacks, but is particularly acute among the latter community. 70 per cent of Black American children are born out of wedlock, 90 per cent in the cities. Studies have shown that children from stable families where both parents live together perform far better at school and work. As for education, one of his ideas for Blacks in areas with failing public schools is to open their own in a church or community centre.
I think he's right about the value of what can also be termed old-fashioned respectability and bourgeois family life. However individual initiative is inadequate to solve all forms of poverty. State action and welfare programmes are still badly needed. But this needn't be a choice between two alternatives. It means mixing appropriate state support while encouraging people to develop and use their talents. And his examples of Black excellence in sport, music, literature and entertainment do indicate that Blacks can excel by themselves. I found this particularly reassuring after listening to the claims about supposed Black intellectual inferior made by Simon Webb on History Debunked as his preferred explanation for the lack of Black progress.
The book comes from across the other side of the political aisle, but it's well worth reading and intensely thought-provoking about the continuing, very pertinent problem of Black failure as a consequence of the general failure of traditional morality post-segregation.
Tags:Affirmative Action, Alexander the Great, Blacks, Capitalism, Children, Church, Civil Rights, Colonialism, Counterculture, Ethnic Minorities, Feminism, Football, Gangs, George W. Bush, Green Movement, Harper's Magazine, History Debunked, Hoover Institution, Imperialism, Iraq Invasion, Lyndon B. Johnson, Murder, Oil Industry, Philip roth, racism, Schools, Segregation, Sexual Revolution, Shelby Steele, Shootings, Simon Webb, Stanford University, State Enterprises, State Schools, Universities, V.S. Naipaul, War, White Guilt, White Supremacy, Whites
Posted in America, Crime, Democracy, Economics, Education, England, Environment, Ethics, Greece, History, Industry, Iraq, LIterature, Medicine, Morality, Music, OIl, Persecution, Politics, Poverty, Sport, Trade Unions, Welfare Benefits | 2 Comments »
Another Festive Musical Attack on the Tories from PoliticsJoe
I've been putting up some of the vids from Kunt and the Gang for their obscene song about our incompetent, greedy, and murderous prime minister. However, they haven't only made one or two. They've made thirteen, which is far too many to put up. And I think we've got the message by now. But here's another musical spoof of them I found on YouTube from JOE: Now That's What I Call A Tory Christmas. It's a parody of the long-running series of music albums, Now That's What I Call Music. The spoof songs include a version of Wham's 'Last Christmas', about them telling people to keep apart while they themselves partied, Michael Gove singing a version of 'White Christmas' with a suspicious sniff; the horsey woman sings about how cronyism got her the contract for PPE and Rishi Sunak and friends singing about how they've spaffed everyone's money up the wall. Other songs satirise Dominic Cummings for his drive to Barnard Castle and the Tory party cutting aid to Africa. And there's a final song from a football commentator, manager or somebody advising us all not to vote for these bellends. Which is excellent advice. All with a carefully cut and edited voiceover from the minister for the 18th century, which makes him seem even more of a ridiculous anachronism than he already is. So enjoy!
Tags:Boris Johnson, Conservatives, Coronavirus, Dominic Cummings, Drugs, Football, International Aid, Jacob Rees-Mogg, Kunt and the Gang, Last Christmas, Lockdown, Michael Gove, Now That's What I Call Music, PoliticsJOE, Rishi Sunak, Wham, White Christmas, Youtube
Posted in Africa, Charity, Comedy, Industry, Medicine, Music, Politics, Popular Music, Sport | 2 Comments »
Private Eye on Luciana Berger
Remember Luciana Berger? She is, or was, the Blairite MP for Liverpool who joined the chorus of Jewish MPs screaming that Jeremy Corbyn was an evil anti-Semite and a threat to British Jewry because he criticised Israel's oppression of the Palestinians. Oh yes, and he wanted to ditch Thatcherism. She was one of the lynch mob of angry White women who turned up at the kangaroo trial of Marc Wadsworth demanding that he should be expelled for the dreadful crime of embarrassing Ruth Smeeth. For which Wadsworth, a long-term anti-racist activist who had worked with the Board of Deputies of British Jews in passing legislation to deal with real anti-Semitic attacks by the BNP, was labelled an anti-Semite. Berger seems to have turned up amongst the intake of new MPs in the 2010 parliament, and so Private Eye ran a feature on her in their 'The New Boys and Girls' column in their issue for the 18-31 March 2011. She comes across as fiercely ambitious, opportunistic and with scant interest or understanding of the ordinary Liverpudlians she supposedly represented. The article runs
"She may recently have been voted the most fanciable member of parliament, and since being elected as Labour MP for Liverpool Watertree last year she has developed a drooling fan club of sad, middle-aged men in the Commons – but looks deceive.
Twenty-eight year old Luciana Berger is what the comrades used to describe as a "right operator". Within a few months of her arrival, Ed Miliband had already promoted her to the frontbench as a shadow minister for energy and climate change.
Her swift climb up the greasy pole began soon after she left the Haberdasher Aske's School for Girls and went to Birmingham University, where she became an executive member of the National Union of Students, convening national anti-racism campaigns. She resigned in 2005, accusing the NUS of taking a lax attitude to anti-Semitism on campus.
She later took up a "public affairs" post at Accenture and went on to advise the NHS Confederation, but not before the rumour mill had come alive with talk of a relationship with Euan Blair after the pair were pictured at a party. Denials came thick and fast, not only from Blair but also from the Labour party, which took it upon itself to issue an official statement saing that young Luciana "was not, and had never been" romantically linked with Euan Blair.
One of her predecessors in the Liverpool Wavertree seat, the late Terry Fields, might have doffed his fireman's helmet to her for the way she managed to get selected in the first place, for it came straight out of the old Militant Tendency's instruction manual. While Labour was choosing its candidate, Berger lived for a month at the home of Jane Kennedy, then the sitting MP, whose partner was the Labour official who ran the selection process, Peter Dowling. The completed ballot papers were then returned to Kennedy's home address for counting.
A furious Frank Hont, secretary of the regional branch of the Unison trade union, lodged protests with party bosses, to no avail. Although veteran Liverpool Walton MP Peter Kilfoyle branded her a "student politician" who lacked the experience to do the job, Berger went on to beat Liverpool councillors Wendy Simon and Joyce Still by a margin of around 2-1 to win the candidacy on an "all-wimmin" shortlist. By this time, Berger was in a relationship with the MP and journalist Sion Simon, who was shortly to stand down from parliament to devote his energies to becoming mayor of Birmingham. The pair were talked of as a new "power couple".
Berger didn't improve her stock with incandescent Scousers by committing a series of gaffes that would have sunk a less shameless candidate. In January 2010, the Liverpool Echo tested Berger with a four-question quiz on Liverpool life and history. She scored two out of four, not knowing who performed "Ferry Cross the Mersey", and not recognising the name of former Liverpool FC manager Bill Shankly.
In her defence, Berger said that "you can't ask a girl a football question" and added: "I'm not new to the city. I've been coming here for the past decade through all different jobs." It is difficult to know what caused more offence, Berger's failure to have heard of Shankly or her reference to coming to the city "through all different jobs" – jobs, after all, being a commodity in short supply on Merseyside.
For a while it looked as though she would be given a run for her money at the election by Scouse actor and former union activist Ricky Tomlinson, who announced that he would stand for the Socialist Labour Party under the election slogan "Berger – my arse!" – but then wimped out because of "personal and contractual commitments".,
Once in parliament, Berger's ability to upset local sensitivities continued. Last October she infuriated Liverpudlians by appearing on a Radio Five Live show with Kelvin McKenzie, who was the editor of the Sun at the time of the Hillsborough disaster and whose coverage of the story led to a boycott of the paper on Merseyside that last to this day. Berger's lame defence was that she "didn't know who the other guests were".
With yet another little local difficulty somehow shrugged off, Luciana has also shrugged off Sion Simon and is now romantically involved with an equally ambitious Labour MP, Chuka Umunna, who has been dubbed "the British Obama". With the pair already being talked of as a new "power couple", let's hope the Labour party doesn't go and spoil things against by issuing a denial."
From this, it seems that she won her selection as Labour MP through knowing the right people, and is less interested in representing Liverpool than using it as a base to get her rear end in parliament. Which describes any number of Blairite MPs, male and female. As for saying that it was unfair to expect a girl to know about football, this sounds less persuasive ten years later when there's a campaign to get more women and girls playing sport and women's footie has been a regular fixture on the box with the men's. As for Berger's commitment to anti-racism, while I'm sure it was genuine enough at the time it was clearly outweighed in the Wadsworth's case by her determination to defend Israel and purge the party of Corbyn and his supporters anyway she could. I also wonder about her complaint that Birmingham University wasn't doing enough to tackle anti-Semitism. It's possible it was all as she said it was, and there was real anti-Semitism on campus. But the Blairites deliberately conflate anti-Semitism with anti-Zionism. Was the anti-Semitism she was so upset about simply other student activists, equally determined in their opposition to racism, condemning Israel's persecution of the Palestinians?
And it is, in my view, too bad that Tomlinson didn't stand against her and win. If he had done so, it was have done much to demonstrate to the Blairites, and particularly Starmer, that the Old Labour they despise has the power to defeat them by being able to create its own, independent party outside their control.
Tags:anti-racism, anti-semitism, Anti-Semitism Smears, Bill Shankly, Birmingham University, Blacks, Board of Deputies of British Jews, Chuka Umunna, Ed Miliband, Euan Blair, Football, Frank Hont, Haberdasher Aske's School for Girls, Jane Kennedy, Jeremy Corbyn, Jews, Joyce Still, Keir Starmer, Kelvin McKenzi8e, Labour Party, Liverpool, Liverpool Echo, Luciana Berger, Marc Wadsworth, Margaret Thatcher, Militant Tendency, NUS, Palestinians, Peter Dowling, Peter Kilfoyle, Private Eye, Purges, racism, Radio 5 Live, Ricky Tomlinson, Ruth Smeeth, Sion Simon, Socialist Labour Party, The Sun, tony blair, Wendy Simon, Whites, Zionism
Posted in Arabs, Education, Fascism, Israel, Judaism, Music, Persecution, Politics, Popular Music, Radio, Sport, The Press, Trade Unions | Leave a Comment »

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaCommonCrawl


It's well established that sitting too much can send you to an early grave—health experts even call it "sitting disease"—and that moving more can help you live longer. Now research shows that if you're able to swap just 30 minutes of your usual sitting time with physical activity, you can reduce your risk of checking out early.
The study, published in the American Journal of Epidemiology, included nearly 8,000 adults age 45 and older who had been part of a national health investigation that included activity monitoring between 2009 and 2013. The researchers tracked the death rate of the group through 2017, and then crunched the data to estimate how substituting time spent sitting with time being physically active would affect the risk of an early death.
They found that trading chair time for time spent in easy, low intensity activity like walking reduced risk of early death by 17 percent. Increasing the intensity of that activity doubled the benefits: Swapping a half hour of sitting time for the same amount of moderate to vigorous activity slashed early death risk by 35 percent.
"Our findings underscore an important public health message that physical activity of any intensity provides health benefits," said Keith Diaz, Ph.D., assistant professor of behavioral medicine at Columbia University Vagelos College of Physicians and Surgeons in a press release via Newswise.
Previous research by Diaz's team found that prolonged sitting is particularly problematic. People who routinely sat for an hour or more without getting up were more likely to die an early death than the who sat the same total amount of time, but got up and moved around more often during the day.
That study also concluded that people who sat for fewer than 30 minutes at a stretch enjoyed the lowest risk of early death, adding more incentive to get up every half hour as possible.
It all makes total sense. You have more than 600 muscles that make up your human body. You are literally made to move. When those muscles are put in park for prolonged periods, your metabolism tanks and your risk for metabolic disease like diabetes, obesity, and heart disease goes up.
This study just adds to the tall body of evidence that if you move those muscles just a little bit more every day, they'll reward you with a longer, healthier life.


text:
Alarm fatigue can cause patient harm in New York hospitals
The constant presence of multiple alarms in New York health care facilities can be a contributing factor to medical mistakes and negligence.
In New York, hospitals and other health care facilities are constantly adapting to new technology and updating systems that allow physicians and nurses to monitor and care for patients. Each machine has its purpose, and the alert it provides could mean the difference in life or death.
Turning them out
Adjusting to the presence of a constant sound and gradually tuning it out is a brain function that allows many to perform in over-stimulating environments. However, when the constant sound is a patient alarm, and the health care providers in the vicinity fail to respond, the patient could suffer unnecessary harm.
Unfortunately, nurses and physicians are not subjected to a single alert, but hundreds every hour, leading to sensory overload commonly known as alarm fatigue. In order to deal with the tasks at hand, many nurses and clinicians adjust the volume levels of the machines, learn to ignore the noise, or even turn off the alerts completely.
Too many alerts
According to Advanced Critical Care, a journal published by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses, the alarms going off in clinical situations are false in 72 percent to 99 percent of the cases, with relatively few indicating a legitimate medical emergency. Listening to hundreds of alerts and identifying which ones require immediate attention can be difficult or impossible. If providers were to attempt to respond to each, they would have to leave sterile environments to check the status of other patients, raising the risk of cross-contamination and infections significantly.
Managing alarms
The Washington Post reported that the association that provides accreditation to hospitals, the Joint Commission, requires health care facilities to analyze the health risks associated with delayed responses to each in an attempt to improve alarm safety. Between January 2009 and June 2012, there were 98 instances of adverse events related to alarms reported to the commission, but experts believe these represent a fraction of the incidents that occurred.
One potential solution being put into effect in some facilities is limiting who is authorized to turn off alarms. Many hospitals are also attempting to limit the number and types of alarms going off by standardizing equipment purchased so that alerts are easier for staff to identify.
A patient who sustains harm as a result of a missed alert may have an extended hospital stay, leading to greater medical expenses, lost wages and pain and suffering. Determining whether the responsibility for the incident lies with the manufacturer of the device, a physician or a member of the nursing staff may be difficult. A medical malpractice attorney in New York may be able to help identify liability so that a person can receive compensation that is entitled by law.
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Welcome back to all families after the student vacation period. I hope that you were able to enjoy some time together over the break, and are feeling refreshed and renewed for our term ahead.
A particularly warm welcome back to students and staff who have returned from the Drama and Visual Arts Immersion Tour to New York and from the HASSE Space Camp in Houston, and to those who travelled to Yarrabah in Far North Queensland to undertake community service. All trips went extremely well and provided a myriad of learning experiences. A more comprehensive report will be available in next week's newsletter. During the vacation period I attended the World Youth Day Commissioning Mass for the pilgrims from the Broken Bay Diocese. Staff member Patti Taaffe and Year 11 student Louise Vincent were commissioned at the Mass. I ask you to keep Ms Taaffe and Louise in your prayers as they take part in the WYD Pilgrimage following the footsteps of St. Paul in Greece and then move on to World Youth Day in Krakaw, Poland.
Despite the wet conditions, the Athletics Carnival on Wednesday proved to be a huge success. It was a delight to see our students involve themselves so joyfully in the day, whether it be through the challenge of competition or by loudly and passionately cheering for their House. Congratulations to Mornane House who were the overall winners, and to Barry House who were awarded the Spirit Cup.
Tonight, Year 10 students will be celebrating their friendships and dancing the night away at the Dinner Dance, whilst their parents will also have an opportunity to enjoy each other's company at the Year 10 Parents' Dinner. I wish Year 10 and their parents a wonderful evening of camaraderie and fun.
While we are currently being blessed with some beautiful, sunny winter days, the bouts of extreme weather which we experienced over these weeks and months has unfortunately caused some delay to the completion of the modular buildings project. The School is working with the builders and architects to ensure that the works are completed as quickly as possible so that our students can start to benefit from having these additional learning spaces.
These last few weeks have highlighted just how much our world needs prayer and hope: the news of what has happened in Nice recently, the events of violence and hatred in the US, the political instability in Turkey, the upheaval in South Sudan and in other places of conflict and war remind me of the Common Prayer of Australian cartoonist Michael Leunig that we only have two options: love and fear. We can choose one, but not both. Let us respond with love and not fear.


text:
Meet the awesome team behind Acme Marketing.
Leah Robinson
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Thomas J. Turner
Leah is the CEO and founder of Acme Marketing. She spent several years working as a freelance marketing consultant before moving into full-time management positions. Before founding Acme Marketing, Leah handled several million-dollar accounts for some of the biggest names in tech.
Thomas started out as a freelance content writer and quickly moved into full-time content production for one of America's biggest homeware brands. As Acme's first full-time employee, he's developed and perfected the content strategy from the ground up.
Dan is an experienced social media manager, and his skills span everything from video production to creating PPC campaigns. Dan has deep understanding of the tools and strategies needed to get your content in front of the right people on social networks.
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This is Casper. He is a gentle boy who is looking for a loving, quiet home. He is easily spooked so would like an understanding owner who will be able to give him the time and patience he needs to settle down. He is currently with a foster family as he loves being outside and patrolling the area so wasn't happy at the cattery. If you would like to know a little more about Casper check out his profile HERE!
YOU CAN WATCH HIM IN ACTION ON YOUTUBE TOO!
Hoping Casper gets adopted soon! He's so handsome.
I just want to snuggle that Casper!
Casper seems like a great cat. We will share, and hope he finds his forever home very soon.
Casper seems like a nice guy - I hope he finds a home soon.


QUETTA - Balochistan Union of Journalists (BUJ) staged a walkout from the press gallery during the provincial assembly's session to protest the massive downsizing of journalists by different TV channels and newspapers.
They gathered in front of the assembly to mark their protest.
A team of government and opposition members headed by Provincial Minister Asad Baloch and opposition member Ahmed Nawaz Baloch met the protesters.
Khalil Ahmed, President of BUJ informed them about the serious situation due to the forcible terminations of media workers. He said this downsizing should be stopped.
The team of opposition and government members assured the protesting journalists all help and cooperation in resolving the matter. They said a joint resolution would be moved in the house on the issue of the downsizing.


The College of Humanities and Social Sciences building, shown from the northeast.
IUP's newest building houses the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, which includes the departments of English, Journalism, Political Science, History, Philosophy, Religious Studies, and Geography and Regional Planning.
Academic year 2015–16 witnessed not only the normal activities of CHSS, but also the culmination of a decade-long dream of moving into our new home in the Humanities and Social Sciences building. Fundraising efforts from August 2014 through June 2016 helped to raise nearly $30,000 in support of our new building. The major work of moving in took place over the 2015–16 Winter Break, and, in late January, students with majors from across the university enjoyed their first classes in our new state-of-the-art classrooms.
The new building features architectural elements from both Keith and Leonard halls as a way to preserve a flavor of the past, and its technology offerings make it conducive to today's learning needs.
In addition, the building provides those who travel by wheelchair or motorized scooter a completely accessible path from the Eberly College of Business and Information Technology and Memorial Field House to the Oak Grove.
Read more about the new building in "Humanities and Social Sciences to Get High-Tech New Home," which appeared in the summer 2012 issue of IUP Magazine.


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Maddox never registered as Waste Pro lobbyist
Tallahassee City Commissioner Scott Maddox never registered with Leon County to lobby on behalf of Waste Pro USA before meeting with county officials in 2012 to urge them not to put out a hard bid for residential garbage collection.
Maddox never registered as Waste Pro lobbyist Tallahassee City Commissioner Scott Maddox never registered with Leon County to lobby on behalf of Waste Pro USA before meeting with county officials in 2012 to urge them not to put out a hard bid for residential garbage collection. Check out this story on pnj.com: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2018/02/07/scott-maddox-never-registered-waste-pro-lobbyist/314385002/
Jeff Burlew, Democrat senior writer Published 9:10 a.m. CT Feb. 7, 2018 | Updated 1:55 p.m. CT Feb. 7, 2018
City Commissioner Scott Maddox, an attorney and former chair of the state Democratic party, was first elected to the commission in 1993 and served as its first "leadership mayor" from 1997-2003. He was re-elected in 2012, after serving as state party chair, running his own political consulting firm and making several unsuccessful bids for statewide office.(Photo: Hali Tauxe/Democrat)
Maddox and his close friend Paige Carter-Smith met with County Administrator Vince Long and Deputy County Administrator Alan Rosenzweig in 2012, as the county's long-standing contract with Waste Management was expiring and county staff was working on a competitive proposal for commission consideration.
Former County Commissioner Gary Yordon, then an employee of Governance, attended the meeting, as did Ralph Mills, a regional vice president for Waste Pro.
'The Scheme' in the search warrant:
Gov. Scott on FBI investigation into Scott Maddox: 'These allegations are troubling'
Commissioners shocked by FBI warrant; two say Scott Maddox should consider stepping down
FBI lays out case for bribery, mail fraud in search warrant
Read the search warrant demanding Scott Maddox communications from Apple
Our opinion: Search warrant validates facts of FBI investigation, suggests it could be awhile
The exact date of the impromptu gathering is unclear — neither Long nor Rosenzweig can remember. But Long said it happened in the months before a Dec. 11, 2012, County Commission meeting in which commissioners signed off on seeking a hard bid for trash collection in the unincorporated area.
That means at the time of the meeting, Maddox either was running for re-election to the City Commission after nearly a decade out of office or had already won his city seat in the Nov. 6, 2012, general election. It's also possible the meeting occurred during the two-week span between the election and his swearing into office.
Long said the meeting with him and Rosenzweig happened in county offices after a phone call from Carter-Smith.
"I think we were both surprised that Scott was in the meeting," Long said, "because it was Paige that called. And when they got up there, it was Paige and Scott and Gary and Waste Pro."
Waste Pro acknowledged Tuesday that it is cooperating with the FBI in its investigation into public corruption in Tallahassee. But representatives would not say whether it is the same business the bureau labeled "Company Three" in federal search warrant documents obtained Monday by the Democrat. The FBI described Company Three only as a "waste services provider" that has paid Maddox and Carter-Smith's Governance firm more than $170,000 since 2013.
The FBI documents allege that Maddox and Carter-Smith, who now serves as executive director of the Downtown Improvement Authority, took part in a bribery scheme involving Governance and companies doing business with the city. Federal authorities allege that while Maddox sold the firm to Carter-Smith between 2010 and 2012, he continued to direct its activities and profit from it. Specifically, the FBI said Maddox took official acts to benefit Governance clients in exchange for payments funneled through the firm.
No charges have been filed against Maddox or Carter-Smith. Their attorneys have said they ultimately will be cleared of wrongdoing. Neither Maddox nor his attorney responded to requests for comment.
It was not the first time individuals have worked issues now under FBI scrutiny behind the scenes and without registering as a lobbyist. In 2015, several people, including Carter-Smith and Adam Corey, another central figure in the FBI investigation, didn't register during City Commission deliberations of a vehicle for hire ordinance.
Carter-Smith worked for Uber, labeled "Company One" in court records, while Corey worked for Yellow Cab, dubbed "Company Two." The FBI said in the documents that Uber paid Governance $30,000 over several months in 2012.
The Uber connection:
Uber mounted 11th-hour lobbying blitz at City Hall
Figures in FBI probe worked Uber ordinance behind the scenes
(story continues below video playlist)
County records show Maddox registered to lobby the local government as part of the Maddox Horne law firm — not Governance — from 2006 to 2009 and in 2011, all years he was out of office. He listed Governance as one of his clients.
Among his other clients were Arbor Properties, a firm owned by local apartment builder Gordon Thames; Renaissance Partners, LLC, a now defunct company managed by developer Hurley Booth Jr.; and M/A-COM, Inc., a Lynchburg, Virginia, business. He also listed three Jacksonville outfits as clients: the Mathis & Murphy law firm, developer Rockaway, LLP and Green Power Systems LLC.
Chronicling the FBI investigation
A TANGLED WEB: A look at those under the microscope of federal investigators and their connections to the city, businesses and each other
Our opinion: Maddox search warrant validates facts of FBI investigation, suggests it could be awhile
Maddox in the middle: Adams Street players at heart of Governors Walk project, FBI probe
Governance was focus of 2010 Miami-Dade ethics probe
What happened in Vegas? Photo emerges of Maddox with undercover FBI agents
Read the entire search warrant
Governance listed Waste Pro as one of its lobbying clients as early as October 2011 and as recently as 2014, according to county records. Both Carter-Smith and Yordon — but not Maddox — were listed as lobbyists for Waste Pro for all four quarters of 2012. Waste Pro paid Governance that year between $10,000 and $50,000, according to compensation reports.
Since 2010, Waste Pro has contributed at least $7,000 to local candidates, including a $1,000 check in 2015 to Maddox's abandoned campaign for superintendent of schools.
Waste Pro won the county contract in 2013 after submitting a bid 25 percent lower than Waste Management's, according to county records. Before that, Waste Management had held the county contract since 1987.
Lobbyists with clients before the county are required by ordinance to register annually with the local government. Intentional violations are prosecuted as misdemeanors, with penalties of up to $500 in fines and a maximum of 60 days of jail.
Contact Jeff Burlew at jburlew@tallahassee.com or follow @JeffBurlew on Twitter.
Read or Share this story: http://www.tallahassee.com/story/news/2018/02/07/scott-maddox-never-registered-waste-pro-lobbyist/314385002/


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Available: May 2015
5 1/2 x 8 1/4 , 400 pages
Also available as an e-book
Facebook | Goodreads
Indie Bound
Don't Trust Don't Fear Don't Beg
The Extraordinary Story of the Arctic 30
A gripping work of narrative nonfiction about the thirty Greenpeace activists thrown into Russia's vicious prison system—and the fight to get them out
"The most important prison motto is hope for the better, but every moment, literally every moment, be prepared for the worst. Don't hope, don't fear, don't beg." —Roman Dolgov, one of the Arctic 30
Melting ice, a military arms race, the rush to exploit resources at any cost—the Arctic is now the stage on which our future will be decided. And as temperatures rise and the ice retreats, Vladimir Putin orders Russia's oil rigs to move north. But one early September morning in 2013 thirty men and women from eighteen countries—the crew of Greenpeace's Arctic Sunrise—decide to draw a line in the ice and protest the drilling in the Arctic.
Thrown together by a common cause, they are determined to stop Putin and the oligarchs. But their protest is met with brutal force as Putin's commandos seize the Arctic Sunrise. Held under armed guard by masked men, they are charged with piracy and face fifteen years in Russia's nightmarish prison system.
Ben Stewart—who spearheaded the campaign to release the Arctic 30—tells an astonishing tale of passion, courage, brutality, and survival. With wit, verve, and candor, he chronicles the extraordinary friendships the activists made with their often murderous cellmates, their battle to outwit the prison guards, and the struggle to stay true to the cause that brought them there.
Ecology/Health
"The Arctic is in grave danger. This terrific book illuminates, with thriller-like pace and crackling humor, the story of thirty people who risked their freedom for its protection. Anyone who admires direct action, wants to know what to do about the peril we are all in, or who cares about the future of their children should read it now."
"The story you are about to read is extraordinary. It is one of fear, hope, despair and humanity. But we still don't know how it ends. That is up to all of us. Including you. Please encourage your friends to help bring a hopeful conclusion to this moving story."
"A gripping story of tremendous courage that reads like a thriller. By putting their bodies on the line to stop the drilling, the Arctic 30 became global symbols for a resurgent climate movement, one willing to do whatever it takes to close down new fossil fuel frontiers. This is real heroism, and Stewart's excellent account will surely inspire many others to join the fight for a humane and livable planet."
—Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine
"A riveting adventure story, with real-life heroes and planet-sized stakes."
—Bill McKibben, author of Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet
"A fascinating tale of bravery in the face of totalitarian cruelty. A true page-turner and an important book for our times."
—Gary Shteyngart, author of Little Failure and Super Sad True Love Story
"Reads with the heart-racing pace of a sensational action-adventure story. . . . Paints a vivid picture of the plight of each activist, thrusting readers directly into the action. This riveting account will excite and inspire and provides a thrilling read."
—Library Journal (starred review)
Foreign Affairs writes that the book's "colorful dialogue, moral dilemmas, and scenes of physical danger" would make it a great movie
Author Ben Stewart speaks with Mark Karlin at Truthout about climate change and his new book.
The Democracy Now! team interviews Ben Stewart and Captain Peter Willcox of the Arctic 30 who risked it all to stop oil drilling in the Arctic.
America's Military Today
Challenges for the Armed Forces in a Time of War
Tod Ensign
God Needs No Passport
Immigrants and the Changing American Religious Landscape
Peggy Levitt
Does It Make Us Safer? Is It Ever OK?: A Human Rights Perspective
Kenneth Roth, Minky Worden
Nuclear Power Is Not the Answer
Helen Caldicott
Ben Stewart is a former Guardian Student Journalist of the Year and is now head of media at Greenpeace. He was one of the six protesters cleared of criminal damage to Kingsnorth power station in a groundbreaking trial whose...
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Scott Pruitt's Moroccan calendar draws blanks
Jason Andrew/Getty Images(WASHINGTON) — Newly released calendars for one of the most controversial trips of Environmental Protection Agency Administrator Scott Pruitt's tenure were largely blacked out before being shared with ABC News.
The 47-hour journey in Morocco was already drawing congressional scrutiny and criticism from outside groups because of the lack transparency over why Pruitt was in the country and what he was doing while he was there.
In Morocco, he spent at least a portion of his time promoting exports for U.S. energy firms. Conservative congressional estimates put the cost of the trip at more than $40,000, and because of travel snags, Pruitt and his aides spent two days in Paris at high-end hotels.
Pruitt did not publicly announce he was going ahead of time, did not bring reporters along, and when he finally released copies of his itinerary in response to Freedom of Information requests from ABC News and other news organizations, the bulk of the schedule was blacked out.
"The substantial redaction of calendars from his trip to Morocco, in which he apparently spent substantial taxpayer money to work on an issue that could benefit donors and those with ties to him, seems like just the latest example of the inappropriate secrecy he has brought to every aspect of his job.," Noah Bookbinder, the executive director of the nonpartisan watchdog Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington, said in a statement.
What is known about Pruitt's trip to Morocco last December comes from a press statement he released as he departed to fly back to D.C. According to the EPA press release, he discussed U.S. environmental priorities and the U.S.-Morocco Free Trade Agreement with Moroccan leaders and, to the surprise of some, promoted benefit of liquid natural gas imports in Morocco.
At the time of the trip, the only U.S. company that exported liquid natural gas was represented by a top Washington lobbyist who arranged $50-a-night housing for Pruitt when he first moved to town. The company, Cheniere, and the lobbyist, Steven Hart, both told ABC News they did not ask Pruitt to promote the exports in Morocco.
A spokesman for Hart told ABC News that he did not lobby the EPA in 2017, but federal lobbying records show that he was registered as a lobbyist for Cheniere at the time Pruitt lived in the condo co-owned by his wife, also a prominent DC lobbyist.
The EPA's inspector general is looking into Pruitt's travel as part of its audit of whether all the agency's travel decisions followed the proper procedure. That inquiry was expanded to include the Morocco trip after a letter from Sen. Tom Carper, D-Del., the ranking member of the Senate committee with oversight of EPA, expressed concern about the cost. Pruitt's first-class flight alone cost $17,000 and at least one of his aides and members of his security detail also flew first class.
Most agency heads are authorized to travel first class on trans Atlantic flights, but the cost of the trip concerned members of Congress who were already looking at his high domestic and international travel costs.
The time Pruitt spent discussing Liquid Natural Gas raised the most questions about the trip.
Carper specifically noted that gas exports are not part of EPA's mission.
Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse, D-R.I., also wrote to Pruitt directly about the trip earlier this month. Whitehouse voiced concern that Pruitt's decision to visit Morocco was influenced by companies and lobbying groups that have business interests in natural gas exports.
"For a trip The Washington Post estimated cost $17,000 for you, and that included at least 10 EPA staff, your official business consisted of one full working day, and two days each with one, one-hour meeting," Whitehouse wrote in the letter.
Four Democrats on the House Energy and Commerce Committee also asked the EPA to provide information on the trip. A spokesman said they have not received any response from the agency.
A copy of Pruitt's schedule during the trip obtained by ABC News through a Freedom of Information Act request confirms that Pruitt met with Moroccan government officials on environmental matters, toured a green energy facility and met with the chairman of Morocco's state-owned mining company, all meetings that were also listed on his public schedule.
But four pages of the of the six-page schedule are redacted in the publicly released documents. Other than Pruitt's meeting with the Moroccan Agency for Sustainable Energy CEO Mustapha Bakkoury on December 11, no other events from that day are identified. A large block of the schedule is redacted citing the "deliberative process privilege" allowed under the Freedom of Information Act.
Typically, that's an exception used to avoid releasing the details of internal policy discussions before they are finalized, so as to prevent confusing the public, according to the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press website.
The EPA cites the exemption repeatedly to justify deletions throughout the 350 pages of schedules the EPA released this week, including his activities on New Year's Day.
Whitehouse wrote in a letter earlier this month that he has reviewed copies of Pruitt's schedule that show he traveled with his family to the Rose Bowl and Disneyland during that time.
Adam Marshall, an attorney with the Reporters Committee for the Freedom of the Press, said the use of the Deliberative Process Privilege is problematic in this case because previous court cases have said it can't be used to redact purely factual information like the date, time, or who attended a meeting.
Marshall called it the "withhold it because you want to" exemption because agencies routinely overuse it.
"We know from past experiences that [the exemption is] used to withhold embarrassing and politically inconvenient information from the public," he said in an interview with ABC News.
Bookbinder said EPA has for months, systematically withheld records about Pruitt's meetings and work at the agency that are necessary for basic oversight. Multiple news organizations and watchdog groups have sued EPA for documents related to Pruitt's schedule, which the EPA refuses to release in advance of his events citing security reasons.
Marshall also said that agencies should proactively release calendars and other documents that they know reporters and members of the public will be interested in.
"I think the public interest in agency heads in general and the EPA, in particular, is enormous. It's obvious that there's an incredible amount of desire for this information and the agencies in general and EPA, in particular, should be proactively releasing this information," he said.
The EPA has not yet responded to questions about redactions in his calendar.


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Iskandar targets investments in tourism, leisure, services and property sectors
By THE STAR
SINGAPORE: Iskandar Investment Bhd (IIB) will hold more roadshows in Singapore within the next six months to attract more investors to Iskandar Malaysia.
President and chief executive officer Arlida Ariff said IIB wanted to attract more Singaporeans – who were already making inroads in Iskandar in the education and the health sectors – to the tourism, leisure, services and property sectors.
"There seems to be renewed interest from investors in the republic in Iskandar following the economic recovery both in Singapore and Malaysia," she told journalists yesterday after presenting a keynote address in the Iskandar Malaysia Forum 2010 jointly organised by IIB and the Institute of South-East Asian Studies.
Arlida said Singapore was one of Iskandar's top investors with its private companies holding more than RM2.64bil worth of investments in the manufacturing sector.
In fact, long before Iskandar was launched on Nov 4, 2006, Singaporeans already formed a large group of foreign property buyers in Johor and had regarded the state as their second home, she said.
Arlida Ariff meeting participants at the Iskandar Malaysia Forum 2010.
Now, more Singaporean property buyers were attracted to Johor's real estates, especially with the upcoming business and lifestyle developments that were due to be completed in Iskandar, she said, adding that Singapore investors would normally give their first preference to invest in Malaysia, particularly in Johor, before looking at other areas in the region.
"This is due to the close proximity between Singapore and Johor and historically both countries have been interdependent on each other economically."
Arlida said the forum was a good platform for potential investors from Singapore to get a first-hand information from IIB on the opportunities in Iskandar and the development taking place in Malaysia's first economic growth corridor.
She said many participants at the forum wanted to know whether Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak was committed to continuing the development in Iskandar as the corridor was the brainchild of his predecessor, Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.
She said stakeholders of Iskandar – the Federal and Johor Governments and the Iskandar Regional Development Authority – and IIB had assured investors that the policies remained unchanged despite the change in leadership.
– Iskandar Malaysia News