Politics – Page 32 – More Zonkyness

Tories Misunderstand The Minimum Wage

Oct 152014

In today’s news we learn that a Tory minister has apologised for being caught saying remarks which imply that the disabled are not worth paying the minimum wage. To be fair, it’s probably not just him – probably most privileged Tories have a basic misunderstanding of the word “minimum”. And are in dire need of a bit of basic remedial English remedial education.

As an aside, I’m going to use some words like “incompetent”, “lazy”, “useless”, etc. to refer to people but this is not intended to apply to disabled people. I’m making a point about the minimum wage and not about disabled people; most of whom I am sure are worth far more than the minimum wage.

The minimum wage is just that … a minimum. Which means that no matter how poor, any employee who is just about avoiding being fired is worth that wage. The minimum wage is not a full wage, it is a basic minimum that any employer should want to exceed.

Anybody who exceeds the minimum requirements for performing on a job – even if they are not “excellent” or even “good” deserves more than the minimum wage.

Let’s emphasise that: If you are a good worker and you are being paid the minimum wage then you are under paid. You are being ripped off.

On the subject of the disabled in the work place, perhaps we should be thinking of them as people with certain limitation – just like the rest of us. The overwhelming majority of people out there are not capable of doing my job as well as I can do it because of their limitations – limitations in experience and the ability to think in certain ways. I cannot think off the top of my head of a single physical limitation that would prevent someone doing my job.

Some disabled people may need “special” arrangements to be able to do my job – a special desk for wheelchair users for example. But so do I – I’m tall, so I need a taller desk than usual, and I need a special pair of glasses to read the computer screen for an extended duration. Where is the difference?

Spending a few hundred (or thousand) pounds to adapt a work place to the needs of the worker is hardly an excessive price to pay – it’s a tiny proportion of the cost of employing someone. And employers should be doing this for every worker – adapting the work place for the needs of each individual who works there will make them feel valued, will probably make them more productive, and is less likely to make disabled people feel uncomfortable about asking for their special needs.

We all have special needs.

Malala Yousafzai to Share Nobel Peace Prize?

Politics No Responses »

Oct 102014

I’ve not got a problem with Malala Yousafzai winning some sort of prize – she deserves to. But a peace prize?

Campaigning for women’s education is hardly likely to lead to peace – the neanderthals that oppose women’s education aren’t likely to take being opposed peacefully. And I’m aware that comparing Islamic fundamentalists to Neanderthals is vastly insulting. To the Neanderthals.

But Malala is saying something that needs saying. Espousing truth as it were.

The trouble is the title of the prize: The Nobel Peace Prize. It’s often awarded for actions that do not promote peace, but for more general humanitarian accomplishments. Perhaps it should be renamed to the Nobel Humanitarian Prize or even the Nobel Truth Prize?

Tories Want To Take Away Your Human Rights

Politics No Responses »

Oct 032014

According to the Tory party conference, they are planning to “do something” about the European Court of Human Rights, and to stop the British government being overruled by the ECHR. Most of the time we hear about the work of the ECHR through ridiculous stories but the court deals with tens of thousands of cases a year. So most of the time we do not get to hear about it’s work. After all sensible decisions do not make good news stories.

Let’s look at the rights that the ECHR is there to protect :-

respecting rights
life
torture
servitude
liberty and security
fair trial
retroactivity
privacy
conscience and religion
expression
association
marriage
effective remedy
discrimination
derogations
aliens
abuse of rights
permitted restrictions

Which is a long list, and could do with some additional explanation, which can be found here.

The reason the Tories are giving for abolishing our human rights is that they don’t want interference from the European Union in their actions. Which when you come down to it is kind of worrying – our government finds our human rights and the organisation created after World War II to protect those rights “inconvenient”.

There are those who will ramble on about sovereign rights which are important, but not as important as human rights. People are more important than states.

The more the Tories want to evade the oversight of the ECHR, the more I want the ECHR to be keeping an eye on the behaviour of “our” government. The judges of the ECHR may be unelected but they’re more trustworthy than a bunch of corrupt politicians who find our human rights inconvenient.

In The Wake of The Scottish Independence Referendum

Politics 2 Responses »

Sep 202014

Well we’ve lost our brief opportunity to send scad loads of illegal immigrants back home north in the window between Scotland becoming independent and it joining the European Union 🙂

Now thing get interesting … because of the promises of the “No” campaigners, Scotland has been given some vague promises of greater devolution with more powers for the Scottish parliament.

Which has been immediately seized upon by the Welsh parliament and the Northern Ireland parliament as justifying extra powers for their own parliaments.

But what about an English parliament? The Tories have ruled that out straight away. I’m not sure I want an English parliament, but I do know that I would like to have a discussion on the merits of one. Ruling out the option of an English parliament is representative of the contempt the Tories have for the will of the people.

If the Welsh, Scottish, and Northern Irish are mature enough for the responsibility of devolved powers, shouldn’t the English be considered mature enough too? Admittedly, the English do have a tendency to send too many vote the Tories’ way, but perhaps giving us some additional responsibility will lead us to leave our childish ways behind us.

But perhaps England is too large a unit rub shoulders with Wales, Scotland, and Northern Ireland in a UK parliament. Perhaps we should be considering a larger number of smaller sub-countries. Vehement English nationalists would be up in arms at the suggestion that we can sub-divide England – which by itself is a reason to consider the idea.

England as a country is an artificial creation brought about through conquest, and there is no reason to devolve powers to England if those powers could be devolved to smaller and more sensibly sized sub-countries. As an example, what about :-

Cornwall (and probably Devon too).
Wessex (Oxfordshire, Hampshire, Sussex, Kent, Dorset, Somerset, and Gloucester)
Northumbria (Lancaster, Yorkshire, Durham, and Cumbra)
Mercia (the bits in the middle)
London.

In the same sense that the UK is too large for us to feel connected to the government, so would England be.

If we are going to look again at how the UK is structured, we need to look closely at all the options no matter how radical. It’s all too possible that the politicians will do as little as possible to keep their comfortable lives the same.

Islamic Extremists Buy Into The Myth of The “Weak West”

General, Politics, Religion No Responses »

Aug 202014

The average Islamic extremist when he has time to think about anything other that licking his favourite pig, is under the mistaken belief that the western world is fundamentally weak. Weakened by our dissipated and irreligious lives; weakened by our usual sympathy for the underdog.

This is perfectly understandable for the moronic medieval minds that most Islamic extremists carry around with them. Because in some ways the west does look weak.

But the west is not weak as it has shown again and again since the start of WWII. However it is reluctant to start anything without taking care that it is doing the right thing. Time and again, whenever the west has gotten involved with something without thinking enough in advance (Vietnam, Iraq, etc.) it has gotten bogged down in something it realises that it shouldn’t have started.

But the west will get involved if it is provoked enough and it believes that it is on the right side.

The beheading of James Foley by the pig-licking thugs sometimes known as ISIS, ISIL, IS or just Daesh would appear on the surface to be an attempt to discourage the US and the west from getting involved. It would seem that the US air strikes and the push by the Kurdish and Iraqi military have started making things difficult for IS, and they would like to stop the US air strikes.

What they have accomplished is to encourage the US and the rest of the west to stay involved and take more measures.

They may regard themselves as some sort of ultra-religious freedom fighters, but anybody who uses extortion, flogging, amputations, rape, and indiscriminate killings are nothing more mindless pig-licking thugs.

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