Sunday Reading

Written By: - Date published: 9:47 am, September 1st, 2013 - 5 comments
Categories: interweb - Tags:

My semi-regular Sunday piece of interesting, longer, deeper stories I found during the week. It’s also a chance for you to share what you found this week too. Those stimulating links you wanted to share, but just didn’t fit in anywhere (no linkwhoring).  This week: a right pot-pourri.

First up – the bias of public broadcasting. The BBC is regularly accused of being left-wing, anti-Business, pro-EU…  Well, some academic folk did some research on it – they report Tory political views twice as much as Labour ones (even accounting for who’s in government), and business voices far more than organised labour or community ones, and anti-EU voices more often than pro- ones. Would we find the same here?  Certainly we hear from bank economists most of the time pushing the housing market, rather than academics, let alone trade union voices on business. And if right-wing parties don’t get their say: well it’s not like they aren’t constantly invited!

On US law enforcement – the NSA has had to admit to more illegal spying and the NYPD has had to admit to strategies based on Israeli treatment of Palestinians.

From the Guardian – how much brain-power of kids are we using making them live in poverty, and as Quantitative Easing is the only tool major countries are using to ease the financial criss – due to it being the one that keeps the wealth imbalance in-place – may it cause another crisis? Intriguingly Britain’s austerity economy is still not recovered from the 2007-8 crisis as the length of this recession now far outstrips the Great Depression.

Should we force voters to vote in their first election (possibly tied to dropping the age to 16)? A think-tank is pushing the idea to get people into the habit – and for parties to care about the young.

Finally: Human Origins.  Are we a hybrid-chimpanzee, and is life originally from Mars?

[unless you also want: why are vulvas so obscene they aren’t allowed to be seen? NSFW ]

5 comments on “Sunday Reading ”

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  1. Draco T Bastard 1
    1 September 2013 at 12:08 pm

    Quantitative Easing is the only tool major countries are using to ease the financial criss – due to it being the one that keeps the wealth imbalance in-place – may it cause another crisis?

    Keeping the wealth imbalance in place and actually increasing it was the whole point of the QE. All it’s done is prop up the banksters and the rich while placing the costs on everyone else. If they hadn’t done that QE then there would be a lot of rich who would no longer be rich.

    • Greywarbler 1.1
      1 September 2013 at 12:19 pm

      Amazing how the market works for the wealthy while spouting out its objective and pure ways of sorting for efficiency or something. When people used to buy at small markets, you had to keep an eye out for the trader who put his thumb on the scales and pressed them to show a heavier weight of produce to be paid for than was received. QE seems just the same shonky practice wrapped up in glossy paper and technology on a much bigger scale. And the longer it goes on the harder to shift.

      We have had free market going that from the first could be seen to be failing in its job of managing our economy and apportioning taxes fairly and reasonably, for the benefit of all the society and particularly ensuring that business enterprises were encouraged, so that employment was available at all levels of skills, and could be profitable. 1987 to now, I think we can see it’s wrong and our world is shitty, our problems have increased and our ability to fix them, lessen yearly.

  2. Draco T Bastard 2
    1 September 2013 at 12:59 pm

    Are Governments implementing mass surveillance because of looming climate change catastrophe?
    A good question and probably answers why this government is attacking our democracy and removing our rights.

  4. joe90 4
    1 September 2013 at 1:53 pm

    All twelve episodes of the 1976 BBC adaptation of Graves’s I, Claudius.