Camden, Cuts, The Cabinet, Smiles and taking ownership

Like all councils up and down the country cuts have been imposed by central government. It is entirely up to the locally elected council administrations to decide on how best to proportion out belt tightening measures.

This is after all what every citizen of Great Britain does every month when balancing earnings against expenditure. Is it not reasonable that if “the people” have to make cuts not only to essential things as well as any luxury items and foods just to make ends meet every month.
Unfortunately some folks get caught up in the easy use of that flexible friend the credit card, much like the Labour government under Gordon Brown did with the treasury of our country. But we know where that leads to, in the case of a government a fall from grace, and in the case of the individual the loss and repossession of homes.

So against this backdrop, is it not reasonable that the Camden Labour administration accepts it’s responsibility to implement hopefully a fair and well thought out measures of cuts and that balances the financial books of the very affluent borough of Camden.

I sincerely hope that the new Labour Cabinet fully embraces the challenges that face them in these very difficult financial times and uses a positive managerial command of pushing forward rather than just blame central government for having fewer sweets in it’s sweetie bag this year. It must accept as all the people have already accepted and move on in a dignified and positive way to show by the quality of it’s analysis and fiscal management that Camden can become a shining beacon to other councils by way of example.

If the cabinet feels the need of atonement about about dishing out the package of cuts to the residents of Camden they could always make the gesture to reduce their handsome allowances!

The Full Council meets this Monday 28th February at 7pm. Camden residents will be watching!

Author: Nigel Rumble

Parodox of the US and UK Economic situation

The US economy doing rather better than expected with higher last quarter growth and GDP now up at 3.5%. This all appears to be linked to the upturn in consumer spending for last quarter. The fiscal decision to keep the Dollar down is paying off big bucks at the expense of the stronger pound, UK Economy which has taken the worst last quarter possible with 0.5% down on growth figures with consumer spending at an all time low.

Although too early to pin this UK market retraction on VAT (20% Consumption TAX) increase of 2.5% this clearly appears together with bad weather during the critical consumer spending period pre Christmas period.

Banks appear to be doing well and the debate soon to re-start as the big bank bonuses are announced will re-emerge in the press any week now.

Conclusion: US doing better than predicted with a lower expectation of the US people for recovery, but spending at steady level. UK doing not so well and certainly less than predicted with a retracted consumer spending, but paradoxically a higher expectation of the UK people for recovery.

The UK ConLib coalition clearly needs to work more on giving out realistic expectations to the country. In many ways too many Conservative (and including coalition partners) taxation policies designed to help reduce to the deficit are having a quite opposite effect short-term.

The decision to TAX NonDom’s a fixed annual charge of £30,000 on long-term residents claiming non-domicile status may have been popular with voters pre election but indications are already showing a considerable exodus of extremely wealthy NonDom’s out of Britain to more TAX friendly Nations. Our loss their gain!

It is predicted that the overall (deficit reducing benefit) money gained from this new £30,000 charge will pale into insignificance by the overall loss that the UK economy ‘would’ have achieved had the NonDom’s been encouraged to stay in the UK in the first place!

More the case of the right hand not knowing what the left hand is doing and probably motivated in pre-election voter pleasing campaigning! Time for moving on and working out 'sensiblel' deficit reducing policies.

Author: Nigel Rumble

Private Firm To Run Entire NHS Hospital

Private Firm To Run Entire NHS Hospital

Hinchingbrooke Hospital in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire, will be operated by the private sector from next summer in a franchise expected to last at least seven years.NHS East of England, the area's health authority, is announcing which of two private bidders will run the hospital.The companies - Circle Health and Serco - have submitted comprehensive plans to improve patient care and make services more efficient.The hospital is nearly £40m in debt and previous attempts to turn it around have failed.The only NHS bidder for the contract pulled out in early negotiations.Dr Stephen Dunn, director of Strategy at NHS East of England, earlier said the aim was to ensure a sustainable future for the hospital.

Re-Bloged by Nigel Rumble, Yahoo Breaking News

Powerful Chile Quake 'Shifted Earth's Axis'

"The powerful earthquake that killed hundreds of people in Chile on Saturday probably shifted the Earth's axis and made days slightly shorter, a Nasa scientist has said."

"Richard Gross, a research scientist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, calculated how much the axis may have changed in position following the the disaster.

If the planet's axis did shift by 8cm during the quake, days would have shortened by 1.26 microseconds, Mr Gross calculated. A microsecond is one-millionth of a second.

Earth days are 24 hours long because that is the amount of time it takes the planet to make one full rotation on its axis, so shifting the axis would affect rotation.

The quake shifted the Earth's axis by even more than the 9.1-magnitude tremor off Indonesia that started the deadly tsunami in Asia in 2004, according to Mr Gross.

This was partly because the fault line responsible for the quake in Chile "dips into Earth at a slightly steeper angle than does the fault responsible for the 2004 Sumatran earthquake", he said.

The different angle made Saturday's tremor more effective at moving Earth's mass vertically and shifting the planet's axis, Mr Gross continued.

The 2004 quake in Asia, which killed hundreds of thousands of people, caused the Earth to move by around 7cm.

It chopped an estimated 6.8 microseconds off the length of a day, Nasa said"

This is not a typical Belsize blog, but since this severe event has such significance to world climate, this does serve as a reminder of the fragile world that we inhabit. Who can say if the collective effects of reducing our CO2 emissions in the UK, together in Camden and Belsize will have more or less impact than the loss of 1 micro second to a day.

But one thing is clear the need to reduce climate CO2 and thus helping to prevent a non reversible trend to incresed "global warming". Most scientists agree we have at best less than 10 years to drastically to turn the tide of a non reversible trend. Hansen (NASA).

Author: Nigel Rumble
Quotes: Sky News 2010