Let the Earth breathe .. Wouldn't it be lovely if ..

The Role of the UN – How to end Wars and Oppression Wouldn’t it be great if countries resolved differences by referring disputes to the UN, without a single weapon having to be fired? There are still several regional disputes e.g. Palestine/Israel and Yemen/Saudi Arabia, and whilst it is sad to hear of the deaths of soldiers, it is usually the weak, poor and vulnerable that suffer most.   Children with no means of lifting a hand and asking for help. If we wanted to, we could work on the following 8 point plan to enable the disgraceful tolerance of wars outside of the big 3 territories (3T North America, Europe and China/Japan), and the vast expenditure by the 3T in ‘defending’ themselves.            1.  Agree a UN Charter that establishes the limits of every Country’s powers, and expectations of how Leaders rule their country, especially if oppressive power is abused.   There needs to be acceptance that the UN decision is final, albeit challenges can be mounted say ev

Quantitative Easing?  Nurses take note of The Good, The Bad, and The Ugly Wouldn't it be great if those that controlled us, were honest about their intentions? Let's also bring forward one of the main points discussed below.  Nurses have seen a real fall of 13% in their wages over the last 11 years.  Whilst at the same time the number of UK billionaires has almost quadrupled to 151 and their combined wealth has increased 3.5x by £438,000,000,000 to £605bn.  A tad shocking eh ?  So much for All In It Together.  Quantitative Easing (QE) is a bit of a mouth full, but let’s take away some of mystery. UK Gilts-These are issued by the Debt Management Office within the Treasury and are intended to fund Government shortfalls in revenues over expenditure.  These are sold into the wealth market and the Government receive cash to finance their shortfalls. The Bank of England (BoE) has been buying these gilts since 2009 in exchange for cash, called QE.  This cash is n

The obscenity of obscenities! A Kanye West dispute. Wouldn’t it be nice if status was not a desired IDOL? Following yesterday’s article on The Idols of the Rich, there in my Sunday paper was a headline of ‘Now, call me a billionaire: Kanye West wins Forbes row’. Mr West, the mercurial rapper and fashion mogul, has officially gained the status of ‘billionaire’ following a long and acrimonious dispute with Forbes magazine.   Apparently, the feud began after the August 19 publication did not list him in the list of billionaires. Mr West was unhappy and accused Forbes of ‘snubbing’ him and being ‘disrespectful’. Then in April 20 Forbes produced the list of USA billionaires and again Mr West was absent.   His sister in law Kate Jenner was.   This really angered Mr West, and he sent a text to Forbes as follows: You know what you are doing. You’re toying with me, and I am not going to lye down and take it anymore, In Jesus name. Finally, after months of requests

The Idols of the Rich Wouldn’t it be nice if we truly valued the important things in Life, rather than the Idols we seem to have adopted? So, what are the passions of the 4T (4 Territories - North America, Europe, China and Japan)? SPORTS IDOLS In the UK we have Harry Kane, Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Lewis Hamilton, to name but a few. We have elevated these individuals absolute GOD status. We award them multi million packages (Forbes 2019)   Harry Kane is a relative pauper on just £15m p.a./£300k p.w. Lionel Messi tops the list with £110m p.a./£2m p.w. They ‘earn’ this because we pay them indirectly with sports subscriptions averaging £100 per month, and by buying tickets to watch them, where including extras we can pay a further £100 p.m. It what’s we, as a society, have collectively chosen to do. CELEBRITIES People famous for being famous. Not for what they have achieved.   Not for done.   Not for what they have given. But we treasure them

How close did we come to losing the Earth? It is frightening to think that we had a close call, but the Earth appears to have been warning us for some time that it could not cope with our madness any longer. Prince Charles has written an article, published today in many newspapers, in which he pleads the case for The Earth.  He asks that we carefully consider how we reset post COVID.  Furthermore, he chose a wonderful analogy of The Earth being in Intensive Care. With the world stopping, and pollution drastically reducing, he notes that there were hopeful signs of the Earth breathing again. To take that body analogy one step further, if we say that the atmosphere is the skin, the oceans and rivers the blood, the land the bones, and the people the muscles, we could comment as follows: - 1.  The Atmosphere. Now that the air-transport industry has ground largely to a halt, it would appear as though the ozone layers are starting to repair.  But are we going to rush bac

Who wants to be a billionaire ? A short story today, but one of the most shocking that I have ever seen.   2 lists and 2 paragraphs say it all. According to Forbes there were 2,153 $ billionaires in 2019, and their colossal fortune amounted to $8,700,000,000,000.   Or in words $8,700 billion. The wealth of these billionaires exceeds the wealth of the poorest 118 countries of the world. Over 80% of the world’s wealth in held in 4 territories being USA, China, Europe and Japan.   So, the remaining 20% is held by the other 160 countries. The richest individuals are as follows :-                                Forbes wealth $bn        Country                   1.  Jeff Bezos                   113                          USA      2.   Bill Gates                      98                          USA      3.   Bernard Arnault            76                           France      4.   Warren Buffett               68                          USA      5.   Larry Elliso

What is great about Work, Wealth and Profit? I would suggest that all of these actions are worthy, and indeed essential for the common good of people and society. For from work, we obtain wages, and we are able to provide food and shelter. Usually, in the rich countries our wages can also provide us with comparative luxuries such as fashion clothes, cars and holidays. With our wealth, we can enjoy a comfortable lifestyle, and luxury blessings beyond the vast majority of the world’s comprehension. And with profit, as in what remains from sales after all the costs and taxes, we can pay ourselves ‘dividends’ or invest in the growth of our enterprise. Wages However, when the world goes wrong, we can see examples of CEOs earning multiples of 100x or higher than the lowest paid staff member.   We also see examples of bonus incentives that result in multi-million pound pay-outs. How can this be right where workers on minimum wage do not get to share in the success of the