News and Opinion in Black and White

Talk about stupidity, taking someonee livelyhood away for the rest of their life because they cheated. Idiots. Lets give an example of what its like. A burglar, completely socialy unacetpable, it goes against everything we believe in about a fair society. But we dont lock burglars up forever but the BOA wants to ban Dwain from competing in the Olympics. What sort of example does that set about a free and forgiving society. It makes me wonder how this sort of person gets into postions of such resonisibilty when they dont really to subscribe to the beliefs of the country’s people they claim to respresent. Looks like another case of the old boy network, what else can it be?

I suppose the biggest companies in the World will have the best PR departments as well. What a cunning spin they put on it, perhaps the ultimate argument. Well it would be the ultimate argument if it were true.

Their argument is that putting aside crops to grow fuel instead of fuel hurts the World’s most vunerable people because food prices increase and they cant afford to feed themsleves. The biggest load of nonsense Ive heard in my life and I cant believe that even so called environmental groups have fallen for it.

Im going to deal with the faults with this argument one by one.

First of all the only reason that it pays to grow fuel crops instead of food crops is because oil is so expensive. Now fuel is the most crucial part of developing economies so if you want to keep or push a country back into poverty high oil prices is the thing that is going to do it. Poor countries spend by far a greater percentage of their wealth on fuel. For example there are case of poeple in Vietnam who are being forced to revert to farming with animals because the price of the fuel is too high to run their tractors. Talk about a backward step, talk about a reduction in productivity. Now Im not saying that this is the fault of the oil companies but lets support these countries in growing their own fuel instead of saying bio fuels is bad which is what is being said at the moment, its not going to happen overnight but lets give them time to develop their systems. Think about it with machines one man can work 1 acre a day for example by hand, but with a tractor he can work 100 acres, now I here you say what going to happen to the people who used to work the land, 1 man is doing the work of a hundred. They will do what every other country does and they move to the cities. Now tell me something else, which food do you think is going to be cheaper, the food produced by a 100 people of the food produced by 1 person with a tractor. Its not rocket science. Fuel prices are the primary problem not food prices

Now people are also saying people cant afford to eat. Who cant afford to eat? It must be the people in the cities because farmers are self sufficient. Why havent the people in the cities got the cash to buy food? because their economy doesnt produce enough cash. If high oil prices and growing bio fuels isnt a ticket to a giving a country a BOOMING export industry, I dont know what is.

Bio fuels are going to increase the price of food. This is only true if we dont develop new farmland. Now as Ive mentioned before, there are millions of acres of uncultivated land in Africa. So all we have to do is to expand argricultural land. But then the argument is what about the carbon emissions from transporting all this food thousands of miles. Simple, the fuel used will be from bio fuels.

Food is like any other comoditity, oil, corn, gold whatever. As demand and prices go up, its becomes profitable to develop new agricultural land, just like it is to develop oil fields in hard to reach places. America looks like its going to pass laws to develop off shore oil drilling around the coast of America. They could do that or they could grow the fuel. The fact of the matter with the USA is that they have a finitie amount of land and its all used for something. They really are in a bit of a pickle becuase you know the farmers want to make as much money as possible and not just America but all developed countries. Germany, UK, France, USA, Japan all the countries are close to being maxed out with regards to the growing capacity fo their land. Food, OK there is enough land to be close to self sufficent, but can you imagine the problem when the farmers have the oppurtuinity to produce fuel as well. Food competing with fuel. Bio fuels are really not an option, at least for the West. Really, its the last thing that governments want. The US govenrment really is panicking, they have opened a Pandoras box and they know it. As if the high price of oil wasnt a big enough problem there are also the environmental pressures.

The only obvious solution at the momentis bio fuels, it kills two birds with 1 stone. Carbon Neutral and it WILL be cheap to produce if sufficient money is invested. The problem? The West arent in a position to solve the problem themselves. Its comes back to what I was saying, the West doesnt have enough land, nowhere near enough. The West needs access to millions of acres of uncultivated land.

It shows how clueless and directionless the International Olympic Committee is. They show a complete ignorance to the general opinion of the World’s populous, i.e. freedom, equality and fairness. What a contradiction that China gets the Olympics. Ill ignore the human rights abuses that are alleged of the regime in China. So instead, let’s look at the smog issue. The biggest problem that the IOC see with the pollution is the harm it cause to athletes, sorry, but what about the health of the people that have to live with it everyday, perhaps my opinion of the Olympics is woefully optimistic, but part of their mandate is to make the World a better place. So why, instead of the stupidly selfish and blinkered view of the athletes health only, why don’t they also try and improve the lives of the people who live in the area where the Olympics are held. They should have set standards years and years ago. OK China could be shortlisted for a potential Olympic host, but for them to be successful they have to sort out their pollution issues for a minimum of 5 years before they are realistic contenders. Of course this didn’t happen which brings us to the real reason why the IOC awarded the Olympics to China. 

Money. And perhaps this is ultimate anti Olympic philosophy. The Olympics are supposed to be above money, money is supposed to be an irrelevance to the core principles of free and fair competition between amateurs. OK so the day of the amateur is gone but that doesn’t mean the philosophy can be thrown to the wind, especially when there is such an obvious issue which can be solved with a bit of pressure and of forward thinking. 

Trip 1: Cardiff. Simple as that. Depending on how far you are coming to get to Cardiff this could be a day trip or a weekend break.

What’s Cardiff got to offer? Probably the nicest central shopping district in Britain. Name a town or city which you think is nice and Cardiff will beat it. Fantastic architecture, super clean, super organised, the layout (semi-organic, semi-planned) could been done better, massive variety of shops from one store businesses to your national chains. On top of the shopping Cardiff has probably got the best nightlife in Britain. OK some people are saying how can that be right? Look at the music scene in London! OK your right but for shear variety of pub and clubs in a compact area, it really cant be beaten.

Bit of a culture vulture? Cardiff has a spectacular opera house, spectalucar civil engineering (Cardiff Bay) One of the most well kept castles in Britain smack bang in the town centre. The millenium stadium which is both spectacular from the outside and inside not to mention it seats over 70,000 people and cost 250 million to build whereas the new Wembley can seat 90,000 but cost nearly a billion to build. The millenium stadium is not just a stadium for the rugby team, it shows how well run Welsh organisations can be.

If you like your sports, the atmoshere throughout the day and night on the streets and pubs is second to none when there is a Six Nations International (home or away game). If you want a more relaxed weekend avoid the Six Nations weekends

Where to stay? the Angel Hotel is as good as anything

Talk about immoral, dickensian management practices. I suppose we all like having our own little secrets, but think about it, what do you like more, a secret or a fairer salary.

This all came about because, despite having equal rights in Britain women still get paid less than men. OK full disclosure is good for this, but it makes everyone accountable for the wages they earn, man or woman. If full disclosure becomes compulsary, which I think it should, then this will be one weapon less that big businesses have over its workforce. Im sure the first couple of weeks may be a bit uncomfortable for some people but after the novelty has worn off things will go back to normal and the full salary disclosure law will only be used when it is meant to be ie at annual salary re-negotiations by giving the employee ammunition against their manager.

Bring it on

…I didn’t. Where did this attitiude come from? I got shafted on my pay deal so it’s correct that you get shafted as well. Complete nonsense but it’s the exactly the type of mentailty big companies want us to have. Make it socially unacceptable to complain about your low pay rise. How did we get so brainwashed?

Of course the argument against is “if you don’t like it you can leave”. A completely immoral stance to have. A job is not a shop you go into where, if you dont like the staff you leave. In a job you invest what, 25% of your waking life in making sure you do a good job. You make friends with the people you work with, you make friends with the people you deal with outside of the company, you get to know your job intimately. And the answer is, if you don’t like it you can leave? Complete nonsense, unless your manager is the owner you have just as much right to work for that company as him or her.

Obviously big business promote this idea that its “Capitalism”, a free market economy. If people don’t like the pay deal they can leave, well NOT if you take your social responsibilities seriously as an employer. I have nothing against capitalism, but just because its capitalist, doesnt mean its acceptable that social responsibility and peoples emotions come a distant second.

As the saying goes, united we stand, divided we fall, lets support each other instead of peddling the wishes of corporations by saying it every man for himself. As big businesses know, the key to succes is co-operation.

Gordon Brown’s government are really up against it at the moment. The latest 48 hour stirke buy the lowest paid public sector workers is completely correct though. These people are the hardest hit by current inflation. The price of wide screen tvs maybe coming down but the price of essentials are sky rocketing. Given that lower paid workers spend a larger portion of their income on essentails they get hit the hardest which is why they should not be effected by the current “tough attitiude” against inflation. There is no reson why the least well off should pay the biggest price, given the minor effect they have on the economy as a whole. Gordon Brown’s government should should some moral principle. Time after time they are making stupid decsions which punish the least well off. Whether they do it soley to raise money or if it’s simply a matter of not realising the actual effects of their policies, either way it’s imcompetence.

This one has got me completely stumped. I honestly don’t see the problem. It’s as simple as this, Google Adwords is by far the best advertising programme out there and it has a monopoly not because the company is so big but because the programme is the best and is run with solid fundamentals that encourage the development of the internet.

Lets take a look at Amazon’s affiliate programme for example. Affiliates only get paid when people buy things from Amazon not when affiliates refer people to Amazon’s website. This is fundamentally wrong. It is saying to affiliates that you have to bring people to our site and also get them to buy something. In other words it is giving the affiliates responsibilty of converting the visitors into buyers on a website they have no control over. It is not up to the affiliate to convert visitors into buyers, that is 100% the job off the shop owner, in this case Amazon.

Google know this which is why websites get paid for creating traffic for other sites and not for converting visitors into sales. If websites converted enough visitors into buyers then they would start their own online shop and not advertise other companies online shops.

Until a company comes up with an advertising system that uses the same honest and fair fundamentals as Google Adwords then Google Adwords will continue to be the Number 1. Not because Google is the biggest but because Google is the best.

Ill be honest, I dont really understand the renewed interest, unless there is a chance the board will be replaced as Carl Icahn wants. Its on the table that it’s possible that Microsoft will buy only the search part of the Yahoo! business. This suprises me. As I’ve said before, if Microsoft can get their act together with their own search techonology they they wont need to buy Yahoo! search. At a price of 1 billion dollars for Yahoo! search it must be a better use of funds to keep that money and spend it on research instead.

From Yahoo!’s point of view they should really be saying where they are going to take the business in the future, this is the only way that they can reasonably say that Mircosoft’s offer is too low. Too low, why? what are you going to do in the next 5 years to increase the share value above Microsofts current bid. I haven’t heard anything, Yahoo! are not doing themselves any favours keeping quiet about future plans. It could be that the press is biased to the Icahn and Microsoft side of the story? Maybe Yahoo! have got plans but they are not sharing it?

If Im honest I believe Microsoft must want to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business. To me anyway, it just doesnt make sense that Microsoft would buy the Yahoo! search for a billion dollars, it just doesnt look like good value. Much better for Microsoft to buy the whole of the Yahoo! business and take over the millions of Email accounts that Yahoo! has and all the content that Yahoo! has and all those millions of viewing hours that the Yahoo! content has. Its content has many times more viewing hours than their search results. Just ask Google, they get what? 10 times as many searches as Yahoo! yet in total, people spend more hours looking at Yahoo! content than Google. Content is where the money and influence is and at the end of the day, that is what all companies want.

As for Microsoft saying to the BBC that they are no longer interested in Yahoo! because they are losing key staff. This is a blatant attempt by Microsoft to weaken Yahoo!’s position by syaing the company really isnt worth that much. In fact ill go one stage further about Mircosoft’s plans, they only thing they are interested in, is the information and the email accounts of Yahoo! users and the fringe benefits that go with Yahoo! are a bonus. 

This really is desperation and shows a total lack of vision. The search results from Live.com are absolutley shocking and until they get this sorted they will always be a bit player in the search engine market.