Meanwhile here is some music

Cork Monkey will not be creating new posts until late Mar

Normal service will be resumed as soon as possible meanwhile here is some music

tum ti tum ......

UK Unemployment rises

Youth unemployment in the UK has risen to ove4 rose to 1 million and is the the highest since records began.  The overall number of people out of work ( when measured as people revievig certain allowances)  rose by 3,000 to 1.6 million in November..

Thiws does not of couarse include all those people who are unemployed but bot receiveing allowances. It is thought that this will be a large number swelled by publc sector reducndancies.

CM

Bank Robber Holds up a bank that isnt there!

A man who tried to hold up a bank with a toy gun in May has been jailed and labelled as 'stupid' by German newspaper.

Position Closed

The man tried to hold up the branch in the northwestern town of Walchum, unfortunately for him it had been closed for a number of years so he had to switch to plan B and rob a woman who was passing by.

Following the trend in banking for closing down branches, the bank had moved several years before, with only cash machines left as an indication of its former role and the building had been converted into a physiotherapist' clinic. The 57-year old man, on finding there was no bank to rob turned his attention to passers-by and after initially demanding a ransom of10,000 euro (£8,600) for a woman he forced her to withdraw 400 euros which he took and fled in a stolen car.

He later abandoned the car in a bid to confuse his pursuers but in an  colossal error of judgement left the toy gun he had used in the robbery between the seats. Of course this  master criminal had not been wearing his gloves when handling this and his with his fingerprints were on it.

The court heard that the man had confessed to the crime and had previous convictions for 22 other offences and sentanced him to seven years in prison. The Bild newspaper branded the man "Germany's stupidest bank robber".

Cork Monkey suggests it may be time for a career change. 

Is Europe heading to the stars or to the dogs?

 All agree that increased integration will be the key to solving the crisis in the Eurozone area but while seeing the logic some are reluctant to take this step.

France and Germany will announce proposals on Monday intended to assure the future development of Europe. At the heart will be a new EU treaty that means increased financial integration. Is this the way forward or are member states shellshocked, punchdrunk and seeing stars.

 Restabilising Europe will be a long a difficult process with France and Germany working together to create a zone of stability.  This will need to be agreed by all 27 member states which only 17 of which use the Euro.  Germany is taking great pains to reassure those concerned that this is not a step on the road to a federalised super state and that the European Central Bank will remain independent.

But can they get agreement on this? Even among the Eurozoners there is discord. France rejecting the idea of fiscal union and in particular the idea that national budgets should be being approved in Brussels while Germany want France to do a lot more to end speculation about its capability to repay its large debt.

Outside the Eurozone the situation is at least as fraught. The UK and others are concerned about a two speed Europe where countries outside the Eurozone are marginalised in favour of those within however the Eurozoners are reluctant to have their monetary policy influenced by people who remain on the sidelines but feel the need to throw stones at those trying to fix the problem.

So will this go ahead, will 27 members vote in a fashion likely to effect positive change. Will the change stick - can Europe be mended without becoming a federated superstate. Who can say. But if they are going to do something they need to do it fast! CM

Transparency International cut ties to FIFA

Transparency international the corruption watchdog that was supporting Fifa after its numerous  corruption scandals, has walked away from football's governing body.

An official with Transparency International (TI) has said that this was becasue two of its key recommendations are being ignored.

TI stated that Fifa are paying an expert to oversee the reforms and feel that this amounts to a conflict of interest. Perhaps more tellingly this exper has said he would not re-examine past scandals. There is little logic to this decision unless he is acting under instruction.

The move is a blow to the credibility of Fifa's who obviously have no committment to reformation  process, which should be viewed as a own goal by the probably corrupt leadership and a personal failure of its President Sepp Blatter.

Fifa has declined to comment

CM

Clarkson is a pillock!

What a pillock! Clarkson does it again on TV's one show he said about the strikers

'Frankly, I'd have them all shot. I would take them outside and execute them in front of their families. I mean, how dare they go on strike when they have these gilt-edged pensions that are going to be guaranteed while the rest of us have to work for a living?

Lets put this into a little perspective

aside from the obvious disgrace with regard to having anyone shot ( this does happen to real people in real life Mr Clarkson).

This mans work - is mainly being nasty or stupid in print or on TV. Nice work if you can can it. Not everybody can get such an easy gig. He is a priviliged underachieving twat and should not forget it. If he dissapeared the world would be a slightly cleaner brighter place as there would be less nastiness about- if some of the people he is talking about dissapeared - people would die, things that need to happen would not happen and Clarkson would find himself without some of the thiings that make his life so sweet.

 Clarkson contributes nothing of use to the world - he is an extra, a spare part but some of the people he is talking about have dedicated their life to public service only to find Cameron, the British Prime Minister stealing the food from their mouths to fund his political aspirations

And here we get to it the nub. he is a chum of David Cameron and will benefit from the loss of public services (while complaining that the remainder cannot do the work of two no doubt). .

It is not the only area on which Clarkson has ventrured and oopinion. He thinks we pay too much fuel duty - why? beciause he uses a like to drive cars. He does not like the speed limit, why? becuase he wants to drive at them at high speed, he does not like caravans why? they take up space on his road getting in his way ...get the picture.

The people Clarkson rails against do not have a gilt edged pension as he suggests and include the poorest in the country and what they do have is being stolen from them so people like Clarkson can pay less tax. What he calls work is actually a privileged lifestyle and an unecessary job. I doubt that he could do a whole days proper work either in manual terms or in taking the responsibility for making tough decisions - that in doing x we cannot do y and living with the consequence of that decision proffessionally.

This man should not have access to public money and should get no more work from the BBC. We should stop watching him and reading him so he has to retire on his wealth. Perhaps the organisation that holds his money can collapse and his penision and savings dissapear so he has to return to the world of work, for that is the biggest insult.

This man thinks he works for a living.
CM

Striking for rights or damaging the economy - what are the UK public servants up to?

As the UK public sector workers strike we need to ask three questions - is this right, is the fair and will it work.

The plain truth is that something needs to be done - the UK must pull back from its spending commitments and this will involve fewer people being paid less. Politicians need to be honest about this and deal with the fallout of which these strikes are a part.

This current coalition governments position (informed by the conservative dogma rather than the liberals) on public services is that they should be provided by the private sector wherever possible with the government picking up those services that cannot be made profitable by private business. Much of the current strategy for dealing with the financial crisis appears to reflect this bias.

Successive governments have had a policy of paying public sector workers well below the market rate, but that did not matter. Up until say 10 years ago people entered the UK public sector as a vocation, to serve and the payoff beyond the joy of public service - A good pension. Thatcher and Blair changed this thinking - Thatcher believed that in the main public sector workers delivered little of value. She and governments since have used public sector recruitment to dig themselves out of negative unemployment figures and service particular communities with unemployment problems. These people may not be as committed to public service and there has been a rise in the sort of people who have a job in the public service because the could not hack it anywhere else. You have probably met some of these in your dealings with central or local government.

That is not the case with most people though. Many have given long and loyal service only to find their pension is being plundered to pay for the mistakes and the political aspirations of their political masters. They are being asked to pay for today's mistakes but when the current crisis is over the new devalued pension will give governments wriggle room to either deliver tax cuts or build up a war chest for high value projects.

So it is right that this strike go ahead - government have to listen to these people and should do so gracefully and perhaps have negotiations not agree to them as a tactic and do nothing. In addition these people while protecting their jobs are also protecting the quality and range of public services. Services Government would prefer not to deliver. For their pains they are painted as greedy lazy bureaucrats who are better of than the private sector, spoiling for a fight with politicians for the sake of conflict alone.

Is it fair? To be honest government, unions and the public would all rather not be here - however it is not fair of the politicians to feign care for the impact upon the public to mask that these strikes are inconvenient to their political objectives. It is not fair that the public will not get their public services today but it is difficult to see how to manage the strike in any other way ( if the public are not impacted government ministers have simply ignored the issue claiming that as the public do not care there is no issue). It is never fair is to have money stolen from you and this is what the raid on pensions and wages amounts to. It is understood that public servants have to play there part in the recovery but the government has given no commitment to look at this again when the economy is stronger.

Will this work? If the government had been straight - argued for cuts in the short term on the basis of reframing the deal when the outlook was better then this would have worked - public servants are better than politicians at running the country - they do it every day, even when the politicians attention is elsewhere. They not politicians have already made billions in savings to offset the countries debts by cutting back, reorganising or cancelling projects that are needed - but not approriatte now. If the government had been honest about a change of political philosophy requiring smaller government - this would have worked too. But using the credit crisis to achieve political objectives this will not work.

They may achieve the political objectives but their focus is wrong for dealing with the crisis - they will employ the wrong tools, use the wrong strategies. I cannot help but think that the strike is somewhat irrelevant to this main event but that the things the unions are fighting for cannot be saved without convincing the politicians that there is a better way. But what is this better way?.> CM

Another WWWeb -media business making fast and loose with our personal information - when will it end?

Facebook has been under investigation by the US  Federal Trade Commission for deceit related to personal data and privacy and has agreed to stop deceptive privacy practices, committed to not making false claims and will submit to independent audits for 20 years.

Facebook, holds personal information on some 800 million users and has often been criticized for its attitude to personal privacy and practices with the personal data of its members.

The FTC claim Facebook repeatedly made claims that were untrue providing the example that the company promises users it will not share thier personal information with advertisers while doing exactly that. In addition they say the popular social network does not inform its users about changes that potentially harm them such as the changes in 2009 that made information that users had specifically designated as private, such as their "Friends List," public.

Under the settlement, Facebook is prevented from being deceptive in the future about how it uses customers' personal information, and is required to get permission from customers before changing how this information information is shared.

Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook's founder and chief executive, has blogged that he is "committed to making Facebook the leader in transparency and control around privacy."

It has agreed – but can it deliver? If it starts being honest to us it will be at a commercial disadvantage so the temptations will always be to act in the dark and then act surprised that people mind. We need some better law around this>CM