Another nail in the coffin for neo liberalism in Britain (from the Guardian):

An extra £5bn of capital investment, funded by spending cuts elsewhere, will form the centrepiece of an overall £30bn national infrastructure programme due to be announced by George Osborne on Tuesday as part of an attempt to prevent the country from sliding back into recession.

The chancellor will unveil nearly 500 public sector projects, many of them to be funded by commercial pension fund investments.

Some of the £5bn extra capital investment over the next three years will go to a £600m schools programme to fund an extra 40,000 places by 2014.

To anyone with a basic understanding of econmics (and those not indoctrinated with neo liberal ideology) Osborne’s move was entirely predictable. Every serious economist who predicted the economic crisis back in 2008 has argued vociferously not to ram through austerity measures. A prolonged recession, rising inequality and unemployment were all completely foreseeable, yet the Tory government in Britain decided that ideology trumped reality and went ahead with their economic agenda believing rhetoric and spin would disguise their actions.

No more. Faced with the prospect of losing the next election due to their severe mishandling of the economy, the Tories are now getting in to the Keynesian stimulus business. Osborne may still talk about meeting his deficit reduction targets and continuing austerity measures, but as the economy verges on the edge of another recession, his boss has told him to forget the fancy theories and get down to serious economics that actually work.

It’s hard to trust the Tories on issues like this – they have a history of giving with one hand and taking with the other – but on the face of it, any investment in Britain’s infrastructure should be seen as a good thing. It’s just a shame they won’t admit their economic ideology has been proved defunct.

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While the Murdochs have been doing their best to keep out of the press over the past few weeks, the scandal that threatened to dismantle their empire is roaring back at them, this time with some allegations that look next to impossible to side step. From the Guardian:

Rupert Murdoch, James Murdoch and their former editor Andy Coulson all face embarrassing new allegations of dishonesty and cover-up after the publication of an explosive letter written by the News of the World's disgraced royal correspondent, Clive Goodman.

In the letter, which was written four years ago but published only on Tuesday, Goodman claims that phone hacking was "widely discussed" at editorial meetings at the paper until Coulson himself banned further references to it; that Coulson offered to let him keep his job if he agreed not to implicate the paper in hacking when he came to court; and that his own hacking was carried out with "the full knowledge and support" of other senior journalists, whom he named.

What does this mean? Most likely the Murdochs will be recalled to Parliament to explain why they gave misleading evidence before, and James Murdoch's career will most likely come to an end. I don't think it possible for him to claim ignorance with this type of damning evidence, and even if he didn't know, he should have, making him inept as an executive. Many more within News International will be facing jail time, and the scandal that refuses to die will simply escalate as more and more employees speak out.

Rupert Murdoch will be quaking in his boots, and rightly so.

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Continuing the tradition of stripping money from the state sector, the Conservative government is facing mounting resistance from the British public who have not bought in to the narrative that public sector pensions need 'reforming' (code word for 'defunding'). Reports the Guardian:

One of the government's key arguments for reforming public sector pensions crumbled when it was made clear that they are projected to become more affordable in the future, not less, as teachers staged the biggest school strikes since the 1980s over the plans.

The forecast that the cost of paying pensions to 6 million public sector workers will fall by £67bn over the next 50 years undermined David Cameron's claim earlier this week that the system could "go broke" if it is not reformed.

More than 2 million pupils missed classes as a group of four breakaway unions staged the first mass strikes against the coalition's austerity plans.

The problem with the Tory Government's economic projections is that by and large, they don't add up. Every serious economist has rejected the severe austerity measures being passed, and the news that their pensions projections are way off should come as no surprise.

The reality is that the Conservative government is forcing the public sector to pay the brunt of the damages caused by the financial industry. They have concocted a series of false storylines backed by complicated sounding numbers that makes it appear government spending is the problem behind Britain's economic woes. It isn't – and government spending is the only way out of the current mess. The more David Cameron attempts to punish the public for the crimes of the financial sector, the more resistance his government will face. Despite the concerted effort to trick them, the British public is not stupid, and the Tories are finding out the hard way.

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An astonishing trial in the UK has proved diet, and not drugs can completely reverse type 2 diabetes. From the Guardian:

People who have had obesity-related type 2 diabetes for years have been cured, at least temporarily, by keeping to an extreme, low-calorie, diet for two months, scientists report today.

The discovery, reported by scientists at Newcastle University, overturns previous assumptions about type 2 diabetes, which was thought to be a lifelong illness…..

Eleven people with diabetes took part in the study, which was funded by Diabetes UK. They had to slash their food intake to just 600 calories a day for two months. But three months later seven of the 11 were free of diabetes.

I'm not a nutritionist, but it does stand to reason that a disorder caused by excessive food consumption could be cured by doing the exact opposite. The more we find out about the human body, the more we understand that what we put into it effects how it operates. Study after study shows that good diet and nutrition dramatically enhances your health and quality of life, enabling your body to effectively fight disease and regulate itself without the need for pharmaceutical drugs. Obesity and type 2 diabetes are conditions that present perhaps the clearest examples of this link, and now thankfully we have clear proof that it can work in reverse.

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Rising fees and lack of funding appears to be driving student away from UK universities and looking across the Atlantic for higher education. From the Guardian:

Data obtained from seven prestigious US institutions reveals that a major drive to recruit UK undergraduates is starting to pay off.

One leading headteacher told the Guardian that the growing interest came partly from a belief among parents and pupils that "UK universities were creaking at the limits".

Harvard has received 500 applications from UK students for undergraduate courses this autumn, a jump from 370 last year.

Meanwhile, the University of California, Berkeley, has had 166 applications from the UK, up from 130 last year. The university said applications from other European Union students had fallen from 343 last year to 281 this year.

The decision to raise fees in the UK has now made its universities some of the most expensive in the world, and it appears many students are failing to see the benefits given the extensive budget cuts under the Conservative government.

The pound to dollar exchange rate probably plays a role in this, and the US university system is far from perfect (most students go into extraordinary debt to go to college in America). But it is obvious that the uneasy combination of state control and austerity measures are making UK students question the benefits of an education at home.

Having gone through both the UK and US university systems myself, I would certainly lean towards the American experience over the British one. I had more class time, more resources and more work to do in America, and I felt the facilities were better and the attitude towards learning far more serious. I probably had more fun in the UK (tax free alcohol may have played a part in that….), but learned a great deal more in the US. Of course this is a highly subjective review, but in terms of value for money, the US (at least the state universities) are in my opinion, far superior.

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