Making Fire

Best wood for drills and hearths

Ash drill on a Willow hearth
Cattail drill on a limewood hearth.
Elder drill on an Elder hearth.
Elder drill and a Willow hearth.
Elder drill on a Pine hearth.
Elder drill on a clematis hearth.
Hazel drill on a willow hearth.
Hazel drill on a Crack Willow hearth.
Hazel drill on a Limewood hearth.
Hazel drill on a Pine hearth.
Hazel drill on a Sycamore hearth.
Ivy drill on a Ivy hearth.
Ivy drill on a Hazel hearth.
Ivy drill on an Alder hearth.
Poplar, Limewood and Cedar should work just fine on a cedar hearth board.
Sycamore drill on a Sycamore hearth.

Willow drill and hearth.

Can't Understand Nefarious Tories

Kevin Maguire

Our man prowling the corridors of power

David Cameron abandons Brits hurt abroad in terrorist atrocities

16/02/2011

THE abandonment of victims of terrorism abroad is a cruel betrayal which stains David Cameron’s good name.

Tourists maimed and murdered on foreign travels by gunmen and suicide bombers will get no help from this Con-servative regime.

I understand Justice Secretary Ken Clarke has dropped Labour plans to compensate those targeted because they carry a British passport.

Insurance companies refuse to cough-up for acts of terrorism overseas which saves them money but leaves the wounded and families of the dead ­struggling to cope.

People such as film-maker Will Pike, destined to spend his years in a wheelchair as a ­paraplegic after the 2008 Mumbai atrocity.

His spine was irredeemably damaged when sheets, curtains and towels knotted together to escape the Taj Mahal Hotel gave way, sending him plummeting to the ground.

Had it happened in the UK he might be entitled to as much as £5million to rebuild his life and pay for care.

Because it didn’t an appeal fund had to be set up to help a severely disabled man abandoned by the authorities.

Campaigning Labour MP and former Minister Ian McCartney, a huge loss to Parliament since he stood down at the last election over his own health, devised a scheme to fund ­compensation.

Under his prompting the Labour Government agreed to help victims with the hundreds of millions of pounds unspent in a 1993 insurance fund set up to cover IRA explosions.

But ConDem Ministers and Whitehall mandarins quietly – and quite disgracefully – dropped the plan.

You don’t need to be a conspiracy theorist to link the about-turn to the Treasury creaming off surpluses in the Pool Reinsurance Company since the IRA put down its detonators.

Clarke squeaks of reviewing the Criminal Injuries Compensation Scheme. Cameron utters honeyed words of concern in the House of Commons.

Yet victims of Bali, Mumbai, Moscow and bloodbaths to come are ignored by officialdom. It’s callous and indefensible of Cameron when the cash is in the coffers.

This is one outrage a Con PM cannot blame on the deficit.

The progressive attempt to appeal to 

self-interest has been a catastrophe. 

Empathy, not expediency, must drive our future

• 
• • George Monbiot
  • guardian.co.uk, 
  • Article history

So here we are, forming an orderly queue at the slaughterhouse gate. The punishment of the poor for the errors of the rich, the abandonment of universalism, the dismantling of the shelter the state provides: apart from a few small protests, none of this has yet brought us out fighting.

The acceptance of policies that counteract our interests is the pervasive mystery of the 21st century. In the US blue-collar workers angrily demand that they be left without healthcare, and insist that millionaires pay less tax. In the UK we appear ready to abandon the social progress for which our ancestors risked their lives with barely a mutter of protest. What has happened to us?

The answer, I think, is provided by the most interesting report I have read this year. Common Cause, written by Tom Crompton of the environment group WWF, examines a series of fascinating recent advances in the field of psychology. It offers, I believe, a remedy to the blight that now afflicts every good cause from welfare to climate change.

Progressives, he shows, have been suckers for a myth of human cognition he labels the enlightenment model. This holds that people make rational decisions by assessing facts. All that has to be done to persuade people is to lay out the data: they will then use it to decide which options best support their interests and desires.

A host of psychological experiments demonstrate that it doesn't work like this. Instead of performing a rational cost-benefit analysis, we accept information that confirms our identity and values, and reject information that conflicts with them. We mould our thinking around our social identity, protecting it from serious challenge. Confronting people with inconvenient facts is likely only to harden their resistance to change.

Our social identity is shaped by values that psychologists classify as extrinsic or intrinsic. Extrinsic values concern status and self-advancement. People with a strong set of extrinsic values fixate on how others see them. They cherish financial success, image and fame. Intrinsic values concern relationships with friends, family and community, and self-acceptance. Those who have a strong set of intrinsic values are not dependent on praise or rewards from other people. They have beliefs that transcend their self-interest.

Few people are all-extrinsic or all-intrinsic. Our social identity is formed by a mixture of values. But psychological tests in nearly 70 countries show that values cluster in remarkably consistent patterns. Those who strongly value financial success, for example, have less empathy, stronger manipulative tendencies, a stronger attraction to hierarchy and inequality, stronger prejudices towards strangers and less concern about human rights and the environment. Those with a strong sense of self-acceptance have more empathy and greater concern for human rights, social justice and the environment. These values suppress each other: the stronger someone's extrinsic aspirations, the weaker his or her intrinsic goals.

We are not born with our values. They are shaped by the social environment. By changing our perception of what is normal and acceptable, politics alters our minds as much as our circumstances. Free, universal healthcare, for example, tends to reinforce intrinsic values. Shutting the poor out of it normalises inequality, reinforcing extrinsic values. The rightward shift that began with Thatcher and persisted under Blair and Brown, whose governments emphasised the virtues of competition, the market and financial success, has changed our values. The British Social Attitudes survey shows a sharp fall over this period in public support for policies that redistribute wealth and opportunity.

This shift has been reinforced by advertising and the media. Their fascination with power politics, their rich lists, their catalogues of the 100 most powerful, influential, intelligent or beautiful people, their obsessive promotion of celebrity, fashion, fast cars, expensive holidays: all inculcate extrinsic values. By generating feelings of insecurity and inadequacy – which means reducing self-acceptance – they also suppress intrinsic goals.

Advertisers, who employ plenty of psychologists, are well aware of this. Crompton quotes Guy Murphy, global planning director for JWT: marketers "should see themselves as trying to manipulate culture; being social engineers, not brand managers; manipulating cultural forces, not brand impressions". The more they foster extrinsic values, the easier it is to sell products. Rightwing politicians have also, instinctively, understood the importance of values in changing the political map. Margaret Thatcher famously remarked that "economics are the method; the object is to change the heart and soul".

Conservatives in the US generally avoid debating facts and figures. Instead they frame issues in ways that appeal to and reinforce extrinsic values. Every year, through mechanisms that are rarely visible and seldom discussed, the space in which progressive ideas can flourish shrinks a little more. The progressive response has been disastrous.

Instead of confronting the shift in values, we have sought to adapt to it. Once progressive parties have tried to appease altered public attitudes: think of all those New Labour appeals to middle England, often just a code for self-interest. In doing so they endorse and legitimise extrinsic values. Many greens and social justice campaigners have also tried to reach people by appealing to self-interest: explaining how, for example, relieving poverty in the developing world will build a market for British products, or suggesting that, by buying a hybrid car, you can impress your friends and enhance your social status. This tactic also strengthens extrinsic values, making future campaigns even less likely to succeed. Green consumerism has been a catastrophic mistake.

     Common Cause proposes a simple remedy: that we stop seeking to bury our values and instead explain and champion them. Progressive campaigners, it suggests, should help to foster an understanding of the psychology that informs political change and show how it has been manipulated. They should also come together to challenge forces – particularly the advertising industry – that make us insecure and selfish.

      We must shed old thinking and stand up for those who believe there is more to life than the bottom line". But there's a paradox here, which means that we cannot rely on politicians to drive these changes. Those who succeed in politics are, by definition, people who prioritise extrinsic values. Their ambition must supplant peace of mind, family life, friendship – even brotherly love.

     So we must lead this shift ourselves. People with strong intrinsic values must cease to be embarrassed by them. We should argue for the policies we want not on the grounds of expediency but on the grounds that they are empathetic .

Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs offers amnesty 

for millionaire tax dodgers

Written by Niklas Albin SvenssonTuesday, 05 October 2010

Very rarely does one venture into the “personal finance” section of the business papers. Maybe it is because advice on how to invest your million pound fortune doesn't seem that relevant to your life situation. Sometimes, however, it pays off.

Photo: ToabiIn the October 1^st edition of City AM, Juliet Samuel offers kind advice on how to avoid paying taxes on your “untaxed funds” (that is, money that you've lied to the tax authorities about). It turns out that HMRC [Her Majesty’s Revenue & Customs] have offered an amnesty for precisely this crime.

Apparently, it is very expensive to prosecute tax evaders and very rarely do successful prosecutions land significant amounts of money, so the HMRC has simply decided to ask for volunteers to come clean and declare their previously undeclared earnings.

City AM, gracefully provides an example of how anyone with £10 million undeclared income in Lichtenstein could benefit from this. If you, in June 1990 deposited £10 million in Lichtenstein from some undeclared source and this money today is worth £20 million, you would normally have to pay around £14 million in taxes on interest and of course the original 40% income tax, plus a fine of around £3.2 million. However, with the amnesty, if you agree to pay £3.2 million in taxes plus a penalty of £0.2 million, you can now have amnesty from future prosecution. Thus, you can save about £14 million and sleep easier at night in your million pound mansion knowing that the HMRC is not after you.

Not everything is song and dance in tax dodger land, however. In spite of this generous offer, only 419 people registered in the first six months of the offer (the number in the past six months is rumoured to be around twice that), as opposed to the around 5,000 British investors holding £2-3 billion between them in accounts there (that is, half a million each on average). Law firm DLA Piper partner Simon Airey thinks that this might be because the deal has not been publicised enough by the HMRC. So, we can presume that City AM is lending a hand now.

It is not hard to understand why the HMRC has kept quiet about their offer of amnesty for rich tax dodgers with million pound tax accounts in tax havens. At a time when the government is introducing austerity measures in the public sector and benefits, giving tax breaks for the rich squares badly with the idea that “we are all in this together”.

The Deindustrialization 

Of America Michael Snyder The Insider

     The United States is rapidly becoming the very first "post-industrial" nation on the globe.  All great economic empires eventually become fat and lazy and squander the great wealth that their forefathers have left them, but the pace at which America is accomplishing this is absolutely amazing.  It was America that was at the forefront of the industrial revolution.

It was America that showed the world how to mass produce everything from automobiles to televisions to airplanes.  It was the great American manufacturing base that crushed Germany and Japan in World War II.  But now we are witnessing the deindustrialization of America.  Tens of thousands of factories have left the United States in the past decade alone.  Millions upon millions of manufacturing jobs have been lost in the same time period.  The United States has become a nation that consumes everything in sight and yet produces increasingly little.  Do you know what our biggest export is today?

Waste paper.  Yes, trash is the number one thing that we ship out to the rest of the world as we voraciously blow our money on whatever the rest of the world wants to sell to us.  The United States has become bloated and spoiled and our economy is now  just a shadow of what it once was.  Once upon a time America could literally outproduce the rest of the world combined.  Today that is no longer true, but Americans sure do consume more than anyone else in the world.  If the deindustrialization of America continues at this current pace, what possible kind of a future are we going to be leaving to our children?

Any great nation throughout history has been great at making things.  So if the United States continues to allow its manufacturing base to erode at a staggering pace how in the world can the U.S. continue to consider itself to be a great nation?  We have created the biggest debt bubble in the history of the world in an effort to maintain a very high standard of living, but the current state of affairs is not anywhere close to sustainable.  Every single month America does into more debt and every single month America gets poorer.

So what happens when the debt bubble pops?

The deindustrialization of the United States should be a top concern for every man, woman and child in the country.  But sadly, most Americans do not have any idea what is going on around them.

For people like that, take this article and print it out and hand it to them.  Perhaps what they will read below will shock them badly enough to awaken them from their slumber.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/deindustrialization-factory-closing-2010-9#ixzz10lK9zoES

SELF INTERESTED 

BU££$HIT 

Berkshire Rises to Highest Since 2008 as Buffett Touts Growth

Berkshire Hathaway Inc. rose to a 23-month high after Chief Executive Officer Warren Buffett said the company is expanding with the U.S. economy.

Berkshire’s Class A stock advanced $790 to $125,300 yesterday in New York Stock Exchange composite trading. Berkshire last closed above $125,000 on Oct. 6, 2008.

Buffett, 80, ruled out a second recession for the U.S. and said at a conference this week that businesses owned by Omaha, Nebraska-based Berkshire continue to grow. Berkshire is adding workers as demand rebounds for its machine tools, recreational vehicles and freight space in its railcars. The stock has gained 26 percent this year through yesterday, compared with a gain of less than 1 percent for the Standard & Poor’s 500 Index.

“We still think it’s undervalued,” said Bill Bergman, a Morningstar Inc. analyst. As the economy improves Berkshire will benefit from “the earnings power in the operating subsidiaries that have been hit so hard during the recession,” he said in an interview.

Berkshire’s record close was $149,200 on Dec. 10, 2007. The stock fell to a six-year low of $72,400 on March 5, 2009, as the recession reduced demand for Berkshire’s products and the equity market slump contributed to derivative losses.

Profits at Berkshire’s manufacturing units surged in the first half as economic expansion boosted spending and costs were curbed by job cuts last year. Buffett’s firm eliminated more than 20,000 positions companywide in 2009. The manufacturing, service and retailing businesses more than doubled earnings to $671 million in the second quarter on gains at RV-maker Forest River and toolmaker Iscar Metalworking Cos.

Acquisitions

Buffett built Berkshire into a $206 billion provider of insurance, energy and luxury goods and services over four decades of acquisitions and stock picks. In February, Berkshire bought railroad Burlington Northern Santa Fe Corp. for $27 billion in a deal that Buffett called a bet on the U.S. economy.

“I am a huge bull on this country,” Buffett, who also is Berkshire’s chairman, said in remarks to the Montana Economic Development Summit on Sept. 13. “We will not have a double-dip recession at all. I see our businesses coming back almost across the board.”

The world’s largest economy grew at a 1.6 percent annual pace in the second quarter, exceeding the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News, revised figures from the Commerce Department showed on Aug. 27. U.S. economic growth will slow to 2.5 percent next year from a projected 2.7 percent this year as unemployment above 9 percent tempers consumer spending, according to the median forecast of economists surveyed by Bloomberg News this month.

Berkshire’s third-quarter operating earnings may rise 26 percent to $1,669 a share, according to the average estimate of five analysts surveyed by Bloomberg. Berkshire’s Class B stock was added to the S&P 500 in February after the company split the shares in a transaction connected to the Burlington Northern acquisition.

To contact the reporter on this story: Andrew Frye in New York at afrye@bloomberg.net;

 THE ULTIMATE NIGHTMARE  Deja vu 

Party Like it's 1979

The Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government in Britain is made up of and advised by millionaires and billionaires. And while they live a life that millions would dream of, they spend their time investigating how much they can cut spending on social services, healthcare, education and pensions. The contradiction is clear for all to see.

The Con/Dem coalition is a government of Big Business, nothing more, nothing less. Despite the protests of David Cameron that he is just a regular “middle class” fellow, he is related to Royalty (William IV), went to Eton and Oxford, and is married to an aristocrat. The Cabinet, the Fellowship of Threadneedle Street, is composed of 18 millionaires.

The latest additional “advisers” to this Big Business government are Lord Levene, the veteran City financier and the retail capitalist Sir Philip Green. They have been engaged to find “savings” before the October spending review and both are, as we can see, very well qualified for this onerous task of squeezing the poor.

Lord Levene “advised” John Major on efficiency from 1992 to 1997. His long career includes stints as chairman and chief executive of Canary Wharf and working for Morgan Stanley and Deutsche Bank.

Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia business includes Bhs, Topshop and Dorothy Perkins (he has also bid three times for Marks and Spencer) and he has lived in Monaco, a tax haven, since 1998. To avoid paying tax, his company paid a small £1.2 billion dividend to his wife, a Monaco resident and ineligible for tax.

Knighted four years ago, this tycoon enjoys a flamboyant lifestyle of yachts and extravagant parties, which makes him a very suitable candidate for the government’s austerity cuts! At the same time, Deputy PM, Nick Clegg, vows to “break Britain’s entrenched class structures.” He presides over a Cabinet of millionaires advised by millionaires on how to slash working class living standards and cut billions from public services… services they will never use themselves.

According to the Financial Times, “Sir Philip, speaking from his yacht in Italy, said he and Ian Grabiner, chief executive of Abcadia, would handle the day-to-day work and would start gathering information today.” (13 August).

Their attacks will hit the most vulnerable in society who rely on these public services: the old, the sick, and the infirm. The Budget cuts are threatening to close Britain’s only mobile TB unit this December. TB has become an important health problem, with London reporting the highest rates of the infection of any city in Western Europe. The disease affects those living in cramped, poorly ventilated and unhygienic conditions, hardly a concern of our government of millionaires.

Chancellor Osborn at the CBI dinner, surrounded by the Chief executive of IBM, the president of CBI and the chief executive of CBI. Photo by the CBI.Waiting lists for social housing are at record levels, with some 4.5 million seeking accommodation. With planned cuts to affordable homes, a further half million will join the waiting list. They will be trapped in bed-sits and campsite accommodation, never being able to find a home.

Next year nearly one million people will see their housing benefit cut by an average of £12 a week. With home building at its lowest level since the 1920s, we will see a return to “Cathy Come Home” conditions for many, 50 years after the film shocked the nation. In addition, Cameron has also suggested removing the right of council house tenants to remain in their homes.

“Some seem to think that austerity is a one-off event – something that has already happened in the Budget”, explained the big business Financial Timesrecently. However it warns, “The promised cuts in public spending have scarcely begun to bite.” Such retrenchment will bring “real pain.”

The government bailed out the banking system using tax-payers’ money. Now the banks are making billions. Barclays saw its profits jump to almost £4bn, up from £2.75bn last year. HSBC’s profits more than doubled to $11.1bn. The biggest five banks made more than £15bn in pre-tax profits in the first half of the year. Not only that, but the bankers are being asked to join the government as “advisers”. They did such a great job in the slump that Stephen Green, HSBC chairman, is to lead a “taskforce” made up of chief executives of Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Barclays, HSBC, Santander and Standard Chartered to help the banks.

And, of course, the working class is now being presented with the bill for the crisis through cuts in services, wage cuts and mass unemployment. They will make cuts to try and eliminate the £149bn deficit in just five years.

No wonder consumers in Britain are amongst the most pessimistic in the world over their economy, with 34% believing it was in a “very bad” state.

Youth unemployment has rocketed, with 17.5% of the six million 18-24 year olds jobless. When BT recently offered 221 apprenticeships, 24,000 young people applied for the

While bankers’ profits are booming, the crisis is certainly not over for millions of people. They face years, if not decades of austerity.

This failure is a failure of the capitalist system, which produces for profit and not for need. Rather than austerity, there is sufficient productive potential, if used properly, to give everyone a job and dramatically increase living standards. Unfortunately, it is in the hands of the bankers, capitalists and speculators. There is no solution while this remains. All they can offer is counter-reforms and attacks.