BBC - Soutik Biswas's India: How Churchill 'starved' India

A very interesting story. Appalling truth.

I had always heard that Winston Churchill was a fan of the eugenics movement. An insane form of Darwinism.



BBC - Soutik Biswas's India: How Churchill 'starved' India

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Leighton Andrews Minister of Education and LieLong Learning!

If I was the Assembly Minister of Education I would check my facebook page for mistakes!

This one’s a cracker!

http://www.facebook.com/LeightonAndrews

I think if one of Leighton's staffers is reading this, he/she should make the relevant changes, this is public you know!

Education and Work

Employers	Welsh Assembly GovernmentDecember 2009 to present Welsh Assembly GovernmentDecember 2009 to present Minister for Children, Education and Lielong Learning The people of the RhonddaMay 2003 to present Assembly Member for the Rhondda
College	UCNW Bangor '78 University of Sussex '80

Likes and Interests

Saunders Lewis was not a fascist!

“no question Saunders Lewis is an interesting and important historical welsh figure but i do feel bound to ask what this narrow minded bigot has to offer the modern multi-lingual multi-racial and secular wales that exists at the end of the first decade of the 21st century?”

I must confess that my knowledge of Saunders Lewis (like most Welsh) is very little, mores the pity. However leigh I think we should celebrate Saunders because he did have a vision of Wales (somewhat flawed) of that did exist both in reality and as a ideal. I think it is fair to challenge him over the charge of anti Semiticism. However even that was quite common in between the wars spread across the political spectrum (which included ironically enough Leon Trotsky). It was usually directed against the perceived Jewish plutocracy. As for SL alleged Fascism, people just loved Mussolini, and even Lloyd George said nice things about Hitler (its all on tape). The war and the holocaust put an end to the love affair with Fascism and anti semiticism (except it seems amongst the extremes of right and left).

For SL the Welsh language was the one thing that represented the core of the Welsh identity (something I disagree with vigorously). For him industrialism spelt its doom, which was his dark vision. His polemic was more borne out of frustration over the fate of Wales and its native language, than as plain hated for the English and its nation, that Jon Manchip White (Cardiff born author and Professor in Tennessee) testified to in his book “journeying Boy, A Welsh Childhood” who was his good friend who recalled him proposing a toast to the Queen, hardly an act of a rabid Anglophobe. RS Thomas was certainly a Anglophobe (ironically my favourite poet). He probably had more in common with Thomas Jefferson who’s vision of America was that of small communities and not of large cities which he despised, in other words an Agrarian Republic. SL saw the salvation of Wales and its language surviving in the small communities of the west and north. It is a tribute to him that he did not spend his final years in the west but in Penarth, which must puzzle those who accuse him of his alleged rabid anti English, it could be said he was more pro Cymraeg than the former.

Also as a dedicated Catholic he would have paid heed to Pope Pius XI condemnation of both racism in Mit brennender Sorge . believe as a English speaking Welsh that SL should be celebrated for his vision of Wales and not for the calumny leveled against him. He was a pacifist who served in WWI and saw what war could do, he was wrong about WWII as was many.

Chilean miners out!

I think the whole World must have been with the miners during their own ordeal. How many people could spend 2 months in a small hole, I know I could not.

 

What surprises me that the Welsh blogosphere had not played closer attention to this whole episode, considering the mining traditions we share with these miners. along with the mining tragedies that Wales has had.

Thank God they are out!

Mayors, why we cant be bothered!

You have to ask yourself what happened to the “hot debate” on Cardiff having an elected mayor. Truth is there was no real debate city wide about it. I realize living 3000 miles way how would I know? Its simple it’s Facebook and Twitter, as well as talking to family. My mother (who is a dedicated voter) had not heard about this “hot topic”. The reason why, to paraphrase James Carville “It’s the media stupid”. There is no city wide “conversation” about this, its all in the heads of the bloggers, and the wider media has chosen not to run with it, because it doesn’t sell papers! I read a tweet from Cllr Cerys Furlong that said that public was not interesting in changing Cardiff’s city government based on poll of 101 people on Wales online, hardly a large or scientific sample of opinion, so why would Cllr Furlong dismiss it based not only on a really ridiculous poll, and a lack of a wider debate. You could take it at face value, because she thinks that an elected mayor concentrates power in the hands of one person. Any different from the current cabinet system, and the old committee system was just the same.

However still the people of Cardiff should have a right to debate how their frontline services are run. Jonathan Morgan began this debate, and he seems to be “missing in action” over it. According his blog post Cardiff needed this urgently. Yet even he has lost interest in the project with the speculation that he had only brought it up because he might lose his seat to a very strong Julie Morgan.

Cardiff I believe it would be more like 24000 ( I have seen smaller, however I think that they thought it was based on 5% and not 10% which after discovering that the hard work may have put them off)

I do think it’s a shame that people in wales get more bent out of shape over fields, parks, and having their kids attend Victorian asbestos ridden schools, than looking forward. Its true that in America we vote in small numbers (though I think turn out here is about the same as in the UK now) for every office, however there is not the apathy here that one finds at home, and along with a local newspaper Dodge City that is more widely read than the Echo, and radio and TV stations that at least have nearly 21/2 hours of local news a day, people know what is going on, especially in the schools.

I think that people at home (Wales) are not really apathetic, they are just resigned to fact that politicians really in general look after their selves, and nobody else , and that they will do what they like anyhow.

But maybe there is light at the end of the tunnel

Can Wales compete? Learning from Ethan Allen

Image by Getty Images via @daylife

I have just caught an episode of the Dylan Ratigan show and Dylan was speaking to Farooq Kathwari CEO of Ethan Allen Furniture in the United States. Ethan Allen is an American success story, and proof that American manufacturing can compete with low cost countries like China and India. At the moment Ethan Allen produces most of its furniture (65%) in the US with the goal being 70% in the near future. Ethan Allen has shops in China selling its US made furniture..

Mr Kathwari made a interesting point that Germany cost is very high yet Germany is still on of the World’s largest exporter. Surely that Wales could compete with high quality products, a matter of quality over quantity.

However we need a well trained and well educated work force and the question is? Is the Welsh education system up to the challenge?

Americans conducted tests on Guatemalans. Infecting them with syphilis

A rather disturbing story has just come out of the US. Apparently the americans were conducting tests on Guatemalans by deliberately infected them with Syphilis between 1946-48. The full story can be found here.

Not that sort of thing that would endear Americans to Latin America.

Hugo Chavez must be having a field day!

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• U.S. to Apologize for Infecting Guatemalans with STDs (livescience.com)