Under the previous, coalition government, local authority outsourcing of services doubled. The value of local government contracts keeps increasing and contract periods keep getting longer. Meanwhile, as a consequence of the coalition government’s Open Public Services reform programme, councils are under pressure to outsource, while deep cuts force them to consider it a way of cutting costs.
None of this is popular with the public. In polling commissioned by campaign group We Own It, 61% of the population thinks that local and central government should run services in-house as the default. Only 21% want to see more outsourcing.
That’s hardly surprising when you consider the recent scandals over outsourced services. In 2013, the Serious Fraud Office launched a criminal investigation into G4S and Serco, both large outsourcing companies, over allegations they overcharged on government contracts to provide electronic tagging of prisoners. At the end of last year, the government was found to be paying Serco £1m to run an empty secure children’s unit for seven weeks. And in September, G4S lost the contract for running a young offender facility, after it was graded as inadequate amid concern over the degrading treatment of detainees.
A comprehensive review of the research finds that there is no empirical evidence that the private sector is more efficient. Research also suggests that many authorities take services in-house as a way to cut costs and improve quality. Although outsourcing might mean cheaper services in the short term, there’s a knock-on effect on morale and the quality of service provided, and in the longer term you lose flexibility and control.
We Own It campaigns for public services – waste services, children’s services, parks and libraries, social care – that put people first. Our new campaign, Our Services Our Say, calls on councils to support principles of transparency, accountability and people before profit in public services, and tell us how they will put these into practice locally.
We’re suggesting a new process for public service commissioning. Private providers should be subject to freedom of information requests, while public service contracts, performance and financial data should be publicly available – a proposal that is supported by 67% of the population.
We also call for public consultation over public services, especially before any outsourcing of services or privatisation of assets takes place. We think the public should have the right to recall providers who do a bad job – and while this couldn’t apply to existing contracts, it could be introduced for new ones.
Under our proposals, the public interest case would be made for any privatisation or outsourcing. There would always be an in-house bid on the table (or a reason given if there isn’t) and social value would be the priority.
This campaign aims to stop out-of-control outsourcing, but it’s also a way to give the public a say. We all pay for public services and we all use them on a daily basis.
We already have broad support and on Wednesday, Liverpool city council became the first council to pass a motion in support of the campaign. This council has already cancelled its street-cleaning contract, bringing the service back in-house. We would like there to be national legislation – a public service users bill – to make these common sense ideas a reality. In the meantime, we hope councils will lead the way.
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“Begin at once to live and count each separate day as a separate life.” ~Seneca
At times, it’s seemed as though life contains an endless supply of days.
I thought this for sure when I was younger. It didn’t matter how long I held a grudge or how long I waited to do something I wanted—there would be an unlimited pool of other opportunities. At least, that’s what I thought back then.
Maybe it’s a rite of passage from childhood to adulthood, the moment when you realize life happens now and that’s all you’re guaranteed. It doesn’t really hit you when you merely know it intellectually, like you know your ABCs, state capitals, and other concrete facts.
It hits you when somehow you feel it. Your health declines. You lose someone you love. A tragedy rocks your world. It isn’t until you realize that all life fades that you consider now a commodity, and a scarce one at that.
But maybe that’s irrelevant. Maybe living a meaningful, passionate life has nothing to do with its length and everything to do with its width.
With this in mind, I recently asked Tiny Buddha’s Facebook friends, “How do you live life to the fullest?” I was inspired by what they had to say, so I’ve used them to create this list:
1. Live in the moment. Forget the past and don’t concern yourself with the future. (Tanner Christensen)
2. Fully embrace the now, no matter what the situation. (Patrick Flynn)
3. Do the things you love. (Diego Felipe Villa Serna)
4. Learn to forgive and embrace unconditional love. (Ann Glasgow)
5. Live every day as if it’s your last, embracing each experience as if it’s your first. (Jennifer Fertado)
6. Believe in “live and let live.” (Satyendra Pandey)
7. Use quiet reflection, honesty, and laughter. (Erin Rogers Kronman)
8. Be other-centered. (Tricia Mc)
9. Find calm in making art. (Z.r. Hill)
10. Focus on today and how you can do your best to live it to the fullest. (Amelia Krump)
11. Participate in life instead of just watching it pass you by. (Lindsey Wonderson)
12. Stay healthy, eat right, and most importantly, be kind to all. (Tho Nguyen)
13. Pray, forgive yourself, appreciate others, listen to your gut, do things you enjoy, and remind yourself that we are all loved and connected. (Sandra Lumb)
14. Don’t sweat the small stuff. (Allison Gillam)
15. Question everything, keep it simple, and help whenever and however you can. (Lynda Corrigan Sutherland)
16. Try to enjoy every minute of every day. (Maria Ahlin)
17. Appreciate life’s every second. (Anna-Karin Boyaciyan-Demirciyan)
18. Step through new doors. The majority of the time there’s something fantastic on the other side. (Terri Mindock)
19. Remember that all is a gift, but the most precious of all gifts is life and love. (Debbie Teeuwen)
20. Keep your spirit free, be flexible, let go. (Leslie Brown)
21. “Do one thing every day that scares you.”~Baz Luhrmann (Adam Raffel)
22. Don’t attach to outcomes. (Wp Ho)
23. Spend as much time with a two year old as possible. (Jackie Freeman)
24. Enjoy each and every moment of life. Every day is a new challenge and opportunity to discover something new. (Chirag Tripathi)
25. Budget travel. It is always an adventure! You get to enjoy what fate has to offer with limited means. (Ruby Baltazar)
26. Be honestly thankful for every breath you take. (Jonathan Carey)
27. Just be. (Catherine Halvorsson)
28. “Trust yourself. Trust your own strengths.” ~Gaundalf the grey (Jonathan David Evan Fulton)
29. Pause momentarily before everything you do so that you notice everything you should or could notice. (Scott Hutchinson)
30. Follow your hopes and not your fears. (Jody Bower)
What have you done today to live life to the fullest?
2016: "Last year, the Science and Security Board moved the Doomsday Clock forward to three minutes to midnight, noting: 'The probability of global catastrophe is very high, and the actions needed to reduce the risks of disaster must be taken very soon.' That probability has not been reduced. The Clock ticks. Global danger looms. Wise leaders should act—immediately." See the full statement from the Science and Security Board on the 2016 time of the Doomsday Clock.
2012: "The challenges to rid the world of nuclear weapons, harness nuclear power, and meet the nearly inexorable climate disruptions from global warming are complex and interconnected. In the face of such complex problems, it is difficult to see where the capacity lies to address these challenges." Political processes seem wholly inadequate; the potential for nuclear weapons use in regional conflicts in the Middle East, Northeast Asia, and South Asia are alarming; safer nuclear reactor designs need to be developed and built, and more stringent oversight, training, and attention are needed to prevent future disasters; the pace of technological solutions to address climate change may not be adequate to meet the hardships that large-scale disruption of the climate portends.
2010: "We are poised to bend the arc of history toward a world free of nuclear weapons" is the Bulletin's assessment. Talks between Washington and Moscow for a follow-on agreement to the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty are nearly complete, and more negotiations for further reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenal are already planned. The dangers posed by climate change are growing, but there are pockets of progress. Most notably, at Copenhagen, the developing and industrialized countries agree to take responsibility for carbon emissions and to limit global temperature rise to 2 degrees Celsius.
2007: The world stands at the brink of a second nuclear age. The United States and Russia remain ready to stage a nuclear attack within minutes, North Korea conducts a nuclear test, and many in the international community worry that Iran plans to acquire the Bomb. Climate change also presents a dire challenge to humanity. Damage to ecosystems is already taking place; flooding, destructive storms, increased drought, and polar ice melt are causing loss of life and property.
2002: Concerns regarding a nuclear terrorist attack underscore the enormous amount of unsecured--and sometimes unaccounted for--weapon-grade nuclear materials located throughout the world. Meanwhile, the United States expresses a desire to design new nuclear weapons, with an emphasis on those able to destroy hardened and deeply buried targets. It also rejects a series of arms control treaties and announces it will withdraw from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.
*I don't subscribe to this yet this is an information and technology "sharing" blog.
Raytheon is one of America’s top defense giants, which specializes in air and missile defense, sea-based radars, sonars, torpedoes and more. In the 1980s, the space-based research company developed an anti-missile defense dubbed Star Wars. In light of the recently released Star Wars: The Force Awakens movie, Raytheon has proposed new ways to better it’s anti-missile defense.
In August 1945, the U.S. dropped two atomic bombs, and since then, no other country has dared to use nuclear weapons. The nuclear age triggered an onslaught of nuclear weapons that could bring humanity to extinction. In an effort to thwart the use of nuclear weapons, The Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) – otherwise known as Star Wars – was initiated by President Ronald Reagan. The purpose of the program was to develop a sophisticated anti-ballistic missile system that would stop missile attacks from other countries, specifically the Soviet Union.(1,2)
The SDI was eventually abandoned; scrapped as another closed chapter in American history books. Motivated by ambitious intentions, the Star Wars program was a hopeful candidate for a revolutionary defense system. Nevertheless, Raytheon wants to resurrect the Star Wars program from the abyss by offering some suggestions about how it could be improved.
THE ANTI-MISSILE FORCE AWAKENS
Some improvement recommendations are banal but nonetheless important, such as the lack of Imperial cyber security. As Raytheon notes:
First, the Empire. Think back to “Episode IV: A New Hope,” where R2-D2 simply plugs in to the Death Star’s network and disables the trash compactor that is about to crush Luke, Leia, Han Solo and Chewbacca.
That sort of activity is what IT security professionals call an anomaly – a rare occurrence that warrants further investigation. It’s a good thing the Death Star lacked an insider-threat detection system, which would have helped the Empire corner the rebels right then and there.
The rebels, meanwhile, could have used stronger cyber when they tried to deactivate the tractor beam. R2 saw it on the Death Star network but could not deactivate it. If he had, Gen. Kenobi never would have had to embark on the heroic trek that led to his fatal confrontation with Darth Vader.
Side note: Thank goodness Jabba the Hutt didn’t know about multi-factor authentication. If he did, there’s no way a disguised Leia ever could have operated the carbonite cell and freed Han.(2)
Raytheon’s more ambitious projects include the use of several “kill vehicles,” which are rocket launched missile seekers. They are launched into space as kamikaze pilots, which decimate ballistic missiles by colliding into them. This is achieved foremost by Raytheon’s Exoatmospheric Kill Vehicle. It works in collaboration with the the Standard Missile-3. Together, Raytheon claims the fused forces have a “combined record of 35 successful intercepts in space.”(3)
Furthermore, Raytheon is currently working on a “Redesigned Kill Vehicle,” which is a cheaper and more efficient killing machine than its predecessor. The industrial corporation was awarded a contract in August, which is fueling Raytheon to develop a new weapon known as “Multi-Object Kill Vehicle.” The weapon is tuned to destroy several missiles spread throughout space.(3)
AN INTRINSICALLY EXPENSIVE AND DANGEROUS UNDERTAKING
It’s an ambitious and noble goal to foster technologies that counteract the impending apocalypse. Nevertheless, Raytheon has a history with exorbitant shortcomings. These failures are a product of the inherent challenges of the projects at hand and meeting stringent demands set by Congress, such as “it is important to redesign the Exo-atmospheric Kill Vehicle using a rigorous acquisition approach, including realistic testing.”
Furthermore, there is an intrinsic threat within the logic of the system. According to Yousaf Butt, a professor and scientist-in-residence at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies at the Monterey Institute for International Studies:
Missile defense couldn’t replace any lost deterrent value because missile defense doesn’t deter nuclear attacks. The purpose of missile defense is to defend–or, more accurately, attempt to defend. An adversary wouldn’t be deterred from launching a nuclear attack because of the existence of missile defense; rather, it’s the credible threat of overwhelming nuclear retaliation that deters an adversary.
If the enemy is irrational and suicidal enough to discount the threat of massive nuclear retaliation, then a missile defense system that can theoretically intercept only some of the attacking missiles most certainly isn’t going to be a deterrent.(3)
In other words, there is a real possibility that the Star Wars program could destroy the planet rather than preserve it, making the anti-missile defense program seem more like a Death Star than a lifesaver.
*I would gather that many are familiar with "mental inversion". viz. Taking the concrete to create the abstract and vice versa.
What's scary about this scenario is when we apply the appropriate psychological theory, we can abstract the conclusion that Donald Trump represents 36% + or - of all American's way of thinking.
*At college or somewhere in life a man once told me, "Every time we kill off any living organism on this planet, we also kill a greater portion of ourselves". I believe this to be true.
Australia's Great Barrier Reef has lost more than half its coral cover in the past 27 years, a new study shows.
Researchers analysed data on the condition of 217 individual reefs that make up the World Heritage Site.
The results show that coral cover declined from 28.0% to 13.8% between 1985 and 2012.
They attribute the decline to storms, a coral-feeding starfish and bleaching linked to climate change.
The research is published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences journal.
Glen De'ath from the Australian Institute of Marine Science (AIMS) and colleagues determined that tropical cyclones - 34 in total since 1985 - were responsible for 48% of the damage, while outbreaks of the coral-feeding crown-of-thorns starfish accounted for 42%.
Two severe coral bleaching events in 1998 and 2002 due to ocean warming also had "major detrimental impacts" on the central and northern parts of the reef, the study found, putting the impact at 10%.
"This loss of over half of initial cover is of great concern, signifying habitat loss for the tens of thousands of species associated with tropical coral reefs," the authors wrote in their study.
Co-author Hugh Sweatman said the findings, which were drawn from the world's largest ever reef monitoring project involving 2,258 separate surveys over 27 years, showed that coral could recover from such trauma.
"But recovery takes 10-20 years. At present, the intervals between the disturbances are generally too short for full recovery and that's causing the long-term losses," Sweatman said.
John Gunn, head of AIMS, said it was difficult to stop the storms and bleaching but researchers could focus their short-term efforts on the crown-of-thorns starfish, which feasts on coral polyps and can devastate reef cover.
The study said improving water quality was key to controlling starfish outbreaks, with increased agricultural run-off such as fertiliser along the reef coast causing algal blooms that starfish larvae feed on.
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Politicians have offered confusing and conflicting information on guns in the wake of the San Bernardino shootings and President Obama’s announced plans for tighter gun controls:
Jeb Bush said Obama’s plan would take away the rights of someone “selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun” by requiring that person to perform background checks. That’s not correct. Such “one-off” private gun sales would be unaffected by Obama’s proposals.
In an ad, Marco Rubio says Obama’s plan is to “take away our guns.” The president’s plan would do no such thing. No guns would be confiscated under Obama’s plan, and no law-abiding citizen would be denied the ability to purchase a gun.
In an interview, Donald Trump said Hillary Clinton’s gun plan is “worse than Obama[‘s]” and that “she wants to take everyone’s gun away.” That’s not what Clinton is proposing either.
Obama said that “historically, the NRA was in favor of background checks.” That’s misleading. The NRA opposed the Brady bill and offered an alternative background check provision that gun-control advocates saw as an attempt to kill the bill.
Obama’s Proposal
In an emotion-filled speech on Jan. 5, President Obama announced a series of executive actions aimed at reducing gun violence. The most controversial was Obama’s plan to crack down on some unregulated Internet gun sales.
The plan does not include any new regulations, or an executive order. Rather, Obama has directed the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives to “clarify” that anyone “engaged in the business” of selling firearms — even if the seller operates over the Internet or at gun shows — must get a license and conduct background checks.
In other words, Obama said, “It’s not where you do it, but what you do.”
And, Obama warned, those who “engage in the business” of selling firearms via the Internet or at gun shows but do not obtain a license and subject buyers to background checks will be federally prosecuted. A person who “willfully engages in the business of dealing in firearms without the required license is subject to criminal prosecution and can be sentenced up to five years in prison and fined up to $250,000,” the White House warned.
To back that up, Obama also announced that ATF has established an Internet Investigations Center that will track illegal online firearms trafficking, and Obama vowed that his 2017 budget proposal would include funding for an additional 200 ATF agents and investigators.
Obama’s plan also includes the hiring of 230 additional FBI staff members to help to more efficiently and effectively perform background checks, and $500 million to improve mental health services.
There has been some confusion about his proposals. For example, a number of our readers asked us to fact-check Obama’s claim that “some gun sellers have been operating under a different set of rules. A violent felon can buy the exact same weapon over the Internet with no background check, no questions asked.”
Many of those readers correctly noted that federally licensed firearms dealers — no matter where they operate, including the Internet — are already required to perform background checks on the gun purchaser. And, besides, it’s illegal for a felon to purchase a gun, period.
But that doesn’t mean Obama’s statement is wrong. Obama did not say violent felons arepermitted to purchase guns over the Internet, only that some “can.” Obama was referring to those who buy guns from sellers who purport to be “private” sellers, not licensed dealers, and therefore are not required to perform background checks.
According to current law, those “engaged in the business” of firearms dealing are required to be federally licensed, and must then subject buyers to background checks. But the law exempts any person “who makes occasional sales, exchanges, or purchases of firearms for the enhancement of a personal collection or for a hobby, or who sells all or part of his personal collection of firearms.”
In moving to crackdown on Internet sales, Obama is acting on the belief that too many sellers engaged in the business of selling firearms are purporting to be private sellers in order to avoid the need to be licensed (and in turn be required to obtain background checks).
That’s why, in an op-ed published by the New York Times on Jan. 8, Obama said the gun control steps he announced earlier in the week “include making sure that anybody engaged in the business of selling firearms conducts background checks.”
The key phrase in that statement is “making sure.”
Although Obama did not set a threshold number of sales to define who should be a licensed dealer, the White House noted that the “quantity and frequency of sales are relevant indicators.” The administration noted that “even a few transactions, when combined with other evidence, can be sufficient to establish that a person is ‘engaged in the business.’ For example, courts have upheld convictions for dealing without a license when as few as two firearms were sold or when only one or two transactions took place, when other factors also were present.” An Associated Press story said those other factors include business indicators such as “selling weapons in their original packaging and for a profit.”
Some have cautioned that Obama’s actions will have little real effect on gun violence. Carlisle Moody, an economics professor at William & Mary, told us Obama’s proposals “will almost certainly have no effect on violent crime” because licensed firearms dealers who do business over the Internet already do background checks. The guns are mailed to a local licensed dealer who performs the background check.
Existing law also requires that Internet sales between individuals in different states include background checks because guns cannot be legally mailed across state lines, per the Gun Control Act of 1968. In those cases, the gun is again mailed to a local licensed dealer.
The only possibility of avoiding background checks via the Internet is for the two individuals to meet in person, Moody said. “This is a tiny subset of all gun sales. The number of face-to-face gun sales between individuals in which the purchaser is a violent felon who then uses the firearm in the commission of a crime is even smaller.”
In addition, eight states — California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island, Washington state — and Washington, D.C. — require background checks for all gun sales, even face-to-face private sales. Two other states — Maryland and Pennsylvania — have similar requirements for the purchase of handguns only.
We should also note that it is illegal for a seller, private or licensed, to knowingly sell a firearm to someone who is prohibited from owning a gun, such as a convicted violent felon. But the seller would have to know. And as we said, in legitimate private sales, background checks are not required.
Bush: Obama’s Actions Would ‘Burden’ Private Sellers
Reacting to Obama’s announced gun actions, Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush toldABC News that Obama’s plan would place an unnecessary burden on private sellers. But legitimate private sellers would not be required to do anything new.
“If someone is selling a gun out of their collection, a one-off gun, they’re not a dealer, which would require a license and already requires that, you’re taking that person’s right away,” Bush said. “It doesn’t make sense to add burdens on people where the problem isn’t — you’re not solving whatever problem he’s trying to solve.”
While Obama had the ATF clarify that a person engaged in the business of selling guns would need a license and to conduct background checks on buyers, regardless of where those sales take place, there is nothing in Obama’s actions that would affect the “one-off” gun seller that Bush describes.
In order to affect the private seller, Congress would have to pass a universal background check law. A bipartisan 2013 amendment offered by Sens. Joe Manchin, a Democrat, and Pat Toomey, a Republican, would have gotten closer to universal checks, though it would have allowed sales to family, friends and neighbors without the need for background checks. Itfailed in a 54-46 vote.
In his speech on Jan. 5, Obama acknowledged that he could not institute universal background checks through executive order. “I want to be clear,” Obama said. “Congress still needs to act.”
Unless or until Congress passes a universal background check law, the “one-off” sales described by Bush will still be exempt from the need for background checks.
Taking Guns Away?
On the day that Obama made his speech, Republican presidential candidate Marco Rubio released an ad in which he says, “His [Obama’s] plan after the attack in San Bernardino? Take away our guns.”
