Railways are a natural monopoly. There is no genuine competition between providers. For many people, the privately owned railway service is the only practical way to get to work. We have the most expensive passenger fares in the world, and a negligible amount of freight sent by rail, despite absolutely astonishing subsides pair to the private railway companies – and mostly ejected straight out again as shareholders’ profits. I was hoping to give you a figure for the total subsidies private rail companies have received since the crazed system was set up, but I can’t find a reliable series of figures anywhere – can anyone help?
We also still have a rubbish service. Some nominal punctuality improvement has been made, largely by the ruse of making timetables themselves unambitious. A member of staff at Ramsgate station told me recently of an HS1 service which left Ramsgate 18 minutes late, but reached St Pancras on time. On 27 December I left Brussels 11 minutes late on a Eurostar and made Ashford one minute late. Giving a talk in Cardiff recently, the train from Paddington spent in total almost 20 minutes standing in stations to await shceduled departure. Many timetables, particularly around London, have in fact been worsened – the ordinary commuter service from Gravesend to Charing Cross for example is now scheduled to be eight minutes longer than it was when I used to get it every day in 1986. In other cases track, rolling stock and signalling improvements that make quicker journeys possible are ignored in the timetable, all to give that margin of leeway and avoid punctuality fines and refunds.
The last five railway journeys I have been on (excluding Eurostar) all had people standing or squatting in corridors.
We have a train service which is the most expensive in the world but is still arguably the least pleasant to use among developed nations, and is very slow when you compare similar journeys with our European counterparts. It is impossible credibly to argue that the crazed multiple contact privatisation model has worked.
Rail needs to be renationalised immediately.
Clark, I used to believe in vaccination too before I took a look into it.
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Dr Suzanne Humphries, a practicing nephrologist (kidney physician) says the vaccine industry isn’t giving people both sides of the story, and parents need to get informed before subjecting their children to vaccines that can potentially cause serious harm or even death:
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=efto1LpWkKw
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Demeter, your argumentum ad ignorantiam is your prerogative.
However, there is a very relevant comment under the Sen. Rockefeller video I linked to (3 Dec 11.53pm):
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“the average adult may not deserve to survive or get respect from the elite. the bulk of the population live in a state of denial and escapism and have already been dumbed down. so dumb that even when presented with the truth and the agenda of the controllers they crawl back into their fantasy world.”
tropicbum62 1 month ago
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P.S. I have no children and will never take a vaccination, so I gain no benefit by sharing my views on vaccines but I do recommend that people inform themselves and apply critical thinking.
Sorry SB I forget your a polymath; not only a statistician and climatologist but also an immunologist too. Immunology works, however capitalists will obviously try and capitalise on it and I think thats where you get confused.
So you think Sen Rockefeller’s statement is proof that vaccines don’t work. Not entirely from ignorance as I studied biological science a component of which was immunology
Demeter, are you saying that vaccination is the same as immunisation?
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If so, can you provide any evidence?
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For anyone interested, ARE MOST DISEASES CAUSED BY THE MEDICAL SYSTEM? By Walter Last:
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http://www.health-science-spirit.com/medicaldisease.html
“So you think Sen Rockefeller’s statement is proof that vaccines don’t work.”
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Did I say that? Please explain how you arrived at this conclusion.
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I would suggest that vaccines “work” very well for the Rockefellers but not for the patients.
Not the railways ever will be renationalised. Not while sharks like this get rehabilitated –
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2011/12/30/new-year-honours-list-2012_n_1176227.html.
He’s just bought Total’s retail arm, btw.
Evidence? It’s basic nomenclature, semantics. A vaccination is the method of administering an immunisation, a vaccine would be the preparation.
Health Science ‘Spirit’!
I had a feeling it would end up somewhere like that. It reminds me of the absurd notion that using condoms doesn’t prevent the spread of HIV, because all of the anti-immunisation quackery sits right along side it.
Anyway nationalise the rail system, gets my vote!
http://www.transport-watch.co.uk/road-rail-comparisons.htm convert the permanent way to take buses.
The UK railways have been mis-managed for ages. When changing from steam to diesel, BR tried a number of different diesel engine designs. Fair enough. But 46 of them?
BrianSJ, how many different applications did BR look into – shunting yard locos of various power, main line freight, main line passenger, dual diesel / overhead electric, etc? If they needed fifteen types of loco, they tried about three for each job.
That’s right, dismiss the article based on its name or rather your prejudicial association of said name – a sample on vaccines:
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“Vaccinations are the proud showpiece of drug medicine in eliminating the dreaded childhood infections of previous centuries. However, long-term statistics and diagrams tell a different story. Starting between 1850 and 1900 scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough, and measles had declined by about 90% by the time general vaccination was introduced for each disease. While statistics vary between different countries, this is generally true for England, the United States and Australia. Whooping cough had declined in England by about 98.5% before a vaccine became generally available, and measles had declined by over 99%. Tuberculosis had declined by 87% when antibiotics first became available and by 93% before the introduction of the BCG vaccine. The death rate from rheumatic fever had declined by 86% when penicillin was introduced (34). All of this has obviously more to do with better plumbing than with vaccinations.”
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“There are also statistics showing that death rates from targeted diseases rose with the introduction of vaccines. Other side-effects ascribed to modern vaccines are cot or crib death (SIDS), a strong rise in autism and ADHD, and shaken baby syndrome (spot bleeding in the brain) which apparently landed innocent parents in jail. Experts strongly deny that there is a connection between vaccines and autism, but it is strange nevertheless that the rates of autism have suddenly exploded after greatly increased numbers of vaccinations in recent decades, and there is no obvious alternative reason. Also autism is absent in Amish children who are generally not vaccinated. Vaccinated children are reported to have about 150% more neurological disorders such as ADHD and autism compared to unvaccinated children (35).”
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“Another curios aspect of vaccine safety statistics was highlighted by Dr Archie Kalokerinos. Working in the remote Australian outback with Aboriginals he found that every second child died as a result of vaccinations. Because deaths commonly occurred about 3 weeks later, they were not recorded as vaccine-related; officially reactions were limited to occur only for up to 2 weeks after vaccination. However, eventually Dr Kalokerinos solved the problem by giving babies high doses of vitamin C before vaccinations, and no more vaccination deaths occurred. Also SIDS disappeared. Naturally he encountered ridicule and hostility from his medical colleges, and babies are still dying needlessly (36).”
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And, yes, renationalise railways and other key infrastructure: energy, water, transportation.
Scouse Billy,
As the curmudgeon puts it; if the efficacy of the street drugs were to be on par with the efficacy of the pharmaceuticals, one could not find many pushers walking around and pushing, instead these would be lying around and pushing up daisies.
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The paradox of healing but leaving enough room for a few more repeat prescriptions has always confounded the profiteers.
Passerby, very well put.
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Are you familiar with Dr DeMeo’s phenomenal, whistle-blowing speech given to the Association of American Geographers, San Francisco 1994?
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“This is the third time I’ve been asked to say something about this most pressing issue in the modern sciences, the suppression of new ideas and discoveries by unethical and repressive methods. The public exposure of such activities are generally unwelcomed in the modern scientific arena, as there is a widespread illusion that suppression and censorship, with devastating personal attacks against individual scientists, does not exist in the world of modern science. We can accept the historical cases, such as the trial of Galileo by the Catholic Church, but that is safely distanced by several hundred years. All the offending characters are buried in their graves. Not so the modern examples, some of which are every bit as shocking as what happened to Galileo, or worse. While genuine scholarship demands an open and dignified reception of even the most odd and challenging of ideas from one’s fellow scholars, all too often the attitude of “academic superiority” predominates, setting the stage for power-politics of all sorts. Academic science is then transformed into Grand Theatre, from whence “behind the curtain” the most vile and aggressive actions can be played out against dissenting heretics. “Academic freedom” then becomes an empty slogan, a facade which serves only to cover-up serious abuses. It is my unfortunate conclusion, supported by the examples to follow, that power politics is now dominant in the natural sciences, and especially so in medicine.”
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Read all at:
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http://www.orgonelab.org/suppression.htm
Dont forget the personal issue flooding anti-maths’ opening gambit for his latest OT crapshower. He posts some reasonable peoples words for his new topic later, (after rockerfeller voodoo tube etc.) but imposes his slagfest with the unignorable :”that would be the same Save The Children that vaccinate immuno-deficient, malnourished children – unbelievably damaging, if not genocidal.”
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Seriously, delete all this crap. Its not censorship to delete persistent off-topic virtual prophets flooding in the middle of a fine thread. It is site maintentance.
You basically asking me to prove that vaccines don’t cause autism etc but where is your proof that they do. Your info i see is taken from the excellant peer reviewed journal known as health science and spirit. My lecturer at uni who was working on the HPV / cervical cancer vaccine must have been lying to all of the students so as to inculcate us all into the grand scientific immunisation conspiracy.
Yes Demeter, he probably was.
oops did it again, too crabby. sorreee
GlaxoSmithKline, the global pharmaceutical giant, has been fined 400,000 Argentinian pesos after the deaths of 14 babies during clinical trials in Argentina. That’s about £59,500, from a company worth around £73.8 billion, the 5th largest company on FTSE.
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Two doctors were also fined 300,000 ARS each, for their involvement in the trials which were carried out between 2007 – 2008. GSK were trialling a vaccine against pneumococcal bacteria, and recruited around 150,000 babies under the age of one for the trial.
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GSK were charged with experimenting on humans and falsifying parental consent for babies to be involved with the trial. Witnesses claimed doctors involved with the clinical trial bullied illiterate parents into signing to 28-page consent forms, and leading parents to believe their child would not receive any other vaccines if permission to take part in the clinical trial was refused.
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/…
http://zoebaillie.wordpress.com/2012/01/04/glaxo-builds-bonny-babies-unless-youre-argentinian-of-course/
“orgonelab”, Billy? You a scientologist? You think the orgone box can prevent polio? Well, well. That shouldn’t be too hard to disprove. Join the world of clinical trials….
Komodo, no I am not but that’s not the point.
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There is a very interesting documentary, Cancer – The Forbidden Cures by Massimo Mazzucco that shows how Pharma along with the regulators and the medical schools has acted to prevent cheap, non-patentable medicine.
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http://vimeo.com/25279346
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Well worth watching.
Scouse Billy,
Have you ever read up on the cancer treatment in Iran? (Iran was subject to massive chemical attacks of Saddam, and to this date there are huge numbers of the victims of these attacks and they suffer from wide variety of illnesses including cancers, let us hope they can help the victims of the Fallujah bombings/nuking by the US too).
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Evidently they are working on naturally occurring antigens for eradication of cancerous cells, and so far they have managed to combat a whole host of cancers.
What happened to the discussion about the railways? What have the railays got to do with vaccination?
Sorry Suhayl, Billy decided his was a more pressing topic again and i helped it along with outraged outbursts. Save the Children medics harming the children, supposedly, oh we’re all doomed again.
Ah well, Hip (once Crab, once Sandcrab…) and a rollicking ‘Peter Pull and Puff’ journey was had by all! Hope you’re well, Hip.
Thanks Suhayl, i’m on the up overall.
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ScouseBilly, fair play to you, ill try to engage your positions calmly someday.
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Would you like to have a car? -along with almost everyone else? or not have a car along with almost everyone else? I want us to mostly *not* have cars, it is easy to see them as a great scourge already. Even silent electric ones need to be fitted with an electronic yell to say “CAREFUL IM MOVING!”. Nice trains and stations and clear streets for me please.
Train fare prices.
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6 January 2012
Searching for the most expensive train journey
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-16390608