Want a day off work?

So you want a day off. 
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Let's take a look at what you are asking for. 
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There are 365 days per year available for work. 
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There are 52 weeks per year in which you already have 2 days off per week, leaving 261 days available for work. 
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Since you spend 16 hours each day away from work, you have used up 170 days, leaving only 91 days available. 
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You spend 30 minutes each day on coffee break which counts for 23 days each year, leaving only 68 days available.
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With a 1 hour lunch each day, you used up another 46 days, leaving only 22 days available for work. 
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You normally spend 2 days per year on sick leave. 
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This leaves you only 20 days per year available for work. 
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We are off 5 holidays per year, so your available working time is down to 15 days. 
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We generously give 14 days vacation per year which leaves only 1 day available for work and I'll be damned if you are going to take that day off!

Another point of view

Not to accept the idea of reincarnation is to agree to a great injustice.
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It is to accuse the God in whom so many profess to believe of injustice.
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Because if karma is not a law of nature, then why are so many born unequal?
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Why are so many condemned to such hard lives?
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While others have all possible advantages?
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Reincarnation restores justice to human existence in this.
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And in all circumstances surrounding life.
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It enables man to believe that the Universe is governed by law in every particular and in each department.
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Reincarnation also provides exact justice to each individual in every civilisation alike.
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Each person set in motion the causes in his last life.
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Which have brought about what he is now experiencing.
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And is, therefore, undergoing a just punishment or reward because he is the person who did the thing.
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And the person who should be punished or rewarded.
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Now you might say "I am not the person".
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It was another person, who was called so and so in a previous life.
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To say that is to misconceive the doctrine.
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It does not mean it was another individual.
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But the very same one reincarnated in a new body.
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As one might be wearing different clothes, clothed in a different garment.
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The name is nothing.
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It is given to you by your parents
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You did not choose it.
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Just as much as without your consent it is your body.
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It does not represent you.
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Nothing else can give us the idea of exact justice for each and every one of us.
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A justice over many lives.
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A perfect justice.
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Religion cannot do this.
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Religions fight each other.
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Offer ridiculous ideas of heaven provided you believe in them and only them.
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Does any intelligent system seriously offer anything for ever and ever?
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Like being with your loved ones for ever and ever?
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How about a million years with each other?
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Or maybe ten million?
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Are they serious!
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No it is just a corruption of what the masters have ever said.
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Reincarnation is the vehicle which drives us forward along with it's twin karma.

Stressed

Stressed is desserts spelled backwards
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Someone saw this and noted it. 
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What does it say about anything?
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One idea is the lady holding a cake or dessert as shown above, giving release from stress maybe?.
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Not sure about that, another is that we can always find something to be stressed about and maybe that's "our just desserts" and not the cake idea.
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No matter stressed is a major experience for most of us and is unfortunately in most of our lives
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Being stressed though is usually of our own making.
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Just that most of us do not see things that way
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If you are stressed at the moment as you read this then ask yourself this.
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This stress I am feeling where does it come from?
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Usually we like to point the finger at someone or something other than ourselves.
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But if we are honest very often the trigger is in us.
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That other person or situation is just the trigger for our own frustration or stress.
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If I am totally cool then you can say and do whatever you like and it will not upset me.
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If I am cool then whatever comes my way will not upset me.
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In other words you can only press my buttons or get me upset and stressed if I let you.
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If this resonates with you then what are you doing to remove or reduce the stress in your life?
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It is possible to live in stressed times without allowing it into your life.
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Not 100% percent for sure but for much of it.
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And this only comes along to those who are prepared to change.
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To change habits and thought patterns.
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Habits and thought patterns that lead to our getting stressed.
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Perceptions that we hold so dear.
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Time to examine them and find ways to let them go.
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And the way to let them go is to control your mind
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Why?
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Because if you are not thinking then nothing touches you.
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So having the ability to turn off your mind is necessary.
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And that is a whole other story for another day.

Evil Scientists

The University of Rotterdam researchers in the Netherlands have created a mutated H5N1 bird virus. Made in the lab, the virus could not only go pandemic but is considered lethal to over 50% of those it affects.

To put it in plain English, a virus with the potential to kill up to half the world's population has been made in a lab, genetically altered to become much more contagious. 

The fight between academics and bioterrorism experts is whether or not to publish the recipe for anyone to replicate the virus, and whether the research should have been done in the first place.

This shows clearly that H5 can change in a way that allows transmission and still cause severe disease in humans. 

It's scary," says Peter Doherty, a 1996 Nobel prizewinner for work in viral immunology, in the New Scientist article, "Five easy mutations to make bird flu a lethal pandemic."

In the lab, the University of Rotterdam research team gave the H5N1 virus three mutations that were known to adapt bird flu to mammals, which killed ferrets even though the virus did not transmit between them.

The second trial saw the researchers giving the H5N1 to even more ferrets, repeating the process ten times. 

Up until this time, none of the H5N1 virus had spread … at least until the tenth round. 

At this time the shedding of the H5N1 virus had spread to ferrets in separate cages, killing them in the process.

Malik Peiris of the University of Hong Kong, a flu virologist, says this means H5N1 transmissible between humans can evolve in birds, where it is circulating already, without needing to spend time in mammals such as pigs.

According to the New Scientist, "Killer flu research to be censored"

D. A. Henderson of the University of Pittsburgh, who led the eradication of smallpox, notes that virologists already review and regulate work with smallpox virus. 

But flu could be a worse threat, and "special measures are warranted".

The Rotterdam research will be published in the journal Science accompanied by explanations about why it was done, and the measures taken to ensure the virus did not escape.

However, the study's lead researcher, Ron Fouchier of the University of Rotterdam, said, We will respect the advice and try to publish in censored form. 

But we still believe the detailed data should be published. 

We have the moral obligation to share the details with those that need to know.

Fouchier believes it is important that researchers must investigate the threat posed by H5N1 while evolving in the wild, something that far outweighs the harm that hypothetical bioterrorists might do.

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Well he had to say something to justify himself didn't he?

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Sorry the possibility of this evolving in the wild are pretty remote.

Hard to believe that someone approved this line of research without considering or being interested in the possible, no probable use in the future.
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Someone else decided to fund this research.
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Now who would do that?
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And at some time somewhere this will get out and then we have another pandemic.
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As if this planet did not have enough problems without mad scientists playing the fool.

Never ending

Companies have been paying up to £1,800 a head to meet ministers, senior government advisers and MPs at a series of networking events previously banned by the Cabinet Office.
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The chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, policing minister, Nick Herbert, and climate change minister, Lord Taylor, have all addressed the exclusive invite-only events, organised by a networking business called the Chemistry Club, and usually hosted at the high-end Sartoria restaurant in Mayfair, London.

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Senior MPs from backbench committees have also attended the events, as have senior civil servants and special advisers from the Treasury, Home Office, Ministry of Defence, Department of Energy and Climate Change and other key departments.

Among the public sector employees to have attended the networking evenings is Ben Moxham, David Cameron's special adviser for energy and the environment and a former employee of BP, who was at an event on climate change in November.

The club charges senior executives from energy companies, consultancies and technology businesses between £1,300 and £1,800 per person for each event, although it invites some from the public sector to attend for free.

Senior executives from companies including BP, Shell, and the Russian oil giant Gazprom have attended the company's climate change events, while Apple, Google and Citigroup executives were among those at other networking evenings.

Transparency campaigners said the club's nature raised concerns similar to those raised in previous "cash-for-access" controversies – that those with the financial means could secure privileged access to government decision makers.

The Cabinet Office issued guidance in August 2010 to departments telling civil servants not to attend Chemistry Club events, and at the time said it had not been aware how much companies paid to attend the events,.

However, the Guardian has learned that public figures from departments and other public bodies, including the Metropolitan police and the intelligence agency GCHQ, resumed attending events after the ban, some as soon as a month after the initial guidance was issued.

The Cabinet Office now says it overturned its ruling forbidding civil servants attending after "discussions" with the club, but has not disclosed when this decision took place.

Civil servants, meanwhile, have declared their attendance at recent events on hospitality registers, frequently valuing the hospitality received at £25 or below despite the four-figure price tag for private sector attendees.

The Chemistry Club runs two main series of networking events: one, called the Climate Change Forum, focuses on energy and climate change, the other on IT and technology. The club stresses its evenings "are not social gatherings but 'work events'" that "represent an exceptionally good use of attendees' time".

A 2010 job listing for the organisation showed the emphasis the club places on making the right introductions: "The evenings are unique; prior to each private dinner every member and guest is prepared by way of a phone meeting," it said. 
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"We gain an in-depth understanding [of] the executives' needs, resulting in relevant introductions facilitated on the night."

Mark Simon, chief executive of the Chemistry Club, said the events targeted key decision makers involved in the subject matter for invitation.

"If you look at climate change, for example, we look at who is core to the debate," he said. "There's no point inviting someone who no one wants to speak to ... 
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The objective of the event is that they walk away having had a handful of relevant conversations.

It's about mutuality. The civil servant wants to meet suppliers just as much as the supplier wants to meet with, say, someone at the ministry.

Simon said he could not recall if civil servants had been barred from attending the events, but his "sense is there was and then they changed it".

He believed this reversal had occurred towards the end of 2010 after discussions with the Cabinet Office on improving the transparency of the organisation, which has from last July been publishing attendees at the events on the club's website.

"If civil servants want to come, there needs to be a level of transparency," Simon said. "That's an ongoing, evolving process."

Details of attendees are now published as PDFs at the bottom of the FAQ section on the Chemistry Club's corporate site.

Simon said he had gone to see the Cabinet Office to discuss these changes. However, the Cabinet Office response to a freedom of information request from the Guardian asking for details of any meetings said it turned up no records.

The Labour MP Lisa Nandy, who has pursued further details of the Chemistry Club's activities since the Cabinet Office first discouraged officials to attend, said transparency needed to go further.

"It's been exceptionally difficult to get clear answers about who attends these meetings, and why. It's hard to avoid the impression that ministers are just paying lip service to the principle of open government. 
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It cannot be right that lobbyists can provide access for cash," she said. "Ministers have serious questions to answer about whether lobbyists can buy influence with their government. 
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The question remains, why would you pay thousands of pounds to network with civil servants if not to change policy or win a contract? 
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Tamasin Cave, of the transparency group Spinwatch, said the Chemistry Club characterised "a lobbying industry out of control"
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Lobbying is a tactical investment which affects companies' bottom line – they do not spend £1,800 for nothing," she said. 
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Cave said the coalition's plans to increase lobbying transparency would do nothing to shed more light on events such as these.
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"The government's proposals on lobbying are a joke," she added. 
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They do not allow us to see the impact that lobbyists have on the decisions this government makes.
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What we urgently need is a proper register showing who is lobbying whom, what they are lobbying for, and crucially how much money they are spending on influencing decision maker.
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A Cabinet Office spokesman said: "The Chemistry Club has now changed the way it operates to provide for greater transparency around its operations and attendance enabling civil servants to attend events should they wish to do so. 

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Civil servants' attendance at such events must be declared in departments, and will be published for the most senior civil servants.
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And so it goes on............. corruption by any other name.
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An endless fight to try and bring transparency to decision making.
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Not for nothing was the current Prime Minister in this very same industry before entering politics.

Moving through crowds

The seasoned commuter is most likely a pro at it and with 57,000 people weaving through London's most crowded concourse at Waterloo station every rush hour, that's hardly a surprise.
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But navigating your way through throngs of people doesn't have to leave you sweating and wanting to punch the dawdling pedestrian in front of you.
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There's no need to get stuck behind a slow walker – but there are now hundreds of Facebook groups (often with violent solutions) dedicated to this urban problem. 

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Simply put your eyes on the problem and take a second to allow your brain to process the patterns in the movements and speeds of people in front of you.

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Remember the tactics that you'll need to walk through a fast-moving railway station won't be the same as those for a packed concert or busy market.

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For moving crowds, walk deliberately and with intent. 
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Where possible, make a conscious decision to look directly up at the point you are trying to reach. 
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This way members of the crowd can see where you're going and move accordingly.

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If the crowd is very heavy look down at the floor several metres ahead to carefully place your feet and hold your arm in front of your chest as a "human indicator" of your end destination.

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For fixed crowds you need to be more patient; people who can feel a constant (but not aggressive) pressure will often step aside, while a gentle tap on the shoulder will often create the space you need. 
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Be prepared to weave through groups. 
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Stand straight, square your shoulders and set your elbows at a defensive angle.

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In both situations you should evade rather than invade by changing direction to slip behind people rather than cutting in front of them.

Section - 5

                                                                Carl Court/AFP/Getty Images

The man above, Emdadur Choudhury was fined £50 for burning a poppy.

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But defacing the American flag is deemed acceptable.

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Section five of the Public Order Act in the UK has a corrosive effect on free speech – it's time to roll back the culture of being offended.

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Sometimes you have to feel sorry for the police. 

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Beyond already dealing with a raft of ill-considered laws, politicians also want them to act against "insulting" behaviour. 

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Section five of the Public Order Act is so broad that almost any protester on any subject can be arrested and fined for harassment, causing "alarm or distress".

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It's not merely theoretical; many ludicrous cases have been prosecuted. 

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The police arrested a student who held up a sign stating Scientology was a cult – surely a matter of opinion? 

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Kyle Little, a 16-year-old from Newcastle, was fined £50 with £150 costs for saying "woof" to a labrador dog in front of police officers. 

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Eventually the magistrates' decision was overturned by a crown court. 

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The very arbitrary nature of deciding what is insulting gives the police a power they can misuse. 

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After a night out with friends, Sam Brown asked a police officer: 

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"Excuse me, do you realise your horse is gay?" Police took Brown to court after he refused to pay an £80 fine. 

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The CPS eventually dropped the case.

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Criminalising "insult" has a detrimental effect on freedom of expression. 

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The term is so broad that it creates legal inconsistencies. 

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There is legal authority that defacing the American flag is a non-insulting form of protest but burning a poppy is criminally insulting.

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It makes little sense.

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These powers are widely used during protests. 

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Protest is often directed at an unsympathetic audience and will often directly cause offence. 

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Oil companies may feel insulted by accusations of having blood on their hands, but there is a clear public interest in having opinions on the behaviour of the powerful heard.

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Lord Justice Sedley said in Redmond-Bate v DPP "Free speech includes not only the inoffensive but the irritating, the contentious, the eccentric, the heretical, the unwelcome and the provocative provided it does not tend to provoke violence. 

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Freedom only to speak inoffensively is not worth having.

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Yet, the inclusion of "insulting" in the Public Order Act means there is no clear jurisprudence between the offensive speech protected by Sedley and insult as criminalised by the act. 

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Unfortunately most of these cases will go nowhere near learned judges, and the majority of these fines won't be challenged by a public that has never been informed of its rights. 

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Very few of these cases get beyond a magistrates court, and divisional courts, where some of these fines have been quashed, are often loth to intervene.

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When asked to determine the meaning of the word insulting under the previous form of the act, the House of Lords held in Brutus v Cozens that "parliament has given no indication that the word is to be given any unusual meaning. 

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Insulting means insulting and nothing else.

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This law, combined with our culture of offence, means there is the expectation that opinions deemed offensive should be criminalised. 

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Our tolerance of the harmless eccentric has waned. 

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The British no longer raise an eyebrow at fringe opinions, but demand the full force of the law. 

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One example is Harry Hammond, a 69-year-old evangelist street preacher. 

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Hammond believed homosexuality was a sin and wanted everyone to know this. 

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So he stood in the streets of Brighton proselytising against homosexuality with a sign proclaiming the catchy slogan: "Jesus Gives Peace, Jesus is Alive, Stop Immorality, Stop Homosexuality, Stop Lesbianism, Jesus is Lord."

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Instead of ignoring an old bigoted man, a crowd gathered. 

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At one point he fell to the ground in a tussle over his placard, and soil and water were thrown over him. 

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While Hammond was charged under section five, no one in the crowd was charged for assaulting him. 

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He was fined £300 by a magistrate and ordered to pay costs of £395. 

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The court also ordered the forfeiture of his sign.

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He died shortly after his conviction. 

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Gay rights activist Peter Tatchell described Hammond's prosecution as "an outrageous assault on civil liberties".

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While it's easy to see how Hammond's behaviour could rile a crowd, the danger with policing offence is that it's highly subjective. 

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Perhaps only a generation ago, when there was very little tolerance towards homosexuality, a gay pride march could have been prosecuted for insulting Christians like Hammond.

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Luckily, liberty has friends in parliament. 

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Conservative MP Dominic Raab discovered that section five was used 18,249 times in 2009. 

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Less than one in six of these offences had a religious or racial element, the majority were for the non-specified crime of insult. 

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Following pressure from the Liberal Democrats, the Home Office consulted on this issue.

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My organisation, Index on Censorship, has been lobbying hard for ministers to roll back the culture of offence which has a corrosive effect on free speech. 

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Removing insult from section five would be a good start.

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Finding the correct balance between public order and legitimate protest isn't always easy. 

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But asking the police to patrol offence has undermined public trust in them. 

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Rightly so, for it is not the job of local bobbies or magistrates to protect citizens from insult. 

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Christian preachers or mouthy anarchists may irritate, but in an open, free society, robust opinion will insult you: perhaps we all just need to get used to it.

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Mike Harris - Guardian

Tamiflu ..............the continuing story

They say that Roche, which makes the antiviral, has failed to supply them with full clinical trials data on the drug, despite repeated requests.

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The Department of Health invested heavily in Tamiflu after the avian flu scare in 2005.

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Derived from spice star anise, it ordered 14.6 million doses that year at a cost of £200 million.

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Trials have shown that it helps alleviate serious flu symptoms and could reduce hospitalisations by 60 per cent.

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Ministers decided to buy so much because vaccines cannot be made quickly enough to protect populations against emerging strains.

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They have now stockpiled enough Tamiflu and another antiviral, called Relenza, to cover half the population.

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But when scientists at the Cochrane Collaboration, which aims to assess evidence on medical treatments, asked Roche for full details of 10 treatment trials, they say the firm only provided them with partial information.

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Each report contains four or five modules, but they say Roche only supplied the first in each case

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They had to resort to freedom of information requests to the European Medicines Agency (EMA), which supplied them with the second modules.

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The reviewers then spotted "discrepancies between the reporting of trials in clinical study reports sent to regulators versus published papers" which "led us to lose confidence in the journal reports", according to their analysis, published in the British Medical Journal.

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For example, "in one case the published version of a trial unambiguously states that 'there were no drug-related serious adverse events', while the clinical study report lists three that were possibly related to oseltamivir", the generic name for the branded drug Tamiflu.

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They also found evidence from one trial that Tamiflu "may inhibit the body's ability to mount a normal immune response to influenza".

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If confirmed, this meant Roche's claim that Tamiflu does not impair immune response was "wrong", claimed the authors, led by Peter Doshi of Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine in Baltimore, US.

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He commented: In the BMJ in December 2009, Roche promised full study reports to any legitimate investigators. 

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They have not provided a single full study report to Cochrane, despite our repeated requests.

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The BMJ has been running a campaign highlighting the problems of unpublished trials, accusing drugs companies of only publishing favourable results.

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Dr Fiona Godlee, its editor-in-chief, said the EMA had told the journal that it planned to start publishing reports for all drugs submitted for approval in the next few years.

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But we are still a long way away from having a full trial history for all drugs in clinical use, she noted.

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Public safety and the proper use of public money demands that we should stop at nothing less than this.

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Roche, which made £1.9 billion from Tamiflu in 2009, defended its record on the drug. 

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A spokesman said: Roche has made full clinical study data available to health authorities around the world for their review as part of the licensing process.

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It is the role of global health authorities to review detailed information on medicines when assessing benefit and risk.

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He added: Numerous clinical studies – and real-life medical experience - show Tamiflu is effective in reducing the severity and duration of influenza symptoms as well as secondary complications in children and adults.

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Regarding the question of the effect of immune repsonse, he said: "Research presented at the ICAAC conference in 2008 confirmed that oseltamivir did not prevent the mounting of an immune response to the influenza virus.

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A spokesman for the Department of Health said: "We rely on expert advice, which is regularly updated to ensure that our antiviral use is based on the best available scientific evidence.

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At the end of last year we published a major review of the scientific evidence base, which showed a clear benefit in offering antivirals to those with severe illness and those with additional risk factors.

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Stephen Adams

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Notice anything in the company statements?

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Carefully worded to avoid answering the legitimate concerns raised.
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Power allows such prevarication as no one wants to go after the spin.
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Most journalists work for organisations, which do not want to upset advertisers.
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In these difficult times holding on to your advertisers is paramount.
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So for you personally please think twice before taking any flu vaccinations.
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Go and look on line at the many articles on this subject.