Category: Catastrophe

Dec 30th

12/30/2013

Power has now been restored to homes after a fierce storm lashed northern England over the last few days. I feel so sorry for the people whose Christmas was ruined by floods. Now they have to face cleaning up their soaked possessions and carry on with their lives.

However, on the other side of the world, thousands of people are leaving their homes after a volcano erupted in eastern El Salvador, that's south of Mexico (I had to look it up).

Residents in the coffee-producing region of the San Miguel province heard a powerful explosion before the Chaparrastique volcano began spewing hot ash and smoke into the air after a lull of after 37 years. The volcano spewed lava in 1976 and caused a strong tremor in the area in 2010.

The Salvadoran government detected increased activity inside the volcano, and has been monitoring the situation since 13 December amongst the 20 volcanoes in the small Central American nation.

Fortunately, nobody has been hurt. Civil protection authorities are setting up temporary shelters for the 5,000 evacuated people living in a 3km (2 mile) radius. About 300 communities live around the volcano.

So many people around the world are displaced and suffering right now because of natural disasters and conflict among the people. Today's news reveals thousands of children are likely to have been separated from their families as a result of the latest violence in South Sudan. Children are our future. I hope the people who care for them are kind.

I'm setting up a blog for 2014: http://511580395457358476.weebly.com
I'll continue my daily views on news there next year. Hope you stay with me. I appreciate your support.

5 Comments

Dec 11th

12/11/2013

3 Comments

Technology has conquered a missing human limb. Yay for mankind! In the past, when a soldier lost his arm, it was gone forever. Think Napoleon Bonaparte.

A modern soldier, injured in battle, is the first person in the UK to have a bionic arm which he can control with his thoughts. The surgery included having his nerve system rewired, and months of learning how to use the new arm. Cpl Garthwaite was badly injured in Helmand, Afghanistan, in September 2010 when a Taliban rocket-propelled grenade took off his right arm and killed one of his comrades.

The surgeons at the hospital in the Medical University of Vienna had to rewire his nervous system - taking the nerve endings from his shoulder, that would have run down to his hand - and rewired these into his chest muscles.

This has meant over the past 18 months, the patient has had the sensation of a hand growing in his chest. While learning to use that hand again, electrodes sent signals into the bionic arm so that he could control the prosthesis.

The Viennese bionics company Otto Bock who developed the arm says this new kind of intelligent upper limb prosthesis can be controlled using the same nerves organically responsible for arm movement and enables more natural movements. The patient, they say, performs movements intuitively, and the prosthesis can directly convert the thought commands. See the full story here.

www.wallsave.com

I hate to mention it because the soldier deserves our respect, but this technology, used in a bad way, could be used as a potential future army of ciborgs.

Meanwhile, we discover more about our earth every day. This is something that technology has no control over. Scientists have discovered that the supervolcano beneath Yellowstone National Park is far more immense than previously thought. The team measured the cavern, which stretches for more than 90km (55 miles) and contains 200-600 cubic km of molten rock. The magma chamber was colossal. Reaching depths of between 2km and 15km (1 to 9 miles), the cavern was about 90km (55 miles) long and 30km (20 miles) wide.

ngm.nationalgeographic.com

Some believe a massive eruption is overdue, estimating that Yellowstone’s volcano goes off every 700,000 years or so. There had only been three major eruptions so far. These happened 2.1 million years ago, 1.3 million years ago and 640,000 years ago.

One leap for man, one threatening catastrophe for the Earth. We can't hope to contain a future volcano eruption, so we might as well cheer on our heroes, injured while trying to create peace in a war nobody wants with no settlement in sight.

3 Comments

Dec 7th

12/7/2013

4 Comments

www.telegraph.co.uk

They say that fire is the devil's only friend. Now, it seems disease is the benefactor of war. History has repeatedly shown that contamination rides well with human conflict.

For instance, the poliovirus outbreak in Syria, Israel and Egypt, caused by related strains can be traced back to Pakistan.

War and insurgency provide the ideal conditions for bacteria and viruses to take hold, so it is little surprise that polio has become entrenched in Pakistan and Afghanistan. The dreaded disease has now re-emerged in the Middle East and Africa. Consequently, poliovirus continues to circulate in northern Nigeria, igniting a further outbreak in war-torn Somalia and the wider Horn of Africa.

en.wikipedia.org

While the type of warfare has changed down the ages, the link between war and disease remains as robust as ever. The collapse of hygiene and healthcare systems leads to infections rapidly re-establishing themselves in war-torn populations. Civilians and soldiers end up living in crowded and insanitary conditions, ideal breeding grounds for a range of bacterial, viral and parasitic infections. In Syria, a typhoid epidemic has taken hold in an eastern province.

But, mass movement of troops and refugees also spreads infectious disease. Many civil wars in Africa have been accompanied by the swell in infectious diseases, such as HIV.

en.wikipedia.org

Vast mobilization of troops during World War I undoubtedly played a part in one of the most devastating contagions of modern history. The 1918 influenza pandemic. Although widely known as the Spanish flu, no one knows for sure where the virus originated. Three waves of infection led to the demise of 50 million to 100 million people worldwide, more than twice as many people as the war itself.

The impact of infection during war can be traced back to the depths of time.

From the BBC, Chronicles of contagion:

    165 AD: Roman soldiers returning from the Parthian war spark the Antonine Plague (probably smallpox) that ravishes the Roman Empire.

    1155: Emperor Barbarossa contaminates drinking water by disposing human corpses in wells in Italy.

    1618-48: The Thirty Years War. Typhus fever caused by a bacterium spread through the feces of blood-sucking lice was rampant and lead to the cancellation of some battles.

    1763: British settlers give two blankets and a handkerchief from a smallpox hospital to two visiting Native American chiefs.

    1805-14: The Napoleonic wars. Typhus fever wreaked havoc, killing more French soldiers than the war effort itself.

    1853-56: Crimean war. British forces are decimated by cholera outbreaks.

    1870-71: Franco-Prussian war. A particularly aggressive form of smallpox virus, originating in France, was introduced into Prussia by French prisoners of war incarcerated in camps. This spread through the civilian population, but not to the Prussian soldiers - they had been protected.

    1914-18: World War I. Across the world the influenza pandemic kills millions. In Russia, peace was followed by widespread famine and a constant flow of refugees blighted by cholera, dysentery, malaria, typhoid and typhus.

    1939-45: World War II. The Japanese poison more than 1,000 Chinese wells with cholera and typhus and drop plague-infested fleas.

    2011: The CIA was reported to have established fake vaccination programs in Pakistan to secure DNA samples during the "war on terror" and the search for Osama Bin Laden. The ensuing mistrust has hampered legitimate polio vaccine programs.

    2012-13: Environmental samples test positive for the presence of poliovirus in Egypt, Israel, the West Bank and the Gaza Strip and cases of polio reported in Syria.

    May 2013: WHO report on the isolation of wild poliovirus from a young girl in Somalia, which had been polio-free since 2007.

The current polio outbreaks in Syria, Israel and Egypt, along with Pakistan, Afghanistan, Africa and the Middle East are sad reminders that infectious diseases win during any mass conflict.

Why do people fight? For what they believe is right? Considering the dignity with which Nelson Mandela conducted his campaign for equal rights in South Africa, I'm wondering if peaceful protest would work just as well. At least it would deny disease a chance of spreading.

4 Comments

Dec 6th

12/6/2013

10 Comments

A major storm has hit northern Europe during the last two days, leaving at least three people dead, causing transport chaos and threatening the biggest tidal surge in decades.

Already, a lorry driver was killed when his vehicle was blown over in Scotland, while a man died when he was hit by a falling tree in England. Britain's Environment Agency said tidal surges could bring significant coastal flooding. The Thames Barrier was being closed to protect London. Thousands of households along vulnerable coasts have been evacuated as seawater floods coastal areas of eastern England and North Wales.

In Denmark, a woman died after a lorry turned over in high winds. The Oeresund road and rail bridge between Sweden and Denmark - which links the Danish capital Copenhagen with the Swedish city of Malmo and features in the hit television series The Bridge - was due to close from 1500 GMT.

In the low-lying Netherlands, the Eastern Scheldt storm surge barrier has been closed off for the first time in six years. Dutch authorities said they had issued the highest possible flood warning for four areas in the north and north-west of the country.

In Germany, the port of Hamburg is bracing for a direct hit and a massive tidal surge. There are fears it could be as powerful as the flood that killed more than 300 people in the city in 1962.

The news of these very real events is terrifying to those people who live close by. Fortunately, I live safe inland on higher ground. The weather's changes have caused meteorologists worry for some time now. Environmentalists around the world have predicted that the scenario will worsen unless mankind changes their way. Unfortunately, this is a slow process during which world representatives work to hash out sanctions.

As an author of fiction, I feel somewhat burdened, embroiled and culpable, not only with the title of my second book, Tidal Surge, which is set in the present day, but by publishing the Higher Ground Series. The futuristic novels, set after the Great Flood, follow the lives of a group of characters. Mankind has been swept backwards to live a more-or-less primitive life with only memories, broken articles poking above the soil, and ruined cities hinting at the past. Four books tell of adventure--Wind Over Troubles Waters, Knights in Dark Leather, Golden Submarine, and Long Doom Calling. You can see the covers on the sidebar and click on them to link to the books. The heroine guides a group of followers from Saint Eyes (St. Ives) to Long Doom (London) to find an ancient ring in the hope of setting Britland on the right track.

I believe in a Universal Consciousness into which highly-tuned people can gain access. This explains why inventors, artists and scientists can discover the same idea simultaneously. Perhaps my writing partner and I captured thoughts about the future of mankind. I hope we're wrong.

10 Comments

Nov 22nd

11/22/2013

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www.nasa.gov

Scientists have analyzed a cosmic explosion, the brightest ever seen, caused by the death of a massive star. The monstrous blast from the dying star was spotted by Nasa's Swift and Fermi space-based telescopes. The journal of Science published the results of the blast of radiation, called a gamma-ray burst, spotted earlier this year.

Researchers believe the distant star was about 20-30 times the mass of the Sun. When the star ran out of fuel from the material at its core, it exploded and hurled radiation across the cosmos. The core of the star would have collapsed into a black hole, while liberating a powerful jet of energy—the gamma-ray burst.

A blast wave would have caused the rest of the star to expand outwards, creating another dazzling event called a supernova. Although the event was closer to Earth than most gamma-ray bursts that have been detected, the radiation would have posed no danger. Once it reached our planet, the energy would have been absorbed by our atmosphere.

www.dailymail.co.uk

Several months ago, observations from the Hubble Space Telescope appeared to show a distant collision between two neutron stars—the remnants of massive supernovae.

Astronomers suggest that such collisions are responsible for ultra-short bursts of gamma rays occasionally seen across the Universe. The rare cosmic event could produce heavy elements such as gold. Neutron stars are incredibly dense and massive. As well as bursts of light, when they collide they are also expected to send gravity shock waves through the Universe.

Although uncommon, neutron star collisions would generate the enormous fluxes of neutrons needed to make elements heavier than iron, like platinum, lead and gold, by rapid neutron capture.

www.nrao.edu

At some point in the Earth's history, we were probably irradiated by a gamma-ray burst, and it will happen again in the future. If a similar explosion happened closer to home, within a distance of 1,000 light years, it could damage the ozone layer, with devastating consequences for life on Earth.

Fascinating, but the circumstances are out of our control. What I take from this is that there's a reason why gold and platinum are so precious. Giant superstars gave up their life to produce these prized metals. From now on, I will regard my golden wedding band with more reverence and awe—not only does it represent a union made before God, but the metal has been forged by a supernova.

This sense of awe spills over into all my novels that feature a star moonstone ring, set in pure gold. Both the gold and the stone were created from materials made during the original big bang at the beginning of time.

10 Comments

Nov 20th

11/20/2013

6 Comments

ispygod.net

A global fitness study has shown that many children cannot run as fast as their parents could when they were young. The figures presented at the American Heart Association's annual meeting suggest children's fitness levels are declining in Western countries. But some parts of Asia like South Korea, mainland China and Hong Kong are also seeing this phenomenon.

Researchers analyzed data spanning 46 years and involving more than 25 million children in 28 countries. On average, children today run a mile 90 seconds slower than did their counterparts 30 years ago.

Across nations, cardiovascular endurance—gauged by how far children can run in a set time—has dwindled consistently by about 5% every decade, according to the findings. The decline in endurance is seen in boys and girls and across all ages from nine to 17 years, and is linked to obesity, with some countries faring worse than others. In the UK, half of seven year olds don't get enough exercise according to research. Whilst nearly two out of three boys do an hour's physical activity a day, for girls it is around one in three.

www.ecommunity.com

To stay healthy, children and young people need to do at least an hour of physical activity every day. This can be walking or cycling to school and running in the playground. It can be done in small chunks rather than one session.

Prof Michael Gwitz of the American Heart Association stresses that the exercise needs to make a person or child sweat and should be sustained and dynamic to promote cardiovascular fitness. Simply going to the gym or belonging to a school sports team might not be enough without plenty of movement. Parents, schools and community groups can all help kids on their way to 60 minutes exercise a day.

So how can anyone motivate children to be active? School sports are vital. But parental input is crucial. Seven year olds today face more distractions, more incentives to sit, than any previous generation. For many of them, the computer tablet, apps or smart phones are a part of daily life. Sadly, many regard playing outside as a dull alternative to controlling a computer game.

www2.kirklees.gov.uk

Telling them that they need to exercise and be healthy doesn't work for the average primary or secondary school child.

Two things are crucial. First is making physical activity routine—part of daily life. Walking to school is one obvious example. Parents who set an example and do exercise tend to have more active children. The second is finding a sport or activity which engages the child.

The Change4Life campaign is aimed at encouraging people of all ages to lead healthier, more active lives. Its motto, "Eat well, move more, live longer", sums up the aim of the campaign. It already has half a million members.

www.nytimes.com

Using free apps and email messages Change4Life encourages children to take several small steps that will help lead to a permanent improvement in their health. This includes breaking down the perhaps daunting task of being active for at least 60 minutes into 10 minute chunks, plus suggestions for games which will tempt kids away from their screen.

In the Drop-Out 70s when my children were young, we had no such toys. We even gave up the television until the school required them to use it. When home in the country town of Robe, South Australia, they walked everywhere they needed to go, which included the swimming at the nearby beach, exercising at the playground and collecting firewood or wildflowers for our craft shop. Their father and I considered the possibility of a future apocalypse because of missiles pointed at all major cities in the world at that time. I made sure they would have every chance to survive if civilization should be destroyed.

What would happen to these unfit and unprepared children if a catastrophe, either natural or man-made, happened now?

See my co-written novels on the sidebar, where a young group of survivors in the future after the Great Flood form together to search for a way to save mankind. In the first of the Moonstone series, Wind Over Troubled Waters, sixteen-year-old Cerridwen loses her mother in a landslide.

6 Comments

Nov 15th

11/15/2013

8 Comments

The year 2013 is likely to be among the top 10 warmest on record, according to the World Meteorological Organization. It continues a pattern of high temperatures blamed directly on man-made climate change. Nations meeting at UN climate talks in Warsaw, Poland, are struggling to make progress on political solutions to climate trends.

thinkprogress.org

A spokesman from WMO said although individual tropical cyclones cannot be directly attributed to climate change, higher sea levels are already making coastal populations more vulnerable to storm surges. Of the broad pattern, he said: “All of the warmest years have been since 1998, and this year once again continues the underlying, long-term trend. The coldest years now are warmer than the hottest years before 1998.

"Atmospheric concentrations of carbon dioxide and other greenhouse gases reached new highs in 2012, and we expect them to reach unprecedented levels yet again in 2013. This means that we are committed to a warmer future.

"Surface temperatures are only part of the wider picture of our changing climate. The impact on our water cycle is already becoming apparent - as manifested by droughts, floods and extreme precipitation."

people.uwec.edu

Today’s statement is provisional, pending weather patterns to the end of the year, but it confirms that global sea level reached a new record high. The spokesman said the overall trend was clear. He urged governments to end subsidies for fossil fuels and give people clean energy sources.

On the news today, Japan is to significantly slash its greenhouse gas reduction target in the wake of the Fukushima nuclear disaster. With all of Japan's nuclear power plants currently offline, the country is forced to increase its burning of fossil fuels. Coal, oil and gas are called "fossil fuels" because they have been formed from the organic remains of prehistoric plants and animals.

www.discoveringfossils.co.uk

The plight of people in the Philippines after the horrific Typhoon Haiyan claimed so many lives and caused such devastation is heartrending. Some sources say there is little hope for the survivors as countries make every effort to rush supplies in to help. However, the country is not the only place to experience extreme weather. In 2012, the US suffered record high temperatures.

This year, Australia recorded its warmest 12-month period on record ending in August. Despite the record temperatures, climate change has proved politically explosive in Australia, with the new government scrapping a controversial carbon tax and refusing to pay into a fund to help poor countries most affected by climate change.

How unfeeling of Australia to keep their toys locked away and not share with the rest of the world.

But Prof Kevin Parton from the Institute for Land, Water and Society at Charles Sturt University in New South Wales said: “The overall message of the WMO statement is that recent conditions from all parts of the globe have been precisely what climate scientists predicted would occur under conditions of global warming.

"Apart from increasing global temperatures, the statement points to many, many examples of extreme weather from the UK to Russia, and from the Sudan to Argentina. It also highlights huge impacts of climate change on Arctic sea ice, the Greenland Ice Sheet, Antarctic sea ice and the rise in global sea level.

"If you look only at heat waves over the last 12 months, then extreme conditions occurred in Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, Austria, Finland, China and Japan.”

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Dr Steve Rintoul, research team leader at Australia's CSIRO Marine and Atmospheric Research division, said: "A more significant point is that global-average temperature in each of the last three decades has been warmer than any prior decade dating back to 1850, as reported in the recently released IPCC report. It provides compelling evidence that human activities are primarily responsible for the warming over the last 50 years."

I can't help with solutions. I hope the world leaders come to some agreement in time to save the world. As more people occupy our planet, the demand for fuel will increase. That's a more difficult problem. Perhaps China's one-child policy shows the way to the future.

8 Comments

Nov 14th

11/14/2013

8 Comments

www.dailymail.co.uk

Fighting goes on in Syria. After the army secured the area around the city of Aleppo's airport and retook a strategically important base nearby, a jihadist rebel group affiliated to al-Qaeda has joined calls for a mass mobilization to halt a government advance.

The UN says more than 100,000 people have been killed since the uprising against President Bashar al-Assad began in 2011. These include women and children. More than 2.2 million Syrians have fled to neighboring countries while an estimated 4.25 million have been displaced internally.

Syrian President Bashar al-Assad has recruited an army of 500 women to guard checkpoints and carry out security checks in an attempt to plug the holes left by defections and casualties in his dwindling army. The new paramilitary force called the 'Lionesses for National Defense' has been trained at a boot camp in Wadi al-Dahab in the Syrian city of Homs.

Should the female gender play an active part in war?

www.independent.co.uk

Women fight in Canada, Denmark, Finland, Germany, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Romania, Spain, and Sweden all permit women in all combat units. France, Israel, and the Netherlands permit women in combat positions but they are barred from some units. The US and Brazil are currently looking at how to include women in combat positions, and Australia is already phasing them in. Many other countries including the UK send women to the front line in non-combat roles, or permit women to be fighter pilots

In the United States, there is a move to lift the ban on women assuming roles in frontline combat units. Under current rules, female soldiers, compromising of around nine per cent of the British armed forces, are not allowed to enter into situations where they could engage and potentially kill the enemy. In the Canadian armed forces, unusually, every job is open to women. Both sexes live and fight together.

Around 12% of soldiers serving in the Canadian army are women and they have been integrated into combat positions since 1989. Those who argue against putting women into battle sometimes say that a woman would not be able to carry a wounded fellow from the battlefield. But women are tested every year in soldier carry and soldier drag exercises, paired with someone of a similar weight. They lift bigger people using the fireman's carry.

The only woman in a Canadian platoon of soldiers on the Afghan front line, Capt Ashley Collette was in charge. The traditional way to develop team cohesion is to train, eat and sleep as a unit. This presents some logistical challenges, but Collette took pains to be modest. While the men slept in boxer shorts, she would wear pajamas. When training in Canada, she would climb into a cupboard to change, or pull her sleeping bag around her and change underneath. In Afghanistan, she shared a room roughly 3m x 4.5m (10ft by 15ft) with up to 10 people.

She is passionate that people see her as a soldier, rather than a woman soldier and describes the whole debate about whether women can handle a combat job as null and void. After returning from her tour, she was awarded the Medal of Military Valour, one of Canada's highest military honors, for her leadership in Afghanistan.

During WWII , women of the Special Operations Executive did everything from spying, to sabotaging and gun fighting behind enemy lines. Now, Alesha Escobar has released the 3rd book of The Gray Tower Trilogy. Along with using espionage and fighting skills, the heroine must battle warlocks and vampires as well. You can visit the official blog tour page http://theministrytour.blogspot.com/

What are your views on women fighting on the front line?

8 Comments

Nov 8th

11/8/2013

10 Comments

www.news.bbc.co.uk

Campaigners and religious figures have urged the British Army should stop recruiting under 18-year-olds. An analysis of MoD figures by Child Soldiers International suggested 880 16-year-olds enlisted last year.

I find this shocking. Young boys and a few girls, who have never learned about life as an adult, are joining a group of people whose sole aim is to fight. I guess all of them won't enter the front line of battle. They could act as cooks, laundry workers, or office staff. At the age of 16, a young adult is not equipped to make life-changing decisions.

Meanwhile, an open letter from human rights group Child Soldiers International called on the UK Ministry of Defence to raise the joining age from the current 16 years of age. Bishops in Wales signed the letter, along with other Christian peace groups from around the UK.

However, the MoD said it had no plans to change the recruitment age, arguing enlisting could be beneficial for youngsters and is fully compliant with the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child.

I agree with this for some youths. Those out-of-control boys in street gangs could do with a sharp lesson in discipline in one of the Armed Forces. Also, they could learn other skills that would help them deal with life another way. But they shouldn't be sent to fight on the front line.

www.theguardian.com

The campaigners pointed out that in World War One the youngest that recruits could join up was officially 18. Only boys older than 19 should be sent to fight, although many younger boys slipped through. I'm sure you've read books or seen heartbreaking movies about this.

At present, 16-year-olds can join the UK Army with parental consent and can apply from 15 and 7 months. The UK is among fewer than 20 countries which have a minimum voluntary recruitment age of 16.

Ages for army entrants around the world vary: Bangladesh – 16 (voluntary),El Salvador - 16 (voluntary), 18 (compulsory), Iran - 15 (voluntary service in the Basij), 16 (voluntary), 18 (compulsory), Russia - 16 (military cadets), 18 (compulsory; men have to register for the draft at age 17), Singapore - 16 (voluntary), 18 (compulsory), and United Arab Emirates - 16 (naval cadets), 18 (voluntary). All other countries vary between 17 and 18 yrs.

www.article-3.com

And how does this apply to women? Should the female gender play an active part in war at all?

Under current rules, female soldiers, compromising of around nine per cent of the British armed forces, are not allowed to enter into situations where they could engage and potentially kill the enemy.

In the United States, there is a move to lift the ban on women assuming roles in frontline combat units. Britain has to review its current policy on females in combat within the next five years under EU equality laws. A military source told The Times, America’s decision to allow women on the frontline is highly likely to influence the debate.

I don't want to think about war AT ALL. However, that won't make it disappear. Most of all, I don't want youngsters signing up to fight in war until they've had a chance to live—to learn, love and grow.

10 Comments

Nov 4th

11/4/2013

3 Comments

Amongst a tidal wave of desperate people leaving their homes around the world, many more are due to arrive in the UK in a few months. It's often said that the tiny island of Britain is sinking under the number of people clamoring to its shores. A study by the European Commission last month revealed the number of EU migrants without a job living in Britain already had risen to more than 600,000. Can the economy support more people?

From January 2014, residents of Romania and Bulgaria—two of Europe’s poorest countries and European Union citizens—will be entitled to travel to the UK and claim the same benefits and health care. These include maternity allowance, child benefit, child tax credit, working tax credit, and housing benefit. An agency spokesman said many Roma families will come to the UK with seven or eight children and claim £3,000 a month.

Job agencies are being bombarded with requests from many who want to know how they can claim these benefits in Britain. Some overseas agencies were offering to help Romanians claim advantages in return for a slice of the money. And a London-based company is claiming to offer ‘assistance for getting benefits in the UK’. When questioned, a Bulgarian woman said, ‘Just because I wasn’t born in England, what does that mean? That’s prejudiced'.

The way I see it, benefits are set up by a country to safeguard their residents in times of need. Citizens pay into the scheme their whole working lives as a form of insurance against when they might need help. I advocate helping others, but can the system work if outsiders claim part of the contribution? I arrived from Australia 25 years ago and worked hard for 20 years, paying my taxes like everyone else. Now retired, my pension consists of the recorded sum and a pension payment from Australia, topped up to meet UK living standards.

The UK is locked into the European Union Treaty, which requires a fundamental right of citizens to travel freely between member states. But it is not the lack of jobs in Romania that has caused the exodus—the employment rate is better than that in the UK. It is how much people get paid. So while some in the UK fret about the implications of thousands of unskilled workers pouring into Britain, the Romanian government is concerned about a drain of its brightest talent. The skill-levels and types of jobs vary significantly and include agricultural or building work, medicine, and the professions.

Unfortunately, some of the stories are true. A small number of people do arrive in Britain to beg or steal and they have no plans work. These are influencing public opinion away from the majority of Romanian immigrants who really want to work legally and make a future in the country.

I watched a film last night, 2012. In the end, the wealthy people who had bought seats on a spacecraft ready to escape a global catastrophe allowed the clamoring multitude at the gates aboard, thereby endangering the whole flight. A consensus amongst them decided if the future of mankind was based on selfishness, it wasn't worth preserving. After the hordes rushed aboard, the spacecraft didn't meet the take-off deadline and remained on Earth, acting like Noah's Ark. I like this concept. Insurance against a time of need is worthless if we don't share our benefits. However, the whole world's population must work together.
It starts with the first step.

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Francene Stanley, author of many published novels. If you like my writing, why not consider purchasing one of my books? You'll see them on the sidebar below.
Born in Australia, I moved to Britain half way through my long life.

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