Nèdeem Elmahjoub's blog

We went to Iraq in 2003 and we "liberated" it from a brutal dictator. In fact we had tried to "liberate" Iraq before that, in 1991. 16 years later   " protests earlier this month were brutally put down by security forces, leaving nearly 150 people dead," reported the BBC. You see, there is no hope. These "backward people" even after helping them with training an army and security forces, they failed in front of the "Islamic State" and now they are killing their own people.

95 suicides or about one death every four days! "In the drive to make universities profitable, there is a fundamental confusion about what they are for. As a result, there has been a shift from prizing learning as an end in itself to equipping graduates for the job market, in what for some can be a joyless environment. At the same time as access to university was dramatically expanded, spending on public services was slashed: in the decade after the financial crash, day-to-day spending on public services as a share of GDP was at its lowest since the late 1930s. This meant savage cuts to local authorities, schools budgets and NHS mental health provision." In addition to the workload at university, according to a 2014 report , "a significant number of students  (45%) do paid part-time  work alongside their studies, with 13% doing a 35-hour week." That's what we call joyful learning and learning to develop critical thinking! In reality, corporate universit...

We are all in it together! Council cuts in England

"The current UK government nevertheless continues to drive outsourcing into the state’s most complex and socially essential service domains. It’s enough to make Leonid Brezhnev blush." "Why public sector outsourcing is less efficient than Soviet planning"

On current exchange rates, Britain is the world’s fifth-largest economy, but no one seriously believes it produces more goods and services than India, Brazil or Indonesia. The UK’s prosperity level is not even in the top 15 per cent of IMF members. The US, Germany and France are far ahead of Britain in the  productivity league table and output per head and per worker does not even match that of Italy. Spending on public services is severely strained: at 39 per cent of national income, it is 5 percentage points below that of Germany.  Britain's economy: how strong is it?