Practical Thoughts

Today (the 28th) marks the festival day of Onam. It is a date of great joy to the people of the State of Kerala, India as it celebrates an almost mythical period of great prosperity in their State, in a time long ago. It is written: When Maveli ruled the land, All the people were equal. And people were joyful and merry; They were all free from harm. There was neither anxiety nor sickness, Deaths of children were unheard of, There were no lies, There was neither theft nor deceit, And no one was false in speech either. Measures and weights were right; No one cheated or wronged his neighbour. When Maveli ruled the land, All the people formed one casteless race. If only such conditions would again prevail. For the Kerala people it is a time that is remembered in reverence, and an occasion to apply some of the principles you would find in such conditions, namely kindness and forbearance.  Such an occasion is reminding me of the TV series recently shown on BBC T...

The DWP (otherwise known as the Department of Whopping Porkies, or, better, the Department of Wicked People) has finally come clean. The DWP has finally bowed to public demand and has published the "death stats" in actual numbers as well as "Age-standardised mortality rates". What are we talking of here? That the Ministry refused for some time to publish the latest available stats o f people who have died while claiming incapacity benefits since November 2011. The DWP has only this week announced that the number who died between January that year and February 2014 is a shocking 91,740 . This represents an increase to an average of  99 deaths per day or 692 per week , between the start of December 2011 and the end of February 2014 – compared with 32 deaths per day/222 per week between January and November 2011. This appears to be a threefold increase. The Minister, Iain Duncan Smith, had previously told Labour MPs that asking him to publish the stati...