mostly nuggets

blessed britons

The UK still relies on health workers from poor countries: As issues of immigration refuse to leave the mainstream political debate, the reality appears to be that many of our vital public services could not function without the arrival of skilled professionals from overseas. In the last five years alone, the UK has imported 289 trained nurses from Malawi, 364 from Botswana and 757 from Zambia. South Africa, Ghana, Kenya, Lesotho and Zimbabwe also send nurses trained in the health systems of Africa to work in the NHS. The popular myth of the UK being a soft-touch for health tourists, masks a reality in which we are being tended in our sick beds by nurses that many poor countries can ill afford to lose.

— New Economics Foundation

‘China-dependence' going up for life in UK October 2007

mad world

Alicja Ziemowit, one resident of Lodz, Poland, arrived back home to discover that the local council had built a new road complete with traffic island in her back garden.
When she complained she was told that a change in the law meant that local council officials could now use private land for road building without consent or compensation. A council spokesman said, "I don't know why she is complaining, it is not a busy road, and she can still get to the back of her garden quite easily." She will surely enjoy relaxing on the hard shoulder and could now perhaps open a roadside stall to sell cappuccinos to workers at the new computer factory down the road.
Lodz council added, humourlessly, "She still owns the land, it just has a road on it now."

— Schnews

Issue 599