HS2 vs Technology

Since returning to the UK 8 weeks ago, I've spent far too much time on the rail network. Having lived in France for a little over a year, I've become used to travelling by TGV. So you'd think I'd be excited  that plans for HS2, the high speed rail network to run between London, Birmingham, Manchester and Leeds are being cooked up. But not so. 

It takes no genius to see that, unlike Britain, France is a country with a vast geography: The distance between Paris - the capital, and Marseille - the 3rd biggest city, is 774km. In contrast, the distance between London and Birmingham, the city to benefit first from this new superfast infrastructure, is just 188km. In fact, there will be a measly 30 minute saving on journeys made by train between the two cities once HS2 is up and running. 

The cost of the new railway is being estimated at £42.6bn. For the benefit of 30 minutes on journeys, I'm sceptical that this investment will be recuperated in any reasonable period of time, if ever. The works undertaken to the countryside and the repossessions of land will change the face of the Midlands. This would be fine, if the economic benefit could outweigh the ecological cost. However, I'd like to make one proposition that would save the government several billion pounds: upgrading technology. 

One thing that France and Japan did not have when their TGV and Shinkansen were developed was mobile technology: people needed to get between cities quickly and affordably. Nowadays, people have constant access to the internet. They can work when and where they like. Except between Plymouth and London, and Sheffield and York - as recent journeys have revealed to me. The train network is suffering from a lack of investment in technology. 3G is hard to find between major hubs (I often find myself desperately downloading and replying to emails in the 5 minutes that I'm afforded in each station) and WiFi, if available at all, requires a sign-up and hefty fees that don't represent the flexibility necessary for a modern workaholic. 

If we could invest heavily in technology and lower the cost for passengers, it would enable businessmen and women to work efficiently on the train. Rather than reducing their journey time by mere minutes, their efficiency and productivity could be increased significantly between offices. The benefits to local communities close to train lines would be profound also: the Countryside Alliance has been vocal about rural mobile signals. If we enabled 4G along the rail network, rural towns and villages could stand to benefit greatly. 

I'm concerned that we've missed the train when it comes to High Speed. Perhaps forward-thinking, rather than spending money on reactionary and negligible public transport infrastructure, could see this country excel in this, the 21st Century. 

Family murder-suicide in Spain is proof of care failings

A British man, his Irish wife and disabled daughter have been found dead in Spain, in what is being labelled as a suspected 'murder-suicide.' It is the latest in what is becoming all too frequently a family affair involving disabled children. The family reportedly left a suicide note suggesting that their daughter's disability had become too much to cope with.

An occurrence that is no longer a rarity, struggling families with disabled members often find themselves pushed into a corner of society where they are forced to struggle alone with the effects of having a vulnerable adult to care for. Often subjected to abuse, and almost always left without adequate support, each harrowing case highlights the tragedy of having to care for a loved one with a disability.

My twin brother, a sufferer of autism and bipolar amongst other things, has been in care since the age of 8. We took the difficult but necessary decision to place him into care as his behaviour became progressively harder to manage. Other families, through no fault of their own, feel they cannot make this step. And I can't blame them: the care system today is fundamentally flawed and often morally void. It is true that there is no better unit to care for a disabled person than the family unit, however often the strain of looking after somebody with distinct care requirements and - in the case of my brother - challenging behaviour, becomes too much for one family member to be able to bear.

It is the tragedy of the social care structure that these people do not receive adequate support in their choices, whichever they may be. Faced with the prospect of being placed into a care system which has given us the Winterbourne View abuse scandal, people are sceptical and highly suspicious of the care network. The Care Quality Commission is one cog in this complex network of agencies, and has been described as "not fit for purpose" by Stephen Dorrell, the chairman of the Commons health committee.  The government have announced a series of reforms to the watchdog. But what families really need to see is drastic changes to the entire care system. Transparency, an efficient regulator and family rights over the care of their respective family members are necessary to demonstrate the safety of the industry to service users and their support network. It is true that the people who know each individual best are the people who have been there for them throughout their life, not profit-making care providers and agencies with multiple case loads and a high staff turnover.

For families wanting respite, it should be provided to them without the fear of entering into a system which could prove harmful and ultimately destructive for the unit that each fights so hard to protect.

For families who simply can no longer cope with the daily care needs of the vulnerable adult, they need the peace of mind that their loved-one will be safe, secure and happy.

For families on the edge, they need to know that there are people there to help.

All of these are changes the government needs to make to reestablish a genuine support network to restore trust in the care system. Without such changes, trust in placing a loved one into the care system will remain low, and I fear that the tragic events that have unfolded in the last few days will continue.

Obama's African Tour

Barack Obama has today started his African tour in Senegal, the Francophone country in the Sahel. Visiting Senegal, South Africa and Tanzania, he will miss out the birthplace of his Father - Kenya, most probably because Uhuru Kenyatta, the President, is wanted by the ICC for war crimes.

What Obama's visit to Senegal displays most tellingly is that Language barriers need not hold back a new wave of foreign direct investment: Senegal played a key role in supporting French troupes in Mali during the conflict earlier this year against AQIM and is being seen as a driver of stability in the region. 

Whilst China, Malaysia, Brazil and India have been undertaking massive investments in African states and sponsoring governments to further their business interests (the China International Fund is sponsoring the building of a major new airport in Luanda, Angola as well as new infrastructure projects across the continent and even the African Union building in Addis Ababa), the West have fallen by the wayside in adopting a strategy to see long-term growth in Africa. It seems that despite Bob Geldof rescuing an entire continent from malnutrition, donating goats to rural families is no longer a viable option for these oil, diamond and uranium-rich nations. 

Yet there are fears that Chinese involvement could lead to exploitation in the region: already corrupt politicians are swayed easily by the promise of a new palace (or in the case of Equitorial Guinea's dictator, President Obiang, a new capital city) and are willing to give countries who invest, large stakes in their natural resources.  What Obama has started to demonstrate is that, despite the lack of promises of sparkling new buildings, FDI coming from Western nations need not necessarily mean a raw deal. 

In return for investment, the West have the capacity to offer real security (Niger has already allowed the US to establish a drone base in its capital, Niamey) and long-term, controlled growth with minimal exploitation. Countries who are still managing their own development and struggling with the socio-economic changes, it can be argued, will care less about the stability of the countries that they are investing in. 

Whatever the outcome, Obama's first stop on his tour is clearly more than just a geographically-useful one: West Africa is hurting under the pressure of Islamic militants and groups such as Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb and Nigeria's Boko Haram. Sensible and controlled long-term investment in business, government and security in this region could pay off in dividends. Literally. 

A Man's World

It is a curious state of affairs in the International Community, when the LGBT population of the US gets DOMA repealed, on the same day that Julia Gillard gets ousted from the Australian Labor party. It appears that the new global (or at least Western) political cause du jour is gay rights: celebrities and politicians everywhere have "come out" in favour of equal marriage, against DOMA (the Defense of Marriage Act) and DADT (Don't Ask, Don't Tell), and in favour of gay adoption. Australia has proved that, far from being ready to join the 21st Century, its politicians are still sat firmly in the 19th.

Julia Gillard, the ginger kangaroo-knitter from South Wales (the Old one, with sheep and rain and actual real Welsh people) ousted sly PM Kevin Rudd from office in 2010 in the 3rd favourite past-time of the Australian people (after Barbecues and Aussie rules) - the 'Spill.' Clearly a woman on a mission, the Australian media and political community set about trying to tear this unmarried, baron dominatrix apart. Particularly telling of the nature of regression in Australian society, however, was the way in which they undertook this task: rather than creating policies that were better for Australia and holding the Prime Minister to account, they broke her down in the only way their tiny chauvinistic minds would allow them.

So intrusive were the questions about her hairdresser partner's sexuality, the never-ending debate about this childless woman's ability to relate to normal Aussie families and cruel pranks played by the opposition - notably the Julia Gillard Kentucky Fried Quail added to the menu at a fundraiser being organised by an ex-minister, which described the dish as having "small breasts, huge thighs and a red box" - that Gillard was forced into a corner where she cringingly opened up about her private life by taking part in a photoshoot, clad awkwardly with balls of wool, her cavoodle Reuben and a part-knit kangaroo that she stated was being made as a present for Wills and Kate's new baby. This was the end of the line. If the politicians had hated Gillard being a woman already, they hated even more her last-ditch attempts to integrate into the culturally-transcendent stereotype of a dull, menopausal housewife.

Rudd decided to win back his place in the top seat as voters realised how much of a desperate PR stunt Gillard had just engaged in. Which is a shame, because despite the almost-constant struggle of Gillard to single-handedly defeat sexism in Australia (and why not the World?), there was something us Pommies loved about Gillard. We will miss her falling over, her battlefield-worthy corridor walks with her ever-diminishing allies and her definitely-only-mildly islamophobic remarks which are now used across the world by right-wingers as the ideological political stance on immigration. Being called a bitch is something that no woman should have to endure, let alone by the leader of the opposition.

Payday Poverty

The government has a lot to answer for: cutting benefits and increasing the cost of education. The bedroom tax - which is supposed to increase the fluidity of larger properties for council and housing association tenants - has ended up inflicting poverty upon people and created a vacuum of small,  1 and 2-bedroom homes for people whose families have fled the nest. 

What it also has a lot to answer for is the increase in payday lending. It is surely no coincidence that the poorest people in society have their homes and livelihoods taken away from them and turn to a sinister, confusing, morally-void system of lending money to people. Stella Creasy MP is right; Payday loans are crippling the impoverished. And Wonga.com is offering rates of 5853% to borrow up to £400 at a time. 

This creates a dependency which is cyclical; if one month, a struggling mother needs to borrow some money to pay for food for her family (which has had its benefits drastically decreased and is being forced to fork out up to 25% of the rent they used to have covered by the state), she will likely see the allure of the payday lenders who use questionable tactics to lure their vulnerable victims into borrowing money at several hundred times the rate of a normal, high-street bank. Then the next month, faced with a £130 charge for a £400 loan, this poor single mother will be forced again to keep borrowing at several thousand percentage points. Embarrassed and desperate, she will continue this vicious cycle. 

And this may seem like a harmless way of raising money for some big-wig with his Bentley and mansion on the outskirts of London. But this is the sub-prime mortgage crisis for the working class. Debt breeds poverty, poverty breeds crime and hopelessness and crime and hopelessness are the cause of the disintegration of our communities. 

Shockingly, Wonga.com also operates in South Africa, a country with huge poverty levels and huge attributable consequences: gun crime, drugs, prostitution, HIV/AIDS. All of these are a result of the people of South Africa being exploited in a plethora of ways over a prolonged period of time. 

These companies, whether in the UK, South Africa or elsewhere are not lending a helping hand; they are lending a ticket into prolonged desperation. These are regulated loan sharks and they need to be stopped.