ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

There is a false presumption that vaccination is some sort of a safeguard against the spread of disease. This is only true if the vaccine wipes out the disease worldwide. If not, the disease is often 'masked', waiting for the inevitable epidemic.

How surprising, the company that may be responsible for the present outbreak will now make even more money out of supplying the vaccine.
Perhaps I may be too cynical.
But in business nothing is beyond belief when profit rules.

I dislike Bush and his actions. However, why the shock that the Americans should employ Peruvian men to fight for them.
The British government have done this for many years, the difference is they are called Gurkha's, many have suffered and died for us and yet we do not reward them as we reward our own troops.
We certainly cannot condemn the Americans when our own record is poor.

That was one of the poorest questioning technique from a bbc presenter i have ever had the misfortune to watch. If the man were prescient then he could have answered the question when it was asked the first time!!!

The spokesperson from Plane Stupid made some very bold statements on your show tonight that went totally unchallenged. I keep hearing that man is causing global warming and climate change but i cannot find any evidence. Why do the majority of people blindly accept a statement such as "a third runway at Heathrow will kill millions of africans" without being presented with evidence? Climate change caused by the actions of the human race is a theory. That is all it is. We fail to predict what the weather will be like next week, and it is arrogant to assume we can predict the weather in 50 years time. Its too complex for our current understanding.

Anyway, I am an environmentalist. I care about this planet and I recycle but all I ask for is facts not politically motivated trumped up theories.

However, I think that its right that groups are allowed to demonstrate. It is every humans right to have freedom of speech.

Peruvian Mercenaries
Here we go again...I'm really getting tired of this! Will the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ never learn? I am a UK TV tax payer. I do not want to pay for covering stories which are of no concern to Britain. Do you know what a commercial transaction is? If you offer a sum of money & someone accepts the money in return for performing a task, then you have a basis of a contract.
I really don't know what the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ wants to achieve with this story. What is the relevance to the U.K.? And I hope the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ is going to offset the air miles travelled by the reporter to Peru for this non-story. Please don't use my TV tax for idiotic pieces such as this.

Regarding foot and mouth.

It has taken me all day to find out that vaccinations are not being used, mainly, to preserve our "FMD free" status meat. This status keeps meat prices highe,r and commercially, leads to bigger profits for in the corporate agribusiness sector.

Vaccinations may not be the complete and total answer, but would certainly stop the disease, spreading at the present time without, killing more animals.

However it is a Catch 22 situation for the farmers, and NFU, as without FMD status, some UK farms may not be commercially viable anyway.

So the whole issue of biosecurity, although important, is something of a diversion, from the main issue of commercial viability within the EU and global meat markets.

So there's the rub as far as I can see right now. New cases still coming to light as we sit here blogging.

It may also be the case that foot and mouth is a mild illness that can be cured with anti-biotics, and, poses no threat to human health.

How many more twists to this story? It would be a storm in a teacup if not for the commercial implications, the mass killing of animals, and obvious threat to the farming community. Again it seems to me vaccinations are the easiest humanitarian, not, commercial solution. Is it our choice to make? I feel like becoming a vegetarian again.

I was horrified by the tone of the interviewing tonight. I thought
Emily Maitlis' mocking tone was unpleasant and unedifying for both her and the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ. Jeremy Paxman may be able to get away with this sort of approach but she can't.

Was she hinting that the company that makes the FMD vaccine was responsible for deliberately releasing the virus in order to make money from selling it ? Maybe not quite, but it was an implication. Hilary Benn quite correctly replied that they would acquire the vaccine, if used, from the most appropriate source, presumably one that has sufficient supplies.

Her treatment of the BAA spokesman was even worse but he held his own, as did Hilary Benn. Ms Maitlis would have been better mocking the Plain Stupid representative about his outrageous claims but she failed to address his totally unsupported claims.

This is not the quality of reporting or interviewing that I expect from the ΒιΆΉΤΌΕΔ

quote - Joss from Plane Stupid - 'plans (for a third runway) that we KNOW (my emphasis) will cause thousands of deaths in Africa due to climate change'

a sensational and fashionable enough declaration but is this really rational debate or just emotional blackmail? what about a balanced consideration of the costs AND benefits of that runway to Africans? and anyway why pull the patronising 'poor ethnics' card, climate change affects Europeans too, or are we too sinful to be worth saving from armageddon?

isn't the truth that the environmental lobby are actually the offspring of well educated middle class professionals taking the first steps towards a cushy office career in some policy institution or other...

I'd certainly appreciate a higher level of debate on NN instead of this constant stream of lobby groups and NGOs...

what about a serious NN programme unpicking the roots, organisation, ideology and ethics of environmentlism as a lobbying force in society?

BAA:

The young man from Plane Stupid did himself & his cause no favours.

Legitimate concerns about aviation pollution & the effect on the environment are one thing.

But making up facts to suit his agenda was PLAIN STUPID i.e. "millions of people in Africa will die because of a 3rd runway at Heathrow"

However, the pseudo passion intertwined with legitimate concerns about pollution & climate change, did quite usefully highlight the political bandwagon that environmentalism has attracted (quite useful mechanism to attack your favourite bogeyman & get people to listen, whereas normally they typically ignore such political propaganda. esp at the ballot box). An example of a typical protest/cause career opportunists is Peter 'what to believe today' Tatchell' [1]

For the beeb, it would be interesting to explore self declared 'environmentalists' other views in respect to the economy, politics, society & the environment, so we the audience can obtain a flavour of context.

For example, what about the nuclear answer to our environmental ills & energy crisis, a polarised debate in the environmental movement e.g. James Lovelock [2a] or Patrick Moore [2b]

Just as Muslim radicals & extremists do not speak for the entire Islamic Faith, similarly those of the left who are busy trying to highjack & infiltrate the environmental movement even further, do not speak for everyone who has concerns about the environment.

The answer will come around by the majority changing their behaviours, not a minority clique looking to eschew the range of possible answers to real questions, in order to suit their political agendas. That simply won't work in the long run, because the majority will reject such fixed process & ineffectual 'non solutions'.

CAMPSFIELD

- 11 years of New Labour cock ups on crime & national security . Not only can't they control our borders, when they do get people can't hold onto them - pathetic.

PERU

- and? … they sign up & take their chances. My advice get a good contract, T&C's & some good insurance.

FOOT & MOUTH:

- New Labour does it again …. "The laboratory at the centre of the investigation into the foot-and-mouth outbreak recently suffered damaging funding cuts which were condemned by an influential group of MPs" [3a]

- New Labour legacy still there from the last time …. "Government efforts to boost the rural economy following the foot and mouth crisis have failed, a report concludes" [3b]

… we’ve had the BROWN BOUNCE … methinks we will get more of the BROWN BOOMERANG

vikingar

[1]
[2a]
[2b]
[3a]
[3b]

I sometimes have to ask my self, am i living in a parallel universe, did i wake up one morning after traveling through time and space and find myself in an upside down topsey turvey unreality, i get these doubts and fears from time to time, and i got that strange kinda feeling again when i watched mondays newsnight; the item on jailbreak immigrants was interesting enough but what really freaked me out was there is actually a support group called 'asylum welcome'..there is clearly a few people with WAY too much free time on their hands. A good cause like 'victims of crime' support group, i can go along with that one but really...'asylum welcome'.. i'll soon need my own support group at this rate, am i starting to doubt my own existance? am i really alone with with these thoughts or am i just another Daily Mail reader? i want the little grey people to take me back home in their ship, this experiment is starting to get really scary..

Emily Maitlis is a good interviewer and an even better writer. Get off her back, you miseries.

cookie ducker - you're not alone. what I find scariest though is that whereas in my youth I was out on the streets getting a lungful with anarcho-marxists, now I'm gasping for air in cyberspace with DM readers - Yikes!

vikingar - great post as always - there are a plethora of public speakers now who ran the protest/career gamut, gambit or gauntlet from the late 1970s / early 1980s - helped in no small way by the policy of positive discrimination, it's been a huge drain on the intellectual capital of the country methinks

...aaah, will the complacent annihilism of postmodernism never end!!!

what's your point about f n' m? if we don't fund agricultural research then scientists can't be held responsible for poisoning our food supply? the only way forward is lower animal product consumption and 100% organic farming,

... but the whole 'miles' issue is a neostalinist agenda to restrict social mobility (IMO)

which brings us back to the comical harrassment of the aviation industry by a few Zac Goldsmith clones - it started with MacDonalds, then Tesco, RyanAir, now BAA - they might as well demonstrate for mass culture to be banned! ...but

surely it's Plane Stupid or else where's the pun?

You had to laugh at Newsnight's desperate attempts to create a scandal on the Peruvian security guards - lets face it, anything to "bring those yanks down"! Of course the biggest clue was at the beginning of the report - namely what some of those returning guys had down with the money they'd earned - increased opportunity in an impoverished country. And much as the report tried, it was near on impossible to get any of the men to say they regretted going even with injuries and grievances. One in the eye for for good old lefty reporting...?

An excellent Newsnight last night. It was very fine to see Paul Mason fighting the good fight against the privatised one. And I don't blame the young for wanting to disrupt our indulgences so long as they're not violent - they're the ones who will reap any future whirlwind regardless of what causes it.

One small point: does Emily Maitlis really need to keep saying 'thank you for coming in'? What, as opposed to coming out? Wouldn't 'thank you' suffice? It's rather vexing.

After hearing these people on PM and now these brainwashed Live8isms that Heathrow is going to kill thousands of Africans then it sounds less summer camp more like brat camp? Or even climate cult camp?

If Iraq is every day safer then why should the translators come here? That action would contradict the Government statements that we are on track?

If the F&M is due to the floods washing over land then it would make sense to close the footpaths?

Thought it was a fantastic story, the production was remarkable, the characters were very likable and the pace kept you watching. Some people in this column clearly don't get it: as Simon Cooke, who is saying "stop wasting my TV license money in stories which are not of concern to Britain", well actually Iraq IS a British war and, if he cared to listen to the reporter, he would have noticed that many of these security guards had been guarding the British Embassy and bases in Basra (were the bulk of the British troops are). So actually they are dying and getting injured to defend the military deployment that is being funded with HIS taxpayer money, while he complains about the TV license and waits for even more stories about the British weather!

Last night's feature about Peru's workers in Iraq made interesting viewing. Again, it is another outrageous aspect of the Bush/Blair war that has largely gone unreported so far (there must be so much more to dig up!). It is a reminder that other countries have been pulled into this reckless, pointless and unlawful war, too. And, of course, it is only natural that poor people will accept those contracts if they are dangled in front of them. Through the war in Iraq, we (and I say β€˜we’ because Britain is as much a part of this as America) are exploiting the Third World with little respect for life. South America rarely gets on the news in the UK, so it is interesting to hear stories and see pictures about their way of life.

BAA

i completely support the climate campaigners but after initially seeing that they had simply said "expanding heathrow will kill africans"
without any evidence, i thought it a bit ignorant and an unwise tactic to make, so i thought i'd do a little bit of investigating,
this is what i found:

Mohamed Adow, 28, from Kenya, works for the NGO Northern Aid, a Muslim group working with subsistence farmers and pastoralists in north-east Kenya's Mandera district.

"In 2005-2006, the drought killed 70% of livestock in northern Kenya, and now 80% of the 3 million people living in the region are dependent on food aid. It's not a future problem, it is already ruining the lives of the poor people I work with."

and although it doesn't prove that building the runway will directly affect people living in the developing world, it does give us further insight as to what a big problem climate change is and the terrible effects it is having for everyone.

Just a reply to some of the comments above from me, the reporter.
Simon Cooke #7: As I made clear in the piece, some of the Peruvians were employed on British bases in Iraq.
Mike Johnson #18: "And much as the report tried, it was near on impossible to get any of the men to say they regretted going even with injuries and grievances". The report did not try to do this, indeed it said at the very beginning and again at the very end, in graphic terms, that they had gained from going, and in most cases did not regret it. If you think the focus on the money they made, and the good it's done them, was in some way a "clue" inadvertantly left in by me the reporter right at the top of a piece that lasted 15 minutes and took a week to shoot and a week to edit, think again. I and the producer chose to put it at the top of the narrative because it was an in-your-face defiance of expectations.
The wider point was made by the UN High Commission on Human Rights represnetative - that their right to work in this way poses a new challenge to international law. The UK government has been considering since 2002 legislation to regulate the activities of private military companies, and 31 countries have signed a UN convention outlawing the recruitment of men for jobs like this.
Their grievance, a legitimate one, was that the whole system of insurance and compensation designed to look after them was not working. The company went some way to acknowledging this in the piece and has taken steps to address it.
This was a complex story that shows the ramifications of a very new trend in warfare, ie the growth of private military contractors, and I would say it is in the public interest that we told this story.