Links - 5th September 2019 (2)

The demolition of Rodrik’s trilemma - "In his book The Globalization Paradox, published in 2011, the Harvard Professor Dani Rodrik formulated his famous trilemma: it is impossible to attain economic hyperglobalisation, national sovereignty and democracy simultaneously, because only two of these things can be achieved at any one time. The sides of the triangle must be chosen (and it is a choice that comes with consequences: global governance, a golden straightjacket or the Bretton Woods compromise, also known as the liberal order). But at a time of emergence from a lengthy crisis and a change of the world order, the three vertices –and therefore the sides– are all fracturing at once, or at least being subjected to tensions they may or may not be able to withstand, certainly in Europe but also further afield: globalisation, which was already stalling and more so now with the trade war unleashed by Trump; national sovereignty, with the territorial tensions in a range of states and the new nationalisms; and democracy, with reverses to the rule of law in various places, the crisis of systems and the rise of populist movements. A choice can no longer be made between the three sides."

Making tourists pay to use NHS is racist, say doctors | News | The Times - "Doctors have voted overwhelmingly to stop charging foreign patients for NHS care, claiming that doing so is “fundamentally racist”.Up to 500 delegates at the British Medical Association’s annual conference in Belfast backed a motion that said that asking overseas visitors to pay made medical staff “complicit” in racism.“We are doctors not border guards,” Omar Risk said during the debate. “Charging migrants for accessing NHS services is a fundamentally racist endeavour — we are complicit in the oppressive regime.”Doctors who opposed the motion were booed as they spoke against it
Tax money is unlimited!

Doctors' union votes to stop charging overseas patients for their treatment at NHS hospitals - "What is ‘health tourism’?
This is when patients who are not entitled to free NHS care are treated without paying their bills. It covers short-term migrants, holidaymakers and foreigners who deliberately target the NHS. The exact cost is put between £200million and £2billion a year.
What are the rules?
Only patients who are ‘ordinarily resident’ in the UK are entitled to free care, which usually means being here for at least six months. This excludes care in A&E units and GP surgeries which are free for everyone. In all other situations, staff are legally obliged to check eligibility. Anyone who isn’t eligible for free care should be invoiced...
Many hospitals will ask to see passports or utility bills to confirm patients have been living here for at least six months.Patients who admit they are not ordinarily resident or refuse to provide documentation should be taken into a side room and interviewed by an overseas visitor officer.They will be asked further questions to ascertain if they are from the EU and if so, the Government will bill their member state. Otherwise patients will be given an invoice for the course of treatment and if they do not pay up, staff should refuse to provide care.But the cooperation of doctors is required because they are usually the most senior members of the ward or department.The NHS is facing an unprecedented financial crisis due to the ageing population, the toll of lifestyle-related conditions such as obesity and diabetes and the cost of expensive new drugs."

Donkey that retired after giving children rides for 20 years is stabbed in London - "A donkey which gave rides to thousands of children has been stabbed after going into retirement in southeast London.Bimbo, 28, was found with a deep wound in his side by a local resident in Eltham, where he was being kept after retiring in 2012."

How Labour has turned London into a foreign city - "On offer is free NHS treatment, free housing, free schooling and countless welfare benefits. It is a place of opportunity, security and, above all, available women.This was a definite pull for one young Afghan working in a butcher’s in Neasden, North West London.As he put it, in his village, if you slept with more than one person in your life, ‘they shot you in the back’. In Britain, however, sexual opportunities were immense. The agents explain how to take full advantage of the UK.‘London is a country of rights,’ they say. How very true! If you tell the correct story, they are informed, ‘you will never be sent home’.And yet, when migrants manage to reach the UK, they all have to pay back the people-traffickers who got them here.Indeed, it is this debt, sometimes with interest rates of 100 per cent, that lies behind the often appalling working conditions they are forced to accept... There is a whole illegal city in London of several hundred thousand people, and nearly half of them are thought to have arrived after 2001.This is a city hidden from official statistics, but not hidden from employers who take on the workers, no questions asked, through agencies.Legal workers also have problems because the sheer number of new arrivals push down wages.A Polish builder explains that, on his work site, the English builders tell him angrily they used to be paid £15 an hour. Now it is £7 an hour. ‘They hate me,’ he says simply.But then he gripes about the newly-arrived Romanians who, he says, are pushing wages even lower...Judah joined 80 or so Romanians, ‘blank eyes wide with hunger’, touting for work.‘They pace up and down in their work boots for the next 11 hours, muttering tensely, ‘waiting for a white van’.This is a reference to the fact, they tell Judah, that the proverbial White Van Englishman is the best type of employer. Whereas Pakistanis, Turks and Poles are the worst... Judah encountered a Grenadian, now a successful cocaine dealer, who recalled moving to the White City estate in West London with his mother when he was 12.‘We pitched up for a better life, but found ourselves right in the middle of a war zone,’ he recalled.He said the estate ‘was way more corrupt . . . way more dangerous, more full of disillusion than anywhere in Grenada. Within six months of being here, I had lost 75 per cent of my morals.’... The sex industry is another area where our flawed immigration policy has had a malign effect. Now, 96 per cent of prostitutes are migrants. In the main, Albanians have taken over... The mother of one of my son’s friends lived opposite. She was intimidated by the sinister men in leather jackets who sat in the nearby coffee shop all day.She reported to the police that the girls on the top floor looked underage and never went out. In due course, her car was smashed up.She suspected this was done as a warning to keep her nose out of it. The police did nothing and she never raised the matter again. Finally, migration has even changed the nationality of London’s vagrants.There are now around 5,000 — mostly Polish and Romanians — living rough on London’s streets... In this new London, increasingly there is one nationality significant for its absence — white, British-born. Nearly all the migrants comment on this phenomenon... Between 1971 and 2011, the white British share of London’s population slumped from 86 per cent to 45 per cent, overwhelmingly the old Cockney working-class. Cockney, in fact, is predicted to die out in 15 years. I once visited a school in the East End displaying photos of a class from the Thirties and today. In the first photo, the children were all white. In the second, none of them were.In some countries, this might be called racial cleansing. In London, it is simply the result of the failed policy of multiculturalism."

Canada becomes the first G20 country to ban shark fin trade - "Canada has become the first G20 nation to ban the import and export of shark fins, in an effort help preserve a predator under threat.The country is the largest importer of shark fins outside Asia, though shark finning in the domestic fishery has been illegal since 1994... An estimated one-third of fins sold come from species that are at risk... Canada's bill bans the import and export, to and from Canada, of shark fins that are not attached to the shark."... "The shark fin ban is just a gimmick to gain political capital," says Ben Leung, who is active in the Chinese immigrant community in Canada.He criticises the ban, arguing it targets Asian culinary culture, while providing little actual help to protecting sharks."
Thanks to the BBC, we know that two thirds of shark's fin comes from species not at risk - proof that activists are spreading misinformation
Tellingly this doesn't target other shark products

Arby's created a carrot made out of meat and it tastes the same - " the sandwich chain is flipping the vegan "meat" trend on its head, leaning into its "We have the meats" slogan and creating its most bizarre concoction yet: the "megetable," a vegetable made out of meat. And Arby's new megetable, the "Marrot," is exactly what it sounds like: a meat-based carrot that not only tastes like the orange vegetable but has much of its nutritional value... "Arby's is not one of the restaurant companies interested in working with Impossible Foods," Arby's said in a statement this May. "The chances we will bring plant-based menu items to our restaurants, now or in the future, are absolutely impossible.""

The Dalai Lama on Trump, women and going home - "the world's most famous refugee has some surprising views on immigration.In a speech last year he said that refugees to the European Union should ultimately return home, adding that "Europe is for Europeans", a statement he stood by when I challenged him on it."European countries should take these refugees and give them education and training, and the aim is return to their own land with certain skills," he said.The Dalai Lama believes the end game should be to rebuild the countries people have fled. But with some 70 million people displaced across the world according to the latest figures, what if people want to stay?"A limited number is OK, but the whole of Europe [will] eventually become Muslim country, African country - impossible"... I also challenged him on another remark he made in 2015, when he said if he was followed by a female Dalai Lama she would have to be attractive.In another surprise, he reaffirmed his belief that beauty matters as much as brains. "If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive," he told me while laughing.His message seemed at odds for a man who preaches a message of tolerance and inner confidence, but the Dalai Lama told me that in Buddhist literature both inner and outer beauty matter. He also said that equality was important and was keen to stress that he supported women's rights and equal pay in the workplace.As the interview drew to a close, I was struck by how unexpectedly frank our discussion had been, which reminded me of something the Dalai Lama had told me earlier in the day.One advantage of not being able to return home to Tibet, he said, was that India is a free country where he can express himself openly. The Dalai Lama's message of unity is universal - but for a man famed for his compassion, he can also be controversial"
Apparently compassion means you should lie

Dalai Lama warns the whole of Europe could become 'Muslim or African' if migrants are not returned - "'They themselves, I think [are] better in their own land. Better [to] keep Europe for Europeans.'It is not the first time the monk has made such comments. In a speech last year in Malmo, Sweden, the Tibetan Buddhist said refugees should return to help rebuilt their own countries.He said: 'Receive them [migrants], help them, educate them, but ultimately they should develop their own country. I think Europe belongs to the Europeans.'Last September when he made a similar comments after being asked about refugees during his public talk in Rotterdam, the Dalai Lama issued a statement in response.He said: 'When refugees from other countries have come to Europe, it's wonderful that Germany and other European countries have given them help. 'However, I think that most of those refugees think of their own lands as home, but just now there is lots of killing, bullying and suffering there.'That's why they escaped. So, in the short term, European countries should provide them with shelter, and should particularly provide children with facilities for education and training, including mechanical training, for the young people.'The aim is that they should eventually be able to return to rebuild their own countries. That has been my view right from the beginning. 'For example, we Tibetans took shelter in India, but most Tibetans want to return to Tibet when the situation there has changed. Each country has its own culture, language, way of life, and it is better for people to live in their own country. That is my view.'... In 2015 he said that if he was succeeded by a female Dalai Lama she would have to be attractive, despite declaring himself to be a feminist.Speaking to the BBC he again said while laughing: 'If a female Dalai Lama comes, she should be more attractive.'On international Women's Day this year in March he called for more women to be given leadership roles instead of men who are 'celebrated for killing their opponents'.He posted: 'Women have been shown to be more sensitive to others' suffering, whereas, warriors celebrated for killing their opponents are almost always men"

Rationally Speaking | Official Podcast of New York City Skeptics - Current Episodes - RS 230 - Kelsey Piper on “Big picture journalism: covering the topics that matter in the long run” - "'another perspective, which is one I hear articulated a lot at Vox in particular, is billionaires are mostly doing some shady stuff. Especially when startups are getting off the ground, a lot of them are breaking laws and cutting corners and ignoring data privacy. And none of them are really in this commendable category where they made their billion dollars. Maybe JK Rowling. But I think there are some people that think she's pretty much the only billionaire who just became a billionaire by making something people wanted.'...
'if cockroaches are trying to imagine how humans will kill them, they might imagine cockroaches with lasers attached to the front or something. They probably won't imagine spray, because they just don't have any of the concepts to come up with spray'"