Japan Today

Pitz comments

Posted in: Three million UK children living below poverty line: study See in context

The social trends that have created this are the breakup of the traditional family and the large number of inactive people claiming an inability to work due to mental health issues. Overakk tax take has risen inexcerably over the past 20 years to pay for the NHS and Welfare costs, with pressures amplified by a rapidly growing population. The top tax of rate on incomes over £125,000 ($160,000) is 47%, is in line with the rest of europe, but tax rates on lower earners ar emuch lower than in the rets of Europe, with 53% of the population net recipients of state aid. The minimum wage of £11.44 an hour (Y,2,222) has consistently been raised over the past 14 years. If the Conservative Government can be critizised for adopting socialist policies that have created a benefit dependent society, more socialism is not the solution. There needs to be a hard push to get people back to work and manage immigration better to reduce the pressure on public services.

-1 ( +3 / -4 )

Posted in: UK opposition Labour Party unveils its pledges to voters in hopes of winning the next election See in context

What a load of rubbish. Sterling did not depreciate by 25% after BREXIT, if fact FBP is stronger relative to the Euro that it was 5 years ago. Apart from the CoviD year Bristish GDP growth has exceed the EUR average in every year of the past 15 years. In Q1 2024 it had the strongest growth in the G7. Education levels are at their highest ever in the Pisa tables. France and Germany are facing strikes in their Health services and Germany is currently the economic basket case in Europe. The UK does have servere infrastructure problems. High levels of net immigration has resulted inn enormous pressure on housing, transportation and, hospitals and hige capital spending will be required to improve wellbeing, but no political party has an answer to that. The Labour party's envy tax on private education sets it apart from the rest of Europe where taxes of education are forbidden by EU Law and most countries actually subsidize private schools. General public dissatisfaction after the years of CoViD, global economic slowdown and concerns (justified or not) are causing a shift away from the Governing parties across the Western Worlds (witness Trump in the US, the far Right in Italy, France and Germany and the Socialists in the UK. Labour will win convincingly but cannot deliver any meaningful change and will be gone after 5 years when they can't deliver on the Nirvana everyone on the left is expecting.

-2 ( +1 / -3 )

Posted in: China says U.S. military aid to Taiwan will not deter its will to unify the island See in context

Taiwan was a Chinese colony for about 200 years (formally the Kingdom of the Ryukus) before reverting to Japan until the end of WW2. Other countries have given their former colonies independence when their citizens have demanded it. Why can't China do the same - or perhaps the US and India should be reclaimed by the UK.

5 ( +7 / -2 )

Posted in: France begins nationwide strikes amid soaring inflation See in context

Actually Germany is even more of a basket case. The IMF expects them to have the wekaest economy in the G7 next year and they face a severe recession this winter.

-1 ( +5 / -6 )

Posted in: Climate activists throw soup over Van Gogh's 'Sunflowers' in London See in context

I don't understand whyt they are anti-oil - do they think acrylics are superior to oil paints?

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Posted in: Liz Truss vows tax cuts after winning vote to be next British PM See in context

Truss has an politics, philosophy and economics degree from Oxford and her husband is also an economist. While I would have preferred Sunak, she is highly intelligent and well educated. Sunak's downfall was that he was seen coming from a privalaged background with a public school education and billionaire wife. despite the fact that his parents were self-made immigrants, The reality is that like the rest of Europe the UK is facing a recession caused by Putin's invation of Ukraine. The health service is certianly facing extreme pressure due to the crisis in social service provsion that is resulting in beds being blocked in hospitals (the problem with the ambulance service is ambulances queueing at hospitals for hours at peak times to offload patients, and the pressure on public services due to populatio growth (UK has the highest rate of population of any major European country - 65% more than Germany 2.5x France. Unemployment is well belwo European levels, but inflation is slightly higher (Spain is far higher). As an econo,ist working for a Chinese bank in London we are far more concerned at what is happening to the German economy ove the next 12 months than the UK.

-1 ( +0 / -1 )

Posted in: Liz Truss vows tax cuts after winning vote to be next British PM See in context

To put some perspective on the differnece between the US and UK in terms of diversity, persons of black descent account for 13.6% of the US population vs 3.0% in the UK. Conversely the Asian descent population of the US is 6% vs 6.9% in the UK. White population of UK is 87% vs 75.8% in the US, so it is not suprising that the US was the first to have a black president/MP. Sunak came close to being the first Asian PM, with 43% of conservative party members voting for him, so its only a matter of time before the UK has its firstnon-white leader.

Sources: https://populationdata.org.uk/uk-population/

https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fact/table/US/PST045221

1 ( +1 / -0 )

Posted in: Britain to see 80% spike in energy bills as crisis worsens See in context

If JT publihsed aricles written in languages other than English the same articel could be published in any European country. Italy is seeing the highest rises in prices of any country, and Germany is even less able to provide subsididies. One of my contacts writes "I live and work part of my time in Austria, my last bill for Gas and electricity in a modern well insulated 2 bed apartment rose by €4,000 last month. Moreover, Europe is now switching off the lights, preparing not just for cost rises, but for no gas and or electricity at all."

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Posted in: Self-driving buses being tested across Japan let you pay with your face See in context

"Self-driving buses being tested across Japan let you pay with your face"

I thought we already paid through the nose.

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Posted in: On Japan's stretched frontline, doctors and nurses face long fight against coronavirus See in context

@Zichi The Guardian is a notorious left wing source of headline grabbing disinformation. This is the NHS response as reported in the Nursing Times, which I hope you would agree is a more reliable source.

https://www.nursingtimes.net/news/coronavirus/nhs-refutes-claims-nurse-shortages-behind-nightingale-hospital-underuse-22-04-2020/

To put Japan's experience in context with W Europe. Belgium 622 deaths per 1m pop, Spain 503, Italy 446, France 350, UK 311, Japan 3. Even allowing for significant differences in recording morbidity, image the pressure Japan's hospitals would be under if the country were anywhere near these numbers

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Posted in: On Japan's stretched frontline, doctors and nurses face long fight against coronavirus See in context

The UK Nightingale hospitals... Sadly, they are hardly used, due to policy and staff shortages, even though they have non-working airline staff and other volunteers in there as care support workers.

They were hardly used because due to early lockdown UK hospitals never reached capacity (except for one hospital in NW London) and ICU bed capacity is now over 50%. There was never an issue with staffing.

It is true that like everywhere else, UK hositals came close to running out of PPE, but never did and were alwayys able to meet WHO guidelines for hosital staff at all times. Its a very different case in private nurseing homes which have had to buy their own equipment due to shortages. There is evidenc eof some hospitals contributing to shortages by hording equipment and the NHS Logistics Management has been critizised by the Army. No one in the UK, including opposition parties, Unions and Healthcare workers have claimed the Government doesn't care - just that it has been too slow.

Japan is different - many small proviate hositals that are not greated up for pandemic type situations, few ICU beds and quite basic facilities in some. But the level of infection and number of deaths remains very low comared to other developed countries.

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Posted in: ANA’s kabuki-themed in-flight safety video receives Grand Prix from Cool Japan Matching Award See in context

Does it take all day to watch it ?

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