Since Zimbabwe got its “power-sharing” government, the spotlight has moved away from the humanitarian disaster unfolding there, but it is clear that such political change as there has been has not put food in the mouths of those who need it, particularly the tens of thousands languishing in the country’s prisons.
The Red Cross says it is now feeding more than 6,000 prisoners, some of them severely malnourished. At one gaol, more than half of the 1,300 inmates are reported to have died last year, and a leading member of the MDC, now allegedly sharing power with Robert Mugabe, has provided an inside report.
Roy Bennett was locked up himself earlier this year, and he said some prisoners looked in a worse state than the inmates of Nazi concentration camps. Meanwhile, Zimbabwe’s Justice Minister has complained that he is not getting enough money to provide inmates with even basic rations. The Red Cross is also working on basic sanitary provision in the gaols as fears grow that disease will sweep through them.
Showing posts with label Mugabe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mugabe. Show all posts
Monday, 8 June 2009
Monday, 23 February 2009
It's only money (7)
Now I know this is highly irregular, but I’ve got a leak from the next meeting of the Bank of England’s Monetary Policy Committee. They’ve found the solution to the lack of people wanting to lend – they’re going to cut interest rates again to minus 2.5%!
The reasoning works like this. Back in October, if you lent someone £1,000, at the end of a year, you would get back £1,045 – a profit of £45. No one wanted to lend. So what could the Bank do to ensure a steady supply of lenders? Slash that profit margin! So today let’s imagine you’re brave enough to lend someone £1,000, in the middle of a recession. There’s always a chance, of course, that you won’t get some or all of your money paid back at all, but if you are lucky enough to get the whole debt repaid, you ‘ll get the princely return of £10.
Bizarrely, this change has not resulted in dozens of people queuing up to lend money. So now Labour has persuaded the Bank that the way to attract lenders is to charge them for the privilege. From next month, if you’re fortunate enough to get your money back at all, you’ll receive only £975 for every £1,000 you lent. How could any lender resist this prospect? (I understand the government is also planning to ensure a steady supply of orange juice in the shops by decreeing that its price has to be cut by 80%)
Should this courageous initiative fail, the Bank has another trick up its sleeve - “quantitative easing” – printing money to you and me. It is a policy that has been used with great success by the Weimar Republic and Robert Mugabe among others. There is a ready solution available to the crisis we are in (see my blog of January 29) but that would involve helping the poor, so Labour dogma means it cannot possibly be implemented.
The reasoning works like this. Back in October, if you lent someone £1,000, at the end of a year, you would get back £1,045 – a profit of £45. No one wanted to lend. So what could the Bank do to ensure a steady supply of lenders? Slash that profit margin! So today let’s imagine you’re brave enough to lend someone £1,000, in the middle of a recession. There’s always a chance, of course, that you won’t get some or all of your money paid back at all, but if you are lucky enough to get the whole debt repaid, you ‘ll get the princely return of £10.
Bizarrely, this change has not resulted in dozens of people queuing up to lend money. So now Labour has persuaded the Bank that the way to attract lenders is to charge them for the privilege. From next month, if you’re fortunate enough to get your money back at all, you’ll receive only £975 for every £1,000 you lent. How could any lender resist this prospect? (I understand the government is also planning to ensure a steady supply of orange juice in the shops by decreeing that its price has to be cut by 80%)
Should this courageous initiative fail, the Bank has another trick up its sleeve - “quantitative easing” – printing money to you and me. It is a policy that has been used with great success by the Weimar Republic and Robert Mugabe among others. There is a ready solution available to the crisis we are in (see my blog of January 29) but that would involve helping the poor, so Labour dogma means it cannot possibly be implemented.
Saturday, 31 January 2009
Cholera in Zimbabwe
As Morgan Tsvangirai announces that he will join a government of “national unity” with Robert Mugabe, the World Health Organisation reveals that 3,000 people have died of cholera in Zimbabwe since the epidemic started in August last year. More than 60,000 have caught the disease.
Cholera may have been present in India as early as the 4th century BC, but the first pandemic struck the world in 1817. It appeared for the first time in Britain in 1831, claiming its first victims in Sunderland, and killing about 60,000 people across the whole country. Doctors were completely baffled by its cause – a fungus, infected air, electricity? The Lancet lamented; “we are at sea in a whirlpool of conjecture.”
During the third pandemic in the 1850’s – generally regarded as the most deadly – Queen Victoria’s anaesthetist Dr John Snow, who practised as a family doctor in London’s Soho, famously discovered the link between cholera and contaminated water, but it was decades before the medical profession as a whole accepted his conclusion.
Nowadays cholera can be treated very effectively with antibiotics and mixtures that replace the fluids and salts lost by the body, but that doesn’t help in a country like Zimbabwe, where Mr Mugabe’s regime has brought the collapse of sewage systems and water supply, and the closure of hospitals.
Cholera may have been present in India as early as the 4th century BC, but the first pandemic struck the world in 1817. It appeared for the first time in Britain in 1831, claiming its first victims in Sunderland, and killing about 60,000 people across the whole country. Doctors were completely baffled by its cause – a fungus, infected air, electricity? The Lancet lamented; “we are at sea in a whirlpool of conjecture.”
During the third pandemic in the 1850’s – generally regarded as the most deadly – Queen Victoria’s anaesthetist Dr John Snow, who practised as a family doctor in London’s Soho, famously discovered the link between cholera and contaminated water, but it was decades before the medical profession as a whole accepted his conclusion.
Nowadays cholera can be treated very effectively with antibiotics and mixtures that replace the fluids and salts lost by the body, but that doesn’t help in a country like Zimbabwe, where Mr Mugabe’s regime has brought the collapse of sewage systems and water supply, and the closure of hospitals.
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