Bankers vs Cleaners

The results of a recent study by the New Economics Foundation, a UK think tank, suggest that a cleaner is worth much more to society than a banker. A hospital cleaner can create £10 of value for every £1 they are paid, while bankers destroy £7 of value for every £1 they earn. Tax accountants do even greater damage.

Eilis Lawlor, spokeswoman for the New Economics Foundation, said: "Pay levels often don't reflect the true value that is being created. As a society, we need a pay structure which rewards those jobs that create most societal benefit rather than those that generate profits at the expense of society and the environment".

You can read the BBC article here, or read their whole report here.

Sitting on a Volcano

Twenty-five years ago, the worst non-nuclear industrial accident ever happened in the city of Bhopal:





Thousands of people died in the days that followed, and many more have suffered from the long term effects of exposure to methyl isocyanate and the abandoned chemical wastes which have polluted the water supply over the last twenty five years.

People in the US often think that this kind of tragedy cannot occur in the most industrialized nations. The Love Canal disaster was an eye-opener for many Americans, and contributed greatly to the reasons for the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency's Superfund scheme, which was designed to clean up other dangerous waste dumps across the country, as they were discovered. Read all about Superfund here

Want to know which sites are near you? Take a look at the EPA site here, but bear in mind, the sites on the National Priorities List are just those deemed large enough and dangerous enough to warrant clean up action by the EPA. There are many smaller yet extremely hazardous sites across the US, and many of those have probably been forgotten long ago....