No pain, no gain!

Everybody's antennae stand up on their heads when they spot an unusual name amongst the patients in the hospital. Next quesion is- Does she speak English?

The opening up of the UK to the EU has ensured that we are exposed to a variety of nationalities, peoples, cultures and languages. So in a country where we struggle with women requesting a caesarean for no reason, we may have to deal with a woman who had lost three of her family while having a caesarean in Africa and is terrified of even a suggestion that she may need a caesarean. The terror makes communication difficult but worse still, sometimes we may find no translators for an African dialect and have to spend an hour and a half worth of three point translation from English to a European language and into an African one.

Pretty young European women, who are pregnant, jump the queue for being alloted a house. This makes some people resentful, but it makes things worse when they realise that the woman in question, has not lived in Europe but has acquired a European passport by being in an African country, which was until a few years ago, a colony of a European country.

Translation has become huge business in the UK. Schools with classful of children who don't speak English make teachers work twice as hard. Public services feel the brunt of the influx, especially where large numbers have settled down.

Strikes by a number of industrial workers protesting against companies opting for "cheap immigrant labour" is something happening more frequently, as the recession gets under way and makes news.

British workers probably need to remind themselves of Darwin's rules of survival of the fittest and reinvent themselves and move out to Europe, just like Mumbaikars, who need to think, why hordes of non skilled workers from Bihar, continue to find work in "amchi Mumbai".

Businesses work on basis of supply and demand, profitabilty and cost effectiveness. Doing business is easier, as long as you can remain competitive.

But as capitalism limps ahead, propped up by socialistic measures like intravenous boluses of tax payer's money, struggling businesses abandon social responsibilty. Common people like us are asked to bike to work, not go on flight holidays, recycle our rubbish and do our bit, while huge machines turn old cars into scrap, to kickstart the automobile industry.

What about all the wars which have taken such a huge toll on human life? America is top exporter of defence goods and this tiny island country is next- 21% market share.

The think tank has advised the Government that investing in Defence firms is likely to get us out of recession than investing in Banks! Well, that is not rocket science! But I wonder how you create a marketing campaign to create demand for defence services.

They envisage that since the wars on terror have been more successful in recruiting terrorists at home and abroad, the world is going to need kits to protect themselves from terrorists and also pirates- thankfully for the defence firms, they have made a comeback too!

It is not just doctors who benefit from other people's suffering.

So much for the symbiosis or interdependence of the two worlds- civilized, democratic and green and not so civilized, democratic and green.