Friday, March 30, 2012
Sunday, March 25, 2012
Same old Tories, same old sleeze
The Tory treasurer has been caught offering access to Cameron and Osbourne for a 250k donation to the party. Sounds familiar - it was 50k before the election. Why is anyone surprised?
And the Tory response - nothing actually happened, so that's al right then. How do we know this has not happened before? We need full disclosure from the Tories.
Talking of corrupt party funding, when are the Lib Dems going to pay back the 2.5m they received from a doner who has subsequently been found guilty of fraud?
Tony Blair looks whiter than white compared to these lot.
Friday, March 23, 2012
Polly Toynbee on the budget
A budget for Tory blowhards and Redwood dreamers | Polly Toynbee http://gu.com/p/36ckt
Could this be Osbornes's 10p tax moment? They certainly seem to have miscalculated this badly, or they were so arrogant that they didn't care...
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Tuesday, March 20, 2012
The politics of envy
Remember when the right used to accuse the left of 'the politics of envy': unfairly demonising the rich and sucessful? Now the Tories are engaged in a new version: demonising the poor and unemployed in favour of the rich top 1%. Poor workers are played against benefit claimants and public sector workers (for example over housing benefit, pay and pensions). The poor are also accused of somehow causing the recession, along with it being blamed on too high government spending (the bankers are somehow not to blame). I think this is wrong for the following reasons:
1) Most housing benefit is claimed by workers on low incomes not the unemployed. It essentially subsidises low pay and high rents, especially in the south. If the government was really concerned with rocketing HB, they would impose rent controls. As it is they are using HB as a weapon of social engineering.
2) It was the bankers who created the conditions for the recession, by pushing people into debt and comoditising bad debts. Deregulated banks cause recessions (most of the recessions of the 1800s were caused by banks over lending, as was the slump of the 1930s).
3) The rate of Job Seekers Allowance for a single person is £71 per week: out of this you have to pay everything except rent and council tax. We have one of the lowest level of benefits in Europe, and they are also harder to claim.
4) The recession was not caused by too high government spending, however much the right seems to think it was. Finally, Spain - NYTimes.com demostrates that the spanish government was running a surplus and had a lower national debt than Germany before it imploded.
But of course facts can't get in the way of creating a right-wing narrative.
Monday, March 19, 2012
The right-wing frenzy continues...
Cameron faces battles on two fronts over infrastructure plans | Politics | The Guardian
The Tory-led government now wants to privatise our roads. After all, the privatisation of the railways went so well, and led to cheaper fares. Oh, wait...
The funniest part was the BBC talking about toll roads in France. These are run by the government to help finance the (state run) SNCF. D'oh.
Wednesday, March 14, 2012
Only in America (or a fascist dictatorship...)
Daily Kos: Arizona out-crazies other contraception bills. Use birth control, get fired.
Arizona legislators have removed language from a bill which would have made it illegal to fire some for using contraception (even if it is paid for by the employee). The war against reality (and women) continues in the US.
Sunday, March 11, 2012
The Lib Dems finally drop all that embarrasing democracy stuff
Interesting comments from Lib Dem MPs this week, basically saying the 'sovereign' LD conference can be ignored if the party is in power. Well, that is going to improve voters trust in politics, isn't it? Didn't the LDs keep going on about how democratic their party was? I guess that's gone the way of their 'progressive' policies. They are little more than the Tory-lite party now.
Now they have basically sold the NHS down the river, I hope Labour hangs this round the necks of all LD candidates at the next election.
Wednesday, February 29, 2012
Monday, February 27, 2012
Ken Livingstone calls for Mayor to be banned from having a second job
My Letter to David Cameron | Ken for London
It really does show how out of touch Boris has become, when he thinks £250,000 is 'chicken feed'. He already earns more than the PM.
Sunday, February 26, 2012
The A4e stench
This could be a bombshell for IDS and his welfare reforms, especially coming on top of more companies withdrawing from the workfare schemes. There has been a bad stench around A4e for several years, since some of its staff were found to be falsifying results. Why were they awarded this contract, and why did Cameron give Emma Harrison a job?
This blog (Redpepper.org.uk) claims A4e have been forced to pay back money to the government five times since 2008 due to irregularities.
Thursday, February 23, 2012
Wednesday, February 22, 2012
The world against Apartheid
I have just finished watching the BBC4 series The world against Apartheid: have you heard from Johannesburg?, which bought back memories of supporting the anti-apartheid movement in the 80s and early 90s. The struggle demonstrated that individuals can make a difference if they campaign together - shades of the current UK Uncut movement today.
As someone says in one of the programs - You may feel like you are a drop of water in the ocean, but the ocean is made up of drops of water.
