Wednesday, April 26, 2006

New Labour Spin reaches New Depths of Deceit

All steps seem now being taken to ensure that Brown's accession to the premiership can proceed without hitch in spite of ever growing daily evidence of his own extraordinary incompetence. Yesterday a damning indictment of that surly Scot's personal flagship legislation, the Tax Credit System, was made public, a summary of which may be read from a Reuter's report, linked here. We must presume that on the basis of earlier New Labour practice of rushing out bad news to disguise incompetence as on 11th September 2001, similar steps were taken yesterday afternoon to protect the reputation of Labour's heir apparent. To the continuing shame of all the mainstream media this ploy seems to have succeeded. The Today programme listing Labour's present failures mentioned neither the inquiries into the sickening corruption allegations nor the huge Tax Credit overpayments - merely Charles Clarke's dreadful incompetence, the Health Secretary's shameful mismanagement of the NHS and the Deputy Prime Minister's adultery. Quite a coup, but it has continued and grown worse throughout the day, the presumed short term discomfort of the other ministers so named - all still clinging to office this evening - apparently being considered as well worth while in the broader scheme of maintaining this corrupt clique in power. After all Jowell and Kelly, so recently objects of similar media attacks, relaxing and wallowing in their continuing ministerial perks provide sufficient evidence of the charade that the fourth estate needs anymore to be feared. Watching the PM at his press conference this week, facing his apparently supine and adoring co-conspirators in the complete degradation of the country, was a sickening sight that could have left few of the properly informed unashamed. Surely, all within the Westminster circle must be well aware of the depths to which this administration has sunk? The Chancellor was, very unusually, nowhere in evidence at today's PMQ. As was reported in last week's Sunday Telegraph -'Transparency International' has listed more than fifty questions regarding possible corruption that the most senior members of the present British Government should now be answering to the police. Others of the Cabinet should by now have resigned given their own proven incompetence. Where was Brown today? Redditch some say - if so WHY? What is his response to the disgusting fiasco that is his Tax Credit programme and why are the MSM burying that story?

Thursday, April 20, 2006

Labour's loans and contracts scandal

Hold your nose and read this report from today's The Times. For those with little time here are two quotes: The loans by Mr Rosenfeld and Sir David were made to the Labour Party months before Minerva secured planning permission for a £500 million shopping centre scheme in Croydon, South London.

Minerva and the Government angrily rejected any links between the financial support and the planning approval.

............................................

Last month Rod Aldridge announced that he was standing down as executive chairman of the technology company Capita after a commercial backlash to the revelation that he had made a £1 million loan.

Capita has won billions of pounds of contracts in the public sector.

Weeks after making the loan, Mr Aldridge — who has not been nominated for an honour — was made the head of Gordon Brown’s youth community service scheme, which he and the Chancellor will launch with Charles Clarke, the Home Secretary.

Wednesday, April 19, 2006

Falconer on funding

The BBC website reports the farcial, so called funding proceedings, linked here. Beforehand the Pope, reportedly a wartime volunteer in the Hitler Youth, made the 'Filth' with which we in the West are surrounded the main thrust of his Easter message. In Britain, we only have to look at our sullied political classes to realise that in this at least, the possibly ex-Nazi Pope - has at least made one good point! Does 'Filth' not somehow best convey one's own present thoughts on the likes of Blair and Jowell?

Tuesday, April 18, 2006

Labour Lords a-leaping

Socialist Worker Online is not a publication this blog has previously linked to - however, I do recommend this article which may be read by clicking here.

Monday, April 17, 2006

The EU's crippling cost

A national daily (albeit on a bank holiday, when much attention will be diverted elsewhere) finally spells out the real tax implications of Blair's EU sell out. These figures and the manner in which the money is spent are best considered alongside the present party financing corruption scandal. The following is an extract from the Daily Telegraph's Leading Article, which may be read in full by clicking here The additional amount conceded by Mr Blair last December, £7 billion, is equivalent to the total police budget for England and Wales. The United Kingdom's annual gross contribution to Brussels, £12 billion, is equivalent to the combined revenue raised by inheritance tax, capital gains tax and stamp duty. We are, in short, paying in an awesome amount of money.

And what are we getting in return? Our Parliament is hobbled, our countryside ruined, our fishing grounds plundered, our businesses asphyxiated with regulation. Even in his own terms, as a pro-European, what did Mr Blair get in return for handing away our taxes? Did the French agree to reform the Common Agricultural Policy? Did the net recipient countries express their gratitude to Britain? Of course not.

We made some disobliging remarks about the Prime Minister's negotiating skills at the time, but don't take our word for it. Listen to how he was received in Europe. Le Parisien declared that "Chirac won the match against Tony Blair on the British rebate". Welt am Sonntag commented: "Tony Blair began the EU presidency as a tiger and ended it as a doormat".

The amount of this money returned directly to all Britain's political parties with elected MEPs is an absolute disgrace, especially considering the absence of any democratic or real legislative role assigned to the so called European Parliament.

Equally unacceptable should be the fact that much of the funds actually spent on real projects often further fall within the non-democratic gift of Europe's political establishment, themselves subject to appointment and control by the often corrupt national party machines of the member states, of which corruption Britain's two main parties now seem to appear at the head.

The rest of the national media this weekend nevertheless seem surprised at the reported rise of the BNP! How can that be?

Thursday, April 13, 2006

Unfit to Govern

Random items from this morning's press: NHS Farce Dr Duncan Newton, the medical director at the Bradford Teaching Hospitals Foundation Trust, urged other hospitals to follow its lead by asking patients to walk to the operating theatre to cut portering costs. The Independent. UK's Bird tests may be missing flu virus. If you left a swab in the refrigerator in its sheath like that, it would dry out and you'd lose all your virusNew Scientist Freedom Threatened

An unnecessary evil Daily Telegraph Leader (Filed: 13/04/2006)

Economic incompetence UK alone among G7 to see rise in jobless

By Edmund Conway, Economics Editor Daily Telegraph (Filed: 13/04/2006)

Unemployment is rising faster in the UK than in any other major developed country, it has emerged, as Britain's jobless total rose to the highest level in two and a half years.

April 11 (Bloomberg) -- Britain's trade deficit was unchanged at a record level

Tuesday, April 11, 2006

Ungoverned in Europe

So Italy too is exactly split by an electorate presumably dismayed at their Nation States inability to govern. France in the same week capitulates once again to mob rule, this time from an economically powerless group of protesters - making the sense of democratic helplessness even stronger. Can the under 26 year olds in France truly prefer unemployment to a job from which they might be fired. Germany's coalition and post-election hiatus can surely not be so quickly forgotten - even if the craven capitulation of Spains' voters and the resulting Zapatero government seem to have slid from public view. The corruption inquiry hanging over Britain's longstanding PM for selling honours hardly puts that country's once effective two party system in a good light - while the PM in waiting imitates his boss kowtowing to Nelson Mandela while promising British taxes to educate every african chile on the dark continent as if there were no squalor at home. British opposition parties are in such disarray that none yet seem fit to govern. All grist to the non-democratic EU mill.

Sunday, April 09, 2006

Political funding scandal

Simon Jenkins in his column in today's Sunday Times, linked here states: Since taxpayers are not privy to this conspiracy against the exchequer the only redress may yet be rioting in the streets. Strangely in his listing of the obscene amounts of taxpayers money available to our thoroughly rotten political class he omits mention of the biggest scam - the European Parliament. Nevertheless the amounts he reports are well worth repeating here. Quote

To this the answer is that almost half their gross revenue already comes from the state. At Westminster opposition parties receive £5.5m a year for parliamentary offices, including aides, researchers and spin doctors. Since 2000 a further £2m has been added for “policy development”, whatever that means. MPs get gyms, discounts, freebies and trips galore. They are civil servants and pay no Vat. Their travel is free and their second homes (and in the case of some ministers, third ones) are subsidised. They recently voted themselves pension plans of stupefying generosity.

The parties also get an estimated £80m of free letter post, conference security and television propaganda. Even Sinn Fein gets £584,000 a year in cash for “parliamentary allowances”, despite refusing to turn up or even take the oath of allegiance. The money is described as “an act of goodwill”.

Unquote

Read the whole column and seethe!

Friday, April 07, 2006

Common Sense abandoned in Britain's Courts

Radio Four's Today programme reports a ten year old is being prosecuted for racist remarks made to a playmate. His name at least was not released on account of his age, denying the authorities the excuse that they did not know. Elsewhere the Telegraph reports, linked here, as follows:

Court hands sisters over to mother's lesbian lover By Nick Britten (Filed: 07/04/2006)

Two young sisters at the centre of a bitter custody battle were taken from their biological mother yesterday and sent to live with her former lesbian lover following a landmark court ruling.

Thursday, April 06, 2006

Pointers for Britain's future governance from the EU

An interesting poll for the upcoming French Presidential elections may be read from Global Scan - it starts as follows: "(Angus Reid Global Scan) – A poll by CSA released by Marianne places Nicolas Sarkozy and Ségolène Royal as the favourite contenders before the next presidential election in France. In the first sample, interior minister Sarkozy of the centre-right Union for a Popular Movement (UMP) is first with 34 per cent, followed by Royal—the leader of the regional government of Poitou-Charentes and a prospective Socialist Party (PS) candidate—with 26 per cent, and Jean-Marie Le Pen of the National Front (FN) with 12 per cent. Support for UMP member and current prime minister Dominique de Villepin stands at four per cent, down eight points since January. In a second sample, which omits de Villepin as a prospective contender, Sarkozy is first with 34 per cent, followed by Royal with 27 per cent, Le Pen with 12 per cent, Union for French Democracy (UDF) leader François Bayrou with eight per cent, and Revolutionary Communist League (LCR) member Olivier Besancenot with six per cent. In a prospective run-off, Royal holds a four-point advantage over Sarkozy." The FT reported on Sarkozy earlier today, that column is to be found at: http://news.ft.com/cms/s/6bef03d2-c50a-11da-b7c1-0000779e2340.html

Democracy in Danger

Finally the mainstream media is wakening up to the real threat to our freedoms of which this blog, its predecessor Ironies and my other blogs have been warning for years. See this item from last weekend's Sunday Times, linked here....yesterday's Daily Telegraph read from here and today's Guardian linked here. The columns' titles are respectively: "Royal aide: No 10 risks turning into dictatorship"

"We're teetering on the brink of an elective dictatorship" By Simon Heffer (Filed: 05/04/2006)

'Blair's inner circle and its ferocious grab for power' "From forcing through ID cards to the erosion of parliamentary scrutiny, a determined clique is hijacking our democracy " Jenni Russell Thursday April 6, 2006

Tuesday, April 04, 2006

Will Britain's SO CAlled 'FBI' rattle the right racketeers?

As Daniel Hannan MEP pointed out in his column in yesterday's Daily Telegraph, the European Parliament is nothing other than a huge confidence trick designed to deliver taxpayers' funds in obscene amounts to the established EU political parties. Arguably, even worse, in the UK we now have Tony Blair, the Prime Minister, apparently caught red-handed in selling honours while Tessa Jowell continues in his Cabinet. Even a columnist in the daily paper in Jamaica today holds Britain up as a shocking example of corruption. Read the article from this link if you do not believe it. Astoundingly, David Cameron, with his own deep roots in the now clearly rotten British establishment will today meet with the nation's latest shameless leader to discuss the steps they might jointly take over future funding for their individual parties, having been clearly exposed for the unacceptable methods used recently. On the agenda can only be conspiracy! The Lib/Dems have similarly benefited from some of these abuses down the years. The local government elections next month would seem a perfect opprtunity for the electorate to express their disgust by voting for none of the mainstream parties. But oh what sorry alternatives!! Perhaps our new national crime agency SOCA might take its brief seriously and pursue these racketeers as seriously as other menaces to society and bring in the main political leaders to face justice. Are there enough in the main body of the party membership willing to step forth and put matters right? A reminder of how racketeer is defined: "a person engaged in illegal enterprise for profit" Is not selling honours against the law? How does Blair manage to buy such expensive real estate? Does profit for the party one leads never provide personal gain?