Labour to scrap tax for under £10k?
Workers earning less than £10,000 a year could soon be exempt from paying tax in a bid to boost the economy, according to the Daily Mirror.
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New Statesman: we must negotiate with Hamas
The New Statesman magazine this week came out against the war in Gaza.
The devastating air assault on the Gaza Strip which began on 27 December, and the ground invasion that followed, are the latest stages in the unequal war between the state of Israel and the Islamic Resistance Movement, better known by the acronym Hamas. The onslaught has so far led to the deaths of more than 600 Palestinians, many of them children, including those killed in an air strike on the UN-run al-Fakhura school in the Jabaliya refugee camp.
Since Hamas’s unexpected victory in legislative elections in January 2006, Israel has been attempting to loosen the organisation’s grip on the Palestinian territories. Although the elections were widely acknowledged to be free and fair, neither Israel nor any of its western allies was prepared to recognise a Palestinian Authority run by what they regard as a terrorist organisation.
Its leading editorial also said the Israeli government must negotiate with Hamas.
Yet it is hard to see how Israel will benefit from its instinctive reversion to force, grotesquely disproportionate in this latest war. It is also hard not to see this invasion of Gaza, as well as the invasion of Lebanon in 2006, as proxy wars in the larger conflict with Syria and Iran. The campaign is unlikely to damage Hamas as much as Israel seems to hope – its military wing need only retain a rudimentary fighting capacity to claim a victory of sorts, and because of its willingness to resist the invasion, it may yet emerge from the conflict with its status enhanced.
…
It may be unpalatable to deal with a group that endorses suicide bombing and which is virulently anti-Semitic, but Israel, and its sponsor, the US, must acknowledge Hamas as the democratic choice of the Palestinians and seek grounds for compromise. In the long run, negotiations will provide a more effective and infinitely more humane way of protecting Israeli citizens than attempting to batter the Gazans into submission.
…more on the New Statesman website
Bat-shit crazy libertarians
Oh dear, so much for libertarians valuing free speech, disagreement and discussion eh? Old Holborn, a blog I was getting into enjoying, is shutting down because an idiot decided to:
post my name , address, email address, business address, photo of me and my children on the web. Because he was angry with me over my stand on Israel.
…
Many people now know where I live, where my children go to school, how I earn my crust and I will not put my family at any further risk.
How remarkably unsurprising. This kind of behaviour on blogs is frankly outrageous.
Quantitative easing: the case for ‘printing money’
‘Brown plans to print more money’ was the front-page headline on tonight’s Evening Standard, and tomorrow’s Daily Mail front-page splash follows suit.
With interest rates set to fall again in the morning to their lowest level since the Bank of England was founded in 1694, the question is whether government should look at expanding the money supply.
‘We are looking at the issues. No decisions have been taken’, a senior Treasury source tells the Standard.
Clegg: Britain must halt arms exports to Israel
Liberal Democrat Leader Nick Clegg today called for Gordon Brown to halt all arms exports to Israel and condemn the unacceptable and counter-productive tactics which are bringing suffering to hundreds of thousands of innocent civilians in Gaza.
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Governing by tabloid headlines
Yesterday, Polly Toynbee dismissed David Cameron’s new tax proposals as “part populism, part poison”. If that’s so, then I hope she’ll react with similar disgust to Hazel Blears’ latest belch of blame-the-poor prattle:
Hit-squads will make early-morning calls to make sure parents are out of bed to get their kids ready for school before heading out to look for work. They will even turn up with rubber gloves to get families to clean up filthy homes. Communities Secretary Hazel Blears said: “In a recession, there’s no space for freeloaders. We need a more muscular approach to ways the state intervenes into deliberately-unemployed people’s lives. Young people are often capable of much more than signing on the dole like their parents.”
Let us be clear; these aren’t serious proposals.
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Top Stories and Blog Review – 7th Jan
Obama speaks; Papers react; UN diplomacy
International
Egypt floats truce plan after school bombs
‘One of the more shocking sentences I’ve read’
Al Qaeda No. 2 blames Obama for Gaza
‘Why do they hate the West so much, we ask’
Apple presents iLife at Macworld swansong
Gas row flares as supplies to Europe cut
Nationwide
Thousands bankrupted over unpaid council tax
Cases have ‘cut UK terror threat’
Britain feels the chill as gas prices soar
Atheist bus campaign goes nationwide
DAILY BLOG REVIEW / by Aaron
The New Humanist recommends Catholic Google. Get all your information kindly censored by your moral overlords.
Craig Murray on Putin’s “remarkably successful” regional bullying. Btw, Craig has a new book out soon.
Charlotte Gore argues that suggesting we nationalise the banks is a bit, well, daft.
Hagley Road to Ladywood on how those on a low income are being squeezed by rising costs – and why is this being ignored by the MSM media?
Sunny Hundal. Sunny’s audio documentary on why British Asian woman are 3-times more likely to commit suicide than average.
Tim Leunig/LDV, an economist at the LSC, explains how he predicted the recent fall in oil prices, and how he expects it to remain stable in ’09.
steerpikelet is writing a piece on incapacity benefit and has some questions for claimants.
I want to march for Gaza, but I can’t
I would like to march against Israel, really. I don’t think that bombing campaigns like the one we currently see are the answer at all. I am appalled by its dead, especially the innocent victims within it.
I am a member of the Left Jewish bundle, and was a long standing supporter of parties such as left wing Israeli Peace party Meretz and organisations like the shared Arab / Jewish village Wahat al Salam ~ Neve Shalom. I have Palestinian and Israeli friends and they expect me to march.
However I will not march in London against the war. The reason is that inspite of my opposition, I feel highly uncomfortable amongst the demonstrating crowd, for it appears somewhat suspect to me. The burning of the Israeli flag as quoted here at end of a London demonstration and the atmosphere of unidirectional violence are just confirming this.
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Apparently, Osborne wants Ken back
Many years ago, at school, the smart sarcastic thing was to scratch your chin and make references to Jimmy Hill “itchy chin” and “chinny reckon” if somebody was being just a little implausible.
Now that is a little bit ‘playground’ for such an esteemed public figure as the Shadow Chancellor, to say nothing of an ancient serious think-tank, but for some unfathomable reason, that image just flashed into my mind when I saw this this Telegraph news report, which effectively confirms that Ken Clarke is coming back. And what do you know, but it was the Boy George’s idea all along…
Some believed that Mr Osborne, the Shadow Chancellor, would be against Mr Clarke’s return as it would undermine him. However, The Daily Telegraph has learnt that contrary to those reports, Mr Osborne has been actively lobbying for his return. He has told friends that he works well with Mr Clarke and values his advice.
One friend of Mr Osborne’s said: “George has been talking to Ken about his return and Ken has been very supportive of George. The two get on very well and George would not have a problem with him coming back – in fact is pushing for it.”
Ooh. Itchy, itchy chin. That’s better.
(Cross-posted from Next Left)
George Osborne is confused, again
George Osborne says in the Evening Standard:
Our economy sucked up the savings of millions of Chinese workers, like a national vacuum cleaner, and spent them – often on the very goods those Chinese workers were toiling away in their factories to make. And the message from the Labour Government was: don’t worry, we’re borrowing recklessly, too. Gordon Brown ran up the highest budget, borrowing in the developed world to go on a spending spree, too.
As I’ve said before, its part of the Tory narrative to keep talking about debt, so it can paper over their ‘do nothing’ economic strategy with regards to the economic crisis. This bit simply displays more of that nonsense.
Is Osborne saying households were wrong to buy cheaper Chinese goods? I thought the Tories were for free trade? Is there something wrong with this?
Well, yes, you could argue there is something wrong with it – that we aren’t manufacturing enough of our own cheap, British goods to export or consume here. As a result, we imported significant portions of our consumption, in return for which the Chinese bought British (and tons of American) debt and currency. That’s global trade for you. So what’s Osborne arguing for? Less free trade? An investment in British industries? Protecting existing British industry? Invading the Chinese so we can loot their foreign currency reserves? Or is it another silly article fumbling his own economic ideology so he can stick it to Labour? When will someone in the mainstream media call out this man’s silliness?
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