EU leaders call to cap bonuses
The Group of 20 richest nations must adopt “binding rules” to regulate bank behaviour, the leaders of the UK, France and Germany have said.
UK Prime Minister Gordon Brown, French President Nicolas Sarkozy and German Chancellor Angela Merkel made the comments in a joint letter. They also agreed to explore ways of limiting bonuses at banks to prevent future financial meltdowns.
The leaders also said banks could not go on as if the crisis never happened. Bonuses will be on the agenda when the G20 leaders meet in Pittsburgh later this month.
The Brown-shirts come to Italy
More news about Italy’s rapid journey to a 21st century version of European fascism. In the past we’ve already documented the alarming rise in anti-immigrant attacks, the legalisation of vigilante groups (including the adoption of dubious symbolism) and the implementation at local and national level of punitive measures against ethnic minorities (i.e. the so-called ‘kebab ban‘).
Italy’s rampant homophobia is another reason for concern.
Since some seriously ugly rhetoric was the soundtrack to the right’s electoral triumph in 2008, anti-LGB attacks have been piling up.
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Tories: We control Scotland Yard
The Conservatives have wrested control of Scotland Yard from the Home Office and now have its top officers working to their agenda, a senior aide to the mayor of London, Boris Johnson, has told the Guardian.
Kit Malthouse, the deputy mayor for policing, has declared that he and Johnson “have our hands on the tiller” of the Metropolitan police and have an electoral mandate to influence what it does.
He asserted that the Johnson regime had “elbowed the Home Office out of the picture” and would no longer act as a rubber stamp to whatever the force proposed, insisting: “We do not want to be a passenger on the Met cruise.”
But, he claims, the new approach did not amount to the politicisation of policing and said the London model was being studied by the Tory frontbench as a blueprint for its approach to law and order across Britain if they were to win next year’s general election.
Al-Megrahi and right-wing hypocrisy
Why is everyone in such a tizz over the release of Al-Megrahi? As has been documented time and time again by Private Eye, a question mark hung over his conviction anyway – and the man had cancer.
We do tend to release the terminally ill on compassionate grounds, in this country, and it probably saved the taxpayer hundreds of thousands of pounds in continued appeals anyway – not to mention the cost of keeping the man prisoner. So what is the furore about?
Then I read these two articles by Cllr Piper. Iain Dale, Newmania and the other Tory trolls are involved; suddenly all becomes clear. Despite the Westminster government having nothing to do with the release – beyond Bill Rammell saying that he and his colleagues hoped al-Megrahi wouldn’t die in prison – the issue has become a stick with which to beat Gordon Brown.
Presumably it never occurred to the SNP, a party with no love for Labour – who are the main Opposition in Scotland, to tell London to stuff it up their jumpers. Tory blogger Iain Dale predicates his claim of pressure on the fact that three Ministers sent letters to the Scottish executive outlining the position of the UK government on the issue. Dale dismisses, of course, that in each of these letters the outlining of position is counterbalanced by acknowledgement that the matter is one for the Scottish government entirely – and so it is.
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Leave me and my potential babies alone
Shock, horror, disaster: the population is exploding! Yes, the recently-over-reported demographic expansion of 1%, incidentally mitigating the encroaching pensions crisis, has kicked off a chain of explosions – explosions of racial paranoia, class hatred and misogyny.
According to Amanda Platell of the Mail and Melanie McDonagh of The Telegraph, what this means is that middle class, “Anglo-Saxon” women now have a duty to have more babies in their twenties. I have a spare set of sewing scissors around if anyone cares to unpick the various strands of racism, misogyny and class prejudice going on in those assumptions – let’s just say that it’s all intersectionally fucked.
I’m going to work on the assumption that by “Anglo-Saxon…women”, McDonagh means to say is that ‘white women should be having more babies.’ And despite my Mediterranean-Slavic heritage, I’m fairly sure I’m one of the nice young lilywhite gels McDonagh wants to see breeding like paranoid supremacist bunnies.
To which my response is: fuck. Right. Off. I’m not going to be told when and how and with whom I may breed, by anyone, thanks.
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BNP forced to pay costs on white membership
The BNP will be forced to pay legal costs in a case against their ‘whites only’ membership policy after turning up to court unprepared today.
The party had waited until last night to brief their legal team on the matter, meaning the case had to be adjourned until October 15th.
The party will therefore have to pay legal costs, which will be assessed at the next session.
Judge Paul Collins said: “This is an application by the Equality and Human Rights Commission for an injunction against three officers of the BNP.
“To put it very crudely for the purposes of this morning, the commission take the view that the terms on which the BNP admit persons to membership is in breach of the Race Relations Act because it discriminates against persons on the grounds of race and they want an injunction to stop it.”
Clegg and Cameron agree to TV debate
The Media Guardian reports today:
David Cameron and Nick Clegg today accepted a call to take part in a televised leaders’ debate in the run-up to the next general election.
Sky News announced today it would host a live debate during the campaign, warning that it will “empty chair” any leader who declines to take part.
The Conservative and Liberal Democrat leaders have long said that they would welcome a TV debate, but it remains unclear whether the prime minister, Gordon Brown, would be willing to take part.
Earlier this year, the business secretary, Lord Mandelson, appeared to suggest that Brown was prepared to face his rivals on screen, saying he thought the prime minister “would not have a problem” with a debate.
However, Downing Street is still resisting the call. More here.
But Labour councillor Bob Piper thinks Brown should join in:
But who has the most to lose? Certainly not Brown with an already low poll rating. It is hardly likely to get any lower, and even if it does, it wouldn’t matter that much. If he and Cameron stay at their existing level of popularity Labour would lose hopelessly anyway, so it could be argued that the only way is up. In a pre-election debate the Tory leader would have to come out with specifics – something which can hardly be described as his strong point – and as the Lib Dem bloke is fighting the Tories across the South of England and the West Country he will also be as keen to bash Cameron as he is Brown (although ‘savaged by a dead sheep’ is a phrase which comes to mind).
Anyway…. on the whole debate thing, I suspect both the media and the politicos rather over estimate how much people are interested in either of them
A left-wing success story in Europe
The amazing triumph of Germany’s left wing party casts some doubt on Angela Merkel’s chances of re-election.
A succession of articles and editorials have been penned to analyse why the European left may have failed so far to cash in on the financial crisis. With the partial exception of Spain, left-of-centre parties have taken one drubbing after the other in Britain, France and Italy.
To the surprise of many, centre-right and far-right parties were more successful in intercepting voters’ anxieties through a combination of faux-pious approach to big business and finance and distraction techniques centred around real and imaginary threats to social values, national identities and tradition.
In the meantime, the moment the economic tide turned, having spent a decade or two doing somersaults to reassure Big Business took a devastating toll on the moderate left. In Britain, France and Italy, for instance, an increasing number of voters identify the centre-left as weak, useless and incapable to empathise with struggling families and workers alike.
Last Sunday though, something new happened.
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Bristol Tory says gay funding ‘outrageous’
The leader of Bristol’s Tories, Richard Eddy, has said that a Big Lottery Fund award to tackle homophobia was “outrageous” and proof that money was being awarded to reflect “politically correct” lobbies favoured by Labour.
A lottery grant of almost £400,000 was awarded to a Bristol youth group, Reach. It will form a youth group to be involved in decision-making processes that affect lesbian, gay and bisexual young people through consultation with agencies around Bristol, North Somerset, South Gloucestershire and Bath & North East Somerset.
But Mr Eddy, who heads the opposition Conservative group on the city council, told the Bristol Evening Post:
I think this is a mistaken and misguided, outrageous waste of money.
Sadly, it seems to be further confirmation that the Big Lottery has long since ceased to impartially distribute lottery cash to worthwhile and respected causes, instead it seems obliged to dole out punters’ money to a raft of politically correct lobbies which clearly sit within the Labour Government’s priority.
Right on cue, a pressure group called The Campaign Against Political Correctness issued a statement saying:
I’m sure people in the community would rather have funding that would benefit all. Often singling out groups of people for special treatment creates more problems than it solves. Funding that would go to a group involving all people would be more inclusive.
A few years ago Mr Eddy had been condemned for trying to have a golliwog as the office mascot. At the time he said it was “a harmless joke”.
A Facebook Group condemning the Bristol Tory has already attracted over 500 members.
Different arms of the environmental conspiracy
On Sunday Peter Beaumont wrote this article in the Observer asking: “What is the Climate Camp in London for?”
He goes on to quote approvingly from Saul Alinsky’s Rules For Radicals (one of my favourite books ever) and then says:
I mention Alinsky because he seems to crystallise many of the failings, not just of the Climate Camp, but of significant sectors of the wider anti-war and anti-globalisation movement which have struggled either to articulate precisely what is their message or who have chosen, literally at times, to pitch their tent at the margins of the political debate.
…
Climate Camp, with its often hazy message and complex inner negotiations, with its indulgent obsession with its own workings, its insularity and the suggestion of elitism of its direct-action hard core, is in danger of becoming about Climate Camp, the institution, rather than about the wider fight to halt global warming. With all its energy and motivation, that would be a shame.
As applicable to Climate Camp itself, those are not criticism that should be dismissed so easily. But I see all this slightly differently. The problem is to assume that Climate Camp is the entirety of the environmentalism movement. It isn’t. It represents an arm of that movement: the more anarchic, activists interested in direct action and publicity stunts.
continue reading… »
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» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
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