Burns defeats Clinton in New York Mayor election
CNN reports that in the recent elections for the Mayor of New York, Charles Montgomery Burns, better known as Mr. Burns in the hit animated TV series “The Simpsons”, got the most votes of any write-in candidate during last month’s mayoral election in New York City. According to records released by the New York City Board of Elections, the cartoon billionaire received 27 write-in votes out of the 299 that were cast.
Although Burns finishes just under 586,000 votes behind eventual winner, fellow billionaire Michael Bloomberg, he managed to finish ahead of a whole range of well known opponents, including Fantastic Four arch-villain Victor Von Doom, Mickey Mouse, Sleeping Beauty, Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Presidents Abraham Lincoln and Teddy Roosevelt, and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler.
Full story here
NATO hosts first ever briefing for bloggers
The North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, or NATO for short, held its first ever briefing for political bloggers yesterday.
A group of British political bloggers, including myself, were invited to NATO political headquarters in Brussels for a day-long briefing with high ranking personnel at NATO.
Most of the discussion centred around NATO’s involvement in Afghanistan.
Other topics touched upon included potential threats including energy security, cyber attacks, terrorism and protection for women in areas of war.
Most of the briefings were off-the-record, although the group of bloggers were able to question and discuss NATO operations with Brigadier General Eric Tremblay – spokesperson for ISAF, the force responsible for securing Afghanistan.
Also high on the list was a discussion of NATO’s ongoing re-evaluation of its Strategic Concept document.
Bloggers who attended
Luke Akehurst (lukeakehurst.blogspot.com)
Martin Butcher (natomonitor.blogspot.com)
David Cole (davecole.org)
Mehdi Hasan (newstatesman.com)
Sunny Hundal (liberalconspiracy.org)
Zohra Moosa (thefword.org.uk)
James O’Malley (poddelusion.co.uk)
Will Straw (leftfootforward.org)
The event was organised by Atlantic Council UK.
More thoughts on Afghanistan later.
Update: Some of the attendees have already blogged their thoughts.
Will Straw: NATO: We won’t bugger off
Mehdi Hasan: My conversation with a Nato brigadier-general
Luke Akehurst: NATO holds bloggers briefing
What to do about boggle-eyed Spectator bores?
Boggle-eyed Spectator bore Rod Liddle, who is one of many who seems to believe that both lies and bigoted boo-hoo are now legitimate weapons in the great battle against the awful liberal elitists, wrote that:
The overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community. Of course, in return, we have rap music, goat curry and a far more vibrant and diverse understanding of cultures which were once alien to us. For which, many thanks.
It looks like the bugle has been blown, and every cheap, nasty bullshitter in the land has acknowledged its message… With the Tories almost certain to triumph at the next election, anyone who’s spent the last decade masquerading as a basically decent human being should now rip off their masks and show the world their hideous deformities.
continue reading… »
Concern about climate change ‘highest ever’
Public concern about climate change is at its highest level according to a new GlobeScan/BBC World Service poll conducted in 23 countries, which began international tracking in 1998.
Nearly two thirds of those polled now say climate change is a “very serious” problem. However, concern has fallen in China and the USA.
On the eve of the UN Climate Change Summit in Copenhagen, only six per cent of the 24,000 people polled want their government to oppose a climate deal being reached in Denmark.
The poll also shows that, in spite of the global recession, an average of 61% support their governments making investments to address climate change, even if these investments hurt the economy.
However, the poll finds that public opinion in the world’s two largest emitters of CO2 is more ambivalent. While the Chinese are the most likely to support government investments to address climate change even if these harm the economy (with 89% in favour), only 52% of Americans feel the same way.
The overall results show that there is strong support for governments taking an ambitious approach to the Copenhagen negotiations. On average, 44%—and majorities in 10 of the 23 countries polled—say they want their government to “play a leading role in setting ambitious targets to address climate change” at Copenhagen.
A further 39% think their government should “adopt a more moderate approach and support only gradual action.” Only six per cent want their government to oppose any agreement.
Majorities in major European nations support their government playing a strong leadership role in Copenhagen—62% in the UK, 57% in France, and 55% in Germany. Other governments being pressed by their citizens to show leadership include Canada (61%), Australia (57%), Japan (57%), and Brazil (53%).
The survey also finds that concern about climate change continues on an upward trend, even in a recession year. Thirteen of the countries in this year’s survey have been polled regularly by GlobeScan over the last eleven years on their views of climate change: since 1998, the proportion rating it as a “very serious” issue for the world has climbed from 44% to 63%.
Outright opposition to a deal is limited to small minorities in all survey countries. The countries with the highest proportions of those opposing any international agreement are the United States (14%), Brazil (12%), and Pakistan (12%).
The results are drawn from a survey of 24,071 adult citizens in 23 countries, conducted by the international polling firm GlobeScan between 19 June and 13 October, 2009.
From a press release
Campaign orgs send out pleas on Windfall tax
The campaign group Compass and pressure group 38 Degrees today both sent out mailouts to their subscribers calling for them to take action on a bankers Windfall Tax.
This was the mail from Compass, which has always spearheaded the call for a Windfall Tax.
Today’s newspapers are reporting that the Alistair Darling is considering an emergency tax on bankers’ bonuses. This is great news for all Compass activists that have campaigned for months for tougher action on bankers.
The next 48 hours before the Pre-Budget report are vital. To beat the city spin machine we need to send a loud message to the Chancellor. We’d like you to send him an email and invite your friends to do the same.
http://action.compassonline.org.uk/48hours
Reports suggest Ministers are worried about the “technical difficulties” of introducing such a tax and they are also facing a backlash from the city.
The case for a windfall tax isn’t simply one of justice: there are economic benefits too. The proceeds of a windfall tax could fund a Green New Deal.
We have just 48 hours and we can only do it with your help – click here, send an email to the Chancellor and then invite your friends to join in too.
http://action.compassonline.org.uk/48hours
Let’s be clear, the latest profits reported by banks are in the most part unearned; they have largely been accumulated not from hard work and responsibility, but made off the back of tax-payer and government bailouts.
We cannot allow the bullying from the city to continue, in the next 48 hours we need your help to defeat the city spin and make sure the Chancellor delivers.
And this was the mail-out from 38 Degrees:
Today’s papers all report that right now the Chancellor, Alistair Darling, is considering a tax on bankers’ bonuses. We’ve been campaigning together for months now for action to rein in bonuses, and this is great progress.
But the banks are fighting back. They’re using all their lobbying power to try to stop the Chancellor’s plans, even claiming that taxing their bonuses would breach their human rights. [1]
The government says it will make its decision “in the next 48 hours”. [2] That means we’ve got 48 hours to outweigh the banks’ lobbying pressure. Together we need to send Alistair Darling a clear message that after the taxpayer has spent billions bailing out the banks, it’s only fair to put a tax on their bonuses.
Tell Alistair Darling we want him to stand up to the banks: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/bank-bonus-tax
Many families in the UK are facing a tough, recession-hit christmas. Millions of people have lost their jobs or their homes, or suffered the worry that it might happen to them. Meanwhile, over 5000 bankers are currently expecting to get a bonus of over £1million. [3]
The banks played a lead role in causing this crisis and it took a huge amount of taxpayers’ money to rescue them. Yet even banks largely owned by the taxpayer, like RBS, are putting heavy pressure on the chancellor to allow them to hand out record amounts of taxpayers money in bonuses.
Together we’ve been campaigning for the government to make sure that the recession doesn’t hit the poorest hardest. Just last Friday we handed our petition to the Chancellor calling for him to commit £4 billion to stop more children falling into poverty. A tax on bankers’ bonuses is one of the ways the Chancellor could raise the money he needs to protect children from the worst effects of the recession. Together we can push him to make sure that banks start to pay back the money they owe us.
Tell Alistair Darling we support a tax on bank bonuses: http://www.38degrees.org.uk/bank-bonus-tax
PCC reviews code; wants suggestions
The Press Complaints Commission today sent out this release:
The Editors’ Code of Practice Committee, which writes and revises the voluntary code of standards overseen by the Press Complaints Commission, is undertaking its annual review of the Code.
It welcomes suggestions from the public, civil society and the industry on how the Code might be revised to improve the system of self-regulation of the press, of which it is an essential component.
Suggestions should be sent as soon as possible, but no later than 31 January 2010, to:
Ian Beales
Code Committee Secretary
PO Box 235
Stonehouse
Glos GL10 3UF.Or by email to: ianbeales@mac.com
Yes, let’s tax the ‘wealth creators’
It’s the ultimate fallback argument for the richest one or two percent of the population; sure, the £20m penthouses overlooking Hyde Park, the private jets and the 37 meter superyachts might make it look as if we are flaunting it, but at the end of the day, don’t you ever forget for one moment that we are the wealth creators.
We don’t owe you lot anything. In fact, you owe us. And if you so much as try to detract even minimally from our immense fortunes, we shall have a collective hissy fit and depart your third rate neocommunist shithole country forthwith for some free enterprise paradise somewhere else, plunging the mass of the population into abject penury. The bottom would fall out of the domestic servant labour market, all because of your ingratitude. And then you’ll be sorry.
I mean, we can’t have democratically elected governments enacting progressive taxation, can we? That would mean that we would have to pay proportionately as much as our cleaning ladies, to use a comparison first put forward not by the far left, but by SVG Capital boss Nicholas Ferguson two years ago.
Expect many op-eds pitched at this level of sophistication over the coming days, as the bourgeoisie pretends to quake at the prospect of some sort of minimal tax clawback on bankers’ bonuses.
Swing to left in international elections
At the weekend, elections were held in Romania and Bolivia:
In Romania, the incumbent President Traian Basescu, of the centrist Democratic Liberal Party appears to have narrowly defeated the Social Democrat candidate Mircea Geoana, earlier exit polls suggested that Geoana was leading by 51% to 49%.
In Bolivia, the socialist Evo Morales won a landslide victory, with 61% of the vote. Former army captain Manfred Reyes Villa finished second, with 23% of the vote.
The elections took place in very different economic situations:
The Romanian economy is set to contract this year by 8.8 percent. After years of record economic growth fueled by easy credit and heavy foreign investment based on a neo-liberal economic model, Romania’s economic fortunes collapsed last year in the wake of the global financial crisis. Romania has also been impacted by downturns in Spanish and Italian construction sectors. Some ten percent of Romanians live outside Romania working in construction and working as domestics or day laborers.
In 2007, Romanians abroad sent €7 billion back home; this remittances are barely expected to top €5 billion. The International Monetary Fund suspended a €20bn ($29.7bn, £18bn) rescue package for the recession-hit country until a new government is in place and ready to enact budget cuts. Mr Basescu has pledged to implement public sector job cuts, suggested by the IMF as a way of putting the budget in order. Mr Geoana has said he would not, but he too has promised to co-operate with the IMF.
Bolivia’s projected economic growth of 2.8 percent this year is the most of 32 Western hemisphere nations tracked by the International Monetary Fund in its October World Economic Outlook. This year Bolivia will shed a title it has held for nearly a century. Since the end of its tin boom, Bolivia has been South America’s poorest country. Under Morales, the macro-economic management of the economy has been handled deftly doubling the country’s foreign reserves. The mantle of South America’s poorest country now passes to Paraguay.
More info here.
Copenhagen does not go far enough
There has been a lot of critical reaction to James Hansen’s modest and reasonable callfor a junking of the current Copenhagen negotiations in favour of something else that would actually effectually address the climate emergency that we now face.
Most of those reacting negatively to this key intervention from the leading voice of contemporary policy-engaged climate-science don’t appear to ‘get’ the very good reasons why James Hansen of NASA has said that a mediocre agreement at Copenhagen – which is all that we could possibly get now – would be worse than no agreement at all.
The ‘solutions’ on offer at Copenhagen are almost exclusively based around carbon offsets and carbon trading. These would make no meaningful contribution toward tackling the climate crisis for all sorts of reasons (a superb inventory of why can be found at The Corner House, but most crucially because they would mean that, just like with Kyoto, there is no ‘hard’ cap on total emissions.
A carbon trading system that allows offsets against emissions that allegedly would have happened without the system being in place, even if it works, offers no guarantee at all that overall emissions will fall, let alone fall at the rate that they need to fall at if we are to have a chance of keeping the world to within 2 degrees of over-heat.
Thus it may in one important respect be serendipitous that the Copenhagen talks seem in any case likely to fail.
The CRU hack at the University of East Anglia may even have a silver lining.
continue reading… »
Fabians challenge Cameron on poverty
David Cameron recently attacked Fabian approaches to poverty. The Society says the evidence shows his argument doesn’t stack up, and challenges him to get over his fear of criticising Margaret Thatcher’s record if the Tories are to set out a credible anti-poverty agenda.
In their letter to the Conservative leader, the Fabians argued that:
“The 1980s saw the largest increase in poverty and inequality in 20th century Britain. Yet your recent lecture at the Guardian skipped straight from 1968 to post-1997 in analysing poverty trends. Perhaps you would disagree with our analysis of why poverty rocketed in the 1980s, but the problem is that nobody knows what your view is. For the Conservative anti-poverty agenda to be a serious one, you should give another speech where you tell Britain what you think went wrong on poverty and inequality in the Thatcher years, and how you would avoid making the same mistakes,”
The Fabians are publishing a two-year study of what works in poverty prevention this week. You can read the full letter here.
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» Even by economic standards Hester’s £1m bonus is unworthy
» Revealed: govt to restrict abortion counselling despite Nadine Dorries vote
» Would raising the tax threshold actually help the poorest?
» To win London, Ken Livingstone has to step outside his comfort zone
» This trade agreement with India will destroy thousands of lives
» UK debt hasn’t hit £1 trillion – mostly because of QE
» The benefits of being a “burden” on society
» Today’s economic figures will simply confirm UK’s “lost decade”
» Have Labour realised the election is more than three years away?
» Violence in the office
» Want a more responsible capitalism? Reform how pensions work
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