Taking from the poor and giving to the rich
Here are three stories which are more closely related than they seem. First:
Workers judged to be lonely and to have a chaotic home life could be barred from working with vulnerable people, even though there is no evidence that they pose a risk, according to guidelines from the Government's new vetting agency…
If a teaching assistant was believed to be "unable to sustain emotionally intimate relationships" and also had a "chaotic, unstable lifestyle" they could be barred from ever working with children.
If a nurse was judged to suffer from "severe emotional loneliness" and believed to have "poor coping skills" their career could also be ended.
People who inform on benefit cheats could be given a share of the resulting savings to the state under proposals being examined by Labour’s manifesto team.
Shares in state-owned banks would be offered to voters at a discount as part of a Tory effort to encourage young people and those on modest incomes to invest, George Osborne has announced.
The shadow chancellor said his "people's bank bonus" would reward taxpayers for the £850 billion ploughed by the Government into propping up crisis-hit financial institutions.
The common theme here is that these stories show that the state is not a rational force for justice, but rather a means of bullying the vulnerable whilst handing cash over to its favourites.
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An opening for the controversial Geert Wilders?
[Article was wrongly attributed initially. The correct author now listed.]
The Dutch government collapsed early on Saturday morning, with the Dutch Labour party leaving the coalition over a disagreement with Christian Democrat Prime Minister Balkenende’s proposal to extend the country’s military commitment in Afghanistan, beyond the coalition’s earlier agreement to withdraw by the summer with all Dutch troops leaving Afghanistan by the end of the year.
The 16 hour long Cabinet meeting had led Labour leader and deputy PM Wouter Bos had pulled out of Friday’s progressive governance conference in London, at which British PM Gordon Brown was joined by centre-left premiers and party leaders from around Europe.
Labour’s withdrawal from the Cabinet leave the government without a majority coalition, and will lead to new elections within three months. The parties face local elections on March 3rd. Dutch public opinion backs the Labour stance on withdrawal, though is equally divided over whether the issue ought to end the government.
The Netherlands has had the most volatile politics in western Europe in the last decade.
Geert Wilders’ populist anti-immigration Freedom Party (PVV) hopes to make significant gains, having won 9 seats as the fifth largest party in the last elections in 2006.
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Watch: Wired mag going mad for the Apple iPad
Is this the future of media?
Wired magazine, which also publishes in the UK, have published this video illustrating how they would distribute their magazine over different formats – especially the Apple iPad.
Really though? Are they going to spend all that time and money to prepare each magazine for the iPad? Can’t see it happening, can you?
Not unless they charge £10 per edition.
What happened to Brown’s Gold?
In 1999 Brown as Chancellor of the Exchequer sold 400 tons of gold at the bottom of a 20 year slump in the gold market. He sold at $275 an ounce and could get closer to $700 now.
Conservative Home’s Left Watch argue that, by being patient and waiting for the price of gold to more or less triple, the French have made 50% more than Gordon Brown on gold sales having only to sell half as much.
Tim Montgomerie asks “Is there a more powerful example of Brown’s incompetence?”
When it comes to the matter of how the Gold was sold I think that is fair comment, it really does seem that Brown didn’t know how to best sell gold – and more damningly – didn’t try to find out the best way either.
By announcing the sale in advance it is reckoned that he depressed the market by around 10%. Record numbers of investors took up “short” positions on Gold in anticipation of the sale.
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Watch: Maddow at crazy conservatives conference
Over in the US, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow attends the annual Conservative Political Action Conference (CPAC).
This is the face of the US mainstream conservatives. Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Watch
BBC white-washes Geoffrey Howe’s record on unemployment
And I thought Nicholas Winterton was out of touch with ordinary working people!
Never fear, Nick, the BBC’s outdone you. Here’s BBC News (from 6 mins 45 secs in) commenting on Geoffrey Howe’s approach to post-recession fiscal management in 1981:
Then he planned to tighten the budget even as the country was coming out of recession.
And this was the reaction: a letter from the Times from 364 economists arguing he was doing the wrong thing. The eminent list of academics included Professor King, now Governor of the Bank of England.
History proved Geoffrey Howe to be more right than they were.
You fucking what? Try telling that to people who needed a job in the 1980s.
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Pro-Apartheid group paid Cam to go S. Africa
In his younger days, David Cameron was paid by a shadowy pro-Apartheid lobby group to go to South Africa.
This nugget is revealed by Johann Hari in a piece for the Independent yesterday.
In his mid-twenties Cameron went on a week long “jolly” to white supremacist South Africa, breaking sanctions against the regime, paid for by a shadowy pro-Aparthied lobbying group.
But he says he regrets that and the party now abhors racism.
via Claude at Hagley Road to Ladywood.
Cameron has been urged to apologise for the trip but has yet refused to do so.
However he did admit the Conservatives were wrong to oppose sanctions against the apartheid regime and repudiated Margaret Thatcher’s description of Mandela’s African National Congress as “terrorists”.
Irish Unity conference shows why it’s good to talk
Gerry Adams, Martin McGuinness and Ken Livingstone will be among the key speakers at TUC Congress House on Saturday, where Sinn Féin is organising a conference on Irish unity.
Both Adams and Livingstone have alluded to the roots of the event in the dialogue which began back in 1982, shortly after Sinn Féin won its first seats in that year’s Assembly elections.
As GLC leader, Livingstone invited the party’s leaders to London only for them to be banned by Home Secretary Willie Whitelaw under the Prevention of Terrorism Act.
That invitation has played a central role in the right’s charge sheet against Livingstone ever since, but it is often forgotten that on his subsequent visit to Belfast in February 1983, he told republicans that “every time a bomb goes off in London or innocent civilians are killed in Northern Ireland it visibly puts back the cause of a united Ireland.”
The contacts established then went on to play a significant role in the peace process, with Livingstone acting as a key intermediary between Sinn Fein and Mo Mowlam in the mid-1990s.
The debates about Ireland in the 1980s raised issues that have resonated in more recent conflicts.
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Bankers stay in UK despite threats by City, Tories
Well that came as a complete surprise. Despite threats by City bankers and senior Tories such as London’s occasional Mayor Boris Johnson and shadow chancellor George Osborne – they have stayed put.
Boris Johnson in particular railed against the tax on bankers bonuses and the 50% tax rate. He warned that that over 9,000 bankers could move to other countries in Europe, such as Switzerland, that were friendlier to bankers.
However, a report by Channel 4 finds that just 1,079 British citizens migrated to Switzerland to work in the financial services industry in 2009. Of those, approximately two thirds work in IT and related disciplines.
Watch
The report adds: “But a fall of seven per cent is in line with the drop in bankers from around the world moving to Switzerland: 7.7 per cent. And the fact that the trend is downwards shows that tax increases have not yet triggered anything resembling mass exodus.”
A fund manager called it “posturing”.
Wonder what Boris will say now.
In defence of the SWP
contribution by Richard Seymour
Last Saturday, I had the unusual experience of sharing a room with Ken Livingstone, Margaret Hodge MP, Weyman Bennett, Martin Smith, Dawn Butler MP, student union organisers, and a spate of union leaders. The occasion was the annual conference of Unite Against Fascism.
By Wednesday, I was reading Laurie Penny’s outburst, in her brief pay-off to the recent split within the Socialist Workers’ Party, that: “The SWP has been at the forefront of every attempt to scupper cohesion on the left over the past decade.”
If you haven’t noticed the incongruity as yet, allow me to explain. Unite Against Fascism is a broad coalition against fascism that is a remarkably successful example of “cohesion on the left”. Far from scuppering this enterprise, the SWP is involved in running it, promoting it, and campaigning for it.
Joint Secretary Weyman Bennett is just one of many SWP members who have burned rubber to make this coalition work. A number of speakers at last week’s conference, Margaret Hodge included, paid tribute to him. If this were an anomaly, I could perhaps understand Penny’s argument. But it is not.
continue reading… »
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