Tory MEP wastes tax money on denial ads
The Conservative MEP Roger Helmer is a well known global warming denier. He is also a critic of spending any taxpayer money that educates people about the issue.
He recently unveiled this poster campaign:
The billboards can be viewed by the citizens of Derby, Leicester, Northampton, Lincoln and Nottingham – in Helmer’s East Midlands constituency.
So where did the money for the £9000 billboard campaign come from?
The Guardian’s Leo Hickman did some digging:
I’m told that the “information fund” of the European Conservative and Reformist Group, of which all the Conservative MEPs are members, has covered the costs.
Indeed, each poster carries the ECR logo, as the rules of the funding allocation demands. Another call to the ECR’s office in Brussels confirms that the group – as is the case with all seven of the EU parliament’s political groups – is entirely funded by the parliament.
…
So, what we appear to have is a Conservative MEP who, as a TaxPayers’ Alliance supporter, likes nothing more than complaining about how the EU loves wasting taxpayers money, using just such a source of funding to buy prime advertising space to promote his own pet beliefs and theories.
What a hypocrite.
Roger Helmer has previously been in the news for claiming that homophobia is a “propaganda device”.
He has also hosted conferences denying global warming, which headlined speakers who were paid to deny the effects of passive smoking.
More light finally shed on the allegations against Julian Assange
With the beginning of the extradition proceedings against Julian Assange, we finally get to see exactly what the allegations against him are.
Gemma Lindfield, for the Swedish authorities, told the court Assange was wanted in connection with four allegations.
1. Miss A said she was victim of “unlawful coercion” on the night of 14 August in Stockholm. The court heard Assange is accused of using his body weight to hold her down in a sexual manner.
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UKuncut mark Dec 18 as next protest ‘Pay Day’
UK Uncut have today announced that the next massive day of national action by ‘Big Society Revenue and Customs’ (BSRC) against wealthy tax avoiders will be held on Saturday 18th December.
Sir Philip Green and Vodafone are likely to remain the focus of the growing public anger against tax avoidance by multi-national corporations and extremely wealthy individuals, that is estimated to cost the public purse £25billion every single year.
Both have been shaken up by the protests so far, but on December 18th they will face protests on a scale they could not have imagined just a few months ago.
This announcement comes just a few days after 23 protests were held on high streets across the country.
On Oxford Street, Topshop’s flagship store was forced to shut-down. In Brighton protestors super-glued themselves to the window display of Topshop, closing it for the day.
Daniel Garvin, 26, says
Philip Green is a multi-billionaire tax avoider, and yet is regarded by David Cameron as an appropriate man to advise the government on austerity. His missing millions need to be reclaimed and invested into public services, not into his wife’s bank account.
Rebecca Davies, 32, says:
The cuts will hit the poorest and most vulnerable in our society the hardest are based on ideology, not necessity. There is an alternative.Over four years, the £100bn lost through rich tax avoidance could more than pay for the planned £82bn worth of public service and welfare cuts.
The protests were sparked after Vodafone reached a ‘settlement’ on a long standing tax dispute with HMRC earlier this year, following the change in government. Some experts believe the deal meant that Vodafone saved up to £6bn in tax.
Oxbridge isn’t racist – but it’s failing the working class
Newspapers are frustrating. They often report stories that are genuinely interesting and worth investigating in a way that’s so misleading and confusing that the real point gets totally lost amid extremist rhetoric.
The Guardian’s reporting of David Lammy’s data on ethnic minority admissions of domestic Oxbridge undergraduates is a good example: some of the underlying data is good, but many of the factoids are wrong or misleading.
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Labour Yes! campaign unites party on vote reform
The Guardian reports Labour leader Ed Miliband’s support for the launch of a Labour Yes! group which will campaign for Labour voters to vote Yes in the referendum on the Alternative Vote.
This confirms the party leader’s commitment, in his first conference speech as leader, to supporting a change in the voting system.
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WikiLeaks is More Than Assange
As was debated a few days ago at Liberal Conspiracy, it is very difficult to know what to think about the Swedish allegations against Julian Assange. In such situations one can only hope that the evidence against him is presented in a timely fashion. Then he can be either charged and tried, or released, as the available facts dictate. We will know what to think in due course, there is no need to pre-empt a due process which so far seems to be progressing as it should.
But let us assert one thing right now: the personal exploits of Julian Assange tell us nothing about the morality of the Wikileaks project and it’s recent #Cablegate actions.
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Not getting the point on violence against women: a report from Bristol
contribution by Sian Norris
A few weeks ago, the UN International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women and Girls, was celebrated by Bristol City Council with an exhibition of art and writing.
Events turned sour however when the head of the council, Barbara Janke, questioned why the art on display was only by women, before arguing the UN day ignored male survivors. And now she’s attacking us through local media.
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SABmiller: world’s second largest brewer is dodging millions in poorer countries
contribution by Sarah Palmer
With Vodafone, Boots, and Topshop already in the UKUncut firing line over tax avoidance, this week ActionAid has exposed how SABMiller, the owner of Grolsch and Peroni beer, is siphoning millions out of developing countries.
For the last year, we’ve been working with former tax inspector Richard Brooks (also behind the Vodafone expose) to show exactly how SABMiller is using tax havens to avoid its taxes in South Africa, Mozambique, Tanzania, Zambia and India.
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Campaign launched to release Briton from Iraq
The wife of a British man held without charge in Iraq for a year is calling on the UK government to step up its efforts to secure the release of her husband.
Ramze Shihab Ahmed, a 68-year-old dual Iraqi-UK national who has lived in the UK since 2002, was arrested by security officials in a relative’s house in the city of Mosul on 7 December 2009.
Ramze Shihab Ahmed, who had travelled to Iraq to try to secure the release of his detained son ‘Omar, was first held in total secrecy for nearly four months before being able to phone his wife in London. He has told his wife of how he was tortured – including with electric shocks to his genitals and suffocation by plastic bags.
Amnesty International has launched a campaign calling for Ramze Shihab Ahmed to be released unless he is charged with a recognisable criminal offence and fairly tried, as well as insisting that the alleged torture is fully investigated.
Ramze Shihab Ahmed’s wife, Rabiha al-Qassab, a 63-year-old former teaching assistant who lives in north-west London, said:
I can hardly believe that a whole year has gone by with my husband in jail like this. It’s disgraceful what they’re doing to him. He doesn’t even know what he’s accused of.
An Iraqi judge recently visited my husband and assured him that the ‘confession’ that the interrogators tortured out of him will be disregarded and that they’ll re-investigate the case. This is better news but I want to see the Iraqis say either we’re charging him or – much more likely – we’re going to release him.
After his arrest last December Ramze Shihab Ahmed was held in a secret prison at the old Muthanna airport in Baghdad, before being relocated to Baghdad’s al-Rusafa Prison where he is still held.
He has been interrogated about alleged links to al-Qa’ida and reportedly forced to make a false confession following torture and while blindfolded.
In September Amnesty published a report showing that an estimated 30,000 detainees were held without trial in Iraq, many of whom had recently been transferred from US custody.
Is The Times ‘helping terrorists’ to attack WikiLeaks?
Yesterday The Times newspaper, and today the BBC, are going big on the news that WikiLeaks published a list of ‘sensitive installation sites’. Apparently it was a step too far.
But let’s be clear on what happened here.
WikiLeaks is slowly releasing information to specific media outlets with the proviso they coordinate the publication of that information. A lot of the material has not been released yet (incl the bits on UFOs).
continue reading… »
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