The TUC supports UKuncut’s campaign against tax avoidance
contribution by Brendan Barber
UKuncut protesters are right to be angry at the scale of tax avoidance in the UK. The TUC has long been campaigning to expose the amount of tax that is dodged by big companies and the super-rich.
There is a whole industry of socially-useless advisers who come up with new perfectly legal ways of avoiding the tax that Parliament intended wealthy people and organisations to pay.
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UKIP celebrate Cameron ditching Oldham fight
Several Conservatives have expressed alarm over suggestions that David Cameron is willing to let Libdems win the Oldham by-election.
ConHome’s Jonathan Isaby asked the question last week:
But I am detecting increasing concerns from various quarters that the party machine is not putting its all behind Kashif Ali’s campaign to win the seat in which he was less than 2,500 votes behind the winning candidate in May.
Many of those I have spoken to fear that CCHQ has decided not to fight Oldham East and Saddleworth seriously in order to maximise the chances of the (second-placed) Lib Dems gaining the seat from Labour.
This was followed up by James Kirkup at the Telegraph:
Some Tories worry that their leaders, all wrapped up in their warm, snuggly coalition-blanket, don’t want to give the Lib Dems a kicking and actually try to win the thing for the Conservatives. David Cameron’s words in Brussels just now will fuel those worries.
But Conservative-Libdem plans could come seriously unstuck if the agreement ends up helping UKIP.
That is certainly how many within UKIP are taking it:
Cameron Surrendering Oldham To Lib Dems Is UKIP’s Opportunity
David Cameron saying he wishes the Lib Dims luck in the coming Oldham byelection will be music to the electoral ears of one candidate. If the Conservatives don’t want the seat, don’t worry. UKIP do.Voting for UKIP candidate Paul Nuttall must be the best possible way to kick cameron and clegg’s arrogant little arses.
If UKIP mobilise their vote and successfully convince enough Tory voters their party doesn’t want their vote, both the Conservatives and Libdems could be in for a shock.
A new report shows why ‘the Big Society’ won’t really work
A major new survey shows that the recession has increased the demand for charities’ services at the same time as the cuts and the increase in VAT will make it harder for charities to provide those services.
The survey found that:
not only will the sector be hit by departmental spending cuts, but also by decreases in other sources of income. This is largely due to market forces and decreases in the general public’s disposable income. We expect that the cuts, particularly those to welfare, will increase demand for services, causing further pressure for charities to meet beneficiaries’ needs.
Apparently, celebrities should ‘stay stupid’
Nothing seems to irk the country’s hacks more than a celebrity expressing a political opinion.
We binge on hundreds of celebrities, some more worthless than others, while we laugh at their imperfections, dimpled thighs and sweaty armpits as sported by Heat, the Sun or the Daily Mail.
We love to remark on how thick, shallow and uneducated they are. We sneered at Jade Goody’s “pig ignorance“, laughed at Paris Hilton’s dumb quotes and we frowned at how detached from the real world the superrich and the superfamous are.
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UKuncut winning the ‘propaganda war’
The biggest day of protest against Tax Avoidance yet, yesterday’s “Payday” is once again all over the press.
Though there were some TV cameras around, broadcasters generally gave the protests a miss yesterday, instead focusing on ensuring their correspondents were caught somewhere in heavy snow to report on the weather.
Press coverage
The Observer today:
Protesters against corporate tax avoidance carried out their biggest day of action to date by targeting businesses in 55 towns and cities across the UK.
In Brighton, activists dressed as Santa Claus glued themselves to structures inside department store BHS to prevent themselves from being ejected. Protesters in London mounting a “disruptive tax dodger tour” claimed to have shut fashion chains Dorothy Perkins and Burton, both owned by Sir Philip Green’s Arcadia Group.
The Observer has another piece titled:
Big business goes on the defensive as tax protesters win the propaganda war
Sir Philip was yesterday on holiday in Barbados, where he was pictured enjoying the Caribbean sea with his daughter Chloe, 19, apparently unconcerned about the protests in Britain.
The family are spending Christmas and New Year at a £16,000-a-night villa at the exclusive Sandy Lane Hotel.
Arcadia is owned by Sir Philip’s wife Tina, who is resident in the tax haven of Monaco rather than the UK. In 2005 she was paid a £1.2 billion bonus, equivalent to £3.3 million a day.
It’s obvious where their sympathies lie too.
The group, which organises using social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, is protesting against the government’s public sector cuts and what it says are widespread tax avoidance schemes by corporations and the wealthy that cost the exchequer up to £25bn per year.
Plus, the Daily Telegraph, Metro.co.uk and The BBC yesterday. A feature in Al-Jazeera too
A nice intro in The Independent yesterday too:
Its methods are unorthodox, ranging from targeted use of superglue to hijacking Twitter-based PR campaigns, and its rapidly growing support base spanning schoolchildren and pensioners has no official leadership.
But one thing about UK Uncut is certain: it is fast becoming one of Britain’s most effective and unpredictable protest movements.
As the chant went yesterday: “We are everywhere.”
A video from how the Topshop action in London unfolded
More videos: from Brighton (really well made) from Manchester and from Newcastle.
It makes no sense to expect this Coalition will fall soon
Amidst all the growing energy around direct action on the left, there is an oft-repeated claim that if we keep this up the Coalition will fall by next year.
This is highly unlikely for several reasons, a key one being that nothing as divisive as tuition fees will come up any time soon.
But there’s another major reason: Cameron really wants it and Nick Clegg has no incentive to escape it; together they will do anything to keep it going.
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“Lost” hacking emails under investigation
The privacy watchdog, the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO), has launched an investigation into claims that vital emails between senior executives and journalists on the News of the World have been “lost” while being transported to India, The Independent on Sunday can reveal.
Experts fear the missing emails – on computer hard disk drives that have reportedly vanished – could have major implications for the multiple investigations into claims the newspaper was involved in widespread hacking into the phone messages of targets from the worlds of politics, royalty and entertainment.
The investigation will add to mounting pressure on Andy Coulson, press secretary to the Prime Minister, David Cameron, and a former editor of the News of the World. Coulson, who denies any knowledge of the hacking, resigned from his post after Clive Goodman, the paper’s former royal correspondent, was convicted of hacking the phones of Prince William’s aides.
The latest investigation comes just days after lawyers acting for the actress Sienna Miller lodged a document at the High Court in London, saying they had found new evidence that would justify bringing prosecutions against other journalists from the Rupert Murdoch-owned paper.
The kettle
contribution by Heathcote Ruthven
I am going to buy two Hamsters. One will be called Kettle, and the other will be called Kettle. They’ll be opposite sexes and I’ll make them have babies. When the mother gives birth, her babies will all be called Kettle. Then I’ll cut the food source, watching while the parents eat their babies and they all starve to death.
A neologism coined by the international policing community will soon become a way of life. Our freedom of expression, if expressed in too large a unison, will now be contained in a common domestic metaphor. One that, in the collective memory of this country, is most palpably associated with what is known as ‘Builders’ Tea’ or even, among the younger generations, ‘Instant Coffee’.
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Follow the #UKuncut protests today – live
Direct action is today taking place across the country to highlight tax avoidance, organised by the activists at UKuncut.
Follow the live updates on Twitter from here.
The major London actions begin exactly at 1:04pm. One will target Vodafone, the other Topshop.
Brighton lot met at 12pm. Liverpool crew meet at 12:30pm to set off for their action.
Why BBC chief’s call for our own Fox News is a terrible idea
contribution by Emily Davis
Mark Thompson is reported today as making a call for an equivalent to Fox News in Britain. Seriously, WTF?!
Apparently he doesn’t think that it would “necessarily mean you get the dire consequences that some people see in America”? What in heaven would be any different, then?
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