The acute observer may have noted that, whenever the scandal of multi-millionaire non-dom top party donor Lord Ashcroft is brought up, the Tories’ default reaction is “yeah but the Unions too, they bankroll Labour”.

Let’s leave aside the long list of differences (technical, fiscal, substantial, ethical, practical, etc) between the two types of “donations”. Let’s leave aside “solemn and binding” promises.

The best way to gauge weight and influence as carried by Lord Ashcroft vs the Unions is to check the relationship between donors and political parties.

Not a single senior Tory has publicly said a bad thing against the Belize-based tycoon. They said a lot of things, but nothing bad. And how could they, given that the Baron has pumped around £5m into Tory coffers?
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The rising number of repossessions is the forgotten issue of the pre-election campaign.

In a different world, this incredibly insightful piece of research by the housing and homelessness charity Shelter would be front page news.

Referring to 1971 as a starting date, Shelter discovered that if food and other essential items had gone up as fast as the average property price, a box of washing powder would now cost £28-53, a jar of coffee over £20 and a pint of milk £2-43. continue reading… »

How a group of laid off workers took over an uninhabited island and began their protest.

When so-called “reality TV” programmes started mushrooming up one after the other, many commented on the fact that the only “real” thing about them was in the name.

And yet, as they quickly saturated television, their artificial, dumb and repetitive formula will probably be judged by history as the Noughties’ worst cultural legacy.

Back in 2005, we wrote that a Temping Idol or Casual Employee Academy would have been a good antidote to the binge of televisual fakery that goes by the name of “reality”.

Now, a dramatic story is actually underway and it’s no fake.

A group of workers barricaded themselves on Asinara, a small island off the northern coast of Sardinia. For decades, and until 1997, the island was used as a maximum security prison, and its only inhabitants were prisoners and warders.

After being collectively laid off four months ago, on February 24, a group of workers from a chemical company called ENI landed at Asinara and set camp at the old prison.

This is when their L’isola dei Cassintegrati, “Redundancy Island”, started. Though there are no celebrity and no television crews, the workers are hoping to direct collective focus towards their plight.

Their families help them set up a Facebook group which has already gained over 14,000 supporters. It reads:

“Redundancy Island is a ‘real’ reality, unfortunately, where no-one is famous but everyone is jobless. Hidden away on an island which is the symbol of what a once Great Sardinia which is now in the throes of a deep crisis, we are dwelling in cells which are no worse than the prison bars that the national government, the regional one and ENI presented us with.

There are no yachts, billionaires or showgirls on this island, just the crude reality of unaccountable politics and a state-controlled company – ENI – pursuing its business goals as they trample on hundreds of families. Not least, a group of brave workers fighting for their rights”.

Since redundancy notices were served in November, the workers have had to make do with a single 800 Euro payout.

“It’s embarrassing that we have to mimick Celebrity Island to remind people of what’s going on in both Italy and Sardinia”, said one of the protesters to Italian daily la Repubblica.

Youth unemployment data across the EU suggest that countries with more developed apprenticeship policies have minimised the worst effects of the downturn.

In Britain, 17.9% of those below the age of 25 are unemployed. True, some countries are faring even worse. The percentage is 21.5 per cent in Ireland while, in Spain, the jobless amount amongst the young has now reached a staggering 42.6 per cent.

Countries like Denmark and Germany, however, show a different picture – with the unemployment rate amongst the under-25s standing at 8.9 and 10.5 respectively.

Of course, there is no obvious reason for this disparity. However, Germany has long been known as a country placing apprenticeships at the core of its education system.

The German system is a model for youth work contracts. It is called ‘the dual system’. Once completed compulsory education, either at 16 or 19, a worker can start an apprenticeship at a company which can last between 2 and 3 and 1/2 years. During this period, for two days a week, the apprentice will have to learn the theoretical background at a vocational school known as Berufsschule.

The precise skills and theory taught on German apprenticeships are strictly regulated. The employer is responsible for the entire education programme.

There are aroud 350 trades to choose from: anything from accountant to builder or from medical worker to baker.

About two thirds of young people who finish school decide to begin an apprenticeship every year.

The fact that the contract is really an ‘apprenticeship’ doesn’t mean that the worker has no rights. Unlike other countries such as Italy, contracts designed to help the young are not misused to maximise profits out of unprotected workers. The company is required to pick up the social security costs as well as unemployment insurance and pension entitlements.

What varies is the salary. For instance, an apprentice metal worker in the Baden-Wurtemberg region will earn around 810 Euros a month during his first year, €861 in his second, €937 in the third and €988 in his fourth. His counterpart in Berlin will probably take home €100 less each month.

This can partly explain why there is a lower percentage of university students in Germany when compared to other Western countries, but there is a much lower percentage of people entering the German labour market with no qualifications. This seems to have protected, at least partially, German workers and job seekers from the worst effects of the downturn.

Britain, instead was hit on two fronts.

One one side, the 1980s and 1990s saw a sharp decrease in the number of apprenticeships which was only reversed through increased investment since 1997. The number of learners of all ages starting on the Apprenticeships programme has more than doubled from around 75,000 to around 180,000 today.

On the other side, the Labour government was guilty of placing unrealistic expectations on the University system. You may remember the old Blairite obsession with having 50% of people in Higher Education by 2010. It was never going to be economically sustainable, which is why the Government is now -very shyly- trying to support graduate internship positions.

At the moment, it’s not going very well. Out of 725,000 unemployed 18-24 Britons, there are 3,400 graduate internship positions, only 47% of which are paid.

Calls in favour of reducing the cost of running the BBC by 25% haven’t gone down well. Facebook campaigns are being set up and accusations are being flung that the cuts are “politically motivated” to butter up the Tories.

In short, the sceptics argue that weakening the BBC will be a gift to its private competitors and a blow to public services on both radio and television.

I am totally in favour of the BBC. I think a competitive state-owned TV is sacrosanct and whoever thinks the BBC should be dismantled and/or privatised is purely driven by rampant ideology.

However, the current cost of a TV licence is £142.50. In 2000, it was just £104. In ten years, an increase of around 36% – without anyone asking licence payers if they agreed with the way the corporation expanded.
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Following previous rows about the Prime Minister’s favourite biscuits, as well as speculation over his use of anti-depressants, the state of his eye sight and his chewed fingernails, Gordon Brown has now been accused of using his breath to intimidate staff.

It all started when senior Observer columnist Andrew Rawnsley, anxious to plug his new book The End of The Party, quoted a number of staff at No.10 Downing Street accusing the Prime Minister of making their life a misery with his pongy mouth.

This ignited a political battle over whether Gordon Brown suffers from halitosis or whether this is simply a Tory conspiracy aimed at discrediting the Prime Minister as recent opinion polls indicate Labour is making up some lost ground.

According to one of Rawnsley’s sources: “the air in our Downing Street office is really unpleasant. Each time the PM opens his gob we recoil in horror. It’s like being hit in the face by a rotten onion”. “Needless to say”, the source adds, “the whole thing’s ruining our lives. We dread coming into work”.
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Rumour has it that the Department of Health is considering mandatory health warnings on all alcoholic drinks in the style of tobacco products.

I don’t know about you but I’ve never met anyone -not a single person – who’s ever quit smoking after reading health signs on packets of fags. Like, NOT ONE.

Introduced in the early nineties, warnings such as “Smoking kills”, “you’re gonna die” and “What a piece of shit you are for smoking” were made to cover at least 30% of a cigarette pack in 2003 – presumably a measure for the inattentive. Most recently, “picture warnings” have also been introduced, along with measures to “hide cigarettes under the counter”.

But with alcohol the contradictions will just be comedy material.

Here’s a government that makes a substance available 24/7, practically everywhere, but then goes apeshit that those bottles and cans don’t carry a clear enough warning that the same substance is bad for you.
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Do you remember when last year Iraq war zealot and Tony Blair fan David Aaronovitch wrote of the “pointlessness” of accusing Israel of disproportionate force in Gaza?

“Pointless outrage”, he called it, as he wrote in the Times that “Israel takes care with its targeting, [the Palestinians] don’t”.

Like he still does over Iraq, Aaronovitch was oozing confidence that yet another war was “morally just”.

Around that time, Amnesty International and other observers obtained evidence that Israel had used white phosphorous -reports also substantiated by Aaronovitch’s own paper, the Times. All “pointless” stuff, of course.

And yet the UN too, with the Goldstone report, accused the IDFS of using “disproportionate force”, a claim that was immediately rejected by the Israeli government as “flawed from A to Z”, “biased” and “ludicrous”, along with allegations that white phosphorous had been used.

One year later and the tune has changed. The Israeli government published its report to the UN, admitting -crucially- that “[S]everal artillery shells were fired in violation of the rules of engagement prohibiting use of such artillery near populated areas”. In particular, the report refers to a UN compound sheltering 700 civilians that was set ablaze by white phosphorus shells.

Which, I guess, goes to show the “pointlessness” of overpaid commentators a-la Aaronovitch.

Tony Blair’s appearance at the Chilcot inquiry reminded us of the guy’s exceptionally slippery eel-like qualities.

Also, like Andrew Rawnsley remarked in Sunday’s Observer, the former PM’s job was made a lot easier by the “feeble” nature of the panel:

“Time and again, they approached an interesting subject area, stumbled around like people in the dark trying to find the light switch and then abandoned the quest without leaving themselves or anyone watching much the wiser about the most divisive war in the last century of our history”.

I don’t normally agree with Peter Hitchens, but he nailed it right on the head when he wrote:

“Mr Blair, questioned in a feeble and disorganised way, talked himself out of trouble by answering questions he hadn’t been asked and not answering the ones he was asked. His interrogators mostly didn’t notice this simple trick, which dishonest people instinctively use”.

All we learnt is that, after years of reasons for going to war mutating faster than the Sars virus (in succession, WMDs, violation of UN resolutions, Al Quaeda, human rights and ‘regime change’), we are now told that 9/11 was what really did it.

The former PM said: “The crucial thing after 9/11 is that the calculus of risk changed… After September 11, if you were a regime engaged in WMD (weapons of mass destruction), you had to stop.”

Yet, even if you agreed with this line of thought, it would only make sense if they’d held accountable each and every regime that was suspected of engaging in WMDs. You do it only with one and it’s like trying to contain a bursting dam with a brolly.

And, in any case, hadn’t the slippery christian said in the infamous Fern Britton interview that he’d have gone to war anyway regardless of WMDs?

Not to mention that no-one raised the simple straightforward objection that Iraq had jack to do with 9/11. If anything, a number of countries were far higher in the list of potential involvement. The hijiackers, for instance, were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the United Arab Emirates. No evidence whatsoever existed of any link between Iraq and Al Quaeda.

The panel also failed when Blair was asked why he had insisted on a second UN resolution if he now thinks that the first one was enough to legally justify the war. They allowed him to slip out of that contradiction without further prodding.

Fair enough suspicion. Fair enough emotions running high. Fair enough the desire to appear tough before so-called rogue states. But can you raise raze an entire country to the ground purely on that basis – in the 21st century? Can you be so geo-politically inept and blind to the extra oil you’re going to pour on the flames? Can you play with so many people’s lives just like that, when the motivations are so hit and miss?

It has been years now that Tony Blair has been getting away with lame justifications such as “God will be my judge on Iraq“, “I did what I thought was right for the country“, or ” I believed in it. I believed in it then, I believe in it now“.

But you ask any prime minister, president, führer or member of a junta and they’d probably say, through history, that they too believed in what they thought was right. And that is just shit.

Yesterday it emerged that a former city worker living in a £500,000 home in East Sussex may have killed her own two children aged 2 and 3. They were found locked in the back of her Nissan and the post-mortem said they asphyxiated.

But the main point is this. According to the Daily Mail, Mrs Donnison and her husband had just split up. In fact, “the couple’s marriage had been falling apart for a long time”, adding extra strains on the woman.

No doubt if Iain Duncan Smith’s tax break for married couples had been already in place the two would still be together. Under the Tories’ proposals, with children under 3 the Donnisons would have been entitled to a tax allowance.

And surely an extra twenty or thirty quid extra a month would have helped them patch their differences and nipped family arguments in the bud.

Yesterday I wrote about a similarly disturbing case.
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“A bitter taste in Bournville” and “Cadbury: Not such a sweet deal“, said the Guardian. “Why takeover bids rarely work“, warned Jeremy Warner in the Telegraph. “Kraft takeover jobs bloodbath” and “High price for handing UK PLC to foreigners” were the headlines in the Daily Mail, while the Independent noted that “Bournville laments saddest day for 10 years“.

Yesterday’s papers couldn’t agree more. In essence, the widespread opinion across the spectrum was that another British institution is going, that the usual City “short-termists” are making a mint off the back of a local community, that the economic long-term interests of the country are being ignored and that Britain’s surrendering to one too many foreign takeovers.

But scratch beneath the condemnation for Cadbury boss Roger Karr’s own admission that job losses were an “inevitability“, the CEO’s £12m payout, or the simple fact that the buyers Kraft are a company ridden with something like £22 billion of debt, and few grasp the fundamental reasons behind the potential loss of Cadbury.

For instance the fact that the industrial policy of the past thirty years has been coherently and systematically biased towards the professional short-termism that turned London into the Mecca of City spivvery. And that’s under the active complicity of both Tories and Labour.
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Six months ago Britain’s tabloids were tolling the bell of a looming Armageddon.

The Daily Mail headlines ranged from IS SWINE FLU ALREADY HERE?; and SWINE FLU: IT’S GETTING SERIOUS, to SWINE FLU NOW THE BATTLE TO CONTAIN IT, and KILLER FLU IS HERE.

And that’s without counting the paper’s first page warnings that “65,000 could die [and] one in three could get infected”, printed in the 7 July 2009 edition.

So you will excuse us if we laughed out loud this morning when the same paper published what is already on course as the most ridiculous article of 2010, a faux-outraged piece by Christopher Booker that states: After this awful fiasco over swine flu, we should never believe the State scare machine again!
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Last week the Southern Italian region of Calabria (’the toe of the boot’) became the theatre of a depressing anti-immigrant witchhunt eerily reminiscent of last century’s Ku Klux Klan violence in the US.

First off, the background. Like in most of Europe, fruit-picking is carried out by immigrants, except that in the South of Italy, those are largely underpaid and illegal – under the ruthless watch of the local mafia (n’drangheta), one of the most powerful groups of organised crime in the country.

Reports suggest that up to twenty thousand illegal immigrants in the region are paid £20 for a 12 or 14-hour working day minus a £5 ‘fee’ handed to their gangmasters for transport and “protection”.

They live in appalling conditions, amassed in rat-infested warehouses with no light and poor sanitation and with nothing to do but work and sleep – effectively becoming profit fodder for the n’drangheta. Every morning they are rounded up together, packed into rusty trucks and driven to orange or olive groves.

Last month, a report by Italian daily la Repubblica highlighted a ticking bomb, comparing the migrants’ living conditions to concentration camps. “About seven hundred of them live jam-packed into a derelict paper mill”, wrote reporter Carlo Ciavoni.
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George Carey, Archbisop of Canterbury until 2002, has written in today’s Times< , in which he just stops short of calling for Christians to be given priority in a migration point system.

The article echoes what he already said yesterday on BBC Radio 4’s Today programme.

The former Archbishop and current member of the Balanced Migration Group followed a template that we’ve recently seen far too often from the usual suspects: a) if you talk about immigration you are branded a racist b) if you want to stop the BNP from growing you need to “seriously address the concerns” c) Britain is a Christian country.

To which the answers are:
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Something doesn’t quite add up over the security panic that followed last week’s failed terror attempt to blow up a transatlantic airliner.

Britain has joined the US and other countries in toughening up checks at airports. Full body scanners, hand luggage checks and no toilet access an hour before landing are amongst some of the measures introduced to tame the new wave of psychosis that is hitting the western world.

Now. Let’s say that your house was broken into once and, hypothetically, you decided to take extra security measures to protect it. Iron bars on the bedroom window, armoured glass fitted with welded steel hinges, a special 24/7 CCTV guarding the room and a 10st stainless steel padlock to round it all off, are all concrete measures that would set your mind at rest.

However, with the initial excitement out of the way comes the realisation that all of the above may just be an expensively futile exercise. The bedroom may be safer than a fortress, but front door, living room, kitchen and all other entry points are as vulnerable as they were before.
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We are desensitised to the idea of being ruled by Eton and Oxbridge elites. But would it be the same if Britain was like this instead?

There’s been some debate recently over the fact that the Mayor of London, the Chancellor of the Exchequer and the Prime Minister all went to Bournville School, Birmingham and that almost the entire Cabinet did their university studies in Birmingham too.

When we turned the question to the public, we registered overwhelming resentment. The idea of being ruled by an unrepresentative lot, both geographically, socially and culturally doesn’t seem to be perceived as either popular or fair.

“It’s absurd that all our leading figures went to the same school and had exactly the same background. They’re all from the same Birmingham school. And how bad is it that we have an actual Mayor of London who grew up in a Birmingham council estate? It doesn’t make sense!”, told us Ariel Painin-Diaz from South Kensington.
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Millions worldwide have cheered the individual action of Massimo Tartaglia, the man who last Sunday whacked Berlusconi in the teeth. A divisive, dodgy, inflammatory right-wing Prime Minister got what he deserved, many commented online.

However, two days later, it’s important to make a cool-headed assessment as to what the blow landed on Berlusconi’s gob really means in the short to medium terms.

Until Sunday, Berlusconi’s coalition were showing their biggest cracks since their landslide election victory in April 2008. His hacking at the Italian constitution caused a series of unexpected rifts within his own coalition. By last week, one of his most senior and influential allies, Gianfranco Fini, was all but considered no longer part of Berlusconi’s coalition.

Most significantly, on Friday, Mr Casini, a former centrist partner of Berlusconi’s government, called for the formation of a broad ‘Republican front’ to finally defeat the billionaire Prime Minister.

And if you also take into account the spectacular sexual scandals that marred the Prime Minister throughout the summer, for the first time in years Silvio Berlusconi looked all but rock steady.

By Sunday evening, however, everything had changed.
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The pre-budget report has triggered an entirely predictable swirl of reactions from the usual suspects. According to Andrew Porter in the Telegraph, “middle classes [are] to be hit hard”, echoing Tory criticism that Labour’s pre-budget report is tantamount to none other than “class war”.

The Daily Mail calls it “Clobbering the middle earners”, adding elsewhere that “Darling vows to hammer middle classes”.

So let’s look at what those warped minds think the middle classes are and let’s see what this looming “hammering” may consist of.
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Imagine you land a job where you get paid £161-50 a day for each day you turn up (even if you stay for, like, 20 minutes) plus £86.50 a day for food, drink and taxis, and an additional £75 for office costs, without producing a single receipt.

And you can’t resign even if you wanted to. What sort of workplace would let you do that?

Some people would tell you that your boss is either a saint or an idiot of the highest degree. Everyone at work takes the piss and the whole shop functions like a joke, with average attendance rates standing at just over 50%.

Until one day, under pressure from auditors, the board, or sheer financial hardship, your gaffer decides to see sense and announces he’s going to tighten the belt.

‘Course you’d expect the “reforms” to bring in more scrutiny on costs and expenses (i.e. producing receipts) as well as a wage freeze or even a pay cut.

But no. You turn up to work (it’s not even compulsory, there’s no attendance levels, you see) and, much to your delight, you find out that the dreaded toughened up rules are so tough that you wage is actually higher – from £161-50 a day to £200!

More, you also get £140 a night for accomodation expenses and you’ll still be spared from submitting receipts, as long as you declare you’ve performed “appropriate duties”, whatever that means. Sure, now you’ll be required to clock in, but a couple of hours will do, so no worries if you get bored or your colleague’s annoying voice is getting on your nerves.

Dream job, right?

Well, welcome to the world of Unelected Peers in the House of Lords. And you know what the Senior Salaries Review Board people said (those who drafted the reforms)? “We are sending a strong signal: if you’re swinging the lead, don’t do it.”

“We’re celebrating our 40th birthday in style”, announced the Sun yesterday.

With a series of self-congratulatory quotes (i.e. from people like Simon Cowell), Britain’s own bible belters have kickstarted a series of “sparkling birthday features”.

It’s undisputed that the Sun managed to push its way to the forefront of Britain’s contemporary culture. From shifting the nation’s attention towards mammary glands, through their contribution to harmony and cohesion, and all the way to reasoned and fact-based news reporting, the Sun has indeed become the epitome of British phlegm, “a national institution” (according to the Sun itself).

But to spare the Sun the risk of sliding into self-important back-slapping mode, which would be soooo unlike them, we’ve decided to help them celebrate the rag’s history with a short roll of honour of some of its most memorable moments.
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