Rewarding And Repeating Failure - The Tory Way.

Now let's get this straight once and for all. The crash in 2008 was the result of three decades of the banks lying, cheating and inflating a property bubble that they knew would one day pop. They did it deliberately and without any regard for the consequences as each individual working in the sector calculated that they could enrich themselves before the whole thing went tits up. It was a criminal enterprise pure and simple and, under normal circumstances, would have led to wholesale arrests for corruption and lengthy prison sentences. That it didn't is due entirely to the fact that our politicians were complicit in the crime and had often directly benefitted from it. So the banks were saved from facing the music using money stolen from ordinary people, with money in other words lifted from the victims of the crime. The Labour party, like political parties across the globe, had gone along with the neoliberal crime spree because they were convinced that the likes of Margaret Thatcher and other supposed miracle workers had won the economic argument. But it was all a colossal confidence trick, a means for those driven insane by greed to steal as much as they could. When the crisis hit in 2008 Britain, like many other countries, appeared to be doing well with a healthy economy and enough cash to be generous to its own citizens. When the crisis hit politicians across the world were caught completely by surprise because, by and large and despite many warnings, they had been too stupid or too wilfully blind to see what had been going on. Finally revealed for the crooks that they were the banks did the only thing they could - they put a pistol to their own heads and told the rest of us, "Stop, or I shoot." So our politicians rescued the banks believing they had no choice if they were to avoid a global financial meltdown. All this is known but the question remains, what has been learned. Nothing apparently, at least by the Tory party which has gone to great lengths this week to defend the idea that greed is good and that the neoliberal economic mumbo-jumbo is still the only way. Worse yet it has been revealed that, since 2008, pay for bankers has risen by 35%. The criminals then are still in charge and are being aided and abetted by that criminal organisation known as the Tory party. The price for all this is the shameful rise in the numbers of ordinary people having to rely on food banks, less and less security for ordinary working people, the theft and sale at knock-down prices of publicly owned assets and the wholesale murder - there can be no other word for it - of pensioners as they succumb to the cold unable to afford winter heating bills. Voting Tory kills and guarantees nothing better than worse to come as they and their rich pals grab all the lifeboats and leave the rest of us thrashing about in the ice cold water.

Is Boris Johnson The Most Odious Buffoon On The Planet?

The annual Margaret Thatcher lecture has long been the venue for the swivel-eyed loony right to express their most outrageous and idiotic ideas. This year it was delivered by Boris Johnson who took the opportunity not only to show how stupid he and his fellow Tories are but also to demonstrate how odious they can be. Declaring that envy and greed were the only foundations for economic expansion, he went on to tell his appreciative audience that the poor were poor because they are too stupid to be anything else. Apart from displaying a complete ignorance of how capitalism works by misunderstanding the concept of demand, Boris also managed to completely forget that most rich people are rich not because of their outstanding intelligence but because most of them inherited their money. Boris himself is an outstanding example of this since it is quite unlikely he would amount to a row of beans without his inherited money and his access to the privileges that this has bought him. Under normal circumstances he would be regarded as an ignorant buffoon. As a major player in the Tory party, however, he ceases to be a harmless idiot and is transformed into an evil clown. This is what the Tory party does - it elevates the moronic to positions of influence simply because they have money and turns their most idiotic ideas and basest prejudices into policy. By these means they destroy our society, undermine our most successful institutions, wreck our future and reduce the vast majority of us to the level of serfs. They are a shameful blight on this country, a drain on our economy that we can no longer afford and represent a streak of lunacy amongst us that harms the very vitality of the country. It is time for us to be rid of them.

Voting Tory Kills.

Since the Coalition government came to power three years ago the number of elderly people admitted to hospital suffering from hyperthermia has risen by a staggering 40%. This shameful statistic starkly demonstrates the level of sheer barbarity to which Britain has sunk since the Tories seized power by the back door in 2010. The poor, especially the elderly poor, are the hapless victims not only of rapacious and greedy energy companies who are quite willing to kill for profits but also of a government policy of austerity designed to save criminal bankers and the property values of the rich. There can be no doubt that the Tories are deliberately sacrificing people on the altar of their all-consuming greed and have elevated selfishness to the level of a political philosophy. The government, far from being ashamed of themselves, continue to preach austerity for us and unlimited riches for themselves as if this represents a force of nature instead of a deliberate and calculated act of barbarism. Worse yet they have noted the profits made by their unscrupulous pals in the banks, payday loan and energy companies and have devised ways to rake in the cash themselves. No longer satisfied with relying on the bribes they receive from big business and which they smugly describe as "donations" or the juicy tax cuts they have allowed themselves, they have decided to steal from the poor by more direct means. Iain Duncan Smith - who else? - has installed 0845 premium rate phone lines at the DWP so that those applying for crisis loans, maternity allowance, benefits and help finding work have to pay through the nose for help from this shameless and greedy government. In one of the most shocking instances of the DWP deliberately ripping off the public, more than 150,000 people alone were charged a top rate to ring the DWP's Bereavement Benefit number. What kind of government is it that allows elderly pensioners to die unnecessarily and deliberately steals from the poor, the vulnerable and the bereaved? A Tory government that's who.

Is Truth Finally Catching Up With The Finance Industry?

There are encouraging signs that, despite the Tory party's best efforts, the finance industry is gradually cleaning up its act after 30 years of running riot. George Osborne has told us that, in the wake of public disgust for loan shark companies such as Wonga, he will legislate to cap the eye-watering rates they charge to desperate poor people. Of course he hasn't even suggested what that cap will be since he fears that Wonga and other criminal organisations might cap their "donations" to the Tories in return. In fact Osborne's initiative has all the hallmarks of being window-dressing with lots of warm fuzzy words and very little in the way of actual cold prickly measures. Stand by for the Tory's favourite "voluntary code of conduct" confidence trick. It has also been revealed that RBS has been operating a scam that would make the Mafia blush. They have been in the habit of moving perfectly good viable businesses into remedial measures in order to bankrupt them, purchase their assets at knock down prices and then flog them off at a profit. Essentially they have been mugging small businesses in much the same way as they have been mugging the public for the last three decades of the neoliberal economic "experiment". Stand by for yet another raft of banking executives resigning and walking off with lottery-sized pay-offs as they weep all the way to their offshore banking accounts. Who says that crime doesn't pay?

Tory Evil Continues To Fester.

The Tories have certainly pulled out all the stops to retoxify their brand this week. Not that Cameron's much vaunted "detoxification" ever amounted to much more than telling outright lies, twisting facts and smiling as they wielded the axe. They seem to have given up the hopeless struggle of persuading us that they're not the nasty, greedy, vicious bunch of crooks we know they are and have, instead, tried to smear Labour over the Co-Op Bank/Paul Flowers scandal. Yet even this is backfiring as it has been revealed that George Osborne deliberately blocked "health checks" of the banking sector to weed out rogue executives. The reason for this is not hard to understand - the Tories were protecting their criminal allies in the finance industry who bankroll their corrupt political machine. Meanwhile, Iain Duncan Smith stepped up his pogrom against the sick and disabled by targeting the benefits paid to those so seriously ill that no real human being would expect them to work. Having cancer, apparently, is now no longer sufficient excuse for not working and enjoying the film star lifestyle available on benefits. Having secured their income and persecuting the sick so they can reduce their tax liability, the Tories turned to their next money-making scheme. This involves selling off your health records, supposedly protected under data protection legislation, to their mates in the private healthcare racket. They are able to do this, they smugly informed us, because "technically, medical records are owned by the secretary of state for health". In other words they are "technically" owned by Jeremy Hunt, the Tory party's most successful slime on the top of the pond. They seem to forget that, technically, they work for us and are little more than the hired help on a par with all those other public sector workers they hate so much.

Serco And G4S Too Crooked Even For The Tories.

The Tory party has had to shelve its plans to privatise the prison service because the two preferred companies for the lucrative million pound deals are too bent to take them up. Both Serco and G4S - (you remember G4S, the company that failed to fulfil its contract to provide security at the Olympics but was paid out of taxpayers money anyway) - are being investigated by the Serious Fraud Office because they've been committing some pretty serious frauds. Apparently they've been charging us, the taxpayer, for tagging criminals who were dead, already in prison or never actually existed at all. Even the Tories would have a hard time explaining why they would shovel taxpayers money into the pockets of a bunch of crooks - well, more taxpayers money that is. We asked a party spokesman for the Tory view of all this; "This is absolutely scandalous," the spokesman told us. "Why, because the two companies are so corrupt?" our reporter asked. "No, because the silly arses were found out so easily. We simply cannot be seen to be dealing with such incompetents. Failing to fulfil a contract but being paid anyway is one thing, but getting caught deliberately defrauding the public purse is another. How many times must we tell these people, if you're going to be as corrupt as we want you to be then at least be clever enough to hide it from the plebs. They should have asked for out advice - we've been pulling the wool over the eyes of the electorate for over 100 years. I suppose now we'll just have to privatise something else."

Tories Plan To Disguise Themselves.

The Tories, worried by the fact that no sane person will vote for them in 2015, have come up with a cunning plan to fool us all into supporting them without realising it. They plan to set up a bogus party, perhaps called "The National Liberal Party", and hope that none of us will realise that it is just a front for the greedy and selfish, neoliberal and insane right. "It's either that," a Tory spokesman told our reporter, "or not allow northerners to vote next time around. To be honest we can't make up our mind which way to go. A bogus liberal party has its advantages since it might persuade Johnny Foreigner that Britain is still a democracy, but disenfranchising the north would be far more effective. Plus, we've enjoyed tearing away the mask since we won the last general election in a landslide and would like to continue being openly nasty. It's wonderfully liberating to be able to treat most of Britain like the bunch of feckless peasants we believe them to be. Most of us are sick of having to explain ourselves to those too thick to realise that there is no alternative to our safeguarding our wealth at their expense. But, on the other hand, we Tories do have some genuinely liberal ideas such as flogging disabled people with a birch rod, sending the unemployed to gulags in the Outer Hebrides and turning the NHS into death camps for the elderly."

Tories Set Out Their Stall For The Next General Election.

Elated by the most recent polls that they are now less popular than a dose of the clap, the Tory party has begun to set out its stall for the next general election. Building on such wildly popular policies as abusing disabled people in the streets, forcing the unemployed into slave labour, increasing the number of homeless people and murdering pensions by freezing them to death, they now propose that we should all pay just to see a doctor, that we should pay a hotel fee for staying in hospital and vat should be placed on food and children's clothing. As tax dodging by large corporations has soared to seven times the entire budget for unemployment benefits, these policies they feel will galvanise the British electorate into supporting the cause of unending austerity for everyone except the already wealthy. We asked a Tory party spokesman if they had gone collectively insane; "Insane? Us? Certainly not. We have talked to ourselves quite extensively about these policies and have come to the conclusion that they will be outstandingly popular. Ian Duncan Smith, the most popular politician this country has ever seen, has assured the party that his figures conclusively prove that we have never had more support amongst the peasantry. The electorate simply cannot wait to sacrifice their future, as well as that of their children and grandchildren, just to make sure that we remain to smug, self-satisfied bunch of posh boys that the they love so much. Such patriotism gives one a warm glow all over and brings a tear to the eye. The Blessed Margaret would be so proud!"

Tories Take Yet Another Step Beyond.

The Tories officially detached themselves from reality today and took what can only be considered as a spin around cloud-cuckoo land. First on the blocks for a sprint into Lalaland was Boris Johnson who demanded that people should stop "bashing" the super-rich and then compared them to an oppressed minority like the homeless, Irish travellers and ex-offenders. The super-rich, he claimed, should have our "humble and hearty thanks". Unfortunately he was completely at a loss to explain why we should all be so grateful to people who steal our money, refuse to pay their fair share of taxes and seem to believe that bribing Tory politicians is a form of democracy. After this spirited defence of Tory values, or crimes as the rest of us would understand it, David Skelton writing in the Guardian seriously argued that the Tories are actually the party of the working class. The party should, he suggested, "make it part of their core message that their reforms are explicitly designed to help the poorest." How they could possibly do this while simultaneously persecuting the unemployed, the poor, the disabled and the sick remains unexplained. Better yet, he went on, they "should be seen as the party of housebuilding, tackling the housing crisis head on." Finally, he said without a trace of irony, the Tories should be "helping the low paid and standing up for working people." In other words, he seemed to say, the Tories should become the Labour party. One is tempted to ask what drugs Skelton is on but the truth is that, like most Tories, he is mainlining on delusion.

Union Accused Of Intimidation By Leaflet.

It was Francis Maud's turn today to slither around the TV studious and push the party line. While energy companies, payday loan companies and the banks regularly hold the public to ransom, the Tories are outraged by Union tactics at Grangemouth. The Unite Union was, of course, doing what it was supposed to do - protecting its members pay and conditions - but the Tories have accused them of using intimidation. This apparently consisted of union officials handing leaflets to managers and their families. "This is very serious," Francis Maud told the BBC, "and calls for public floggings and life sentences for evil union members who seen to think that they have a right to put their side of the argument. It's despicable and we are contemplating a new offense of "Aggressive Argument". This forms part of our long-term plan to ensure Britain remains a low wage economy and to secure an economic recovery for hard-working millionaires like myself. We believe that unions have a right to exist but feel that they should be part of consensual partnership in which management does as it likes and the unions do as they are bloody well told. I remain confident that, once we return the country to the paradise that was the early 19th century, then everything will be fine. You know, the rich man in his castle, the poor man at his gate, that sort of thing." We had hoped to speak to Unite union officials but our reporter was warned that we might then fall foul of the "Listening to both sides of the argument" laws which will outlaw any view that contradicts the government and which the Tories hope to make retroactive. "This is part of our legitimate efforts to change history," Maud explain, "together with the recent purge of everything any Tory has said, promised or lied about since the reign of Henry VIII".

Cameron Voices Horsemeat Concern.

David Cameron voiced his worries today that consumers might follow Princess Anne's advice and start eating horsemeat. "It's very worrying," he told our reporter. "I have almost no money invested in horseflesh and I consider Princess Anne's intervention a gross breach of competition laws. I must also add that the thought of poor horses being sold for meat is quite distressing. If we're not careful some of the hoi polloi might end up with real food and that will never do. My God they'll be eating beef, lamb and pork next. Worse yet the habit might spread to the upper classes and turn them all French! We, the upper classes that is - not the plebs obviously, are British after all and should avoid compromising our stiff upper lips by consuming evil foreign dishes. Much more of this continental nonsense and I'll call for a referendum on our EU membership - probably." We sought the opinion of the Tory party as a whole and was told by a spokesman; "The Tory party does not eat foxes, hunting hounds or horses". We asked Princess Anne is she would like to rebut the Prime Minister's view, but all she said was "Neigh".

Cameron And Hunt - Still Ducking And Diving.

Part-time PM David Cameron and the loathsome Jeremy Hunt have been giving a master class this week in the art of ducking and diving. "Call me Dave" was first up with his threadbare explanation for attending the Commonwealth Conference in Sri Lanka despite that country's dubious human rights record. Distracted from his busy round of flogging arms to various Sri Lankan government gangsters, Dave took time off to carefully explain why his presence at the Conference was all Labour's fault. "Ed Miliband, who as everyone knows was Prime Minister at the time, agreed in 2009 that the conference should be held in Sri Lanka despite the fact that his crystal ball was telling him that the government there would soon be guilty of human rights abuses. This left me with no choice but to attend the meeting since it was pencilled into my diary and my bags were already packed. I feel that, with good will on both sides and with the new guns I've just flogged to the Sri Lankan authorities, the problem will soon be resolved as the hard-working government finally gets rid of all the scrounging shirkers in the Tamil community." Meanwhile, back in Britain now officially renamed "Tory World", "Jeremy stop calling me C**t" has called for negligent doctors and nurses to be jailed for up to five years in order to cover up his own record of neglect and mistreatment of the NHS. While A&E departments continue to close for the winter and the incidence of postponed operations increased by 40%, Mr.Hunt felt he had no choice but to use the time-honoured Tory tactic of blaming the victims. "Despite all our efforts to persuade them otherwise," Hunt told the BBC, "doctors and nurses in the NHS still continue to deliberately kill patients for fun. If I could fully privatise healthcare in Britain then, of course, all these problems would vanish overnight. Doctors and nurses would then act in accordance with their oath to do no harm because they would be guided by the higher morality of the market place. I have to add, however, that the real problem with the NHS is all those selfish pensioners who resolutely refuse to die quietly so I can reduce my tax bill."

Tories Extend Principle Of Killing People For Money.

Having established the principle of forcing the disabled and unemployed into destitution to aid criminal bankers and killing pensioners to aid greedy energy companies, the Tories have now extended the principle of the euthanasia of plebs to the NHS. Our healthcare is now, in all but name, fully privatised and is now subject to competition law - the charter that allows greedy executives to ignore competition so they can fill both their pockets and the pockets of their shareholders. The NHS is now obliged to spend millions on competition lawyers to avoid being sued by the Competition Commission and avoid litigation by the corporate bloodsuckers who are also the recipients of lucrative contracts forced on the NHS by this so-called government. Two NHS hospital trusts in Bristol have already been stopped from rolling out a unified cancer pathway to save lives in order to follow the rules of competition. Meanwhile the wage bill for top NHS executives has exploded since the Tories got their snouts in the trough even as ordinary health workers have seen their wages frozen and their increments have come under threat. Essentially the NHS has been turned into a three-ringed circus in which the corporate clowns are the main beneficiaries. The Tories, having starved the NHS of funds and thrown it to the wolves, is now pointing the finger at failing A&E departments and trust managers desperately trying to hide the truth from the public and bellowing "See, we told you it needed reform." But make no mistake this is murder for money masquerading under an all too convenient ideological commitment to the "market place." Far from creating a new "market place" for healthcare the Tories have created their own version of Pol Pot's killing fields complete with a nice new shiny price tag.

Halls Of Residence For MP's? Not Likely!

Every now and again a politician comes up with a good idea that is designed to make his fellow politicians more honest. Such politicians usually end up being buried under an avalanche of special pleading and, "Ah yes, but....." Today Chris Williamson, Labour MP for Derby North and Shadow Minister for Communities and Local Government, suggested that MP's should live in halls of residence like students to put an end to them speculating on the London property market and using taxpayers money to make huge profits for themselves. "There is a block of flats opposite the House of Commons," he then pointed out. His suggestion has been largely ignored by other MP's, presumably because they hope the idea will quietly go away, but one couldn't resist putting her head above the parapet. Dame Margaret Beckett, a fellow Labour MP for Derby North, immediately told us that the block of flats referred to by Chris Williamson did not exist. "You would have to build one," she claimed, and added; "Prices are enormous in London so I don’t think it would work out cheaper. Also, there is no space around Westminster so you would have to build it further away and then MPs will be incurring travel costs." Even worse, she continued; "MPs are not students – many have families and need more room. One of the things we’re starting to see is fewer women and fewer people with families wanting to become an MP. If you put MPs all together in a block of flats that trend will get worse, not better.” Oh dear! Still she failed to address the central question which is why should the taxpayer fund speculation on the London property market by MP's who then pocket the profits? Nothing to do with the fact that Dame Maggie claimed £72,537 between 2004 and 2008 on a house in her own constituency that was already paid for and had no mortgage on it whatsoever while she stayed in a grace and favour flat in London, courtesy of the taxpayer, and rented out her own flat then?

Full Steam Ahead On Planet Tory.

Every Prime Minister has a good week now and again and this has certainly been one of David Cameron's best so far. His programme to demolish three-bedroomed houses in Britain is going well as the bedroom tax makes them unaffordable for most ordinary people, the pay of so-called "super managers" in the NHS has shot up despite a 1% pay freeze for everyone else and Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi has agreed to pay back the money he claimed for heating his stables. All this was marred only by Jeremy Paxman finally noticing what many of us have known all along - that David Cameron is a really nasty piece of work. Paxman's epiphany came about because of Cameron's plan to celebrate the outbreak of World War I. "What kind of idiot would celebrate the outbreak of a war that saw the slaughter of an entire generation of young British men?" Paxman asked. The News in Shorts might understand celebrating the 100th anniversary of the end of World War I which, of course, would occur in 2018. And that's the problem as far as Cameron is concerned. By 2018, if there's any justice, Cameron will be out of office and be languishing on the Tory back benches listening to the latest swivel-eyed loon to lead the Tory party in opposition. He needs a celebration in the run up to the general election of 2015 that will create a "feel good factor" and, hopefully, give him a majority in Parliament so he can carry on persecuting the unemployed, sick and disabled. Unfortunately the only one he can find is the one that celebrates the mass murder that occurred after August 1914 during which people like him shoved people like us "over the top" to die in our millions in no-mans land. Enter the Tory spin doctors determined to make a calamity for this country into a jamboree for those right-wingers who think that the wholesale slaughter or working-class people is a really, really good idea and an excuse for "a jolly good party." So is Cameron really an idiot? No, just another cold and calculating leader of the nasty party determined, if he gets the opportunity, to be even nastier after the general election in 2015.

Iain Duncan Smith: The Smeagol Of British Politics.

Iain Duncan Smith, pictured above in characteristic pose, has been many things in his life - a benefit cheat, a liar, a failed leader of the Tory party and now a failed minister. This week his cherished policy of creating a single benefit designed to make it easier to force the unemployed, disabled and sick into complete destitution has crashed to the ground with a price tag of £425 million. The Parliamentary Accounts Committee has now issued a report that details the extent of his utter failure. The Department of Work and Pensions stands revealed as lacking in leadership, in which bad news and contrary evidence are routinely ignored and in which bullying is regarded as a legitimate management technique. This is hardly surprising since IDS himself has no leadership skills whatsoever, his only response to evidence proving him wrong is "I have a belief I am right," and who has demanded that MP's pin the failure of his policy on his permanent secretary, Robert Devereux. In many ways he bears a striking resemblance to Tolkien's creation Sméagol or Gollum as he is also called. A sneaky creature filled with resentment for his own failures, Sméagol is locked into a monomaniac search for his "precious" - the ring of power. IDS is similarly locked into a monomaniac search for power, jealously having to stand to one side as Cameron wields the power IDS feels should be his. Sméagol's catch phrases are tailor-made for IDS, "What's it got in it's pocketses?"; "We wants it. We needs it."; "You don't have any friends; nobody likes you"; "Come on Hobbits. Long ways to go yet. Smeagol will show the way"; "They do not see what lies ahead, when Sun has faded and Moon is dead". Uncanny isn't it?

Political Corruption And The Art Of Coalition Government.

Tory MP Brian Binley has been boasting about political corruption in Britain while on a taxpayer paid junket to Malta. Gleefully describing himself as a "political hanger on" Binley told the Bank of Valetta that he will push their interests in Britain confident of success because British politicians "are totally corrupt." In the meantime Nick Clegg was happy to defend MP's claiming the energy bills for their second homes on the basis that the cost of living was increasing while he and his wife both has "jobs" and, therefore, deserved the money because they are "hard-working." The arrogance and sense of entitlement displayed by these two corrupt, self-serving and greedy politicians amply demonstrates the extent of the political corruption in Britain. Our politicians are now so corrupt that they don't even understand what the word means any more. They honestly believe that they are entitled to unlimited access to public funds simply because they are "important" public figures. They can't even be sacked for a total and unmitigated failure to do their jobs as Iain Duncan Smith's less than glittering career as the Work and Pension Secretary demonstrates quite clearly. Having totally wasted £140 million on a useless IT system, wasted even more millions on a mandatory work scheme that has proved less successful than doing nothing and pushed hundreds of thousands of people into utter destitution, David Cameron is still insisting that IDS is "doing exactly the right thing". The corruption is now so pronounced and the government so inept that PricewaterhouseCoopers (PcW) is warning that austerity in Britain will have to last until at least 2030 and that the electorate will just have to get used to a standard of living not experienced since the 1950's. Punished because the banks were run by criminals, we are now being punished so that politicians can keep the gravy train moving and to provide the "savings" necessary to fund their tax cuts.

Tories Plot To Steal State Pensions.

While millionaire Tory MP's are claiming over £5,000 a year on expenses to pay the energy bills on their second homes George Osborne's favourite right-wing think tank, the Policy Exchange, is plotting to steal our state pension. They are trying to defend this by pretending that the state pension is a benefit. It is not - we pay for it throughout our entire working lives and are lucky if we live long enough to get back even a small portion of what we've paid in. The real reason for this move is that Tories don't like paying tax and are willing to pauperise or even kill as many ordinary people as it takes to get what they want. Having taken our money they now want to divert it to fund even more tax cuts for themselves. Not content with fraud they are now willing to contemplate outright theft, not content with pauperising ordinary people they now want us destitute. They have declared war on their own citizens - the people they are supposedly paid to protect. They can, therefore, no longer be regarded as a political party but must now be seen for what they are - a criminal organisation dedicated to greed and utter selfishness. The Tories seem to want to take the gloves off. Let them do so and then we, the electorate, can give them such a kicking at the next general election in 2015 that they will never recover. They need to be smashed so completely that they will never again rise to threaten this country with their own brand of state terrorism.

Recovery? What Recovery?

George Osborne would like us all to believe that we are out of recession and that he has the figures that prove it. Yet, despite his apparent confidence, the recovery is not obvious to most of us and that includes the head of the CBI, John Cridland pictured above. He thinks that British business is in such a parlous state that workers should accept lower wages and tax payers should even pay their employee's energy bills. Yet he also claims, to try and persuade us all to vote Tory again apparently, that there is a recovery underway and business confidence is growing. How does this square with the rest of us feeling no benefit whatsoever while business, known to be cash rich, is avoiding investment like the plague because of uncertainty? The News in Shorts has talked about the new "heads we win, tails you lose" capitalism before but John Cridland seems to want to take it to an unprecedented level. He believes that we all have no choice but to accept higher prices and lower wages while he gets a tax cut and the taxpayer pays his bills. Who does he think he is, a Tory MP? Meanwhile Ed Miliband feels he has no alternative but to try and bribe business with yet another tax cut to persuade them to pay living wages. Why do businessmen, who should know that higher wages leads to greater demand, have to be bribed to do the right thing? We know that business executives are pathologically greedy but do they also have to be so unutterably stupid? Is greed and stupidity the only qualifications needed to become a business leader? Apparently so if John Cridland is a typical example. Yet the answer is quite simple. If business leaders are so utterly useless and find that they lack the ability to do the job they are so grossly overpaid for then their businesses should be taken into public ownership and they should be given jobs more commensurate with their limited abilities - stacking shelves at Tesco for instance.

Iain Duncan Smith: The Face Of Modern Toryism.

"He will claim divine authority as he works all kinds of counterfeit miracles and signs while doing all kinds of evil." I am not religious, in fact I am opposed to all forms of organised religion, but this description of the Antichrist makes you think. The only question is does Iain Duncan Smith know his Bible as much as he'd like us to believe? He certainly likes to claim divine authority, happily telling us that if he believes something then it must be true. His "solutions" to problems that only have reality in his imagination could be seen as "counterfeit miracles" and he is certainly "doing all kinds of evil." In truth he is simply a delusional oaf, a serial liar and an incompetent. That he could obtain a position of power in Britain tells the electorate everything they need to know about the modern Tory party - which is little more than a ragbag of would-be petty dictators and a bunch of frustrated fascists for the modern age. As Ed Miliband told us so tellingly; "Britain is better than this." I'd like to think that is true. I'd also like to think that we have progressed enough at the beginning of the 21st century to finally put the Tories behind us once and for all. They once represented the spirit of the age - the 19th century with all its brutal and primitive disregard for ordinary working people and its condescending attitude to the rest of the world. That age is long past as is the Tory party's place in modern British politics. Surely we should have outgrown them by now?

Fraud Is The New Harmless Hobby.

Welcome to Britain in the 21st century - a country where it is perfectly legal to lie, cheat and steal as long as you are rich and powerful. This new "morality" has now infected every aspect of business, politics and the press. The finance industry can happily manipulate the markets, deliberately sell products they know will bankrupt their customers, charge interest rates that are nothing short of immoral and avoid paying tax with total immunity. Politicians take backhanders that are euphemistically called "donations", routinely twist the facts to suit themselves, regard the electorate as little better than potential marks for their latest confidence tricks, fraudulently pad their expense accounts and kill people so they can cut their own tax liabilities. Yet few of them are ever called to account and are allowed to pursue their criminal careers with little fear that legal action will be taken against them. The only exception to this is the press whose phone hacking was so outrageous they upset other rich and powerful people and provoked a reaction - eventually. Yet even in the fourth estate it is highly unlikely that those at the top - the Murdoch's for instance - will ever have to face charges in court. It will certainly be a cold day in hell before you see a leading politician charged with crimes against humanity, a banker or energy executive charged with theft or a Murdoch charged with invasion of privacy. Grant Shapps is a case in point. This is a man who sets up internet businesses whose expressed purpose is to plagiarise other people's work and commit fraud. Ashamed to be associated with such an obviously illegal business and to avoid prosecution Shapps operated the company under an assumed name - Mike Green. Despite this amateurish ploy which wouldn't fool anyone, Shapps has avoided prosecution. Why? Because he is the Chairman of the Tory party and is, therefore, immune. Have no doubt about it, Britain is one of the most corrupt countries in the world and would put many third-world tin pot dictatorships in the shade.