The News In Shorts

How the news would look if everyone stopped waffling and told the truth.

Saturday 12 November 2016

How The West Was So Easily Defeated.

Who would have guessed that when the Twin Towers collapsed on September 11th 2001 that we were actually witnessing the complete and utter defeat of the Western world and that militant Islam had already won? How could this have happened despite all of our military hardware, all the bombing and invasions and after all the years we had spent patting ourselves on the back for defeating Communism? How could such a resounding victory have been so easily achieved? The answer is quite simple. Our enemies simply knew what buttons to push because they understood how fragile our democratic institutions and how threadbare our high-sounding democratic principles actually were. They knew that despite our overweening pride in ourselves our feet were made of clay. All it took was a few years of low-level terrorist attacks, a gentle push and we toppled over. Who would have believed just a few years ago that a British government would be able to punish the poor, the disabled and the homeless simply for being poor, disabled and homeless? Who would have believed that in a country seemingly dedicated to family values that a billionaire tax-avoiding misogynistic serial philanderer and well-known bully could possibly be elected into the White House? Al-Qaeda and its latest offshoot ISIS obviously did and they have roundly and completely defeated us simply by standing by and watching us tear each other to pieces. Looking back over the last 30 years it's easy to see how we connived in our own demise. We allowed our politicians to wreck our economy with neoliberal mumbo-jumbo and create a unequal society ripe for revolution. We allowed those same politicians to blame the innocent victims of this inequality and punish them simply for existing. We stifled debate by making some subjects such as immigration unmentionable and effectively outlawed free speech. We allowed our media to fall into the hands of right-wing crazies who hate everyone except themselves. We allowed our enemies to separate us from our real friends simply because they too were foreigners. What was once our democracy, the democracy of Roosevelt's New Deal and Atlee's Welfare State, has now been so completely subverted that people actually believe that buffoons like Donald Trump and Boris Johnson are our only hope. Once we reached that stage we really were lost.

Friday 11 November 2016

A Trump Presidency.

How did this happen? How did this utter idiot become President of the most powerful planet on Earth? It wasn't because he's the most popular man in the USA since he failed to gain a majority in the popular vote. The Presidency was delivered to him by the arcane electoral college system which has, once again, handed victory to the loser. Trump did, however, poll just under 50% and the question arises as to why so many people would vote for a bombastic egocentric racist bully after the eight years of a Barak Obama Presidency. How could the USA go from the grace and decency of Barak Obama to the utter ignorance and prejudice of a man like Donald Trump? Frustration would seem to the the answer. Frustration that Obama could not deliver the change that he promised. Yet that frustration was caused by the obstructionism and cynicism of the Republican dominated Republican Houses of Congress - the very party that has now been propelled into the White House. Some say that Trump isn't a real Republican and that they never really accepted him as their leader in this Presidential campaign. There is some truth in that but, nevertheless, Trump voices many of the brain-dead nonsense that the Republican party is often reluctant to say openly and in public. He dared to say the things that they were thinking and won. Trump is nothing more than a demagogue, voicing the prejudices of Americans and promising whatever simplistic solutions were needed to gain the White House. Trump has promised to break international agreements, ignore the threats to the environment and to commit criminal acts to assuage the fears of the largely ignorant and bible-thumping electorate that put him into the Oval Office. This is the triumph of ignorance over reason, of prejudice over reality, of irrationality over rationality and it might just mark the end of western democracy as we have understood it.

Sunday 28 August 2016

Brexit: The Whole Sorry Saga.

Two months on and how is Brexit fairing? Well, the Tory party is still tearing itself apart over Europe, torn now between those who know that Brexit is a bloody stupid idea and those who are too stupid to know its a stupid idea. The grandees of the Tory party are circling around Article 50 like sharks trying to make up their minds if it will bite back - not one willing to start the process when their careers are at stake. The lies about all the foreigners leaving the country overnight and the £350 million per week for the NHS are now exposed for what they were while the "sunny uplands"of "independence" from Europe no longer look so sunny and the uplands look more like dark and deep chasms of economic doom. Theresa May has handed over Britain's economic future to Liam Fox and Boris Johnson with instructions for them to go abroad and put their money where their mouths are. Characteristically Fox and Johnson immediately started a turf war, more concerned about themselves than the country they profess to love. Meanwhile, in political terms, the whole thing is turning out to be a bit of an embarrassment. Britain's membership of the EU represents a huge amount of law that must now be unpicked and repealed in the only institution where such unpicking and repealing can be done - Parliament. Unfortunately most MP's are not too keen on the hard work needed for such a task, while most of them were against the idea in the first place. How many Parliamentary votes does it take for Britain to leave the EU? None, if you're a Brexiteer, because the Parliamentary democratic process will almost certainly fail to deliver the desired result. None, if you want to "Remain", because no MP in their right mind wants to wreck the economy and make stuffing their offshore bank accounts with taxpayers money even more difficult than it already is. Democracy, the thing that delivered Brexit in the first place, is becoming increasingly difficult for those in power, who never liked it much in any case, to handle, while their utter incompetence and unsuitability for the job is now glaringly obvious. Brexit is not a case of the blind leading the blind, but of the stupid leading the stupid.

Tuesday 12 July 2016

Yet Another Outbreak Of Democracy.

The Parliamentary Labour Party is in turmoil tonight after the National Executive ruled that Jeremy Corbyn will be allowed to stand once again for the leadership of the party. We asked a Tory Lite Labour MP for his reaction to tonight's news. "This is disastrous," he told our reporter. "We've worked so hard to stamp out democracy since the blessed Margaret Thatcher became the spiritual head of the Labour party in 1979 and now it's broken out all over again. When will voters in this country understand that we - the establishment - knows what's best for them and that democracy has no place in our brave new world? If voting continues to make a difference like this we'll have no choice but to abolish it." Puzzled by this reaction our reporter asked about the Brexit vote. "We have to bow to the wishes of the overwhelming majority of the people who voted for it. It's refreshing when the public vote for something that we in the establishment have longed for. Now we can ignore Johnny Foreigner, make up the rules for ourselves and vote ourselves the tax cuts and the unlimited expense accounts that we deserve." We asked if the Labour party would now split. "Split? What are you talking about, split? I have been and always will be a proud member of the very slightly left-wing of the Tory party. Why would we split when our leader, Theresa May, will win the next election? That's the trouble with you people, you actually think that British democracy should have some choice in it. Politics is not about choice, its about maintaining the status quo or, failing that, managing change so that people like me come out on top."

Saturday 9 July 2016

Is Britain's Parliamentary Democracy Doomed?

Britain is about to get an unelected Prime Minister - again. The myth of Britain's parliamentary democracy is that we elect our MP's individually as the representative of a majority of the electorate in a constituency and that it is the choice of that representative as to which party they belong. If enough MP's form themselves into a party with a majority in the House of Commons then it is that party that forms the government and chooses a leader who is primus inter pares (first among equals). Of course none of this is true. MP's are selected to stand for election by already existing political parties and, in effect, the electorate vote for a party. The leaders of the parties are already known and are only primus inter pares until someone decides that they rather fancy the title of Prime Minister themselves. In fact Britain is an elective dictatorship in which a Prime Minister can pretty well do anything they like as long as the party will go along with it. And if the party is a little lukewarm then they can be "whipped" into agreement. So we now have the strange situation in which a small number of Tory party members can choose who the next dictator of Britain will be from a list of two presented to them by the Parliamentary party. The Labour party was pretty well run along the same lines until Ed Milliband decided that it needed a bit more democracy and that the leader in Parliament such be chosen from a list unlimited in number by all party members. The Parliamentary Labour Party now has a leader it doesn't want and believes is unelectable but has the support of the rest of the party. Milliband's attempt to inject more democracy into the Labour party came about because he saw that Parliament was a cosy club in which a political elite were far more interested in themselves than they were in the rest of the country. The revolt of the Parliamentary Labour party against Jeremy Corbyn would seem to indicate that he was probably right since they are obviously putting their own interests before the interests of their party and the country at large. The problem with democracy is that it often delivers answers that political elites don't like - which is why professional politicians don't like it much. This problem is exacerbated when the electorate are largely ignorant of the issues involved in pretty much any question they are asked and are largely unqualified to make any kind of sensible judgement. Which is why democracy is the worst kind of government except for all the rest. Essentially Parliamentary democracy in Britain is based more on myth than reality, has become increasingly unconnected with the rest of the country and is probably too unwieldy for the 21st century.

Monday 4 July 2016

The Tory Plan For Brexit.

All of the contenders in the race for the leadership of the Tory party have now made it plain that, as far as Brexit is concerned, there is no going back. There is no further argument to be heard amongst them even if, as seems likely, much of the electorate who voted leave have now changed their minds. The reason is because, leavers or remainers, the Tories have realised they have an historic opportunity within their grasp. Suddenly the Tories finally have a plan for Brexit and, if you have any sense at all, you won't like it. Using what has been dubbed "Disaster Capitalism" they intend to use the confusion and chaos caused by Brexit to completely reconfigure Britain. When we say "reconfigure" we mean that the Tories intend to steal everything that isn't nailed down, especially the NHS which will be privatised as soon as possible. The NHS represents billions of pounds of taxpayers money invested in expertise and fixed assets all of which will now be handed over to private companies at bargain basement prices. The Tories will use the money thus raised to award themselves and their rich mates new tax cuts while the sick and disabled will be bled white to provide the necessary profits. This will be accompanied by a scrapping of the Convention on Human Rights and a new set of "rights" written for us by the Tories. You will have the right to a minimum wage, but no more than that. You will have the "right" to have a zero-hour contract of employment. You will have the "right" to pay exhorbitant rents for a moldering ruins unfit for human habitation. You will have the "right" to touch the forelock as the hunt rides by. The Tories have always considered the British population to be lower than vermin and they now intend to make that consideration an actuality. We have placed ourselves into the hands of a bunch of psychopaths and they fully intend to indulge their most gruesome fantasies.

Thursday 30 June 2016

Boris Ducks Responsibility.

Like David Cameron before him Boris Johnson has now ducked responsibility for the disaster that Brexit represents. Like all Tories when the going gets tough they bug off to protect their own reputations. But let's get this straight from the very beginning, it was David Cameron, the worse bungler this country has ever known, who started this idiocy. He did so to shut up his back benchers and cabinet colleagues in his own party and assure his position as leader of the Tories. He has succeeded in doing neither. At the same time he has threatened the very existence of the United Kingdom and of its economic well-being. Now, in true Tory style, Boris Johnson has ducked his responsibility in all this. Having thrown his weight into the Brexit campaign with his eye on the top job he has failed to secure that for himself. Two men, once friends, now united again in abject failure. Neither of them, despite their assurances, have the stomach for invoking Article 50 or for what will come afterwards. They have failed the country which has been sacrificed on the altar of their egos and ambition and don't have the courage to pick up the pieces. Now it will be left to either Theresa May, who doesn't believe in Brexit and voted to remain or Michael Gove who thinks that the problems of education in Britain can be solved by privatisation and sending each school a copy of the King James Bible (printed in Germany). The blame for what follows will sit squarely with the Tories though, without doubt, the Murdoch press is already cooking up stories to place the blame for this mess at Jeremy Corbyn's door.

Wednesday 29 June 2016

Disappointed Brexit Voters.

Nearly a week after the triumphant Brexit campaign many Leave voters have been voicing their disappointment. "I just understand why it's not 1959 again," one voter told our reporter. "Why have all these black, brown and eastern European people not left already?" Another asked, "Where is Margaret Thatcher or, better still, Winston Churchill? Once they return from the grave we'll show these Johnny Foreigners what's for. Have they been deliberately hidden away from us by Parliamentary Remain campaigners? Without them how will we ever mount another D-Day invasion of the Continent to save the miserable people of Europe from themselves?" Meanwhile desperate Remain voters have been tossing bottles into the Channel (now definitely the English Channel once more) begging for help. The messages seem to be more or less the same; "Help! I am trapped on a cold rainy and windswept island in the North Atlantic where 52% of the population are clinically insane and government is non-existent." Still, the latest round of news should cheer them up as George Osborne, the only Tory politician still working it seems, plans to raise taxes (for working people, not the hard-pressed rich) and announces that the NHS is no longer affordable and spending on it must be cut as soon as possible. In further good news for Leave voters the EU has just announced that British banks will no longer be able to trade in Europe along with all other service industries in what was once the UK. As Nigel Farage said only a couple of days ago, "You're not laughing now are you?"

Monday 27 June 2016

Angela Merkel Says "Nein"

Boris Johnson, following his triumph on the cricket field this weekend, finally came up with an EU exit plan today. He would saunter over to Europe when he felt like it, tell the EU what he wants and then watch as Johnny Foreigner falls to his knees and begs him to accept everything he wants. With full access to the single market Britain would have to pay nothing to the EU while the free movement of people across Europe would be a thing of the past. And, if this didn't come to pass, then Boris could saunter back to Britain with Article 50 safely put away in a box until he does get what he wants. "Give me what I want or I won't invoke Article 50 and leave you dangling." Unfortunately Boris didn't count on Johnny Foreigner, or rather Angela Merkel, being rather more clever that the average British voter. She has said "Nein". There will be no negotiations before Article 50 is invoked and, if Britain wants access to the single market, it will have to contribute money for the privilege and accept the free movement of people. In other words we will have all the "disadvantages" of EU membership without, at the same time, having any voice. Now where did we hear that before? Oh yes, that's right, it was voiced by the Remain campaign. So none of the advantages promised by the Leave Campaign but all of the disadvantages pointed out by the Remain Campaign. So where is our "strong" negotiating position now? Like most things about the Leave Campaign it now proves to have been an illusion.

Article 50: Who Will Push The Button?

So who will push the button and invoke Article 50? Not David Cameron obviously since he's resigning and has left it to the Brexiters. So it's down to Boris isn't it? Except that Boris is not keen to do so. Nor is Michael Gove who has decided to take a back seat and push Boris into the hot seat. So what's going on? Leadership of the Tory party is now toxic while the man who pushes the button will have to take responsibility for what comes next. Boris' solution is to negotiate a deal with the EU which will basically make no changes to the UK's position - a Brexit with no Brexit in it. The only ones urging that something must now happen are those who have absolutely no intention of taking responsibility for it like Nigel Farage and Liam Fox. It's easy to urge action when its not you who has to go over the top and capture no man's land. All that is clear is that the Tory party's civil war over the EU has spilled out into the country at large and they have led us into a blind ally with no exits, including exit from the EU, in sight. The UK is in imminent danger of ceasing to exist as Scotland now looks set to leave and with Northern Ireland also in danger of following suit. The economy is continuing its slide towards oblivion with more money being lost on the stock exchange in three days than the UK would give to the EU in 20 years. The Pound is also sliding remorselessly downwards against every currency in the world. Meanwhile thugs are appearing on streets throughout the country yelling at any foreigner they can find, "We won, now get out of our country". This is not simply a political crisis, it is also an economic and social crisis and the genie is well and truly out of the bottle. Whether we leave the EU or not there is no going back. Britain has now seen itself in the mirror and the reflected image is not a pretty one. Bigoted, isolated and increasingly irrelevant in world terms where do we go from here?

Sunday 26 June 2016

The Political Vacuum.

So where is everyone? Since the EU referendum the Tory party, both leavers and remainers, have literally gone to earth and cannot be found with radar. Where is the leadership? Where are David Cameron and George Osborne? Where are Boris Johnson and Michael Gove? Nigel Farage is still in evidence trying to hide the fact that two years ago he was demanding that if the referendum was too close, 52% to 48% say, and he was on the losing side then another referendum should be held. Perhaps they hope that the so-called coup against Jeremy Corbyn, a story that the right-wing press is clinging to with desperation, might deflect attention from the utter mess the Tory party has left the country in. Then there is the elephant in the room. The UK is a representative democracy and not a direct democracy. Referendums are advisory only and have no binding legal force. Parliament is sovereign and it can overturn the utter folly of the UK leaving the EU. But for that we need leadership and a Parliament with a spine instead of a Parliament with nothing more than MP's addicted to filling their pockets with expenses and hiding their money in offshore accounts. The Leave campaign has now been exposed as a catalogue of lies, evasions and deceptions. There will be no extra money for the NHS, immigration will not be curbed and the free movement of people across Europe is to be retained. Nothing they promised will come about, so why should these snakeoil salesmen we allowed to reap the benefits of their confidence trick?

Saturday 25 June 2016

The Leave Campaigners Lied To You.

Conservative MEP and Leave supporter Daniel Hannan: “Frankly, if people watching think that they have voted and there is now going to be zero immigration from the EU, they are going to be disappointed.” Conservative MP and Leave Supporter Andrew Bridgen: "Well it (spending £350 million a week on the NHS) needed caveating. Er, £350 million is the amount of money that we do have to owe the EU every week. I think we've committed to £100 million per week (to go to the NHS). So there will be no end to immigration from Eastern Europe or anywhere else for that matter, though it is absolutely certain that, unless you are a banker or football player, your right to work anywhere in Europe has just been removed. Your jobs are not safe, wages will not suddenly increase and the NHS and schools will be under just as much pressure from immigration as they were before Brexit. Not to worry though, think of all that lovely dosh spent on the EU that can now be spent on the NHS. £350 million a week wasn't it? Well no because, as Andrew Bridgen has now tacitly admitted, after our rebate the figure was actually £250 million (that's about £4 per week per head of the British population). Now the Leave Campaign are pledging £100 million to the NHS (don't hold your breath). So where will the other £150 million per week go? In tax cuts for the Tories and their wealthy backers. Get the picture? Yes they lied to you so that they can get their hands on biggest share of the "savings" from the EU and put it into their tax-free, off-shore accounts. Congratulations you have just been robbed by the best conmen in the business - the Tory party, stealing your money in order to save you from greed.

Friday 24 June 2016

Etonian Idiot Makes Way For Etonian Buffoon.

While other Tory morons have been blaming the Labour party and Jeremy Corbyn for losing the EU referendum the real culprit, David Cameron, has just announced his intention to stand down as Prime Minister. This utter fool has not only divided the country almost neatly down the middle and laid the foundation for the disintegration of the UK, he has also managed to make his own position completely untenable. How did it come to this? Cameron called for this referendum in order to shut up the other boneheads in his own party and assure his position as head of the Tories. Now the boneheads have won and the bonehead-in-chief has lost his job. Nothing loath the Tory boneheads will now elect an even bigger bonehead to lead them - Boris Johnson. The Tory party cannot address the real problems that have led the British public to reject the EU because they are the problem. This referendum has turned out to be a vote against government - any government - rather than against the EU. The people unable to stop themselves from voting the worst possible people into power have now rejected the only people who stood between them and unfettered Toryism. Will £350 million a week now pour into the NHS? No, because we were not paying out £350 million per week to the EU and whatever we save from contributions to the EU the Tories will now pocket by rewarding themselves yet another tax cut. Will immigration now stop completely? No, it didn't in the 1950's and 60's before the UK joined the Common Market and it won't now. How else can the Tories punish us for having the nerve to exist and keep wages low without immigration? Will Brussels now stop telling us what to do? Yes, and now we can swop faceless bureaucrats there for faceless Tory donors here in Britain. Will the Tories now rip up the Convention of Human Rights? You bet your life they will and our human rights will now shrink until they disappear completely. The bonehead-in-chief has died, long live the next bonehead.

Britain Votes For National Extinction.

Britain has voted for Brexit - so what next? To begin with it is important to know that we have just handed ourselves over to the likes of Boris Johnson, Chris Grayling, Michael Gove and Iain Duncan Smith - some of the most rapacious, selfish, greedy and vicious Tories ever to crawl from under a rock. These are the kind of people who will now rewrite our Human Rights legislation which will be one of the shortest documents ever written by a British government. These are the people who will be looking after the NHS, inasmuch as they will be looking after their own interests while they flog it off to their rich mates. These are the people who will be in charge of our economy which will be soon only be a part-time job since there won't be much for them to concern themselves with. These will be the people who will oversee the dissolution of the UK as Northern Ireland and Scotland cut their ties to Little England as it sinks into irrelevancy. In the great tradition of English stupidity the country has voted for national extinction as they sit in the rain unable to afford holidays abroad, shouting "Yah-boo" at Johnny Foreigner as they watch a bunch of right-wing Tories steal everything in Britain that isn't nailed down. Congratulations turkeys for voting for Christmas.

Friday 22 April 2016

Boris: Ignorant Or Just Plain Stupid?

Boris Johnson told off President Barack Obama for having the temerity to offer an opinion on Brexit. The United States would never share its sovereignty, Boris announced and, in any case, President Obama has only voiced his opinion because his Kenyan ancestry makes him naturally anti-British. Now these are both curious arguments coming from Boris. In the first instance the United States is made up of 50 sovereign states who share that sovereignty under a federal government. In other words those 50 sovereign states have already voluntarily given up part of their sovereignty to form a greater and stronger combination. The clue is in the title - the United States. Boris also has non-British ancestry, in his case Turkish. Now given that Turkey was at war with Britain during WWI does that mean that Boris secretly hates Britain and does that explain his wish for it to exit from the EU? It certainly makes you think. Which is more than you can say for Boris who has managed to be both factually wrong and racist at one and the same time. Barack Obama is no more Kenyan than Boris Johnson is Turkish. The difference between the two men, however, lies in the quantity of their intelligence. Barack Obama has a great deal of it, Boris has practically none. Comparing Boris to Obama is actually a fruitless exercise, but comparing Boris to Donald Trump is a different matter. Both men are ignorant, both are plainly stupid and both would make spectacularly incompetent leaders of any country, let alone the USA and the UK.

Tuesday 12 April 2016

Achievers Or Just Numbskulls?

There appear to be some very contradictory views coming from the Tory party at the moment. MP Alan Duncan believes that criticising David Cameron could lead to parliament being filled with "low achievers". who "hate people who look after their own family and who know absolutely nothing about the outside world". This is pretty punchy stuff especially when you consider that the Tory party seems to hate everyone who isn't a Tory, look after their own families at the expense of everyone else's and have absolutely no idea about the lives of ordinary people outside the Westminster bubble. At the same time his comments seem to confuse achievement with making money. Albert Einstein, Mahatma Gandhi, Leonardo Da Vinci and Archimedes certainly achieved a great deal but, as far as I know, none of them were millionaires. What Mr.Duncan doesn't seem to understand is that greed does not equal achievement while obsessively piling up huge amounts of money in offshore accounts is not an achievement but a mental health issue. Nor does inheriting large amounts of money from dead relatives make you an "achiever". Still, to redress the balance William Hague then said something equally as shallow, misleading and downright stupid. Looking too closely at a politician's financial dealings, according to Mr.Hague, might frighten off otherwise talented people. It might, for instance, frighten off those whose personal finances are an absolute shambles and deny us all the valuable experience they might bring to high office. "Personal circumstances are not necessarily a good guide to how good they will be as a prime minister, a chancellor or anything else," he said. So a really good politician, according to Mr.Hague, might be stupid, he might be feckless and he might even be dishonest. This is in sharp contrast to the way in which the Tories regard everyone else however. If you are poor, disadvantaged, disabled and badly educated, then you cannot by definition be deserving. But, if you are rich, privileged, expensively educated and stupid, then you deserve to wield power and should be given every opportunity to prove how worthy you are. Accustomed as we are to the Tories turning the world on its head these mental gymnastics are truly awesome. It is certainly true that being greedy, over-privileged and utterly stupid has never held back either Mr.Duncan or Mr.Hague. What holds the rest of us back, however, is a system that puts too much emphasis on wealth and not enough on real ability.

Saturday 9 April 2016

Cameron: "I could have handled the tax row better"

"I could have handled the tax row better," David Cameron told a Tory party forum today. Actually no Prime Minister you could have told the truth instead. Even now Cameron is being less than candid as it is revealed that his father was responsible for not one, not two, but at least three tax dodging wheezes that kept him and his family out of any tax bracket for the last 30 years. While the PM, his wife and his children might not benefit from any such scheme "in the future" it remains pretty well certain that he and they profited mightily from them in the past. What is immoral for the goose is immoral for the gander as Jimmy Carr might well observe. It remains difficult, however, to shame a Tory Prime Minister since Tories have no sense of shame and measure everything by what they can get away with. What this does reveal is how rotten the whole financial structure of Britain has become. We should not be surprised that sleaze still exudes from every financial orifice considering that the whole stinking pile was first heaped up by the Thatcher government, was patiently tilled by the Blairite Labour party and has continued to fester under Cameron. You would need a very bad sense of smell today not to notice it.

Samantha Cameron's Fingers In The Till As Well.

In this recent picture of the Camerons two things are obvious. First David Cameron seems blissfully unaware that he is being targeted by an assassin with a laser scope. Second, his wife looks very stylish in her Indian sari. So she should considering that she employs one of her mates as her style guru at a cost to the taxpayer of £53,000 per year. Of course such "advisers" and "consultants" are common in the corridors of power, but we could be forgiven for pointing out the obvious problem with Sam's fashion arrangements. She is not in government. She is not even an MP. She is merely the PM's wife so why is tax payers money being squandered on her appearance? And why is the PM married to a woman who is so dim that she can't dress herself without forking out £53,000 of our money? In fact the answer is actually quite obvious. This is not just any government, this is a Tory government. Stealing tax payers money for such things as cleaning moats, pruning orchards and heating the stables for their horses is second nature to such people. Privilege, it should be pointed out, is an expensive hobby and a sense of entitlement is inevitable under such circumstances. How else can any self-respecting Tory maintain the lifestyle he or she is accustomed to without resorting to a bit of petty larceny? In fact the success of the entire Cameron clan has been almost entirely based on it, from stealing money from the poor and disadvantaged to stashing the proceeds in tax havens, the Camerons know how to look after other people's money. It's time for this farce to end and well past the time that Britain turfs these scroungers out of office.

Thursday 7 April 2016

How Much Can Cameron Get Away With?

So it comes down to this - what can Cameron admit and still get away with it? So far he has admitted that he sold his shares in his father's offshore investment fund for a mere £30,000. Loose change for Cameron and, he hopes, not too big an amount for the plebs to swallow. Of course this ignores his wife's nice little earner for being a "consultant" for Smythson's - a company that is based, for tax purposes, in a tax haven. This might explain why the Cameron's spend so much time out of the country as she commutes to her job every Monday morning. It ignores the fact that Cameron's father paid no tax in the UK for 30 years as his son was being educated at Eton and Oxford University. It also fails to address the question of George Osborne's financial affairs which remain completely opaque while he refuses to speak on the matter. Worse yet, there is no explanation as to why both Cameron and Osborne have consistently opposed any attempt by the EU to shed light on tax avoidance by the rich and greedy. Cameron once described Jimmy Carr's financial dealings as "immoral". Was Cameron's father immoral then? Apparently not for, according to Cameron, he remains "proud of my dad and what he did and the business he established and all the rest of it." Double standards? Why not, after all there is one law for them and another for the rest of us. This, of all the begrudging statements given by Cameron over the last few days, comes as close as we are likely to get to his mindset. Good at pointing the finger at others he doesn't like it much when others point at him and his immoral family.

Wednesday 6 April 2016

Cameron, Osborne And The Panama Papers.

The Panama Papers have been described as the biggest leak in history and it shows us all exactly what our leaders think of us. We are here to pay taxes while they are here to avoid them. Asked about their connection to tax-dodging and money laundering the answers that both David Cameron and George Osborne gave are more illuminating for what they didn't say rather than from what they did say. After three previous attempts to divert public outrage Cameron finally said that he and his family would not benefit from such underhand tactics "in the future." Which, of course, rather begs the question about what he and his family were doing up until today. Osborne's answer was even more illuminating. He said nothing and immediately terminated an interview during which the question was asked. This seems to suggest that Osborne has no defence of any kind to offer. Hardly surprising since his family business, despite healthy profits, has not paid tax in the UK for a decade. While they have been forcing austerity down our reluctant throats Cameron and Osborne have been profiting at our expense. Austerity, so crucial to Britain's economic survival, does not apply to them or their rich mates. They are exempt, they have a get out of jail free card. There is one law for us and another for them. Now do you get it?

Top Tory Defends Criminal Organizations.

Dominic Grieve, the former attorney general, has admitted that the UK government could stop British overseas territories acting as tax havens if they wanted to. However, he added that it would be wrong to do so because it would mean job loses in those tax havens! "Ordinary workers losing their perfectly legitimate jobs in the steel industry is fine," a leading Tory spokesman told our reporter, "but bankers in the British Virgin Islands is a completely different thing. What would happen if Britain put a stop to all criminal activity in its overseas dependencies? It would be chaos. Billionaires around the world, poor souls, would be reduced to tears as they could no longer avoid tax, while criminal organizations would have to find some other way to launder their ill-gotten gains. Wealthy people don't pay tax, what about that does no one understand? They will always find loopholes in the tax system, so its only fair, right and proper that we should provide those loopholes for them legally. If not they would be forced to break the law making them into real criminals and we can't have that can we?"

Monday 4 April 2016

The Panama Papers.

So what do the Panama Papers actually tell us? That the wealthy, the greedy and the selfish have been lying to us and have expertly avoided their responsibility to the societies that have supported them? We already knew that, even if we've allowed ourselves to be blind-sided by these reptiles. We have stood by as they have pedaled their lies about austerity like the fools they always took us to be and allowed ourselves to be diverted into hating the under-privileged while they returned the world back to the cesspit it was before 2008. These people, it must be said, are experts at the long-con, but we saw that revealed in 2008 and yet we still allowed them to get away with it and, to our shame, allowed them to set the whole thing in motion once again. We were taught our lesson in 2008 and we then promptly forgot it. In the UK 37% of the population were so stupid that voted into power the most rapacious, vile and utterly ruthless bunch of conmen they could find. The Tory party has condemned hundreds of thousands of our fellow citizens to lives without hope and have scapegoated the most vulnerable in our society simply to cover their own tracks. They have stolen money from the poorest in our country in order to reward themselves and their rich mates with nice juicy tax cuts. They have told the disabled that they deserve to lose £30 a week even as their rich mates greased their palms. Now their two-faced treachery has been laid bare for all to see. And what was the response of our Prime Minister? Contrition? Guilt? Embarrassment? No, he simply told us that his family's part in this grubby affair was "private business". Private business? Not any more it isn't. As the great Roman poet Horace once told us; "A word once let out of the cage cannot be whistled back again." Well, maybe not twice.

Sunday 3 April 2016

Privatisation: The Story So Far.

So how is privatization working out? British rail was privatized by the Tories between 1994 and 1997. In the years since then those of us who have to use rail have spent our time waiting for late, dirty and overcrowded trains and watched glumly as the price of our tickets has spiraled ever upwards. Much of that money is going to nationalized transport industries owned by foreign governments who are making a fortune for their taxpayers. It is the same story for the utilities, gas, electricity and water. Much of this is now supposed to be in private hands. In fact much of our "privatized" utilities industry is owned by foreign governments. One of the biggest investors in British privatized industries are the Chinese, a country run by a communist oligarchy who have been doing their level best to destroy any and all competitors in the steel industry by dumping their steel products on the world market at lower than cost prices. Why is this? In many foreign countries the concept of "the commanding heights of industry" - those assets vital to a country's continued existence - is still recognized. There are some things, transport, gas, electricity, nuclear power and the production of steel, that are just too important to national security to be put at risk. The Tories don't see things in quite the same way. The only thing that they believe should never be put at risk is their wealth. They do not care if ordinary people are put out of work, don't care if ordinary people are being held to ransom with ever increasing cost of living rises, don't care if foreign countries control our industrial infrastructure and don't care if these same foreign countries can blackmail us by turning off the supply of things we need to survive. None of this matters as long as they can continue to stuff their offshore bank accounts with tax free profits. Betraying your own country in this way once had a name - treason. The word treason has now been replaced with another, less harmful sounding word - privatization. But it remains treason nonetheless. Our entire steel industry is now under threat and our Tory government is "doing everything it can to save it." Everything, that is, except re-nationalizing the industry. Nationalization in times of peril to a vital industry is only contemplated by the Tories when the vital industry is banking. When their wealth is at stake anything goes. When ordinary people's jobs and our national security is at risk re-nationalization is simply not on the table.

Friday 1 April 2016

Tories Hit The Real Hard Workers Again.

Following David Cameron's Easter message of "all standing together" his best mate, George Osborne, has once again put his hand into the pockets of hard working people and grabbed enough cash to give a nice bonus to their rich mates. A hike in national insurance which comes into force today will snatch up to £40 a month from ordinary working people so that Tory fat cats can buy new yachts, cars and holidays in Lanzerote. Most of the burden will fall on public sector workers (not MP's of course) who paid a lower rate of national insurance to encourage them to invest in public sector pensions. This advantage has now been removed, negating much of the reason for taking out the public sector pension in the first place. In other words the whole thing has been a turned into a giant scam with the only real beneficiaries being the already wealthy scroungers who infest this country. This is what David Cameron means by "standing together" - we stand while the fat cats loll about and help themselves to our money. However, no one can say that Osborne's economic policy is not working. Billions of pounds have been transferred from the poor to the wealthy over the last six years while the national debt has ballooned to £1.3 trillion. None of this matters of course since the poor are undeserving and the rich fat cats who bankroll the Tory party will never have to pay off the national debt - paying taxes is only for the little people after all. Meanwhile the Tories are busy wringing their hands over the British steel industry even as they block attempts by the EU to stop the Chinese dumping cheap steel on us all. The reason for doing this? Because national security comes a distant second to the financial well-being of the Tory's best mates, the bone-idle rich, who bankroll the criminal and treasonous enterprise that they like to describe as a "government".

Thursday 31 March 2016

Only The Wealthy Can Have Socialism Now.

The wealthy pride themselves on knowing a good thing when they see it and they absolutely love socialism - at least for themselves. Which is why a bunch of wealthy scroungers have given themselves public sector jobs in Parliament and hiked up the wages (not to mention expense accounts) to levels that other public sector workers can only dream of. When a banker gets into trouble his bank is taken into public ownership, the debts he has run up are paid off using tax payers money, his bonuses are guaranteed and, when his bank has been made solvent again, he gets it back at a knock-down, bargain-basement price paid for by the money he's stolen from the rest of us. The whole of the Royal family has been nationalised, their incomes subsidised by the tax payer despite the fact that they own outright most of the damned country already. Yet, the amount of taxpayers money wasted on saving the banks from their own criminality would support the British steel industry, even at £1 million per day, for 200 years. Of course the Tories have no intention of doing anything so last century as saving the steel industry by nationalising it. Socialism for ordinary people? Margaret Thatcher would spin in her grave. Socialism, it would seem, is no longer for the hoi polloi. Like every good thing it has been appropriated by the wealthy and turned into a parody of itself while, at the same time, it is vilified in the right-wing press when there is any suggestion that ordinary people might benefit from it. While the biggest scroungers in the country have now been re-labeled as "wealth creators" the disadvantaged, the poor and the disabled have all been re-labeled as "scroungers". The Tories have turned the world on its head.

Saturday 26 March 2016

What Price Education?

This photograph of Nicky Morgan, the education secretary, actually tells you all you need to know about her. The same wide-eyed manic stare of Jeremy Hunt, the same vacant facial expression of Iain Duncan Smith masking a dim mind, the same furtive look of George Osborne as she internally adds up the money she can steal from taxpayers. This, God help us, is the face of British education for the foreseeable future. A future in which all schools, that's right all schools, will become academies. So what's so good about acadamies? Are they regularly out-performing state run schools? Hardly. Are they more efficient in terms of spending tax payers money? Far from it. So why do the Tories want to effectively privatise education? There are two main reasons. First and foremost is their desire to see a return of Grammar schools, though the model they are thinking of is far from the Grammar schools of the past. Rather than an escape route for clever working-class kids the Tory version is a means to entrench privilege amongst the better-off middle-class and, therefore, more deserving members of our society. Second, but by no means least, their model is one in which tax payers money will be channeled into the greedy hands of already wealthy Tory supporters. Only yesterday it was revealed that a Birmingham Academy Trust has been siphoning off tax payers money to the tune of over £1 million and then handing it to one of their head teachers, Liam Nolan, who just so happens to also be the Trusts Accounting Officer and Chief Executive. It has also been revealed that the Department of Education has failed to monitor the money that has been siphoned off by other so-called Trusts and then paid to private companies as "consultancy fees". Much of this money, surprise surprise, has ended up in the hands of friends and relatives of the trustees. In other words tax payers money is being diverted out of education and into the grasping hands of those who support and bankroll the Tory party. Fraud on a huge scale with more than a side-order of political corruption. Despite this the mad-eyed Nicky Morgan has told the National Union of Teachers today that the course she has outlined is irreversible and there is nothing they can do or say that will persuade her otherwise. Nor should the public think that some sort of control can be exerted on these Trusts by parent trustees. Only today Nicky Morgan has made it abundantly clear that parent trustees will not be welcome and that trustees should be "business people". In other words cronies of the Tory party who will be willing to divert at least part of the money they steal into Tory party funds. After the debacle over Iain Duncan Smith's resignation it is time that the people who did not vote for this criminal government, the 63% majority, to take the gloves off. This is not politics as most people would understand it. This is organised crime and those responsible for it over the last six years should be impeached, tried for conspiracy and fraud and given lengthy jail sentences.

Saturday 19 March 2016

Iain Duncan Smith - The Heinrich Himmler Of Our Time.

Iain Duncan Smith, the UK's most evil and now most cynical politician, has resigned over the Tory plans to wreck the lives of as many disabled people as possible. The latest round of spiteful not to say down right evil cuts to disabled benefits is, according to IDS, "a compromise too far". Compromise? What on earth does IDS mean? Is he suggesting that he only reluctantly agreed to the cuts in order to save the fragile and largely fictional economic "recovery" that George Osborne has engineered over the last six years but now finds that his conscience has intervened to protect the most vulnerable in our society? Hardly. If that was the case then he should have resigned six years ago. IDS has shown little concern for the voodoo economics that Osborne has been pedaling since 2010 and has shown scant regard for the welfare of others. He has seemed quite happy to continue his career as Britain' most successful serial liar and unrepentant scrounger. Suddenly, however, the idea of cabinet collective responsibility, that fig leaf used by UK politicians to avoid criminal prosecution, has lost its allure. "It wasn't me Guv. It was that Cameron and Osborne what done it. I was only following orders." So what is going on? Is IDS merely trying to distance himself before he and the rest of his criminal gang are hauled before the Court of Human Rights for crimes against humanity? That seems most unlikely since his fellow politicians in Europe and the wider world will make absolutely sure that no such prosecution ever takes place. "Blimey," they are probably saying. "If the whole Tory party is dragged through the courts where will that leave me?" Has he had a change of heart? That too seems unlikely since he doesn't have one. So what's left? Ah, of course, the EU referendum and the imminent demise of Cameron as leader of the Tories. What better way for IDS to stake out his future claim to influence in the Tory party while, at the same time, holing George Osborne below the waterline? IDS, like Heinrich Himmler in 1945, is hoping he can negotiate his way out of the mess that the EU referendum will undoubtedly cause, while Cameron, like Hitler, continues to cower in his equivalent of the Berlin bunker before he finally shoots himself in the foot. IDS is probably hoping that Osborne, like Martin Bormann, will simply disappear, that Eric Pickles, like Herman Goering before him, will mount a spirited defence of the indefensible and that Boris Johnson will do an Albert Speer and emerge as "the good Tory".

Thursday 11 February 2016

Broken Britain.

So what's new this week? Jeremy Hunt has failed to win the argument with the junior doctors so he's imposing new contracts on them without further consultation. Parliament has voted to keep the arrest of MP's secret from the public. 83% of the money earmarked to ease council cuts will go to Tory councils. MP's have voted to give themselves yet another pay rise. Iain Duncan Smith has called for people on benefits to be taken off the electoral register. So what do we all think about British democracy? It might be a good idea.

Sunday 31 January 2016

Vermin Control And Tax Dodgers.

Westminster, it transpires, spends £1,500 of taxpayers money every week on vermin control and yet there are just as many Tories there as there was last month and the month before. It would seem that the vermin controllers need their own watchdog - Ofverm, Ofrat or, more appropriately, Oftory perhaps. Imagine what it would be like in The House of Commons if rats were sponsored by tax-dodging corporations like the Tories are - the place would soon be overrun with them, as it is overrun with Tories. It certainly explains why there are so many Tories in political parties other than the Conservatives, why there has been a definite lack of socialism in the Labour party or liberalism in the Liberal Democrats over the last couple of decades. £1,500 per week does seem a rather large amount of money when compared to the zero effort put into bringing tax-dodging corporations to heel but, since they bribe the Tories (of all parties) to turn a blind eye this is hardly surprising. Not that George Osborne needs much persuading - his own family business has made over £200 million in profits over the last seven years and yet has payed nothing - that's right zero, zilch, nowt - in tax. This is what happens when vermin control is put into the hands of a rat. Can anything be done? Well, we could try catching all the Westminster vermin in a huge trap, putting large amounts of cash in them as bait. We could also tell the large corporations that, if they don't pay tax, then they will not be allowed to trade here in the UK. Many would pick up their skirts and run for the hills I'm sure, but homegrown companies might then step in creating a few more jobs while they are at it. We could also shut down the largely British-owned offshore tax havens like Jersey, the Bahamas and the Cayman Islands. But then where would the likes of George Osborne hide his money from the rest of us?

Sunday 24 January 2016

London Welcomes The Scum Of The Earth.

Why does Google pay no tax in Britain? Why are criminal bankers immune to prosecution and continue to hold court in London. How can Putin murder someone in London using a radioactive poison and get away with it? How can Saudi's bring slaves into Britain with impunity? How can highly-placed paedophiles escape prosecution until they are safely dead and beyond what passes for justice in Britain? Why has central London become a no-go zone for the British poor? Property prices have now reached into the stratosphere and rents are unaffordable even for middling millionaires. Money is the key to all of this of course, that and the utter selfishness that has now become a mainstream political philosophy. When the superrich ghetto that has been created in London is questioned the answer is always the same - they are bringing investment in Britain. They suggest that this means jobs for the rest of us and a more secure economic future, that these people are "wealth creators". In fact they are no such thing. They bring money into Britain because they can avoid paying tax here. The only real investment they make is in property, driving prices up to ridiculous heights that only they and their other rich pals can afford and pushing the indigenous population to the outer fringes. They don't create wealth, they steal it from the rest of us and then hang onto it for grim death. Central London is awash with crime, from state-sponsored murder to people traffiking, fraud and money-laundering. All this is overseen by the political arm of organised crime in Britain, the Tory party. To subsidize this colonization by the scum of the Earth the poor are further impoverished, the sick and disabled are persecuted and the weak are bullied. Meanwhile, eager to share in the spoils of all this criminal activity, David Cameron buys himself an executive jet while his cabinet spend more time managing their inner-London property portfolios and avoiding tax than managing their departments of state. Democracy no longer exists in Britain, it has been replaced by an oligarchy who count 37% of the vote as an "overwhelming mandate" and regard the rest of the country as an adjunct of the City - a place beyond the walls they are erecting around themselves where the servant class are allowed to live. It is tempting to say that Britain deserves better than this but, in truth, it doesn't. Any people who will stand by and watch the crime wave that has now taken over from politics in this country and do nothing about it doesn't deserve any better. I have often heard people talk of the Nazi regime in Germany and ask why ordinary Germans didn't do something to stop it. Well we now have our answer - look at your neighbours and then take a long hard look at yourself.

Tuesday 12 January 2016

Tories Keep A Low Profile.

In the wake of the junior doctors strike there has been a curious lack of comment by the government. Only Boris Johnson, the party buffoon, has so far made any substantive comment and that so ludicrously partisan that it was hardly worth listening to. Jeremy Hunt, caught on his own million pound doorstep, had little to say and no other Tory Minister or MP has anything to say at all. The BBC have suggested this is because Ministers are loath to appear in the same studio as junior doctors and be unable to defend their indefensible position. The truth is much simpler. All bullies are cowards and no bully is more cowardly than a Tory bully. That is why they pick on the most vulnerable in our society, the sick, the disabled, the homeless and the unemployed. Faced with any real resistance to their vile policies they suddenly disappear, cowering in their off-planet shelters hoping that the BBC, the Daily Mail and the Telegraph will do their nasty work for them.

Why Corbyn's Economic Policy Makes Sense.

Let us first consider a few statements made by the psychopaths who run the Tory party. David Cameron asks us to believe that there is no connection between increasing poverty and cuts to the benefit system. Iain Duncan Smith assures us that there is no connection between benefit sanctions and the suicide of those left destitute by those sanctions. Boris Johnson tells us that today's junior doctor's strike is because they are 'in the grip of advanced Corbynitis'. Jeremy Hunt tells us that the NHS, amidst its worst crisis in 60 years, is "safe" in his hands. The one thing that connects all of these statements together is that they are all obvious falsehoods, pedaled by cheap crooks who are seeking only to reward themselves with nice juicy tax cuts. These people, together with several Tories inside the Labour Party, also tell us that Jeremy Corbyn's economic plans will lead to economic meltdown, that Corbyn is an economic illiterate and that his policies are too left-wing. So how does this square with a letter written by 41 leading economists, including a former adviser to the Bank of England? “The accusation is widely made that Jeremy Corbyn and his supporters have moved to the extreme left on economic policy. But this is not supported by the candidate’s statements or policies. His opposition to austerity is actually mainstream economics, even backed by the conservative IMF. He aims to boost growth and prosperity. Despite the barrage of media coverage to the contrary, it is the current government’s policy and its objectives which are extreme. The attempt to produce a balanced public sector budget primarily through cuts to spending failed in the previous parliament. Increasing child poverty and cutting support for the most vulnerable is unjustifiable. Cutting government investment in the name of prudence is wrong because it prevents growth, innovation and productivity increases which are all much needed by our economy, and so over time increases the debt due to lower tax receipts. We the undersigned are not all supporters of Jeremy Corbyn. But we hope to clarify just where the ‘extremism’ lies in the current economic debate." So who should we believe? A bunch of self-seeking, greedy, selfish crooks or people who actually know what they are talking about?

Monday 11 January 2016

Tories Lecture The Plebs On Raising Children.

The Prime Minister has decided that the time is right to lecture us all on child rearing since we obviously aren't very good at it. In fact we are so bad that he believes, after knocking down working-class housing estates and replacing them with "affordable housing" that only millionaires can afford, we should all be permanently tutored in how to do it. This from a man who spent his time at school indulging in bizarre initiation rituals, smoking pot and snorting cocaine, trashing restaurants and pubs and burning fifty pound notes in front of homeless people. He is obviously speaking from experience since his parents must have been utter rubbish at child rearing. What Cameron has failed to say is that his comments refer only to ordinary people and not the psychopaths that make up the ruling elite in Britain. Essentially he is telling us that we should all do as our "betters" tell us while the authoritarian and draconian rules he would like to impose on us don't apply to him and his privileged pals. At the same time he is telling us that poverty will disappear overnight if we would simply do as we are bid while earning a decent wage has absolutely nothing to do with it. People suffering from cancer whose benefits are cut, single people being taxed for having the sheer nerve to have more than one bedroom and the disabled who simply refuse to do their civic duty and commit suicide would all benefit, Cameron lectures us, from having a nice, dutiful and obedient family. Essentially this is nothing more than than the authoritarian, paternalistic drivel which the Tories excel in. Poverty is not caused by "bad" families. It is caused by inequality and the low wage economy that the Tories want to foist on the rest of us in order to finance nice fat tax cuts for themselves. Cameron's idiotic ranting is simply another extension of the Tory narrative that tells us the poor are poor because they deserve it and that greed and selfishness are virtues. Instead of this nonsense he would be better occupied raising living standards instead of depressing them and building decent housing instead of handing us all over to slum landlords.

Friday 1 January 2016

Tories Xmas Gift To The Bankers.

Having used the New Year's Honours List to reward their rich mates for being rich the Tories have decided to round off the year by giving their banking mates a "get out of jail free" card. Only six months ago George Osborne sacked Martin Wheatley as head of the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA) because bankers thought that he was too effective and was preventing them from committing the new crimes they had thought up since 2008. Now Osborne has effectively neutralised the FCA by stopping them from investigating the culture, pay and behaviour of banking executives. Having bankrupted the entire world economy and having persuaded governments across the world to make the poor pay for their costly crime wave, the banks have now persuaded the Tories to let them off the hook completely - not that the Tories needed much persuasion. Britain is now officially one of the most corrupt countries in the world, a tin-pot dictatorship supported by largely fictional economic data provided by criminal banks and bankrolled by those same criminal elements out of the taxpayers money stolen from ordinary people since 2008. Nothing could show more effectively that the Tory party is nothing more than the political arm of organised crime and that anyone who votes Tory is nothing more than an accesory to crime after the fact.