The Repugnance of George Osborne

"I regard tax evasion and – indeed – aggressive tax avoidance – as morally repugnant," Mr Osborne said. 

And so, today, in his latest national Budget, Chancellor of the Exchequer George Gideon Osborne (whose personal fortune is valued at around £4 million) handed the very richest in society a huge tax cut - a 10% reduction from 50p in the pound to 45p on earnings above £150,000 per year - on the spurious grounds that because it was allegedly so high, it deterred our wealthy compatriots from paying their tax. So, by creating perhaps the biggest piece of tax avoidance in history, he has legitimised their non-payment - balancing the cost of doing so by freezing age-related tax allowances for pensioners - greedy old sods that they are (in George's universe, not mine dear reader!).

George is worried that the rich may desert us and go elsewhere. You might wonder where, exactly. Tax havens, George warns - except the British Government, more than any other in the world, could act to end the curse of these pirate enclaves where multinationals and the very richest individuals move their money to avoid contributing a fair share to the societies they live in - seven out of the fourteen non-sovereign tax havens  belong to the British Crown, but our neoliberal Government is doing precisely nothing about the exemptions legally enjoyed by these. This although the havens deprive the UK Treasury of somewhere between £2 billions and £12 billions in lost revenue every year. 

Yes, this is the logic of the new moral crusader in 11 Downing Street, hoisting high the flag of fiduciary purity on his crusade against the repugnant and immoral. Time for us all to pay our way. And if the billionaires don't magically cough up more tax on a lower tax bill (????), well, we'll just slash another £10 billion off the beleaguered welfare budget, ignoring the needs of an increasingly larger elderly population.

Yes, this is the logic of the moral crusader who preaches the virtues of contributing to the common purse while quietly "aggressively avoiding" a huge tax bill himself.

This is the George Osborne who has allegedly avoided paying at least £1.6 million in taxes himself  by means of a Trust Fund that will benefit him personally and family members - however aggressively or not he has done this, we will never know. That is a secret between him and his accountant.

The Greek Myths: retirement at 55, lazy workers and a bloated public sector

On BBC TV on Sunday morning, our beloved Prime Minister, David Cameron, did one of these things he does so often to endear himself with the masses - he told a lie. Shock horror!

Yet, to be fair to the blue-blooded, blue-nosed Old Etonian, it may not have been a deliberate lie. It may well just have been another example of his arrogant sloppiness in half-baked factology, first detected with his rubbish about record national debt, etc.

Mr Cameron repeated something which a surprising number of commentators, politicians and the public believe - because, thanks in part to comedians, Conservatives and the corrupt xenophobic media, most British people seem to think that Greek people retire at 55 years of age, and that this has contributed to their economic woes which have so badly rocked the Eurozone and beyond.

In fact, this is a total nonsense.

May Zeus strike them! The neolibs fibs about Hellas

The average retirement age in Greece is over 61. As in the UK, some jobs do allow early retirement at 55, but in fact 86% of workers do not enjoy such a scheme. The normal state pension age in Greece is 65 years of age - the same as at present in the UK, though it is rising in both countries over coming years.

In the UK, because women still retire earlier than men and a significant number of men retire early (many at 55 or even earlier), the average British retirement age is just above 63 now, just a little older than Greece.

So, yet again, the rightwing mythmakers have been at work, stigmatising an entire nation as lazy good-for-nothings. The truth, of course, is that Greece is in trouble because it is tied into the Euro and no longer has any control over its own currency - if the drachma was still in use, they could have devalued it and be well on their way to fiscal recovery. But because they are tied into strict limits set by the European Central Bank, which has appointed the unelected neoliberal technocratic Prime Minister (the inappropriately named Mr Papademos, which translates as Father of the people!), Greece is unable to print its own money - hence it is trapped in the Euro-snare where the Central Bank rather than the elected governments calls the tune.

Greece's problems also stem from some rather dodgy lending to the previous New Democracy (conservative) Government by international financiers just after the millennium. But of course, the neolibs are not going to own up to that one, so they are more than content to pander to racist lies about lazy people and, of course, a supposedly bloated welfare state. In truth, the Greek public sector, accounting for less than 12% of all employees, is the 4th smallest in all the Eurozone countries and Greeks on average work over 160 hours longer each year than Germans and over 100 hours longer than the European average.

As ever, our politicians and media ignore the huge concentration of wealth in the hands of a tiny rich elite in Greece, in line with the trends in most other austerity-focused states, seduced as ever by the half-truths, lies and twisted statistics of our political-economic masters. They are myths we buy into at our own peril - because it feeds the plans of the elite to continue to grasp and command more and more of the wealth of all nations. And, as part of that, force all of our retirement ages up and up until our leaving does can be combined with our wakes. 

Scottish and Wry...

David Cameron, George Osborne and Muppet-in-Chief Danny "Beaker" Alexander have managed to get themselves totally twisted and hoist on their own petard today over the prospect of a Scottish independence referendum. Concerned about the plans by the SNP Scottish Government to play a long game of slowly building up to a referendum in 2014, with a multiple choice of status quo, more devolution within the UK and total independence, they have decided to bring forward legislation to force the vote to be held sooner.

Citing secret discussions between Cameron and Osborne and "global business leaders", the Con Dems have warned any further delay will damage the Scottish economy and, for alleged clarity, the punters are to be given only two choices - yes or no to independence.

Beaker and Osborne - taking Britain forward to oblivion

It is testimony to the total ineptitude of the so-called unionist parties that by their actions they have completely validated the SNP's claims of central government ignoring the wishes of the Scots - who voted in large numbers for the majority SNP Government, which had made its referendum plans clear - and have almost certainly hastened the break up of the UK.

So which is the worst piece of amateur, overgrown schoolboy brinkmanship? :
- Westminster politicians from the Tories and Lib Dems, both of whom were comprehensively routed in the Scottish elections, with the latter pretty close to the wipe out zone, lecturing the elected government in Scotland on when it is to hold a vote? And besides, didn't both these parties vehemently oppose calls by then  Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander to call the SNP's bluff and hold a "bring it on" independence referendum four years ago? Had they supported her then, the issue might have been voted down for a generation. Now, they just look deeply interfering to the point of bullying; and with no small whiff of despair in their deeds.

- Cameron and Osborne declaring that the vote on the future of Scotland (and indeed, the entire UK, by default) should be held on a timetable dictated by big business?  It may have escaped their notice, but now is perhaps not the best time to cite the grasping pirate captains of capitalism as the motivating factor behind your cause.

- Cameron, Osborne and Beaker thinking it is clever to deny people a third option of enhanced devolution, presumably calculating that by doing so, enough devolutionists will baulk at all-out independence and opt for the status quo. Dave Cameron's old University mate and former President of Oxford Uni Tories, BBC Political Editor Nick Robinson, obligingly spouting the latest Downing Street cheat sheet, suggested this morning that a multiple ballot wouldn't be possible because "no one would know which option had won" if none got more than 50% of the vote. Presumably the Lib Dems haven't got round to explaining AV to the Tories; oh, sorry, bad language...

- Changing the law to make any referendum result binding, unlike all the other referenda held in the UK, which have been consultative. Presumably they are gambling that the apparent finality of a binding referendum might scare some people off voting for change.

- Cameron, Osborne and Beaker saying anything at all about Scottish independence. After all, what better advert for Edinburgh breaking away from the union is there than a reminder that these smug people, with little support among Scottish voters, are still ultimately in charge?

I am a Scot, living in England. I am no nationalist of any type and no advocate of independence. But after this amateurish farrago of blatant political fixing, which these pathetic irridentists seem so blindly determined on pursuing, I can only feel that the day the Saltire is hauled above a fully independent Scottish Parliament has come much closer - and, for the first time in my life, I really wouldn't be in disagreement with a basically social democratic country that wants to cut its ties with the junta that is driving Britain to the neoliberal dogs.

Taking Tea With Adolf - the Tories' Nazi Fetish

Aidan Burley MP (right) said he regretted the behaviour of the others in the party...

Just hours after the Prime Minister called for "Christian values" to save Britain from moral decay, a Tory MP, Aidan Burley, has been fired from his post as Private Parliamentary Secretary at the Department for  Transport. The Cannock Chase parliamentarian had been seen as a rising star until he was photographed at a stag party where the groom was dressed as a Nazi. Although initially claiming (after the photo was published in a Sunday newspaper) that he had felt uncomfortable and should have left the party sooner, it came to light that he had actually hired and paid for the fascist outfit and was more than a tad instrumental in setting the theme for the evening. At this point, Prime Minister Cameron decided he had to go, more it seems to avoid the bad publicity than through any real regret about the offence caused/

So far, so tasteless, but Burley is far from the first Conservative activist to have a more than passing fascination with things Nazi and a strange desire to dress up in the clobber Hugo Boss designed and supplied (latterly using slave labour) for the Hitler Gang back in the inter-war years.

Hugo Boss: by appointment to Hitler

Both in the UK and USA, the supposedly respectable right in the Tory Party and the Republicans appear to have a good number of people in their ranks who have a taste for SS-chique. Last year, for example, a Republican candidate for Senate in Ohio defended his regular dressing up as a Nazi Waffen-SS officer to re-enact the glories of the Hitler years. And a letter in Private Eye in 2007 alleged that, while at University in the 1970s, former Tory MP and now UKIP big wig Neil Hamilton joyfully paraded with henchmen dressed in Nazi-style brownshirts.

Anyone involved in student politics in the 1980s, the heyday of Thatcherite triumphalism, will recall the rumours and the real sightings of members of the Federation of Conservative Students enthusiastically sieg-heiling each other after a few beers and the (particularly) odd ones who seized any opportunity at all to don alleged "fancy dress" with some sort of Nazi theme. But this is hardly surprising when you look at the actual politics of these people.

Tory students, 1980s

The FCS in the 1980s was well known for its extreme positions on a range of policy fronts, with racism and a taste for authoritarianism ranking high in their pantheon. This, after all, was the group that, under the chairmanship of current Speaker of the Commons John Bercow MP, repeatedly called for Nelson Mandela to be hanged and very enthusiatically voiced its support of vicious military regimes in Chile and elsewhere. In at least one case, its members sought to make common cause with the British National Party, formed by John Tyndall, who also had a strong liking for donning Nazi outfits. It was disbanded by the main party only after its 1985 conference at Loughborough University deteriorated into a drunken riot.

The BNP's Tyndall (left)

But today, their successors are little better - just a few weeks ago, Conservative students at St Andrews University burned an effigy of Barack Obama and just a few days before that Oxford University Conservatives were put under investigation after claims of members singing Nazi songs celebrating killing Jews at one of their "Port & Policy" meetings - one committee member who resigned in protest said that this is a regular event among a group which counts the current Prime Minister and Chancellor among its alumni and which is seen as a nursery for future Tory leaders and PMs.

Many Conservative have been repeatedly found sympathising and actively engaging with the most odious far right groups - Cameron himself pushed the Tories out of their links with mainstream Christian Democrats in the European Parliament into an alliance with very extreme, homophobic and fascistic eastern European parties. This includes blatantly neo-Nazi sympathisers in the Baltic states and Polish politicians who derided the election of Obama as the end of white civilisation.

So in spite of David Cameron's claims to have transformed the Tories from the nasty party of the past to one that represents the allegedly Christian values of the country, it seems if you scratch the surface, the putrid odour of racism, violence and repression is not far away at all.

British values? Fighting moral decay? I hope not.

2010 General Election debate in Hammersmith - the Tory candidate defends Cameron's alliance with European neo-Nazis. In the election, Hammersmith was one of only two seats where there was a swing towards the Labour Party.

Batting for the Bankers

So with great fanfare David Cameron claims he has stood up for Britain's national interests by opposing every single one of the other European Union member states as they attempt to claw their way out of the Euro-crisis. With everyone now acknowledging the arrival of a two-speed Europe - 26 states going at one speed and Britain at the other - the chances of a General Election in the New Year have to have increased. Hoping to ride a wave of mindless xenophobia, "Bulldog" Dave will be watching the polls closely for his hoped-for bigot-bounce over the next few months so that he can call a snap election, pose as John Bull reborn and free himself of the pro-EU Lib Dems, who face oblivion at any polls. Given the long-term economic prognosis, it could be his only-ever chance of forming a majority regime.

And yet, how tragically confused the public mood will be - because the supposed national interests he claims to have stood up for are nothing to do with the interests of ordinary people. What he has vetoed is not any of the daft (though in total relatively few) regulations that emanate from Brussels on standardised food weights or what constitutes Wensleydale cheese, or not. Nor have his efforts done anything the tackle the corruption to be found in the workings of much of the Union's institutions. He has done nothing to stop the EU's ludicrous and damaging pursuit of biofuels, nor anything to challenge the wasteful transportation of goods over huge distances of the Continent. And there is nothing to stop the  dislocation of local communities caused by the single European market (unsurprisingly, that last is the bit that the rich backers of the  Eurosceptics are very, very keen to keep as it is).

Indeed, for ordinary British people, his actions may make things much worse - as Europe faces financial disaster, any economic meltdown across the Channel will inevitably shaft Britain as much as anywhere else, creating unemployment, inflation and misery for millions. By vetoing the proposed international financial regulations, Cameron has at least delayed and probably damaged longer term the struggle to restore economic stability to our key trading partners. Why risk that?

Simple - because for Dave it is worth it.

What Cameron has done is make sure that the City of London remains free of any effective scrutiny. Yep, Bulldog Dave has been out fighting on behalf of the bankers. He has used Britain's veto on this historic occasion to strike a blow against proposed internationally binding regulation of the international finance trade that flows in and out of London banks and City brokers' accounts, fleecing hardworking people of billions in thieved commission and forcing public service cuts through their myriad means of tax avoidance and tax dodging.

He has also put paid to the so-called Robin Hood tax - a tiny levy on bankers transactions that could raise tens of billions of pounds a year to cut deficits and fund public services. Instead, Dave sees it in Britain's interests to let the leeches keep the cash. The rest of Europe may go ahead, but given the importance of the City of London in international finance - a trade with little more than peripheral, trickle-down benefits for Britain - our decision to opt-out will blunt the impact of any transactions tax. This in turn will seriously undermine wider attempts to get the international community to tackle the excesses of the banking and finance cartel that has done so much to bring our world to its knees.

And of course by isolating Britain from absolutely everyone else, he leaves a European Union which will inevitably be dominated by Germany and France - British influence will diminish rapidly in spite (and even because of) all the jingoistic flag waving.

So, I hope Dave is proud of himself. The challenge will be for progressives to expose his claims of fighting for our national interests as a lie and cover for protecting his party financiers and former school chums; yet at the same time to keep advocating for a better, social Europe. The new, more integrated arrangements that every other country seems to be signing up to may not be the right answer either, but at least at its core is an attempt to create some international public control over the currently pretty much unregulated international finance markets which play games with ordinary people's jobs, communities and life chances.

Bulldog Dave? Not likely. Just Bull**** Dave, batting for the bankers.



1946 - and the Eurosceptics mascot calls for a Union of Europe: Winston Churchill's Zurich Speech.

Death of a Dictator

Moammer al-Gaddafi is dead. Trapped near his hometown of Sirte by a combination of NATO drones and Libyan NTC fighters, a storm drain was his final refuge as his bodyguards fought to the death around him. Then, filmed as ever these days by mobile phone cameras, he was dragged to a truck, pleading for his life and brutalised to death. His bloodied corpse was then dragged around, still filmed, before being taken to a hospital in Misrata for crowds to come and stare, and photograph a bit more.

The photographs and video footage have been transmitted around the world already - shown on websites, TV channels, newspapers and even described in some detail on the radio. And as the world has gawped and Libyans celebrated, western leaders like Obama, Cameron and Clinton have hailed the moment, declaring their pride.

Gaddafi's regime was a harsh one, no doubt, although many others are worse and to the end the Leader clearly retained the loyalty of many of his compatriots. Thousands died or were tortured in his prisons; his agents killed his opponents at home and abroad (although it remains exceedingly unlikely that he had anything to do with the Lockerbie bombing); and he was one of the few African leaders to launch an invasion of a neighbouring state - attacking Chad four times in the late 1970s and early 1980s. He showed little mercy for sure.

And yet, in these final moments, bloodied and humiliated, pleading for his life in front of the cameras, the overwhelming sense was that here was a small, frightened and helpless old man, a human being like all the rest of us, deluded perhaps by his long years in power, but flesh and blood still. In the hands of his captors, he was no longer a threat to anyone. In the frenzy of the moment, after years of persecution, it is perhaps unsurprising that those who seized him killed him. But it does not make it right - and it certainly is nothing for David Cameron to feel proud about, or for Hilary Clinton to breathe a sigh of relief as she claims she did.

No international pariah after all...

These are the same people who happily did business with Gadaffi right up until the uprising against him began., who bought his oil and sold him his weapons and, in Britain's case, trained his security services. While it does seem to stretch incredulity given today's heated incidents to suggest any conspiracy to kill Gadaffi, Clinton's relief may well be as much to do with being spared the embarrassment of a trial and the evidence that would have come out about the West's involvement with the old regime as anything to do with an end to the fighting.

And, yet again, the western media have outdone themselves in lurid excess - the graphic pictures of Gadaffi's final minutes should make any vaguely compassionate person retch: and while in a country as inured to state propaganda as Libya has been, showing his body may serve some purpose in convincing the population that he really is gone, it raises yet more questions about how the international media use the now so readily available means of recording and transmitting the most gruesome and humiliating images to sell copy.

When Benito Mussolini and his mistress Clara Petacci were killed by Italian partisans in April 1945, most newspapers did not print the now infamous photograph of their dead bodies hanging upside down at a petrol station in Milan - that Il Duce's trousers were firmly buckled on and Petacci's skirt carefully pinned up was surrealistically tasteful in comparison to today's Saharan gore-fest. Even as late as 1989, when Ceaucescu was executed by a hastily organised firing squad as he tried to flee Romania, the cameras turned away as he and his wife were shot. But perhaps it was Saddam Hussein's execution in 2006 that showed at once the power of mobile technology - an initial, official video of him walking to the scaffold in apparent calm was soon superseded by several mobile captures of a baying mob remonstrating with him as he tried to pray, and then more of his body falling through the trap door and then his corpse in the hospital. of course, the media just couldn't resist...

That things went even further today with Gaddafi should perhaps be no surprise and it would without question be wrong to ban footage - but the use of frame by frame images of his treatment by his captors on tabloid websites is little more than publishing torture porn to gain an audience. Saw 7 or 8 would struggle to compete with the Daily Mail's series of snuff photos.

More will mourn Gaddafi's passing than the West will ever admit to: his regime was violent and repressive, but it was not without its supporters and in the context of the Maghreb, his government led the way in provision of free health and education services, massively reducing illiteracy rates, and greatly improved the position of women and black Africans in a traditionally patriarchal, Arab society. Many Libyans were sent to the West for their higher education - I recall meeting several at both Glasgow University and Bradford University, all of them proud of their nation's achievements and complimentary of their Leader even in situations where they had no need to be. That, in time, Gaddafi so perverted the dreams of his popular revolution that he brutalised his nation is the truly enduring tragedy for Libya - because today, the violent men who have replaced him, including their western sponsors, by their eager celebration of his killing augur no better future at all for the people of Gaddafi's battered nation.

No page has been turned, no new chapter begun. There is nothing to be proud of - no refreshing rain falls on the deserts of Tripolitania and Cyrenaica tonight; only spilled blood mixes in the Saharan sands, a legacy of the hubris that has been and an omen of the hubris still to come.

In better times: the Libyan Leader with the G8 Heads of State, including his nemesis, President Sarkozy of France

The Fat Cat Who Won't Feed His Own...

Our political masters love to make out that they are just normal folk in special jobs. So, when they are not siring kids like the Blairs and Camerons have done while in Downing Street with great PR flourish, they go for the next best thing in terms of image - pets; especially rescue pets.

Long ago, then Vice-President Nixon had trouble over his puppy, allegedly a bribe, but deftly swiped the issue away by appearing on-screen with the mutt demonstrating its cloying affection for Tricky Dicky. Later, across the Atlantic, the urbane Harold Wilson had his Labrador Paddy. Thatcher made up for an absence of  animal pets by having her Cabinet, but subsequently John Major adopted a stray cat (which his successor Tony Blair was at one point forced to prove he hadn't killed), while in the White House Clinton had Socks the cat, even Butcher Bush kept dogs and Obama adopted a rescue dog for his kids.

Keeping up with tradition, British Prime Minister David Cameron announced on taking office that a rescue cat, Larry, would be coming to live in Downing Street. The poor animal duly arrived in a cat cage to be feted by the press (one of whom Larry animatedly scratched) and he was pictured on the Cabinet table with a Union Jack collar patriotically attached. Milking the idea of being a fun-loving guy, Cameron even had himself photographed with an assistant holding Larry out to a visiting President Obama.

The significance of the Obama photocall should not be underplayed - the US president, at his folksy best, is all smiles as he pats the cat, while the assistant looks genuinely pleased with the animal. Safely a few feet back, Cameron smiles but, with his hands firmly on his hips, he sort of gazes at the cat with a mild disdain. A bit like a Victorian father with his kids, he'll try to look interested if he has to, but for God's sake, don't ask him to actually touch the creature himself and no - do not, under any circumstances, expect him to hold it.

And now the truth is out. Fat Cat Cameron, multi-millionaire, happy to portray himself as an animal lover, does not even pay to feed the cat. His own cat. In spite of his cash, in spite of milking the publicity shots, he won't stump up for even a can of kat-o-meat or a box of biscuits. No, this rich man makes his staff pay for his cat. And now he has ostentatiously agreed that they can hold a quiz evening to raise money for poor Larry's upkeep. Dependent on the random vicissitudes of charity, poor Larry needs to remember the words of an old Labour leader, "That if the Tories win...I warn you...do not fall sick..."  Who, after all, will meet the vet fees?

Quite unsurprisingly, just like his past wheeze of trying to be seen as a keen environmentalist by cycling to work while a large car drove behind him carrying his briefcase, Cameron's attempt to pose as a lover of fur (living and domesticated as opposed to the creatures he likes to hunt and shoot), now stands exposed as just another tawdry publicity stunt. As if we hadn't guessed...

So spare a thought for Larry as he contemplates an uncertain future. He was originally obtained to help catch rats that were to be found living in Downing Street. Clearly, his work is not yet done...

Riots Revelation - Nick "Nicked" Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister, is an Arsonist (Genuine)

As post-riot punitive sentencing carries on apace, with people jailed for stealing ice cream and bottled water, a radio interview with Nick Clegg, Deputy Prime Minister (who wants rioters to do community work in Lib Dem dayglo orange vests), went badly wrong for the would be crime fighter. After condemning youths who rioted, he stumbled with his words when reminded of his own arsonist past - at the age of 16, while in Germany, he set two greenhouses on fire, brutally slaughtering a number of innocent cacti. He received a sentence of community service, though it is not known what colour of vest he had to wear.

The revelation about Clegg comes hot (literally) on the heels of the vast number of reminders of how Conservative leader David Cameron was a member of Oxford University's Bullingdon Club in his younger days, along with the current London Mayor, Boris Johnson. The Bullingdon was a sort of Hells-Angels-for-Bankers, except that the Angels would probably object to being compared to such badly behaved people. As Cameron himself gleefully recounted in 1986, as well as their regular routine of smashing up restaurants and pulling the trousers off of people they took a dislike to, on one infamous occasion with these oiks "Things got out of hand and we'd been drinking a bit much. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets."

It is difficult to see which is worst - that people with such attitudes should now be running our country; or that, having done the things they did when they were youths, they are so utterly condemnatory of young people, mostly from rather less privileged backgrounds than their own, for acts which in many cases are not as serious as their own past crimes and misdemeanors. It's almost like one law for them and another for...

But of course, perhaps that is the entire point.

Go to 4 mins 44 seconds to hear Nicked Nick challenged about his fiery youth.

Lessons from Libya - and Caroline Lucas on ethical foreign policy

 
As the battle for Tripoli continues, the Gadaffi regime appears to be tottering towards collapse, but huge question marks remain over the future of Libya. The western backed rebels are a loose and contradictory confederation of tribal, political and religious interests; and the intervention of Britain and France in particular in the bombing of the country, which has been largely ascribed as the crucial factor in the rebels' success, is likely to be one requiring payback from any new government. Britain alone has fired over £250,000,000 worth of missles and bombs into a country that last year the Con Dem Government was happy to sell almost as much "crowd control" equipment to, while the British SAS trained the Leader's elite guards (though maybe not so well as it has turned out).

Like Iraq, Libya is one of the few Arab states with a large public sector, boasting clean water, free education (for males and females) and health services unrivalled in the rest of the region. Along with state controlled industries, these are now ripe for the capitalist "liberation" of the economy which has so often gone hand in hand with supposed political liberation in the history of US and UK military intervention. With the rebels already hundreds of millions of euros in debt to the EU for loans to cover their war effort, the level of western influence and pressure on any new administration to comply with European demands for access to the Libyan economy is already massive. Oil is perhaps less of an issue, as it was already substantially in western hands. But public sector privatisation and the sanctioning of the Desertec solar array plan, which Gadaffi's regime opposed, are clearly tempting prospects for western business interests.

While an overwhelming number of British parliamentarians have meekly gone along with Britain's military role, which far exceeded any "mission to protect civilians", Green Party leader, Caroline Lucas, was one of just 15 MPs who voted against the intervention (compared to 557 in favour). Today, she has issued a statement which, while welcoming the fall of Gadaffi, warns the West not to intervene, but rather that the Libyans be allowed to run their country free from external interference.

But the lessons from Libya Caroline Lucas calls for include acting on the need for a greater ethical dimension in British Foreign and trade policies - both the last and current British governments happily engaged with Gadaffi in return for cash. And while Deputy PM Nick Clegg talked about Britain aiding freedom in Arab states earlier this week, the same Government he leads with David Cameron just weeks ago happily hosted the Crown Prince of Bahrain, whose regime brutally crushed protests and calls for democracy earlier this year. And who can forget Cameron's opportunistic appearance in Egypt's Tahrir Square at the head of a delegation of arms merchants?

British Governments have to practice what they preach; for now, their policy reeks of the rank stench of rotten hypocrisy and self-serving sanctimony.

Caroline Lucas' full statement can be read here.

Kill all you like - Cameron & the Crown Prince, batting for British business in Bahrain

Police & Riots: Cameron Turns to American for Help; Insists is Not Desperate

British Prime Minister David Cameron has turned to American police for advice on how to handle riots - certainly, they've plenty of experience of that, although notably the man he has hired has already said policing on its own cannot solve what are essentially wider social problems.

The British police, meanwhile, are more than a little cross with the assertions by Cameron and Home Secretary Theresa May that it was their dictation of police tactics that caused the riots to come to an end. Police chief Hugh Orde denounced this as a fabrication - and after all, while his officers endured hours and even days of assaults and threats by mobs, Mrs May, visiting a former riot scene to view the damage, fled after just 90 seconds when some entirely peaceful people booed at her.

Cameron of course has previous form on telling other people how to risk their lives on his behalf. It was only a few weeks ago that, faced with complaints from Army generals about lack of a proper strategy and decent equipment in Afghanistan, he told them at a press conference, "You do the fighting, I'll do the talking!"

Isn't it good to be ruled by such brave people?

Fuel to the Fire

Listening to David Cameron answer questions for over two hours in the Commons this afternoon was a sadly repetitive, turgid and wholly predictable affair. "Criminals", "No excuses", "Water cannon", "full force of the law", "baton rounds" (notably not called by their more common name of plastic bullets), all the cliches were there. He huffed and puffed his way through the usual rightwing knee-jerk stuff about discipline, bad parents and lack of respect - an entirely partial agenda. He paused only momentarily to reject the more outlandish suggestions, such as the one that Wembley stadium should be used as an internment camp for tens of thousands of suspected rioters who should be "rounded up" by the military - though who knows how tempted he was by the prospect?

Lib Dems, Tories and Labour were frequently indistinguishable in seeking solely an authoritarian response, ignoring the fact that if anything has proven this does not work, the riots and looting of the last week show it: where there are too many rioters in too many places at the same time, the police cannot cope. Sure, you can deploy or employ more and maybe you could bring in soldiers - a tactic pioneered in mainland Britain by Winston Churchill in Llanelli in Wales when troops machine-gunned strikers - but such a step would not be a sign of strength , but rather the last refuge of the truly desperate. All it would do would delay the start of the next round of riots, and crank up the level of dissonance and violence when they finally erupt.

A few saner voices urged some calm reflection rather than diving into the raft of new laws and harsh actions welcomed by Cameron today. Caroline Lucas called for an examination of the impact of inequality and a tempering of Government policy in the light of all the evidence that this significantly contributes to crime and violence; Labour's John McDonnell had earlier argued similarly in the Guardian; and a number of other Labour MPs called for a wide ranging public enquiry.

But Cameron has already decided on the authoritarian option, and new laws are to be rushed in, notably somewhat after the event. It is to be strongly suspected that they will be both a huge over-reaction to the events of this week and that before long they will be being used to stifle dissent rather than riots. Once the police can demand that people remove face masks, how long will it be before costumed protester posing in Cameron or Clegg masks are being arrested for intent to riot? If Twitter can lead to people being arrested for false rumours of riots, how long before the interpretation of messages leads to legitimate demonstrators being seized ahead of perfectly lawful protest?

And how long before the police - or army - are indeed deployed to shoot at British citizens rather than anyone in authority taking a serious look at why so many people so willingly engaged in criminal activity this week? It is not a question of excusing people - it is a matter of understanding why something so awful has happened in order to reduce the chances of it happening again.

Criminologists, people who have spent years investigating the motives and behaviour of people who take part in criminal activity and so somewhat more acquainted with these matters than your average Shire Squire Tory MP, have repeatedly explained that most of those looting this week are people who feel they have nothing to lose, that, for whatever reason, they feel they have no stake in society and consequently feel utter contempt for society. The comfort of gangs can be a cold substitute, but many do not even enjoy such camaraderie.

In such a context, the common sense response would be certainly to contain the current round of trouble - although a good dose of British Summer rain appears to have done so for free tonight - but to then work hard to understand and remove the causes of such behaviour. Yet what is the Government's plan? Grant Shapps, Housing Minister, declared today that it would be to empower councils and housing associations to evict tenants found to be involved in the riots. The definition of anti-social behaviour is to be extended from the immediate vicinity of their houses to almost anywhere.

What vituperative petty, small-minded, short-sighted brain, for want of a better word, comes up with such a solution?

You have nothing and feel no connection with society and have been rioting on the streets. What are we going to do? Well, we are going to take away your home and put you out...on the streets! Nursing an even greater set of grievances...

Such are the men who run our country in the Cabinet of Millionaires, 
including the one who claimed £7,000 of our money for soft furnishings. Who is looting who?

Whoever has will be given more, and he will have an abundance. Whoever does not have, even what he has will be taken from him. (Matthew 13:12)

Faces Off!: How soon before genuine protest like this is banned for potentially fomenting potential riot?

From Bullingdon to Brixton: Rulers & Rioters, and Broken Glass

The feral elite and London rioters - how our rich have built a society defined by greed and loot.

There have been many unsurprising commentaries written about the riots engulfing English cities since the weekend - the rightwing press and politicians have predictably trotted out their condemnation of "scum", "riff raff", "feckless" rioters. There have been calls for water cannon to be deployed and the police have menacingly "refused to rule out" the use of baton rounds.

There is no doubt that social tensions sparked the round of violence: the police, having shot a Tottenham man dead in unclear circumstances , refused to talk with his family or a crowd who went to a police station to stage a silent protest on Saturday evening. As tempers flared, a young girl was allegedly attacked by six policemen and from there the rest, as they say, is history. Tottenham town centre was in flames by the early hours of Sunday and from there disturbances have spread around the country, reaching Salford in Greater Manchester this evening and Leeds last night.

And yet, this is no Tahrir Square, nor is it an echo or amplification of the student demonstrations in London last autumn. Whilst undoubtedly many who have taken part in the riots and looting are socially excluded, others are clearly not - and obtaining goods such as X-Boxes, perfume, rucksacks and designer clothing appears much higher up the agenda than protesting about cuts in social care and eduction services. Likewise, some incidents, including forcing passers-by to strip naked, go far beyond any political protest. Small, local shops have been destroyed alongside the chain stores in clearly indiscriminate attacks. So is there anything more than criminal greed?

The BBC interviewed two girls this morning, drinking stolen wine at 9.30 am, laughing about the fun they had had and eagerly anticipating another night "showing the rich" they could do what they wanted. As one commentator noted, "Where we used to be defined by what we did, now we are defined by what we buy. These big stores are in the business of tempting [the consumer] and then suddenly these people find they can just walk into the shop and have it all."

Our society has shaped the pent up desires for the luxury goods being targeted - jewellery shops and electrical stores are prime targets. With the recession making many of these out of bounds for so many, the denial being expected of generations raised on aspirational acquisition is simply too great to be sustainable, especially in a society as characterised by extremes of wealth as ours. As "The Spirit Level" by Wilkinson and Pickett so powerfully explained last year, unequal societies are not only less happy ones, they are also more troubled, crime-ridden and violent. The actors do not personally need social or political objectives for such a drama to unfold.

But more than just stoking the demand for these possessions, our society has now also created the permission required to take what you can. We live in a country with a ruling elite now exposed as being utterly mired in greed and corruption - and rewarded for being so. It is a genie that once out the bottle is returned with great difficulty.

Our Members of Parliament have been exposed for their greed and gluttony over the expenses scandal. With Government leaders claiming for cleaning septic tanks, the Deputy Prime Minister getting his lawn cut at taxpayers expense and MPs "forgetting" to stop claiming for redeemed mortgages, our representatives punished barely a handful of scapegoats and are now back to claiming more than they were before the scandal erupted in 2008.

Our bankers, exposed for their ineptitude and greedy speculation, have been bailed out to the tune of nearly £40,000,000,000 of taxpayers' money - over £1,000 per British adult - yet continue to receive tens of billions in bonuses. The richest dodge their taxes, with the authorities writing off billions, like Vodaphone (£6 billions excused). Public services are being closed to keep our rich elite in champers.

Some of our police, the London Met most of all, have been shown to be riddled with corrupt practices - with cops receiving payments from newspapers for confidential information; investigations tainted by officers receiving gifts, lunches and even jobs from the people under suspicion; and just last week a Chief Constable and his deputy suspended for alleged fraud.

And of course, we have our Prime Minister, David Cameron. In his own youth, Cameron was, along with London Mayor Boris Johnson, a member of the Bullingdon Club at Oxford University (see picture on left above; Cameron is second from left at back; Johnson is on the right, sitting). This society of toffs was known for its practices of pot-smoking, drinking and eating to excess before carrying out some "robust" redecoration of the restaurants they used for their revelry, the main difference with this week's rioters being that Mr Cameron's associates had their Daddies' money to pay for the damage they wrecked. Indeed, Boris Johnson's biographer notes:

"I don't think an evening would have ended without a restaurant being trashed and being paid for in full, very often in cash. A night in the cells would be regarded as being par for a Buller man and so would debagging anyone who really attracted the irritation of the Buller men."  And Cameron himself has reminisced fondly that,“Things got out of hand and we'd had a few drinks. We smashed the place up and Boris set fire to the toilets.”

And so, as we fumble forward to find the motives for the riots - so presciently predicted last year and then helped along by the policies of Nick Clegg and his confederates - there is no doubt that we live in a country where any moral compass is gone. Our "feral elite", as Green Party leader Caroline Lucas has described them, are out of control.

What is the real difference between our grasping rich, ripping off employees and consumers and dodging tens of billions in tax, and the kids nicking £300 sound systems from Currys? Perhaps not even a sheet of broken glass...

No Such Thing As The Big Society

David Cameron's Big Idea is the so-called "Big Society". Originating in the Conservative manifesto, it is now central to the Coalition Government's Agreement and objectives, setting out
"to create a climate that empowers local people and communities, building a big society that will 'take power away from politicians and give it to people."

The Idea, which at one point Cameron attributed to none other than Jesus Christ, is underpinned by five pillars - more powers to local communities, more powers to local councils, encouraging volunteering (including suggestions that volunteers run post offices and pubs), supporting the development of mutuals and co-ops, and more openness in government's workings. And of course, it needs its own special, Tory-placeperson team to promote it - the Big Society Network.

The stench of Tory ideology suffuses the B.S.

All seemingly vaguely laudable, were it not for the background of massive cuts in public spending and the inevitable wiff, or more appropriately, stench of anti-state ideology in the Government's thinking and actions. It is also very cynically selective in terms of memory and facts, on several counts.

Firstly, this week, the False Economy Project showed how the cuts in spending are impacting seriously on many of the very charities that are meant to deliver the Big Society . This year alone, £110 millions in public funding is being cut from their grants towards running a huge range of services, from social care to educational services to support for young offenders.

Central Government in the Gauleiter-like form of Communities Secretary Pickles has attacked local councils for cutting grants to local charities. He callously ignores the fact that (a) the cuts are being imposed on local government by Central Government and (b) thanks to the ongoing Thatcherite agenda adopted by all Governments since the 1980s, the voluntary sector is no longer voluntary in any traditionally  recognisable sense. Rather, in many cases, charities have become the third arm of providing (at low cost and no-profit) a wide range of public services. Consequently, the Conservatives' cuts to local government will inevitably harm charities - most public funding to charities is channelled via local councils.

It was with Care in the Community in the late 1980s, followed by the "voluntarisation" of social housing, that there began a substantial contracting out of public services to the voluntary/charity/third sector. And as that continued under major, Blair and Brown, the sector itself changed massively. For example, in social housing, from being a small, local or specialist movement in the early 1980s, it has been purposefully developed by Tory and Labour Governments into a number of increasingly large groups of national or at least regional businesses, far removed from its original purpose. But it is at least still not-for-profit and it is a key provider of services, so to suggest that somehow it would not be affected by cutbacks in public spending is ingenuous to say the least.

But the other factor is the collective amnesia about how many of our public services were established in the first place - many of our hospitals and GP services long preceded the NHS; and not thanks to the random generosity of Victorian philanthropists as Received Wisdom might claim. Rather, these and other public services were established by the actions of millions of men and women, joining together through trade unions and mutual societies to establish voluntarily the services the community needed for its health and well-being. Alongside this, through political action and the Labour Movement, they agitated, ultimately successfully, to have these provided by the state rather than by voluntary action. Why? Because rightly, in a society with the means ours has, health, housing and other basic needs should be a right, not something obtainable dependent on the strength of local mutual aid societies.

The Tories cite mutuals as a way forward for the Big Society. If these were replacing privately owned businesses, fine. But where they have had a great chance to rekindle the mutual spirit, by turning the nationalised banks into mutual building societies run for people rather than profit, what have they done? Along with their Lib Dem allies, the Tories have announced they will sell off the good bits back to the private finance sector to apparently rebuild confidence in Britain! It seems we are all happily confident in the efficacy of private bankers once more - it's the rest of us who are the problem now.

The fact is that the charitable works that Cameron and Osborne laud from a century ago, probably in the mistaken belief it was all about nice industrialists rather than the mass of people, were done in the absence of public services. They were done from necessity and shared need to fill a huge gap in the well being of society. What they are doing now - closing services, shutting post offices, making people redundant - is the opposite. It is taking the ultimate objective of the charitable works of the past - the creation of a secure society - and dismantling it.

The consequences of such barbarity, of returning the welfare of millions to the randomness of the Victorian Age, when life was short and brutal, a Pandora's Box is being opened up. With the Thatcherite nostrum of looking after the self first and foremost, the riots in Tottenham last night, and now this evening in Enfield, may be just a glimpse of a terrifying future for us all. With youth services and other public facilities in that area slashed and unemployment rising, whilst no excuse for the violence, it serves as a serious reminder of what can happen when the value of society is discounted and the social contract torn up, regardless of the deceitfully honeyed words so knowingly whispered by H.M.'s Executioners.

BREAKING NEWS ON CAMERON RESIGNATION DEMAND

THE NEWS WE WERE ALL WAITING FOR:

The Shadow has Dirty Dave in his sights..

Alec Baldwin: David Cameron Should Resign

 

www.huffingtonpost.co.uk

Today's biggest question: What does actor Alec Baldwin have in common with Labour MPs Dennis Skinner and Sir Gerald Kauffman? The answer: all three have called on the prime minister to resign in the last week.

More here from the Huffington Post

Lib Dems Last Chance in the Coalition of the Corrupt

"We both want a Britain where our political system is looked at with admiration, not anger. We have a shared ambition to clean up Westminster..."

These words were the ringing declaration by David Cameron and Nick Clegg in May last year, hailing the Conservative-Liberal Democrat Coalition Government as a new start in British politics, jaded by the scandals of MPs expenses and the banking crisis. But tonight, they ring truly hollow.

After revelation upon revelation in the last fortnight of the incestuously close relationships between News International, the Metropolitan Police and the highest echelons of the Conservative Party, including - perhaps especially including - David Cameron himself, the idea that this can ever be a Government capable of reforming and cleaning up its own mess is beyond risible. Again and again, Mr Cameron has been compromised, whether in his hiring of Andy Coulson, his friendship with Rebekah Brooks, or his courting of Rupert Murdoch (even having him round for a "thankyou" cup of tea when the ink was barely dry on the Coalition Agreement). His actions in the Commons today were evasive to the point of being pathetic, like a childish schoolboy caught red-handed in the tuck shop, but denying he ate the chocolate smeared all over his chin.

Shapeshifter: like Star Trek's Odo, Cameron ultimately reverts to type..

It would be laughable were it not so deeply, terribly serious. Serious not only from the perspective of the victims of phone hacking, nor from the alleged payments to corrupt policemen, nor even the jobs offered by the Met and Cameron himself to former hacks and their family members. But even more so from the perspective that News International owned the two biggest circulation newspapers in the UK which, along with the prestigious Times titles, switched from supporting Labour to nakedly partisan advocacy for the Conservatives at the last election. And, given the nature of the reporting in The Sun and News of the World, these papers have substantially added to the atmosphere (or atmosfear) of xenophobia, disablism and paranoia that informs swathes of our society, while unquestioningly pursuing a right-wing agenda that entrenches the power of Murdoch and the Establishment.

Tomorrow's Morning Star...news you can trust!

Cameron should resign. There is no question of that. He is a disgrace to his office and, as we saw with him having to red-faced hurry home from South Africa earlier this week, he is a shame on our country.

Of course, he won't go. Like many power-hungry men in his position, he will cling by his fingernails to the varnished surface of the Cabinet table until his grip is prised off.

But by who?

Many Tories have long been suspicious of Cameron, but for now there can be little doubt that most will close ranks around them - the entire scandal has tainted their party and their class; so they will not relish removing him if he can ride out the storm.

Yet of course, this Government is not a Conservative one alone. Cameron holds office thanks to the support of 57 Liberal Democrat MPs and their leader, Nick Clegg. To date, they have been untainted by the scandal - they were not wined and dined by Murdoch and his lackeys - and Clegg claims to have warned Cameron about appointing Coulson as his Press Secretary, although evidently his words fell on deaf ears and he meekly went along with the appointment, the need to clean up politics quietly forgotten.

So, the question now has to be this - how long will the Liberal Democrats continue to sustain this man in office? How long will they permit him to be evasive about his appointment of Coulson? How long will they ignore his meetings with Murdoch's men - 26 in just over a year - at a time when News International were seeking Government approval to buy BSkyB outright? Do they seriously think the public will buy the idea that Cameron's links with NI were unknown to Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt, who was to take the decision?

Before the task fell to Hunt, the duty of ruling on the takeover bid was in the domain of Business Secretary Vince Cable. The Lib Dem big wig was infamously stung by two young female reporters, the "middle aged" Minister effusively showing off by declaring himself to be "at war with Murdoch", thereby disqualifying himself from being allowed to take the decision. In spite of claiming he could nuke the Government because he was so important and powerful, he only just kept his job.

But if Cable's injudicious remarks compromised him, how much more compromised is the Government by the insidious, obsequious relations between the Prime Minister and these people?

So, for Mr Cable and his boss Mr Clegg, already reeling from the hostile reaction to their support for a range of neoliberal policies, the question now surely has to be is it not time to do the decent thing and pull the plug on their Coalition? When you have a Prime Minister as weakened as this one now is, surely it is time to ask the People who they want to govern? And don't they realise that, if they are indeed at war with Murdoch, they are also at war with their Coalition partner, who, more clearly than ever, is nothing but the parroting placeman of the moneymen who are trying to buy up our country and put paid to our democracy?

Time for Vince to push the button...

In Cameron We Trust (not)?

It's that Watergate Moment!

A dramatic week for our politics, press and police. And yet do the travails of the 3-pees amount to anything more enduring than this week's headlines as the Establishment probably prays this morning that the public is heading towards "Murdoch fatigue"?

The chances of this latest crisis to rock our rulers leading to the democratically accountable media we need seem unlikely in the extreme. Even Ed Miliband, who has had a good fortnight, has come out against any compulsory regulation of our errant Press and the "wide ranging" public enquiries announced by David Cameron will take several years to be about as useful as the public enquiries into the Falklands War and the death of Dr Kelly. And now comes the claims in the Independent on Sunday that the Chair of the committee of MPs that will question Murdoch and his acolytes this week has close personal links with News International executives.

At the end of the day, it has been fun to watch them squirm. Rupert Murdoch, Rebekah Brooks and Andy Coulson (the latter two now both arrested) have been hounded by the cameras all week and even although it is rather a case of their rivals kicking them when they are down, it is still sweet to see the boot finally on the other foot, however temporarily. And as for Cameron himself - the mask has finally slipped as the Independent newspaper revealed his continued friendship and fortnightly meetings with the people whose staff bugged and connived their way into the private life of his predecessor, Gordon Brown. Sadly, as yet, this is not turning into his Watergate - the rest of the Press, chewing on the bloodied legs of News International, have a vested interest in keeping him where he is.

But the parallels are striking - Nixon had links to all manner of unsavoury characters who did him favours, not necessarily with him needing to ask or know. And infamously, he bugged hundreds of conversations in the heart of the White House. Cameron has not done that, but his sponsors (or their surrogates) clearly have committed equivalent acts, even if their newspapers were supposedly so out of control that they didn't know about the hacking, nor ask any questions about where the stories came from.

How tenable can it be then that we have a Prime Minister who socialises with the people who used pretty underhand methods to undermine his predecessor and twist the democratic process? Or who allowed Parliament to be misled about his continued contact with Andy Coulson after he left his post at Downing Street? Or who was silent about the fact that, since becoming Prime Minister, he has met with News International executives on average once every two weeks?

Cameron's dark side, for the diminishing number who still thought he didn't have one, is becoming strikingly clear - his taste for Power seems to be as endlessly thirsty as the unquenchable palate of the Dirty Digger, whom he clearly admires so much. And to whom, in the end, he owes so much.


Update - 17 July; Metropolitant Police chief resigns and attacks Cameron over the affair. More here.

Symbiotic Sun - who depends on who?  "The Sun" front page on election day 2010)

Former Prime Minister Gordon Brown Addresses Parliament last week: