Pigs to the trough again

So we now see the leaders of the free world zipping around trying to talk our representatives into giving away our money. The image of the pigs whose snouts were in the trough for years coming to us for a refill when they hit bad times is sickening.

What do they actually need to do to be held to account?

What about making them personally responsible and ultimately answerable in a court so as to focus a few minds? Would it not be nice if a shareholder or ex-employee laid off could ask someone to consider making the chief executive and his underlings pay them compensation from their golden goodbyes?

Dream on – New Labour aka Old Tory Brown will make sure they are compensated for their greed and incompetence.

Same old same!

Get emailing, telephoning and protesting NOW!

On Sunday 15 June, the mass murderer-in-chief George Bush will be visiting Britain to meet with Gordon Brown, who continues to collude obediently with Bush's war crimes. Stop the War, in conjunction with CND, has called a demonstration on that day, which will assemble in Parliament Square at 1pm.

Clearly it is important that we all join together and protest either in person, or by writing to your MP, Gordon Brown and to all family and friends to encourage them to protest about the visit.

Here’s what some others have to say about the Texan butcher:-

HAROLD PINTER, playwright and Nobel prize winner:
"There is no more suitable candidate for Leading War Criminal than George Bush. The only person that comes anywhere near him is Tony Blair. They are both beneath contempt. Bush should certainly be arrested and sent to Guantanamo Bay where he can rot forever.

"LOUISE CHRISTIAN, human rights lawyer:
"George Bush bears a heavy responsibility as the leader of the most powerful country in the world who has comprehensively turned his back on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights of 1948 and the whole concept of international law.

"MOAZZAM BEGG, former Guantanamo detainee:
"History will judge G.W. Bush as the man who wreaked devastation and destruction on earth even as he was having men tortured in the world's most notorious and secret prisons."

Get emailing, telephoning and protesting NOW!

Father Blair?

As Tony Blair launches his Faith Foundation in New York, saying that he wants to spend most of his remaining years ensuring that religion is seen as a force for good in the world, what must the orphans, widows and mutilated men of Iraq and other war zones think of western “justice” and our brand of "religion"?

The new organisation, for which he is seeking hundreds of millions of pounds of charitable funding (nice little earner then), claims that it wants to focus on developing better understanding between faiths as well as fostering concrete action on fighting poverty and disease. Exactly the thing his policies as the British Prime minister promoted in Iraq.

He is simply a war criminal and all his recent turns as “Peace Envoy” and now promoter of “religion” will be seen for what it is – a guilty man trying to reinvent himself.

Maybe a turn in a prison to reflect and pray could be the best thing for him.

Ready for the fight!????

Seeing New Labour/Old Tory going into meltdown means that we could be looking at a right-wing resurgence, something Brown and Co have been promoting for some time now.

The only answer to this is to get the “Real Left” in gear for the general elections set to happen in the next 24 months or so.

Can the Left raise a campaign in time? Well let’s hope those manoeuvring for position in their local pond don’t miss the opportunity that beckons at sea!

Fat Cats win again

A Labour friendly think-tank, the Institute for Fiscal Studies, has produced two damning reports which expose New Labour’s failure to address issues of poverty and inequality.

In Poverty and Inequality in the UK: 2007 the IFS find that the number of people living in relative poverty (living in households with less than 60% of median incomes - that is less than £363 per week disposable income) rose from 12.1 million in 2004/05 to 12.8 million in 2005/06 (the last available figures).

Despite Labour promises, these figures show a rise in child poverty and working adult poverty.

The second report, published last week, called Racing Away: Income Inequality and the Evolution of High Incomes suggests that inequality is higher today than at anytime during the present Labour or proceeding Tory administrations.

Inequality is measured using the "gini coefficient." It gives a measure as a single number between 0 and 1. The closer to 0 a country scores the greater the levels of equality; the closer to 1 the country scores the greater the inequality.

In 1979 Britain’s score was 0.25. During the 1980s inequality grew sharply, reaching a peak in the early 1990s at 0.34. This was a rise in inequality without historical parallel. There was a slight fall in the inequality measure between the early and mid-1990s, but it rose again during the early New Labour years (reaching a peak in 200/2001 of 0.35).

Although there was a slight drop in the inequality score after this, it has now gone back up to 0.35 - a higher level of inequality than when Labour came to office in 1997.

Under New Labour the top 10 per cent of earners now take home 40 per cent of all earned income in Britain, while the top 0.1% have an average pre-tax income of £780,000 (the average pre-tax income for the UK is £25,000).

Since New Labour came to power in 1997 the average income of the top 10 per cent of earners has grown faster than any other group in society. Meanwhile, the average income of the lowest 15 per cent has grown at a slower rate than that of any other group.

So there you have it. Under New Labour the rich get richer and richer, and the poor fall further and further behind.

(As seen on RESPECT www site)