Thursday, December 26, 2013

What's The Difference Between Ed Miliband and David Cameron?

What's The Difference Between Ed Miliband and David Cameron? One man does things for the greater good, the other does things for his own good.

Apparently for some years now Ed Miliband like so many other caring people has given up part of his Christmas day to deliver meals to others less fortunate, Mr Miliband's office would not confirm this or confirm where he helped this Christmas day because at Ed's request he doesn't want camera's following him. 

Can you imagine Ed Miliband's spin doctors? As the report says, they are probably saying if there's no publicity in it then what's the use, stay home with the family. However, here lies the real reason why Ed Miliband does what he does, he does it because he genuinely wants to help, he genuinely wants to talk to other people, he genuinely wants their opinions good or bad, he needs to now what ordinary people think and want to make their lives better.

The very fact that Ed Miliband has done this for years without publicity shows us the calibre of the man. While others have knocked him, tried to ridicule him, accused him of being out of touch, of being a rich boy and accused him of being 'Tory lite', Ed Miliband has been doing things like this. I guess Ed is what  is termed as a 'doer' and the rest are mainly armchair preachers.

Visiting ordinary people on Christmas Day without fanfare, is not all he has done, I read somewhere that Ed Miliband has also visited small businesses, shops, factories, market stall holders etc unannounced without cameras so people can feel free to say what they really think and feel.

Miliband is not frightened of confrontation either, when it happens he doesn't hide it or from it, even if it is on camera, like so many other issues that come with him being Labour leader, he deals with it head on, we may not like what he decides, or agree with some of the ways he wants to develop Labour policy, but what cannot be denied is his strength, his honesty and his integrity and what is obviously his burning desire to unite the people of this country and give a voice back to the ordinary person who has felt for some years that they have been ignored by politicians.

We have seen Ed Miliband on many unannounced walkabouts, in streets, markets, shopping centres etc. We have seen the impromptu pallets whipped out and him stand in the middle and talk to passers by, we have seen him talk to those in watchers who are hostile to him and even though he may not have won them round, what he does, is something he is really good at, he talks *to* people and not at them and he allows them their say and he answers them honestly, no political flannel!

The prime minister, David Cameron by contrast never answers a single question in PMQs and if he ever bothers to speak to the public at all, it is all stage managed scripted questions which he has been supplied the scripted answers by his researchers, nothing at all comes from Cameron. We see him visit factories or supermarkets or schools and everything even the questions, are arranged before hand. The workers are always placed strategically behind him so the cameras can pick them up. But we never know what those workers actually think, we only know what those who are cherry-picked for presentation to Cameron think and what is the use of that? And the factories are always companies belonging to Tory donors, like Warburtons and JCB and Cameron always manages to get them loads of free advertising by having their logos in shot. Everything Cameron does is contrived to benefit him and the Tory party.
Even after three and half years we don't know what Cameron is, what he stands for or what he really wants to do, except he revels in the glory of being PM and revels in publicity. We know that his opinions are like Tory policy, they change with the way the political wind is blowing. If Cameron ever does slip off message it is usually to put his foot in it, he doesn't know history as his knowledge of when the Americans entered WW2 showed us. He is gaff prone and cannot do detail, his intellect is simply not up to the job. He insults people, he attacks immigrants and loves being shown and heard attacking the poor and unemployed inferring that they are all 'shirkers', idlers' scroungers' or 'benefit cheats' and the disabled are all 'swinging the lead', because he and Lynton Crosby thinks there are cheap and nasty votes to be won in this area, so he thinks nothing of appealing to some narrow minded peoples base instincts.

Whatever David Cameron does he makes sure he passes the buck to Labour, even for his own mistakes, he never excepts responsibility for anything he and his government have caused, like the appalling surge in poverty, the numbers of food banks, the fact that food banks have been forced to step in a feed over half million people these past few months and he will ensure the entire press pack and the broadcast media in tow to hear him trying to pass the buck for his own vicious and often incompetent government policies. He only grins when he's winning too For example: Last summer when the England cricket team were taking part in the Ashes test match with Australia and were winning, you couldn't keep Cameron off of TV, up he popped on every news channel and in every paper associating himself with a winning side, this time when the England team could do with a few words of encouragement because they are losing, David Cameron is nowhere to be seen. Cameron only grins when England is winning, otherwise they don't exist and it is the same with us ordinary folk, the only time that Cameron has time for us is when the election is approaching and he needs out votes and then we will not be able to get rid of him. Ed Miliband on the hand has proved he is friend in need, so is a friend in deed, he is there in the good and the bad times, not just after your vote, (although of course he does want this) he is after what you think, what you want and how you see things. Another example of this was when Ed Miliband went to Brixton to attend a ceremony for Nelson Mandela, there were no TV cameras present, just Ed Miliband wishing to pay his respects with the ordinary people of Brixton - where was the prime minister? At home; he had already got his publicity by taking a selfie at the memorial service of Nelson Mandela with the Dutch leader and president Obama, so he wasn't interested in what the ordinary folk of Brixton were doing to commemorate the passing of Nelson Mandela and I believe the sentiments that Cameron expressed over the passing of Mandela and his life were entirely false.

Number 10 had also made sure that Ed Miliband was sidelined when he attended the memorial service in South Africa. It was up to the Foreign Office and Number 10 to have made sure that the importance of Ed Miliband's presence as leader of the Labour opposition  was known to the organisers of the event, after all Nelson Mandela and the Labour party have a very long history. It was the Labour party who stood with Mandela in his long fight against apartheid. While some in the Conservative party were calling for the hanging of Nelson Mandela, and David Cameron was on an all expense paid jolly to the white supremacist  South Africa (for which he has never expressed contrition), it was the Labour party who stood resolutely by Nelson Mandela and worked for his freedom. Cameron knew this but Cameron also recognised he could get himself seen on the world's stage and that was more important to him than Nelson Mandela or his family. Nelson Mandela has also been a guest at the Labour party conference yet all of this seems to have been forgotten, this was a disgraceful act by the prime minister's spin doctors and office, yet the decorum of Ed Miliband as a true statesman and a true friend of South Africa towers head and shoulders above David Cameron and his publicity seeking antics.

Some accuse Miliband of being public schooled/privately educated - he wasn't.  Ed Miliband went to a state primary school and a state comprehensive school and he got to Oxford university under his own merits.

This last year we have started to see the real Ed Miliband. He has stood up and spoken out against bankers and has also repeatedly said we must change the way we do business as a country, even though he knows it makes him unpopular with the Tory business owning establishment and the financial houses.

He forced David Cameron to stop dithering about phone hacking he backed Cameron into a corner and gave him no option but to hold an inquiry. and hold an inquiry and the result those badly affected by phone hacking. like the family of murdered Milly Dowler were able to get some kind of justice for the trauma they have been forced to undergo at the hands of the Murdoch press.

Ed has also stood up to Cameron, Hague and Obama over Syria and prevented the bombing of Syria and because of that Syria is now decommissioning chemical weapons.

He has stood up to the Murdoch press. He has also stood up to the Daily Mail and Dacre. He has stood up to the vested interests of the energy companies and loan sharks, he has promised to repeal the NHS, the bedroom tax. In fact Ed Miliband has been setting the political agenda this past year.

This is the calibre of the Labour leader and far from it not being recognised by the Tories and their right wing press tycoon friends (who have a vested interest in Cameron being reelected), they recognise Miliband's qualities only too well and they are doing their best to make sure that the public do not see them, it's why they tell lies about him, deliberately misrepresent him and deliberately misquote him. They know that if the public get wind of the fact that irrespective of whether they agree with everything Ed Miliband does or not, that he is decent, honest and more intellectually capable of running this country that the entire current government put together that it will spell enormous trouble for them, so they do their best to ensure the public is not informed or is misinformed and they use their Tory friends in the right wing media and broadcast media to do this.

At first the Tories underestimated Ed Miliband badly, however, their spin doctor in chief (and lobbyist of everything bad) Lynton Crosby has not made that mistake he knows that Miliband represents a huge threat to Cameron, which is why 2014 and up until the general election in 2015, the Tories will play not just dirty politics, they will employ filthy dirty sewer rat infested politics.

Ed Miliband may have breached one of the biggest unwritten rules in modern politics "if you do good things let people know", but to me this just clearly shows that at last we have a decent, honest caring man who wants to lead our country and is more than intellectually capable too, we should not pass this chance up.


Monday, December 16, 2013

Tories Casting Around For More Benefit Cuts to Fund Another Millionaire's Tax Cut!



Conservative expense 'fiddler' Nadhim Zahawi the MP for Stratford-on-Avon wants child benefit stopped for people who have more than two children.

Millionaire MP Mr Zahawi was recently discovered charging the taxpayer almost £6000 per year to heat his 20 horse stables and to heat his stable manager's mobile home. He claimed it was a mistake, however, if an ordinary person was to make a 'mistake' like this, they would be splashed across the Sun, Mail and Express, be held up as 'typical' of the working class 'plebs' referred to as 'idlers' shirkers' and 'scroungers' and hounded to within and inch of their lives and would certainly face prosecution and prison. But if you are the millionaire Tory MP close friend of PM David Cameron you get to get away with your 'indiscretion', in much the same way that Liberal Democrat MP David Laws did when he was discovered fiddling over £50,000 housing allowances, he got a slapped wrist and given a week off. Mr Laws has now been brought back into the government and rewarded for his little 'indiscretion'.


The Family Allowance Act 1945 was an Act of parliament and part of the Beveridge Report in 1942 that came into operation in August 1946, it was the first law to provide child benefit to help with raising children in the UK.

There could be a debate to be had about why anyone should be in receipt of child benefit at all in this day and age, if all people were paid a proper rate for their job and paid so they could actually support their families, there may be a case for paying out less in these kind of benefits, but as I suspect that this would force the Tories benefactors, the big companies, the corporations, the energy conglomerates and the nationals and multi nationals and the bankers who donate millions to the Tory party to pay YOU a decent wage, I suspect that this is a debate that the Tory controlled coalition government would not like to have, because it may expose the appalling anomalies that are hidden within our system, anomalies which are there to keep the poor downtrodden and in their place and ready to do any old menial work and be made to be grateful for it! Face it we are becoming cheap labour fodder. 'Social mobility'? What social mobility? It's all Tory talk.

If child benefit is to be stopped for those who have more than two children, then why does Zahawi and Cameron think it should start with the poorest in society? How would making a poor family even poorer help? How would taking money from someone who had a good job and could well afford their three children and then became unemployed through no fault of their own actually help? or are we going to go down the road of social engineering?

The truth is of course it won't help because the odious Zahawi admits that this wouldn't be done to help anyone - except for the Conservative party. Zahawi is charged with coming up with policy that will attract voters to the Tory party and this is a naked and blatant attempt to buy the 'nasty vote' for the Tories, it is being mooted in order to attract voters who seem to have forgotten they were once children themselves and whose family no doubt collected 'Family Allowance' for them.

Did David Cameron's millionaire parents collect family allowance for him and his THREE siblings?
Until recently David Cameron collected child benefit (and other benefits) for his children.
Millionaire aristocrat and Tory chancellor George Osborne collected child benefit for his children.

Probably millionaire Tory MP Nadhim Zahawi collected child benefit for his THREE children, why wouldn't he when he collected £6000 per year from the taxpayer to heat his stables, his managers home, and his own home? After all he must be really hard up, so it's 'understandable' that Tory chancellor George Osborne should give him a tax break of £100,000 and now according to the autumn statement it looks like he will be getting another huge tax break of around £100,000, when his income tax is reduce still further. Good that he is casting around looking for cuts to made so the chancellor can fund these tax cuts for millionaires!

And he is currently claiming £170,234 for his expenses and second home from the taxpayer, the man just loves to claim! He has 31 acres of land in Warwickshire, with stables run as a livery yard registered in the "Register of Members' Interests" as Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd. Zahawi is also a registered owner of a residential property in Putney, which he bought for £1.85 million in December 2005. Zahawi & Zahawi Ltd is a business consultancy company registered to the same Putney address with Companies House. He also has three rental flats in London, and is a non executive director of a London-based specialist recruitment company called "SThree", from which he had a monthly salary of £2,916,67.  He also founded YouGov Pollsters and is a registered shareholder. Lynton Crosby the PM's lobbyist spin doctor also happens to be a director of YouGov.

Questions:
  • Why does a man of Nadhim Zahawi's means and extensive property portfolio receive an allowance from the taxpayer for a second home in London? Why doesn't he just use one of his own properties?
  • Why has so very little been made of this in the right wing Tory supporting press, when if it were a labour MP they would act as if the sky was falling in?
  • Would this mean that the poor would be restricted to how many children they can have while the rich can carry on breeding with impunity?
Not to be outdone Conservative Chairman millionaire Grant Shapps aka Michael Green aka Seb Fox of 'dodgy' website notoriety yesterday waded into the argument with another 'Shappsism', he goes one step further, not only does he want to rob and bludgeon and take money off the poor with more than two children, he wants all people all are unemployed to stop receiving all child benefit. So if you lose your job and are struggling, millionaire Tory MP Grant Shapps thinks it would be cool to  make your struggle even harder by taking away help with child support. 

Has Shapp's 'Shappsism' found a cunning way to help plug George Osborne's black hole in his finances over his promises on the cost of the free school meals and pupil premium policies? Apart from it being a barking mad suggestion (why is Shapps even an MP he is not not even nice but dim, he's just incredibly dim), how would it work? Would it apply to those people forced to do temporary jobs and are always in and out of work - now you have child benefit now you don't - sort of thing? What about part-timers do they qualify with IDS new hours penalties? Zero hour contracts? Those forced to work for nothing on government workfare schemes, will it apply to them? The cost of these policies is assumed to be swallowed up in the overall spending envelope from 2016-17. In other words, they are NOT costed and those costs will have to be found at a later date by slashing even deeper into other spending. 


And the Liberal Democrats are not much better, in fact in many ways they are worse, they are enabling this government to privatise the NHS. Cut ESA and declare terminally ill people and disabled people fit to work. They  hide behind falsified unemployment figures and pretend there is a recovery when it is just an over inflating housing bubble. They are helping them pass legislation that enables them to charge poor people the bedroom tax. They help to make people homeless, they turn a blind eye to the escalating numbers of foodbanks and the fact that the Red Cross has put out an appeal for help in providing food parcels to British citizens and that Save the Children and Shelter are warning of a catastrophe in child abuse and child homelessness that has soared over the past three years. The Lib Dems of all people turning a blind eye first to the trebling of tuition fees now to the selling of student loans which means that after graduating students with or without jobs will be hounded to pay back their debt to debt recovery companies or face prosecution. The Lib Dems voted WITH the Tories to abolish EMA making it harder for kids from humble backgrounds to continue with higher education.

Power craved opportunist Lib Dems


Follow the money, there is always a 'cunning plan' to take away from the poor and now the squeezed middle and give to the rich with everything the Tories do. They give with one hand and take three times more away with the other.

First this Tory controlled coalition government came for the disabled, the sick, the poor and the vulnerable and the unemployed and you kept quiet and rejoiced at others hardship because you didn't think they meant you - now they are starting to come for you and your family and your security is at risk, what do you think now? This is just the start - still think it's a good idea to vote Conservative?

Same Old Tories.

Remember we are all just one accident or illness away from being sick and disabled and we are all just one pay day away from being unemployed.

It affects *YOU* too!

Same old stinking hypocritical, lying, deceitful, incompetent Tories!

Wednesday, December 11, 2013

Is There Another Iain Duncan Smith Scandal Waiting To break?

George Osborne's housing bubble,  falling living standards and cost of living crisis are not the only problems we have threatening to derail this quasi economic recovery, we also have a massive scandal in the making about statistics abuse at the Department of Work and Pensions headed by work and pensions secretary Iain Duncan Smith (IDS).

The right wing press and even the Guardian seem to be reluctant to investigate and expose the 'strange' data concerning unemployment statistics. The Great Falling Unemployment Myth. They keep telling us that unemployment is falling, it isn't it can't be and a cursory look at the way the statistics are being compiled and abuses would only take a few minutes.

When Mark Carney became the Governor of the Bank of England (BoE) a short while ago, he made much play about how interest rates would have to rise when unemployment hit 7%. When he first said this I immediately pointed out that the government were fiddling the unemployment statistics so much and were being so successful in doing so that we would reach that figure of 7% unemployment much sooner than he expected. I said if this happened then Carney would have no choice but to row back from raising interest rates. This is now exactly what is happening. The whole country and the economy is now balanced on the top of a house of cards which has been been built on a unsustainable housing bubble, soaring debt and false and unemployment figures.

How long before it topples?

In my opinion the Department of Work and Pensions (DWP) under the instruction of the Work and Pensions Secretary Iain Duncan-Smith is fraudulently collating sets of employment and unemployment figures for the Office National Statistics (ONS) to work on and it is not IF the economy crashes, it is WHEN it crashes! If Carney was to raise interest rates on the back of falling unemployment when it is not really falling the whole lot would come crashing down and people would lose, homes. businesses and jobs.

There has been regular statistics abuse at  the DWP every set of figures that IDS is involved with are wrong, they never add up. He (and other government departments and ministers) have repeatedly caught by the UK Statistics Department and publicly rebuked for misusing stats, but they still do it and not only that, they go to the House of Commons and blatantly lie about statistics. Osborne did it last Thursday when he said that our living standards were rising, it turns out that Osborne was using stats in his figures that he knows he should never have used, in a blatant misuse of statistics which was obviously meant to deliberately deceive and this amounts to an abuse of his power.

Now not only is there an abuse of statistics at the DWP it is now set to waste over a £100 million at least on IT systems that are unfit for purpose.

And how come IDS awarded Accenture the IT contracts  right up until 2018, when they were the same company that failed to deliver the last government a suitable IT system for the NHS? david Mowett the  Tory MP for Warrington used to be in the employ of Accenture. Mr Mowat describes his tenure at Accenture as a success, was he still there when Accenture was the company that gave up two failing NHS contracts and then tried to paper over the cracks and claimed it had all been a roaring success? Mr Mowat retired in 2006 and in 2006 after months of negotiations, Accenture handed contracts worth £2bn over to rival Computer Sciences Corporation after getting paid just £110m for spending a third of the allotted 10 years on the job. Its hand had been forced by losses of $450m it was set to make on the deal in 2011.

David Cameron has been rebuked for telling lies in a party political broadcast and Cameron and Grant Shapps, Jeremy Hunt and Iain Duncan Smith have all been rebuked for misusing statistics, yet they are allowed to carry on with impunity both in the House and outside and they are allowed to get away with it and journalists print the guff they are fed and never ask question - why? IDS has been rebuked by the Office for National Statistics for telling lies HERE.


How dangerous is Iain Duncan Smith's deliberate falsifying of the unemployment data? Ask Mark Carney BoE Governor as he is making decisions on interest rates on the back of unemployment data and if the data is untrue and interest rates rise it could herald a collapse in our economy.

Yet no one seems to be willing to investigate IDS and the obvious anomalies in unemployment, yet they are crucial to our economic recovery!

David Cameron actually sacked Iain Duncan Smith and he refused point blank to go and Cameron capitulated and allowed him to stay, extraordinary behaviour, anyone would think that IDS had some sort of hold over the prime minister? Could it be because Cameron and Osborne have been asking IDS to falsify the unemployment and employment statistics (and others) and he threatened to expose the lot if he was sacked from his job?

The question is under whose instruction is IDS doing this? Why is such an incompetent man able to exert so much power over the prime minister? Is a this scandal in the making and does it go right to the heart of British Government?

Yet the right wing press say nothing - why?


Autumn Statement Just a Load of Codswallop and Reannouncements

Last Thursday was the Conservative chancellor's long awaited and much talked about Autumn Statement, which turned out to be worse than the BBC at Christmas - just another load of repeats and re-announcements of policies that have already been announced many times before.

The government used to have a buzzword for infrastructure projects, they enthusiastically describe them as 'shovel ready'. However,the truth is that the majority of these shovel ready projects announced by the government last week have already been announced - several times! And we have yet to see a single shovel being picked up let alone used! More lies and misleading from the Tory chancellor. For all this government's announcements and re-announcements about infrastructure projects, the truth is that new infrastructure projects have fallen by 3.5% in the three and a half years the coalition government have been in power. Not such good news if you are a first time buyer, or trying to rent, or waiting for a council property to become available.

Christmas is approaching fast and the cost of living is sprialling out of control, people are borrowing more money than ever before and it is not to buy festive food and drink, they are turning to expensive credit cards and payday loan sharks and borrowing money to pay their household bills, gas, electric, water, food.  These are not just the unemployed 'shirkers' and 'skivers' that the government unfairly like to harangue and single out for public abuse and bullying, these are people in work in low paid jobs, some doing several part-time jobs in order to survive.

In last week's autumn statement when the shadow chancellor, Ed Balls tried to raise this issue with the chancellor, he was met with this.


Typically the right wing press have lied and misled about Ed Balls performance, it was actually quite good, but it could not be heard for the braying and jeering in the chamber which was allowed to continue as the Speaker had lost control of the House.

Ed Balls had to shout to be heard above the laughing and guffawing millionaire Conservative and Liberal Democrat MPs and this braying and jeering also came from the millionaire cabinet minister government front benches. Mr Balls tried his best to raise points about the cost of living, he tried his best to represent what ordinary members of the public wanted raised, the cost of living, falling living standards, soaring energy costs, people being forced to use credit cards and turn to payday loan companies to make ends meet, but the jeering and laughing front bench and government back bench MPs refused to allow this to be raised.

When chancellor George Osborne returned to his feet, did he address the points raised by Ed Balls about the struggle of the public to live? About how people have not had a pay rise and how others are trapped on low pay in a race to the bottom? No, not a bit of it, the appalling response from the man responsible for the millions trapped in poverty and forced to use foodbanks to fee their children, many even returning food that requires energy to cook it (because they have no light or heating), was to launch into astonishing and venomous personal attacks about Ed Balls playing the piano. The chancellor clearly enjoying the fact that his MPs had denied the public the right to hear Ed Balls response, joined in the laughing and jeering, this millionaire cabinet are so out of touch, so arrogant that they think it is OK to laugh at us the public struggling to survive as a direct consequence of this chancellor's failed policies.

Anyone who saw last weeks shameful debacle in the House of Commons, it was clear that it was orchestrated to stop the public from listening to the Shadow chancellor's response and to stop the public from understanding that the Labour opposition understand their problems and are working hard trying to do something about it and are desperately trying to raise the cost of living crisis to the top of the political agenda and force the government to act. I know that Tory and Lib Dem MPs received a text message to drown out the chancellor it was called "operation get Balls", what I would also like to know is where this message originated from? My guess is that it came from Lynton Crosby, the PMs election strategist (and the lobbyist with fingers in every dirty money making scheme known to man), if it did then this is a clear and orchestrated breach of protocol which goes right to the heart of this stinking corrupt Tory Lib Dem government.

Why didn't this government want you to hear the opposition's message?

Osborne keeps saying he is balancing the books but he is trying to do so without balancing the economy, which is akin to paying extra off of your mortgage  each month and not leaving enough to heat or light your home and feed and clothe your children forcing them to live in poverty or to beg and steal food or die of starvation. It is economic illiteracy, economics of the madhouse. And the utter lunacy of it all is that Osborne isn't even paying down the national debt, it is actually growing and he isn't even reducing borrowing, he will borrow more in his five years of government than the former Labour government did  in their entire thirteen years and the Labour government had an international banking crisis and the worse global recession for over 80 years to deal with, what excuse does Osborne have? None, just his own failed austerity measures and his own failed policies and his own failed predictions. In truth George Osborne has failed every single target he has set himself. He inherited growth of 2.7% from Labour in 2010, now he thinks we should all congratulate him if he gets growth back up to 2.5% in 2014 (that's still 0.2% short of what he inherited from Labour back in 2010). The truth is that the British economy has gone backwards and is still going backwards.

The chancellor's autumn statement was made up of infrastructure projects that have already been announced several times, and a load of predictions and forecasts from Osborne's quasi Office Budget Responsibility (OBR) about growth, predictions from the office that to date has not got one single forecast right!

There is also serious doubt about how Osborne is going to fund the projects he has announced the next day after the autumn statement the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) tore into Osborne's statement ridiculing and backing what the shadow chancellor had tried to say over all the jeers and shrieking from out of control Tory MPs. Living standards in 2015 will be lower than they were in 2010.

The chancellor also never addressed the spiralling personal debt problem and ignores the fact that household debt in the UK has reached a record level, according to figures from the Bank of England. Individuals now owe a total of £1.43 trillion. Many people not borrowing to invest, but borrowing to  get them out of trouble and to pay mortgages and rent and to meet their household bills.

We are all merrily skipping down the exact same road as led to the 2008 crash, the only difference is, that this time it is not the banks that is funding soaring out of control toxic debt unknown to the rest of us, it is the British government with quantitative easing (QE) that is knowingly funding what will (as sure as eggs is eggs) turn to be toxic debt. The banks are not lending because after the crash and because of new government regulations that insist they have a certain amount of funding on their books and this caps the amount they they have enough to lend, so Osborne has stepped in to override his own regulations and ordered the BoE to top the banks accounts up with printed money (QE), so in effect the government are guaranteeing loans and funding unsecured loans with taxpayers money and the banks are making all the profit. Again economics of the madhouse. If there is another global slow down or crash we are going to be in serious, serious trouble.

This whole so-called recovery is based on George Osborne over inflating the housing bubble and stepping in to act as guarantors for loans which people cannot afford, to enable them to obtain mortgages they cannot afford, meanwhile house prices continue to rise at the fastest pace since before the crash.

This is a housing bubble

This is a credit bubble

This is unsustainable

This is why the government were so keen to drown out Ed Balls last week, they are scared of the wider public learning just what a precarious situation it is that we are really in.

Instead of sucking up to the government and allowing the government and this dreadful 'towel folding chancellor' to get away with this appalling behaviour along with their lies and their incompetence, journalists should be tearing into this government and exposing the sewer of incompetence and corruption running just below the surface. If they fail to do this, then these journalists from these right wing papers, the Sun, Sunday Sun, Times, Sunday Times, The Mail. Mail on Sunday, the Telegraph, Sunday Telegraph etc are all going to be blamed when the Tory 'boom ends with a huge bust' (and it's already on its way) - manufacturing is slowing, exports have fallen 2.1% last month and the trade gap widens, consumer spending is slowing and the government continue to base the whole economy on a precariously perched housing bubble and QE and set after set of falsified unemployment data. The bust when it comes will make 2008 look like a walk in the park and these papers will be left looking like Tory sycophantic poodles, they will lose what little credibility they have left!




Sunday, December 1, 2013

Government's Energy Policy Omnishambles



According to news reports this morning George Osborne is going to give us all a £50 rebate off of our electricity bills? That works out to around 96p per week. Combined bills have risen by around £75 to £150 per year.

I have listened to many reports on the energy crisis and fuel poverty, yet not one single so-called political journalist has mentioned that in 2010 shortly after assuming power, and despite a firm pledge no to, George Osborne CUT pensioners winter fuel allowance between £50 and £100. Pensioners aged 60 to 79 years saw their allowance cut by £50 while those aged 80 years on saw their allowance cut by £100.  The older you get the more prone you are to suffering hypothermia and unfortunately not many people are aware they are becoming susceptible to hypothermia and this is why so many elderly people perish from the cold. Is George Osborne and this headless chicken government seriously expecting pensioners to be grateful that they are being rebated £50 out of what has already been taken away from them? By my reckoning the lower scale are owed £150 while the higher scale is owed £300, which Osborne has stolen from them.


It's also worth noting that while needy pensioners were having their wither fuel allowances cut by the Conservatives and left struggling to pay their fuel bills and struggling to keep warm, the Tory chancellor was awarding millionaires with a £100,000 cheque in the form of a tax rebate. The prime minister David Cameron's advice to pensioners and others on low pay struggling to pay astronomical heating bills and struggling to keep warm and feed themselves, was to put on an extra jumper and stay in one room! Almost as bad as previous Conservative government's advice on heating costs and staying warm between 1979 and 1997, when they advised the elderly to wear a woolly hat to bed. This was in reply to criticism over the number of 'unnecessary deaths' that were happening with the elderly due to Thatcher privatising the utility companies and the resulting price hikes in gas and electricity.

Is this rebate of £50 going to be paid to everyone across the board no matter what their financial circumstances? So a person subsisting on £57 per week job seekers allowance will get a £50 rebate while a millionaire tax avoiding Tory party supporter also receives £50 off of their energy bills? Will this £50 be available to all across the country, or will it only apply to certain areas?

Since the Conservative controlled Coalition government took power in 2010, families have seen their annual incomes fall by approximately £1,600 per year as a direct result of the Tory chancellor's austerity measures and his help to big businesses to drive down wages and it's getting worse.

Poor families and those struggling with energy bills who have been placed on prepayment meteres pay more for their gas and electricity than anyone else, this is penalising the poor, will they just receive 96p per week? or will they be given real substantial help to help them cope with heating their homes and feeding their families and themselves? Some people have already seen their family tax credits cut, their child allowance cut and are already being forced to pay more in council tax and rents and some have been slapped with the bedroom tax of between £14 and £24 per week. How is 96p per week going to help them?

The government's energy policy has been exposed as a complete and utter omnishambles a complete contradiction, they haven't got the first idea what they are doing, let alone how to do it, and over something as vitally important as our energy security, it really is very frightening.

What does George Osborne say to the fact that he and his government have already raised the green levy for all energy consumers by 50% over the past three years?

What does George Osborne say about the fact that his government have already raised the carbon floor by 4% higher than they need have?

Where is this £300 million 'rebate' going to come from? A cut in green taxes and then placed on general taxation? So we are not saving anything at all, except for the millionaire Tory tax dodgers who don't pay tax so they will pay no or very little tax but will still receive the £50 rebate, while the rest of us pay for this rebate through general taxation.

ONCE AGAIN George Osborne, David Cameron and Nick Clegg have succumbed to pressure from the big 6 energy companies and placed some green taxes onto general taxation, which benefits the energy companies and penalizes the rest of us. David Cameron is dancing to the tune of the energy conglomerates, we know Cameron doesn't do detail but the coalition government's complete energy horlicks is seriously alarming!

For two months we have seen Cameron, Osborne and Clegg instead of doing something to try and help consumers affected by the cost of living crisis they have been flailing about attacking Ed Miliband and Labour's pledge to freeze energy prices for 20 months, reset the energy market and introduce a tough new regulator as - a 'con'. Instead of acting to bring the energy companies under control instead they joined in with the energy companies and have put out all kinds of scare stories, from the lights going out to the energy companies raising their prices before the freeze:

1). Well before Ed Miliband announced Labour's energy plans, the energy companies have been threatening to put the lights out and spreading stories about gas supplies running short, and they have in fact *already*cancelled billions of pounds of investment by cancelling building a new green nuclear power station and two green gas power stations because of the Tory controlled coalition government's incompetence and dithering over their energy policy on renewables etc. The constant bickering and politicking going on between the Tories and the Lib Dems at the heart of British government over their energy policies causing delays in policy already lead to cancellations of investment is what is really threatening energy supplies in this country, it is not Ed Miliband's insistence on standing up to the energy companies and stressing that we must as a country have a clear cut energy policy for the sake of the people AND the energy companies and future energy security.

2). If all the energy companies decide to put up their prices before a future Labour government implement a price freeze, then this is called a cartel and we have strict laws about forming cartels in this country, if the energy companies did this then thus would be illegal and the regulator can stop them doing it.

3). Hypocritical Cameron and Osborne accused Ed Miliband of being a Marxist and getting his energy policies from 'Das Kapital'. This was one week before Osborne went to communist China and begged their communist government to come to the UK and build a power station for us.

Cameron says we have no control over global energy costs, yet he has signed a contract with the communist government of China to set the UKs electricity prices for the next 35 years!

Cameron, Osborne and Clegg say we have no control over global energy costs, yet the energy conglomerates are both produces and wholesalers of their own product, so they set their wholesale price they pay and the have set it artificially high.

Both Cameron and Osborne have said you cannot interfere in the market while doing exactly that! They have been interfering in the Market! They accuse Ed Miliband's price freeze of being  a con, yet in secret Osborne and Cameron have gone to the energy companies and have been begging the energy companies not to raise prices until after the 2015 general election - now that is not only a con, it is a huge deceit. They are virtually saying to energy companies look help us get back in and you can do what you like to energy costs after the election. It is gross misleading of the electorate and trying to gain votes and reelection by fraudulently allowing the public to believe the opposite of what is true and Cameron has form for doing this, he done exactly the same over the NHS when he said under his government there would be "no more top down reorganisations of the NHS" while secretly planning the biggest top down reorganisation of the NHS in its entire history, the man is a bare faced liar and cannot be trusted.  Take this argument to the Tories logical conclusion accusing Labour's energy policy being a con, the Tories said the energy companies would raise prices before a price freeze, then if this is so what is to stop the companies massively hiking prices after their self imposed price freeze that the Conservatives have been begging for in private?

Osborne says he cannot interfere in the market but he has CUT tax for fracking companies by a huge 50% to attract them into this country at the same time as watering down environmental impact assessments for fracking companies which could lead to the pollution our water supplies! This is in addition to Osborne shedding 15% of the workforce in the Department for the Environment, he is getting rid of the very workforce whose job it is to oversee that fracking impact assessments were carried out properly!

Cameron and Osborne will claim that their cut in green levies will save households £50 per year and come just days after David Cameron dismissed green levies as "green crap", but bills will still rise as inflation busting price hikes by the energy companies will add £107 to the average bill.
Cameron announces that green levies are "green crap" yet it is his government who have raised green levies over 50% in the past three years, so this government are not only giving us back a small amount of what they have already taken, we will pay for the rebate anyway as it has been reported that the green levies will be added to general taxation. In short the government's rebate means that he is going to take £300 million which is currently paid by the energy firms, give us a 96p per week rebate and pass the cost onto us all through general taxation. (I hope he doesn't have anymore bright ideas like this!)

If the green [crap] levies are cut, who will pay for the warms homes project that funds insulation for poor people and helps local authorities to insulate their housing stock? How many jobs will be lost as a result of the government's panicking actions?

On the one hand Cameron is saying his government are going to cut the [green crap] levies, yet writes in the Guardian that that he is going to argue in favour of green jobs in the new year, does anyone know what this man is actually doing? Does he even know? The man is a walking talking contradiction in terms! If David Cameron had any intention at all of providing 'green jobs' he would not now be constantly deferring the issue, he would be facing it head on, after all he has no difficulty in touring the world with his arms dealer buddies flogging arms to small Arab countries and dictatorships, for them to pass on to Al-Qaeda to use on our troops! If Cameron had his way and ed Miliband had let him, he would have sold arms to Syrian rebels who are run rife with Al-Qaeda!

All the government are doing is trying to kick the energy problem into the long grass until after the general election in 2015. he keeps trying to spin about climate change issues, hoping that no one will notice how awful his government have been concerning green issues. He can delete all the speeches he likes because everyone already knows he promised to be the "greenest government ever" and "vote blue go green" and like his NHS promise everyone knows this was yet another huge lie. They want to delay any decisions of green policies until after the next election hoping that no one will notice their long and medium term energy policy is in tatters.

It appears that in the Coalition what we have is not a proper government, but an amalgamation of weak and utter pricks, none of them capable of making a tough decision (unless they concern bullying weak, the poor, disabled, unemployed, sick and elderly). Cameron, Osborne IDS and Clegg can stand up to the weak, but run a mile from the strong and powerful such as the bankers, hedge funds, big business and power companies any tough decisions due to be made here ends with the capitulation of the British government!

What has happened to all Cameron's big ideas? Big Society, Compassionate Conservatism, we're all in it together?

As the days and weeks pass Cameron is looking and sounding more and more unhinged, all his promises broken and disintegrated into a heap of dust, everything crumbling into a pile of lies, it's just one lie on top of another lie on top of another lie. He can make his big promises and protestations in his speeches and then try to expunge them from existence, but what he doesn't realise is that he is a busted flush no one believes him anymore, not even his own MPs! Cameron has proven himself to be totally untrustworthy, he is dishonest, he is a liar, in fact he is worse than a used car salesman because after an encounter with one of them at least we still have the car, after three years with Cameron, we have absolutely nothing, except a million more people in poverty, rising homelessness, soaring numbers of foodbanks and the Red Cross distributing aid to families inside Britain  as millions of families lose the fight with the cost of living as their wages are driven down every lower by Cameron and his mates in big business.

It's one long cover up after the other, it's U-turns and now the O-turn. Incompetence is rife. The green tax levy, in the morning  it was announced that number 10 had asked energy companies not to raise their prices until after the election, then by lunch time they definitely didn't and then by teatime they may have and all the while the energy companies are telling the country by radio and TV that Cameron and Osborne had definitely asked them to keep prices down and it is the same with every single policy announcement, it all ends in one huge heap of confusion. Where and what exactly is this government's green policy and energy policy? It's important its affecting millions of people who are currently making the choice between heating and eating, they have NO money for basics, while this government flails around sucking up to big business and the energy companies.

This government have now become synonymous with making policy up on the hoof and it shows, it really does show. There doesn't appear to be any clarity, no checks and balances within this government and it's structure and shape is non existent. Our energy security is vitally important and we appear to have a bunch of vacuous muppets running it. we are waiting for the Chancellor's Autumn Statement on Thursday to produce some clarity, but if his answers on the Andrew Marr show this morning were anything to go by, by Friday morning we will still be waiting for clarity. Whatever Osborne announces it should be an immediate freeze on energy costs and plans to restructure the energy market at the very least and the energy companies must pay for any rebates, this must NOT fall to the taxpayer.

Cameron's government covers up the today's errors and policy chaos, with tomorrow's errors and policy chaos and on and on it goes, it is relentless and has been the hallmark of this dreadful mongrel government over the past three years. The Liberal Democrats are no better what a weak power and awe struck pathetic bunch of poodles who are simply in government to serve the purpose of the Tories - to keep,them there, no matter what catastrophe, hardship and distress and utter chaos they cause.

Cameron is not an asset to the UK but a huge awful embarrassing drag on us all.

This is a total omnishambles of a government and we cannot go on like this.