Just a few random facts to help people remember the great tradition of New Labour in supporting ordinary working people:
Tony Blair is chraging between £100,000 and £200,000 per speech – while for just an extra £180, attendees can have their photograph taken with him.
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/politics/article6850868.ece
Baroness Scotland paid her husekeeper just £6 per hour.
The visa in the housekeeper’s passport had already expired (irrespective of whether it was genuine or not) before Baroness Scotland claimed to have seen it.
A friend in the FCO has told me that the French proposal for a cap on bankers’ bonuses, against which Gordon Brown fought furiously in the EU, G8 and G20, suggested a limit of 8 million euro per banker per year. Brown said this was too restrictive. Brown will announce to great fanfare in Brighton instead a system where bonuses are delayed and paid part in shares (which saves the bankers 22% in income tax).
These changes are meaningless as the bankers are rather well placed to borrow against their delayed bonuses and shares, and can just up them to defray the cost of doing so…
I just don’t understand the popularity of Blair as a public speaker: who in his right mind would pay anything to hear him rabbiting on, waffling a load of dull platitudes?
I would have to be paid several hundred knicker before I’d even consider being subjected to his awful grin and woolly banalities. And I’ve have to be paid a few hundred more to applaud at the end.
Don’t the rich have anything better on which to spend their ill-gotten gains? Are they that lacking in taste?
After Christine Lagarde announced this Darling met his opposite number from the US and it seems only then the decision was taken to more or less ignore this idea. If the bankers find the taxation too high in the G21 markets they’re welcome to try and make more in less developed markets.
PS Can you find an alternative to tiscali? It seems most of the mail sent there does not arrive and tiscali are not that renowned for competence so we can for once blame cock-up rather than conspiracy for this 🙂
Let us consider a hypothetical PM who in office had served the interests of a hypothetical Middle East nation; e.g. by removing a potential threat to that nation. It is seen a poor form for that nation – or one or more of its citizens – to gift millions to the statesman directly; but if he receives the same amount represented by aggregating a large number of smaller donations then everything appears above board.
Blair will receive, Inshallah, for services rendered, rendition, meat factory style in the pit of hell, again and again and again.
Why would a multi-millionaire wish to make yet more money in this way?
Here’s one possibility: he saw Elvis’ mansion Graceland and the gold-covered taps in the aeroplane the ‘Lisa Marie’, and thinking also of John Travolta, his heart was seized with the pain of longing. ‘If only I had a private plane of my very own and a Captain’s hat to wear, just like J.T.,’ he cried inwardly. ‘A place suitable for entertaining Presidents and showing how great I am, as I jet around the world. If only!’
A hundred speeches like that, Mr. B, and you’ll get there. Keep at it.
PS. To be fair to Elvis, here’s two eye-openers from Graceland, which I consider myself lucky to have been able to see once in my lifetime: the plane had a pull-out desk, because Elvis always took a boxful of books with him when flying, being an avid reader. But even more important: at the end of a hall lined with discs covered in yellow and white metal, is a wooden panel containing dozens of charities which Elvis helped without making a fuss about it. The fellow lived well, and took good care of his parents (who lived at Graceland), but he was generous too.
Unfortunately, Blair wants the money to puff his inane ‘Faith Foundation’ which he crazily imagines is going to reconcile the irreconcilable and make all these mutually hostile religions love each other.
Dear Craig
Blair is still seen as being in the running for President of Europe so people want to suck up, just in case.
The reality is he should be in a cell awaiting trial at the Hague.
I think Blair is a slimy corrupt scumbag.
Yours sincerely
George Laird
The Campaign for Human Rights at Glasgow University
Have just got back from Ireland where I heard a radio phone-in on the subject of the Irish economy. It was a local programme, and callers were ringing from respectable market towns to say they were marching in the streets about the government’s incompetence and corruption. The final question from the dj was an enthusiastic: “So, basically, you’re calling for revolution?” and the reply, from a middle-aged, motherly sounding sort of person, was “Well, basically, yes”.
Before the Irish Revolution I do hope they’ll spare a moment to vote ‘no’ to the Lisbon treaty next week.
I just wannted to support Ruth’s comment to your article of September 24th since I think it says it all. Viz:
“The corruption of the judiciary also makes a ‘democracy’ ineffective by concealing state crime. The corruption seeps into every vestige of the system where matters sensitive to the state are present.”
In the prestigious Canadian magazine “Macleans” its Editor Mr. Andrew Coyne under the headline “Canadian democracy is broken” recently stated “if we were writing about a Third World country with a system like ours, we would be careful to refer to the “largely ceremonial” Parliament and “sham” elections.”
As my own story so abtly demonstrates the same situation applies to Britain’s very similar parliamentary democracy.
Our institutions (including the judiciary in cases where there are establishment considerations) march to the establishment’s drummer, placing deference to the authorities ahead of truth. It is not a question of right or left wing politics. Some might describe this governance by the establishment through a sham parliament as akin to neo-fascism. But, whatever it is, it is certainly not a true parliamentary democracy.
Roderick Russell
#207, 1733 ?” 27 Ave. SW
Calgary AB T2T 1G9
Canada
403.229.0864
the propaganda pro Lisbon is astonishing. mind you, the fact that they’re being made to vote again is astonishing.
We must not discuss Blair in anything but the most serious manner. He has proven himself to be the psychopath of all psychopaths – charming, lying, oblivious to the suffering and loss he has caused. He has brought hell to earth in Iraq and Afghanistan especially.
Do watch Press TV Agenda next Friday at 19.05 or online. The Zionist entity, the psychopath and the central requirement to indict the leading war criminals are discussed. Dr Ghada Karmi and myself are the two doctors, + Andy Worthington (Guantanamo) and ‘Prof’ Geoffrey Alderman – dealing with ‘Doctors at War’ with Yvonne Ridley in the chair.
If you cannot do that, please join us on http://blairfoundation.wordpress.com/
Look at Ali Abbas’ incinerated arms – from a nuclear fission weapon I believe. Just one of Bliar’s victims.
For truth David Halpin FRCS
I have worked with some incredibly talented people who were just so intelligent, that I was in awe. These people weren’t interested in making money. It wasn’t about that. It was all about getting the job done to perfection. It was all about the work – not the money.
And these people had the highest levels of integrity. Their honesty was never questioned, because such a thing would be completely ridiculous.
We were working our balls off – to deliver and we did deliver. And it did the job – just as promised – and was important and needed by Millions of people.
And I compare our politicians to the people I have worked with, and its just unreal.
And I read Murrays blog and I read Guido’s blog…
And I read about these creatures….
How the hell did we allow such a complete corrupt bunch of selfish horrible people, pretend to control us – when in fact they are in control of nothing except their own snouts in the pig troughs we have provided for them.
I think its time to eat the pigs.
Tony
At present , after coming back from visiting relatives abroad, my income is zero. So any one of the zeros of the proposed 8,000,000 euro bonuses would be welcome. Next week I’ve got to do jury service, which is £36 for a 4 hour sitting. Better than nothing.
When I get work, I never manage to earn more than my friends who work 16 hours a week at minimum wage but who have children. When my children were young, the ( Tory ) state didn’t give us anything.
The reason why New Labour get away with so much is that they have bought the electorate. It looks as though the two main parties now have to wait a generation for their turn in power, to give time for our memories of their crimes to fade away.
I think its a Natural thing. If you avoid conflict and just try to be nice to people Naturally, such that being nice is just Natural – you end up being attracted to people who are just the same as you and you meet these people all over the world wherever you go and you look and smile and talk
And then a series of co-incidences happen each of which are extremely difficult to rationalise mathematically – but some are easily explained…
But then you try to rationalise the almost completely unconnected co-incidences that really did seem to be completely random and unexplainable…
And then you discuss chaos theory with your clever son
And You Smile
I Do Not Know How It Works
Call it Prayer
Call it God
Call it Anything You Like
The Spirit is Rising
Or it could be I’m happy and listening to some extremely good music on the radio after a great day out with my wife and friends
Tony
Hullo Craig,
I expect it’s only the little bankers who’ll need to borrow against their bonuses. The big bankers, of the variety that own the Fed and all the other reserve banks, have no such penny-ante restraints.
Whilst the details escape me, I recall that the people who set up the first US Fed were required to have an initial reserve of, um, $500,000 (yeah, yeah, sue me if I don’t get my ordinals and cardinals wrong). But rather than bother raising this money, they bluffed their way through, and then once in power just declared they had the money and lent it to themselves. And that’s the top end of banking for you. Money from nothing!
And Brown-note did as he was told did he? City of London uber alles!
I’ve just finished reading “Murder in Samarkand”: rivetting, and quite unputdownable. Craig’s description of our charming Uzbek ‘allies in the War on Terror’ is appalling, and his account of the treatment he was subjected to by the UK government is even more ghastly and shame-making for us who voted these morally corrupt politicians into office and pay their salaries and those of their sycophantic civil service mandarins.
But alas, Craig’s personal inferno is just a tiny drop in the moral cesspool which Western foreign policy has become. What we urgently need is not just a political revolution but a wholesale moral revolution, and as yet I don’t see from what quarter that is likely to emerge.
The bankers can’t be moral or they’d have no jobs to do. The politicians can’t be moral or they’d lose their party support. The carbon fuelled economy is based on pollution and exploitation. The size of global markets makes them almost impossible to connect with, or regulate. The power of organisations like the IMF or WTO are unchallenged, or challenges are crushed. There is a glimpse of another world – where banks are run like Triodos and politicians are like Glenda Jackson, say, but few people are even aware it exists. We are heading for a European superstate with Blair as President, and if it wouldn’t have made me feel sick, I would have put £50 on him three years ago.
“We are heading for a European superstate with Blair as President”
Yup. Latest polls give the ‘yes’ camp a lead in the Irish referendum campaign.
The idea that paying bankers’ bonuses in shares will fix anything is ludicrous.
In fact, the idea that it represents change is even more ludicrous. Lehman Brothers compensation was likely the most heavily tilted toward shares – depending on pay levels, up to 70% of a bonus was paid in shares that could not be touched for 5 years.
The overall level of pay remains the key issue – because irrespective of exactly how the bonus is broken down into cash and stock, it is the total size of the package that incentivises recklessness.
The idea that paying bankers’ bonuses in shares will fix anything is ludicrous.
In fact, the idea that it represents change is even more ludicrous. Lehman Brothers compensation was likely the most heavily tilted toward shares – depending on pay levels, up to 70% of a bonus was paid in shares that could not be touched for 5 years.
The overall level of pay remains the key issue – because irrespective of exactly how the bonus is broken down into cash and stock, it is the total size of the package that incentivises recklessness.
Despite all the empty rhetoric – viz. Darling this morning – there is no serious intention by any political party to clip the bankers’ wings. They couldn’t, even if they wanted to; the events of the past year have made it crystal clear that the politicians in both the US and the UK are owned by the bankers.
Bankers’ wings? I was looking at some Masonic heraldry my ex. had drawn. She’s a Church of England vicar and into that sort of thing.
Are those the same as the wings of Lucifer / Satan. I think he’s the guy / thing with the dividers who marks out the stone. Motto: If you know how to do it, go for it. Morality is for squares and fools. Who dares, wins.
The lozenge round the outside represents the female sexual organs inside whose enclosed space the winged Lucifer does his thing.
If you think I’m loony, what about the freemasons who designed the damn thing?
“Despite all the empty rhetoric – viz. Darling this morning – there is no serious intention by any political party to clip the bankers’ wings.”
There was a serious attempt, by the French and Germans at G20. And the British fought tooth and nail to stop it. This should be more widely known.
There’s a classic spin operation going on today to give people the impression Labour has “got tough” on the bankers, when precisely the opposite is the real truth. And they’re getting away with it.
“I think he’s the guy / thing with the dividers who marks out the stone”.
I think you’ll find that’s Hiram Abiff, the builder of Solomon’s temple (allegedly).
How are the mighty fallen and how the founders of the Labour Party have been betrayed. Penultimate verse very apt to describe the NuLabour incumbents.
THE RED FLAG
(James O’Connell, 1899)
The people’s flag is deepest red
It shrouded oft our martyred dead;
And ere their limbs grew stiff and cold
Their hearts’ blood dyed to every fold.
Then raise the scarlet standard high!
Beneath its folds we’ll live and die.
Though cowards flinch and traitors sneer
We’ll keep the red flag flying here.
Look ’round, the Frenchman loves its blaze,
The sturdy German chants its praise,
In Moscow’s vaults its hymns are sung
Chicago swells the surging throng.
It waved above our infant might
When all ahead seemed dark as night.
It witnessed many a deed and vow,
We will not change its colour now.
It well recalls the triumphs past
It gives the hope of peace at last
The banner bright, the symbol plain
Of human right and human gain.
It suits today the meek and base,
Whose minds are fixed on pelf and place,
To cringe beneath the rich man’s frown,
And haul that sacred emblem down.
With heads uncovered swear we all
To bear it onward till we fall;
Come dungeons dark or gallows grim,
This song shall be our parting hymn.
good Monbiot piece in the Guardian. http://bit.ly/12nCqU
If you read Mary backwards you get yram. Mmmm… But in the picture I saw, it wasn’t Hiram because it had got the red wings of Lucifer and the dividers were marking out the world, not stone. A clear pictorial statement of the relationship between vice, satanism, brute power and religion in the Masonic minds of the establishment.
Anyway, New Labour are the underdogs now and you have to get sympathising with them, you mockers from the safety of your keyboards. Bliar’s not on the gallows yet and there are friends of Zion in all the parties to rescue him.
are you alright, anon? I can sympathise with the underdogs bit, actually.