It is very sickening to see Cameron, Osborne and Johnson dressing up their opposition to a financial transaction tax as a defence of the UK against Europeans. Reducing the attraction of multiple financial speculative transactions is an obvious step in reforming the crazed world of fantasy finance. If it did reduce the concentration of speculative centres in the City of London that would in the long term be good thing – our economy is over-dependent on servicing a system which cannot last anyway.
The Tories see Britain as the world capital of spivs, with unlimited free amounts of cash raining down on their friends and family in the city who devise ever more elaborate financial speculations on every one of which they take a margin. Free lolly forever. Hooray!
But it is probably too late anyway. The establishment seems oblivious to the extent to which the system is unravelling. Almost all European governments face increasing demands for real interest on the money they borrow from banks and financial institutions – increased bond yields – but that only increases debt, which countries largely service by new borrowing in this never-never land. Banks demand higher interest because they fear the risk of not being repaid, and the higher interest makes it more and more certain they won’t be repaid. It is only one of a number of ways the logic of the system has collapsed.
So the Tories posture while the system sinks deeper and deeper, and meantime people around the world have noticed that the elite are screwing them. These really are the most interesting times of my lifetime.
Valuable post to read in parallel, from the other blog that’s essential everyday reading:
http://www.golemxiv.co.uk/2011/11/buckle-up-credit-crunch-2/
Mega-confirmation that it’s not a sovereign debt problem, it’s still a banking crisis. We have to stop them destroying us …………
Moral of the story – Hey! if yuz got dosh, buy gold, silver or any precious metal now.
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Sure, knock yourselves out because some people WILL get rich doing that and some people WILL lose money doing the same thing. For some reason it is only the corporations who don’t buy gold. Look, I don’t get it alright. Let’s listen to some Pink Floyd again,
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http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-X7K9uNONes
Apologies for running a tandem thread on religion (but I didn’t start it!) Quakers are a ‘broad church’ and most would have difficulty believing in a little old man in the sky – it’s more about the human ‘spirit’. I have met several who describe themselves as atheist – room for all!
Enough preaching from me. Won’t mention it again.
The rot started with Thatcher – and there was no ignorance involved. She knew exactly what she was doing when she methodically dismantled British industry to revenge herself on the unions and put the working man “back in his place” where she was convinced the lower orders belonged.
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Given that the UK has gone from a major industrial power to a ‘service provider’ (for other and more complex reasons than Thatcher, I do appreciate) the steady erosion has been utterly predictable. The bankers rule now? Hell – they ruled then and have ever since. If only via their proxies (or hadn’t we noticed how rich Prime Minsters seem to become after office?) We just didn’t see it. The only difference now is they’ve got greedier and greedier until it’s impossible for anyone not to notice – a bit of an own-goal in some ways.
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The result will be – I’m convinced – violence on a large scale – and I’m not even talking about the violence Obamabush/Cameron/Netanyahu are already provoking. It’s been going on for years already, and attributed to ‘terrorists’. Many of whom of course were and are terrorists by any terms of reference. But the term is increasingly being used for anyone who opposes the new ‘World Order’, especially if they use methods that almost every community in the world seeking self-determination has used at some time in the past. The foundation of both the USA and Israel were often based on the actions of ‘heroic freedom fighters’ who today might amply qualify as terrorists. Their respective governments still qualify for that term. In WW2, the Allies consistently used tactics that costs innocent lives and might today be described as terrorism.
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My point being that, when the violence starts in earnest (and I suspect we’ve seen nothing yet), the innocent are once again going to be ‘collateral damage’ for all sides. And there will be more than 2 sides. The ‘elite’ (and I agree a new term is needed – ‘scum’ perhaps – that rises to the top in the same way) might be defeated, I suppose. But I suspect they’ll just change. When a man fights for freedom he rarely gains other than a new master.
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There was a time when Britain was – rightly or wrongly – regarded as a centre for democracy and freedom of expression. What a turn up for the books if we have to rely now on other countries to teach us, again, what the word ‘conscience’ means.
Haven’t seen this nanny type lately on the box. Perhaps the British Bankers Association who employ her as their spokesperson have sussed that nobody believed a word she ever said.
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On BBC Radio 4’s Analysis programme on 7 November 2011, Angela Knight discussed how her role as the head of the banks’ trade association had expanded during the financial crisis into a spokesman role: “The fact that I was answering the questions, and I was seen in newspapers, on TV and on the radio, meant that people would come up to me almost as if it was my fault. I was simply trying to explain that in the case of the banking crisis, it wasn’t a crisis for all banks, we weren’t the only country in it and there were a lot of complex issues underneath.”
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angela_Knight
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Most of her Commons entries in 1997, the year she was booted out in the Labour landslide, refer to the Building Societies Bill – when building societies were readied to be turned into banks.
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{http://www.theyworkforyou.com/search/?pid=22652&pop=1#n4}
Knight was an MP during Major’s tenancy of No 10.
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What he is remembered for on Wikipedia
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28 November 1990 – 2 May 1997
PM, First Lord of the Treasury & Minister for the Civil Service
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Early 1990s recession; Gulf War; ratification of the Maastricht Treaty and the Maastricht Rebels; forced exit from the European Exchange Rate Mechanism (“Black Wednesday”); the Downing Street Declaration (initiating the Northern Ireland peace process); Privatisation of British Rail; The National Lottery; Citizen’s Charter; Sunday Shopping; “Back to Basics” campaign; Cones Hotline; Dangerous Dogs Act.
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Enough said.
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Before him were 21 years of Thatcher. The entry for her:
First female Prime Minister of the UK. Falklands War; sold council housing to tenants (right to buy); miners’ strike 1984–85; privatisation of many previously government-owned industries; decreased the power of trade unions; negotiation of the UK rebate towards the European Community budget; Brighton hotel bombing; Sino-British Joint Declaration; Anglo-Irish Agreement; Westland Affair; abolition of GLC; Section 28; the “Poll tax” and Poll Tax Riots; Lockerbie bombing; the end of the Cold War.
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Sorry to remind you.
+1 Passerby
“WRT Max, I agree with lots of what he says, but going back to Gold is not exactly the solution either.
However, if a government run central bank were to start issuing currency based on the assets owned by the state, then we can start the recovery from the cleptocracy that has been masquerading as our banksters, and all the ills thereof. We all ought to wish for the end of the theft from the workers, who generate the wealth, by the parasites whom feast on the said generated wealth, and have little in the way of generating it other than speculating and stealing even more.”
Agree. But no way should politicians be responsible for issuing the currency or else hyper inflation becomes assured.
“The tragedy of the 2008 crash was that the government missed a golden opportunity to reform the entire money system, by taking the issuance of the nations money and placing it in the hands of – where it rightly should be- the treasury.”
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its only a tragedy if it wasnt planned . i suspect much of this was and is planned and the outcome known . certainly the raft of laws here and in the US suggest that more was and is expected than the alleged threat of terrorism.
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are we really to believe that all the worlds economists, financial experts dont know or recognise the obvious resolution of the current banking/financial issues .. just as govts didnt know that the wmd claim was a lie/scam..
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whats amazing is that without a whimper we have moved from a limited democracy to dictatorships in europe .. but we dont call them that .. we call it technocracy.
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the underlying movement by the UK and US govts is towards fascism we can ignore it and claim its nonsense but its already happening .. just read the small print .. and pay attention to the militarisation of the police.
“Mark Golding – Children of Iraq 18th November 2011”
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one thing the downfall of MF global informs us of is that segregated bank accounts and safety deposit box will not save anyone from their monies being stolen by the banks.
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that is the worst place to keep your money at the moment is in a bank.
Eurozone debt web: Who owes what to whom?
The circle below shows the gross external, or foreign, debt of some of the main players in the eurozone as well as other big world economies. The arrows show how much money is owed by each country to banks in other nations. The arrows point from the debtor to the creditor and are proportional to the money owed as of the end of June 2011. The colours attributed to countries are a rough guide to how much trouble each economy is in.
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UK
GDP: €1.7tn
Foreign debt: €7.3tn
Foreign debt per person €117,580
Foreign debt to GDP 436%
Govt debt to GDP 81%
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Risk Status: LOW
The UK has very large amounts of overseas debt, of which the biggest component is the banking industry. The high debt to GDP ratio is explained by the UK’s active financial sector, where there is a great deal of capital movement. This level of overall external debt is generally not seen as a problem because the UK also holds high-value assets. Having said this, the UK economy remains in the doldrums and the country is highly exposed to Irish as well as Italian and Portuguese debt. The UK in turn owes hundreds of billions to Germany and Spain.
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http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-15748696
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The words ‘Risk Status Low’ jar somewhat.
I came across this quote, the perspicacity of the paragraph compelled me to stop my work and post it at once;
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“As a result of the war, corporations have been enthroned and an era of corruption in high places will follow, and the money power of the country will endeavour to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people until wealth is aggregated in the hands of a few and the Republic is destroyed. I feel at this moment more anxiety for the safety of my country than ever before, even in
the midst of the war.”
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Note the necessity of war for transference of the loot. Further, noteworthy point; “endeavor to prolong its reign by working upon the prejudices of the people”.
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The cancer of zionism was the prerequisite for total control, which is now complete in Greece, Italy, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, whilst the process continues relentlessly. Alessio Rastani said; I go to bed dreaming of a depression, he was not kidding was he?
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Sadly even when the game is given away, and the rigged game is exposed, the illiterate masses cannot comprehend the fraud that is perpetrated upon them.
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Identify the person quoted, and get 10 merits!
Abe Lincoln, assassinated by Freemasons…
I’ve long been of the view that there are actually good arguments against a financial transaction tax. Any such tax just leaves the present system intact, bad behavior isn’t necessarily discouraged, and, worst of all, gives traders a veneer of morality in their dealings – they are paying tax, so what could be bad about what they do? The current, failing structure is reformed, but not enough. Indeed it is only reformed so much as to keep it intact – which is what capitalism is good at. And of course, it would be very hard to enforce.
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But of course, these arguments won’t be voiced by a Tory, so they play the nationalism card. On balance I actually favor a transaction tax, because Tories and Hedge Funds hate the idea. But I certainly don’t regard it as an answer to out myriad problems. Every article I read, every scrap of information that my poor brain can retain, all point in one direction: total collapse of the world economy, 1929 style. No Tobin Tax can prevent that.
sorry lads
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http://www.snopes.com/quotes/lincoln.asp
The rest of it was even stronger,and I can’t bare to look at it, but basically what I was saying partially in Arabic and I really don’t do Arabic, and neither does he.
Basically, it said we are taking all your Iranian customers too.
Its just kids talking to each other like Facebook and all the silly games.
What I was trying to explain to the incredibly stupid American Right Wing Politicians was that there is going to be no nuclear war between you complete insane arseholes, and that Iran pays promptly on time in English pounds…
And that us in the UK are taking all Your Fucking Business
The World will Still Go On after We are using US Dollar Bills To Wipe Our Shitty Bums with
The Value is With Our Kids Doing Something Useful If It Is Just Allowing Millions of Kids All Over The World Play With Each Other and Talk To Each Other
Seriously, You Have Got To Believe This….
The Kids are Doing It For Themselves and are Just Waiting For You Old Stupid Cnuts To Die…
The Kids all over the world have been talking to each other and travelling and meeting each other.
The Big Problem
Will Die
They Are Just Waiting For Us To Go Away
They Have Far Better Morals
Tony
You see, it doesn’t really matter what you look like. When I was a teenager, I was incredibly shy, and could never ask a totally beautiful girl who I was in love with to get up and dance with me, in case she said no which would completely emotionally destroy me. So I never asked and went home all one and cried myself to sleep.
But I got older
I do realise, that now, that I have to get the eye contact right, and have the courage to ask her
Sure I sometimes get turned down
But at least I have the courage to ask
They Nearly Always Say Yes
And Get Up and Dance With Me
I Was Much Better Looking 40 Years Ago
Tony
I don’t know about you, but of course I have asked some of the old dears to dance with me, and they have…
But I have never been into the older girl “Mum” thing…
It’s a bit more primative than that…
The subconscious says what you see in my eyes
“I want to dance with you”
Tony
What an amazing woman.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/nov/17/helen-john-greenham-protester-drones
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Protest and survive: the Greenham veteran who refuses to go away
Thirty years ago, Helen John was the first full-time member of the Greenham Common peace camp. Now 73, she’s still hard at it, trying to stop drones operating from a UK air base
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“We have seen the back of the cruise missiles, the son of the Nazi V1 flying bombs; now we have their grandson drones bringing about indiscriminate destruction,” she wrote in a recent online rallying cry against the lethal pilotless aircraft currently deployed over Afghanistan. She signed off with a characteristic flourish: “In sisterhood and total defiance.”
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We meet at Lincoln station, near RAF Waddington, an airfield where next year drones will be controlled for the first time from British soil. Currently, the appropriately-named Reapers, with their all-seeing cameras and cargoes of bombs and missiles, are flown by an RAF unit based in Nevada. The smaller time difference between Britain and Afghanistan is intended, John says, to make their operators less prone to tiredness and killing civilians.
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The Greenham camp, she says, was established in better weather: the glorious Indian summer of 1981. Unlike some of the other founders, she was middle-aged, 44, and had not previously been politically active. “I went through life like a pudding. I didn’t notice a lot of things. I didn’t know what feminism was. I had five children, and had been working as a midwife.” Suddenly struck by terror and anger at the nuclear arms race, she decided to leave her family and live at the peace camp full-time, the first Greenham protester to do so.
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Never mind a seperate section for the Zionist/NeoCon debate Craig,can we have a seperate section just for Tony please?
@ Mary
Yep you’re spot on about the disastrous Major years but maybe that was the pre-narrative to NuLabour?
I’ve often wondered if Edwina Currie was actually a Zionist honeytrap to control/blackmail Major?
‘Tis but a thought…
Major wades in.
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http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2011/nov/18/tobin-tax-city-london-john-major
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‘Tobin tax’ would hit City of London with missile, says John Major
Former prime minister says move to introduce financial transaction tax would fan flames of Euroscepticism
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He would say that wouldn’t he? Too much to lose.
You mean this ridiculous woman Jives? How could Major resist? He didn’t stand a chance.
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http://www.anorak.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2011/10/edwin-currie-strictly.jpg
Yep that’s her Mary.
I’ve suddenly lost my appetite for breakfast :.)
@ Mary
Major’s been well rewarded for his sacrifice though.
Recently appointed European Chairman of the Carlyle Group.
Kerchiiiiiing!
Libya has big plans for its post-war future, hoping to be reborn as the next Dubai and having all the necessary sun and beaches, with oil reserves aplenty. British companies are likely to come out on top of those lining up for a piece of the action.
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It was France and the UK who initially led the effort to topple Colonel Muammar Gaddafi. Britain, together with France, sent their navy and fighter jets to establish a sea blockade and assault military targets on Libyan territory.
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Now the National Transitional Council (NTC) of Libya says its friends will be rewarded – and these are not just words.
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In the last two weeks, the UK Department for Trade and Industry led a working party to Libya to look around at what needed rebuilding. The British government department estimates that Libyan contracts, in sectors from oil and gas to education and construction, could be worth some $315 billion over the next decade.
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Oil firms Shell and BP have already held talks with the Libyan transitional government, which pledged to honor the Gaddafi-era contracts with them.
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Now the NTC delegation is in London to hold talks with top business executives on the “massive opportunity to rebuild Libya.”
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http://rt.com/news/libya-rebuild-contracts-uk-385/
I think Tony is really Stephen/Julian sleepwalking…
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“Edwina Currie was actually a Zionist honeytrap”
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Beartrap, Shirley?
Mary,
Thanks bloody thanks, now I am off woman for at least a fortnight, how could you? That photo ought to be used as a contraceptive aid.
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Major must have been some desperate geezer to muster the courage and have a go at that. Probably a trap, surely not of the honey kind, but a fly trap kind. Nonetheless effective, imagine her telling anyone which incidentally she did, about her time with Major. The embarrassed PM owning up to being arseholed and in charge of the Nuclear Weapons.
Does Tony do LSD? This is not beer talk, we are privy to. We are witness to some kind of tripping session he is enjoying; ” I was saying partially in Arabic and I really don’t do Arabic, and neither does he”.
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Ditto the man;
Tony is really Stephen/Julian sleepwalking…
…. a seperate section just for Tony…..
For anyone interested – an interview with my favourite documentary maker, Massimo Mazzucco (The New American Century, Cancer – The Forbidden Cures etc.)
Joyce Riley interviews Italian filmmaker MASSIMO MAZZUCCO GCN ~ The POWER HOUR 5.27.11. His documentary The NEW AMERICAN CENTURY extraordinarily exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it themselves. His new film shows how US movie theaters have been used to broadcast propaganda; the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan. He continues to show how “Halliburton under their “cost plus” exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster’s Millions, yet instead of blowing $30 million they blew through BILLIONS by literally burning millions of dollars worth of hundred thousand dollar cars and trucks if they had so much as a flat tire.” These lies of the past must be exposed so that one can understand the present.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=e81mj6-lJ8g
Occasionally Tony Opmopc says something relevant and sensible. If under the influence of whatever, how does he do all those capital letter shifts and no typos? Weird. Perhaps he types out a a batch when not under the influence of whatever and then fires them off one after another. Sometimes I feel sorry for his obvious anguish but at other times, it irritates.
Until 2005 John Major was a highly-paid adviser to the American private equity Carlyle Group and has also worked for US firm Emerson Electric and UK car components and bus firm Mayflower. (he left in 2003, as the existence of a £20M accounting shortfall was being discovered. Mayflower went bust.)
His more recent commitments are less well-documented, but this year they have taken him – and his taxpayer-funded protection team – to New York, Chicago, Manila, Zurich, Seoul and Jamaica.
In October his busy schedule took him to Singapore and Stockholm and back to London and his home in Huntingdon, Cambridgeshire.
These movements were reflected in the expenses claims of his armed protection team, which included five nights in the historic Raffles Hotel in Singapore at a total cost of £2,154.
The bill included two officers treating Sir John to dinner at the elegant Raffles Grill.
Another claim includes a £516 bill for a two-night stay at the five-star Grand Hotel in Stockholm, and a further trip in March saw three officers fly with Sir John to Miami and then on to Seoul and Jamaica, with one officer submitting a claim for £6,761.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1291838/White-water-rafting-Sir-John-Major.html#ixzz1eAqVAh00