New Labour’s “Big idea” is to cut winter fuel allowance for wealthy pensioners, thus saving £100 million a year, or 0.08% of the annual deficit. This is plainly irrelevant, but is given such prominence because the media have to maintain the fiction of significant policy differences between the three neo-con parties, and because at the same time we are supposed to get used to, in the words of Johann Lamont, New Labour’s opposition to the “Something for nothing society”, otherwise known as benefits for the needy.
In my own family, pensioners who would already be entitled to pension credit do not get it because they will not apply; they see the basic state pension as an entitlement to which they paid in their working lives, but anything means tested as charity to relieve poverty, the idea of which they find demeaning after a lifetime of work. I understand their attitude and find it, at root, noble.
I cannot understand why this country is unable to produce a single unified tax system, under which those with far too much money are relieved of a significant portion of it, ordinary folk pay reasonable taxes and those without enough money, including the unemployed, underemployed and pensioners, receive enough money for their needs, including looking after their children or personal care. A single, unified form every resident fills that removes stigma and removes overpayment, underpayment and the obscenity of the super-rich tax dodgers.
Meanwhile the odious Balls plans to find £100 million from pensioners while planning to blow that 1,000 times over and blow $100 Billion on the entirely worthless Trident missile system. Anybody who believes New Labour is the answer to any of our problems is certifiable.
Strange to see a medic in that Bilderberg list but when you see his connections and non executive directorships, no surprise.
http://www.acmedsci.ac.uk/p149.html
Here he is with Agent Cameron.
http://www1.pictures.zimbio.com/gi/John+Bell+David+Cameron+Visits+Oxford+University+3t4IYa4W651l.jpg
David Cameron Visits Oxford University
In This Photo: David Cameron, John Bell
British Prime Minister David Cameron (L) leaves the newly opened ‘Li Ka Shing Centre for Health Information and Discovery’ at Oxford University with Professor Sir John Bell, the Regius Professor of Medicine, on May 3, 2013 in Oxford, England. Mr Cameron was joined by Mr Li and the Chancellor of the University of Oxford, Lord Patten, to launch a 90 million GBP initiative in ‘big data’ processing and drug discovery.
(May 2, 2013 – Source: Oli Scarff/Getty Images Europe)
I see ‘Lord’ Mandelson of Ichor will be attending Bilderberg. He seems to have been courting the Russian underworld (allegedly), but the Grauniad has had second thoughts about reporting this:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/info/2013/jun/01/taken-down-peter
Another old favourite of mine, Richard Perle of WMD, will also be contributing the opinions of the American Enterprise Institute aka AIPAC’s Earth colony.
@ Guano :
“You want me to read your work again? etc etc etc”
_____________
I don’t care much one way or the other; just do the right thing 🙂
Komodo, Perle is the worst of this despicable bunch of meglomaniacs. There’s a book coming out about how he commanded not just press-coverage of 9/11 but military communications which stopped those in the Pentagon communicating with people inside the twin towers to tell them to get the hell out.
I cannot find the link but I think it was on Tony Gosling’s Bilderberg blog.
This is the last section of William Blum’s Anti Empire Report.
‘What are we going to do about our sociopathic corporations?
Scarcely a day goes by in the United States without a news story about serious ethical/criminal misbehavior by a bank or stock brokerage or credit-rating agency or insurance agency or derivatives firm or some other parasitic financial institution. Most of these firms produce no goods or services useful to human beings, but spend their days engaged in the manipulation of money, credit and markets, employing dozens of kinds of speculation.
Consider the jail time served for civil disobedience by environmental, justice and anti-war activists, in contrast to the lifestyle enjoyed by the wicked ones who crashed the financial system and continue to fund the wounding of our bleeding planet.
The federal and state governments threaten to sue the financial institutions. Sometimes they actually do sue them. And a penalty is paid. And then the next scandal pops up. And another penalty is paid. And so it goes.
Picture this: A fleet of police cars pulls up in front of Bank of America’s Corporate Center in Charlotte, North Carolina. A dozen police officers get out, enter the building, and take the elevator to the offices of the bank’s top executives. Minutes later the president and two vice-presidents – their arms tightly bound in handcuffs behind their back – are paraded through the building in full view of their employees who stare wide-eyed and open-mouthed. The sidewalk is, of course, fully occupied by the media as the police encircle the building with tape saying “No tresspassing. Crime scene.”.
But remember, just because America has been taken over by mendacious mass-murdering madmen doesn’t mean we can’t have a good time.’
http://dissidentvoice.org/2013/06/what-our-presidents-tell-our-young-people/
5th June, 2013
I see they (Bilderberg) will have the protection of a no fly zone, at tax payers expense. I wonder if that’s to make the tiny percentage of people UK, think that they will actually need a No Fly zone – against the ( Fake ) war on terror.
They’ll be popping decades old bottles of whatever, and Laughing their heads off
I was Genuinely amazed yesterday, to find that the two people i Know whom consume the most MsM Tosh, didn’t have the faintest idea what the Bildergerg group is, Ah the Ugly Apathy
” …stopped those in the Pentagon communicating with people inside the twin towers to tell them to get the hell out. ”
They needed telling?
KOWN @8.43am yesterday- spot on!
The snotty delegate from last year you mention appears to have taken instruction from another old Bilderbeger, Denis Healey. He included references to attending Bilderberg in his autobiography; something considered pretty bold at the time (1989).
However when asked on occasions subsequently to elaborate on what, exactly, went on at these meetings, enquiring journalists would get a blunt ‘Fuck off!’ from the Great Man in reply.
Denis Healey is still around, and was interviewed quite recently. I do wish someone would engage him on the state we’re in, partcularly in terms of his view of our morphing from a realtively liberal democracy with a mixed economy to an altogether more corporate economy with fascist values.
At one time he seemed a champion of liberal democracy and has come out against our more recent wars.
He was also a founder of Bilderberg.
At one time when challenged about the NWO element thrown at Bilderberg, he agreed that that was not an unreasonable interpretation of what was going on, but that he didn’t feel the project as menacing as its critics alleged.
But still, I’d love to see it put to him directly how he feels about our current economic arrangements compared to the post war dreams himself and others espoused.
“Anybody who believes New Labour is the answer to any of our problems is certifiable.”
I agree 100%, but what’s the viable / feasible / alternative. IMHO the situation regarding growth and thereby unemployment is going to get worse, and history shows that in times of economic hardship it is so often the far right who make significant gains and at the moment they are organised to some degree as is shown by the demos taking place after Woolwich.
Where is a credible far left alternative who will be prepared to take on the 1% and their sycophants when all the forces of the military, media, police etc etc are lined up ready to literally club them senseless.
“Africa’s challenges”
No.1: avoid being bombed and invaded by ‘friendly’ Western nations seeking to ‘protect’ Africans.
~
It’s highly amusing reading social engineering site http://agirlcalledjack.com/ especially the claim that she runs the site using a “Jurassic Nokia”. One look at the HTLM source shows an abundance of JavaScript and meta data that demonstrates that the site is the product of professional web developers and not the ‘unemployed single mum’ as claimed. In ‘her’ last article ‘she’ mentions applying for 17 jobs in one day. One would have thought that the services of such a talented and resourceful web site developer would be snapped up in an instant. BTW my dinner consisted of one chicken breast steak (unit cost: 25p) three potato croquettes (4p each) and a pile of frozen sweetcorn (5p). Total 42p.
Habbabkuk 5 June 2013 9.55am “…prefer not to give detail, but…”. Clearly neither impartial nor disinterested, then. All meetings seek to maintain confidentiality, although, in my view, there’s a debate to be had about that.
But the list of participants in the Watford Bilderbergh, simply judged on their own past actions, suggests that it will not be benign for the rest of us
Totally agree Craig. Was struggling to understand how Ed Balls could argue on the Sunday Politics show that the Conservative austerity policy was likely to continue to fail, damage the economy and reduce revenues so much that Labour if it won the next election would be forced to maintain those spending limits (i.e continue Conservative austerity policies). It may be what the focus groups are telling him, but that’s likely because the focus groups don’t understand the difference between personal or business debt and government debt – that the government relies on the economy being big enough to produce enough revenue and that it can print money.