The entire purpose of this blog is to ask you to think outside the box. It therefore cuts across the lines of dogma of any group, and is formed purely by my own independent thought. As I have frequently stated, if anybody agrees with every point I make, something is wrong.
This is going to annoy both left on Greece and right on banks, and my own party on the SNP and Labour. Here goes.
The citizens of the United Kingdom gave 45,000 pounds each, every man woman and child of them, direct to the bankers in bailouts. We will be paying off that money in taxes – with vast sums in interest to the same bankers, from whom we borrowed virtual money they did not have, to give to them as real money – for generations to come. Quantitive easing gives yet more money to the bankers, cash in place of risky bonds they wish to dump.
When you add it all together including interest, every man, woman and child in the UK will pay over 100,000 pounds each to the bankers, to bail out the bankers from the mess their own extreme greed had created. Indeed it is possible to argue rationally that the payment will be infinite, as the debt incurred will never be repaid but continually rolled over, and interest payments continue.
We did not have to do this. We could have let the bad banks go bust, started new ones, and boosted the economy by spending just 20% of the money we have given the banks on crucially needed public infrastructure works – railways, renewable energy, housing, insulation, hospitals, schools etc. But Gordon Brown and New Labour decided just to give money to the bankers instead.
In Greece, the people have actually given much less to the bankers for bailout than people in the UK. It is important to acknowledge that the causes of the Greek financial collapse are different. Greece was rather a recipient of bad lending, a country which received loans it could not possibly afford. Due to corrupt networks of elite collusion embracing both government and private sector, much of this money was simply siphoned out of the country into overseas accounts in London and Cyprus. The British people are suffering from the banking collapse through being forced to bail out the bankers. Greece is more in the position of somebody in a huge house who could not afford the mortgage – except for the vital distinction that all the people in Greece were paying the mortgage, but the large majority living in sheds behind the mansion.
I welcome Syriza’s victory as an indication that people are not content just to accept the narrative given them by the mainstream media and the parties in the pocket of corporations. I hope that they negotiate hard and force the banks to take a huge haircut on Greek sovereign debt. I acknowledge their commitment to social justice. But I do hope they will be realistic with both themselves and their people on the amount of blood, sweat and tears that is going to need to go in to building a productive Greek economy. An example of Keynesian stimulus is much needed by the rest of Europe.
Gordon Brown’s bank bailout was probably the biggest single gift any politician has ever given his corporate masters in the entire history of the world. It is worth reminding ourselves just how very right wing the Red Tories are. Not to mention the fact their front bench remains littered with war criminals. I therefore have grave reservations about Nicola Sturgeon’s weekend interview indication that the People of Scotland want a Labour Government with SNP support. I don’t. I am not going to elect somebody to represent me as chief bag carrier to a war criminal.
The SNP leadership remain infected by managerialism. It is easy to convince yourself you are doing good things while not changing anything fundamental, and at the same time building a very well paid career and a personal powerbase. I don’t want devo-max, I don’t want more powers, I don’t want something “as close to federalism as possible”. I want freedom for my country. I want independence. I want to live in a country which does not illegally invade other countries, collude in torture, carry out mass surveillance of its citizens, or possess nuclear weapons. The idea of running the Union a little bit better, making it a teeny bit more humane and competent, does not interest me. Nor does dulling the edge of austerity, when it is going to behead us anyway.
Besides which I am absolutely convinced the Tories will win the election, which will make all this jostling for position look rather foolish.
Yet again mad Murphy spouts one thing but does another, this time Murphy whose been spouting his opposition to fracking in Scotland all week, failed to vote or even turn up, for the debate on the Infrastructure Bill.
Mad Murphy said a few day ago that, Labour would not allow Scotland to be a “guinea” pig for fracking in the UK.
Meanwhile its been wall to wall coverage of Holocaust week, every paper or news station has covered, every possible angle, that’s humanly possible.
We must never forget, are the buzz words, ringing from primary schools to presidential palaces.
He was a sort of back room production assistant with STV Mary, he worked on the consumer affairs programme “What’s Your Problem”, presented by Marion White, a sort of That’s Life without talking dogs, or Esther Rantzen, or a sort of proto-Watchdog. I don’t remember him doing anything at all to camera, more of an unseen researcher, but I wasn’t an ardent viewer.
He also lectured at Glasgow Tech (Glasgow College of Technology), I know someone who had him there for economics lectures, who described him as “charming” and “smashing”, think she was in love or in awe, but she (this person) was then and is still a bit doo-lally at the best of times. I think she still thought then, when asked about Brown, that he was going to do something ‘socialist’ having just replaced Blair. How wrong she and we were about that.
“but don’t expect to get into a deep and meaningful conversation with a fairly busy man, unless he responds to what you write here.”
Did I say “deep and meaningful conversation” no.
You know, it’s great to hear some are busy. jeez.
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I can’t belive how stupid i’v been for so long. It’s not new to me, im a slow learner. But god, what a wake up this thread has been.
How far he sunk, to end up going round Scotland groundlessly frightening older people silly over their pensions amongst other vile scares and scams. What a creep. Should have mocked up an identikit photo of him: If you see this man, don’t approach him, he is considered dangerous and harmful, ring 999 and ask for the coastguard or pest control officer to deal with him.
Off topic, sorry.
Interview (unfortunately in Russian) of Vladimir Milov, former Deputy Energy Minister of Russia. The information is credible I think, coming as it were, ‘from the horse’s mouth’.
http://www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2015/01/27/523756/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Milov
Evgueni wries:
“Off topic, sorry.
Interview (unfortunately in Russian) of Vladimir Milov, former Deputy Energy Minister of Russia. The information is credible I think, coming as it were, ‘from the horse’s mouth’.
http://www.epravda.com.ua/publications/2015/01/27/523756/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vladimir_Milov”
Any chance you could paraphrase for those of us not able to read Russian?
So there’s only 100 days left until the either the same far right mad man is re-elected, or a new right wing, mad man, posing as a moderate leftie is elected, to the den of iniquity aka, Westminster.
Meanwhile, in Scotland with a few exception,in the last few weeks, the Labour branch, has voted for £30 billion quid of austerity cuts, the £100 billion renewal of Trident, and the abstaining of voting on fracking.
The poor and working poor haven’t a hope in hell, when it comes to the machinations of Westminster politicians.
The German cabinet has been spied on by ‘Regin’ malware. maybe some of our IT experts can make sense of it.
http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/regin-malware-unmasked-as-nsa-tool-after-spiegel-publishes-source-code-a-1015255.html
Ominous banker clouds rise over SYRIZA’s sunshine victory in Greece as Soros and the bankers appoint the new finance minister of Greece…
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/forum/21/206
Jobcentre bosses set up “hit squads” to target benefit claimants for sanctions and put pressure on them to sign off the dole, according to evidence presented to an inquiry by MPs.
The written statement, by a former jobcentre official, John Longden, says frontline staff were ordered to “agitate and inconvenience” customers so they fell foul of the rules, enabling staff to stop their benefits payments.
Staff who failed to meet sanctions targets each month were threatened with disciplinary action, he claims.
Longden says he was told by a manager that the message with regard to customers was: “Let’s set them up from day one.”
He adds: “Customers were being deliberately treated inappropriately in order to achieve [staff] performance [targets] without regard for natural justice and their welfare.”
Longden’s evidence covers events he says he witnessed at Salford and Rochdale jobcentres between 2011 and 2013. It has been lodged with the Commons work and pensions select committee, which is investigating benefit sanctions policy.
http://www.theguardian.com/society/2015/jan/20/jobcentre-hit-squads-benefit-claimants-sanctions
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Job Centre hit squads, agitate, and inconvenience, claimants, meet sanction targets, is this how Ian Duncan Smith intents to punish folk who need help.
Meanwhile IDS and his greedy bunch of troughing b*stard Lords and MP’s have the luxury of subsidised canteens and bars.
Westminster cannot be changed, form the inside out.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/a_21st_century_left_rises_syrizas_victory_and_its_relevance_for_the_us_an
It has not been an easy first day in office for Greece’s newly elected anti-austerity party Syriza.
Two Greeks and eight French were killed when a Greek F16 fighter jet crashed at Albacete airbase in central Spain. The jet was taking part in a training exercise in a Tactical Leadership Programme of NATO.
Syriza’s election represents a direct attack on Anglo-American and NATO aims for the world, as their anti-austerity policies reject the financial oligarchy’s IMF. A definitive analysis has been assembled detailing how Hollande’s recent change in rhetoric, refusing to demonize Putin in particular, could have posed a strong motive for the recent attack in Paris.
Such a theory is not beyond the realms of possibility. One only needs to look towards Operation Gladio, a NATO stay-behind operation during the Cold War that sought to ensure Communism was never able to gain a foothold in Europe, by supporting radical right-wing groups to suppress, through acts of terrorism, any attempts of Communist groups to acquire power.
This historical context, combined with the rise of anti-Western financial oligarchy Syriza party in Greece, makes this jet crash accident a story that could potentially just be the tip of an approaching iceberg. Is this Operation Gladio back in action once again, sending a message to Greece that their policy direction needs to remain in favour of Western financial interests Unfortunately for NATO, it is not only the Greeks they have to deal with as the world begins to turn on Western oligarchy.
Fool
“Habba at 11:03: Just tell me to which international court you would advise the Greeks to go to seek relief.
………..
This is a good point….”
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Well, I don’t know if it was a good point, let’s just say it was a point.
But a point/question to which the imbecile to whom it was addressed of course had no answer and so left it to someone else (yourself) to respond. 🙂
Fool
“What would happen if the UK said to Europe we are not holding a referendum, we don’t propose to formally leave but we are not paying our national contribution? I suppose we would be ganged up on until we paid or renegotiated or left, but as to actual enforcement?”
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I imagine the Commission would bring the UK govt before the European Court of Justice for violation of the relevant legislation.
But your thought will remain hypothetical because the UK isn’t going to do that.
Jermynstreetjim
“Habbabkuk (La Vita È Bella): This modest chronograph of Cross-Channel culpability, I suspect, is what John Goss was referring to, when he asked you, quite pertinently and politely, (John Goss26 Jan, 2015 – 6:36 pm) “Habbabkuk, when is the United States going to pay of its debt?”………. !”
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As you know perfectly well, Jim, Mr Goss was up to his usual diversionary tricks again; his question has nothing to do with what was being argued about (Greece) and therefore won’t get an answer from me despite having been phrased “politely” as you put it.
Mr Goss should learn to stay on subject – when he does, he’ll always get an answer from me.
(Perhap’s YOU’d like to answer in my place?)
Mary (09h13)
“What a world. What a country.”
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And what a mish-mash your post was.
So it’s not worth an answer, except for the following.
“The shocking ‘austerity’-imposed destruction of Greece’s once proud healthcare system…”
“Once proud” is bollocks. The Greek public health system was always useless, before the financial crisis and now.
Private medicine is OK.
Thanks for that about Brown Tony M. It sounds awful.
—–
The service from Auschwitz is being transmitted live on BBC News. Many rabbis are officiating, the ram’s horn was sounded and now kadesh with the wailing. In the the gaps the programme is being given a theatrical impression with long shots of the railway and trucks with snow falling on icy wastes.
What audience do the BBC provide this for? It is not on Sky.
Family of the dead French Commissioner, who supposedly committed suicide during the Charlie Hebdo fiasco, have been denied access to the autopsy report.
I wonder why? Hmmm.
Silence in the court. Pooh Bah,the self appointed expert on Greece and the Greek language has spoken.
He does not like being given the facts because they cannot be disputed. All he can do is criticise the person who posted them.
Unfortunately for NATO, it is not only the Greeks they have to deal with as the world begins to turn on Western oligarchy.
I wish. First let’s see unemployment for under-25’s rise to 100% throughout the EU, and then we might be talking. Meanwhile,
Vouchercodes.co.uk recently undertook a survey. They got 1,300 parents to ask their kids a simple question. The kids were aged between five and 10.
‘What would you like to be when you grow up?’ No answer choices; it was a blank canvas for the kids to answer.
The top five responses:
1. Just want to be rich (22%)
2. Famous (19%)
3. Police Officer (16%)
4. Zoo Keeper (14%)
5. Fire Fighter (13%)
The Daily Mail had a survey from 1984 that asked a similar question.
The top five answers:
1. Teacher (15%)
2. Banking/Finance (9%)
3. Medicine (7%)
4. Scientist (6%)
5. Vet (6%)
(When I grow up I want to be a… Kardashian?)
http://www.techinsider.com.au/2015/01/world-economic-forum-ebola-oil-banks-global-warming-pop-stars/
This generation’s ripe for valorisation. It’ll probably be happy to breathe through air meters, and believe its indebtedness represents wealth. I see little hope of a consensus for kicking the usurers out, sad to say.
Furious MPs have attacked the City watchdog for delaying the release of a report into the collapse of Halifax Bank of Scotland until after the General Election.
The findings will expose the disastrous blunders of former bank executives, regulators, as well as politicians.
But they will now not be published until the summer at the earliest – nearly seven years since HBOS imploded after years of reckless lending, triggering a £20billion bail out from the taxpayer.
Should we even be the slightest bit surprised by the delay, one just has to look at the Chilcot report(Oh that’s right we can’t) to see people are being played for fools.
HomeAloneara
“And Craig, I really tried to support you (maybe i’v done more harm than good) but you’ve never said a word to me.
I don’t want thanks, or to know where I stand in someone else’s viewpoint. But not even a passing comment?
Again it’s this past idea’s that get to me, that maybe I said something that ‘defined’ my character somehow. Maybe it’s just a bad assumption I make. To be clear I surly have said things that are unhelpful, stupid or made of imperfection.”
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Together with “Republicofscotland”, you occasionally get too confident, or your touch slips, and you over-reach yourself just enough to reaffirm my belief that neither you nor he are quite what you seem. When I read a post like the one above I’m convinced that if you’re not provocateurs then you are, at the very least, not on here for the purpose of trying to be helpful. You are both either fakes or just fooling around.
Banks, hedge funds, private equity…doncha love ’em?
Ezra Pound’s fine rant says it better than I can:
Canto XLV
By Ezra Pound
With Usura
With usura hath no man a house of good stone
each block cut smooth and well fitting
that design might cover their face,
with usura
hath no man a painted paradise on his church wall
harpes et luz
or where virgin receiveth message
and halo projects from incision,
with usura
seeth no man Gonzaga his heirs and his concubines
no picture is made to endure nor to live with
but it is made to sell and sell quickly
with usura, sin against nature,
is thy bread ever more of stale rags
is thy bread dry as paper,
with no mountain wheat, no strong flour
with usura the line grows thick
with usura is no clear demarcation
and no man can find site for his dwelling.
Stonecutter is kept from his tone
weaver is kept from his loom
WITH USURA
wool comes not to market
sheep bringeth no gain with usura
Usura is a murrain, usura
blunteth the needle in the maid’s hand
and stoppeth the spinner’s cunning. Pietro Lombardo
came not by usura
Duccio came not by usura
nor Pier della Francesca; Zuan Bellin’ not by usura
nor was ‘La Calunnia’ painted.
Came not by usura Angelico; came not Ambrogio Praedis,
Came no church of cut stone signed: Adamo me fecit.
Not by usura St. Trophime
Not by usura Saint Hilaire,
Usura rusteth the chisel
It rusteth the craft and the craftsman
It gnaweth the thread in the loom
None learneth to weave gold in her pattern;
Azure hath a canker by usura; cramoisi is unbroidered
Emerald findeth no Memling
Usura slayeth the child in the womb
It stayeth the young man’s courting
It hath brought palsey to bed, lyeth
between the young bride and her bridegroom
CONTRA NATURAM
They have brought whores for Eleusis
Corpses are set to banquet
at behest of usura.
Ba’al.
I remember this one U.S.U.R.A
Open Your Mind
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S.U.R.A.
Never mind the national politics, RoS. Let’s go for the universal principle. No state can be properly free unless – impossible dream, perhaps – unless it is free from usury. I think a lot of what is bothering us follows from that, and it heads my personal Bill of Rights.
Mary
“The service from Auschwitz is being transmitted live on BBC News. Many rabbis are officiating, the ram’s horn was sounded and now kadesh with the wailing. In the the gaps the programme is being given a theatrical impression with long shots of the railway and trucks with snow falling on icy wastes.
What audience do the BBC provide this for? It is not on Sky.”
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Holocaust Day sticks in your craw, does it? I’m not surprised.
I bet you wish you’d been around when the Jews were being slaughtered – preferably as a KZ female guard, I imagine. Am I right?
Super rich hedge fund managers are buying ‘secret boltholes’ where they can hideout in the event of civil uprising against growing inequality, it has been claimed.
Nervous financiers from across the globe have begun purchasing landing strips, homes and land in areas such as New Zealand so they can flee should people rise up.
With growing inequality and riots such as those in London in 2011 and in Ferguson and other parts of the USA last year, many financial leaders fear they could become targets for public fury.
Robert Johnson, president of the Institute of New Economic Thinking, told people at the World Economic Forum in Davos that many hedge fund managers were already planning their escapes.
He said: I know hedge fund managers all over the world who are buying airstrips and farms in places like New Zealand because they think they need a getaway.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/world-news/panicked-super-rich-buying-boltholes-5044084
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So some are getting ready to cut and run, if the Mirror is to be believed, (debatable at best) a revolution may well not be too far away.
“Silence in the court. Pooh Bah,the self appointed expert on Greece and the Greek language has spoken.
He does not like being given the facts because they cannot be disputed.”
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What facts? The one Maabout the Greek public health system having been “once proud”?
Republicofscotland
“a revolution may well not be too far away.”
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Will you be playing Danton or Robespierre, RoS ?
Mary will obviously be one of the old crones knitting at the foot of the guillotine.