The Unnecessary Death Of A Mum

The Tory Government Is Hammering The British Steel Industry.
Chancellor George Osborne’s “March of the Makers” is a sick joke when we uncover fresh evidence that the Conservative Government is hammering the British steel industry.
Failing to ensure blue-chip producer Sheffield Forgemasters will supply most of the steel needed to build the £18billion Hinckley Point nuclear power station is unforgivable, especially when Business Minister Anna Soubry parrots inaccurate propaganda claiming the firm could not make the metal.
Far from creating the Powerhouse they promised, we once again see the Tories pulling the plug on the North.
( Daily Mirror, 30.01.2016 )

There’s Money For MPs But Not For Others.
Ten months after the monster pay hike that shocked Britain, MPs have given themselves another, at more than SIX times the inflation rate.
OK, inflation is low and the rise only 1.3%.
But the average worker got just one per cent, to about £27,500 a year.
The MPs’ deal takes them to a princely £74,962.
Plus expenses, of course.
It is a slap in the face to others on the public payroll too.
They are told there’s no money to give them more than one per cent for years to come.
Yet there is money to give MPs more.
( The Sun, 10.02.2016 )

The Unnecessary Death Of A Mum.
A mum who faced eviction from the house where her son had taken his own life hanged herself in the same spot.
Frances McCormack, 53, had reportedly been asked to pay Bedroom Tax after the death of her son Jack Allen, 16, in 2013.
An eviction notice arrived at her home the same day her body was found in August, 2015.
Part of a note found in her bedroom was reportedly addressed to PM David Cameron, on the hardship the hated Bedroom Tax caused.
( Rose Winfold )

Greedy Private Landlords And Rental Sharks.
Thousands of cut-price Right To Buy homes end up in the hands of greedy private landlords, a report reveals.
Almost four in ten council houses bought by tenants are later flogged to rental sharks who charge far higher prices than town halls.
Last year, 12,304 properties were sold under Right To Buy as PM David Cameron revived Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy.
He now plans to extend this, raising fears of a new grab by landlords.
Some rental firms charge 50% more than the same council pad next door, the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee found.
( The Sun, 10.02.2016 )

Blind, Deaf And Very Dumb.
Jimmy Savile raped, groped and abused girls under the noses of his BBC bosses.
Yet, according to a leaked draft of the Savile Review, none of them knew anything about it.
One 15-year-old even killed herself after he and another DJ seduced her.
And twice he was interviewed by BBC executives about his behaviour with young girls.
Yet still no-one knew anything about anything.
How can that be?
( Carole Malone, 24.01.2016 )

Ministry Of Defence Squander Money On Telephone Calls.
The UK Ministry of Defence staff have spent over a quarter of a million pounds calling directory inquiries and the speaking clock in five years.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed 81,000 calls were made to 118 118 inquiries at a cost of £202,000 between 2010 and 2015.
Another £62,000 was blown on speaking clock calls, despite staff being issued with a list of free alternatives.
( Sean Rayment, 31.01.2016 )

The Northern Poorhouse Project Gets Closer.
Look behind those red doors on asylum-seekers in Middlesbrough and you’ll see a bigger story than G45 incompetence.
A government policy to put more asylum-seekers in working class Teesside streets than in every Tory-voting constituency in the entire southeast.
The same Teesside streets devastated by the closure of steelworks due to Cameron’s lack of concern and eagerness to let his new-found Chinese friends dump cheap steel on us.
The Northern Poorhouse project gets closer to completion by the day.
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

Families Pay For His Stupidity.
Ditching plans to build flood barriers that might have protected homes and businesses did save a few bob for Chancellor George Osborne yet we pay for his stupidity when the expense falls on families washed out of their properties.
Britain needs a smart state, not the penny-pinching small state where Osborne & Co’s skimping leaves us all with a costly nightmare.
( Daily Mirror, 11.01.2016 )

The Real David Cameron.
How revealing to see the carefully constructed facade crumble, the snarl appear and the real David Cameron look down at the Labour leader like something brown and sticky found on the sole of his Savile Row brogue.
“My mother would say, put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem”, he spat like an Old Etonian roasting his fag for bringing him crumpets without wearing a bow tie.
Here was the bullying elitist unplugged from his PR machine, his inner Lord Snooty released.
The aristocrat who believes he was born to sit at the top of a class system and everyone below should polish their forelock and tug it in the presence of their betters.
( Brian Reade, 27.02.2016 )

Bankers Are Poised To Fill Their Boots Again.
How, instead of seeking justice for the British taxpayer, Osborne held more than 90 meetings with top bankers since becoming Chancellor, pecking them on the cheek as they left his revolving door with goodie bags full of tax cuts and lighter controls.
Funny, isn’t it, how our government is happy to see a disgraced banker given a Golden Goodbye while a lifelong steelworker gets a Wooden Tata?

As we head for another global crash, bamboozled by the same language that we were back in ’08, those bankers are poised to fill their boots again, speculating, hedging their bets, letting stocks fail so they can buy and then profit, while our pensions and savings get hammered, company profits shrink, jobs go, houses are repossessed, pay drops.
And, as they say in The Big Short, immigrants and the poor take the rap.

Not that this looming global crash should interfere much with the five-star shindig taking place in Davos right now as the planet’s rich elite gather to swap notes.
Because all evidence points to them hitting the jackpot as inequality soars.
Less than 1% of the wealth created since 2000 has gone to the poorest 50% of the world’s population.

Last year in Britain, FTSE 100 chief executives earned more than 180 times as much as the average worker.
Yet for most of the past 15 years, during which there has been the worst crash since the 1920s, those companies have been less valuable than they were at the turn of the century. Go figure.

An Oxfam report this week showed that if you put the world’s richest 62 people on a coach, that coach would have more wealth riding in it than the poorest 3.6 billion on earth.
In 2010 the figure was 388, meaning if the inequality carries on at the same rate, in five years you could seat the world’s richest 11 on a minibus and they would be wealthier than half the planet.

And in a decade’s time that number will have fallen to two.
They could be lifted on to a gold-plated speedboat.
Leaving four billion people drowning in their slipstream, the last noises they hear being champagne corks and laughter.
What a wonderful world.
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

Westminster Pedophile Ring.
Claims of a Westminster pedophile ring emerged 22 years ago in magazine Scallywag, which shut after it was repeatedly sued for printing lies.
Scallywag published sordid tales which bear a striking resemblance to the Westminster allegations currently being investigated by the Met’s Operation Midland.
It said children were abused at ‘parties’ at a flat in Dolphin Square, Westminster, and many ‘abusers’ were Tories.
Scallywag closed down in 1998.
( Daily Mirror, 10.02.2016 )

A Pathetic Reason For Not Taxing The Rich.
George Osborne has been bragging that cutting the top rate of income tax led to increased revenue of £8billion.
His logic being that it’s counter-productive to tax the rich too much because they find ways of avoiding it.
Whereas when you hit the poor with extra taxes like the Bedroom Tax, they are so powerless they have no option but to pay it.
What a fair and moral system that is.
Here’s an idea: instead of allowing them to cook the books, why don’t we do to the rich what we do to benefits claimants: Demonise them, fine them, threaten them, evict them and jail them.
( Brian Reade, 05.03.2016 )

A Dangerous Paedophile Was Made A Knight Of The Realm.
Strangely, I haven’t heard any demands for action against Margaret Thatcher’s advisors who failed to check out stories that she was inviting Jimmy Savile, a dangerous paedophile, to New Year parties 11 years on the run, plus regular tea at Number 10, and giving him supportive TV appearances.
Remember, the BBC made Savile a popular TV host and Thatcher made him a Knight of the Realm.
( Brian Reade, 05.03.2016 )

Eton Student Spared Jail For Sharing Child Abuse Images.
A former student at the very expensive Eton College was spared jail after he was found to have more than 2,000 pornographic images of children as young as two years-old, including rape and bestiality.
Oxford Crown Court heard that Andrew Picard, 18, made indecent images of children and shared them via Skype chat rooms between January and February, 2015.

It was an undercover police officer who exposed Picard by entering the chat room.
Picard admitted one count of possessing indecent pictures of children, one count of making indecent pictures of children and eight counts of distributing indecent photos or recordings of a child.

Picard was spared jail and given a ten month sentence, suspended for 18 months and with a mental health treatment requirement.
It makes you wonder if John Smith the labourer who went to a state comprehensive school would have been treated so leniently.
( Rose Winfold, February 2016 )

Trident Is Being Used As A Political Tactic.
Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face, particularly international terrorism.
Who said that?
It was three of the most respected and experienced military experts in the country.
Former head of the Armed Forces, Field Marshall Lord Bramall and former Generals Lord Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach.
They added, “Our independent deterrent has become virtually irrelevant except in the context of domestic politics”.
The problem is that Trident is now being used as a political tactic by the Tories to hit Labour, in the same way they used the myth that Labour caused a global economic crash, not greedy bankers.
( John Prescott, 24.01.2016 )