Here's how things stand. The follies of the big banks have caused the steepest plunge in output since the second world war. The economy is showing signs of stabilisation, owing largely to emergency cuts in interest rates and taxpayers' billions being used to prop up a ­financial system on the brink of collapse. Unemployment is rising, and it is rising most rapidly for the blameless, not the wretched bankers.

Even before the recession began, incomes for those at the bottom of the pile were below the level of three years ago. The longer Labour has been in power the slower incomes have grown. Inequality is higher than under Thatcher. Child poverty has increased in the past three years and the public finances are shot to pieces.

According to the prime minister, we are now living in a different world. The crisis of neo-liberalism has ushered in a new age in which there is a new and more important role for the state.

That is true, but only up to a point. The state is rather keener on controlling the people than the markets.

The evidence for this? Well, in the past month, the Treasury has announced that it is "not persuaded" that the most profound financial crisis of the past 100 years should result in reform along the lines of the Glass-­Steagall act of 1933. This is a sensible idea that would cut the banks down to size and create a legal distinction between retail and investment banks ...

Gdn  10 May 2009

What Larry Elliott describes here is the arrival of the corporate state, 21st century version.

The neoliberal dream of the small state was always the same flim-flam as the Marxist notion that the state would wither away with people like Stalin at the helm.

Indeed, it's one of the conundrums of the age: the ease with which ex-Marxists within New Labour have made such a smooth transition to neoliberalism.

But the case of China is emblematic.

The neoliberal state was never going to function by democratic means, since it is vanishingly unlikely that, offered a manifesto on the Washington Consenus, a majority vote could be obtained.

The manner in which NAFTA was negotiated and implemented offers proof.

The problem facing us is starkly simple: a vote for David Cameron's Tories is a vote for a party that has long since-abandoned 'one nation' conservatism and an albeit hierarchical notion of society.

The older Conservatism, of Edmund Burke and Lord Shaftesbury - and David Selbourne - is now of largely nostalgic appeal.

The clever element of New Labour policy is the incorporation of a strand of libertarianism, most aptly illustrated by the removal of any limitations - social, or economic - on the consumption of alcohol.

The steadfast refusal to hear the pleas of the medics for greater controls has gone unheard, and the alco-pushers occupy a seat at the policy table that would never be offered to the producers of nicotine and cannabis.

The panoply of police-state security measures offers the final proof that neoliberalism does not, and cannot, rest on majority support.

Unlike fascism, it offers no sense of belonging, social cohesion being the very opposite of what is required.

The neoliberal citizen - oxymoron - is a private person unconcerned about the fate of others, and is, in truth the triumph of social Darwinism.

It is a dystopia against which the likes of Keir Hardie and the early trade unions made common cause. Their betrayal is a truly astounding achievement on the part of Blair, Brown, and Mandelson.

It is also an open goal for the BNP to exploit: the offer to exchange the neoliberal variety of fascism for the original marque.

Blogs to Larry Elliott

David Selbourne

Who will police the police?

If the police have been releasing sensitive information to journalists, in return for payment, that would meet most people's definition of corruption.

And this is a particularly insidious crime because it undermines faith in the police, in whom the power of enforcing the law has been entrusted.

Ms Brooks, who has since risen to become the chief executive of News International, tried to backtrack this week, saying she does not have information about specific payments. But there are plenty of other good reasons to believe that this has been widespread.

The former News of the World journalist Paul McMullan alleges that a fifth of Metropolitan Police officers have taken backhanders from tabloid journalists for information.

Yet the idea that Scotland Yard should be in charge of this investigation – or should decide whether there are grounds for a probe – is surely a bad joke.

It is inappropriate enough that the Metropolitan Police is investigating News International over the separate News of the World phone-hacking scandal after the force's lamentable (and suspicious) failure to do the job properly the first time around in 2006.

But the notion that Scotland Yard can be trusted to investigate itself directly over corrupt dealings with tabloid journalists is even more ludicrous ...

Ind  16 Apr 2011

It is hard to imagine a more dangerous breach of trust by a public corporation

Never mind the footballers, TV presenters and film stars that Rupert Murdoch's people have been busily buying off or threatening since this scandal broke.

There are hundreds of them, maybe even thousands, and they all have the right to a private life, but the gravity of this affair lies in this: at the same time as Murdoch's organisation was maintaining sway over the course of politics in this country, his journalists were listening to government ministers' private messages.

It is difficult to imagine a more dangerous breach of trust by a public corporation, which of course may even have implications for national security.

If the chancellor's phone was hacked, it certainly does.

Since the Guardian's Nick Davies began his investigations, it has become clear that News International would go to extraordinary lengths to suppress the story, including an attempt to derail further investigation by the police after royal reporter Clive Goodman and private investigator Glen Mulcaire had been jailed.

There is in an ongoing dispute between the director of public prosecutions, Keir Starmer, and the acting deputy commissioner, John Yates, about advice given by the Crown Prosecution Service to the police, but what must be clear is that the police investigation was stalled and somewhere along the line Murdoch's influence was felt ...

Guardian  09 Apr 2011

Murdoch 'urged Gordon Brown' to halt Labour attacks

UK's soft bank rules 'dragging down' reform

Subverting Safer Finance

The New Economics Foundation (NEF) cited weak limits on commodity speculation, tolerance of naked short-selling and inaction on tax havens as evidence that Britain gives financial tricksters an easy ride.

In doing so, the country acts as a haven for these activities and prevents wider reform, the NEF added.

The think-tank urged the Financial Services Authority to copy the American model by imposing position limits on commodity speculators driving up food prices.

A ban on naked shorting – selling shares without first buying them in the market – would also bring Britain into line with the US, Japan, Hong Kong and other major markets, it argued.

Andrew Simms, the co-writer of the report, said:

"If the Government wants a safe and stable financial system, it should stop the UK dragging down efforts toward financial reform.

"If it doesn't, we are in danger of being seen by our neighbours as a financial rogue state, subverting safer finance."

London is the European centre for commodities traders and hedge funds, which were accused of bringing banks close to collapse by selling borrowed shares in volumes that caused the banks' share price to collapse.

The FSA said the European Union had taken control of regulating financial markets and that rules on short-selling were now in the hands of agencies in Brussels.

The watchdog is reviewing speculation in commodity derivative markets, a practice that the NEF says further impoverishes people in developing countries.

The NEF called for the Government to clamp down on tax havens that allowed the rich to avoid paying taxes in their home countries. It argued that the Treasury could bring low-tax centres such as Jersey, Guernsey and the Cayman Islands into line by using reserve powers or exercising its right to impose good governance.

The NEF also accused the Alternative Investment Market of attracting companies to list in the UK by offering soft-touch governance and transparency ...

Independent  29 Mar 2011

In areas including potentially damaging commodity speculation, the Alternative Investment Market, naked short-selling and the operations of British tax havens, the UK is holding back urgently needed regulation. Subverting Safer Finance finds that:

• London is a major centre for commodity trading, yet instead of demonstrating leadership, the UK is lagging ever further behind the US. And while the EU is trying to support global regulation by raising standards towards those of US legislation, the UK’s response is to block any attempt at reform.



• A London exchange called the Alternative Investment Market (AIM), has pursued a strategy of winning new business by driving down standards of transparency, governance and investor protection.



• The US banned naked short-selling (a form of trading that many argue increases market volatility and instability) in 2008. The European Parliament is seeking to impose an EU-wide ban on naked short-selling. But, the UK government is trying to derail this initiative.



• While the UK claims it cannot influence tax havens, many of which territories are in fact UK Crown Dependencies or Overseas Territories, a past history of intervention suggests otherwise. An HM Treasury review confirms that the UK has reserve powers enshrined in the constitutions of the Overseas Territories to affect and block legislation. The UK also has the power to intervene to uphold ‘good governance’ in the Crown Dependencies. This means that in several cases the UK is actively choosing to not tackle tax havens.

Subverting Safer Finance    29 Mar 2011

Banking Commission    Corporate State Britain    Fiat Currency Banking    

Phone hacking: The dark arts of Jonathan Rees

Meanwhile, what of Acting Deputy Commissioner John Yates, who was so quick to assure the world that there wasn't much to the phone-hacking stories uncovered by journalists on this and other newspapers?

He has hired one of the UK's most notorious libel firms to warn off this newspaper for reporting the claim that he misled parliament.

In a Commons debate this week, Chris Bryant, MP for Rhondda, made the direct accusation that Yates did, indeed, mislead two parliamentary select committees.

Moreover, it was alleged that Scotland Yard has known for five months that its evidence was incorrect.

The two committees involved should, as a matter of some urgency, invite the police to explain its position ...

Guardian  11 Mar 2011

Panorama to name sixth journalist

Scotland Yard admits Daniel Morgan's killers shielded by corruption

Scotland Yard in spotlight ...

An empire of tabloid corruption

Killers shielded by corruption

24 years, five police inquiries

Nick Davies email to Andy Coulson

The Big Society Bail-In brings protest to your local bank

Look through the newspapers this month and two points will become immediately clear.

First, the government is cutting, privatising and changing the very nature of social security and public goods that were won through the 20th century.

Every aspect of what was fought for by generations seems under threat – from selling off the forests, privatising health provision, closing the libraries and swimming pools, and scrapping rural bus routes.

Second, the banks are doing just fine. February is bankers' bonus month; Barclays announces their gifts to themselves on the 15th, with its chief executive, Bob Diamond, expecting £9m just for him.

While RBS is due to transfer its £900m bonus pool into the pockets of high-earning bankers on the 25th. These bonuses should make the disgrace of the MPs' expenses scandal look like chicken feed and are another demonstration of just how much we really are not all in this together.

The two, of course, are linked.

Because it was our broken banking system, with its greed and reckless gambling, that caused the crash.

The National Audit Office has reported that at its peak, the amount of support provided to the banks reached nearly £1tn ...

Guardian  10 Feb 2011

This failure to curb banks is a failure of government itself

Jacqui Smith's new career

Miss Smith ... lost her seat in Redditch at the election last year.

Miss Smith has since secured a role as a consultant for KPMG, which won lucrative contracts when she was Home Secretary.

She has also applied to be a vice chairman of the BBC Trust.

The two-and-a-half-day-a-week job comes with a £77,000 salary – far more than an MP’s with shorter hours.

The role would run alongside her work as an adviser to Sarina Russo Job Access, a company run by a friend of Tony and Cherie Blair ...

Daily Mail  29 Jan 2011    

RBS chief Stephen Hester awarded a £2.5m bonus

Mr Hester, parachuted in to rescue RBS at the height of the 2008 financial crisis, will take home an estimated £6.80 million in bonuses, salary and other payments this year ...

Vince Cable, the Business Secretary, who is the Cabinet’s most vocal critic of large bank bonuses, has been unable to persuade George Osborne, the Chancellor, that a clampdown is necessary.

cynicalengineer

The threat of withdrawing the practice of thankyou "directorships" certainly brings the politicians to heel.

Telegraph  08 Jan 2011    Fiat Currency Banking

Knighted – for services to high gas prices and Cadbury's demise?

Knighted for 'services' to Branch Office Britain

Roger Carr, the tycoon who saw through the sale of the 200-year-old British company Cadbury to the US multinational Kraft in February, has been knighted for services to industry in today's New Year Honours list.

Sir Roger was praised by the City for getting a good deal for shareholders when the Cadbury sale went through in February.

Since then Kraft has announced that it is moving the firm's headquarters to Switzerland to avoid UK tax, at a probable cost of thousands of UK jobs.

The award is doubly controversial because Sir Roger also chairs Centrica, the parent company of British Gas, which recently announced a 7 per cent price hike.

Soon after that announcement, Centrica raised its full year profit forecast to more than £2.2bn.

The regulator, Ofgem, is holding an inquiry into whether major energy companies are "lining their pockets" ...

Independent  31 Dec 2010    

Broughton and Carr business knights

Profile: Sir Roger Carr

Roger Carr and Martin Broughton knighted

Roger Carr, the new CBI head

Hunt ruling will be open to legal challenge after past Murdoch support

David Cameron's decision to hand responsibility for ruling on BSkyB's future from Vince Cable to Mr Hunt caused surprise and anger at Westminster ... critics claim that Mr Hunt is equally compromised – specifically by his remarks lauding Mr Murdoch for his contribution to British television and apparently backing Mr Murdoch's planned takeover ...

It also emerged that Mr Hunt held a private meeting with the tycoon's son, James, the chief executive of News Corp in Europe and Asia, shortly after the takeover bid was launched in June.

Meanwhile, BSkyB shares rose 2 per cent yesterday, up 14.5p to 743p, as investors judged that the chances of News Corp's takeover going ahead had soared with Mr Hunt's appointment.

Andrew Neil, the former Sunday Times editor, said News Corp had pulled a "very expensive ad campaign" to lobby support for its bid to acquire the 61 per cent of BSkyB shares that it does not own ...

truthseeker

Pick-up any one of Rupert Murdoch's newspapers (he owns 175 titles worldwide including The Sun, News of the World and The Times in the UK), or tune in to any one of his TV Channels (he owns the Twentieth Century Fox Studio, Sky/BskyB, Fox Network, and 35 TV stations, fast-growing Fox News and Fox Entertainment, and 19 regional sports channels) and you are likely to come across hysterical stories screaming of "benefit fraudsters and "dole scroungers".

This may make you not only believe the overwhelming scale of "benefit culture" and burden on the State but that Murdoch's media empire is firmly on the side of decent hard-working tax payers.

There is just one problem - Rupert Murdoch's media empire fails to pay it's tax!!!

Media tycoon Murdoch may run one of the most profitable businesses in the UK, but it appears that he has somehow managed to avoid running up a tax bill over the past two decades.

Mr Murdoch thinks it is acceptable for a Billionaire to shirk his tax bill whilst at the same time stigmatising the poor as "benefit cheats" and "dole scum".

According to a previous report in The Economist, Mr Murdoch in the 1990's saved at least £350m in tax - enough to pay for seven new hospitals, 50 secondary schools or 300 primary schools.

How he has done it remains a mystery - and News Corporation is certainly loath to give away any financial secrets.

But it appears that Mr Murdoch's tax accountants have surpassed themselves - making full use of tax loopholes to protect profits in offshore havens.

Mr Murdoch also has the luxury of shifting funds from country to country across his sprawling media empire to foil the taxman.

It is not just the Inland Revenue that has been left empty-handed by News Corporation's clever financial engineering.

Mr Murdoch "hands very little of his profits to governments" according to The Economist.

Overall, News Corporation paid just £146m ($238m) in corporate taxes on profits of more than £2bn.

In other words he is paying tax at a paltry rate of just 6%. That compares with normal company tax rates of 30% and upwards.

The financial secrecy that has characterised Mr Murdoch's empire could turn out to be a double-edged sword.

On the one hand he has managed to hold on to more money.

But News Corporation's complex structure, which includes 60 incorporated tax havens, such as the British Virgin Islands and the Cayman Islands, has confused analysts and investors alike.

Independent  23 Dec 2010    Corporate Media    Rupert Murdoch    Tax dodger Murdoch

Jeremy Hunt's links with Rupert Murdoch empire under scrutiny

West remains on life support

... while the rise in inflation is routinely regarded by some as a sign that the Bank of England has lost the plot, the rise in prices has, to date, not been matched by any significant rise in wages.

This latest dose of inflation is, therefore, not like the inflations of the 1970s, when both prices and wage rose rapidly.

Indeed, the bigger worry at the moment is not so much that inflation will continue to rise but, instead, that the higher cost of living will erode real incomes and spending, thereby threatening the pace of economic recovery in 2011 and beyond.

Combine that with the ongoing austerity in the public sector and it becomes abundantly clear that the UK economy, like other Western economies, is not yet out of the woods.

Indeed, the Western world remains on economic and financial life support ...

lettus

The UK economy is bleeding to death because big companies pay far less than they should in tax.

Until that is cured - and the only cure I can think of is a turnover tax - nothing will change.

In addition to bringing in much-needed public funds, a turnover tax would have a second advantage which is even more important: it would level the playing fields between big companies and smaller companies.

Encouraging smaller companies is vital to economic growth because smaller companies employ proportionately more people.

My analysis is that the whole of the UK's economic woes have arisen because of the disproportionately high power of the big companies.

Over the past fifteen years, the power of the biggest companies has surged. That's why the crash happened - because the banks had become so big and powerful that they could simply lean on the government not to regulate.

And the other big corporates simply lean on the government to change laws in their favour and to cosy up to the tax man so that their tax avoidance measures remain nicely protected.

Big companies spend a lot of their money overseas - in the form of investment in overseas subsidiaries and overseas workers, and investment in machinery to replace what would otherwise have been jobs for UK workers.

So, a lot of the economic activity of bigger companies goes overseas and that's why the economy of the UK is bleeding to death.

Smaller companies, by contrast, can't afford to operate on a world scale and so their economic activity is concentrated on the UK and benefits our country.

Independent  20 Dec 2010    Alternatives to FRB    Tax Dodgers    

The proverbial have taken over the asylum

Former Prison Service boss Phil Wheatley to work for private security firm

During Wheatley's time in charge, the Ministry of Justice introduced measures that opened the way for more jails to be run by the private sector.

From next month, Wheatley will work as a consultant to G4S, the security company that employs 595,000 employees around the world and is looking to bid for a plethora of contracts from the ministry.

G4S already manages four UK prisons, three secure training centres and three immigration centres, but is seeking to capitalise on the coalition government's apparent enthusiasm for expanding the role of the private sector.

G4S said Wheatley's new role had been registered with the advisory committee on business appointments and fully complied with all of its requirements.

He is prohibited from personally lobbying ministers or civil servants on behalf of G4S for 12 months from the date when he stood down from his previous job ...

Observer  12 Dec 2010    

Ofsted head Christine Gilbert in talks to leave early and join academy sponsor

In June, Gilbert, who has headed Ofsted since 2006, announced that she would leave when her £200,000-a-year, five-year contract expires at the end of October next year, amid reports that the education secretary, Michael Gove, was keen to replace her.

But a Whitehall source with knowledge of the appointment process has told the Guardian Gilbert has been interviewed for the job of group chief executive of the United Learning Trust (ULT), the biggest provider of academy schools, which also runs a chain of private schools ...

Guardian  08 Dec 2010    Ofsted

Health policy: extent of corporate influence revealed

The voluntary "responsibility deal" on curbing alcohol abuse is being drawn up with the help of the spirits manufacturers Diageo and Bacardi Brown Forman, the brewing giants SAB Miller, Molson Coors and Heineken, the largest wine company in the world and beer and spirit producer Constellation, supermarkets, and industry lobby groups such as the Wine and Spirit Trade Association, the British Beer and Pub Association and the Portman Group.

Working alongside them are officials, a handful of public interest groups, and liver disease experts.

The network charged with behaviour change and implementing David Cameron's ideas on "nudging" the public into better choices instead of regulating on public health includes Tesco, Mars UK, PepsiCo, the Food and Drink Federation, and Alliance Boots.

They are joined by the advertising industry lobby groups the Advertising Association and the Institute of Practitioners in Advertising, and brand consultants Oxford Strategic Marketing, which works for two brewing giants and five of the top 10 global food companies ...

Professor Sir Ian Gilmore, a leading liver specialist and until recently president of the Royal College of Physicians, said he was concerned by the emphasis on voluntary partnerships with industry.

He had decided to co-operate with the deals, but doubted whether there could be "a meaningful convergence between the interests of industry and public health since the priority of the drinks industry was to make money for shareholders while public health demanded a cut in consumption".

Guardian  09 Dec 2010    Nudge

PFI companies urged to pay money back

A total of around 800 PFI contracts are in operation with a capital value of around £64 billion, according to a House of Lords report earlier this year.

Some £267 billion in repayments are due to be made to private companies over the coming 50 years.

Conservative MP Jesse Norman (Hereford and South Herefordshire) said:

"Under Gordon Brown, the decision was made to push PFIs wherever possible, putting huge pressure on schools and hospitals to contract out not just on the construction process but also on long-term provision of services.

"The PFI obligations taken out on Mr Brown's watch now total over £200 billion, and will cost this country for decades.

"We are seeking a very modest saving of 0.05% on the payments under PFI.

"The major PFI companies include Innisfree, Semperian, Serco, Balfour Beatty, HSBC, Lloyds and RBS.

"These firms have done extremely well out of PFI over the past decade, and it is right that they should contribute now to our national economic recovery.

"In these difficult economic times, no one should be exempt."

Independent  01 Dec 2010    Corporate Public 'Services'

Capita deals with £3.3bn of government spending as more work is outsourced

Some £3.3bn of government spending gushed through Capita operations across a spread of government departments during the first five months of David Cameron's government.

Only a small portion of the total represents fees retained by Capita – the bulk being cash bound for teachers' pensions – but the figure nevertheless highlights the vital role that the outsourcing group holds in the engine room of the state.

Yesterday the company warned its shareholders that reduced and delayed government spending decisions in recent months were proving more of a drag on its sales than anticipated, but it remained optimistic that it would ultimately emerge a big winner from George Osborne's austerity drive.

Capita believes a tide of additional taxpayer funds will start to flow its way from the summer of next year as the public spending squeeze forces Whitehall and town hall bureaucrats to look at radical ways of slashing their budgets.

While the Cabinet Office minister, Francis Maude, talks of locally empowered "mutuals" spinning off public services, Capita remains quietly confident that these cottage-industry start-ups will not stand in the way of its ambitions to be at the heart of the government's cost-saving programme ...

Shoey 19 November 2010 1:22AM

I used to work for a government department, which outsourced building maintenance to Crapita.

Previously, one guy in a van did the whole job. You called him up, he came, chatted a lot, and did a good job.

With Crapita, you had to phone a call centre in Birmingham, and obtain a reference number. A few days later a couple of guys you didn't know would turn up and do the job (so we had to, for example, walk to the next building to use the toilet until it was fixed).

The outsourced contract was nearly twice as expensive than the single government employee.

It's a typical example of privatisation. You pay more for a worse job. Same as railways, dentistry, school meals, electricity, hospital cleaning, water etc etc etc...

I don't know of a single example where privatisation has improved anything in Britain. It's just dogma.

Guardian  19 Nov 2010    Cutting the Deficit

Don't bet on austerity being good for Capita

Government spending over £25,000

About Cumbria Highways

Sefton Council awards two new contracts as part of major services review

HSE picks Capita as gas scheme provider

NHS Choices selects Capita as preferred bidder

Criminal Records Bureau

Capita moves to take over £156m Sats contract

Outsourcer Capita reports

Library of Birmingham

Local Authorities and Capita Symonds sign deal for £75million joint venture

Capita Health Solutions secures contract extension with BT

Capita boss quits over Blair loan

Capita Symonds snaps up consultant Pearce Buckle

Capita Symonds buys up Lovejoy

Capita Symonds buys consultancy group NRM Bobrowski

Marsh & Capita Announce Outsourcing Partnership

Capita

Government spending: Britain's reliance on private firms revealed

Whitehall struggles to wean itself off high-cost contracts ...

Key revelations from the spending data released include:

• The scale of the payments to the biggest private suppliers dwarfs the budgets for some government departments. Capita, the single largest outsourcing firm working for the government, received £3.3bn over the period ...

• £1.43bn was spent on PFI projects for schools and £1.25bn on other PFI deals.

• The challenge facing the government as it attempts to renegotiate its colossal IT bill is laid bare. It paid £271m to one firm alone, Aspire, which oversees the IT system for Revenue & Customs.

• ... The bill for agency staff has soared by 65% since a recruitment freeze for all but the most crucial posts was ordered across Whitehall. Unions said this threatened to de-skill Whitehall and that costly agency fees could undermine efforts to save money.

• ... The Cabinet Office, the driver of the efficiency regime, saw its bills for advertising and consultancy increase, with some extra consultancy costs to help it achieve efficiencies. It spent £923,557 on consultancy in June but by September that cost was £3,414,805 ...

• The Department for Education made a number of payments to for-profit companies providing support and consultancy to the new academy and free schools being promoted by the coalition ...

Guardian  19 Nov 2010    Cutting the Deficit_Shrinking the State

Ireland bailout: UK taxpayers could face £7bn bill

Irish newspapers reported today that Ireland is considering asking for money for its banks via the EU's emergency fund ...

An emergency bailout of Ireland, which is looking increasingly likely today, could cost Britain billions of pounds.

Although Ireland continues to deny that it has asked for help, many analysts believe the country will have to tap a €60bn rescue fund set up by the EU in May this year.

Under the terms of a deal agreed by Alistair Darling in May, the UK is liable for 13.6% of this fund.

This means taxpayers could contribute as much as €8bn (£6.8bn), depending how the rescue package was structured ...

Koolio
15 November 2010 11:06AM

Note the words used in the article could: could, denial, no application, we won't speculate etc. There's so much uncertainty here.

The lesson from the Greek fiasco was that the authorities can't afford to sit around and make up their mind.

We are supposed to have rules and mechanisms in place, yet we have a vacuum and speculation.

As for the UK paying, British banks have significant exposure and it is a large export market, the UK has a vested interest in helping.

That said, it's about time people realised that a total bailout is undesirable.

Professional investors know very well that the value of their investment can go down as well as up, they piled into Irish debt only now it has turned sour.

We need to be sure to save the Irish economy but those who took investment risk need to assume a share of their gamble.

For too long Britain and the EU have appeared to be acting on behalf of the bondholders.

sarkany
15 November 2010 11:16AM

And meanwhile the bankers, bondmasters and hedge-fund sharks order another magnum and calculate how much there is left to steal, the British Government reviews militarisation options in the event of civil disorder and old people start dying because of lack of social care.

What a great society ! What a wonderful system !

No doubt the usual Tory trolls will soon appear spouting their 'Live within your means' garbage, which now seems to be their daily prayer to the Great God Money.

For anyone who missed this report on the coming shape of our so-called democracy from this weeks Observer;

As police face continued criticism for failing to control the march, the Observer has learned that defence firms are working closely with UK armed forces and contemplating a "militarisation" strategy to counter the threat of civil disorder.

The trade group representing the military and security industry says firms are in negotiation with senior officers over possible orders for armoured vehicles, body scanners and better surveillance equipment.

The move coincides with government-backed attempts to introduce the use of unmanned spy drones throughout UK airspace, facilitating an expansion of covert surveillance that could provide intelligence on future demonstrations.

Derek Marshall, of the trade body Aerospace, Defence and Security (ADS), said that such drones could eventually replace police helicopters.

He added that military manufacturers had discussed police procurement policies with the government, as forces look to counter an identified threat of civil disobedience from political extremists.

Guardian  15 Nov 2010    Police State Britain    The Euro: A question of sovereignty

How one large part of the UK economy may avoid an Irish fate

McDonald's and PepsiCo to help write UK health policy

Department of health putting fast food companies at heart of policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease ...

The Department of Health is putting the fast food companies McDonald's and KFC and processed food and drink manufacturers such as PepsiCo, Kellogg's, Unilever, Mars and Diageo at the heart of writing government policy on obesity, alcohol and diet-related disease ...

The groups are dominated by food and alcohol industry members, who have been invited to suggest measures to tackle public health crises.

Working alongside them are public interest health and consumer groups including Which?, Cancer Research UK and the Faculty of Public Health.

The alcohol responsibility deal network is chaired by the head of the lobby group the Wine and Spirit Trade Association.

The food network to tackle diet and health problems includes processed food manufacturers, fast food companies, and Compass, the catering company famously pilloried by Jamie Oliver for its school menus of turkey twizzlers.

The food deal's sub-group on calories is chaired by PepsiCo, owner of Walkers crisps.

The leading supermarkets are an equally strong presence, while the responsibility deal's physical activity group is chaired by the Fitness Industry Association, which is the lobby group for private gyms and personal trainers ...

Responding to criticism that industry was too prominent in the plans, the Department of Health said ... that the government wanted to improve public health through voluntary agreements with business and other partners, rather than through regulation or top-down lectures ...

Guardian  12 Nov 2010    Alcohol, Cannabis & Nicotine    Nudge

Nudge or fudge?

Who is the government's health deal with big business really good for?

Warning of new era of surveillance state

Britain is heading for a new surveillance state of unmanned spy drones, GPS tracking of employees and profiling through social networking sites, the information watchdog has warned ...

Mr Graham's predecessor warned in 2006 that the UK could be "sleepwalking into a surveillance society" and an updated report for him today said such concerns are "no less cogent" in 2010 ...

[The report] said that despite the scrapping of ID cards and ContactPoint, the database of every child, and ongoing reviews of CCTV, the DNA database and "there are still many areas where surveillance continues to intensify and expand".

Mr Graham said: "Many of the new laws that come into force every year in the UK have implications for privacy at their heart.

"My concern is that after they are enacted there is no one looking back to see whether they are being used as intended, or whether the new powers were indeed justified in practice." ...

Telegraph  12 Nov 2010    Police State

'Sleepwalking into Stasi state'

No 10 asks for business chiefs' help to cut jobs

Britain's most senior civil servant is to call in a group of key private sector businessmen to advise permanent secretaries on how to make thousands of job cuts in the public sector.

Sir Gus O'Donnell, the Cabinet Secretary, wants the civil service to learn from private companies how to reduce in size and reform without cutting services and important functions ...

He also suggested the civil service was considering more redundancies than were needed under the Comprehensive Spending Review to give them scope to hire new people in future.

"It may be at times we are using our redundancy schemes to take out rather more [staff] and then come in with people whose skills we need for the future," he said.

"My responsibility is to ensure this [the redundancy programme] is done in a way which makes the civil service stronger.

"So we have done this in a way that is perceived to have been fair, that we have ended up keeping the skills we need and done it in a value-for-money way for the taxpayer." ...

Sir Gus said the public sector had much to learn from private business – not just about job cuts but motivating staff as well.

He said the successful private firms had high levels of staff motivation – something that was not always true in the civil service.

"We know from surveys that we have a number of disengaged individuals across departments and we are working on targeting how we can improve engagement."

Independent  08 Nov 2010    Cutting the Deficit

Tory minister 'intervened on behalf of cocoa millionaire'

Andrew Mitchell, the international development secretary, reportedly made the intervention after he was asked for help by Anthony Ward, whose firm, Armajaro Holdings, had been banned from trading following allegations that a contractor was involved in smuggling cocoa out of Ghana.

The minister telephoned the British high commissioner in Ghana on the issue, according to internal government documents cited by the Sunday Times, despite the fact it involved British business interests overseas, which is outside Mitchell's remit.

Officials in Mitchell's office also contacted the Foreign Office to say that the matter required "urgent attention".

Henry Bellingham, a Foreign Office minister, subsequently lobbied Ghana's vice-president on behalf of Armajaro Holdings.

A partial trading ban imposed on the company has now been lifted, although it remains in place in one district of Ghana.

Armajaro provided donations totalling £40,000 to Mitchell's parliamentary office between August 2006 and December 2009.

The firm donated £50,000 separately to the Conservative party in 2004.

The Sunday Times said that Ward asked Mitchell to lobby the Ghanian government "at a presidential level" weeks after May's general election.

Documents released under the Freedom of Information Act indicated that Foreign Office civil servants raised questions as to why the British government should intervene on behalf of Armajaro ...

Observer  31 Oct 2010    'Choc King'

Transparency must extend to Britain's "public, private" state

Amidst all the talk from government ministers of “efficiency” savings, there has been almost no mention of PFI and its legacy on the public purse ...

The ‘public private’ sector is estimated to be worth £80bn a year in Britain.

Despite the enormous sums involved and the regular stream of controversy that PFi has provoked, the contracts under which the public will pay these vast amounts remain private.

The Coalition government has put great emphasis on “transparency” and “accountability”, the right of the public to know exactly how their money is being spent.

There is no such thing as a transparent state under which £260bn of public commitments remain shielded from scrutiny.

At a time of serious economic austerity, the case becomes unanswerable ...

From the Treasury’s own figures, we are already committed to paying £260bn for buildings valued at only £60bn.

The contracts under which the schemes operate are exempt from Freedom of Information (FoI) requests for reasons of “commercial confidentiality” ...

openDemocracy  22 Oct 2010    Cutting the Deficit

Protect police from lawsuits, says Met chief

Rights groups attack Sir Paul Stephenson's plan to curb court action against officers ...

The Met's chief says money is being wasted on speculative claims, with lawyers gaining large fees that would be better spent fighting crime.

The proposals are contained in appendices to a letter marked "confidential" and sent to Theresa May by Stephenson, who is Britain's most senior police officer, on 22 June.

In the documents, released after inquiries by the Guardian, he suggests:

• Making it harder for people to sue the police for damages in civil actions. These usually involve allegations of brutality or wrongful arrest.

• Loading higher costs on to officers and other staff suing police forces at employment tribunals. These cases include claims of discrimination and unfair treatment.

• Charging the public a fee for freedom of information requests. The Freedom of Information Act is supposed to help citizens hold public bodies to account ...

Guardian  10 Oct 2010    Police State Britain    Propositional Democracy & Recall

CBI wants law on strikes tightened as strife looms

Refer to Clause 6 of the Washington Consensus.

The CBI will today launch a campaign for the biggest overhaul of trade union legislation since Margaret Thatcher confronted militant workers in the Eighties.

The employers' group will call for a series of reforms to the law, amid concern amongst businesses that the forthcoming public spending review could trigger a wave of strikes.

The CBI will argue that the public mood is implacably against strikes and that employment legislation needs to be updated in order to reflect the way labour relations have developed over the past 20 years.

The move reflects a hardening of attitudes towards industrial action following a series of disputes in which employers have turned to the courts to prevent staff going on strike. Workers at British Airways, Network Rail and Royal Mail have all had plans to strike thwarted in this way.

"Strikes should always be the last resort, and in most cases common sense prevails and negotiation wins the day," said John Cridland, the CBI's deputy director-general ...

Independent  04 Oct 2010    We are all in it together

Boris Johnson: we need new laws to stop wave of strikes

CBI calls for tougher legislation on right to strike

Treasury must protect growth, says CBI study

A very corporate-state agenda

The CBI agrees that spending must be limited to "avoid major tax rises that would damage our economy and undermine competitiveness".

But it says investments in areas that facilitate growth must be protected if the economy is not to be tipped into another tailspin.

These include continuing investment in Britain's creaking infrastructure, research and development, and human capital through education and skills training.

"The Government must protect investment in areas that do most to foster economic growth while making savings by re-engineering public-service delivery, reforming public-sector pensions and reducing spending in other areas," the CBI will say.

John Cridland, its deputy director-general, said yesterday:

"The Government rightly decided to limit public spending. The alternative would have been tax rises and other consequences that would have damaged the economy for years to come. Cutting spending means tough choices.

"We think the need for economic growth, not the noise of the loudest voice, should determine where cuts are made. The Government must improve the efficiency of public services and focus the limited public money available on areas that do most to galvanise growth."

The CBI will place particular emphasis on what it sees as the importance of investing in transport infrastructure, because "this offers high returns and will play a crucial role in boosting domestic and international trade".

It will call on ministers to breakdown what it says are barriers to private-sector investment in energy and communications infrastructure ...

Independent  20 Sept 2010    Autumn Spending Review

Austerity will harm UK's economic prospects, says CBI

Alexander launches 'ruthless' tax evasion clampdown

CBI

Simon Lewis goes from PM's spokesman to banking lobbyist

He was Gordon Brown's spokesman when the former prime minister pledged to stop "a return to those terrible old days when people justified big bonuses and we found out that they were based on speculation and short-term deals".

But from next month Simon Lewis will be fighting to ensure that big bonuses are all the rage after being appointed to head a new cheerleader for the investment banking industry.

The Association for Financial Markets in Europe has hired Lewis, who was also the Queen's PR man, as its chief executive as it steps up its lobbying in Europe where policymakers are attempting to crack down on the financial services industry ...

Guardian  16 Sept 2010    

MPs condemn MoD handling of £10bn aircraft project

The Ministry of Defence earmarked £10.5bn in a private finance initiative (PFI) for a fleet of air-to-air refuelling tanker and military passenger aircraft without considering an alternative, says the report.

The MoD wanted to use private finance to keep the cost off its balance sheet.

The MoD is still suppressing financial information about the deal, including data contained in "a lessons learned project", the report shows.

"The use of PFI to deliver a vital military capability like the [Future Strategic Tanker Aircraft] was inappropiate", says the Commons public accounts committee.

It is "simply astonishing", it adds, that the MoD did not decide until 2006 that the aircraft should be able to fly in "high-threat environments such as Afghanistan". Four years later "it has still not decided whether to fit the necessary equipment".

The report continues: "It took over nine years, more than twice as long as expected, to place the FSTA contract ... The last aircraft will not be delivered until 19 years after the procurement began.

"The department did not understand the costs of the deal it was negotiating as it did not obtain access to detailed industry cost data. This meant it could not gauge whether the deal was value for money. In particular, it could not determine whether profit margins were appropriate or the premium it was paying to transfer risk to industry" ...

Guardian  16 Sept 2010    Foreign Policy, Client State

PFI

Is Coulson the most dangerous man in Britain?

A window into the corporate state

Andy Coulson, the No 10 communications chief, found himself in the direct line of fire in the News of the World phone hacking scandal tonight when a former colleague alleged that he issued direct orders to journalists to carry out the illegal practice ...

Cameron was grateful to appoint Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World, as his head of communications in May 2007.

He had been searching for some months for someone to perform the job Campbell had performed for Tony Blair.

He sounded out several journalists, and offered the job to at least three of them.

Then William Hague, whose judgement Cameron trusted, suggested Coulson might be just the man.

He was tough, understood the rougher end of the press and available ...

And for three years, Coulson offered Cameron exactly what he wanted: guidance as to what would "play" with the press, a feel for what "real" people (ie, those outside Cameron's narrow, gilded set) wanted, and access to the nation's most powerful media baron.

As Gordon Brown stumbled and fell out of favour, the Murdoch empire rebalanced, as modern jargon has it, towards the Tories.

Rebekah Brooks, Coulson's close confidante and predecessor at the helm of the News of the World and now chief executive of News International, came to appreciate the Cameron magic.

James Murdoch, her boss, was also won over, with the grudging and uncertain endorsement of his father, Rupert.

The new Camelot that was going to run Britain had been born, and Coulson was a crucial part.

Not bad for a man some thought should have gone to prison a couple of years earlier ...

Independent  05 Sept 2010    Corporate Media    Corporate Public Services

Phone hacking was rife at News of the World, claims new witness

Phone-hacking inquiry was abandoned to avoid upsetting police

MPs seek fresh investigation into NoW phone hacking

Coulson taints Cameron

Mandelson targeted in phone-hacking scandal

Jermain Defoe's fury as police cash in on picture of him talking on mobile phone while driving

I Googled 'Road Safety Support' - an offshoot of ACPO - and stopped looking at the end of page 15 ... zilch!

Police evidence photographs of England footballer Jermain Defoe driving while talking on his mobile phone are at the centre of a legal row after being used to publicise a commercial offshoot of Britain’s most powerful policing body, the Association of Chief Police Officers (ACPO).

The firm, Road Safety Support (RSS), which earns millions providing expert witnesses and advice to help prosecute drivers, has been using the photographs of the footballer at the wheel of his £90,000 Range Rover and other alleged celebrity offenders to drum up business.

RSS began using the pictures at events in January, even though magistrates only heard the case against Defoe at the end of last month ...

ACPO ... despite overseeing police policy on everything from anti-terrorism to public order, ... is a private firm with an income, mostly funded by the taxpayer, of £28-million in the last two years ...

The presentation Who Are Road Safety Support And What Can They Do For You? was written by CPS lawyer Andrew Perry, who is on full-time secondment to RSS.

He explained that RSS is ‘supported by and affiliated to ACPO’ and every slide, including those showing the evidence photos, is headed with the logos of ACPO, the CPS and RSS.

‘Not for profit’ firm RSS is headed by South Yorkshire Police Chief Constable Meredydd Hughes.

He was formerly the chairman of ACPO’s roads policing group but stood down following a driving ban after being caught speeding at 90mph ...

RSS only files ‘abbreviated’ accounts at Companies House which do not disclose its income, but has told speed camera partnerships that its members pay subscriptions of about £900,000 a year ...

Mail on Sunday  05 Sept 2010    Corporate Public 'Services'

Body in charge of UK policing policy is now ... charging the public £70 for a 60p criminal records check

Frontex, Acpo and the policing of Fortress Europe

Call out for 'domestic extremists' to take action against ACPO

ACPO are the mafia of the New Labour corporate fascist state

WTF? Police state is a private company, ACPO!

ACPO in police state shocker

Body in charge of UK policing policy is now ... charging the public £70 for a 60p criminal records check

Coalition turns down heat under energy suppliers

Which minister will follow John Hutton in a few years time?

The Coalition Government has shelved plans for an independent inquiry into the £25bn-a-year energy industry amid accusations of profiteering on electricity and gas.

Before the general election, the Conservatives and the Liberal Democrats repeatedly criticised Labour for failing to tackle prices charged by the Big Six suppliers.

Both the opposition parties demanded an inquiry by the Competition Commission.

An inquiry would have the power to reform the industry, encourage new entrants to break the hold of players such as British Gas and EDF on 99 per cent of the market and, potentially, impose price caps.

However four months into the Coalition Government, no inquiry has been called and the Department of Energy and Climate Change confirmed last night that it has no plans to refer the industry to the Competition Commission ...

Homes in fuel poverty – defined as spending 10 per cent or more of their income on fuel – have trebled in five years to around 6.6 million.

Figures released in December showed that during the cold winter of 2008/09, “excess winter mortality” jumped by 49 per cent to 36,700, sending an extra 10,000 pensioners to early graves.

Meanwhile, profits have surged at the Big Six – British Gas, EDF, Eon, Npower, Scottish & Southern and Scottish Power – and the firms are accused of failing to pass on significant falls in wholesale prices ...

Consumer groups condemned the failure to act, saying customers needed a thorough investigation of the industry, whose numbers of major suppliers has shrunk through takeovers and mergers from 20 at privatisation in the early 1990s to 6 now ...

Independent  18 Aug 2010    Economic Democracy    Pawns or Players?    Rebalancing the Economy

Cameron warned over cuts to winter fuel allowance

Ministers consider cuts to winter fuel allowance

Winter fuel payment cuts to hit millions of pensioners

Sir Philip Green to conduct external review of coalition's spending cuts

Government enlists fashion chain billionaire to head team of officials in Cabinet Office and Treasury ...

Green ... will head a team of officials in the Cabinet Office and Treasury looking at the last three years of spending to identify inefficiencies and savings.

In particular, he will look at whether leases and contracts entered into in 2007 were good value.

Green will report to the minister for the Cabinet Office, Francis Maude, and chief secretary to the Treasury, Danny Alexander, before the end of the spending review.

The review winds up on 20 October and will set out cuts of 25% to 40% in Whitehall departments that are not ringfenced.

The coalition moved quickly within days of taking office to commit to making immediate savings of £6.2bn this year, but the appointment could cause some discomfort within the financial echelons of government.

Vince Cable, now the business, innovation and skills secretary, vehemently criticised Green's appointment to advise the previous Labour government on account of his tax status ...

Guardian  12 Aug 2010    Tax Dodgers    Wealth Log

Philip Green's tax affairs should be investigated

Unions hit out at appointment of Sir Philip Green

The rewards of tax avoidance

Buncefield companies fined £5.35m for oil depot blaze

Peanuts!

Safety breaches by five firms including Total were responsible for blast that injured 43 and damaged homes and businesses ...

... the total bill for the five companies comes to £9.43m.

The fines are another blow to the reputation of the oil industry, hours after BP finally managed to cap its leaking well in the Gulf of Mexico.

But they are tiny in comparison to the profits made by oil companies such as Total, which had a net income of £1.94bn in the first three months of this year ...

... Mike Penning, Conservative MP for Hemel Hempstead, warned that today's fines were "loose change" to major oil companies.

"Legal justice might be done but not natural justice for a local community which is still fighting to win civil compensation claims," he said.

Guardian  16 July 2010    Corporate State Britain

Community struggles to rise from ashes of Buncefield fire

Will they be made to pay?

Release of Abdelbaset al-Megrahi a mistake, government says

Abdelbaset al-Megrahi was the only man to be convicted of involvement in the bombing of Pan Am flight 103, which killed 270 people in 1988.

He was freed on compassionate grounds after being diagnosed with terminal cancer and given three months to live.

There was outrage on both sides of the Atlantic when he was flown home to a hero's welcome in Tripoli, and the case was revived as the first anniversary of his release approaches without news of his death ...

The prisoner transfer agreement with Libya was signed by the former Labour government in 2007 – the same year BP sealed a $900m (£584m) exploration agreement with the north African state.

In a statement, BP said: "It is a matter of public record that in late 2007, BP told the UK government that we were concerned about the slow progress that was being made in concluding a prisoner transfer agreement with Libya.

"We were aware that this could have a negative impact on UK commercial interests, including the ratification by the Libyan government of BP's exploration agreement.

"The decision to release Mr al-Megrahi in August 2009 was taken by the Scottish government. BP was not involved in any discussions with the UK government or the Scottish government about the release of Mr al-Megrahi."

Guardian  16 July 2010        

Senate may investigate BP's role in release of Megrahi

Cameron braced for attack as Ashcroft sharpens his pen

Between February 2003 and December 2009, he is known to have donated £5.1m to the party.

Impressed by Ashcroft's analysis of why the Tories lost, Mr Cameron appointed him Deputy Chairman, with an office at party headquarters, and put him in charge of Tory strategy in the marginal constituencies.

But their relations nose dived in March this year, when the peer finally disclosed that he was a non-dom ...

This month, he formally gave up his non-dom status, after a law passed by the Labour government came into effect which confronted non-dom peers with the choice of resigning their seats or being taxed as UK citizens ...

He has also delayed publication of "Smell the Coffee Two", which he is co-writing with Kevin Culwick, a former party official.

The book is expected to be critical of David Cameron's handling of the election campaign and his decision to go into a coalition with the Liberal Democrats.

Interviewed on the night of the general election, Lord Ashcroft appeared to blame the failure to secure an outright win on Mr Cameron's decision to agree to participate in live television debates with Nick Clegg and Gordon Brown.

One upshot of the coalition is that he finds himself on the same side as Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal democrat peer who pursued him relentlessly over his tax status ...

Independent  15 July 2010

Watchdog probes Tory donor's firm

Lord Ashcroft: controversial Tory donor

Is Lord Ashcroft ashamed to say he lives here?

Ashcroft: new questions

Cameron pressed to reveal truth on Tory millionaire's tax

Ashcroft inquiry called off

Lib Dem peer attacks Lord Offshore Ashcroft

The darker side of Dave

The City chooses another one of its own

... what message does it send out for the [Takeover] Panel to appoint yet another director general from the small – but very well-connected – pool of bankers who have made their living from these mergers and acquisitions for decades? With the greatest of respect to Mr Gillespie, he looks to be a fully paid-up member of the City's old boy network. And signing him up for a two-and-a-half-year stint, rather than the usual two-year term, isn't going to fool anyone into thinking this is a break with the past ...

Independent  10 July 2010    

Multinationals to advise on British taxes

Senior executives from a dozen multinationals are set to advise on the competitiveness of the business tax system, the Treasury will announce on Friday as it underlines its belief that lighter taxes will encourage the private sector to spearhead the recovery.

Lowering the rate of “inefficient and growth-damaging” corporation tax will encourage investment to support the recovery according to David Gauke, exchequer secretary to the Treasury ...

FT  02 July 2010        

Why the former BP boss's new government job is beyond parody

Lord Browne was one of Britain's most-admired business leaders in his heyday, with a gift for getting on well with politicians.

He was nicknamed the "Sun King", and was so close to the former prime minister, Tony Blair, that it was suggested that an appropriate name for the company he headed would be "Blair's Petroleum".

But critics have suggested that his determination to bear down on costs at BP ... contributed to the company's patchy safety record ...

Lord Browne, who was ennobled by Tony Blair in 2001, resigned in January 2007 after it was established that he had lied in court about his relationship with a 27-year-old Canadian ...

Michael Meacher, the former Environment Minister, attacked the appointment, saying it was evidence of an "outdated" prejudice that the private sector is always better run than public services. "Lord Browne bears ultimate responsibility for the Texas oil refinery fire and you could argue that the culture of cost cutting that he introduced in BP is responsible for the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico," he said ...

Lord Browne, who is already running a Government task force looking at university funding, will carry out his latest role part-time and unpaid – unlike Ian Watmore, former chief executive of the Football Association, who is employed full-time running the government's Efficiency and Reform unit ...

Independent  02 July 2010

Peace campaigner, 85, classified by police as 'domestic extremist'

John Catt and his daughter were placed under surveillance at more than 80 lawful protests ...

When the Guardian first revealed details about a police monitoring system that keeps tabs on political activists last year, police gave assurances they were not interested in everyday campaigners.

They said surveillance was needed to monitor "domestic extremists" – a term that has no legal basis but is defined by police as activists who are determined to break the law to further their political aims.

Anton Setchell, who is national co-ordinator for domestic extremism for the Association of Chief Police Officers and is responsible for the NPOIU database, said most campaigners would never be considered domestic extremists.

However, information about the Catts has been transferred to the Police National Computer in Hendon and in July 2005, they were stopped by police under the Terrorism Act after driving into the east London to help a family member move house.

They later discovered police had placed a marker against their car registration on the database, triggering an alert – "of interest to public order unit, Sussex police" – each time they drove beneath an automatic number plate reading camera.

The Catts said they were particularly shocked to discover that they had been tracked for two days in Manchester in 2008, during the Labour party conference ...

Guardian  25 June 2010    Police State Britain

Criticism of EDO Corporation

EDO Injunction Case

smashEDO

'Request for information'

Former QinetiQ boss gets £1.1m golden goodbye

Graham Love, the former chief executive of QinetiQ, has received £1.1m in golden goodbye, performance payouts and consultancy fees despite being blamed by his successor for a financial crisis at the embattled defence technology group and presiding over an "insufficiently commercial" culture.

The cash and shares payouts came on top of salary and benefits of £430,000 Love earned in the seven months before his resignation last October, according to QinetiQ's annual report out today.

His pay has proved a constant source of controversy ever since the group's stock market flotation four years ago. He was awarded shares worth £21m when it joined the market, cashing in £6m a year later to fund a divorce. He is thought to retain about 5m shares, worth almost £6m.

Love's successor Leo Quinn, who received a golden hello of £600,000, last month suspended the dividend for 12 months, warning investors to expect two years of falling revenue and the 13,000 staff to prepare for job cuts of 10% ...

Guardian  25 June 2010    Corporate Sociopathy Log    Wealth Log

Treasury raises £257m in Qinetiq share sale

'Excessive' rewards for Qinetiq chiefs

MPs cry foul on MoD PFI

Qinetiq consortium wins bulk of £16bn MoD contract

Greed of the highest order

Inquiry launched into QinetiQ profiting

Qinetiq's £1bn flotation 'will sell taxpayer short'

Anger as £1.3bn float of Qinetiq gets away

Geeks With Guns

Report condemns swine flu experts' ties to big pharma

WHO in grip of Big Pharma

An investigation by the British Medical Journal and the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, the not-for-profit reporting unit, shows that WHO guidance issued in 2004 was authored by three scientists who had previously received payment for other work from Roche, which makes Tamiflu, and GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), manufacturer of Relenza ...

The UK, which warned that 65,000 could die as a result of the virus, spent an estimated £1bn stockpiling drugs and vaccines; officials are now attempting to unpick expensive drug contracts.

The cabinet office has launched an inquiry into the cost to the taxpayer of the panic-buying of drugs.

Today, the Council of Europe, produces a damning report into how a lack of openness around "decision making" has bedevilled planning for pandemics.

"The tentacles of drug company influence are in all levels in the decision-making process," said Paul Flynn, the Labour MP who sits on the council's health committee. "It must be right that the WHO is transparent because there has been distortion of priorities of public health services all over Europe, waste of huge sums of public money and provocation of unjustified fear."

Although the experts consulted made no secret of industry ties in other settings, declaring them in research papers and at universities, the WHO itself did not publicly disclose any of these in its seminal 2004 guidance.

In its note, the WHO advised: "Countries that are considering the use of antivirals as part of their pandemic response will need to stockpile in advance." ...

Guardian  04 June 2010    Broken Forms of Government    Corporate Sociopathy

EDF ran secret lobbying campaign to reduce nuclear waste disposal levy

The nuclear industry is being offered what campaigners claim is a taxpayer subsidy on the disposal costs of waste from new reactors following a secret lobbying campaign, the Guardian has learned.

The revelation will put further scrutiny on the new government's promise that there will be no subsidy for nuclear power. Liberal Democrat Chris Huhne, the new energy and climate change secretary of state, admitted to the Guardian this week that the government already faces a £4bn funding black hole over existing radioactive waste ...

Documents released under a freedom of information request reveal the extent of behind-the-scenes lobbying last year in Whitehall by EDF Energy ...

A spokesman from Greenpeace said: "These documents blow EDF's claim that they won't need any subsidies for new nuclear clean out of the water. They know full well that the economics of nuclear don't stack up and that new reactors will only ever happen if the British taxpayer is forced yet again to carry the atomic can." ...

An energy department spokesman said: "The allegation that outcomes of the consultation have been pre-agreed with industry have no foundation. The coalition has committed that there will be no public subsidy for new nuclear."

Guardian  02 June 2010    Nuclear Power

Banking split essential to avoid new financial crisis, warns OECD adviser

'We need to separate capital market banking from standard commercial banking. That's the most basic lesson of the crisis,' says Adrian Blundell-Wignall ...

Blundell-Wignall, speaking in a personal capacity at the OECD's annual forum in Paris, said one of the big obstacles to better global governance was "institutional capture" of policymakers by the leading global financial institutions ...

Blundell-Wignall, the OECD's deputy director for financial and enterprise affairs and a former investment banker, was critical of the reform proposals currently being discussed.

"How big a crisis is big enough? It seems as if this crisis was not big enough ... If we can't even do that, I'm very pessimistic about the future of capitalism. I'm afraid that governance will only be sorted out by another big crisis and it will probably be bigger than this one."

He added later that reforms of banking should also include common limits on leverage for all countries, so banks would be unable to circumvent attempts to clamp down on excessive risk-taking ...

Guardian  27 May 2010    FRB

Investment banks likely to face competition review

Lazard man in Kraft spotlight is right to exit

Revolving-door culture leaves government full of clever bankers

Should Goldman Sachs be sacked as a UK Government adviser in light of the charges brought against the Wall Street giant by the US Securities and Exchange Commission? Most people will probably wonder why a vested interest like Goldman was ever employed in such a capacity in the first place.

What those people don't grasp is the symbiosis between high finance and government ...

In 2008, Gordon Brown invited Win Bischoff, a former chairman of Citigroup and now chairman of Lloyds, to co-chair a Government commission on the future of UK financial services.

It came to the conclusion last May that "the international financial services sector has been a major contributor to the wider UK economy, and we envisage this remaining the case in the future".

How they must have loved that "business as usual" approach in the Square Mile.

For more than a decade ... it was said that what was good for the City of London was axiomatically good for the UK.

And even after all we have been through – the multi-billion pound bailout for the banks, the deep recession, the bonus rows – there are still many people who believe that to be true.

Some of them are in government. All their instincts scream: don't rely on the civil servants when it comes to questions of strategic economic policy, call in those clever bankers ...

Independent  20 Apr 2010    Fractional Reserve Banking

Goldman Sachs

Alistair Darling rejects calls to bar Goldman Sachs from advising the Government

MPs call for clampdown on alcohol misuse

MPs have called for a fundamental overhaul of government policy to curb excessive drinking.

A minimum price of 50p per unit of alcohol, to curb excessive drinking in England, could save over 3,000 lives a year, the Health Select Committee said.

Its scathing report accused ministers of paying more attention to the drinks industry's views than health experts.

It is estimated alcohol abuse in England and Wales kills 40,000 people and costs the economy £55bn every year.

The report also called for a rise in duty on spirits and white cider, mandatory health warnings on labels, and stricter regulation of alcohol advertising and promotion ...

BBC NEWS  08 Jan 2010    ACN

• Hoon and Hewitt call for secret vote on PM's leadership
• Key cabinet figures throw support behind Labour leader
• After long silence Miliband offers lukewarm endorsement ...

Papos
7 Jan 2010, 1:21AM

Neither Hoon nor Hewitt will face the electorate in the next General Election.

Hewitt, who, when she was Health Secretary lobbied for and won a smoking ban in all public places after Labour's election manifesto promised only to ban smoking in places where food was served, has been forced to stand down after the expenses scandal.

She claimed over £900 in legal fees after moving out of her flat in her Leicester West constituency and after claiming for staying in Hotels bought another flat in Leicester.

She claims to want to spend more time with her family. But her 'Special Consultancy' to Alliance Boots, the worlds biggest chemist will help take up some of her time, no doubt, as well as her 'Special Advisory' roll to Cinven who bought all of Bupa's UK Hospitals. And her new role as non executive director to the BT Group board will also help towards keeping the wolves from the door.

Hoon, on the other hand did nothing wrong when he rented out his London Home (which he claimed was his main residence) and claimed expenses on his constituency house whilst living rent free in Admiralty House in London. He was also accused of being a flipper by the Torygraph. I've heard it put more strongly than that, though.

I'm sure that in the state of confusion of the whereabouts of his real home he honestly believed that the two trailers sold by Marconi to Iraq for filling hydrogen weather balloons were mobile weapons laboratories despite his own weapons inspectors reporting that they were nothing of the sort. An easy mistake, I suppose for someone who said he believed after the invasion of Iraq in 2003, that the mother of an Iraqi child killed by a left over cluster bomb might 'one day thank him'.

I find it difficult to understand how they believed anyone in the Parliamentary Labour Party would take them seriously, although I can see why journalists did.

They have a living to make.

Guardian 07 Jan 2010

Geoff Hoon savages Gordon Brown over Afghanistan war

Patricia Hewitt joins BT

Lucrative job with Boots

The existence of a previously secret injunction against the media by oil traders Trafigura can now be revealed.

Within the past hour Trafigura's legal firm, Carter-Ruck, has withdrawn its opposition to the Guardian reporting proceedings in parliament that revealed its existence.

Labour MP Paul Farrelly put down a question yesterday to the justice secretary, Jack Straw. It asked about the injunction obtained by "Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton Report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura".

The Guardian was due to appear at the High Court at 2pm to challenge Carter-Ruck's behaviour, but the firm has dropped its claim that to report parliament would be in contempt of court.

Here is the full text of Farrelly's question:

"To ask the Secretary of State for Justice what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of legislation to protect (a) whistleblowers and (b) press freedom following the injunctions obtained in the High Court by (i) Barclays and Freshfields solicitors on 19 March 2009 on the publication of internal Barclays reports documenting alleged tax avoidance schemes and (ii) Trafigura and Carter-Ruck solicitors on 11 September 2009 on the publication of the Minton report on the alleged dumping of toxic waste in the Ivory Coast, commissioned by Trafigura." ...

The ban on reporting parliamentary proceedings on legal grounds appeared to call into question privileges guaranteeing free speech established under the 1688 Bill of Rights ... Alan Rusbridger, the Guardian editor, welcomed the move. He said:

"I'm very pleased that common sense has prevailed and that Carter-Ruck's clients are now prepared to vary this draconian injunction to allow reporting of parliament. It is time that judges stopped granting 'super-injunctions' which are so absolute and wide-ranging that nothing about them can be reported at all." ...

Guardian  13 October 2009

Guardian claims victory on 'gag'

Carter-Ruck

The Sunday Telegraph has learnt that a top official from the Cabinet Office will be accused of misleading the police about the seriousness of the security implications resulting from the Westminster leaks that led to Mr Green’s arrest.

The disclosures will embarrass Labour — and be seized on by Opposition politicians — because the role of the Cabinet Office is to co-ordinate policy and strategy across government departments.

Scotland Yard will also be heavily criticised in the report by Ian Johnston, the chief constable of the British Transport Police, for its alleged heavy-handed and ill-timed arrest of Mr Green.

He will suggest that the nature of the raids late last year were disproportionate to the allegations of Westminster leaks ...

Sir David Normington, the Home Office Permanent Secretary who first raised concerns that leaks of sensitive material could damage national security, is believed to have asked for passages to be redacted ...

Telegraph  10 October 2009

Senior officers 'scared' to abandon inquiry

The Cabinet Minister behind a £12.5billion nuclear power deal with French-owned energy giant EDF is set to take a highly-paid job with the firm.

John Hutton’s proposed move comes just a year after the former Business Secretary gave the go-ahead for the firm to buy many of Britain’s existing and future nuclear power plants.

It is bound to raise new questions about the so-called ‘revolving door’ which allows Ministers to quit and take up lucrative jobs with firms they helped while in Government.

The energy deal saw EDF – which is controlled by the French government – take over British Energy and its eight UK nuclear power stations ... the world’s largest energy firm, wants Mr Hutton, who resigned from the Cabinet in June, to take on a role advising the firm on ‘key strategic issues’ ...

Mail on Sunday  13 September 2009

Defence Secretary John Hutton resigns

Defence Secretary John Hutton has announced that he is resigning from the Government today, Friday 5 June 2009.

Mr Hutton has issued the following statement:

"I have decided to resign from the Government. I will also be standing down as a Member of Parliament at the next general election.

"This is not the place to go into my reasons for leaving. But I can say that it has been one of the hardest decisions I have ever had to take.

"I was delighted to be appointed Secretary of State for Defence last October.

"I have always had the deepest admiration for our Armed Forces, and everything they do ... "

MoD 05 June 2009

New nuclear plants get go-ahead

Local authorities have spent £170 million on consultants in a government scheme to refurbish and rebuild schools in England, the Conservatives say.

They say the £50 billion Building Schools for the Future programme has delivered "hardly any improvements" ... Shadow Children's Secretary Michael Gove questioned whether it was value for money.

He said that since Building Schools for the Future (BSF) began in 2004 a new school had opened in just 15 local authorities ...

BBC NEWS 06 September 2009

A business group set up by Jack Straw played a central role in lobbying for the urgent release of the Lockerbie bomber to prevent damage to British trade links.

The Libyan British Business Council (LBBC), which boasts of 'strong working ties' with the Foreign Office, told Scottish ministers that the death of Megrahi in jail would cause 'grave concern' to its members' interests.

Its chairman, Tory peer Lord Trefgarne, wrote to Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill in July warning that failure to release Megrahi would cast a 'shadow' over business relations with Libya - harming the interests of firms such as BP, which has struck a £15billion oil exploration deal with Tripoli.

He wrote: 'The Libyan authorities have made it clear that should he die in prison in Scotland there will be serious implications for UK-Libyan relations.

'The prospect is of grave concern to LBBC members.'

The letter, contained in documents released by the Scottish Executive this week ...

Daily Mail  03 September 2009

Libyan British Business Council

The Department of Health has spent almost £500 million on management consultants, including deals with firms which have hired senior Labour figures and high ranking civil servants, an investigation has revealed.

The disclosure of more than 100 contracts worth a total of £470 million last night engulfed the Government in accusations of "cronyism".

Among those recruited by the favoured firms are a former health minister, an ex-adviser to the health secretary and a senior Whitehall official responsible for encouraging private sector involvement in the NHS.

Doctors' and nurses' leaders expressed concern over the use of resources which could have paid for more than 60,000 hip operations, or the annual salary of 22,000 nurses.

Critics also said the revelations indicated that the "revolving door" between the Government and its favourite consultant firms was spinning ever more quickly, with former senior politicians, officials and advisers linked to companies profiting directly from the policies they had introduced.

Lord Warner, a Labour peer, who was a health minister until December 2006, now acts as an adviser to PA Consulting group, which received £4.9 million from the Department of Health (DoH) in 2007/8.

Until last December he also advised Deloitte, which received almost £3 million in the same year.

Since resigning as a minister in 2006, the peer has also registered interests working for six other health care, technology and IT firms.

Matthew Swindells, policy adviser to then health secretary Patricia Hewitt between 2005 and 2007, who was earning £195,000 at the DoH, is now group managing director for health at Tribal, which earned more than £2 million from the department in 2007/8 ...

Other figures to have crossed from Government to private sector firms which won the management consultancy contracts include Sir Michael Barber, who was Tony Blair's chief adviser on delivery – focusing on education and health – from 2001 to 2005.

Since September 2005 Sir Michael has been a partner at McKinsey, which was paid £9 million for management consultancy services to the DoH in 2007/8 ...

A spokesman for the DoH said consultants were necessary to supplement the skills of its workforce.

Telegraph  22 August 2009

DoH is told 137,000 NHS posts must go

Steve Bell Cartoon

'Creating an NHS Fit for the Future'

Chelsea Clinton Advises NHS on Hospital Closures

Cutting through the Darzi waffle

The best explanation for the FSA's limp response is the one trotted out time and again about the importance of financial services to the UK's broader economy. The banks and affiliated institutions – hedge funds and private equity – have long been disproportionate drivers of the nation's wealth. Ministers are terrified to rein them in. The language – even now, after the crash – is fawning. Read just a flavour of the report published in May by a group jointly chaired by Alistair Darling, the chancellor, and Sir Win Bischoff, the incoming chairman of Lloyds, to appreciate how so little has changed. The UK's financial services are a "centre of excellence working in partnership with the world", it gushes ...

What is needed is a candid conversation about wealth, its levels and its social and behavioural repercussions – but this is a debate that all main political parties are too frightened to have. At what point does one become excessively rich? The top rate of tax kicks in at £37,000 – already separating the 10% of haves from the 90% of have-nots. Perhaps it is £100,000, the figure the Liberal Democrats originally decreed to require a new top rate of tax (before they fought shy of the idea). Or is it £150,000, the point at which a 50% band finally begins to operate from next April?

Britain – the Britain of New Labour – has become the world leader in indulging the super-rich and the very rich. Forget for one moment issues of natural justice and social harmony: has this culture of greed produced better performance? Excessive wealth has not produced an incentive to improve the nation's lot.

1caro
12 Aug 09, 7:16pm
I'll be candid.

Ministers will not "draw the bigger conclusions" because they, MPs, their Spinmeisters & policy wonks are either in their pay in some way or shape, or they have promises of future careers with them. Not gonna kill the golden goose, are they?

Guardian 13 August 2009

Darling vow on City bonus rules

Watchdog 'caves in' on bank bonuses

Britain's main financial watchdog was accused last night of capitulating to pressure from big banks after it watered down plans to curb City pay ...

Under its original plan, the FSA wanted to compel banks to spread two thirds of an employee's bonus over three years. This would have helped reduce reckless risk taking and ensured that bankers were not rewarded for deals that later went sour.

But following a lobbying campaign by City firms, the proposals were downgraded yesterday to mere 'guidance' for senior traders and deal-makers.

Many leading banks had complained that the overly ' prescriptive' proposals risked causing an exodus of talent, the watchdog said.

'Several banks noted that if (the original proposals) were implemented in the UK alone, they would have adverse implications for the UK as a financial centre,' the FSA said ...

Vince Cable, Lib Dem Treasury spokesman, said: 'These watered-down plans send out entirely the wrong message to an industry which is already forgetting that just a matter of months ago it had to come with its begging bowl to the taxpayer.

'The regulator had a real opportunity to assert its authority but at the first sign of dissent from the banks it has capitulated. The banks seem to think it's business as usual and today it looks as though the FSA thinks this too.' ...

The FSA also ignored calls to outlaw bonuses at loss-making banks - an issue thrown into sharp relief by the hundreds of millions in bonuses paid to Royal Bank of Scotland staff despite the lender plunging into a record £24billion loss.

'A fully flexible bonus policy should not prevent a firm from paying a bonus despite making a loss, provided the bonus is justified,' said the FSA ...

Daily Mail  13 August 2009

FSA bonus rules scaled back on fear of City exodus

Banks given new rules on bonuses

Cashing in on the MoD gravy train

Alan Johnson, the home secretary, has said Britain's security could be put at risk by a police investigation into allegations that MI5 agents colluded in torture.

Johnson said he had "nothing but admiration" for the work of the security service and believed it operated "to the highest ethical and professional standards". He suggested that Britain's interests would be at risk if the service's counter-terrorism capabilities were "diminished and diluted".

Scotland Yard said last week it was launching an investigation, at the request of Lady Scotland, the attorney general, into claims of torture made by former Guantánamo Bay detainee Binyam Mohamed ...

Johnson, who took on responsibility for MI5 when he became home secretary last month, told the Daily Telegraph: "I haven't sat around the last six weeks not looking into these things. I have looked very closely at them and I just say this: we have one of the best counter-terrorism capabilities in the world and we diminish and dilute it at our peril."

He added: "In my six weeks in this job I am so reassured and so amazed at the work that is going on, on our behalf, by people who do not have a voice, who are not able to express their views, who work in the most difficult and dangerous circumstances.

"I have nothing but admiration for them. As I am in effect their voice I will defend them and defend what they do, and it does worry me." ...

Guardian 18 July 2009

A compulsory identity card trial for pilots and 30,000 other airport workers due to start in September has been abandoned by the new home secretary, Alan Johnson. But he intends to accelerate other elements of the scheme, including plans to issue £30 voluntary ID cards to young adults across north-west England. Johnson is also looking at making ID cards free for over-75s.

Longer-term plans to make ID cards compulsory for critical workers at railway stations have also been dropped.

British citizens would not be forced to carry ID cards, the home secretary insisted. Johnson said: "Holding an identity card should be a personal choice for British citizens – just as it is now to obtain a passport.

"Accordingly, I want the introduction of identity cards for all British citizens to be voluntary and I have therefore decided that identity cards issued to airside workers, planned initially at Manchester and London City airports later this year, should also be voluntary." Asked if the cards would ever be made compulsory he said "No", adding: "If a future government wanted to make them compulsory it would require primary legislation."

Guardian 30 June 2009

'If you apply for a passport you automatically go on the ID database'

Johnson has his card marked by Brown

Passport details to be kept on ID register despite card U-turn

Explainer: Identity cards

Britain's private prisons are performing worse than those run by the state, according to data obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

The findings, based on the overall performances of 132 prisons in England and Wales, appear to undermine claims by ministers that the greater use of private jails is raising standards for the accommodation of more than 83,000 prisoners held across both sectors.

Separate figures, also released under the right-to-know law, show that nearly twice as many prisoner complaints are upheld in private prisons as they are in state-run institutions ...

Juliet Lyon, the director of the Prison Reform Trust, said: "There are some good private prisons but there are also some very poorly performing ones. The evidence doesn't suggest that it [use of private prisons] has driven up standards by providing good models. If you look across the prison estate at the public sector there is a high degree of resentment and rivalry between the two sectors and, until recently, little sharing of good practice and information, which is really disappointing."

She added: "It's been an interesting experiment. The end result is that 11 per cent of our prison population are now held in private hands. But one of the issues it has introduced is a kind of market drive to increase the prison population, to grow that business and that's something that really does concern us." ...

A Prison Service spokesperson said: " ... The introduction of privately managed prisons has helped to generate significant overall improvements in value for money and performance, including in the public sector, which has been energised by the more competitive environment."

The Independent 29 June 2009

There's still a dearth of information about ministerial responsibilities within the new mega-Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (Bis). Today it was announced that Lord Drayson, science minister at Bis, will have a joint ministerial post straddling Bis and the Ministry of Defence, prompting some comment on the motives for linking science and defence in this way.

The full list of ministers reveals there will be no fewer than 10 in Bis.

David Lammy will remain responsible for universities and copyright, and Kevin Brennan has a job – in conjuction with the Department for Children, Schools and Families – looking after diplomas. Here's the full list.

Department for Business, Innovation and Skills
•Minister of State - The Rt Hon Pat McFadden MP**
•Minister of State - The Rt Hon Lord Drayson* & ** (jointly with the Ministry of Defence)
•Minister of State - The Rt Hon David Lammy MP
•Minister of State - The Rt Hon Rosie Winterton MP*** (jointly with the Department for Communities and Local Government)
•Minister of State - Lord Davies of Abersoch CBE* (jointly with the Foreign and Commonwealth Office)
•Minister of State - Kevin Brennan MP (jointly with the Department for Children, Schools and Families)
•Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Lord Carter of Barnes (jointly with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport)
•Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Ian Lucas MP
•Parliamentary Under Secretary of State - Baroness Vadera (jointly with Cabinet Office)
•Parliamentary Under Secretary of State* - Lord Young of Norwood Green (and Lord in Waiting - paid)
Number10.gov.uk

There is also widespread debate about what it means to have no department with "education" in its title, let alone "universities".

There are two schools of thought among vice-chancellors: first, that universities are being sidelined in a department dedicated to commerce; second, that they now have access to Mandelson, the most powerful secretary of state in Westminster – which could be a positive thing.

A lot depends on whether Mandelson wins them over ...

Guardian 09 June 2009

England's department for higher and further education has been scrapped, just two years after its creation.

The prime minister has created a new Department for Business, Innovation and Skills under Lord Mandelson.

Universities do not figure in the name of the new department, whose remit is "to build Britain's capabilities to compete in the global economy".

Number 10 said it would invest in a higher education system committed to widening participation.

The role would include "maintaining world class universities, expanding access to higher education, investing in the UK's science base and shaping skills policy and innovation".

"It also puts the UK's further education system and universities closer to the heart of government thinking about building now for the upturn," the statement said.

The new department will be headed by Lord Mandelson ...

In response to the latest shake-up, the further education organisation, the Association of Colleges, said that "in the middle of a recession and with less than a year to run to an election it's unhelpful to introduce this degree of change in terms of ministerial responsibility" ...

The Million+ group, representing new universities, said that the department would have to address "immediate challenges".

"In particular the tens of thousands of potential students who will be turned away because there are no places for them at university this year."

This refers to a problem facing the new department this summer if, as has been forecast by universities, there is a shortfall of places following a surge in applications.

The UCU lecturers union expressed its disappointment at the scrapping of Dius.

General secretary Sally Hunt said she was "very concerned" that the "merger seems to signal that further and higher education are no longer considered important enough to have a department of their own".

"The fact they have been lumped in with business appears to be a clear signal of how the government views colleges and universities and their main roles in this country." ...

BBC NEWS 05 June 2009

Mandelson takes charge of universities

Sally Hunt, general secretary of the University and College Union, said: "UCU is very concerned that this merger seems to signal that further and higher education are no longer considered important enough to have a department of their own. The fact they have been lumped in with business appears to be a clear signal of how the government views colleges and universities and their main roles in this country.

"Education has the power to change people's lives, and if we are serious about the important role it can play in helping us out of recession, then we need experts in education at the helm, not business interests. We will be seeking an urgent meeting with, and assurances from, the minister that both further and higher education have clear and defined roles in the new department."

Guardian 05 June 2009

Universities 'side-lined'

One of Lord Mandelson's first responsibilities will be leading the Government's review of tuition fees later this year. Ministers are already under pressure to lift the existing £3,100-a-year fee cap, despite claims from students that it will leave graduates heavily in debt.

Telegraph 06 June 2009

Brown scraps DIUS

As the political consensus collapses, now all dissenters face suppression

... A few weeks ago, like everyone in mid-Wales, I received a local policing summary from the Dyfed-Powys force.

It contained a section headed Terrorism and Domestic Extremism.

"Work undertaken is not solely focused on the threat from international terrorists. Attention has also been paid to the potential threat that domestic extremists and campaigners can pose."

I lodged a freedom of information request to try to discover what this meant. What threat do campaigners pose? ...

Paul Mobbs of the Free Range Network has found what appears to be an explanation.

Under the heading "Protect[ing] the country from both terrorism and domestic extremism", the Dyfed-Powys Police website repeats the line about domestic extremists and campaigners ...

Mobbs has also found a bulletin circulated among Welsh forces at the end of last year, identifying the "new challenges and changes" the police now face.

Eco-terrorism is a charge repeatedly levelled against the environment movement, mostly by fossil fuel lobbyists. But, as far as I can discover, there has not been a single recorded instance of a planned attempt to harm people in the cause of environmental protection in the UK over the past 30 years or more.

So what do the police mean by eco-terrorism? It appears to refer to any environmental action more radical than writing letters to your MP.

The Association of Chief Police Officers (Acpo) now runs three units whose purpose is to tackle another phenomenon it has never defined: domestic extremism.

These are the National Extremism Tactical Coordination Unit (Netcu), the Welsh Extremism and Counter-Terrorism Unit and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit.

Because Acpo is not a public body but a private limited company, the three bodies are exempt from freedom of information laws and other kinds of public accountability, even though they are funded by the Home Office and deploy police officers from regional forces.

So it's hard to work out exactly what they do ...

Guardian 19 May 2009

Britain's Secretive Police Force

A-Z of legislation

Why is the Medical Research Council run by an arms manufacturer? Why is the Natural Environment Research Council run by the head of a construction company? Why is the chairman of a real estate firm in charge of higher education funding for England?

Because our universities are being turned by the government into corporate research departments. No longer may they pursue knowledge for its own sake: now the highest ambition to which they must aspire is finding better ways to make money.

At the end of last month, unremarked by the media, a quiet intellectual revolution took place. The research councils, which provide 90% of the funding for academic research in Britain, introduced a new requirement for people seeking grants: now they must describe the economic impact of the work they want to conduct. The councils define impact as the “demonstrable contribution” that research can make to society and the economy. But how do you demonstrate the impact of blue skies research before it has been conducted?

The idea, the government says, is to transfer knowledge from the universities to industry, boosting the UK’s economy and helping to lift us out of recession. There’s nothing wrong, in principle, with commercialising scientific discoveries. But imposing this condition on the pursuit of all knowledge does not enrich us; it impoverishes us, reducing the wonders of the universe to figures in an accountant’s ledger ...

The government insists that nothing fundamental has changed; that the Haldane Principle, which states that the government should not interfere in research decisions, still holds. Only the research councils, ministers say, should decide what gets funded ...

All the chairmen of the five research councils funding science, and the chairs of the three higher education funding councils (which provide core funding for universities) are or were senior corporate executives.

These men are overseen by the minister for science and innovation, Lord Drayson. Before he became a minister, Paul Drayson was the chief executive of a pharmaceutical company called PowderJect. He was involved in a controversy that to many feel symbolises the absence of effective barriers between government and commerce ...

Monbiot.com 12 May 2009

£43m windfall for PowderJect chief

Knowledge is power: that's why we're a secret society

PowderJect gets clean bill of health

Do you believe in the infallibility of governments, police forces and databases? If so, your letter welcoming the latest Home Office "consultation" on the national DNA database will no doubt be gratefully received. But if you are of a more cautious disposition, a closer examination of yesterday's proposals might be advisable.

No one disputes the considerable benefits of well-managed DNA evidence in the justice system. It is capable of clearing the innocent and contributing to the conviction of the guilty. Nor is there any objection to those arrested on suspicion of a crime having their DNA taken and applied to evidence gleaned from past or present crime scenes: this is a common, and completely uncontroversial, scenario. There is not even any argument about the wisdom of retaining a suspect's DNA until the conclusion of the investigation, and of any subsequent trial.

The crucial question – and the one on which the Government was defeated in the European Court of Human Rights last year – relates to the retention of intimate material, or the unique personal information extracted from it, in case you should offend in future.

Predictably, the Government's instinct has been in favour of a universal database. Undeterred by the spectre of every small child or senior citizen being marched to the census point for saliva swabbing, Tony Blair openly mooted this terrifying and impractical idea in 2006. But, just as predictably, the Government lacked the courage of its convictions, and instead moved towards universal retention by stealth ...

Telegraph 07 May 2009

Perhaps because of the media interest in the Convention on Modern Liberty, both The Guardian and the Press Association via the The Independent newspapers, have quoted from a discussion paper published over 2 weeks ago by the NuLabour "think tank" lobbyists at the Institute for Public Policy Research, through which several Labour party surveillance nanny police state policies have been "market tested", to see if they can be slipped through past the public and Parliament, without too much vocal opposition.

IPPR seem to have funded and have now published, "A discussion paper for the ippr Commission on National Security for the 21st Century" by Sir David Omand, an eminent retired Whitehall security and intelligence insider, on whose watch under Tony Blair and Gordon Brown, many of the most repressive Labour laws and policies were trotted out ...

A significant challenge supporting the National Security Strategy will be how the intelligence community can access the full range of data relating to individuals, their movements, activities and associations in a timely, accurate, proportionate and legal way, and one acceptable in a democratic and free society, including appropriate oversight and means of independent investigation and redress in cases of alleged abuse of power.

A significant challenge supporting the National Security Strategy will be how the intelligence community can access the full range of data relating to individuals, their movements, activities and associations in a timely, accurate, proportionate and legal way, and one acceptable in a democratic and free society, including appropriate oversight and means of independent investigation and redress in cases of alleged abuse of power.

Spy Blog 25 February 2009

It is time to resist

On the day that it becomes illegal to take pictures of police engaged in counter-terrorist operations – in practice a ban on taking pictures of the police – it is worth noting events in Brighton recently where police set up outside a cafe and photographed people attending a meeting about the environment.

According to the Brighton Argus, members of the Cowley Club, which was hosting a meeting of Earth First, "were confronted with four uniformed officers outside the Somerfield store, opposite the venue, snapping visitors using a paparazzi-style lens". One of the club members, David Biset, said the police were behaving in a deliberately "intimidating manner". He said:

Avenues of dissent are being closed down and police feel able to treat politics as a police matter. There was no suggestion of anything going on outside the building. The police have no reason to be there beyond intimidating people. You shouldn't be put on a database simply for attending a meeting.

The local MP, David Lepper, agrees that the police operation was designed to scare activists rather than prevent crime, and has written to the divisional commander for Brighton and Hove demanding to know why officers were photographing people engaged in a political activity. The police have refused to comment other than to produce the usual assertion that this was a normal police operation ...

Guardian 16 February 2009

The secret police are watching you

Police chiefs body faces calls for review

CIA warns Barack Obama that British terrorists are the biggest threat to the US

Secret police unit set up to spy on British 'domestic extremists'

Taser Abuse in the United States

Launch of Automatic Number Plate Recognition

ACPO

Atomic energy

Richard Caborn
Former sports minister, trade minister and chairman of the trade and industry select committee
Adviser to Amec

Ian McCartney
Former trade minister and Labour party chairman
Adviser to Fluor, paid £110,000 to £115,000 a year

Lord O’Neill
Former chairman of the trade and industry select committee
Adviser to the Washington Group
Chairman of the Nuclear Industry Association

Brian Wilson
Former energy minister
Non-executive director, Amec Nuclear Holdings

FT 17 November 2007

Concern over Labour cash gifts from nuclear industry

The powerful business of promoting a nuclear future

This must rank as one of the great PR triumphs of all time

In examing Laurence W. Britt's "Fascism Anyone?" I have tried to examine his fourteen points and pose the question: does this characteristic of fascism apply in Britain today, or could it possibly do so in the future?

I have answered 'Yes', with confidence, to seven of his fourteen points: [14].

In the case of Point 6 - control of the media - I have suggested that self-control is a de facto
'Yes'. I have not responded to Point 5 - Rampant Sexism.

Fascism’s principles are wafting in the air today, surreptitiously masquerading as something else, challenging everything we stand for.

By Laurence W. Britt

The cliché that people and nations learn from history is not only overused, but also overestimated; often we fail to learn from history, or draw the wrong conclusions. Sadly, historical amnesia is the norm.

We are two-and-a-half generations removed from the horrors of Nazi Germany, although constant reminders jog the consciousness.

German and Italian fascism form the historical models that define this twisted political worldview. Although they no longer exist, this worldview and the characteristics of these models have been imitated by protofascist1 regimes at various times in the twentieth century.

Both the original German and Italian models and the later protofascist regimes show remarkably similar characteristics. Although many scholars question any direct connection among these regimes, few can dispute their visual similarities.

Beyond the visual, even a cursory study of these fascist and protofascist regimes reveals the absolutely striking convergence of their modus operandi.

This, of course, is not a revelation to the informed political observer, but it is sometimes useful in the interests of perspective to restate obvious facts and in so doing shed needed light on current circumstances.

For the purpose of this perspective, I will consider the following regimes:

Nazi Germany, Fascist Italy, Franco’s Spain, Salazar’s Portugal, Papadopoulos’s Greece, Pinochet’s Chile, and Suharto’s Indonesia.

To be sure, they constitute a mixed bag of national identities, cultures, developmental levels, and history. But they all followed the fascist or protofascist model in obtaining, expanding, and maintaining power. Further, all these regimes have been overthrown, so a more or less complete picture of their basic characteristics and abuses is possible.

Analysis of these seven regimes reveals fourteen common threads that link them in recognizable patterns of national behavior and abuse of power.

These basic characteristics are more prevalent and intense in some regimes than in others, but they all share at least some level of similarity.

Information Clearing House

Top

Laurence W. Britt's Fourteen Points

1. Powerful and continuing expressions of nationalism.

Not applicable to the mainstream, but lurks at the margins.

2. Disdain for the importance of human rights.

Official rhetoric, and the Human Rights Act should negate this point, but ...

3. Identification of enemies/scapegoats as a unifying cause.

Yes

4. The supremacy of the military/avid militarism.

Not in the accepted sense of the terms

5. Rampant sexism.

Not qualified to respond

6. A controlled mass media.

Self-controlled; effectively 'yes'.

MPs seek to censor the media [IND]

Go to MediaLens for in-depth examination.

7. Obsession with national security.

Yes

8. Religion and ruling elite tied together.

No

9. Power of corporations protected.

Yes

10. Power of labor suppressed or eliminated.

Yes

11. Disdain and suppression of intellectuals and the arts.

Yes

12. Obsession with crime and punishment.

Yes

13. Rampant cronyism and corruption.

Yes

14. Fraudulent elections.

Not yet

Information Clearing House

Top

A Faustian Bargain

Writing about the dangers of fascism and the corporate state in the USA, David G. Mills concludes:

For some years now we have lived with the Faustian bargain of the corporation.

Large corporations are necessary to achieve those governmental and social necessities that small enterprises are incapable of providing.

The checks on corporate power have always been fragile.

Left unchecked, the huge economic power of corporations corrupts absolutely.

Most of the checks are badly eroded.

Is there still time to get the checks back in balance?

Or will we be left with two unthinkable options?   [ICH]

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