News on the brilliant Rufus Wainwright – if you’ve not seen Rufus live then your life is missing something.

Rufus Wainwright is to release a new live CD/DVD package on August 17 called ‘Milwaukee at Last!!!’. The Canadian singer songwriter recorded the discs from his August 27, 2007 performance at Pabst Theater in Milwaukee, Wisconsin.

There will be 11 tracks on the CD, most of which are from he’s 2007 studio album Release the Stars:

‘Release the Stars’, ‘Going to a Town’, ‘Sanssouci’, ‘Rules and Regulations’, ‘Leaving for Paris No. 2′, ‘If Love Were All’, ‘Nobody’s Off the Hook’, ‘Not Ready for Love’, ‘Slideshow’, ‘Macushla’, ‘The Gay Messiah’

The DVD will have the 11 tracks that are on the CD plus:

‘Rules and Regulations’, ‘Tulsa’, ‘The Art Teacher’, ‘Tiergarten’, ‘Between My Legs’, ‘Do I Disappoint You?’, ‘A Foggy Day’, ‘Beautiful Child’, ‘14th Street’, ‘I Don’t Know What It Is’, ‘Pretty Things’, ‘Complainte de la Butte’, ‘Get Happy’. AlbumVote.

In the press those on the left talk of Sweden a model on how a country with a strong social state should be run. In The Guardian, Ruben Andersson, writes the Swedish model is failing.

Whatever Sweden does must be right, or so reason progressive politicians and Guardian journalists – not to mention scores of Swedes. But beyond this blue-eyed vision lurks a darker reality. Sweden’s conservative coalition government has stood still as the financial crisis has engulfed the country. Jobs, social services and healthcare are eroding. The Sweden Democrats – the equivalent of the BNP – are on the rise. The social state is failing. The Swedish dream is no more.

Swedes were roused from this dream with the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme. Palme might have left behind “a country where no one was poor and no one had room for optimism” as Andrew Brown puts it, but it was Sweden’s homemade financial meltdown of the 1990s that finally killed off the dream. Poverty was added to the pessimism. Savage cuts hit schools, unemployment rocketed, the Krona sank – leaving the social system in a disarray from which it has not recovered. The conservative government at the time has lately been praised worldwide for its handling of the crisis. Actually the bankers were rewarded, not punished, while the rest of the country is still reeling from the cuts, selloffs and dashed dreams the crisis provoked. But the idea of a well-oiled Swedish model insulated from the shockwaves of capitalism runs on like a Volvo. The reality, like troubled, Ford-owned Volvo itself, is more globalised and gloomy than that. Ruben Andersson, The Guardian.

I’m not quite prepared to be as gloomy as that however, perhaps there’s a clue for a more optimistic outlook in Andersson’s penultimate paragraph.

Just as Sweden was in the vanguard of postwar social democracy, it has since the 1990s become a neoliberal experiment. The experiment has failed, though this fails to register in Sweden itself. No waves rock the stagnant pools of officialdom: strikes are almost unheard of and the tabloids are too busy flogging diet tips to bother. The Swedes cannot let go of their belief in the system. Nor can many on the European left. Ruben Andersson, The Guardian.

Mightn’t neoliberalism be the real fault? Let’s be fair it’s pretty much shagged the rest of us why should Sweden be any different, perhaps a simplistic answer, but let’s not be too hasty – I’m not yet prepared to ditch the Swedish Model, let’s not throw the baby out with the neoliberal bathwater.

Johann Hari takes apart one of Cameron’s treasured policies, marriage and his plans to mend Britain’s broken society by handing £40-a-week to married couples. As Hari points out recent surveys suggest that children of parents who stay together for the kids actually fair worse than single-parent families – whilst all surveys should be treated with scetism as a child of such a family I can’t say I’m surprised as soon as my younger sister left school my parents divorced, which came as no surprise to us – anyway back to th point. Hari rightly points out the Tories would actually do more damage and particularly their policy of opting out of the European Social Chapter.

Cameron’s plans for married couples create a false “pro-family” sheen that prevents us from seeing how he will actually make life more stressful for parents in very tangible ways.

The one thing every mum and dad I know wants is more time to spend with their children. But Cameron is committed to pulling Britain out of the European Social Chapter as a “top priority”. Britain’s ten million part-time workers only have the right to paid holidays and other basic rights because of the Chapter. When it goes, so do the rights – and lots of stressed parents will suddenly have less time to spend with their kids. The Tories’ market fundamentalism and anti-Europeanism trumps their warm rhetorical commitments to the family every time.

For all his upbeat let-the-sunshine-win flim-flam, Cameron’s policies would simply shift more power and money towards those who already have it. The Married Couples Allowance would be a big redistribution of wealth to people who don’t need it, paid for by slashing help to the poorest people who really do – from Tax Credits to SureStart to the Educational Maintenance Allowance. And all for a dysfunctional outcome.

That’s the Britain we are sleep-walking towards, while we inanely discuss Gordon Brown’s smile and David Cameron’s bike. Isn’t it time we started to scrutinize his policies, before Cameron has the power to start imposing his right-wing regression on our country? Johann Hari.

I repeat stop sleepwalking.

The Observer again exposes the morally bankrupt scum that run Tragus; the company which owns Café Rouge, Bella Italia and Strada. Tragus pockets tips paid on cards by customers instead of passing them on to staff, which effectively allows the company to pay staff less than the minimum wage.

However tips paid in cash go directly to staff – so Tragus’ response is to employ undercover diners to make sure staff do not encourage customers to pay cash; if they do they face the sack – come to that staff seem to face the sack for a number of things including talking to journalists.

As an unnamed waitress employed by Tragus says

If you want to help Tragus pay my wages (around 14% of it), then leave a tip on your credit card. However, if you want to tip me for the service you have received, I’d be very grateful for a couple of quid in the tip tray. Jamie Elliott, The Observer.

As I’ve said before don’t eat at these places then you won’t be faced with the choice of helping Tragus pay their staff, possibly helping someone get the sack by paying cash or just being rude by not leavening a tip at all.

Banks which help their customers to avoid paying tax will be targeted by intensive surveillance from HM Revenue & Customs under a new “name and shame” regime to be announced by Alistair Darling next week. Larry Elliott and Jill Treanor, The Guardian.

I’m not quite sure how this would work, as I’m sure the banks will be all too keen to go to court to prevent themselves from being “named and shamed” as The Guardian itself found out when it tried to publish details of Barclays tax dodging schemes – still I hope the scheme works as I’d like to know which banks are ripping us off – now why stop at banks?

I don’t remember the Body Shops Ruby, Sharon Haywood does and wonders what would have happened if she’d become three-dimensional.

In 1997, the socially-conscious international cosmetics franchise created Ruby: a chubby-cheeked, chestnut-haired, computer-generated figurine. Ruby was the brainchild of The Body Shop’s self-esteem campaign, “Love Your Body.” Her size 16 image was accompanied by the caption, “There are 3 billion women who don’t look like supermodels and only 8 who do.” She sent the message that you should love what you’ve got, not loathe it.

If you’re familiar with Ruby, you know that she’s not easy to locate. So, where’s this confident and curvaceous character been hiding? You can find her at www.bestrejectedadvertising.com under the category of “Banned,” courtesy of Mattel. The U.S. toy manufacturer thwarted the innovative campaign in its early days by serving The Body Shop with a cease-and-desist order; all posters had to be removed from American shops. Why? In Anita Roddick’s own words: “Ruby was making Barbie look bad, presumably by mocking the plastic twig-like bestseller… Mattel thought that Ruby was insulting to Barbie.” Outside of Roddick’s explanation on her website, no other information regarding Mattel’s specific legal grounds can be found online. We can surmise that Ruby’s rolls and less-than-perky breasts were the offending culprits. Sharon Haywood, Anybody.

It’s a shame The Body Shop didn’t challenge Mattel’s cease-and-desist order, but who can afford to take on a corporation with deep pockets?

This Video is no Longer Available due to a Copyright Claim by London CF

You Tube have pulled this video and if Conservative Future don’t want me to see a video then I reckon I should, and I’m not wrong, you should watch this Don’t Panic video too.

Hat Tip: Liberal Conspiracy.

There’s a lot of nonsense in the Tory press over pensions, Tom P takes apart a ridiculous editorial on pensions in the Telegraph, ending his article writing.

Make no mistake. If you are a public sector worker the Tories are going to come for your pension – they have said so numerous times. The same people who broke the earnings link, gutted SERPS, and encouraged people to leave good occupational schemes to join personal pensions now want to launch an ideological assault on the pensions of people employed by the state. They haven’t changed – they are the same vindictive gits they always have been. Don’t say you weren’t warned. Tom P, Labour and Capital.

I repeat you have been warned.

Rommeldak at Post-Keynesian Observations writes it’s not we’re spending too much it’s that we don’t earn enough.

So what was the problem? Think about this: if, as a macroeconomic unit, we had the resources, technology, and productive capacity to produce all those houses, cars, TV’s, meals at nice restaurants, etc., then why did people have to go into so much debt??? Why weren’t our incomes sufficient to buy those absolutely-affordable goods and services without debt or at least with minimal debt? Therein lies the problem. We didn’t spend too much, we earned too little. Not only is there a systemic issue with respect to market economies being unable to generate a reasonable number of jobs for all those willing to work (see the discussion below), but income distributions have been becoming more and more uneven. Those who form the backbone of consumer demand, the middle class, have been losing relative income shares to the rich. This is all great fun for the rich in the short run, but it leads to what we have right now in the long run: falling sales, default, unemployment, recession, etc.

Hence, the focus of policy right now must not be on cutting back spending. Why should we? We can afford all that stuff, and buying it is what creates jobs and incomes for others. Rather, policy should create income and offer incentives for spending money. The private sector cannot do this alone because as we stand right now, all individual incentives are to restrict spending. Rommeldak, Post-Keynesian Observations.

Hat Tip: Duncan’s Economic Blog.

First thing this morning I clicked my link to the BBC website to check the weather and it seemed like a bad April’s fool joke, but nobody jokes about a death. I grew up with Jackson, being just a few years younger, he’s been a constant throughout my life, this news made me feel shocked, sad and just weird – I don’t know why: it’s strange is it because as I said we’re similar in age. Recently he’s been a controversial figure in the news and has done little musically has done little, however no one can deny his impact on music particularly the late 70s and early 80s and let’s not forget the Jackson 5. I now it’s a cliché but I’m shocked.

Source: BBC.