Monthly Archives: December 2009

Rich Still Not Paying Enough

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Darling soaks the rich and the rest of us too is the headline in The Guardian.

Soak the rich – don’t make me laugh, take National Insurance for instance

Everybody earning more than £20,000 would be affected by a half a percentage point increase in NI from April 2011.The rise will cost a worker on the average UK income of £25,000 a year an extra £4 a week. Larry Elliott and Patrick Wintour, The Guardian.

If Darling’s soaking the rich then why do earnings over around £43,000 attract a rate of just 1% and not the 11% that most of us pay? Now is surely the time to correct this anomaly

Now Poison the Air

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Javelin Park is a step closer to being the solution to the county’s landfill problem – and Shire Hall can’t rule out putting an incinerator there.

Ten bidders who put forward 13 sites to get rid of thousands of tonnes of household waste have been whittled down to four by Gloucestershire County Council – and the site it owns on the edge of Gloucester is favoured by all four. Next week the council is expected to invite them to submit detailed ideas in 2010. Their names and the technologies they would use are secret at the moment to protect commercial confidentiality – but incineration has not been ruled out.

…

This is no big surprise,” said Mr Purchase, who is a member of GlosVAIN – a partnership of 12 councils opposed to an incinerator at Javelin Park.

“It’s what the county council has wanted for the past couple of years – they have not been open with the public and kept them informed.

“The fact that Javelin Park was in the list and incineration is still in there means you don’t have to be a genius to work out what is going to happen.”

Gloucester Labour MP Parmjit Dhanda said: “I think they have already made their minds up.

“It will be a Gloucester location they will dump this on. I suspect that after the General Election is over they will probably focus on incineration but until then play their cards close to their chests.”

Councillor Jeremy Hilton (Westgate), Liberal Democrat group leader said yesterday: “We are deeply concerned the Conservatives are hell-bent on building a massive waste incinerator.

“The council should back-off on their determination to incinerate people’s waste and look instead at a carbon neutral process for dealing with our waste rather than simply burning rubbish.” This is Gloucestershire.

“All the bidders that have come forward are indicating that Javelin Park would be a preferred site for the facilities they are proposing,” said Councillor Stan Waddington (Conservative, Nailsworth and Minchinhampton), lead cabinet member for waste. This is Gloucestershire.

We’ve poisoned the ground with landfill and now we can’t find anywhere else to bury the stuff we’re going to burn our rubbish and poison the very air we breathe and no surprise the County is going to dump it on Gloucester – when are Gloucester residents going to stop electing Tories to the County Council? All they do is appease all those Tory councillors from Gloucestershire’s affluent areas – Gloucester wake up and smell the fire.

What Jobs Worth £20Million?

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In The Guardian Jill Treanor writes Barclays’ Bob Diamond defends bonuses – but then again he would in 2007 he aren’t a £20million bonus.

The Question is what did he do to earn £20 million? Risk any of his own money, put up his house as collateral – no just gamble with other peoples money and what ever happened he still earns a huge wage regardless of a bonus (although I guess for bankers £150,000 is but beer money) without your bonus – not that if you had would justify such an amount in my eyes. The trouble is capitalism has no morals – it would eat children if it was profitable – but in a way it does has infant mortality decreased not so you’d notice and there’s plenty of food to feed the world and don’t answer it’s not that simple – there’s one simple fact capitalism won’t answer such a problem because there’s no profit in it – now I’d have paid someone £20 million to solve world hunger.

Twitted Off Our Faces

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Google has moved to head off some of the threat from young rivals such as Twitter and Facebook by announcing plans to prominently display results from social networking sites in its search pages.

The new development, which the Californian technology giant dubs “real-time search”, aims to bring users more up-to-date information as they scour the web for information. Over the next few days, anybody searching online using Google will see their traditional search results augmented by a string of constantly updating messages drawn from social networks, news sites and blogs.

The move is part of a wider push to make Google’s search index even faster and more up to date, as people increasingly use services like Twitter to transmit information about events as they happen. Bobbie Johnson, The Guardian.

Personally I can’t think of anything worse than Twitter – I haven’t the attention span of a Goldfish and like a little detail not the puerile twitterings that occupy 140 character tweets – and don’t get me started on Facebook.

Christ this seems like the human race as a herd rampaging around our collected knowledge like so many china shop bulls – or maybe I’m missing the point

“There’s no doubt that it’s good to have,” said Danny Sullivan, a prominent observer of Google’s activities, writing on his SearchEngineLand website. “It’s incredibly difficult to be a leading information source and yet when there’s an earthquake, people are instead turning to Twitter for confirmation faster than traditional news sources on Google can provide.” Bobbie Johnson, The Guardian.

Personally I turn to the BBC – and what I don’t understand is, in the aftermath of an earthquake who’s going to be twittering from the afflicted area – surely it takes reporters with all the backup that news corporations supply to provide reports – I can’t see what trawling the 20 odd million messages posted each day – Christ next they’ll be trawling my text messages – that’ll make exciting reading – “will you get some milk”, “where are you” and “I’ll be late” – much like twitter.

Is there a serious search engine out there?

Why Aren’t We Angry?

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What happened to going to work doing your job and getting paid your salary nothing else, maybe some overtime but that’s it? Does anybody do their job to the best of their ability without the need of a bonus? Well most of us don’t get bonuses the culture of bonuses is only rife amongst the well-off and well-paid whilst in this current financial climate the rest of us lesser mortals are expected to work at best for frozen or lower wages – look we should be thankful we’ve still got jobs is what we’re told, which appears all too true as we’ve watched numerous family, friends and colleagues thrown out on the dole queue – all the while they’ve been busy paying themselves bonuses -. Is it me but shouldn’t a bonus be something unexpected? I guess the only thing unexpected about bonuses these days is how much they’ll get.

Isn’t it time we got angry?

Quotes of The Week That Was – November 30, 2009

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It is never a woman’s fault if she is raped: not if she’s drunk, not if she’s sober, not if she’s standing on a table wearing a thong and baby oil. The responsibility for rape lies, always and only, with the minority of men who rape. Laurie Penny, Liberal Conspiracy.

Stephen Greenhalgh, Leader of Hammersmith & Fulham Council and head of the Conservative “Councils Innovation Unit” let rip at a round table event run by Public Finance Magazine and Zurich Municipal, saying, “My mates are all in the shadow Cabinet, waiting to get those [ministerial] boxes, being terribly excited. I went to university with them, they haven’t run a piss-up in a brewery… They’re going to get a department of state, in one case running the finances of the nation”.

In a prophetic expectation of Tory doom, Greenhalgh added “If you’re going to fail, fail running Alabama, fail running Texas, fail running the city of Paris – don’t just take over the country.” Recess Monkey

Cameron is not hiding his £10bn worth of tax cuts that suck wealth upwards from poorer to richer.

Raising inheritance tax thresholds to £2m for couples costs £1.2bn, money from the Treasury to the top 2%. Non-doms will pay, Cameron says, but official figures show the tiny £25,000 contributions from the likes of Goldsmith will cover only a fraction of the cost.

Cameron’s marriage tax allowance will cost the Treasury £4.9bn. Who benefits? The richest will get 13 times more than the poorest. He dare not ditch it when the Daily Mail’s leader column is sending out blasts about the “worrying noises” they hear. “What could be more important than standing up for marriage?” they warn him.

His third pledge is to abolish the new 50p tax rate – not while public sector pay is frozen in their first year but soon, in the first term. That will put money back into the pockets of just the top 1%. Less headline grabbing – but of great value to the wealthy – Cameron promises to uncap tax relief on top pensions – a bonanza for the top 1.5% who already have splendid pensions. Taken together, never in the history of postwar taxation will so many citizens be obliged to pay so much to so few. Polly Toynbee, The Guardian.

The Best restaurant in Gloucester!

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SHOPPERS will be able to grab a pizza the action after the award-winning £300 million Gloucester Quays centre opened its first restaurant.

Pizza Express opened its doors at the docklands complex yesterday morning. This is Gloucestershire.

It says something terrible about Gloucester when the best place to eat is Pizza Express – don’t get me wrong I like Pizza Express it’s just that it’s not the peak of culinary excellence.

Resign – And Good Riddance

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The directors of Royal Bank of Scotland are threatening to resign if the government stops them paying bonuses of £1.5bn to staff in its investment arm. BBC.

Resign I’ll do your jobs badly without a bonus – in fact I’m sure I’ll make a better job of it – I’d have to go some to do worse – and I know a few others willing to do your jobs without a bonus.

Straw Promises Libel Reform

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The government is planning to introduce a “radically reduced cap” on the level of fees in successful defamation cases as part of radical reforms to Britain’s libel laws, according to Jack Straw, the justice secretary.

Signalling his desire for reforms, Straw insisted that the changes can be introduced “without the need for primary legislation”.

Straw highlighted the plans amid concern at the way huge payouts awarded to claimants are attracting “libel tourists” to Britain, and what the minister described as the “chilling effect” of existing libel laws on democracy. Hélène Mulholland, The Guardian.

Reform of our libel laws is long over due for too long they have been used by companies and rich individuals to suppress those that haven’t the money to defend themselves – UK libel law is all about how much money you have not about justice – but then again that’s the justice system the world over.

Posted in Law

Let’s Not Forget

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There’s been a lot of hysteria over the latest primary results and whilst they are disappointing let’s not forget what Labour has achieved.

72 per cent of pupils achieved a level 4 or above in both English and maths, up from 53 per cent in 1997, but a decrease of 1 percentage point compared to 2008. Department for Children Schools and Family.

This drop as Connor Ryan points out is probably as a result of a toughening of standards with the removal of the borderlining process – borderlining is where papers falling just below the standard are re-checked. However what is not in doubt is how improvement has slowed over recent years – this needs to be addressed – but don’t listen to any Tories claiming education has failed it hasn’t – undermining the achievements of hard working teachers and pupils by claiming it does no-one any favours.