It’s crazy to see – with such a tiny electoral mandate – the Tories continuing Thatcherism in its rawest form.

First the privatisation of the police was announced a few weeks, ago, now the privatisation of major parts of the road network (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/mar/19/david-cameron-sell-off-roads).

UPDATE: The London fire brigade is to outsource its 999 control centre to C(r)apita.

Lets be quite clear here. The Secrecy Jurisdiction of the City of London is keeping the upper class rich. What the tories have been doing since Thatcher appeared on the scene, is transferring ownership of everything outside the City from the people (after centuries of struggle by the people to possess what is rightfully theirs) back to the Capital classes (namely, their own people).

UPDATE: A small article from the guardian with a (very brief and not really in historical context) overview of privatisation http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/mar/29/short-history-of-privatisation

Politics

• Oppression works by turning its victims against each other instead of against their oppressors
• Class division works not because you are excluded by the others, but because (by association with the others) you will be excluded by your own
• Those in power who preach hypocracy are entirely aware of this in private.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2012/mar/03/police-blacklist-link-construction-workers

The police or security services supplied information to a blacklist funded by the country’s major construction firms that has kept thousands of people out of work over the past three decades.

The Information Commissioner‘s Office (ICO) has revealed that records that could only have come from the police or MI5 have been discovered in a vast database of files held on 3,200 victims who were deemed leftwing or troublesome.

The files were collected by the Consulting Association, a clandestine organisation funded by major names in the construction industry.

Its database was seized nearly three years ago, but the extraordinary nature of the information held has only now emerged, following an employment tribunal for one of the victims, Dave Smith, a 46-year-old engineer who had a 36-page file against his name and was victimised repeatedly for highlighting safety hazards on sites, including the presence of asbestos.

David Clancy, investigations manager at the ICO, told the central London tribunal adjudicating on Smith’s claims against construction giant Carillion that “there is information on the Consulting Association files that I believe could only be supplied by the police or the security services”.

Speaking to the Observer, Clancy added: “The information was so specific and it contained in effect operational information that wouldn’t have formed anything other than a police record.”

The scandal will be thrown open to further public exposure in the coming months as a class action by 100 victims against at least 39 companies is set to be pursued in the high court by Hugh Tomlinson QC, currently counsel for several of the phone-hacking claimants. The revelations will inevitably raise fresh questions about the probity of the police in a week in which its relationship with major news corporations, and News International in particular, has come under sharp focus. Last week the Leveson inquiry heard that the police were investigating a “network of corrupt officials” as part of their inquiries into phone hacking and police corruption.

Clancy said he was unable further to trace the specific sources of the information held in the Consulting Association files because it touched on individuals living across the country and stretched over three decades.

He added that the relationship between the Consulting Association and the police and security services appeared to have been nurtured when the organisation went under an earlier guise as the Economic League, at a time when the state was keen to liaise with major building firms to discover as much as it could about Irish construction workers amid the threat of IRA terrorism.

John McDonnell MP, who first raised the issue of blacklisting a decade ago, said he would demand a debate in parliament on what he described as collusion. “I am outraged at the systematic abuse of people’s rights. This has destroyed people’s lives, broken up families, ensured that people have not been able to earn a living. It has devastated people year after year, and nobody has listened to us. No one has been willing to believe the extent to which there has been collusion between police, security services and companies. It is all about the ability of companies to exploit workers and destroy anybody who stands up against them.”

The existence of the secret blacklist was first exposed in 2009, when ICO investigators from the Information Commissioner’s Office raided an unassuming office in Droitwich, Worcestershire.

The investigators uncovered an extensive database that was used by construction firms to vet workers they deemed to be trade unionists and troublesome – usually trade unionists. More than 40 construction firms, including Balfour Beatty and Sir Robert McAlpine, had been funding the confidential database, which recorded workers’ trade union activities and conduct at work.

The Consulting Association was closed down and a 66-year-old private investigator, Ian Kerr, was fined £5,000 for administering the database, although the construction firms escaped prosecution. At Smith’s tribunal, Carillion admitted that two of its subsidiaries covertly supplied information to the database to “penalise” Smith for being a trade unionist, even though he had “reasonably brought health and safety concerns to their attention”. However, Smith lost his claim for £175,000 in lost income because he worked through an agency and was not directly employed by Carillion.

A spokesman for the Independent Police Complaints Commission said it had not yet received a complaint from the victims or the ICO.

What is the difference between detention without charge, and kidnapping?

Discuss.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/feb/12/palestinian-hunger-striker-shackled

In a world where your soldiers have no family, and no will or understanding of revolt, the dictator is king.

An open letter:

Dear Sir/Madam,

It may have escaped your notice, as it had mine, that when the British
government throws its influence into defending “The City of London”,
they are actually defending a quasi-autonomous/autonomous offshore tax
haven which happens to be geographically situated in the heart of
London. The “City of London” has its own mayor, police force, and is
not directly accountable nor subservient to the British Parliament or Queen – having arrived at, and sustained ever since, a murky
independence with the Norman Invaders in the 11th Century.

The “City of London” is regarded as the second largest offshore tax
haven in the world (see Treasure Islands by Nicholas Shaxson), sitting
at the center of a web which extends from taxhavens/secrecy
jurisdictions such as the Cayman Islands, Bermuda, the British Virgin
Islands, Monserrat, filtering dirty money into the inner ring of “Crown
Dependency” tax havens/secrecy jurisdictions such as Jersey, before it
is funelled into the “City of London”. All these places are
“quasi-indepdendent” – being firmly under the control of the ruling
elite in the U.K. when it matters, but not in the eyes of the law -
allowing them to escape regulation and inspection.

Consider this for a moment in the context of yesterday’s quote by John
Major (an ex-British Prime Minister) :

Major said: “The proposal at the moment for a financial transaction tax
is a heat-seeking missile proposed in continental Europe aimed at the
“City of London”. If there were such a tax about 80%, 85% of the yield
would come from the City of London.

“Now it is not surprising that the British are upset, if we were
proposing [taxes] on luxuries like wine I dare say some of our
continental partners would think we were being rather unfair to them.
Well that’s the position for us. We can’t accept a financial transaction
tax. I don’t think we will have to, but the proposal adds to
Euroscepticism and yet in many ways it’s a paper tiger.”

Assuming that Mr Major’s figures are accurate, 80 to 85% of the
financial transactions within the E.U. which are currently conducted
occur within the “City of London”.
That is an enormous concentration of money, and power. The suggestion of
Merkel, based on the American idea of a Tobin tax, is to apply a tax of
0.1% to share transactions, and 0.01% to derivatives – to dampen
speculators being to easily able to herd and concentrate monetary flows
into attacks on currencies, nations and corporations.

Why is Mr Major then neatly steps into a shameful analogy to keep the
common man hating the euro, proposing to tax luxuries like wine (kick
the French).

Think about this for just one moment. Isn’t wine already taxed? Yes,
at the French 5.5% reduced VAT rate. Furthermore, when French wine is
sold in the U.K., that transaction is taxed at 20% by the U.K.
government. All transactions in Europe fall under Value Added Tax (VAT),
but financial transactions do not. Why are financial transactions not
taxed? Do they really add no Value?

Mr Major is, however, right in one sense when he refers to financial
transactions as a luxury – they certainly do not belong to majority.
These transactions are managed and profited from by a tiny elite. Their
profits are generally not taxed anywhere in the world, as tax
havens/secrecy jurisdictions allow them to operate outside national
control, in a world where there is (still) no global taxation body.

Secrecy jurisdictions and financial transactions are increasingly used
in a criminal manner, not just for gambling, but bullying and mugging
weaker players (national or corporate) for their assets and profits
through tricks like transfer pricing, leveraged buyouts, blowing asset
bubbles, and currency speculation to name but a few – so why are Prime
Minister Cameroon and Prime Minister Major leaping to the defense of the
“City of London” – when it does not pay tax to the U.K. and operates as
a quasi-autonomous, unaccountable nation inside a nation?

I am not in a position to know, but I can guess:

1) Exposure. It seems unlikely to me, were this tax phased in by
Europe, that the “City of London” would end up paying any tax
whatsoever, as (like Jersey) it is not strictly speaking a part of
Europe. The U.K. signed its agreements, but the “City of London” is
something else, more murky and ill defined. Europe is a “Rechtsstaat” – a
group of States governed explicitly by a publically accessible law. The
U.K. cannot co-exist with such a system – where the U.K. culture of law
is deliberately ambiguous, non-codified, and free to be manipulated by
those with the power to do so, as freely as they like. Furthermore,
there are very, very few people in the U.K. who understand what a Crown
Dependency is, or what the “City of London” is in relation to the rest
of the country. It is kept that way very deliberately. I do not believe
I have ever read an article in any British newspaper, or seen a program
on any British television channel which has ever discussed or analysed
this critical structure at the heart of our capital city. To have its murky underbelly exposed would do great harm to the U.K. in Europe, to its legitimacy before its own people, and also display the source of its power to the world.

2) Class. The class system is alive and kicking in the U.K. 70% of UK land is owned by 1% of the population (Source: http://EzineArticles.com/1139145). The largest private landowner is the Duke of Buccleach with 270,000 acres – his family descend from a Norman invader Hugh de Gras Veneur who seized land in Cheshire after 1066.
Where do the sons and daughters of the elite go to earn their money after their
private education? The “City of London” drives a very sensible deal. It
will make/keep the Scions of the elite wealthy, living in the standard
to which they are accustomed, with intellectually unchallenging work
(which does, however, also maintain the social fabric of the elite
through its constant network of social interaction) and multi-million
pound bonuses.

3) Influence. As the “official” British Empire collapsed, the “City of
London” managed both to maintain and extend the financial influence that
empire had brought it. This is the other side of the bargain. For the
British Government to protect the “City of London”, will they not be
receiving in return, a limited ability to rent that influence for their
own purposes?

4) Corruption. “In 2009 the OECD published a detailed study examining
so-called regulatory capture, where government regulators are taken over
by sectional interests like Banks. ‘We found there was a huge number of
connections of people who had gone through the revolving door to the
banks and back again, with alarming speed’ said David Miller, who led
the research. ‘The biggest banks had the most concentrated connections,
and the countries that had the biggest connections were the UK, the US
and Switzerland’” (Treasure Islands – Shaxton). What does this mean in
practice? “When the government launched an inquiry in 2008 into the
financial crisis, every single one of the team’s twenty-one members had
a background in financial services : four were from the City Corporation
itself (“City of London”) including the lord mayor and two former lord
mayors. The review was led by Sir Winfried Bischoff, a former Citigroup
chairman” (Treasure Islands – Shaxton). This level of influence is
abnormal, even in terms of U.K. history – reflecting the wane in the
nation’s power, and rise in the power of the “City of London”. This is
an inherently, deeply, undemocratic and corrupt relationship.

Please do more to highlight what is going on behind the scenes. At the
very least, carefully and fully review “Treasure Islands” by Nicholas
Shaxson (www.amazon.co.uk/Treasure-Islands-Havens-Stole-World/dp/1847921108/). This is an issue which affects us all.

Kindest Regards,

Benjamin Senior

Talents should be encouraged, and given room to grow – but how to achieve this in a fair way given the different strengths people (children and adults) have?

One option I’ve never heard of having been explored might be genuine “centers of excellence” with a small number of handpicked teachers, and resources for the top flight teaching of the Arts, Sports, Maths, Economics, History, Geography, Science, Literature and so on. The twist would be that class sizes may never go about 20, that each lesson type is half a day to a day long, and critically, that only the very best students *in that specific ability* from the surrounding 50km school intake area are chosen.

This might mean that some children only attend one class per week, while others potentially commute there every day.

A quick note :

The main arguments in the UK Press/public for nuclear and against renewable :

1) It can’t be done because wind/solar are sporadic resources

2) Nuclear is safe and the only option to reduce dependency on coal / oil

3) Basing on renewables means that the poor people of the world will suffer because they won’t have enough energy not being allowed to build nuclear power stations.

Living in Germany I’m very proud of their decision to tackle the “Power Transformation” – but it’s not wishy washy thinking here.

They aimed at 12% renewables by 2011 (which British commentators also said was a fantasy) and are currently at 17%.

They see the same problems with renewables must be solved everywhere (storage and transmission) which can make them market leaders if they solve them – they are not afraid of problems and have the intellectual and industrial means to solve them.

Nuclear is not safe.  In just a few dozen years we have had a wide spectrum of severe accidents, of which doubtless many have been hushed up given that the global regulator is paid for and stocked from within the ranks of the nuclear industry.  The consequences of the “unexpected”, the enormous cleanup costs, not to mention the horrendous problem of cleaning up the waste, are simply so severe that it is worth searching for alternatives.

As for the laughable ideas about damning people to poverty – pure hypocracy and ignorance :  Manhattan and City of London, the two largest offshore centers for money laundering and coruption in the world. For every dollar “given” to Africa, 10 are taken out. The discrepency between our basic needs and what makes us fulfilled as human beings… it’s possible to go on for hours.

1% of the U.S. population now own 40% of its wealth.  It is worse in the U.K.

The point comes where the intelligent, motivated by greed to join the elite and life of luxury, realise they cannot because they are not allowed.

Eventually, they realise that those who are privileged are not inherently better people – although it that belief is part of their signature – who deserve their privilege.

In these periods increasingly large numbers of intelligent, aware, articulate people towards the most capable end of the human spectrum are forced by circumstance to mix with the masses of who otherwise just accept reality as they find it.

Either those potential reformers are crushed – at the expense of the growth of society as a whole – or revolution is formented.

The better solution is for the powerful to have enough foresight to self-regulate.

They do self-regulate in the sense that every now and again a success story is advertised, a rags-to-riches fable, or even institutionalised in Lotteries and the like… but the mega-trend is inescapable. We are returning to a more primitive feudalism.

Offshore : Removal of corporate taxation and regulation – the creation of wealth castles – buying of the legislature : Treasure Islands

Routing Kafkaesque Gagging of the press and parliamentary reporting : http://mirror.wikileaks.info/wiki/Guardian_still_under_secret_toxic_waste_gag/

The outsourcing of Goverment to private multinationals (see offshore) : (various, list)

The deliberate production and aggressive marketing of low quality, dangerous, addictive food for maximum profit, again isolated from the law by successful lobbying.  Marketing includes capture of state resources (schools, prisons) and the active undermining of competitors (e.g. SupersizeMe)

The “leader of the free world” using automated warfare to protect its interest in third world countries, whilst running a series of gulags across the world holding and torturing people for information and to spread terror.

Massive Corporate corruption and inaccountability in the the extraction, transport and use of raw materials (including agriculture) leading to massive ecological and social problems.