I am watching the debate on Osborne’s Fiscal Charter live on the Parliament Channel. The barracking and baying at Caroline Lucas by roaring Tory MPs making that weird public school hawing noise was quite astounding. She was making an entirely sensible point about the viability of government borrowing to fund productive investment.
Listening to George Osborne speak, I find it hard to believe that it is seriously expected by the commentariat that this man will win the 2020 election and become Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. If ordinary people find him an acceptable human being, let alone leader, I really do not understand what has become of society.
I hardly know where to start to deconstruct his speech, but one fact stands out. Osborne purported to give an overview of Britain’s economic crash and “recovery”, without making a single mention of the banking crisis or bankers’ corrupt and greedy practices as the cause of the crash, of vast banking bailouts by the taxpayer and the rapid contraction of the economy. That banker behaviour was of course accelerated by Gordon Brown’s extreme banking deregulation, but that was Brown’s great blunder, not the levels of public spending.
Gideon George Osborne
They Work For Themselves
Mainly lots of lolly coming in from large donors such as Bloomberg, Hintze, Deloitte and IPGL Ltd. Also support from the World Economic Forum to attend Davos (needless to say) and to visit Israel from the Conservative Friends of Israel (also needless to say).
‘IPGL Limited is a private holding company which focuses on partnering with experienced management teams to build fast growing businesses in financial services and other sectors. IPGL’s interest is in developing young businesses into industry leaders over the long term. Over the past 20 years the group has had considerable success in building a range of financial services industry businesses in the broking, fund management and insurance industries.’
IPGL is part of the DDCAP Group. Lots of acronyms there!
Camila Batmanghelidjh is on the Parliament Channel player now.
http://parliamentlive.tv/Event/Index/5e1ce27a-7279-4ba3-9f3f-ed9998fbae7e
~~~~~
Gideon’s entry at They Work for Themselves is http://www.theyworkforyou.com/regmem/?p=11145
This individual has been at Osborne’s right hand throughout.
I have put up a link to this before.
Key player: Rupert Harrison is the most important person in Government who you’ve never heard of
The Chancellor’s chief of staff possesses faith in policy even in the darkest times
1 December 2014
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/key-player-rupert-harrison-is-the-most-important-person-in-government-who-youve-never-heard-of-9896714.html
Harrison has just pushed off to a US fund management group BlackRock.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/4fb65e38-1058-11e5-b4dc-00144feabdc0.html#
But no worries. He cannot lobby the Government for two years. Really?
I am increasingly looking to religious frameworks (in the broadest sense of the phrase) to try and understand the reality inversion presented by the politics-media complex. Is TV still ‘God’ in the age of the internet?
If ‘an eye for an eye’ is ‘balancing the books’, then what is ‘forgiveness’?
http://psalmistice.com/2015/06/18/on-principal-and-interest-hermetic-magick-and-the-lords-of-time/
Bankers are no doubt to blame TOO BUT many of us mortals are also to blame. Inspired by great lies coming out of bright heads (watch Inside Job documentary) we have bought onto the idea of ever going boom. Borrowed MORE than we can afford to support lifestyle MORE luxurious than we can afford. Living by ones means became redundant. Look at those kids living in “poverty” in this country and yet wearing Nike and Adidas and watching American Idol on 50 inch plasma TV.
Bankers of course left with very little regulation and (now) Lord Turner’s FSA turning blind eye onto them were quick to benefit from all this greed. And who can blame them. Banks are the institutions for profit to milk us mortals.
Tories and New labours are to blame for allowing group of greedy people to pass the greed to all of us and creating the situation which could only resemble Ponzi Scheme.
Blame lies on ALL of US and not just bankers. We need to change this consumer greed culture. Without change there will be another and than another generation of bankers ready to make quick profit from this consumer greed.
Scotland Yard Fraud Squad Detective Rowan Bosworth-Davies tells all you want to know about the Criminal Mafia entity that is the City of London and its crooked banksters.Check the back dates for more info.
http://rowans-blog.blogspot.co.uk/
“In any case – whatever you may think of surveillance by the intelligence services – what is the rationale for saying that MPs should be exempt”
The question is whether you accept that there is such a thing as privacy under &8 of the EU human rights act, the most rubbery and open ended rules in the whole act.
1. Everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence.
2. There shall be no interference by a public authority with the exercise of this right except such as is in accordance with the law and is necessary in a democratic society in the interests of national security, public safety or the economic well-being of the country, for the prevention of disorder or crime, for the protection of health or morals, or for the protection of the rights and freedoms of others.
”
Article 8 is considered to be one of the Convention’s most open-ended provisions.
If you talk to your MP, do not expect your conversation to be private. If you want to talk to him about something that should be off grid, arrange a rendevouz and leave your I phones in the car, walks in the woods are the only privacy you are gonna get under big brother.
So you and your whereabouts are known Habby, always worth keeping in mind when you go round vine island in your Morris Metro.
Blame lies on ALL of US and not just bankers. We need to change this consumer greed culture. Without change there will be another and than another generation of bankers ready to make quick profit from this consumer greed.
Absolutely agree. Couldn’t agree more. Literally.
The concepts of living within your means and saving for a rainy day have been completely subverted by the cheap-credit merchants and the negative actual income on deposits available to the punter in the street. But the connection between spending like a drunken sailor, regularly crashing Ponzi economics and the erosion of essential public services isn’t intuitive enough for the punter in the street. It’s anathema to the politician who rarely goes near the street. ‘Growth’ is the only game in town, though the only growth to which this is analogous is the growth of a malignant tumour.
you forgot the word ‘unsustainable ‘somewhere Ba’al, cause thats whats on offer, always and at all times. For example why have all our skinflint supermarkets not brought out strong paper bags and totally banned flimsy plastic films from their premises?
everything we do is half hearted, half arsed, serving some vested interest or others.
How can we expect a sustainable society, when all underlying finance systems are based on gambling, are totally unsustainable?
thanks for linking to Rowans blog, very educating.
I never forget sustainability, Nevermind. But one huge topic at a time….
For example why have all our skinflint supermarkets not brought out strong paper bags and totally banned flimsy plastic films from their premises?
Because they’ve realised that charging 5p for something that costs less than a tenth of that is far more profitable than giving* away paper bags (which aren’t too good in rain), and results in no loss of custom. Their market research indicates that bags-for-life are not hugely popular, and shopping baskets even less so. Win-win, except the planet.
*or marking up the goods to pay for the bags, in practice.
Brown’s actions made the crash of 2008 considerably worse than they otherwise would have been. He encouraged the banks to lend recklessly,at the same time as spending heavily and borrowing everywhere, to create boom,boom, boom and surprise,surprise it ended in a big bust!
Brown during his term as chancellor and PM doubled the National Debt.
Osborne,however appears to be attempting to to out brown Brown. The Tories in office have now doubled the National Debt again from the 80bn they inherited to 160bn odd now.
The Tories economic trick is exactly the same as Browns-force up house prices through low interest rates and other gimmicks eg housing benefit. So people borrow and spend more.
Osborne knows that no party will be able to stay in power without spending more than their income-because that is what he’s done. How long would he have lasted without out browning Brown ?
thanks for linking to Rowans blog, very educating.
Thanks seconded; Bosworth-Davies’ assessment of our sleazy,smarmy Chancellor is spot-on-
‘George Osborne, son of and heir to a Baronetcy is an example of a modern Tory politician who has not had a real job in his life, apart for a bit of scribbling for the Daily Telegraph between leaving university and joining the Tory Party machine. These men represent a background of immense monied privilege and close social ties which have flowed over into their political life. It is hardly surprising that they would see the City and its denizens in the most positive light. They cannot have, nor, in fairness, do they seek to represent their recognition of or their identification with the lives of the vast majority of ordinary men and women in the UK today. They represent a party, a standard of living, a class, which is frankly out of control, bloated by its addiction to money from whatever source it comes, and representing an elitism which is damaging the entire fabric of the lives of the vast majority of the people of Britain’
Important: Julian Assange needs a medical scan (MRI), and Britain is denying him safe passage to a hospital
Please be ready to donate money, or to contact people who might donate money, so that the equipment can be brought to the Ecuadorian embassy where he has been confined for more than 3 years.
Britain recently removed the visible police guard outside the Ecuadorian embassy. This move is nothing but propaganda, to pre-empt some of the bad publicity they might get for denying this man medical treatment unless they can have their fun and take him captive for their US masters, on utterly fake allegations.
+1 on Rowan’s Blog. A must-visit!
N_ the article clearly states that such equipment could not be brought into the embassy due to weight size etc.
So they are denying him the right to see a doctor without being apprehended for an outdated EU arrest warrant which was based on false trumped up charges.
Sweden has negated its status as a correct and legally based authority that can issue this Warrant due to the fact that they failed to take available alternative steps they were prepared to take with others accused of criminalities in Sweden.
By interviewing many other accused here in Britain since Julian invited them into the embassy to interview him, Sweden has shown that it is legally and politically biased in a case that has not even reached a court.
Everything points to a conspiracy to detain him on some charge so he can be a ward of court, accused of something he can then be internationally renditioned as the powers to be would like to.
Attributed Rowans blog link to Ba’al, the thanks should have gone to Salford Lad, apologies.
Aye, Geoffrey.
The housing issue is central to the monetarist policy, insofar as it can be called a policy at all. The price bubble is inflated by resisting fair tenancy legislation, removing social housing from the equation and reinforcing the public belief that to rent is in some way shameful and less prestigious than ownership (this is not the case, say, in Germany). Demand is therefore enhanced, while supply and security of any alternative are reduced. Prices therefore rise out of any relation to the nominal value of the product. This counts as growth for propaganda purposes. It also conceals structural inflation, and it is noticeable that house prices are not included in the calculation of inflation statistics. More enticingly still, it plunges any intending house owner into huge future debt: this as usual appears as instant credit on the books of the lender, from which it moves into the speculative money market.
The current shouting about building ‘affordable homes’ won’t change this. What it will do is enable another tranche of potential borrowers to grow the economy by promising their future earnings to financiers.
Current policy is to pass the buck to local councils for this: they will either have to release brownfield sites for housing development, changing their planning status so that businesses can no longer use them – and businesses pay business rates, which, with fewer businesses, the councils will have to increase, driving away business – or build in the greenbelt. Which will shortly be the subject of yet another Cameronian u-turn from his manifesto committment to do no such thing, oh no.
Private Eye this week carries a short explanatory piece on this topic.
“Blame lies on ALL of US and not just bankers. We need to change this consumer greed culture. Without change there will be another and than another generation of bankers ready to make quick profit from this consumer greed.”
Absolutely agree. Couldn’t agree more. Literally.
I don’t agree. Bankers are not merely exploiting our greed. For a couple of centuries, bankers have been deliberately engineering this situation. They’ve changed our laws, evolved our monetary and financial systems and used mass media to persuade us debt is normal. Incrementally they increase their power and use this influence to further increase their power.
Bankers are running the show. They are not reacting to our needs. They are creating our needs.
Node, I’d say the banks work hand in glove with the politicians. Without the support of the banks lending,through PFI,Gilts and to the general population Brown would Labour would not have lasted long,nor would they have been able to take us to pointless illegal and expensive wars,etc.
In return Brown and Darling bailed them out-what could be fairer ?
There are mobile MRI scanners but that would still entail leaving the entrance to go down into the street.
Ref bankers. Laughing in our faces cont’d.
Jim O’Neill ex Goldman Sachs is now Commercial Secretary to the Treasury.
https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers/commercial-secretary-to-the-treasury
‘Responsibilities
The Commercial Secretary is responsible for:
•Northern Powerhouse
•city devolution
•infrastructure policy
•Infrastructure UK
•corporate finance, including public corporations, public private partnerships, PFI, and sales of government assets
•better regulation and competition policy
•industrial strategy
•working with the Minister of State for Trade and Investment and UKTI to promote the UK as a destination for foreign direct investment’
His predecessor bar one was Sir John Sassoon.
City Spy: Osborne’s strange praise for Sassoon
22 July 2009
IN launching his putsch on the Financial Services Authority and overhaul of City regulation, George Osborne paid tribute to Sir James Sassoon as the Shadow Chancellor’s adviser. This is most odd.
For it was the same Sassoon who, while in charge of financial services at the Treasury, received the results of the “war game” conducted by the Bank of England and FSA into the effectiveness of the banks’ regulatory system in 2004-5. They reported glaring gaps — notably that no method was in place for taking out a failing bank, and the depositors’ compensation scheme was inadequate. What was done about their findings? Er, precisely nothing.
* GEORGE Osborne trusts the Bank of England to take charge of banking regulation again. Two good reasons, lest we forget, why the Bank was stripped of its powers in 1997: Barings and BCCI.
* AND Osborne hails the Dutch system as one to aspire to. The Dutch? Two names there should also put paid to such nonsense: ABN Amro and Fortis.
http://www.standard.co.uk/business/city-spy-osborne-s-strange-praise-for-sassoon-6782877.html
‘Sassoon was the first Commercial Secretary to the Treasury from May 2010 to January 2013, a ministerial position in HM Treasury, the UK’s finance ministry. Sassoon had a long career in the financial sector and previously served in various roles at the Treasury from 2002 to 2008, at which point he began advising David Cameron on financial issues.[2] He was appointed to the House of Lords in connection with his ministerial appointment’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Sassoon,_Baron_Sassoon
Both O’Neill and Sassoon have been given peerages.
So there we have it.
A view of the future from Stephen Hawking.
October 15, 2015
Stephen Hawking on the Future of Capitalism and Inequality
by Conor Lynch
http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/10/15/stephen-hawkings-on-the-tuture-of-capitalism-and-inequality/
“Bankers are running the show. They are not reacting to our needs. They are creating our needs.”
Really? banks and bankers have been around for millennias. However; consumerism is something very new which coincided with the era of cheap credit. I see no banks or bankers forcing their customers to buy house they cannot afford or car they cannot afford or TV they cannot afford. I see millions of Europeans applying for cheap credit cards, taking cheap loans and “affordable” mortgages to service what they CANNOT afford. I see very few people having any saving for rainy day but I see a LOT of people who work day and night to service their debt (which they were NOT forced to take in the first place).
One would be very bad banker if one did not exploit consumer greed to make some profit. But greed comes from consumers and it is NOT forced upon them.
Osborne hasn’t got a clue he must be along with Alistair Darling, be the most incompetent Chancer of the Exchequer in living memory.
Osborne has pushed the austerity agenda from day one, it hasn’t worked, he has turned Britain into a low wage long hour country, foodbanks are numerous, poverty knows no bounds, the welfare approach which he backs has killed many sick and disabled people.
But Osborne has been very generous to his rich friends, selling them Royal Mail shares on the cheap, and bailing out his bankster buddies, in their times of need.
Osborne and Cameron are determined to drive a bigger wedge between the rich and poor of British society.
Node, I’d say the banks work hand in glove with the politicians.
Geoffrey, I’d say the bankers appoint the politicians. They only work with each other in the sense that a boss workswith his employee.
What a lot of tosh! Dubya was urging the yanks to go and spend in the malls and shops to fight the terrorists! Consumerism is the basis of the Western “capitalism”
This paragraph clearly shows a total lack of understanding of the banking system and loans. Although it smacks of misanthropy and disdain of the Europeans who are committing such a heinous crimes as spending beyond their means!!! There should be a law against it really!
The Kunduz thread is closed.
I did not know it was a US gunship that did the horrible deed.
Dave Lindorff, fine denunciation of the Kunduz atrocity
October 13, 2015
US Dispatched a Murderous AC-130 Airborne Gunship to Attack a Hospital
The Air Force’s top killing machine, the AC-130J, was sent to attack the Doctors Without Borders hospital in Kunduz.
Evidence continues to mount that the US committed a monstrous war crime in attacking and destroying a fully operational hospital in Kunduz, Afghanistan on the night of Oct. 3, killing at least 22 people including at least 12 members of the volunteer medical staff of Medicine Sans Frontieres (Doctors Without Borders), the French based international aid organization that operated the hospital.
This even as the US desperately tries to bury the issue of its perfidy by offering “condolence payments” to victims of the attack, though without accepting blame beyond saying it was a “tragic mistake.”
The “mistake” claim looks increasingly shameless as it becomes clear that this was not, as the US corporate media continue to incorrectly report, a “bombing” gone wrong, but rather was a prolonged hour-long attack by an AC-130 gunship, the deadliest killing machine in the US Air Force’s weapons roster of mayhem. The aircraft, equipped with the latest night-vision sighting equipment, reportedly made five 15-minute assaults on the hospital’s main building housing the emergency operating room and recovery rooms, firing its array of howitzer cannons, 30-millimeter machine canons and other heavy weapons whose standard ammunition includes both high-explosive tips and anti-personnel rounds designed to scatter death in a wide pattern.
/..
http://thiscantbehappening.net/node/2876
Bankers are running the show. They are not reacting to our needs. They are creating our needs.
Yes. Because we let them – encourage them, in fact. And they’re not ‘needs’. Someone with actual needs…food, shelter, clothing…rather than a liking for shiny things, wouldn’t qualify for a bridging loan from Wonga, let alone a credit card. ‘Sorry mate, you need to talk to Oxfam – now piss off.’
I’ll concede that each feeds off the other. They encourage us, too. But who the hell actually needs next year’s BMW?
Stop buying stuff you don’t need, and the system will be in deep trouble. Word.
” consumerism is something very new which coincided with the era of cheap credit.”
What a lot of tosh! Dubya was urging the yanks to go and spend in the malls and shops to fight the terrorists! Consumerism is the basis of the Western “capitalism”
I don’t see the contradiction. By ‘new’, Henry Ford would do as a starting point. Which is not historically old at all. The object, as Henry Ford formulated it, is to make the customer (perpetually) somewhat dissatisfied with what he has. Consumerism was inherent in effective mass production, and impossible without it. And that’s a modern development in my book.