Recent Articles

Should the jury have been told about Tabak’s violent porn?

I’m relieved to see that justice prevailed yesterday, and that Vincent Tabak’s ‘defence’ or ‘explanation’ that he hadn’t intended to kill Joanna Yeates but had simply panicked when he ‘misread’ her signals, and put his hands around her throat to stop her screaming, was given the short shrift that it deserved.

I’m disappointed to hear it was a majority verdict of 10:2 rather than a unanimous verdict from the jury mind, but there you go.

What has really pissed me off though, is the news that Tabak had a particular liking for violent strangulation porn.
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Tory MP admits “rules of capitalism… against us”

On the Daily Politics show yesterday, Conservative MP Mark Field, who represents the City of London, admitted that a lot of people feel “the rules of capitalism are skewed against us”.

He was asked about the massive jump in salaries of fat-cat bosses, while ordinary workers saw their salaries barely move.

Field also admitted that “Capitalism seems to be an unfair bargain” to many people, not just the protesters at #occupyLSX.

And credit to right-winger Andrew Neil for destroying the notion that salary increases were about ‘retaining talent’.

Watch

hat-tip to @LatentExistence for the video.

Consumer confidence now points to a UK recession

If yesterday’s GfK NOP Consumer Confidence Barometer measured air pressure we’d be getting ready for a hurricane.

The overall measure has slipped from -30 to -32, down 13 points from October 2010′s -19.

All the different elements are negative, all are down on last year and none are up on last month:
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UKuncut to sue HMRC over Goldman Sachs deal

The direct action group UKuncut is launching legal action against the HMRC over its “sweetheart” tax deal” with the investment bank giant, Goldman Sachs.

UKuncut Legal Action, a spin-off operation, will initially focus on the case of Goldman Sachs being let off £10m in interest payments by the HMRC.

Details of the case were first leaked to the Guardian earlier this month, and have been frequently mentioned in Private Eye.

As Liberal Conspiracy reported subsequently, HMRC chief David Harnett was accused of lying by both Tory and Labour MPs over his answers to a select committee.

Hartnett faced the Public Accounts Committee, which started off with Labour MP Margaret Hodge asking him if he admitted to lying about dealing with Goldman Sachs’ tax affairs.

She also said taxpayers had been “ripped off” by £10m from Goldman Sachs thanks to the HMRC.

UKuncut say:

This is at the heart of our legal action. We are saying that if was a genuine mistake, then it can be rectified and the money paid back. And being the reasonable people that we are, we have given them a couple of weeks to do so.

If not though, we will see them in court, as we believe that this handshake agreement is unlawful because, reportedly, Dave didn’t follow HMRC’s own procedures. So if it’s not quashed, Dave’s dodgy deal could land him in the dock.

The legal action will put further pressure on Hartnett to explain how exactly he “shook hands” on the deal.

UKuncut launched just over a year ago when a group of activists occupied the flagship Vodafone store in central London.

The legal spin off could become a highly significant if it leads to the HMRC back-tracking. It would also open up the possibility of more legal action.

How we’re planning to resist the sell-off of our public services

contribution by Cat Hobbs

What’s astonishing about the government’s Opening Public Services White Paper is how little fuss there has been about it.

It aims to end the “state’s monopoly” and offer public service contracts to “a range of providers”, not just in the NHS, but across the board.

The bill is expected this autumn.
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Video exposes false claim of ‘empty tents’

A video shot by people at the #occupyLSX camp exposes how the claim that tents were unoccupied at night is false.

They used the same camera and show in this video that it doesn’t capture body heat as well as it should.

Watch

via @Georgemonbiot

Also remember what a military scientist told the Guardian:

But the military scientist, who asked not to be named, said on Wednesday that the photographers were not using the right camera settings, and consequently the information needed to draw any conclusions from the images had been lost.

He said: “They cannot make the assumption that they have made from those images. The way they are set up, you wouldn’t be able to tell if there’s anyone in the tent or not, especially if someone is sleeping in an insulated sleeping bag.”

Today’s figures show how the British economy is broken

Two pieces of news and information out today, juxtaposed together, illustrate perfectly the point many on the left have been making about how the British economy is broken.

“Fat cat bosses at Britain’s top 100 companies have awarded themselves pay rises of 49% in the last year,” thunders the Daily Mail.

Salaries of ordinary workers meanwhile have only risen by 3% in the last year. This is neither a ‘trickle-down’ effect, neither are bosses being rewarded for success.
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A private meeting to discuss the future of #occupy? Not exactly

A City of London Corporation press release says:

The City of London Corporation, which is the Highways Authority for the Square Mile, is set to call a special meeting of its Planning and Transportation Committee for Friday to hear legal advice and decide whether and, if so, how to take legal action to clear the highways around St Paul’s of campers.

The Planning and Transportation Committee would meet in private session to consider the legal advice (my emphasis).

The wording is clever, and may lead members of the public unfamiliar with local government legislation into thinking there’s no point in turning up to such a meeting.
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After bombing Libya, Tories now want to sell them weapons

Merely hours after the world was digesting the news that Colonel Gaddafi had been killed, Philip Hammond, the new Defence Secretary, was telling BBC Radio 4′s Today programme last Friday that he hoped to see representatives from the British defence industry hopping on the next plane to Tripoli.

Philip Hammond was more than happy to concur, when asked by John Humphrys, whether in helping to liberate Libya, it was only right that the UK should now benefit financially.
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Tribune magazine: the decision to close is the right one

I was news editor at Tribune between 1992 and 1995, and it lived a hand to mouth existence even then. At a time when almost every other publication in Britain had switched to what journalists of the period called ‘the new technology’, I suddenly found myself thrown back into the era of manual typewriters. The one I was given, according to a standing office joke, used to belong to George Orwell himself.

As the magazine’s token Trotskyist, I was always somewhat at odds with the overall editorial line. But nevertheless various editors somehow found a place for my contributions, and I will always be proud to be associated with a title that – for much of its existence, anyway – instantiated the best aspects of the democratic socialist tradition in this country.
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