Friday 30 December 2011

Internet warning over Turangi attack accused

Stuff NZ
"A senior law professor is warning websites and Facebook users they must not publish the name of the teenager accused in connection with the Turangi attack on a five-year-old girl. The 16-year-old appeared in Taupo Youth Court yesterday. People commenting on some special interest websites have named the accused, with one of those comments also saying the name was all over Facebook. Professor Ursula Cheer, from Canterbury University's school of law, said the name of anyone appearing in the Youth Court was suppressed and could not be published anywhere."
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Turangi boy arrested over attack on girl
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Girl, 5, attacked in holiday park
"Loper said the attack on the girl, who was on holiday with her family from Europe, was one of the worst assaults on a child he had seen in his 28 years policing."

Economists estimate a '30% to 40% chance of a break-up of the euro in 2012'

Daily Mail
"A majority of economists put the possibility of a eurozone break-up at 30-40 per cent in 2012, according to the results of a BBC poll - and 20 per cent even state the eurozone will not exist in its current 17-member form next year. Nearly all of those polled predicted that Europe would return to recession in the new year as the continent struggles to get to grips with its debt crisis."

Thursday 29 December 2011

Turangi attack: Furious public confront teen

Stuff NZ
"Outside Taupo Youth Court no-one wants to give their name, inside most names have to remain secret. Everything about the accused is suppressed except this: he is 16, a male, and will be back in this room on January 12. He does not want to apply for bail. He wears a T-shirt and has bare feet.The victim is five and foreign, her family surrounded now by an aching love that renders $52,000 and counting and more teddy bears and flowers than can be kept. She was attacked while she slept in a caravan at Turangi's Club Habitat motor camp on December 21.There is a crowd interested in the teen, too. Many are right by the side gate, bolshie and mouthy. They call him a paedophile and an animal and tell him he will be judged."

Wednesday 28 December 2011

Turangi tourist attack: Parents relieved at arrest

Stuff NZ
"The parents of the five-year-old European girl savagely attacked at a holiday park are relieved a Turangi teenager has been arrested. The 16-year-old boy will appear in court today charged with sexual violation, aggravated wounding and burglary.Injuries to the girl's head, face and body required four hours of surgery after the attack last Wednesday."

Tuesday 27 December 2011

Please forgive us, Kiwis beg girl

Stuff NZ
"The girl, believed to be from Belgium, was asleep with her 3-year-old brother in a caravan at Club Habitat holiday park when she was attacked between 10.10pm and 10.40pm last Wednesday.She needed four hours of surgery for injuries to her head, face and body."
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Hunt for campground child attacker widens
"The attack at the Turangi holiday camp was discovered when the girl's mother returned from the amenities block and saw through the caravan window a man lying on top of her daughter."

Wednesday 21 December 2011

'Send a nuclear submarine to stick its mast up': Former Navy head calls for aggressive reaction as Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay and Paraguay move to blockade Falklands

Daily Mail
"Speaking to London's Evening Standard, he said: 'They are basically becoming more and more aggressive. I find that worrying. 'Far from trying to settle in a grown-up way and having better and better relations with the Falkland islanders, they are upping the ante and becoming confrontational.' He added that he did not believe Argentina would launch another invasion, but that sending a nuclear submarine to 'stick its mast up' as it patrolled the area would signal Britain's intent. The former First Sea Lord, who commanded HMS Ardent on which 22 crew were killed during the Falklands War in 1982, added: 'When one is there, we should make a point of making it clear that it is there.'

South America gangs up to blockade the Falklands: Islands' boats banned from Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay

Daily Mail
#Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay and Uruguay vote for blockade to show solidarity
#Falklands resident says: 'If we were Palestine, the EU would be up in arms'
#Argentina reignited claim to territory last year after oil companies began looking for fossil fuels
#Fishing vessels with UK licences already subjected to military searches off Argentina coast

Monday 19 December 2011

Why the euro turkey is well and truly stuffed

Telegraph
"The sideshow of David Cameron’s veto will soon be upstaged by the single currency's combustion and the immolation of its weaker members’ economies. Confounded by the triumph of remorseless debt over political will, EU leaders have succumbed to collective delirium, promising that future government budgets will be “balanced or in surplus” and that annual structural deficits will “not exceed 0.5 per cent of nominal gross domestic product”. There is not one chance in a million that this can be achieved by more than a handful of EU states. When fantasy masquerades as action, the end is nigh"

Tony Blair has rewritten history – without modesty or shame

Telegraph
"It's in there, but you'll have to dig for it. Buried deep under many layers of self-exculpatory humbug, on p524, is the formula for Tony Blair's approach to political alchemy. You'll find it in the chapter about New Labour's disgraceful acceptance of illegal immigration during its first two terms in government. Heaping praise on himself for shutting down Opposition attacks over the issue in the run-up to the 2005 election, Mr Blair reveals his ruthless blend of tactics and chicanery: "confess and avoid".

This is the way it works for lawyers, he says, and as a barrister who gave up his practice for the rough trade of politics, Mr Blair was perfectly placed to adopt and adapt it while in Downing Street. Right across domestic, foreign and economic affairs, he mastered the art of defending the indefensible, Westminster's version of a Queen's Counsel who advocates a client's innocence with passion, while knowing for sure that the accused is guilty.

Throughout A Journey, Mr Blair's 700-page tribute to what passes for his legacy, he demonstrates with remarkable impertinence the art of appearing to own up, while dodging responsibility and blaming others. To make this work, he concedes some mistakes here and there (the foxhunting ban). In doing so, he sounds much like a bank robber who confesses to shoplifting sweets, but avoids any mention of the bullion heist from Heathrow.

When the wheels finally dropped off New Labour's charabanc at the last election, with rejection by 70 per cent of voters, it left behind an economy in a frightful mess. Unemployment was higher than in 1997, so, too, welfare dependency and personal bankruptcies. Private pensions had been vandalised and public finances were an utter disgrace, with the government spending about £150 billion a year more than it was receiving in taxes. The future was mortgaged to pay for a fiesta of mismanagement. "

Saturday 17 December 2011

French are felled by triple whammy: Now it's Sarkozy who's out on a limb as UK banks pull funds, Germans side with Cameron and CLEGG attacks their PM

Daily Mail
*Nervous banks pulled £20bn out of France between July and September
*Merkel says she wants to resist Sarkozy's plans to redraw EU rules
*Ratings agency considering downgrading ratings of Italy, Spain, Ireland, Belgium, Slovenia and Cyprus

*Standard & Poor’s puts France on warning that its AAA credit rating is at risk while Britain’s is 'stable'

Sunday 11 December 2011

Yes, Cameron got it right: Most voters agree with PM vetoing treaty changes - and half think we should now quit the EU

Daily Mail

Eurozone leaders duck all the big issues

Telegraph
"The EU treaty agreement reached by eurozone leaders last week isolated Britain and proposed a new 'fiscal compact’, but in reality it looks like just a 'lousy compromise’.

Saturday 10 December 2011

Ten myths about Cameron’s EU veto

Spectator
"So leaving misconceptions and domestic politics aside, did Cameron ‘trip over his own red line’ by spending a veto without actually getting any specific safeguards in return? There is a risk. But the truth is that it all depends on what happens next. As dramatic as Cameron’s veto may seem now, I suspect it is merely one of many acts."

EU Treaty: after a feat close to genius, David Cameron’s status is now as high as it has ever been

Telegraph
"Instead Cameron has achieved an outcome that I would previously have judged wholly impossible. He has led Britain into a position where it is outnumbered 26-1 in Europe, and yet retained the support of the fanatically pro-Brussels Liberal Democrats.

On Friday night it was not just Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, and Danny Alexander, the Chief Secretary to the Treasury, who were rallying round the Government. So were backbenchers such as Sir Menzies Campbell, the powerful Lib Dem grandee, although some colleagues accused their leader of betrayal. So an extraordinary new alliance had been created: Cameron’s policy of principled, reasonable isolation is backed by the mutinous Tory Right, the pro-European Conservative Left and the Europhile Lib Dems.

It takes something close to genius to bring together such a warring group of diehard ideological opponents. Yet against all the odds and in defiance of conventional wisdom Cameron has achieved it. .......He won out because he played it straight. He wanted to do the right thing by Europe and by Britain. The evidence suggests that he was motivated by nothing more sophisticated than a determination to conduct himself with integrity and to act in the national interest. ......The Prime Minister has shown yet again that he is a most formidable politician, especially when he looks trapped with the odds cast against him."

Friday 9 December 2011

Lisbon Treaty

PM finally gets tough with Europe: David Cameron vetoes new treaty to save the euro and hand more power to Brussels

Daily Mail
#Only UK and Hungary certain to stay out of new grouping - and Sweden and Czech Republic may join them in two-tier EU
#After 10 hours of talks 17 Eurozone members and six other countries decide to go ahead with a 'fiscal pact'
#PM defiant as he declares: 'I had to pursue Britain's interests... I effectively wielded the veto'
#French President Sarkozy says Cameron's demands were 'unacceptable'
#William Hague: 'We are not going to give up more of our power from the United Kingdom to the European Union, so in that sense we stand aside'
#City analyst: 'The PM was never going to throw away the advantage the UK holds in financial services, and thank goodness. In the boom times financial services account for one in six pounds collected in tax.'
#Shares and commodities fall in Asia after meeting ends
#Rise in Italian and Spanish bond yields this morning

New treaty to save euro splits European Union

AP/Yahoo News
"BRUSSELS (AP) — The leaders of 23 European countries moved to tie their economies much closer together in a new treaty in their latest attempt to shore up the euro, but failed to get the four other European Union members, including Britain, to join in. ......The failure of the EU to get unanimous support for more stringent budgetary rules may rattle the foundations of a union created to foster peace and prosperity across Europe following World War II.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy laid the blame at the feet of British Prime Minister David Cameron. ......Cameron defended his stance. "What was on offer is not in Britain's interest so I didn't agree to it," he told reporters in Brussels."We're not in the euro and I'm glad we're not in the euro," he said. "We're never going to join the euro and we're never going to give up this kind of sovereignty that these countries are having to give up."

Thursday 8 December 2011

The BOE's Role in the Long U.K. Slowdown

WSJ
"Indeed, the start of the U.K downturn can be dated almost precisely to Mr. King's public demand in the middle of August 2010 that banks start repaying the BOE and treasury's emergency funding facilities early. That forced banks to raise expensive debt, slashing margins, while restricting the availability and raise the price of new lending. The U.K. banking sector was dealt a further blow in April when the Independent Banking Commission, set up partly in response to Mr. King's apparent support for breaking up banks, recommended domestic retail banking businesses be ring-fenced—a decision that has left U.K. banks among the worst performers and lowest valued in Europe. Even though the ICB watered down its final recommendations, few would now dispute the ring-fence proposal is at best a costly irrelevance, at worst a grotesque act of self-harm.

U.K. policy makers miscalculated. Academic theory convinced them that if they told banks to raise capital and liquidity ratios, banks would go out and issue new shares and bonds; and they believed investors would be happy to provide the capital even if the bank earned a lower return on equity since the bank would be safer. In the event, investors saw things differently: They didn't see why highly leveraged banks should earn a lower rate of return than the wider market. And they pressured banks to shrink their balance sheets to meet both new regulatory-capital and liquidity targets and the market's return-on-equity targets and they pressured them to do it immediately, ignoring the lengthy Basel timetable. This dynamic that has led to a mortgage famine and a credit crunch for small and medium-sized enterprises; credit supply is shrinking and money supply growth has been virtually stagnant."

Tuesday 6 December 2011

Why the euro liars must stop deceiving us - and themselves

Daily Mail
"Nobody dares to tell the truth to their electorates: that the governments of Europe are embracing policies which are both wildly anti-democratic and cannot work. ....The truth is that the European financial crisis has laid bare the fact that Greece, together probably with Ireland, Spain, Portugal and Italy, are inherently unsuited to living within the financial discipline the euro requires."

Monday 5 December 2011

Beware the Euro spin...

Douglas Carswell MP (Commentator)
""An EU referendum would plunge Britain's economy into chaos"

Not true. The British economy is in a mess because successive governments have spent way beyond what the tax base can sustain. Governments of all three parties have acted as though they could engineer growth using monetary (and to some extent fiscal) stimulus. It has not worked, instead sowing the seeds of disaster; a credit bubble and bust, plus chronic malinvestment.

Holding a vote on Europe would, of itself, be no more economically disruptive than one on, say, AV or electoral reform.

Voting to quit the EU, however, might just enable us to begin to make some of the supply-side reforms needed to make Britain competitive in the longer term."

Sunday 4 December 2011

Dirty Hari

commentarymagazine
"The second scandal involved the exposure of Johann Hari​, the celebrated young columnist and media personality, as a plagiarist, fabricator, and user of Internet aliases to carry out smear campaigns against his enemies and to promote his own career. The Hari affair provoked less consternation—though it arguably offers as troubling a picture of the state of British journalism as the hacking scandal does. Indeed, the response to the scandal from Hari’s employers at the Independent and from much of the media establishment was arguably even more revealing of a deficit in the ethics of British media culture than were Hari’s original derelictions.

Like several rising stars in American journalism over the past three decades—the Washington Post’s Janet Cooke in the early 1980s, the New Republic’s Ruth Shalit and Stephen Glass in the 1990s, and the New York Times’s Jayson Blair in the early 2000s—Hari, now just 31, achieved his rapid success at a startlingly young age in large part thanks to his deceptions and fabrications. These went undetected for a long time because editors chose not to examine his work too closely. In Hari’s case (as in the case of Glass), his editors did not check his work because he skillfully played to their prejudices, in particular their anti-Americanism and loathing of Israel.

The reaction to his journalistic crimes stood in stark contrast to the American response to Glass and others. Hari’s sins were not greeted with the outrage, disappointment, and deep soul-searching of the sort that went on at all three American journalistic establishments—which led to editors being fired and new standards of exactitude being imposed—but rather with a blasé wave of the hand. In America, if a journalist is caught in repeated invention and deliberate dishonesty, his or her career ends. Not so in Britain. Hari was merely suspended from the Independent and is due to return to it after completing a journalism class in New York."

Friday 2 December 2011

How India squanders British aid: We give £1.4bn to a country that has its own space programme. In this damning investigation, the Mail reveals how it's scandalously wasted

Daily Mail
"But if this is a nation with enormous reserves of wealth, it is also blighted by widespread and endemic corruption at every level of society.

An official report has revealed that 90 per cent of government officials have accepted a bribe for favours, from ripping up a speeding fine to rubber-stamping a building deal. Corruption, as the Indian prime minister confessed the other day, is as much a national sport as cricket.

No wonder that in broke Britain questions are at last being asked about why we are handing billions to India in aid. A new report from an independent watchdog says that the rapid expansion of the UK’s aid programme has left taxpayers’ money at risk from corruption and fraud overseas."

Thursday 1 December 2011

Central banks hand out more cash - it ain't going to work this time either

Douglas Carswell
"What makes anyone believe that making lots of cheap cash available to banks is going to work this time? Isn't that pretty much what central banks have been doing ever since the credit crunch first struck. It's hardly fixed the problem, has it? Indeed, it has been central banks making lots of cheap cash and credit available for the past twenty something years that landed us in this mess to start with."

There's An Easy, Fair Solution To The Global Debt Crisis -- Too Bad No One Ever Talks About It

businessinsider
"The global debt crisis, of course, is nothing new. Since the dawn of time, men have been lending other men money (or other things of value) and not getting them back. But it's only recently that the solution to this state of affairs has gotten so complicated that even PhD economists can't figure it out. In most situations in which people or companies can't pay their debts, a simple thing happens.

It's called "bankruptcy."

The borrower says, "I can't pay you back" and then the borrower surrenders his or her claim on any assets that he or she still possesses.The lender, meanwhile, sifts through those assets and recoups what he or she can."

Guido Fawkes evidence may backfire on Leveson Inquiry

Independent
"Come back, Alastair, all is forgiven

Campbell's evidence yesterday discombobulated Ian Kirby, who was political editor of the News of the World for many years until the paper's demise. "I never knew there were two Alastair Campbells," he wrote on his Facebook wall. "The one I know told me Peter Mandelson was insane, but insisted I used it anonymously, persuaded Tony Blair to change the law in response to News of the World campaigns, spent years trying to befriend the Daily Mail and invented the claim that Sir John Major wore his shirt tucked in his underpants.

"He also encouraged me and Andy Coulson to ask Tony Blair if he and Cherie were in the Mile-High Club to make a good headline. I'm worried that AC has been kidnapped and no one noticed."

Wednesday 30 November 2011

Financial regulator 'urges British banks to prepare for the collapse of the euro'

Daily Mail
"British banks have been told that they need to prepare for the break up of the single currency.The Financial Services Authority told the UK's banking giants late last week that they must 'accelerate their contingency planning for the the break-up of the euro'.'We cannot be, and are not, complacent on this front, said Andrew Bailey, deputy head of the FSA's Prudential Business Unit.The revelation comes after it was revealed multinational companies are drawing up contingency plans in preparation for the possible break-up of the eurozone.Senior executives at a number of leading global conglomerates have hinted that they can no longer assume that political leaders will be able to save the single currency, it has been reported."

Tuesday 29 November 2011

King Says U.K. Economy ‘Increasingly Threatened’ by Euro-Area Debt Crisis

Bloomberg
"Bank of England Governor Mervyn King said the U.K. is being “increasingly threatened” by the euro- area crisis, and authorities must be ready to act if it continues to escalate.

“What we have to do is to be ready and prepared with contingency plans and to make sure that as far as possible our banking system is as robust as possible to withstand whatever shocks that come from the eurozone,” King told lawmakers at a Parliament committee in London yesterday. There are “early signs” of a credit crunch emerging in euro area in the difficulties banks have in accessing funding, he said."

Friday 25 November 2011

All he needed was a camel hair coat, a cigar and blonde dollybird

Daily Mail
"Parliament's jauntiest geezer was up on his Mystic Megs just before lunch in the House of Lords. I refer, naturally, to Lord Sugar, television personality, property developer, shooter of cuffs. He is also a ‘socialist’ peer, though yesterday he sounded more like a Thatcherite (which I suspect is what he really is). ....Sid James’s long-lost twin is not restful to watch. He will not stand still and he hinges his torso backwards, from the waist, to accentuate certain points. When not rubbing his nipple he places his left hand inside his shiny-pinstriped trouser pocket to give things a bit of a jiggle."

Thursday 24 November 2011

Australia's very own John Bercow

New Speaker Peter Slipper under expenses scrutiny (Adelaide Now)
"THE Liberal turncoat who accepted Julia Gillard's support to become Parliament's Speaker is being investigated over his "extraordinary" spending on taxpayer-funded travel. .....The Queensland MP, who has been forced to pay back more than $20,000 in wrongly claimed entitlements, also embarked on a lavish six-week study tour in March. With his wife Inge, he spent an estimated $25,000-plus visiting European travel hotspots, including Spain, Germany and the UK, to examine "bilateral relationship" with Australia. Mr Slipper, whose behaviour was detailed in a confidential file held in the office of ex-prime minister John Howard, has regularly spent close to $200 of tax money on individual taxi fares. .....Mr Slipper's generous use of entitlements often during non-sitting periods of Parliament has provoked fury among local constituents, who signed a petition calling for a full audit. This was tabled in Parliament in September."
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FOREIGN Minister Kevin Rudd has declined to answer questions about new Speaker Peter Slipper. (Herald Sun)
"He also declined to refute Queensland LNP president Bruce McIver's assertion that Mr Rudd stitched up the Speaker deal when he visited Mr Slipper in his Sunshine Coast electorate last week."
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A house of ill repute (The Australian)
"Slipper's career has been punctuated by scandal, allegations of parliamentary allowance misuses and simple stupidity. From high-spending travel entitlements to party defections between the Nationals and the Liberals to finding himself locked in a disabled toilet calling for assistance because he thought the sliding door only had push and pull functionality, Slipper is hardly a model MP."
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Gillard may have slipped with Slipper (Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun)
"A very good and fair speaker in Harry Jenkins has been replaced by a man of very dubious reputation who has also betrayed his electorate’s wishes. It looks like a grubby deal with a grubby man to help a grubby government cling to power. It makes the independents propping up Gillard look a bit grubbiier, too, having to go along with this. "
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The man the Liberals wanted to sack, but Labor made Speaker

We're paying £50m a day to the EU: Britain's contribution to Brussels rises to £18.5bn

Daily Mail
"Figures released by the Office for National Statistics (ONS) show that the UK’s contributions to Brussels rose by 5.7 per cent last year to a record £18.5 billion – double the Home Office Budget. At the same time, the money Britain received back from the EU fell by almost a quarter to £8.1 billion, a fall of £2.6 billion in a year."

United States of Paralysis

Daily Mail
"More important still, however, is the vacuum across the Atlantic.
President Barack Obama, who took office almost three years ago amid such high hopes, now clings to the White House amid collapsed poll ratings and a real threat that the American people will evict him at next autumn’s election.

The United States, as that great historian Sir Michael Howard has said, remains ‘the only nation able, and sometimes willing, to get things done in the world’. Yet this mighty country today finds its political system almost paralysed, its leader overwhelmingly concerned with his own re-election next year, rather than with leading the West out of its slough of despond."

Tuesday 22 November 2011

Oh Sally, please: Fresh embarrassment for Speaker John Bercow as wife declares her favourite gadget is a sex toy

Daily Mail
"She's done it again.

If Commons Speaker John Bercow thought his wife Sally would cause him no further embarrassment after openly discussing their 'spicy' sex life on Big Brother he was mistaken for she has revealed her favourite gadget is a sex toy. Mrs Bercow, 41, made the revelation during an interview for a political magazine when asked what her favourite device was. She replied: ‘I was going to say my vibrator.’When the reporter for Total Politics asked if that comment was off the record, the mother of three answered: ‘Oh no, put that one in.’

Something has to give

Dr Richard North

"The headline and first paragraph says it all. But is there any politically mature person anywhere in Europe who would not pose the same question of their own country and government?"

"The evidence is overwhelming: binding fiscal decisions have been made and communicated to the EU before the Cabinet has met to discuss or approve them.

We have, then, three clear instances in which the system of government laid down by the Constitution – collective decision-making by the Government acting as a whole – has been set aside
."

Friday 18 November 2011

German minister claims Britain WILL join the euro (and they've got secret plans to block our referendum)

Daily Mail
#Finance minister's astonishing claim comes despite deepening crisis that threatens the existence of the single currency
#PM flies to Berlin today to discuss repatriation of EU powers and 'Tobin tax'
#UK to pressure Merkel to allow euro bank to print more money
#Senior Tory calls for 'permanent, universal opt-out' from European laws
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Springtime for Merkel, starring in no particular order...
"This seems like a good time to revive Mel Brooks’ masterpiece, The Producers.
In the movie, theatrical impresario Max Bialystock and his accountant Leopold Bloom set out to stage a musical, Springtime For Hitler, which will be a sure-fire flop. That way, Max can defraud his investors and make a fortune.The euro, on the other hand, was designed to be a sure-fire success and has ended up defrauding an entire Continent."

Thursday 17 November 2011

Homeless moved on ahead of Obama visit

Sky News (Australia)
"Homeless people are being moved away from Darwin's city centre ahead of the visit by US President Barack Obama for security reasons. Larrakia Nation chief executive Ilana Eldridge says her organisation, which offers support to homeless people, has been given a gentle suggestion by the government to help people move away from places Mr Obama will visit. Ms Eldridge says they'll take them to a place where they'll be comfortable and safe. About two thousand people are thought to be homeless in the Darwin region each night, about 95 per cent of Aboriginal descent, with 20 to 30 staying along The Esplanade, where Mr Obama will travel today."

Abbott 1, Obama nil

Quadrant Online(Australia)
"Tony Abbott’s speech in Parliament today to welcome Barack Obama before his own speech to both Houses was a masterpiece – but one which will sadly go over the heads of most Australian people. It was a Prime Ministerial speech, mercifully devoid of the nonsensical sentiment with which Gillard’s was choked. (You’d have thought Julia had been there like Grace Sullivan, making scones while the Japanese bombed Darwin, before she decided instead to direct Obama to the John Curtin Library in Perth – which I notice is not on his itinerary.)

Abbott’s speech, on the other hand, was brilliant. He showed that he has a far better grasp on what America is, and what her role is in maintaining world peace and stability, than Gillard. He also showed that he has a greater love for America and her abundant ideological gifts to the world than Obama does; the influence of Mark Steyn was unmistakable. (Steyn should be charging Abbott royalties).

Abbott’s speech was a noble one; one which showed abundant respect for the values upon which America was founded – and by contrast, very little for the man sitting there who is supposed to be defending them.

Obama kept a poker face throughout, but when he rose to reply, his tone in thanking ‘Leader Abbott’ was unmistakable. "

Number of secondary school children from ethnic minorities soars by 57% in ten years

Daily Mail">
"Study author describes 'irrevocable change' Trend seen right across England In Tower Hamlets, pupils from ethnic minorities make up more than 80%"
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Foreign workers take yet more UK jobs as number of Britons in work plunges and youth unemployment hits one million

Wednesday 16 November 2011

'Pipe-smoking and tweed-wearing university dons': 'Super Mario' names new Cabinet team without a single elected politician

Daily Mail
"Critics have pointed out that Italy will now be governed by a band of 'non elected pipe smoking and tweed wearing university dons' - although Monti does have the backing of all the major Italian political parties. 'This government, ties to banks, to business, to the Vatican, to private universities - to the usual names - is the opposite of what this country needs,' said Paolo Ferrero, leader of Rifondazione Comunista, a tiny, far-left party.Passera also sits on the board of directors of Milan's Bocconi University, which forms Italy's business elite. Monti is currently the head of the Bocconi."

Monti unveils technocratic cabinet for Italy

BBC News
"Mario Monti has unveiled a new, technocratic cabinet meant to steer Italy through its debt crisis after the fall of Silvio Berlusconi's government."

Tuesday 15 November 2011

Blair has sold himself to a foreign power

Yahoo News
"It could become a pub quiz question: who was the first British prime minister to sell himself to a foreign power?

It would be too easy to guess the answer — Tony Blair, who recently signed a multimillion pound contract to advise President Nazarbayev of Kazakhstan. He has reportedly opened an office in the capital, Astana. Other than the president, no-one knows what advice Mr Blair is giving. His client does not need any advice on winning elections: grateful Kazakhs gave him over 95 per cent of their votes in their last presidential elections in April this year. His party already holds all the seats in parliament. Some media reports suggest that he is advising on financial institutions. According to other reports, he is helping the president prepare a bid for next year's Nobel Peace Prize. Again, Tony Blair seems a strange source of advice, until one remembers that the prize was once given to Henry Kissenger."

Sunday 13 November 2011

The week the euro went up in flames

Telegraph
"As this week’s replacement of elected leaders, largely at Germany’s behest, underlines, this is a democratic crisis as much as an economic one. The EU’s essentially undemocratic nature allowed elites to push through the euro – not something which the people of Europe ever demanded or, in most northern countries, even supported with much enthusiasm."

Saturday 12 November 2011

The week that proved the europhiles wrong

Daily Mail
"This was the week that should convince even the most zealous champion of the euro that the game is up. For it was the week when the full, catastrophic consequences of imposing a single currency on 17 nations came home with a force that defies denial. On the political front, the euro stands exposed as incompatible with democracy. Economically, it has proved a destroyer of growth, jobs and livelihoods. .....All over Europe, growth forecasts are revised sharply downwards. And the European Commission’s head of economics admits: ‘A deep and prolonged recession complemented by continued market turmoil cannot be excluded.’ Yet even now, there are some who cling to the fantasy that with ever-larger bailouts here, and ever-deeper austerity there, the euro’s problems can be solved without radical reform. Well, that is a matter for the nations of the eurozone. If they can raise the unimaginable sums needed to carry on with their crippling experiment, on their own heads be it.What is clear is that British taxpayers should have no further part in bailing them out, through the IMF or otherwise."

The EU's architects never meant it to be a democracy

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"So, as headlines scream that vain bids to save the euro threaten us with “Armageddon”, the EU’s ruling elite has toppled two more elected prime ministers, to replace them with technocratic officials who can be trusted to do Brussels’s bidding."

The decline of European democracy

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"Italy and Greece are now both to be led by prime ministers who were not elected to parliament but appointed. Is this a perfect symbol of how the European Union is being preserved by undemocratic methods? "

Thursday 10 November 2011

Eurozone crisis: who is pulling the strings in Europe?

Telegraph
"As the escalating eurozone crisis has toppled governments in Italy and Greece, decision-making is increasingly being driven by France, Germany and a powerful group of Brussels officials. .....Angela Merkel ,Nicolas Sarkozy ,
Christine Lagarde (unelected),Mario Draghi (unelected),José Manuel Barroso (unelected),Herman Van Rompuy (unelected),Olli Rehn (unelected),Jean-Claude Juncker. "

Compared to this, Greece was just a sideshow. Italy could blow Europe to pieces

Daily Mail
"Italy is the third-largest economy in the EU, and the eighth largest on the planet. Its outstanding debt of €1.9 trillion (£1.6 trillion) accounts for 25 per cent of all the debt in the eurozone. ....What should the EU do instead? It should oversee the phased unbundling of the single currency.

Supporters of the project insist a euro break-up would be technically unfeasible, but this is nonsense. All the countries in the single currency have recently managed to change their currency: that’s how they joined the euro in the first place.It works just as well when leaving a currency union. I asked a Slovakian economist how his country had managed the transition when it divorced the Czech Republic in 1993.‘Very easily,’ he replied. ‘One Friday, after the markets had closed, the head of our central bank phoned round all the banks and told them that, over the weekend, someone from his office would come round with a stamp to put on all their banknotes, and that, until the new notes and coins came into production, those stamped notes would be Slovakia’s legal tender. On the Monday morning, we had a new currency.’

The protestations that it cannot be done will strike British ears as familiar: it’s precisely what we were told about the Exchange Rate Mechanism, a forerunner of the euro in which a basket of European currencies shadowed the Deutschmark and which Britain joined in 1990."

Germany and France 'discuss plans for EU overhaul'

Telegraph
"The discussions among senior policymakers in Paris, Berlin and Brussels raised the possibility of one or more countries leaving the eurozone while the remaining core pushes on towards deeper economic integration, including on tax and fiscal policy. ..."This will unravel everything our forebears have painstakingly built up and repudiate all that they stood for in the past 60 years," one EU diplomat told Reuters."This will redraw the map geopolitically and give rise to new tensions. It could truly be the end of Europe as we know it."

Portugal finds hidden assets ....

SMH (Australia)
"US big-wave surfer Garrett McNamara has surfed glacier-fuelled tsunamis in Alaska but even he broke new ground when he surfed this 27-metre monster (that's 90 feet to the older folk out there) off Portugal recently.The wave, which is being acclaimed as the biggest ever ridden, is believed to be the result of deep water canyons amplifying an eight-metre swell at Praia do Norte off the coast of Nazaré." (Video)

Italy panic sparks $30b sell-off

SMH (Australia)
"About $30 billion was wiped from the value of Australian shares today as Italy emerged as the new centre of concern in the euro-zone debt crisis.Both major sharemarket indices fell to their lowest level in a month over concerns about Italy’s ability to service its debt mountain and the implications for the future of the euro as a common currency."

Wednesday 9 November 2011

Italy debt crisis: what the experts said

Telegraph
"Jeremy Cook, Chief Economist at foreign exchange company, World First

“The markets continue to lurch from one problem to the next and we have now kicked the can as far down the road as is possible. Unfortunately there is very little more that can be done to stop this crisis. The only possible mechanism for the eurozone to haul itself out of this mess is to let the ECB print euros and print them like their life depends on it, because - and I do not mean to sound flippant - the euro’s life does depend on it.

"The ECB have tried to stymie the increase in Italian bond yields by buying Italian debt [bond prices move inversely to yields], but they have not done so in any meaningful manner. If Mario Draghi wants to live up to his 'Super Mario' moniker then he really needs to throw the ‘kitchen sink’ at the problem, not just the plug.

"Without a bold move from the ECB, the euro, in its current form, is in grave danger of imploding.”

Italy's Crisis: Why You Should Worry

Yahoo News /ABC
"Now you might say, O.K., then, I’m sorry for the Italians, I like Italy, but…why does this matter outside Italy?

Remember how markets went south – when it looked like Greece might default on its debt? Well, Italy’s debt is FIVE TIMES greater than what Greece owes. It’s been a messy process (and it isn’t over) as the Eurozone economies have struggled to bail out Greece. It’s hard — almost impossible — to see how the rest of Europe could (or would) muster the political will and actual cash to bail out Italy.

Right, got it, and really, I feel badly for Italy. But why does this matter for us?

Here’s a simple equation to keep in mind: Default + no bailout = Economic collapse. And here are some facts: Italy is the world’s 7 th-largest economy; while Greece makes up 2% of the European Union’s GPD, Italy makes up 17%. As one of my colleagues put it today, an economy that size will not collapse in an orderly way."

Tuesday 8 November 2011

The EU sunders Greek politicians from their people

Telegraph
"It’s not a national government – not, at least, in sense of a government that represents the nation. The coalition of the two big Greek parties has been formed for the sole purpose of pursuing an agenda that the nation rejects, viz. the Brussels-mandated loans-for-austerity programme. What’s more, the nation is right to reject it. Greeks can see that the bailout money is not coming to them, but to European bankers and bondholders. The interest payments, however, will indeed come from Greek taxpayers."

France cuts frantically as Italy nears debt spiral

Telegraph
"France has unveiled the toughest austerity measures since World War Two despite the looming danger of a double-dip recession, vowing to slash borrowing by €65bn over the next five years in a last-ditch effort to save the country's AAA rating. "

Defend Britain from these euro dictators

Daily Mail
"Increasingly, it appears we are witnessing the death of democracy and the right of sovereign nations inside the eurozone to govern their own affairs. First the overbearing eurocrats — led by France and Germany — bullied Greece into dropping its planned referendum. Then they forced Prime Minister George Papandreou from office and made it plain that the country’s next leader must be a pro-Brussels technocrat of whom they, rather than the Greek people, approve."

Monday 7 November 2011

the REAL issue that explains the bedlam at our border controls

Daily Mail
"The real culprit is surely a political culture that years ago lost the plot on national identity and race relations — and the legacy of which is an administrative class whose resulting attitudes are simply inimical to the national interest. The crucial milestone in this long-running debacle was 1997, when the incoming Blair/Brown Labour government decided to lift existing immigration controls in order to create a new kind of society, both economic and cultural. New Labour thought that, since the economic dynamism of the U.S. was due to the fact that it was a nation of immigrants, mass immigration would similarly transform the British economy. It also thought that creating a multicultural society would eradicate prejudice and bigotry. Both arguments were, of course, as fatuous as they were anti-democratic. Unlike Britain, the U.S. does not have an ancient national identity that mass immigration would transform."

Wednesday 2 November 2011

Thousand people an hour sign up to e-petitions website calling for debate on migration

Daily Mail
"A petition calling for drastic action to prevent the UK's population soaring to 70million was yesterday backed by 1,000 people every hour. The huge response to the campaign by Migration Watch means it is already one of the most popular e-petitions on the Downing Street website. By 6pm yesterday – 18 hours after its official launch – there were 18,000 signatures. Late last night, the total stood at 24,000."

Greece in meltdown: Government on edge of collapse amid fears of coup as Europe teeters on the brink of financial disaster

Daily Mail
#Greek cabinet vote unanimously to hold referendum on whether to uphold debt agreement
#Generals face sack as coup rumours spread
#Markets plunge as fears for the euro grow
#PM George Papandreou to meet eurozone leaders ahead of G20 meeting
‘It’s all over. The government is about to collapse,’ said one Greek official. Greece’s former deputy finance minister Petros Doukas agreed: ‘The **** has hit the fan.’
------------------
Corrupt nation holding a gun to the EU's head
--------------------
Festering anger, Nazi war crimes and the £60bn the Greeks believe the Germans owe them
--------------------

Tuesday 1 November 2011

Markets in freefall after Greece calls shock referendum on cuts which threatens to SINK Euro bailout

Daily Mail
#FTSE 100 falls 3.4 per cent after opening
#Germany's Dax falls by 6.2 per cent
#French CAC-40 falls 5.9 per cent
#Dax, Nikkei, Dow Jones and Nasdaq also tumble
#59 per cent of Greeks think deal is ‘negative’
#'No' vote could prompt country's exit from the Euro
#228-year-old US brokerage MF Global goes bankrupt due to euro bonds
#First Greek referendum since 1974 when monarchy was abolished
#Chinese warn hopes of 'red knight' riding to slay euro debt dragon are 'misplaced'
#Experts warn of second global recession and social unrest
#Comes as UK growth figures 'better than expected'

Saturday 29 October 2011

The EU and the euro: it was always going to come to this

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"We are not going to pull out, which would anyway be extraordinarily difficult now, because the way Britain is governed has become so inextricably enmeshed with “Europe”. Anyone who thinks we can “renegotiate” has no understanding of what this project is about, or its most sacred principle – that powers, once handed over, can never be given back. So we must stay in, dragged along by a process over which we have no control.

The one clear lesson of recent events, and the total insolubility of the crisis engulfing the euro, is that the project is slowly heading for very messy and prolonged disintegration. Everyone involved, it seems, is trapped, and the only way Britain will leave the EU is when it falls apart, around us and everyone else. Which is what it has, finally, begun to do."

Blair defends opening the door to mass migration and says it had a very positive impact on Britain

Daily Mail
"A defiant Mr Blair insisted his party’s policy on immigration was the right one. He said: 'It’s been a very positive thing and there is no way for a country like Britain to succeed in the future unless it is open to people of different colours, faiths and cultures.’ Under Labour, up to 5.5million people born outside the UK arrived as long-term migrants.Between 1997 and 2010, around 2.3million left the country, meaning the UK population increased by around 3.2million as a direct result of foreign migrants."
ED:Nobody voted for this

Thursday 27 October 2011

One TRILLION euro deal hammered out (with a 50% Greek debt 'haircut' for banks)... but will it be enough to calm the markets?

Daily Mail

"The Governor of the Bank of England, Sir Meryvn King, echoed that feeling by warning the deal would only give 'a year or two of breathing space' to sort out the crisis."

4,000 foreign criminals set free to fight deportation including murderers, rapists and child sex offenders

Daily Mail
"He revealed there were 3,775 criminals in May this year who had been released from immigration detention centres because there was ‘no prospect of them being deported in a reasonable time’. Of those, 3,259 had served sentences for low-level offences, another 429 for ‘more serious’ crimes, and 87 for the most serious offences – including murder, rape and paedophilia. Some are unable to be deported because it is thought ‘unsafe’ to send them back to their home countries, or because of difficulties in getting hold of a passport so they can be put on a plane. Last year, a total of 576 used the Human Rights Act to prevent them from being kicked out, the report found, with the vast majority citing Article 8, the controversial ‘right to a private and family life’.

Wednesday 26 October 2011

UK population will hit 70million by 2027 (and half of increase in next decade will be down to immigration)

Daily Mail

The country has had enough of deception. It's time to close the yawning gap between the ruling and the ruled

Daily Mail Comment
"The supreme irony of Monday’s debate is that it was called in answer to a mass public petition, in accordance with a pre-election Conservative pledge that was meant to prove the party’s determination to reconnect the political class with the people. In the event, the e-petition gimmick served only to highlight and deepen the yawning democratic deficit between the rulers and the ruled. ...So the Mail has a simple proposal: let there be a single-question referendum, asking the public if we wish to reclaim powers from Brussels, yes or no. True, it will not satisfy those who wish to withdraw altogether. But for them, better this than the nothing they will otherwise be offered.

As for the timing, let the referendum be called the moment a new treaty is drawn up. Or if it becomes clear that the new rules are to be introduced on the sly, without a treaty, then let it be held within 12 months from today. There can be no more lies, no more deceit, no more creeping federalism without consent. This time, those unequivocal manifesto promises must be honoured. Only then will our political class redeem the disgrace of Monday night — and begin to reconnect with the people they were elected to represent."

Tuesday 25 October 2011

The Hole in Europe’s Bucket

NYT,PAUL KRUGMAN
"It’s a vicious circle, with fears of default threatening to become a self-fulfilling prophecy. To save the euro, this threat must be contained. But how? The answer has to involve creating a fund that can, if necessary, lend Italy (and Spain, which is also under threat) enough money that it doesn’t need to borrow at those high rates. Such a fund probably wouldn’t have to be used, since its mere existence should put an end to the cycle of fear. But the potential for really large-scale lending, certainly more than a trillion euros’ worth, has to be there.

And here’s the problem: All the various proposals for creating such a fund ultimately require backing from major European governments, whose promises to investors must be credible for the plan to work. Yet Italy is one of those major governments; it can’t achieve a rescue by lending money to itself. And France, the euro area’s second-biggest economy, has been looking shaky lately, raising fears that creation of a large rescue fund, by in effect adding to French debt, could simply have the effect of adding France to the list of crisis countries. There’s a hole in the bucket, dear Liza, dear Liza. "

Irish prime minister 'ruled country from a bar stool' as Celtic Tiger turned into euro basket case (and left the British taxpayer with a £7.5bn bill)

Daily Mail
#Taoiseach Brian Cowen 'would drink all evening in Irish Parliament pub'
#Late Finance Minister hampered in attempts to prevent bail-out 'because he wasn't part of drinking circle'
#'Everybody thought that when he became Taoiseach he’d stop drinking, but he actually didn’t'

Wednesday 19 October 2011

Inflation: an undemocratic stealth tax

City Am,EDITOR’S LETTER
"Had the government passed a law in Parliament to take money from one group and give it to another – to grab cash from people’s bank accounts to help pay down their neighbours’ mortgages, overdrafts and credit card bills – there would have been outrage. Had the government decreed a partial default on the national debt (most of which is not indexed to inflation), the markets would have panicked. Yet because this process is happening on the sly, without discussion, and with the Bank of England telling us that this is merely a short-term blip, hardly anybody is batting an eyelid – even though, once again, the prudent are being mugged to bail out the imprudent. Inflation is not just taxation without legislation and undemocratic: it is also the stealthiest of all taxes. " (H/T Guido Fawkes)

Tuesday 18 October 2011

Obama: The first thousand days

Daily Mail
"On the home front the situation seems grim, the economy is stalled and people are very nervous. Here are some hard stats: The U.S. debt has increased by 4.2 TRILLION since Mr. Obama took office. The government spends over 4.2 billion dollars per day more than it takes in. Over $787 billion was spent on a shovel ready stimulus programme that, in the president’s own words, 'wasn’t so shovel ready after all.' Instead of creating or 'saving' 900,000-2.3 million jobs, 2.2 million jobs have been lost on his watch; According to a report by CBS News last month, unemployment stands around 8-9% even higher among African Americans; The U.S. Labor Department said unemployment rate among African-Americans was 16.7 percent in August, while the overall unemployment rate was 9.1 percent. Among black youth, the unemployment rate was 46.5 percent in August. Meanwhile the government payroll has increased by 140,000 jobs.Three million more Americans live in poverty and there have been 4 million bankruptcies. .......In a thousand days he has played a lot more golf than George W. Bush did in eight years. In a thousand days the economy is in more dire shape than after four years of Jimmy Carter. His foreign policy of apologising abroad to our enemies has weakened our presence on the world stage and ability to project power, liberty and democracy. We are actually respected less than we were under the alleged dummy and Texas cowboy, George W. Bush.

The billions of government funds wasted on crony-capitalistic deals to his campaign supporters, such as the 535 million loan guarantee to George Kaiser at Solyndra; the government throwing millions at a venture simply because of its 'green credentials' and not its balance sheet.But it is not the past one thousand days I worry about. What more damage can he wreak in the remaining 460 days, 19 hours, 32 minutes and 56 seconds until someone competent takes the oath of office in January 2013?"

Sunday 16 October 2011

Printing money like a drunken sailor

The Adam Smith Institute
"The other reason is that inflation is eating into what pay rises people are getting, leaving them generally worse off. And (Friedman again) you can put that down to monetary policy. Like anything else, creating too much of the stuff just makes it worthless, and the MPC has created too much of the stuff. If overseas investors come to the same conclusion and sterling becomes devalued even further, the prices of many essential imports like food and fuel will rise even more, and UK consumers will feel themselves even worse off.

The solution? Hayek this time: inflation must be stopped dead. It is corrosive, and it stops markets from working properly. And if you want to get out of a recession, you need your markets to work as well as you can possibly make them. On that front, high taxes and bad regulations are bad enough, but inflation is a disaster. Present policies may just make things worse, rather than better."

Occupy the Bank of England

Guido Fawkes
"The “Occupy the London Stock Exchange” and “Occupy Wall Street” crowd have got the wrong target. Living standards are being deliberately and systematically undermined by central bankers not stockbrokers. The London protestors should head over to the Bank of England and their friends in NYC should head for DC. Inflation at 5% is robbing rich and poor alike of our earning power.

In consistently predicting this inflationary mess Guido would happily claim sagacity, but it is pretty basic economics that if the supply of something rises, unless demand increases, the value of it goes down. If you print more money, you get inflation. Simples."

ED:Must Read

Saturday 15 October 2011

Lost in administration: Scandal over criminal immigrants hidden among 37,000 files of foreigners appealing to stay in Britain

Daily Mail
"Last year, 37,300 cases were launched by immigrants appealing to stay in Britain after the Home Office ruled they were not entitled to remain here. Of course, this figure accounts only for those tracked down by officials — leaving tens of thousands who have avoided detection free to stay. A significant number of those foreigners fighting to remain in Britain are small-time criminals, terrorists or fraudsters, although the vast majority originally simply slipped into Britain illegally or deliberately overstayed their visas."

Wednesday 12 October 2011

Obama Loses Big on Jobs Bill

Yahoo News
"Nothing quite illustrates the depth of Barack Obama's weakness in Washington better than the painfully public defeat the Senate handed him Tuesday by blocking his signature American Jobs Act. ......The defeat was a sharp rebuke for Obama that amounted to a vote of no confidence on the economic policies of recovery spending that he’s championed for years, namely his idea that flooding the economy with public money will jump-start the private sector. But even Obama’s fellow Democrats seem to have developed sufficient spending fatigue to put the brakes on new outlays, while the most moderate Democrats say the economy will never recover as long as the deficit continues to spiral out of control."

Monday 10 October 2011

'We must control how many people come to this country': Cameron announces major crackdown on immigrant numbers

Daily Mail
"David Cameron today announced a major overhaul of the UK's immigration rules as he said numbers had got out of control under Labour. He pledged to reduce the number of people coming into the country to 1980s levels - and said the 'door was left permanently open' under the last Government. Launching his crackdown, he said: 'We must control how many people come into the country'. He added: 'We have to be much better at finding illegal immigrants and getting them out'.

51% Don't Want Second Term For President Obama

IBD
"A majority of Americans now oppose giving President Obama a second term, reflecting the country's continued weak economic performance, according to the latest IBD/TIPP survey released Monday.

By 51%-41%, respondents in October picked "someone new deserves a chance" over Obama "deserves to be re-elected." Among independents, it was 54%-36%. Back in September, the readings were 50%-44% and 53%-38%, respectively.

Americans are frustrated over the continued sluggish economy, says Raghavan Mayur, president of TechnoMetrica Market Intelligence, which conducted the poll. As Vice President Joe Biden recently admitted, after nearly three years in power, the Obama administration owns the economy."

Saturday 8 October 2011

What could we do with £75 billion?

John Redwood
"How silly of me not to realise we could simply create £75 billion to sort out our problems. Now we are told we can, maybe we should ask what we should do with the new money? ......We could, for example, give every man, woman and child in the country £1250 each to spend as they like. They could use it to pay off the credit card debt, or meet the tax bills on their petrol. It would help with the Council Tax and the VAT. As the main problem over the last year has been the drop in consumer spending, this would offer a way of boosting it. Funny how the authorities never want the punters to have any of the new money. ......We are owed a proper explanation from the Bank of why they think printing money when inflation is already 5.2% is a good idea. Just telling us yet again that inflation will fall and that we are in the midst of the worst crisis ever is not a sufficient argument for actions that savers will fear."

Inflation: Printing Error

Guido Fawkes
"Those dangerous radicals at SAGA, the retirees organisation, are describing QE as a “Titanic Disaster“,

“QE2 will damage pensions, impoverish pensioners and ultimately risk another crash. Inflation depletes spending power. It does not create growth. This inflation has undermined confidence and caused consumers to retrench, which has actually weakened the economy. The authorities must take heed of these dangers before it’s too late.”

The Monetary Policy Committee is simply no longer even trying to contain inflation, the Federal Reserve in Washington and the Bank of England in London are, in concert with their respective treasuries, deliberately letting inflation go to solve the government debt crisis on the backs of pensioners and prudent savers. ......In government and at the Chancellor’s behest we are seeing the printing of money on a scale never seen before, inflation is uncontrolled, spending is rising, debt is being encouraged to rise. The Chancellor plans to facilitate more private borrowing from the Treasury by poor corporate credit risks and the Bank of England now holds on its books a third of all the government debt outstanding with no credible plan to unwind the hundreds of billions in QE driven government gilt purchases. Sound money? What a joke."

Friday 7 October 2011

People too lazy to register being denied the vote? Why, it's simply outrageous!

Telegraph
"All the Government is asking is that citizens go to the trouble of filling in a piece of paper. Is that really too much to ask? A citizen has obligations towards his country, something I would have thought all those citizenship classes would have impressed on people. If he or she cannot even be bothered to carry out such a meagre obligation, should he expect to vote?

Harriet Harman has pointed out that the proposal is "going to push people off the electoral register – deny them their vote, deny them their voice. The numbers are going to be huge.”

But no one is denying anyone’s right to vote – they are only asking the very minimum of civic participation.

Yes, Labour will lose out, but if they rely on people who have no civic sense of responsibility, or who cannot understand English, or who don’t exist, then one has to question their mandate. Besides which, it’s strange that the party of women’s liberation is so keen for heads of households, the vast majority men, to fill in these forms – I wonder why that is?"

QE is a disaster

Douglas Carswell
"Yesterday the Bank of England announced plans to "inject £75 billion into the economy".

Today the sort of "experts" who tanked the banks and landed us in this mess speak of the need for a further £500 billion. Indeed, many of the bankers cheering on this next round of QE stand to gain directly from it.This is a disaster. People will look back at this approach one day and wonder how on earth it was ever seen as a good idea.Printing more money will not create wealth.It will erode savings, punish those who do the right thing and seriously harm the productive sectors of the economy. It will disincentive savings - and not allow the increase in savings ratios needed to build up real credit.The bill for printing this extra £75 billion will be paid by my constituents through higher shopping bills, the diminished purchasing power of their pensions, and reduced savings. So much of this strategy - printing money, low interest rates, rationing credit - is a continuation of the kind of Treasury policy we had under Alistair Darling. We need a different approach.

FACT CHECK: Obama claims miss some evidence

Yahoo News /AP
"WASHINGTON (AP) — Are President Barack Obama's ideas for job creation really bipartisan as he claims? Not when the means for paying for them are put in the equation. The president dodged various facts and and left some evidence in the dust in his latest challenge to Republicans to get behind his jobs program or offer a real alternative. A look at some of the claims in his fast-paced news conference and how they compare with the facts:......"

Confidence in UK banking system rocked as agency downgrades 12 bank and building society credit ratings

Daily Mail
Decision will make it harder for banks to borrow and loan
Doubts over Government support behind move
Fears state-controlled RBS requires new bailout
Osborne says Government has 'credible plan' to weather 'growing global debt storm'

A triple blow to squeezed middle: As Bank chief warns of worst-ever crisis, he pumps £75bn into economy

Daily Mail
Move seen as last-ditch bid to stave off new recession
Interest rates held at record low of 0.5%
Bank considered shock drop in interest rates to 0.25%
Household expenditure falls rapidly

So is this Plan B? £75billion round of money printing is right weapon to shore up our economy, says Osborne

Daily Mail
"The Bank said the latest bout of money printing will take four months to complete but added that ‘the scale of the programme will be kept under review’ – a hint that it may do even more next year. It is thought that as much as £300billion could be printed this time around – taking the total to an eventual £500billion.

Conservative MEP Daniel Hannan said: ‘Nothing new will be manufactured, invented or developed as the result of this monetary splurge, no services offered, no businesses founded. ‘Rather, the money already in circulation – the money in your bank account, in your purse, under your mattress – will be worth less.

Thursday 6 October 2011

Bank of England surprises with stimulus

Herald Sun (Australia)
"THE Bank of England has surprised markets by announcing that it will spend another $120 billion in an attempt to stimulate a struggling British economy, moving a month earlier than many in the markets expected. .......The pound slumped following the statement. Soon after, it was trading 1.1 per cent lower at $US1.5293."

Mervyn King on quantitative easing: why this time will be different

Telegraph: Video
"The Governor of the Bank of England says the challenge facing the world economy is greater now than during the credit crunch."

ED: So we are going to devalue the pound even more and rob any savers?

Bank of England Launch Another £75bn QE Splurge

Guido Fawkes
"Though interest rates stay at 0.5%, the Bank of England is to print further £1,000 of unsound money for every man woman and child in Britain. On top of the £200bn they have already thrown up into the wind, the Quantitative Easing total is now £4,500 each."

Sunday 2 October 2011

Freedom of speech is dead in Australia

Telegraph,James Delingpole
"For my money probably the best political blogger in the world is Australia's Andrew Bolt. He was one of the first journalists onto Climategate (he got there before me) and his takedown earlier this year on his radio show of an EU Climate Commissioner spouting nonsense was magisterial. But he's by no means a single issue commentator: he has strength in depth. His war, like mine, is against those who would constrain our liberty by imposing on us more tax, more regulation, more control. He's firm but fair: one of the good guys.

This is why we should all worry greatly about the latest bizarre ruling from the Australian federal court, which has found Bolt in breach of the Racial Discrimination Act."

Saturday 1 October 2011

The EU dream has turned into a nightmare

Christopher Booker,Telegraph
"The truth about the euro project is that it was always based on a colossal act of make-believe, launched in defiance of all economic and political reality. And as history and storytelling have shown us again and again, when human beings, individually or collectively, attempt to act out a fantasy, there is a very clear and identifiable pattern to what follows. "

Monday 26 September 2011

FTSE slides 2% as traders respond to £2.6 trillion Eurozone bailout plan to allow Greece to default on debts

Daily Mail


"The expected default by Greece on its £305billion of sovereign debt will be a huge blow to the credibility of the Eurozone and send shockwaves through the banking systems of Germany, France and Italy."

Sunday 25 September 2011

Labour 'covered up' pre-election reports revealing Eastern European immigrants were more likely to claim benefits

Daily Mail
"Among the potentially damaging claims to be hushed up, the documents stated that:

#27 per cent of immigrants coming to Britain from the two countries had low education levels and were more likely to claim unemployment benefits
#15 per cent coming from those countries were already out-of-work in their homeland;
#Those coming from all countries to Britain are more likely to end up unemployed than the existing population;
#They were also less likely to engage and contribute in 'civic life'.

The documents, commissioned by the Department for Communities and Local Government (CLG), said that despite the implementation of a 'cap' on numbers, the migration rate into Britain from Romania and Bulgaria increased significantly after the countries joined the EU in 2007."

Saturday 24 September 2011

Plan B: Flood the markets

Telegraph
"While Osborne kept a stiff upper lip in Washington, the mood back home was clearly wavering. Wednesday had marked the biggest shift in the Bank of England’s thinking since it paused quantitative easing (QE) in January 2010. By signalling in the minutes of the September meeting of the Bank’s Monetary Policy Committee that a return to QE is imminent, it acknowledged that a second UK recession is now a real possibility.

“Events are moving fast, and we believe the combination of the deteriorating economic outlook plus Bank comments are setting the stage for a big expansion of QE in the next month or two,” said Michael Saunders, economist at Citigroup.

Essentially the MPC’s message was that unprecedented loose UK monetary policy – historically low interest rates of 0.5pc and the £200bn of QE – was no longer enough to see off the economic storm that is gathering pace in the eurozone and the US, as well as at home."

Tuesday 20 September 2011

Greece Nears the Precipice, Raising Fear

NYT
"But some economists believe default may be inevitable — and that it may actually be better for Greece and, despite a short-term shock to the system, perhaps eventually for Europe as well. They are beginning to wonder whether the consequences of a default or a more radical debt restructuring, dire as they may be, would be no worse for Greece than the miserable path it is currently on.

A default would relieve Greece of paying off a mountain of debt that it cannot afford, no matter how much it continues to cut government spending, which already has caused its economy to shrink. ....Total Greek public debt is about 370 billion euros, or $500 billion. By comparison, Argentina’s debt was $82 billion when it defaulted in 2001; when Russia defaulted, in 1998, its debt was $79 billion. "

Saturday 17 September 2011

The Euro Titanic is sinking but there's no lifeboat for Britain

Telegraph
"No one expressed this more vividly last week than Max Hastings, in a two-page “recantation”, headed “Sorry, I was wrong”. Having always been a fervent “pro-European”, he proclaimed, he now saw the EU as “a disaster which is blighting every aspect of British life”. The euro folly, crippling regulations, uncontrolled immigration – he chucked everything in to show how the EU has become a monster threatening catastrophe “unless its terms and powers are drastically recast”. And yet (as I recall from the days when I worked for him, and he could scarcely conceal his contempt for my criticisms of the EU), Sir Max has never grasped the real nature of this mighty project or the vision behind it, which is finally colliding with reality."

Friday 16 September 2011

Welcome to Dale Farm- twinned with Darfur

Daily Mail
"The ‘travellers’ have even hoisted a UN flag over their camp. A Jolly Roger would be more appropriate, given their cavalier attitude to the laws of the land.

How did they ever get themselves designated as an oppressed racial minority? They’re not even proper gypsies, they’re Irish tinkers. As for calling themselves ‘travellers’, unlike show-folk they never seem to travel anywhere — except back to Ireland for high days and holidays. They say they have nowhere else to go, yet many of them own property in Ireland. One of the Dale Farm squatters is building a development of luxury homes, costing up to £400,000 each, back in the Irish town of Rathkeale. Basildon Council was so busy ‘abusing’ their yuman rites, it even paid them housing benefits direct to a landlord in Ireland."

Wednesday 14 September 2011

UN team accuses council of 'violating international law' by evicting travellers on extraordinary visit to Dale Farm (and even compared it to China and Zimbabwe)

Daily Mail
"Prof Cabannes' accusation comes on the day when it was revealed that a Dale Farm traveller controls a large development in Ireland.

Planning records show that Michael Quilligan, the son of a traveller worth £24million, is the mastermind behind a multi-million-pound development in the town of Rathkeale, the spiritual home of travellers in the west of Ireland.The large detached and semi-detached houses - worth up to £400,000 - are close to completion and are near to the local equivalent of millionaires' row, where other substantial gated properties can be found.Mr Quilligan is thought to have sold some of the properties to other travellers.It is unclear whether Dale Farm residents are among the buyers but one local report yesterday claimed that a dozen of the families facing eviction have bought homes in Rathkeale. ....It also emerged yesterday that Basildon Borough Council had paid housing benefits for some of the Dale Farm travellers directly to a landlord based in Rathkeale.

John Flynn, 55, bought the former scrapyard at Dale Farm for £120,000 ten years ago and owns about five caravan pitches on the site.The council admitted it paid money directly to Mr Flynn at an address in Rathkeale to cover the rent of his tenants, who were allowed to claim housing benefits, despite living on an illegal site.Many of the homes in Rathkeale remain boarded up apart from a few months a year and at Christmas when a cavalcade of UK-registered Range Rovers, Mercedes, BMWs and Porsches roll into the town, pulling caravans behind them."

Monday 12 September 2011

Traveller 'slaves': Vanessa Redgrave can surely explain…

Telegraph
"Let's get one thing absolutely clear about the "slaves" who have been discovered by police imprisoned at a traveller's site in Bedfordshire: we must not to be quick to judge.

Which of us can say, hand on heart, that we have not at some time in our lives felt the urge to kidnap one or two stray migrant workers or alcoholics, shave their heads, steal their mobile phones, keep them in a shed or a dog kennel at the bottom of our gardens and force them to perform menial tasks for starvation rations and no money, beating them if they fail to measure up or try to escape?

And even those of us who haven't actually acted on this urge ought surely to be aware that with certain "communities" special exceptions must be made. ....Indeed, detectives believe that some of the slaves may have been held captive for as long as 15 years.

Fair makes you proud to be British, doesn't it? What a marvellously tolerant nation we have become!"

Friday 9 September 2011

Obama's $450bn employment package to save ONE job: his! Struggling President unveils plan to cut tax for middle class but who pays?

Daily Mail
"Facing a barrage of criticism over his handling of the economy, President Obama unveiled a massive $450bn plan to combat the country's unemployment crisis - and try and save his own job. In a rare address to a joint session of US Congress at what is being seen as the lowest point in his presidency, Mr Obama tried to inject fresh confidence that he can still turn the dire jobs outlook around. Unusually impassioned, the president demanded a truce in the political bickering that could still sabotage his much-vaunted American Jobs Act. ......In one striking sign of discontent, nearly 80 percent of people think the country is headed in the wrong direction. That's about the same level of pessimism as when Mr Obama took office. It reflects both persistently high unemployment and disgust with Washington infighting. No incumbent president in recent history has won re-election with the unemployment rate anywhere near the current 9.1 percent."

Jumping the Shark....

The criminal thing about Cowell's show? It's sheer drivel
"Cowell was furious, and wanted Hageman not to be given the £1 million he had rightly won. Yet ITV says there is nothing it can do. Hageman had been allowed on Red Or Black despite the fact that producers knew he had a criminal record. He had claimed that he attacked a man, whereas in reality he was jailed for assaulting Amy McLean. As he was allowed onto the show without proper checks, he was allowed to keep his winnings. Beating up a woman is unacceptable, but beating up a man is OK? What a joke."

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Unlucky: ITV is left counting the cost of Red Or Black after more viewers tune into Watchdog

Thursday 8 September 2011

The 9/11 Tapes: The Story in the Air

NYT
"A selection of audio recordings from the Federal Aviation Administration (F.A.A.), North American Aerospace Defense Command (Norad) and American Airlines from the morning of Sept. 11, 2001. The recordings, some of which have been published previously, are being released in a multimedia report originally intended to be part of the Sept. 11 Commission’s 2004 report."

Labour Party investigates report on Sir Stuart Bell

Evening Gazette
"The announcement follows Tuesday’s report in the Gazette which outlined our three-month long investigation in which we made a total of 100 calls to Sir Stuart’s Westminster and Middlesbrough telephone numbers. Nobody picked up the phone and all calls rang out to an answer machine ....Our calls to Sir Stuart were all made during weekday office hours before Parliament’s summer recess. .....He added: “I have not done an open surgery for years and meet people by appointment and go to their homes.

I have been MP for 28 years, I have lived in Middlesbrough for 30 years in November, I spend four days a week there and have never had a single complaint from a constituent about this".

ED: And Paris then ?

Is it a rule that you have to be Anglo-Saxon to be a racist?

Andrew Bolt, Herald Sun (Australia)
"A TRIBUNAL has ruled a Macedonian newspaper that published an article denigrating Greeks and referring to them as "freaks of nature" and "deranged bastardly monsters" did not incite racial hatred. "

ED: 'Is it because I'm white?'

Bell Doesn’t Ring True

Guido Fawkes
"It has long been rumoured that Bell keeps a flat in Paris where he used to work as a lawyer. It is said that on Friday, or even Thursday afternoons, instead of getting the train north to his constituency he catches the Eurostar east to Paris for the weekend. Far away from the tiresome demands of his constituents. He admits to having written four novels and numerous short stories in Paris, where does a supposedly busy and dutiful MP find the time? "

What has he been doing? Labour MP hasn't held a surgery for 14 years... but has still claimed £83,000 'staff costs'

Daily Mail
"A senior Labour MP was under fire last night after admitting he has not held a surgery for constituents for 14 years. Sir Stuart Bell, veteran MP for Middlesbrough, was under pressure from the Labour hierarchy to explain himself following claims that constituents cannot contact him. Most MPs hold local surgeries several times a month for constituents to discuss their problems. Sir Stuart, 73, admits he has not held one since 1997 and unlike most MPs he also has no office in his constituency. Sir Stuart, whose wife Margaret is paid £35,000 a year as his office manager, claims he is willing to meet constituents ‘by appointment’ if they contact his Westminster office. But his local newspaper, the Middlesbrough Gazette, reported this week that it had called his office more than 100 times this summer without reply."

Wednesday 7 September 2011

The incredible shrinking Obama

Yahoo News/POLITICO
“Obama is still suffering from the Speech Illusion,” New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd wrote last weekend. “The idea that he can come down from the mountain, read from a Teleprompter, cast a magic spell with his words and climb back up the mountain, while we scurry around and do what he proclaimed.”

Tuesday 6 September 2011

Blair’s torture legacy will cost Britain dear

Daily Mail
"The sickeningly cosy relationship between the Tony Blair government and the murderous Gaddafi regime has long been a stain on Britain’s conscience. As this paper has consistently argued, the former Prime Minister was desperate for oil contracts and, in order to secure them, abandoned any remaining claim to be running an ‘ethical foreign policy’. But, even given all we already know about the Machiavellian antics of this most slippery politician, the documents being unearthed in the ransacked offices of Gaddafi’s former torturer-in-chief, Musa Kusa, are deeply shocking."
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So much for Mr Blair's 'ethical' foreign policy

As Labour's toadying to Gaddafi's torturers is revealed... My God, the shame of Britain cosying up to these monsters

Daily Mail
"Even before the fall of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi’s hateful regime, it was clear the last Labour Government had co-operated with the monster in all kinds of discreditable ways. It had sold him lots of weapons. It had welcomed, and almost certainly connived in, the Scottish Government’s early release of Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi, convicted of the 1988 Lockerbie bombing which caused the deaths of 270 people, 43 of them British. But only now is the true nature of Britain’s shamingly close relationship with Gaddafi becoming clear, as a result of documents uncovered in Tripoli. Their authenticity has not been officially confirmed, and until that happens they should be treated with some caution. If, as seems extremely likely, they turn out to be genuine, we will have proof of a scandal of barely credible proportions."

Sunday 4 September 2011

Devastating secret files reveal Labour lies over Gaddafi: Dictator warned of holy war if Lockerbie bomber Megrahi died in Scotland

Daily Mail
*Devastating stash of documents left in British Ambassador's residence
*Britain gave Libyan secret police questions to interrogate dissidents
*We even informed Gaddafi how Cobra works and MI6 budget.....
The notes show how:

Tony Blair helped Colonel Gaddafi’s playboy son Saif with his ‘dodgy’ PhD thesis while he was Prime Minister.
British Special Forces were offered to train the Khamis Brigade, Gaddafi’s most vicious military unit.
MI6 was apparently willing to trace phone numbers for Libyan intelligence.
Gordon Brown wrote warmly to Gaddafi in 2007 expressing the hope that the dictator would be able to meet Prince Andrew when he visited Tripoli.
MI6’s budget (£150 million in 2002) was readily disclosed to Libyan officials, along with details of how Britain’s Downing Street emergency committee Cobra operates.
Britain’s intelligence services forged close links with Gaddafi’s brutal security units.







Saturday 3 September 2011

London is no longer an English city and that's how it got the Olympics, says John Cleese

Daily Mail
"The comic was asked what he thought about British culture and the recent London riots during an interview on 7.30, a television show in Australia, where he is currently on a stand-up tour.

He replied: 'I'm not sure what's going on in Britain. Or, let me say this – I don't know what's going on in London, because London is no longer an English city.

'That's how we got the Olympics.

'They said we were the most cosmopolitan city on Earth. But it doesn't feel English.

Tuesday 30 August 2011

German business chief calls for country to quit euro and join new currency with Austria, Holland and Finland

Daily Mail
"A top German business leader today called for his country to quit the euro and join richer northern neighbours in a currency block instead. Hans-Olaf Henkel, the well-respected former head of the country’s main business federation, said his earlier support for the euro was ‘the biggest professional mistake I ever made’.He called on Germany, Austria, Finland and the Netherlands to quit the euro – ditching struggling economies such as Greece, Spain, Portugal and Italy - and set up a new currency of their own."


Column - How Gillard tried to kill a story

Andrew Bolt,Herald Sun (Australia)
"The Prime Minister overstepped the line when she called the chairman and CEO of News Limited, John Hartigan. Calls that look like an attempt at censorship have many sinister overtones, with threats of inquiries and forced sales left hanging in the air. And I ask her: What are you so afraid of? What else would you stoop to in order to cling to power? "