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.