First up a little pointer on tax for the BBC and thick MP's who can't understand the system.VAT is a turnover tax, not a sales tax.
The main point is that business does not have to pass the cut on to their buyers.
Labour is hoping that they will, it is an empty political gesture, a bit of political fluff at a time when the very thing this government needs.
It will give businesses a tiny margin to help stave off the effects of recession.
Sadly the opportunity for across the board tax cuts was missed, a reduction of the 100+ stealth taxes as well as reduction in government waste and/or reduction in size of government as a whole on both local and national level; has like our tax money been pissed away up the wall.
New Labour - "I want them dead. I want their familys dead. I want their houses burnt to the ground. I want to go there in the middle of the night and piss on the ashes."
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2 people have spoken:
These bastards use every opertunity to screw you. This is as bad if not worse than the economy, bet you never saw this before. I would rather be poor and have my rights rather than be rich without my rights.
Tuesday, November 25, 2008
Ministers to be given powers putting them above the law - the buried bad news?
at 11/25/2008 12:01:00 PM
Would anyone be surprised if whilst we had our head fixated on the Chancellor's mini-budget the Government would slip out some other announcements in the hope that no one would notice. I believe the phrase we have come to know this as is "burying bad news". Given the circumstances of the pre-Budget report, there was lots of bad news under which to bury some more right?
It seems that the unbeliavble news that was buried yestedray can be found here. It is a statement by Jack Straw on data protection and information security. Initially it all sounds very tough. There are lots of things about the importance of securing the data they hold on us, as well as stuff about hefty fines to be imposed when there are breaches. However, it's this bit on the end that is worrying and frankly quite disturbing.
In addition, to reinforce the framework within which we can safely share data and deliver benefits for the public, we propose to:
place a statutory duty on the ICO to publish a data sharing code of practice in order to provide practical guidance on how to share personal data in accordance with the requirements of the Data Protection Act and to promote good practice in the sharing of personal data; and
confer a power upon the Secretary of State to permit or require the sharing of personal information between particular specified persons, where a robust case for doing so exists.
Did you spot that? They're planning to introduce rules for how and when information can be shared (this is being done through one of those "consultations" with the public). Then, and this is the kicker, they plan to introduce an arbitrary power given to the Secertary of State which allows him or her to simply override the code of practice and the Data Protection Act by diktat.
Here's the thing though, anyone defending this proposal will say "there must be a "robust case for doing so" so there is a safeguard". However, and let's get this straight for a moment. They want to share sensitive data. In order to do that they must present a robust case. So... who is that robust case presented to and will it be public? Unlikely because guess what, in presenting a "robust case" there is going to be protected data involved.
What this ministerial statement effectively means is that the Secretary of State will be able to override the Data Protection Act, order the sharing of data with whoever he or she chooses, upon which the grounds for it will be restricted from public scrutiny because of... errr... the Data Protection Act.
Welcome to the secret state where ministers make themselves above the law.
Note: This little power thrown on at the end is given no mention in reporting in The Times or the Guardian. Why? Nor is any mention made that Straw said the powers were to "simplify the data protection framework and remove any unnecessary obstacles to data sharing". So much for strengthening data protection in Government!
http://dizzythinks.net/2008/11/ministers-to-be-given-powers-putting.html
Who the fuck is fucking you?
What can we expect from what is a Marxist Government?
A Chancellor of Britain a sworn Marxist!
When this author read Darling’s comments, I found it difficult to understand why someone would even join the Labour Party in 1977.
I wrote that “This was a year during which Labour was in coalition with the Liberals and imposing IMF-dictated austerity measures that met with fierce resistance from the working class, and ended with the 1979 ‘Winter of Discontent’ and the election of the Conservatives.” (See “Alistair Darling and the implosion of the Labour government”)
Millions of working people were bitterly angry towards the Labour government and had turned against it. And within the party, there was a move by Labour’s left wing against its right wing that saw the election of Michael Foot as leader, and the adoption of the Alternative Economic Strategy as party policy. Over the next years there was a period of ideological and political warfare in the party that eventually proved to be a last gasp for social democratic reformism and ended with the triumph of the right wing. I thought, how could Darling not be involved in this?
As it turns out, Darling was intimately involved. Like so many others, he is in fact someone who has traversed the political spectrum from left to right to end up as a loyal supporter of Tony Blair and Gordon Brown.
According to informed sources, his early years were not spent as the apolitical young man he professed, but as a member of the International Marxist Group, then the British section of the United Secretariat of the Fourth International. He must also presumably have stood in the Students Union as an IMG member and joined the Labour Party in 1977 while either still a member or under the IMG’s political influence. Certainly in the early 1980s he was still on the left of the Labour Party.
The satirical magazine Private Eye was almost alone in responding to Darling’s dissembling, by drawing attention to a March 10 column in the Daily Record by the former Labour MP and now leader of Respect Renewal, George Galloway.
Galloway, who is sympathetic to the Stalinist Communist Party of Britain, has no love lost for any of the various middle class radical groups which he always refers to as “Trots,” even though many work with him politically. Neither has he forgotten how he was forced out of the Labour Party by Blair and Brown. Therefore he was not averse—and clearly took some pleasure in—trying to cause Darling some political embarrassment when he recounted his first meeting with Darling.
“When I first met him 35 years ago,” Galloway states, “Darling was pressing Trotskyite tracts on bewildered railwaymen at Waverley Station in Edinburgh. He was a supporter of the International Marxist Group, whose publication was entitled the Black Dwarf.
“Later, in preparation for his current role he became the treasurer of what was always termed the rebel Lothian Regional Council.”
Galloway continues, “Red Ally and his friends around the Black Dwarf were for a time a colourful part of the Scottish left. The late Ron Brown, Red Ronnie as he was known, was Alistair’s bosom buddy. He was thrown out of Parliament for placing a placard saying hands off Lothian Region on Mrs Thatcher’s despatch box while she was addressing the House. And Darling loved it at the time.”
Galloway also states how “The former Scottish trade union leader Bill Speirs and I were dispatched by the Scottish Labour Party to try and talk Alistair Darling down from the ledge of this kamikaze strategy…”
Clearly, in the long-run at least, Galloway and Speirs must have been persuasive as to the merits of collaboration rather than confrontation with Labour’s leadership.
Naturally the Guardian would also have been well aware of Darling’s past, but chose not to raise it and instead allowed him to present himself as a somewhat pragmatic liberal. Its only acknowledgement of its “error” came the following week in the form of an aside in the blog of political editor Michael White in which he stated that “Alistair Darling doesn’t do red meat politics, though—as Private Eye pointed out this week—he did have a Trot phase in his political youth as a turbulent member of Lothian regional council, defying Margaret Thatcher’s calls to cap the rates.”
Aside from this brief passage, and a side-swipe from arch Tory Peter Hitchens in the Daily Mail, the story then died the proverbial death.
This is extraordinary. If what is said about Darling is true, we have someone who was once a member of a supposedly Marxist and even Trotskyist group who has held five ministerial posts and is today Chancellor of the Exchequer, the second most powerful position in British political life. Yet not only is this not considered as an obstacle to holding such high office, it is not even mentioned by anyone in the media—other than a few disgruntled political mavericks like Galloway.
Such silence in the media can only be explained by the fact that no one within ruling circles wants to politically embarrass Darling, because he is such a key figure in government. It must also be surmised that the security services, who will have vetted Darling long ago, must have determined that no issue should be made of his youthful excesses. It is, at the same time, an indication of how the IMG itself was viewed by the security services.
This shit is really really doing my fucking head in.
http://www.ukwatch.net/article/alistair_darling_international_marxist
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