0.5% Interest rate set by the Bank of England and kept at a record low for over 2 and a half years because of the financial crisis.
LIAM FOX and chum Adam Werritty may have lived it large at Trader Vic’s in Dubai, but back in the UK a generous arms industry has been ensuring other Ministry of Defence personnel don’t go hungry or thirsty, according to the MoD hospitality register published under David Cameron’s “open government” agenda.The register’s details are skimpy and not terribly up to date, but the latest releases, running from May 2010 to March 2011, show that at a time when the department has been trying to keep down weapons costs, the arms industry and its lobbyists have been busy making reservations.
As Benjamin Franklin put it, "There are three Things extremely hard, Steel, a Diamond, and to know one's self."
Prince Charles has been offered a veto over 12 government bills since 2005
Campaign group launches legal action after leaked documents reveal investment bankers' secret deal with HMRC
The first steps have been taken in an innovative legal action by campaigners to try to recoup £10m in tax from Goldman Sachs. It follows the leaking of internal tax documents to the Guardian revealing that the US investment bankers avoided interest payments thanks to a secret deal with the head of HM Revenue & Customs.
The campaigning group UK Uncut, which a year ago occupied Vodafone offices in protest at a similar alleged "sweetheart" tax deal by the mobile phone company, want the Goldman deal quashed. HMRC's top official, Dave Hartnett, has admitted to a parliamentary committee that the tax concession was a "mistake".
The London law firm Leigh Day & Co has taken the formal first steps to mount a legal challenge to HMRC over the Goldman Sachs deal. UK Uncut supporters claim it was contrary to HMRC's own policies and therefore unlawful.
The secret settlement that was reached between HMRC and Goldman Sachs in December 2010 saved up to £10m in interest on unpaid national insurance charges. Goldman Sachs had been trying to operate an ultimately unsuccessful avoidance scheme by paying huge bankers' bonuses offshore into so-called employee benefit trusts.
The legal action will put further pressure on Hartnett, permanent secretary for tax, following the leaking of documents to the Guardian and Private Eye detailing how Hartnett "shook hands" on the deal.
Before the internal memos were leaked, Hartnett had exasperated MPs on the Treasury and public accounts committees by refusing to release information on secret deals made with giant transnational corporations.
After the leaking led to him being cross-questioned by MPs, Hartnett said he had arranged for the global head of tax for Goldman Sachs to fly in from New York for a London meeting he presided over, to repair what he said was a bad relationship between Goldman Sachs and the UK tax authorities.
Under judicial review proceedings, UK Uncut's lawyers will eventually be able to demand disclosure of all internal documents regarding the process by which the agreement was reached to waive the interest Goldman Sachs owed.
Jesse Norman, a Tory member of the Treasury committee, said Hartnett should resign after telling parliament that he did not deal with Goldman Sachs's tax affairs, which turned out to be untrue. Hartnett said that when he said he did not deal with Goldman Sachs he meant that he did not deal with its tax affairs every day.
Murray Worthy from UK Uncut Legal Action said: "The government's top taxman appears to have secretly agreed to let a global investment bank off millions in tax, while ordinary people are paying for the massive £850bn bank bailout with their jobs, welfare payments, pensions and public services." He said most people would see this as "incredibly unfair".
Richard Stein from Leigh Day & Co said: "If this was an error by a junior official then that is fine and it can be rectified through quashing this settlement. It must not be swept under the carpet or buried within oak-panelled rooms. It is money which should be contributing to all aspects of the country."
The Guardian, Friday 28th October 2011
THEIR average salary hits £2.7mFat cat bosses at Britain’s top 100 companies have awarded themselves pay rises of 49 per cent in the last year.
As households suffer the biggest squeeze on incomes since the 1920s, a study showed executives can now expect to earn £2.7million on average.
That is 113 times the national average of £24,000 for a worker in the private sector, where salaries have risen just 3 per cent in the last year. The extravagant pay packages were enjoyed by every member of the boardroom, from the chief executive down to far less high-profile roles.
In fact, chief executives and finance directors – usually considered the number two at a firm – did not do as well as more junior staff. The average chief executive saw their total payout increase by 43.5 per cent to £3,855,172, while the rise for a finance director was up 34.1 per cent to £2,001,515.
Other directors enjoyed the largest rise, as they took home 66.5 per cent more in pay and perks, to the tune of £2,260,033 on average. The bonus element of the average executive pay packet increased by 23 per cent, from £737,624 in 2010 to £906,044.
Former Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman Lord Oakeshott said: ‘These greedy bosses sit on each others’ remuneration committees and wave through each others’ offensive pay rises.
An average rise of 49 per cent includes vast rewards for failure while employees, shareholders and customers suffer.
All in this together? Don't make us laugh!
Researchers have found that 147 companies form a 'super entity' controlling 40 percent of the wealth of a much larger group.
Liam Fox tiptoes round the notion that he did anything wrongSome resignation speeches change history: Geoffrey Howe with his broken cricket bats, for example. Some create an ineradicable image in the public mind, such as Norman Lamont's revenge on John Major's government: "They are in office but not in power." Some are little better than self-justifying whinges: Ron Davies after his ill-advised walk on Clapham Common.
And then there is Liam Fox, who spoke to the Commons on Wednesday. What a farrago of self-regarding, self-congratulatory self-exculpation it was! He even contrived to tiptoe round the notion that he had done anything wrong. "The ministerial code has been found to be breached," he said, as if it were like a hurricane battering a levee, a force of nature for which nobody is to blame.
And why had he come under attack? Because for more than a year, he had bent the rules, constantly and persistently, in the face of warnings from his most senior civil servants? Hardly. His fall was, in part, the result of machinations by unnamed enemies. It was the result of "personal vindictiveness and even hatred. That should worry all of us."
Time and again he implied he was the victim. But all had not been lost. There had been a tidal wave of support and encouragement from everyone: fellow MPs and cabinet members, constituents, family and friends, and most of all from his wife, who had offered "grace, dignity and unstinting support".
You would imagine that he had, through no fault of his own, contracted a life-threatening illness, his fear and pain swept aside by the kindness of everyone around him. "I may have done wrong, or possibly not," he was saying. "That doesn't matter because everybody loves me."
He rose to cheers from Tory backbenchers. They accept a myth that he was one of the finest of all defence secretaries. He certainly gave us an aircraft carrier without aircraft, and arranged for armed forces members to be sacked while at war.
He began with what sounded like faux modesty. He had been in Libya where he met a man who showed him photos of his dead children. "A few days later I resigned. One was an unbearable human tragedy, the other a deep personal disappointment." So his own peccadillo was as nothing within the greater realm of human unhappiness.
"I accept that it was a mistake to allow distinctions to be blurred between my professional responsibilities and my personal loyalty to a friend." But that too didn't matter, because he had been cleared of the serious charges against him. The cabinet secretary's report cleared him of receiving money or endangering classified material. That had been implied. It was "deeply hurtful". But he accepted it was not only substance that mattered but perception, which is why he resigned. In other words, I didn't do wrong, but people may have got hold of the idea – heaven knows how – that I did.
Then we were on to the media, the real enemy. "Every bit of information, no matter how irrelevant or immaterial, is sensationalised, where opinions and even accusations are treated as fact." It was also unacceptable that family and friends were "hounded and intimidated", including elderly relatives and children. He did not say who these were, though it didn't matter, since a murmur of approval rose from around him.
Such is the loathing politicians feel for the press (except reporters they like) that anyone can now blame their behaviour not upon themselves, but on the media for exposing them.
He sat down thanking the voters of North Somerset for giving him "the opportunity to serve," an echo of John Smith's speech the night before he died. But then John Smith was never accused of covert and shabby behaviour.
Simon Hoggart, The Guardian 19th October 2011
The claim
“There are half a million more private sector jobs compared with the time of the last election”
David Cameron, Prime Minister’s Questions, 19 October 2011
Cathy Newman checks it out
It’s very strange. Most politicians reckon that once bitten by FactCheck, twice shy. Not so the PM. We’ve caught him out on his boast on private sector jobs before but today he was at it again.
He claimed half a million more private sector jobs were created since the election. He’s wrong, and here’s why.
The Office for National Statistics only produces figures on a quarterly basis. And the election fell in May, bang in the middle of the second quarter (April-June 2010).
The latest set of ONS stats show that in the year to the end of June, only 264,000 private sector jobs were created.
So to make his sums add up, David Cameron would need to prove that 236,000 more jobs were landed by people in May and June.
Provisional monthly figures unearthed by FactCheck however show that although an extra 68,000 jobs were added in May, that increase was totally wiped out by the loss of 89,000 jobs in June. And many more jobs – 129,000 – were created in April , while Labour was still in power.
Number 10 told FactCheck that it was “standard procedure” to quote the nearest set of quarterly statistics to the general election.
Cathy Newman’s verdict
Since FactCheck first pointed out David Cameron had slipped up on private sector job figures, he’s repeated the claim at least three more times.
Following our blog last month, the Labour leader Ed Miliband wrote to him demanding he return to the Commons to correct himself.
He’s so far declined, and today he compounded the error. Why does any of this matter?
Well, the coalition government has long claimed that private sector jobs growth would “more than offset” the number of public sector jobs being cut.
So far, the private sector is only just offsetting the losses. In the year to the end of June 240,000 public sector jobs were lost, and, as we’ve seen, only 264,000 private sector jobs created.
Analysis by Emma Thelwell
http://blogs.channel4.com/factcheck/factcheck-cameron-reoffends-on-private-sector-job-figures/8258
Allegations against Rt Hon Dr Liam Fox MP
...Philip Hammond MP, has himself recieved donations and fundraising support from the same wealthy Australian that bankrolled Adam Werrity and the Atlantic Bridge, Liam Fox's dodgy charity, that was supported closely by core Tories George Osborne, William Hague and Michael Gove!
According to the Daily Mail no less, Liam Fox and his best bunny buddy Werrity are, or rather were, "useful idiots'!
The state pension age is to rise to 67 for both men and women many years earlier than planned – possibly as soon as 2025.
The Mail, today reports:
Defence secretary left with questions to answer over nature of meeting in Dubai with investment fund manager
Thousands of Occupy Wall Street supporters have marched on Wall Street, swelled by the backing of more big US unions and backed by a national student day of action.
Alison and Ian join 35,000 other trade unionists protesting against the governments economic policies during the Tory Party conference in Manchester on Sunday...
The PM's patronising demand for families to clear their debts is bad economics and terrible politics, according to George Eaton at The Spectator.
According to todays Guardian: