Sun Shame

The Sun is on a moral crusade. The Sun…. on a moral crusade. THE SUN! The very idea baffles me. Whilst they’re currently being investigated for paying police for stories, they’re taking the moral high ground elsewhere.
Today The Sun has said it:

CALLS on all Brits to be patriotic and report any cheats you know by calling the National Benefit Fraud Hotline

- This is in reponse to their story that benefit fraud costs the UK £1.2bn a year. The figure sounds huge, especially when written in block capitals, as it is in the Sun article. The problem is, the figure is actually tiny.

The story comes from figures released by the Department for Work and Pensions called “fraud and error in the benefit system”. What it actually states is:

The estimate for the percentage of total benefit expenditure overpaid due to fraud in 2010/11 has remained the same when compared to the 2009/10 and preliminary 2010/11 estimates, at 0.8%

- £1.2bn is actually representative of just 0.8% of the total benefit expenditure. If the total benefit expenditure was a £1 coin, less than 1p would be lost to fraud.

In December 2010, the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee found that HMRC happily ignored Corporate tax avoidance worth up to £25bn. Vodafone was allowed to write off its tax bill of £6bn. Rather coincidentally, the head of tax policy at Vodafone is a man named John Connors. Connors used to work at HMRC and enjoys a close relationship with current head of HMRC, David Hartnett. They go for cosy lunches together, and then they casually wipe £6bn from the Nation’s second largest company on the Stock market’s tax bill. Perhaps the “scroungers” mentioned by the Sun should give Hartnett a ring and go out for lunch. All would be fine then.

According to the tax justice network’s report into tax abuse, the figure of £25bn, when added together with tax evasion (the likes of Labour candidate for Mayor; Ken Livingstone accused of using a tax loophole to save up to £50,000) costs us £69bn.

Corporations involved in widespread tax avoidance love Hartnett THAT much, he is the most ‘wined and dined’ civil servant in the Country, having been treated to wonderful Corporate hospitality a total of 107 over three years. I’m sure they do it just because he’s a nice guy. That must be it. I’m sure of it. How many times have you been asked “who would your ideal dinner guest be if you had a choice?” I always answer “Not Oscar Wilde, not John Lennon, not Christopher Hitchens, not Mohammad Ali… none of them…… give me David Hartnett any day of the week! What a guy.“

Another company that enjoyed the dining company of Hartnett, was Goldman Sachs. It will come as no surprise that Hartnett personally shook hands with Goldman Sachs officials on a deal that waived £10,000,000 interest on a tax avoidance program that went wrong. If you’re a single mum struggling to raise kids, and are taking a few quid more than you’re legally entitled to, the Sun want you dead. If you’re a multimillionaire company that believes it owes nothing to anybody and actively breaks the law; as long as you take the head of HMRC out to lunch, you’re perfectly fine.

Like everything The Sun says and does, hypocrisy is at the apex of this story. News International owns The Sun. When its CEO Rupert Murdoch is not defending allegations of hacking the voicemail of a dead school girl, or bribing police for stories, it used to spend its time losing legal battles over unpaid taxes. In 2009 the Australian capital territory won its battle to reclaim $77 million in taxes and penalties owed by News Corporation. When News Corp moved its headquarters to the US, through tax loopholes, it deprived Australia of millions of $ in unpaid capital gains taxes.

The Sun has decided to block use of its “beat the cheat” picture on its article. It can be found here.
But I thought I’d create my own.

The Spirit of Bipartisanship

If I were to bang my head on a brick wall over and over, i’d quickly come to the conclusion that it hurts, and that I probably shouldn’t spend my time banging my head against that wall any more. If I were to try to solve the pain, by continuing to bang my head on the brick wall, i’d soon be wondering what made me think that continuing to bang my head, would help.

John McCain complained recently that President Obama had failed in his attempts to create a bipartisan atmosphere with regards to the “OMG SOCIALISM ARGH!!!” stimulus package that has recently been passed through Congress. Now, I accept that McCain himself is a great hero of bipartisan Politics (regardless of the fact that he thinks President Bush was right, 95% of the time), on such topics as Global Warming and Campaign finance, McCain has reached across the isle, and that is indeed admirable. But I do go the feeling that a long with 90% of Republican Bloggers I come across day to day on WordPress, he’s horribly bitter.

I’m perfectly aware that the Plan has many social elements within it, that Republicans deem “pork“, regardless of who it helps. But that’s what Republicans must have expected from Democrats. Similarly, they got their $275bn tax relief and cannot legitimately yell “Socialism” when the Stimulus offers Businesses, the bonus depreciation feature exists, when tax credits for struggling small businesses exist, when there is double in what small businesses can write off when it comes to capital investments and new equipment purchases.
I refuse to call $41bn for grants to local school districts; $39bn to subsidise health insurance for the unemployed; $4bn in prevention care; $31bn to upgrade and repair public buildings – “pork”. But obviously anything that doesn’t amount to a mass of tax cuts for the rich, is going to demand the calls of “SOCIALISM” from the opposition.

I’m unaware of how much Fidel Castro would have been willing to accept as truly Socialist with this package. Perhaps he’d have welcomed cash for money-losing companies by allowing them to claim tax credits on past profits dating back five years instead of two, or the bonus depreciation for Businesses buying up new equipment, for a tax credit for businesses who hire disconnected youths and veterans.

In an attempt for me to appear a little bit bipartisan here, I will accept that $650million to convert TV boxes to digital seems a little odd. Although a worthy cause, like $15bn for College Scholarships is a worthy cause, it’s unlikely to stimulate the short term economic woes of a Nation on the brink of economic disaster. This is certainly just a way for those like Pelosi to sneak into the stimulus, those niggling partisan leftovers. However, if the money given for College Scholarships, goes to the right place, meaning the Colleges now how money that they were losing, meaning they don’t have to lay off staff, then it can only be a good thing, regardless of the motive for it appearing in the bill. Investing in infrastructure is also, not ‘pork’.

The word ‘pork’ is interesting, when it seems to only apply to investing in infrastructure, and not to the trillions spent on the deaths of thousands of American troops and 1,000,000 innocent Iraqis. That’s deemed ok. But key infrastructure, PORK apparently.

I am more inclined to accept the Obama Stimulus as completely necessary, than I am to accept the argument that it’s full of “pork”. A stimulus is supposed to be full of so-called “pork” because it works. FDR’s worked. The ‘pork’ is not just words on paper. For example, I recently say Fox News state that “$10 million for urban canal inspection is pork spending”…. not it isn’t. It’s a plan to create jobs, and it will indeed, create jobs. That’s how a stimulus works.

Back to McCain. He told CNN recently that this wasn’t the change Obama promised. That, although Obama went to Capitol hill for input, most of what the Republicans offered was just wiped off the table.
What he appears to mean is, Obama must give in to Republican demands, otherwise they will just act as a roadblock regardless of the proposals.

I am not saying the Democrats and Obama have this sorted out perfectly, nor am I saying that the Stimulus will definitely work. But for the Republicans to publicly state how much of a failure it is before it had even taken shape, is nothing but tit for tat partisan bullshit from the Right Wing of the Political spectrum. Especially considering they have full support for a party that has systematically destroyed the economy, and waged an unjust expensive war over the past eight years. It’s a bit rich of them to be taking the high ground now. It’s as if they’ve been asleep for eight years, woke up on January 20th, and yelled “WE HAVE THE ANSWERS NOW!!“…. forgive me for not falling for it. Forgive me for thinking that the useless Bush tax cuts that were not utilised for the best of the Economy by those rich businessmen who shipped work overseas; those tax cuts that McCain supported, were nothing short of an absolute disaster and highlighted the failure of American Capitalism. Forgive me for thinking that Republicans calling it “robbing future generations” is a despicable charge, given that they had no problem spending taxpayers money bailing out Wall Street, and then had no problem robbing American families of the lives of their children, brothers, sisters, fathers and mothers in the first “Resource War” in Iraq.

I would give a lot of credit, to a Republican who would happily admit that their policies may have failed them, these past eight years. I cannot wait to see that day. I compare the Republican bitterness outrage at this stimulus bill, with the lack of outrage at the Bush stimulus package, the largely useless Bush stimulus package. It’s incredible how little the Republicans are consistent in their hatred of stimulus packages. Spending trillions on an unjust war, and then wasting trillions on big business tax cuts has caused this mess. It’s a failure. And McCain thinks he has a right to suggest otherwise?

The Republican Party seriously needs to change it’s attitude.

When the CBO report shows that Clinton left office with a “budget surplus projected to be $5.6trillion over ten years” compared to the Bush administration leaving office with a “projected deficit of well over $4trillion for that same period“, you have to really start asking if these people should be given the chance to talk at all. The damning report from the CBO continues…“As a result of their misguided fiscal choices,
President Bush and Republican Congresses squandered the budget opportunities they inherited and are passing along historically large budget deficits that will persist for years.” So the question needs to be answered, why do you Republicans suddenly think you deserve to be heard now?

I’m sure the spirit of bipartisanship is needed to a degree, and like John McCain, i’m sure Obama has attempted it. But it has to be taken with so much caution, and it has to be taken knowing just how damaging the Republicans have been since 2001. Take on board suggestions that both Republicans and Democrats agree on. Do not listen to calls for mass tax breaks for the rich, because that is not the way to solve every problem (as we’ve now discovered). The caution has to be taken. Obama is doing the right thing by not giving into these people.

Bipartisanship has to come from both sides. Republicans have to acknowledge their dire failings in order to even gain an ounce of credibility, they have to say “Ok, we messed up, we’re ready to have a rethink“, any short of that, and they just should not be taken seriously.

Perhaps the Republicans are frustrated because they have no control anymore. Perhaps they are all more like Limbaugh than we all think and that they want Obama to fail, because if this stimulus succeeds in pulling America out from the pit of Republican destruction, it will only serve to make the Republicans look a hundred times worse than they do right now.

Given that the majority of Americans who read my blog are Republicans, I fear i’m in for a bit of a beating because of this. I will try and survive. Clearly they do not feature in the 67% approval rating for the way he handled the passing of the Stimulus bill. Instead, they must appear in the laughable 31% that approve of the Republicans in Congress as opposed to the 48% who approve of the Democrats in Congress. They certainly don’t figure in the 68% who approve of the job Obama has done up until now. But you know, what do those 68% know anyway!!!!

If America had wanted much more failed Republican policies, policies that had created this mess in the first place, policies that had resulted in record unemployment, a highly costly illegal war, and tax cuts for the rich who then squander away their even greater wealth, then McCain would now be President. America chose not to keep banging it’s head against the brick wall.

Those pesky Democrats

First of all, Michael Steele, new chairman of the RNC, token black Republican, who Fox News described as a “new beginning” for the GOP.
Let’s see about that. Although Steele does not support a Federal Marriage Amendment to ban gay marriage, he does not agree that gays should be allowed to marry. In 2006, he compared stem cell research to the holocaust. He is also a strong Christian. So, very much the same as old Republicans. Maybe…

However….. and here’s the shocking part, I quite like him. The GOP is blatantly using him to combat the idea that there is still racial prejudice amongst their elite. Much like they used Palin to counter the Democrats with Clinton. But that doesn’t mean that Steele himself is useless (like Palin). Steele seems sensible, refusing to mix radical religious beliefs with politics, like so many Republicans. He seems refreshing. A real challenge to the Democrat support base. I like his energy policy, I like that he tried to get the Bush administration to call an immediate halt on the Federal Gas Tax. I like that despite his opposition he rates the issue of banning gays getting marriage as not very important. I like that he’s in favour of diplomacy over clenched fist tactics. I like the guy. And I can’t say that about too many Republicans or Conservatives.

“We must represent a transformative movement that speaks with empathy and compassion…” – Michael Steele.

**********

Tom Daschle has stepped down as nominee for Obama’s secretary of Health, whilst Nancy Killefer was to oversee budget and spending reform. Both, it seems, have a problem paying taxes. Obama made huge mistakes with these appointees. They clearly were not properly vetted. It feeds the Republican bitterness they still hold after losing the election.

That said, since when have Right Wing America become the guardians of all morality? A couple of nominees not paying their taxes is nothing in comparison to the cover ups and lies fed by the Bush administration.
Such as Dr. W. David Hager: appointed to the FDA by Bush, later found to be anally raping his wife, and when questioned about it, said “I missed“. Or Nicholas Morency who not only put a $1.5million bounty on the heads of pro-abortionists, but also admitted to molesting children. Or Elizabeth Dole, manipulating the Religious beliefs of an entire State, by referring to her opponent as “Godless“, just to win an election. Or Dick Cheney the Vice President, who used the War in Iraq to gain lovely new oil profitable contracts for his old company, Haliburton. Which of course, was a few years after Cheney was sued for fraudulent activities with regard to over valuing stock of Haliburton.
Why did these Republican bloggers and writers not stand so strong and filled with eternal rage against all of this? Or when Bush lied about Weapons of Mass destruction? They seem to have become more enraged by Clinton getting a blow job, and Daschle not paying taxes, than they have about thousands of innocent lives lost in the vain hope of acquiring more oil. It’s a horribly critical time in GOP history. They are literally swarming WordPress, finding every little detail to attack Obama on. From turning up the thermostat in the White House (as if he was supposed to let his kids freeze to death just to appease disgruntled Republicans), to not wearing a jacket in the Oval Office, because it “...insults the office of The President…” …. because apparently, taking your jacket off is far more of an insult to the office of POTUS, than it is to sit in front of a camera and take your Country to war on the basis of a lie.
Obama cannot take a shit without Right Winged bloggers finding a problem with it. It’s a bit rich of them to shout CORRUPTION! When their own party has been rife with it for years. It’s as if they’ve been asleep for the past eight years.

Robert Gibbs, the White House Press Secretary is quoted as saying of Obama and Daschle … “They both recognised that you can’t set an example of responsibility but accept a different standard of who serves.” Which echoes the views of all of us. They are showing that they will acknowledge when they have messed up. Which is a good thing. Governments screw up. The difference is, this one seems to be able to admit it with dignity and move on.

Both Daschle and Obama screwed up. Obama admitted he has screwed up. He apologised and moved on. Something the Bush administration found impossible to do. Something our own English Prime Minister, finds impossible to do. Obama and Daschle acted with dignity, following a scandal without dignity. And that’s something new in American politics. Daschle is quoted as saying he would not be able to work “with the full faith of Congress and the American people”, and he’s right. It’s just a pity the previous administration and their supporters who now pick up on every movement Obama makes, didn’t have the same feeling of dignity.

Republicans, You had your chance, you fucked up majorly. Accept it. You do not run America any more. Your concept of “bipartisanship” seems to be that Obama steps to one side, and let’s you have another eight years in power. Fox News may as well just have a few hours of O’Reilly and Cavuoto stamping their feet and throwing a tantrum, like the selfish moronic little children that they are.
Bitterness is a wonderful thing.

Immigrants: We need them!!

This blog will argue that immigration is much needed. I’d appreciate genuine arguments against my blog instead of the usual “fucking muzzies coming to our country with their fucking burkas, fuck off, you terrorist scum”.

INTRO:
I’m becoming increasingly uneasy about the level of animosity toward anyone who happens to have an Asian skin complexion in this country, particularly in the City I live, Leicester. Whenever someone says “I’m not racist but….” you can guarantee they’ve been reading the Daily Mail, and are about to spew some disgusting out of date bile.

I’ve said before, the majority of British Nationalists, who insist that they love our Country and see immigration eroding our culture, have absolutely no knowledge of our ‘culture’ other than the fact that they like to drink a lot, fight a bit, and be a bit racist. Our culture consists of historical events like the Protestant Reformation during Henry VIII, Edward and Elizabeth’s reigns, the Civil War of the 17th Century, art movements like Gothic, Renaissance Realism, pop art and post-modernism, the horrors of the Great War that saw the deaths of millions of people for less than a square foot of land. The fight for liberalism, as Churchill’s army of warriors defeated the destructive force of Fascism. This is our culture, and the Nationalists are the ones responsible for trying destroying it.

We have a large Asian community in Leicester. One of my friends tried to suggest that the white man is in the minority in Leicester now. He went on to suggest over 70% of the City must now be foreign. I disagreed. He laughed and decided to insult my intelligence some more. It annoyed me quite deeply. He suggested that if I look around, it’s like “spot the white man”.
Firstly, even if that was the case, why is that a problem? If I were the only white guy living on my street, what’s the problem? As long as they don’t treat me like shit, why should I care? It’s a skin colour. It does not go deeper than that.
And secondly, I was fucking right. According to Leicester City Council, the White race accounts for 63% of the population of Leicester. So to sum that up, I was right, he was wrong.

I’d now like to argue against those who believe Immigration should be cut off, and we should “keep Britain White”.

AGE:
During the 1950s, after the War, we in Britain had what is described as the “baby boom”. Soldiers coming home and starting families. Between the 1980s and today, we have a “baby slump”. Hundreds of thousands of more women are starting careers early and not having children. Which means, we have an ageing population. The baby boom generation is getting old. The younger generation need to support the pensions of those ageing majority. This is known as the “dependency ratio”. Given that there aren’t enough younger people to deal with this, if we took the BNP line and stopped immigration completely, we’d have the worst pensions crises ever. If this extended to Europe, according to the author Philippe Legrain, the population of Europe would fall by 60 million by 2050. This creates a worker shortage, meaning businesses close, deflation sky rockets. An economic disaster. You need immigration.

The Welfare State:
I refuse to give a response to the awful “they come over here, taking all our benefits” whilst in the same breathe muttering “they come over here, taking all our jobs”, it’s an old outdated argument that no one has been able to prove.
The majority of immigrant workers come to Britain (according to Home Office Stats) in their 20s. They then start to work, they pay taxes.
Those workers have not been to British schools and so they have cost the tax payer nothing, whilst they pay back into the tax system. Which means more investment into public services like The NHS. So actually, we benefit, not them.
Many then start up a business, paying more into the tax system. Perhaps they’ll then have children, who will go to British schools, on the money pumped into the tax system by their parents, which is fair and just. All the time contributing to an ageing British population.

“GO HOME!!”
Many immigrants come here for a better life. If you lived in a Country where you feared for the life of you and your family every day, wouldn’t you jump at the opportunity for a better life elsewhere?
The Phillipines has began calling those people who leave the country, to work abroad “heroes”. This is because the workers, after paying tax in America for example, then send some of their earnings home, which boosts the local economies, allowing the National economy of these countries to grow, lifting millions out of poverty. It has no damaging affect on America. It’s a boost to the poor nation’s economy, and it’s much needed. Otherwise we get rich, whilst the poor get worse and worse, and that’s simply wrong. It also then means the poor countries are able to create new opportunities, new jobs, new exports, which benefit us directly.

Job Creation:
“Stealing all our jobs” seems to be suggesting that there is a static number of jobs, limited in presence, and that immigrants are fighting the British born Whites for those jobs. This is simply ignorance.
When an immigrant comes to live here, he’s going to need a house, a car, a bed, a bath, a towel, a mug, a photograph frame, sugar, a carpet, and every other luxury you can possibly imagine. When 200,000 come here, there is a sharp rise in demand for such objects, which means production needs to increase, which means new jobs need to be created for supplies to meet demand, which means instead of stealing all our jobs, immigration create jobs. It’s basic economics. If we denied these people access to our country, demand would fall sharply, prices would deflate, wages would dramatically decrease because the pool of unemployed would get bigger and bigger as businesses everywhere shut up shop.
We’d all be worse off.

“This Country is a mess!!”
To suggest the country is now a mess, is to compare it to a previous time when it wasn’t a mess. I’m not sure that this has ever been the case. Was it the 1900s during a needless war in which parents watched as their children were sent to their deaths for no good reason? Or the 1920s during the Great Depression? Or the 1940s and World War, when kids were sent away from cities and their parents? Or the 1950s/60s when women were treated as 2nd class, gay people were imprisoned simply for their sexuality and racial prejudice was rife? Or the 1970s when our binmen went on strike leading to the winter of discontent? Or the 1980s when the miners went on strike and 60% of Liverpool was unemployed? Or the 1990s when The Spice Girls topped the charts?
When was the World and in particular Britain, perfect? It wasn’t.

My conclusion:
A Nation is simply a line on a map. A meaningless flag. A place where those who have deep Patriotic feelings can get together and proclaim just how wonderful their Country is compared to the rest of the World.
We are all citizens of the same Planet. We all benefit each other economically. We all bring with us knowledge and cultural awareness that can benefit each other both socially and for our own mental strength. Only by mixing and interacting, sharing and understanding, can there ever be anything near to peace.