Academies: yet more Tory corruption

“Taxpayer-funded academy chains have paid millions of pounds into the private businesses of directors, trustees and their relatives, documents obtained from freedom of information requests show.

The payments have been made for a wide range of services including consultancy fees, curriculums, IT advice and equipment, travel, expenses and legal services by at least nine academy chains.” Guardian Online 12/1/14

powertothepeople had this to say in response:

“The poor subsidising the rich.

Can someone please explain to me why so called 'benefits cheats' are condemned as vermin, yet directors of Academy schools and their trustees who are, by and large cheating the system more so, are not.

DOUBLE STANDARDS OR WHAT. One reason why Tory politicians cannot ever be trusted.”

Jo Vince was less than impressed:

“... figures from the Tories, for all their tough talk about private being good for business...

it is all a racket, a facade to fleece money from the public...

you know those rackets in the US at the peak of prohibition, where you get a front shop selling magazines and candy, and behind there is casino and alcohol selling galore...

now they are doing it everywhere, from the NHS to Education to Social Security, Prisons, Utilities, Transport, 'Criminal' Justice, Law and 'Order'... anything is game for them...

this is what the Tories do, the corrupt corrupting Party...

are you listening, Nick Clegg, collaborator and traitor to the British Public...”

captainbeefheart had this to add:

“It's a gravy train for Gove's mates and others like him. What's so hard to understand? Is it me?

This brought the the following response from ‘VSLVSL’:

“Let's stop calling it by the euphemism "gravy train".

Let's start being honest and call it what it is - corruption.”

originofthespecies spoke for many:

“God, how I detest and loathe this government and all it stands for.”

Can we rely on Milibean and Labour to do any better? Hardly. 

Remember ‘Cash for Honours’? Or the Iraq Dossier? Or the numerous Ministers who oversaw developments in their department then promptly moved into the same industry on a big salary? For example Hewitt helping to privatise parts of the NHS, then stepped down and got a job on the Board at Boots. 

It is time for a massive clearout of all these chancers, sleazeballs and, let us be frank, crooks.

Bonus Street

How about a TV show called Bonus Street about the life and times of City of London crooks?

THE Channel 4 series Benefits Street is a reality TV show based on a Birmingham street where, according to the programme makers, 90% of the residents live on benefits.

It portrays them, essentially, as crooks who are manipulating the benefits system in order to avoid work and who spend the day smoking, drinking, shoplifting and watching very large television sets.

It is hard to watch this programme and not feel a sense of outrage - not least at the producers, Love Productions, for pandering to prejudice. Not much love lost there. The naive residents of James Turner Street say they were told they were part of a film about community spirit.

But Benefits Street is essential viewing for anyone who wants to understand how attitudes to the welfare state have changed in Britain. It is a bit like the Ken Loach drama Cathy Come Home in reverse. That programme reflected public concern about homelessness in the 1960s when the welfare state was still seen as a great social achievement.

Benefits Street - along with shows like the drama Shameless, which also vilifies the unemployed - mark what may be the end of that welfare consensus. According to the British Social Attitudes Survey, the number of people who think the Government should spend more on poverty has halved since 1987.

And it's not just got up by the Daily Mail. A surprising number of people who work with the benefits underclass also believe the system must change. One of them is John Bird, founder of the Big Issue magazine sold by the homeless. He says the current system locks people into poverty by giving them no incentive to work. Which only shows that, sometimes, the people closest to a social problem may not be the best judges of the nature of it.

For the premise of the current debate is that benefits are in some way generous to the unemployed. In fact, the reverse is the case. Britain's Jobseeker's Allowance is among the lowest in Europe, at £71 a week. In Ireland, unemployment benefit is three times that; in Denmark, it's five times as much. I don't understand how Jobseeker's Allowance can be regarded as a disincentive to work when it barely enough to live on.

And for young adults under 25, the benefit rate is only £56 a week. Low benefits are one of the reasons so many young people like Danny in Benefits Street end up shoplifting and getting caught in the prison system - which, of course, makes it almost impossible to get a job.

Are we seriously to believe that the one million unemployed young people in Britain are workshy? Of course not - there just aren't enough jobs.

The Conservatives also want to deny housing benefit entirely to those under 25 - which discriminates unreasonably against young people. If ever there were an answer to Russell Brand's claim that voting is a waste of time, this is it. Pensioners vote, and they get a triple lock and annual increases; young people don't vote, and they lose housing benefit and get year-on-year cuts.

So why are people in Britain so much more hostile to the unemployed than voters in France, Germany, Spain - which all pay much higher social security rates and don't seem worried about being invaded by benefits tourists from Romania and Bulgaria?

Well, part of the answer is housing benefit, which costs the UK nearly £25 billion a year. Remember, though, that this doesn't go into the pockets of the poor but to landlords. This is where the real poverty trap occurs because Britain's housing crisis has made owning or renting a home prohibitively expensive. But I don't see how we can really blame the poor for house-price inflation, which has turned hundreds of thousands of people in the south of England into property millionaires.

And can it really be fair to vilify people on housing benefit when the UK Government is using £130bn to fund the mortgages of people rich enough to buy £600,000 houses under the Help to Buy scheme? Not to mention the tens if not hundreds of billions in public money handed to bankers as a reward for nearly destroying the financial syste? How about a Bonus Street about the life and times of City of London crooks? (my emphasis)

Make no mistake: benefit bashing sells newspapers and it buys votes, which is why the Chancellor, George Osborne says he intends to cut the welfare bill by a further £12bn. But how? Half of the £200bn benefits bill goes to pensioners, and is ring-fenced and inflation-proofed. Most of the rest goes on disability benefits, attendance allowance (in England) and child benefits - much of it to people in work.

The largest category of benefit claimants after pensioners is not the unemployed, but the four million who are working in jobs that pay too little to live on. Not much skiving there.

Child benefit is already being cut for the better-off worker. People on disability benefits are being hit already with stringent tests of their ability to work.

Contrary to popular belief, spending on unemployment benefit, Jobseeker's Allowance, is only 3% of the total spending on welfare - around £6bn, and it is falling as unemployment falls. Very little scope for cuts here - though George Osborne is thought to be planning to freeze all benefits except pensions for three years.

I suspect that Osborne will not resort to the more draconian measures on benefit but will allow the economic recovery to reduce the benefits bill, as it invariably does, and then claim credit for it.

His call for £12bn in welfare cuts is a political tactic designed to make Labour look like the scrounger's friend. Such is the public mood that bashing Benefits Street is now the surest way to gain political popularity.

This also explains why the Government is persevering with the bedroom tax despite its manifest unfairness. The UK Government wants welfare organisations and opposition politicians to be outraged because it makes it look as if the Tories really are being tough on welfare. The "spare room supplement" is a transparent attempt to cut benefits by the back door - or rather the bedroom door - by forcing people who have no alternative but to pay extra for their two- bed council flat.

Scots have traditionally been less hostile to benefit claimants because earnings are lower here and people understand that they're only a redundancy away from Benefits Street ­themselves - though it should be noted that the Coalition's benefits cap is just as popular north of the Border as south. Voters in the south of England have, over the last 30 years, absorbed much of the neoliberal, anti-state mentality of American politics, which is why they vote Tory and Ukip.

The welfare state and universal benefits used to be one of the great unifying factors holding Great Britain together. It spoke of collective security, dignity, equality of opportunity. But like the Barnett Formula, Europe, immigration and the NHS, welfare is being changed in ways that Scots may not find congenial.

As The Guardian's Martin Kettle observed last week, the props of the old United Kingdom are being kicked away. How long before the edifice collapses?

Iain Macwhirter  Columnist  Sunday 12 January 2014 The Herald

Youth Unemployment and the political elite.

We live with the shaming reality of over a million unemployed young people. In a country reported to be in the top ten economies in the world. The Prince’s Trust have done us a favour in exposing how devastating it is to be long-term unemployed in the UK and under 25. Suicidal thoughts, despair and deep frustration are commonplace. Lack of self-esteem fostered by a benefits system with the assumption that the young people they work with are all layabouts and wastrels. Forced attendance at Mickey Mouse unpaid ‘work’ schemes show the contempt with which the young unemployed are treated by the major political parties. The way that G4S and similar shoddy outfits make vast profits claiming non-existent progress is also instructive. Private - no matter how criminal, inept or corrupt = good. Public - no matter how selfless, helpful and effective = bad. The number of long-term youth unemployed rose under New Labour and has continued to rise with the Coalition in charge. 

There has been an outbreak of handwringing in some media but little real insight. This was one readers response to such a hand-wringer.

“You note that Labour poured money into education, but it didn't produce jobs as a result. There's no connection there--you can have well-educated homeless people without jobs, or illiterates. Education does not equal employment.

There's a more basic problem, though, one that columnists and commentators typically avoid: the "left" isn't left--I mean the Labour Party, as you speak to that example. They are as fully tied to the misnamed "free enterprise system" as are their arch-rivals, the Tories. It is there you ought to be looking for an explanation, both in respect to employment and to the broader malaise of a society in which the common people have little voice and influence.

It needs to be said: in a capitalist economy, the most any ruling party (or coalition) can do, is to move the chairs around a bit. Capitalism does not lift society, it does not create abundance, and it does not empower societies to self-rule and freedom from work. Those should be active goals of any so-called democracy, but they are not; instead, all is geared towards enrichment of corporations and a handful of extraordinarily wealthy people.

The young are not stupid or uninformed; they can see quite clearly this is a society of not caring about others, and Labour is simply an example of a familiar kind of shill who affects a sympathetic lingo. When it comes to the facts of economic life, a capitalist economy provides nothing in the way of freedom for the many. On the contrary, their lot is aptly called wage slavery, and it is an arrangement as antiquated and destructive as the feudal relations that preceded its appearance in history.

It isn't the left that's failing the young and their future imperiled by polluting technology; it's a society out of reach and control of the mass of people whose interests are actively traduced by organized greed. (my emphasis) This is now a matter of global survival, and young people are aware of this, as well. Given the fecklessness of most of their elders, why would they not feel despair and a "what the hell" attitude? It's up to us to put this right--and time is short.” OccupyEyed 4/1/14 Guardian Online

And which party is it which best serves ‘organised greed’? Why if it isn’t our old friends the  Tory Party with their not so secret symbiotic relationship with bankers and financiers. Not too far behind are the betrayers of the Labour Party and the little-willied LibDems who just love being ‘in power’ even if it means betraying any remaining principles.

So who to turn to? 

Test Match Debacle or Far-Eastern Betting Syndicate?

A two-horse race between two well-matched runners producing such a one-sided debacle would result in the stewards becoming involved looking for nobbling. 

We know that betting is illegal in India and much of the far-east yet continues on a massive scale. The industry - for that is what it is - runs on a gigantic scale. The criminal masterminds behind the scams and spot-fixing do not get to be in charge without being either very nasty pieces of work or by employing others to do the vicious stuff on their behalf. As in Prohibition Era USA, the ‘crime’ of betting is not seen as being such a bad thing by many citizens. Blind eyes are turned, bribes paid, justice bought and sold and a complete infrastructure established to maximise profits. Legitimate banks of computers are devoted to speeding large sums of currency around the world.

In Britain our regulators have been found to be complacent and way behind the game. The Pakistani spot-fixing affair highlighted an area of betting unbeknownst to our administrators. The idea that a wide would be bowled at a given time or a no-ball sent down between the 6th and 10th overs of a match seems small beer. Until you know the amounts changing hands on just such an incident. There was a spell some years ago when football betting was still in its relative infancy that a popular bet would be the timing of the first throw-in. Hardened pros cottoned onto this in no time and before long the opening minutes of a match would feature an ‘ambitious’ pass from the kick-off just over the head of a winger on either flank. Kerching.

Where betting is legitimate it is somewhat easier to monitor how much is being wagered and on what aspect of the game. A sudden rush of money on an obscure semi-pro midweek game in the Midlands sets alarm bells ringing. This does not apply to the vast majority of the illegal betting industry.

The latest allegations involve a player being paid to get himself sent off. Apparently the ref did not see the first attempt to assault an unfortunate opponent so the poor sod had to be attacked again to achieve the red card. Others are reported to have been paid for yellow cards. Match fixing follows as night follows day. There was a remarkable story of a match in the Russian 2nd division between a side top of the league, hosting one from the bottom who had not won a match all season away from home. The Wednesday before the game a local investigative journalist discovered the plot. The top team would rest many of their best players. They would not attack all game and also they would try to give away free kicks on the edge of their area until one was converted into a goal. At this point the game would die as neither side would attack and the result would stand as a shock 1-0 win to the lowly opposition. Remember this all came out before the game. Most folks would think that having had the fix rumbled there would be a change of plan at the very least. Not a bit of it. The ‘game’ was played exactly to script. And before anyone mounts their white horse and harrumphs all over the place about greedy footballers, there was a far darker side to the story. 2nd Division Russian players are not well paid. The Russian mafia is a powerful organisation with its tentacles in many corridors of power. Players were paid very little to fix the score. They knew their families - their wives and children, mums and dads - were at risk of something horrible happening to them on their way to school, or the shops - if they did not follow the script. 

Corruption is all pervasive. Remember the shock when Hanse Cronje was discovered to be fixing matches? A more upright pillar of the cricketing establishment it would be hard to find.

If Cronje could fix matches, then who else could? And is?

There have been moments of genuine head-scratching in this latest series, none more so than the collapse from a position of strength to one of abject weakness in the last test at the MCG. One incident shines out among the gloom. Ian Bell walked out to bat with England in a bit of trouble having just lost 3 quick wickets. It is a situation he is familiar with. The shot he played for his first ball to an ordinary non-spinning slow bowler takes some believing. A defensive prod? A huge heave? An exaggerated leave-alone? None of these. He chose to gently push a benign delivery 30 yards into the hands of an Aussie fielder. First Ball. 

Others bear scrutiny. When discretion was needed and teamwork partnering Kevin Pietersen was called for we had slogs and appalling shot selection. The non-spinning spinner finished up with 5 wickets.

Now what price would that have commanded in the Indian markets? And what price would the Aussies have got for coming back from so far behind? Great odds.

It is a thought which seems to have left the great commentariat untroubled. 

The alternative? That the England players sheds have gone is also possible. But too much happened on that day three which was inexplicable ----unless the dark side is considered. It should be part of the Inquest.

Update 5/1/14
The shambles that was the second innings this morning confirmed that their sheds have indeed gone. No respectable bookie could risk engaging such an inept bunch of failures in any betting scam.

Food Banks and the Tories

“I went to the Trussell Trust food bank round the corner from the Observer's offices just before Christmas. If I hadn't been reading the papers, I would have assumed it represented everything Conservatives admire. As at every other food bank, volunteers who are overwhelmingly churchgoers ran it and organised charitable donations from the public.

But the coalition is not even prepared to play the hypocrite. Iain Duncan Smith showed why he never won the VC when he was in the Scots Guards when he refused to face the Labour benches as the Commons debated food banks on 18 December. He pushed forward his deputy, one Esther McVey, a former "TV personality". All she could say was that hunger was Labour's fault for wrecking the economy. She gave no hint that her government had been in power for three years during which the number attending food banks had risen from 41,000 in 2010 to more than 500,000. Her remedy was for the coalition to help more people into work.

If she had bothered talking to the Trussell Trust, it would have told her that low-paid work is no answer. Its 1,000 or so distribution points serve working families, who have no money left for food once they have paid exorbitant rent and fuel bills.

But then no one in power wants to talk to the trust. As the Observer revealed, Chris Mould, its director, wrote to Duncan Smith asking if they could discuss cheap ways of reducing hunger: speeding up appeals against benefit cuts; or stopping the endemic little Hitlerism in job centres, which results in unjust punishments for trivial transgressions. In other words, a Christian charity, which was turning the "big society" from waffle into a practical reality, was making a civil request. Duncan Smith responded with abuse. The charity's claims to be "non-partisan" were a sham, he said. The Trussell Trust was filled with "scaremongering" media whores, desperate to keep their names in the papers. But he had their measure.

Oh, yes. "I understand that a feature of your business model must require you to continuously achieve publicity, but I'm concerned that you are now seeking to do this by making your political opposition to welfare reform overtly clear."

"Ministers will not confess to making a mistake for fear of damaging their careers. But it is not only their reputations but an entire world view that is at stake. Put bluntly, the Conservatives hope to scrape the 2015 election by convincing a large enough minority that welfare scroungers are stealing their money. They cannot admit that a real fear of hunger afflicts hundreds of thousands. Hence, Lord Freud, the government's adviser on welfare reform, had to explain away food banks by saying: "There is an almost infinite demand for a free good."

My visit to the food bank showed that our leaders' ignorance has become a deliberate refusal to face a social crisis. Of course, the volunteers help working families and students as well as the unemployed and pensioners. Everyone apart from ministers knows about in-work poverty. As preposterous is the Tory notion that the banks are filled with freeloaders.

You cannot just swan in. You get nothing unless a charity or public agency has assessed your need and given you a voucher. The trust is at pains to make sure that the beggars – for hundreds of thousands of beggars is what Britain now has – receive a balanced diet. To feed a couple for five days, it gives: one medium pack of cereal, 80 teabags, a carton of milk, two cans apiece of soup, beans, tomatoes and vegetables, two portions of meat and fish, fruit, rice pudding, sugar, pasta and juice. That this is hardly a feast is confirmed by the short list of "treats", which, "when available", consist of "one bar of chocolate and one jar of jam".

Sharon Cumberbatch, who runs the centre, tells me that she is so worried that shame will deter her potential clients that she packages food in supermarket bags so no one need know its source. The clients, when I met them, reinforced her point that they were not the brazen freeloaders of Tory nightmare. They trembled when they told me how they did not know how they would make it into the new year.

Most of all, it was the volunteers who were a living reproof to a coalition that can cannot correct its errors. They not only distribute food but collect it. They stand outside supermarkets all day asking strangers to buy the tinned food they need or hand out leaflets in the streets or plead with businesses to help. Sharon Cumberbatch is unemployed but she works to help others for nothing. Her colleagues said they manned the bank because hunger in modern Britain was a sign of a country that was falling apart. Or as one volunteer, Richard Moorhead, put it to me: "I am gobsmacked that people are going hungry. I'm ashamed."

The coalition can call such attitudes political if it wants – in the broadest sense they are. But they are also patriotic, neighbourly, charitable and kind. They come from people who represent a Britain the Conservative party once claimed a kinship with, and now cannot bring itself to talk to." Nick Cohen 28/12/13 Observer

Another way of putting this is: do not trust the despicable tories and their slimy coalition colleagues. The rich must be protected and saved from paying their rightful amount in taxation. Meanwhile the poorest, the most vulnerable and the weakest in our society have what little they have taken away. 

Trust us

The Coalition Agreement between the LibDems and the Tories back in May 2010 has a few things to say about civil liberties:

“The parties agree to implement a full programme of measures to reverse the substantial erosion of civil liberties under the Labour Government and roll back state intrusion.”

“Safeguards against the misuse of anti-terrorism legislation.”

“Ending of storage of internet and email records without good reason.”

As David Bowie sang so memorably this year, ‘Where are we now?’ 

Where indeed.

As the Chilcott Inquiry hits the solid wall of Cabinet obstruction, being met with outright refusal to release papers showing who said what and when in the build up to the illegal Iraq War......

And as David Cameron reneges on an earlier commitment to have a judge-led inquiry into rendition and torture......

And as the deafening silence echoes around Whitehall as revelation after revelation exposes the extent to which GCHQ are deeply in bed with the American NSA --and as our neighbours and reported ‘allies’ become angrier and angrier at the way they have been snooped on.....

And as Jack Straw and the ex-head of MI6 cower behind the execrable ‘defence’ of national security  when the reality seems to be far more national embarrassment or even national crime.....

It seems that there is one law for us, the hoi polloi, and another for them, our rulers. 

Anyone unclear as to why any of this matters needs to wake up and catch up. In our name, innocent people have been sent to so-called ‘black’ prisons around the world where they were tortured. In our name the reverend Blair agreed to send back to Libya a couple of Gaddaffi’s opponents - in fact we sent back their families as well - so they could all be tortured - all so Blair could help his cronies in BP get their grubby little fingers on Libyan oil..... And in our name GCHQ bugs and snoops its way round the world listening in to just about everybody without any by your leave....

It appears that whenever one of our political parties assumes power in the UK they immediately jettison any commitments they made to civil liberties. New Labour were awful. Remember 90 day detention without trial? Now the Tories and LibDems have followed suit.

As for dealing with the secret services we are left with the pathetic toothless club of never was-ers and blazered fools to hold them to account. Really. No rigour, no transparency and no chance.

So what is the answer?

It is absolutely clear there is no way we can trust our leaders - of whatever persuasion - to do the right thing. The answer will have to come from outside Parliament.

A massive campaign of Reform, or...

Failing that revolution will follow - with all the uncertainties and unforeseen consequences and correlated damage which will do irreparable harm to the nation. 

So reform it is then.

What Would Mandela Do?

Listening to the shower of humbuggery cascading from the tory benches this week at the Mandela eulogy,  stretched credulity way beyond reasonable. The unprincipled and shameful support of apartheid, cheer-lead by Thatcher, Tebbit et al - was mysteriously forgotten. No surprise there - this bunch are adept at rewriting truth and would have amazed even Orwell with their terminology. 

As events unfold with continued attacks on the poorest and most vulnerable in our society this government is turning out to be one of the nastiest and divisive in our history.

Not convinced? Compare and contrast. 

Homeless numbers = up. Bankers responsible for financial chaos = untouched.

Food bank take up = up. Bankers arrested for fraud = none.

Children in poverty = up. Tax avoidance = increasing and encouraged.

Benefits supplementing income = widespread and essential. Labelled ‘scroungers’.

Millionaire cabinet introduce bedroom tax.  No mansion tax for the wealthy. 

NHS under siege.   Private medicine = encouraged.

Over 1 million young unemployed.  Rich offspring can take up unpaid internships.

Zero hours contracts = up.       CEO’s paying themselves mega bucks = up.

Distrust of politics/politicians = up. Policies of all 3 main parties alike. Leaders ‘out of touch.’

Public sector = hammered.         Private companies can do no wrong - despite doing         

                wrong.      Again and again and again.

Mandela did not simply campaign for freedom. He was also indomitable on poverty and the causes of poverty. With his experience he had a deep sense of injustice. The cutting back on legal aid for the poorest whether in civil cases, employment tribunals or the criminal justice system is yet more evidence of squeezing the poor. 

The more the suits spoke, the vaster the gulf appeared between them and Mandela.

In all this unfairness and division there is one over-riding fact which should be borne in mind at all times:

We are many - they are few.