Sunday 6 May 2012

BBC Bias fails to mask undemocratic elections

Andrew Marr in his usual fawning style failed once again to challenge a blatant untruth spoken by the Tory chancellor George Osborne on Marr's BBC programme this morning (Sunday 6th May 2012). Osborne claimed that "more than half of the British people voted for Conservative or Liberal Democrat candidates in the local elections last Thursday." That is a blatant LIE.
From the BBC's own figures, 31% of votes cast were for the Tories and 16% for the LibDems. But then only 32% of the electorate voted. This means that actually only 15% (32% of 47%) of the electorate voted for the Coalition candidates, about one person in seven. But you also have to take account of all those people who are denied the vote. People under the age of 18 (who account for nearly a quarter of the population), prisoners, unregistered voters and people in long term institutions for instance. Taking this into account the ConDem vote accounts for less than one person in eight of the UK population.
The same hyperbole applies to Ed Milliband and his crowing Labour Party. Their share of the vote (38%) represents just 12% of voters. Taking into account the disenfranchised, less than one in ten of the UK population voted for New Labour in the local elections. This is hardly "winning back the voter's trust" as Ed Milliband declares.
Andrew Marr continues with the BBC Bias as he allows Osborne to talk about the "three political parties", as if no other political parties exist apart from the ConDems and Labour. Between them them parties garnered votes from less than a quarter of the population of Britain and yet they control more than 80% of local councils and dominate Westminster politics. This is in part due to the refusal of the BBC and other broadcasters to acknowledge that voters have the right to vote for whomsoever they choose and allow the ConDems and Labour to dominate political debate. At the last general election for instance, in my constituency (Richmond, North Yorkshire) the BBC made a prime time TV programme about the contest in Richmond and spoke to the Conservative, Lib Dem and Labour candidates, but did not even inform the one other candidate (from the Green Party) that the programme was being made. I should know. I was that Green candidate. My complaint to the BBC remains unanswered to this day.
It is not a democracy when the state broadcaster decides which politicians you can or cannot listen to. It is not a democracy when less than a quarter of the population decide who runs both national and local government.
So now it is time for you to do your bit. Are you fed up with all politicians, their corrupt ways and economy with the truth? Then do something about it. At your next election, do not vote Labour, Tory or Lib Dem. But rather than sit at home calling a pox on all their houses, go out and vote (if you can) for someone else. Be it Green, be it UKIP, English Democrat, SNP, Plaid Cymru or even a penguin, use your vote to help remove the corruption that is the British political establishment from our green and once pleasant land.

Thursday 19 January 2012

Real Electoral Reform

The English can learn from the Scots (& Welsh & Irish). If you want to get real change (or even independence) do not vote Conservative or Labour or Liberal Democrat. If you live in the Chilterns, you are really not obliged to vote Tory. You could form your own party to oppose the high speed rail link. If you banded together and opposed the Tories in their "safe" seats, just think how quickly you would change their minds?
If you are a member of Unite or another union, put up your own candidates, please stop fooling yourself that Labour represents anyone but themselves. Ed Milliband is just another Tony Blair (as is David Cameron), pandering to big business and the banks. All these politicians promised us the taxpayer would not lose by supporting the banks, so how come we have lost £20billion on Northern Rock alone?
And after the disgraceful betrayal of the Liberal Democrats on student fees, every University Student Union in the country should be putting forward their own candidates.
Everyone else should vote for anyone other than the old elected dictatorship of Labour, Liberal and Tory. Personally I think the finest political leader in the country is Caroline Lucas of the Green Party, but whatever you do, just don't vote for five more years of Nick Clegg!

Sunday 1 May 2011

The Prince or the Pauper?

The fawning attitude of the BBC and other media moguls to the Royalist  wedding in London is part of a continuing conspiracy amongst the ruling classes to deny democracy in the UK. This has been backed by the closing down of Facebook accounts and Websites of anyone critical of the Monarchy and police raids on over 50 social centres.

This wedding is not a dream, but a nightmare. The tightening of the grip of the powers that be, at the expense of democracy. Westminster politicians, except for a brave few, are too frightened to speak the truth about the elite who run our country. If they are so confident that the monarchy is so popular, why has the alternative never been offered to the British people?

We need an informed debate and a referendum to ask ALL the people of Britain whether they would prefer an elected head of state, rather than this continuing dicatorship by an unelected elite. Do we really want to be governed by a Hooray Henry whose best friend is Posh Spice? Do you really think it is a coincidence that the leaders of the coalition government are all public schoolboys?
We know that a large proportion of the cheering crowds at the wedding were foreign tourists, especially Americans, who got rid of their monarch almost 250 years ago. There were no protests because protests were banned, protest leaders detained and the voice of protest gagged by a subservient media, led by the BBC. Like the majority of people in the UK, I did not watch the wedding, but spent the day delivering local election leaflets, campaigning for a Yes vote to electoral reform and dreaming of the day when Britain will indeed become a democracy. Not an elected dictatorship, led by an unelected monarch.
The Prince or the Pauper? Vote for the paupers of this world and set yourself free!

Monday 4 April 2011

News direct from Japan

From: DrumCircles@ yahoogroups. com [mailto:DrumCircles@ yahoogroups. com] On
Behalf Of Kaoru Sasaki
Sent: 02 April 2011 03:30
To: Yahoo! Int'l List
Subject: [DrumCircles] Another thing you can do for Japan

Hi list,

Thank you for your massages, prayers, drumming, donations,
holding charity events and so on.

More than three weeks have past, and things don't seem to be better,
unfortunately. The fiscal & school year begins on April 1, and
many people who evacuated from Tsunami/nuclear disaster area
have either moved for new places to settle or went back home.

Japan is almost like North Korea and the people are not provided
with truth. Information is very much controlled and you outside
Japan may have better information. You may think we always
have internet, but there are old people who don't use internet,
who have lost their PCs, who have PCs but the internet connection
is not available, and so on, especially at the Tsunami/nuclear- polluted
area.

As you know, Japan is one of the biggest seismic country.
Many earthquakes have been happening, before and especially
after the one on March 11. The big plates are stimulated
by the recent quakes, and many experts expect more to come.

There are 54 nuclear-power- related facilities, and the government
plans to build 14 more. They built the nuclear waste dumping
facility in Rokkasho, in the north, but it is almost full.

The real information is not available from either the government
or the power company, but there is already ongoing radiation leaks
which is polluting everything. We know it is MUCH more than
we are told it is.

You have rights to get more angry about Japan, because there is
no border in air and water. What Japan has done to its people
and to the world is a crime.

Japan has been traditionally VERY hard to change from inside.
Dr. Koide of Kyoto University, an anti-nuclear scholar, asked by
someone how we can stop nuclear power plants in Japan,
replied, "We have been trying for 40 years, and it has been
very difficult." Mediad oesn't function here either, because
many of the journalist who spoke out have been 'burried' in
all kinds of ways.

In many environmental movements, we as activists, often used
'external pressure' and asked our foreign friends for help.

Please contact the Japanese embassies in your area,
write to the Japanese government, Tokyo Electricity,
and so on to call for stopping and eventually abolishment
of Japan's nuclear power plants.

Tokyo Electricity http://www.tepco. co.jp/en/ index-e.html

Would it work? ... I don't know, because they may just
ignore your e-mails.

Tell your friends about the situation in Japan, contact
media or your government if you have connections.

Japan has already polluted the planet enough as of today,
and we have to avoid more nuclear-pollution by more
earthquakes to come.

Big earthquakes are said to come 100%. The problem is
no one knows if it will come today or 5, 10 years later.

We are doing our best to stop nuclear power plants here,
and we need your help. Please help!

Kaoru

Wednesday 16 March 2011

Nuclear Disaster

A UK nuclear industry spokesman said last Friday that the survival of the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station after the earthquake was testimony to the safety of nuclear power. He is now probably eating his words as the number of reactors heading towards meltdown increases. The level of radioactivity in Tokyo is now twenty times higher than normal and increasing. The US Army are being kept 50 miles away from the power station, unlike the civilian 12 mile limit. If it wasn't just so appalling, I would be tempted to say the Green Movement told you so.

A big feature of the reporting of this disaster has been the tendency of the BBC to down play the seriousness of the situation in their reporting, compared to other world news media. Sounds like their political masters are calling the shots as usual. We know that the ConDem Government will continue to back nuclear power, as the Tories see big profits for their friends and the Lib Dems seem determined to go back on all the principles they ever used to stand for. The irony is that with proper investment in home insulation and renewable energy as the Green Party suggested at the last election, nuclear power generation would be unnecessary.

Monday 17 January 2011

ConDems Privatise the NHS

The Prime Minister lied to us again today. After claiming during the general election that there would be no large re-organisation of the NHS, he announced one today. Claiming that this did not mean privatisation, he announced that the NHS will be run by GPs, who are, ofcourse, private enterprises.

Ofcourse, GPs have no experience of running billion pound enterprises, so inevitably they will hire medical management companies to run their businesses. I predict that within three years, the NHS will effectively be managed by a handful of foreign controlled "healthcare partners" and privatisation will be a "fait accompli".

Another example of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats saying one thing to get elected and doing the exact opposite when in power.

Sunday 16 January 2011

The Banking Con

The bankers who are urging us to "move on" from the bankers' bonus issue are right. It is not the bonuses we should be focusing on, but the artificial profits these bonuses are based upon. We all know that the majority of financial transactions in the City have nothing to do with financing trades in goods and services, but are pure speculation, or gambling if you prefer.

But it is gambling with loaded dice. Through the use of interest rate swaps and other derivatives, massive bank to bank financial transactions can be manipulated by a small banking elite. Bank profits are boosted by massively increasing the cost of banking overall just by the sheer number of transactions and the shepherding of the resulting profit into the investment banking arms of these banks. The winners are the international banking elite who "justify" their bonuses on the back of these manufactured trades. The losers are the banks customers, including investors, who get higher costs and lower returns than they otherwise would. The fact that investors do not complain about these lower returns shows just how profitable banking can be. Eventually these manufactured trades get so complex and the artificial profits so high that the whole system collapses, but hey, by this time these banks are "too big to fail" and gullible governments step in to bail them out.

Having worked at a firm of money brokers, I have seen just how enormous this banking con has become. Governments need to work together to call the bankers bluff by introducing a punitive Tobin tax on speculative transactions, as well as outlawing artificially created trades which benefit no one except the bankers themselves.