Cameron and Brooks – the more we know, the less we like it

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What have they got to hide, and can it be any worse than what we’re all thinking?

There’s a bad smell surrounding the correspondence between David Cameron and Rebekah Brooks, and it has nothing to do with the horse she let him ride.

The Observer is today reporting details of “intimate” texts sent between the current UK Prime Minister and the former head of Rupert Murdoch’s News International. One of them, from Brooks, states that she felt so emotional listening to his (2009) conference speech she “cried twice”, and that she “will love ‘working together’.”

Working together?

In what way, exactly?

There are too many loose ends here for anyone to feel comfortable. Everywhere you turn, one of them whips you in the face (like a riding crop, perhaps).

Let’s bear in mind all the embarrassment fomer Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt (Con) had over the plans for Mr Murdoch’s firm to take over Sky TV, granting it an unprecedented dominance over the UK mass media. Working together?

Let’s remember that Andy Coulson, a former News International employee and editor of the News of the World, became Mr Cameron’s Downing Street press officer for a time, until he was implicated in the phone hacking scandal and stood down. Working together?

Let’s also consider the way the right-wing press – of which News International and Sky News form an uncomfortably large cohort – has suppressed stories about the harmful effects of Mr Cameron’s policies, such as the deaths of 73 sick or disabled people every week (on average) who had their benefits cut after reassessment by the Department for Work and Pensions and its contractor, Atos. Working together?

Cameron has refused to allow publication of any more of these texts – and it is understood that around 150 may exist. The Observer states that it understands many of them would prove to be “a considerable embarrassment” to the government.

We don’t know what is in those texts, and we are being told that we never will. The only possible conclusion is that they contain information that is damaging to Mr Cameron, and therefore to his Conservative-led government. Because of the identities of the correspondents, we can also conclude only that this damage relates to them working together.

It’s obvious he’s got something to hide.

He’s not going to come clean about it either.

So he’s being dishonest to us, the British public.

It is not in our interest for him to behave like this.

What else has he been doing that is not in our interest?

I think we have a right to know.

After all, he didn’t win the 2010 election; he’s only in Downing Street because of a dodgy deal with the Liberal Democrats.

I told you it would come: Borishambles!

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He just couldn’t keep his mouth shut, could he?

A couple of days ago, at the end of my article ‘Omnishambles, omnishambles, omnishambles’, I wrote ‘Coming soon: Borishambles!’. It wasn’t meant to be taken seriously; I was just acknowledging the Blond Buffoon’s popularity with Tory diehards.

But in a week when Tory backbench rebels handed the government a major Commons defeat over the EU budget, Boris gave me an early Christmas present. Watch this:

I know he was being followed by hecklers who were provoking him by calling him ‘Tory scum’ – but, while it’s impossible to say I approve of such language, considering the Conservative Party’s record since it came into government with the Liberal Democrats, that probably counts as merely mild criticism.

Boris didn’t see it that way. He snapped. The only remaining – even remotely – acceptable face of the Nasty Party showed its fangs. There’s no going back from that.

If you don’t like what the Coalition is doing in government, and you want to exercise your right to free speech about it, then in Boris Johnson’s mind you are a “Lefty tosser”.

Nice one, Boris. It’ll take a few more like that to completely ruin your chances of taking the Tory leadership, but there’s plenty of time.

We’ll keep an eye – and an ear – out for you.

New benefit plan has no heroes – only zeroes

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Shall we play a game? This one’s called join-the-dots. I didn’t really like it when I was younger and I doubt that you will, after you see the picture we’ll be creating.

We’ll start here: The government wants to cut another £10 billion from the welfare budget – that’s the bit of public spending that keeps millions of people off the streets, if only on the breadline. The government could, alternatively, try stimulating the economy to make that money in taxes, but policy seems to be pushing hard the other way, as we’ll see shortly.

So: cuts are coming. How to perform them? Draw a line to where the government announces it wants to break the link between benefits and inflation, and link them to average earnings instead.

George Osborne thinks this is a good idea because inflation hit 5.2 per cent last September, much higher than rises in earnings – remember, the man who won’t do what his initials demand (GO) has kept public sector wages frozen for the last few years and private sector wages are also stagnant. As a result, Gideon has been paying out more than he thinks he should to people who, honestly, deserve a break from his miserly administration.

Now draw a line to the results of the NatCen survey that came out earlier this week, stating that people do not want to see more money being spent on welfare than is being spent already. This is the excuse that Mr Osborne wants to use – he can say there is polling evidence that puts significant numbers in support of an end to so-called benefits uprating. Never mind that only 3,000 people were asked or that none of the main parties ever intended to increase the proportion of government spending that goes on welfare; this is his justification and he’s sticking to it.

I wonder what will happen if wages start to rise faster than inflation? Will the Nasty Party write a new clause into the contract, that benefits should rise along with inflation or wages, depending on which is lower? Officials have already stated that they do not want a huge increase in benefits if wages start to climb sharply, so they are already working on ways to ‘fix’ the linking mechanism. Evil, isn’t it?

Never mind; the current plan uses wages, so now draw a line to this: The government still wants to introduce regional pay settlements for the public sector. The Tories – sorry, the Coalition – believe that national pay settlements inflate public sector wages in certain parts of the country far beyond what their private sector counterparts can manage. They also believe that forcing regional settlements on us will save them a fortune in salaries.

Think what this will achieve: The ghettoisation of much of the UK. With regional pay deals, people will have less money available for things other than necessities, meaning fewer trips to the shops (which have already suffered thanks to the idiotic VAT increase to 20 per cent, which cut a large chunk of growth out of the economy). What happens then? The shops shut and their suppliers go out of business too. More people end up on benefits and looking for work.

You see, this right-wing government does not accept the simple fact that welfare benefits help keep the economy stable. Yes, government spending increases as payments are made, but businesses keep their customers, the economy stays afloat and the country as a whole avoids a terminal spiral of decline.

Cutting welfare, thereby reducing the incomes of society’s poorest, creates fiscal hindrance. As billions of pounds (£10 billion in this case) are taken from the active economy, businesses lose customers and lay off staff.

In a recession, increased welfare spending benefits national income so that each pound is worth £1.60 when it has worked its way through shop tills and paycheques. When welfare is cut, this works in reverse, so cutting £10 billion from benefits will increase the UK’s recession by more than one per cent.

This means a longer recession, a larger deficit and more debt. (The above information courtesy of the False Economy website, which has produced a handy factsheet for you to download, keep, and show to anyone spouting Tory propoganda)

Now draw a line to: The government wants to cut more money from the welfare budget.

Look at what you’ve drawn. A big, fat zero.

This is what the government’s plan will achieve for the people, and economy, of Britain.

Britain’s idyllic rural life: poverty and joblessness

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Campaign to End Child Poverty, Coalition, Conservative, EuroDebt Financial Services, joblessness, Liberal, Liberal Democrats, Llandrindod East/West, Llandrindod North, Llandrindod South, Llandrindod Wells, Mike Sivier, mikesivier, poverty, Powys, private sector, public sector, Tories, Tory, unemployment, wage gap, wages, Western Mail

Poverty and joblessness are stalking the streets of Llandrindod Wells, according to the newspapers. Is everybody having a happy new year, then?

We’ve known for some time that average wages in Powys are less than three-quarters of the national average (according to the Western Mail in January 2011, when the average was £598.30 per week while, in Powys, it was £435.40 – 72 per cent of the average).

Now I read that, with the public sector shrinking rapidly, and wages about to be cut in the little that remains, private firms cannot match its wages.

This means the pulic-private wage gap here is the largest in the UK – a difference of 18.5 per cent for women and 18 per cent for men, compared to UK averages of 10.2 per cent for women and 4.6 per cent for men.

Unemployment in Llandrindod is the highest in Powys at 4.6 per cent. Taken by electoral division, this amounts to 67 people in Llandrindod East/West – 10.5 per cent of the available workforce, the sixth highest amount in Wales; 66 in Llandrindod South, or 5.9 per cent of the workforce; and 55 in Llandrindod North, or 4.8 per cent.

And Llandrindod North has the highest child poverty rate in Powys: 34 per cent.

That’s more than a third of the children in the ward, according to the Campaign to End Child Poverty. The organisation has said parents need access to decent jobs in both the public and private sectors.

I can tell that some of you are probably starting to laugh derisively at the optimism of that statement. It’s not funny, I assure you.

The icing on the cake is a report from EuroDebt Financial Services, which states that people in Llandod are among the most likely to have overspent in the run-up to Christmas.

The town was believed to be 15th most likely in the UK to have overspent, with the amount expected to be 104 per cent of their disposable income.

In other words, people in my town were predicted to have gone into debt to pay for Christmas.

It is a revealing indictment of the state of the nation that some of the most generous households in the UK – Llandrindod included – have some of the lowest incomes!

The issues raised by these statistics are not going to go away and dedicated help is required from our political leaders.

But in a town where the MP and Assembly Member are Liberal Democrats, and two of the three county councillors are Conservatives – all members of the parties that are causing much of the misery – this seems unlikely.

The county councillors are up for election this year. I hope the people in my town will weigh up their votes very carefully indeed before casting them.

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