The Unnecessary Death Of A Mum

We live in a world ruled by politicians and wealthy corporations where harshness, selfishness and a lack of concern about the suffering and the problems of others are the norm.

What chance does truth and impartiality have when five billionaires run almost the whole of UK media?

The Tory Government Is Hammering The British Steel Industry.
Chancellor George Osborne’s “March of the Makers” is a sick joke when we uncover fresh evidence that the Conservative Government is hammering the British steel industry.
Failing to ensure blue-chip producer Sheffield Forgemasters will supply most of the steel needed to build the £18billion Hinckley Point nuclear power station is unforgivable, especially when Business Minister Anna Soubry parrots inaccurate propaganda claiming the firm could not make the metal.
Far from creating the Powerhouse they promised, we once again see the Tories pulling the plug on the North.
( Daily Mirror, 30.01.2016 )

Thatcher’s family hope to bank £500,000 by auctioning 200 of the Rusty Lady’s possessions.
Don’t hold your breath for a relief fund donation when Cameron finishes what his heroine started and Britain’s last deep mine, Kellingley in West Yorks, shuts before Christmas.
( Brian Reade, 07.12.2015 )

The UK Conservative Government.
A bunch of private schoolboys determined to deliver the NHS into the hands of greedy private companies for whom big profits, rather than good care, will be their aim.

Cameron threatening to expel Muslims who can’t speak our national language.
How many British ex-pats would still be living in Spain if that was European law?
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

There’s Money For MPs But Not For Others.
Ten months after the monster pay hike that shocked Britain, MPs have given themselves another, at more than SIX times the inflation rate.
OK, inflation is low and the rise only 1.3%.
But the average worker got just one per cent, to about £27,500 a year.
The MPs’ deal takes them to a princely £74,962.
Plus expenses, of course.
It is a slap in the face to others on the public payroll too.
They are told there’s no money to give them more than one per cent for years to come.
Yet there is money to give MPs more.
( The Sun, 10.02.2016 )

The Unnecessary Death Of A Mum.
A mum who faced eviction from the house where her son had taken his own life hanged herself in the same spot.
Frances McCormack, 53, had reportedly been asked to pay Bedroom Tax after the death of her son Jack Allen, 16, in 2013.
An eviction notice arrived at her home the same day her body was found in August, 2015.
Part of a note found in her bedroom was reportedly addressed to PM David Cameron, on the hardship the hated Bedroom Tax caused.

Turkey’s modern sultan, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is fast becoming a tinpot dictator when a sacked doctor faces two years in the clink if found guilty of insulting the President by comparing him to Gollum.
One’s a dangerous, slimy, obsessive backstabber and the other a character in Lord of the Rings.
( Brian Reade, 07.12.2015 )

UK Conservative Government cuts have led to 441 libraries closing in five years.
Another 149 face the axe.
Even Prime Minister David Cameron’s mother signed a petition opposing the closure of eight out of nine libraries in West Berkshire.

Greedy Private Landlords And Rental Sharks.
Thousands of cut-price Right To Buy homes end up in the hands of greedy private landlords, a report reveals.
Almost four in ten council houses bought by tenants are later flogged to rental sharks who charge far higher prices than town halls.
Last year, 12,304 properties were sold under Right To Buy as PM David Cameron revived Margaret Thatcher’s flagship policy.
He now plans to extend this, raising fears of a new grab by landlords.
Some rental firms charge 50% more than the same council pad next door, the Commons Communities and Local Government Committee found.
( The Sun, 10.02.2016 )

Blind, Deaf And Very Dumb.
Jimmy Savile raped, groped and abused girls under the noses of his BBC bosses.
Yet, according to a leaked draft of the Savile Review, none of them knew anything about it.
One 15-year-old even killed herself after he and another DJ seduced her.
And twice he was interviewed by BBC executives about his behaviour with young girls.
Yet still no-one knew anything about anything.
How can that be?
( Carole Malone, 24.01.2016 )

If you say “It’s our religion”, you can get away with almost anything.

Family Flog Maggie’s Treasured Possessions.
The auctioning of Margaret Thatcher’s treasured possessions at Christie’s left me bemused.
Didn’t the woman who paid £25,000 for her wedding dress realise there are much cheaper ways of getting a good Halloween frock than that?
Did the unusually high amount of interest in her muff prove the theory that all Tory men were attracted to her?
Does the fact that Jeffrey Archer wanted to buy five lots but left with nothing, prove that the cash he earns from those barely literate books is drying up?
And how wisely the main benefactor, Carol Thatcher, learned at her mother’s knee about the personal benefits of selling the family silver.
Yet how little she must have learned at her top private St Paul’s Girls’ School.
Because having to flog your mum’s dearest possessions to get the kind of pension that stops you needing to humiliate yourself on any more reality TV programmes shows those £22,000 annual fees were wasted.
And how her ice-cold mother might have been better off just giving her some love.
( Brian Reade, 19.12.2015 )

Here is your country.
Cherish these natural wonders, cherish the natural resources, cherish the history and romance as a sacred heritage, for your children and your children’s children.
Do not let selfish men or greedy interests skin your country of its beauty, its riches or its romance.
( Theodore Roosevelt )

Ministry Of Defence Squander Money On Telephone Calls.
The UK Ministry of Defence staff have spent over a quarter of a million pounds calling directory inquiries and the speaking clock in five years.
A Freedom of Information request has revealed 81,000 calls were made to 118 118 inquiries at a cost of £202,000 between 2010 and 2015.
Another £62,000 was blown on speaking clock calls, despite staff being issued with a list of free alternatives.
( Sean Rayment, 31.01.2016 )

So tell me. Where shall I go?
To the left, where nothing is right?
Or to the right, where nothing is left?

A Man Of Many Contradictions.
Great news from the Supreme Court where Donald Trump has lost his appeal to stop offshore wind turbines being built within sight of his Aberdeenshire golf course.
What possessed someone with a head like that to build a golf course in the windiest part of Britain?
But then he is a man of many contradictions.
Why would he want to ban the burka when his face and hair suggest he would benefit from wearing one more than any other human being outside the Elephant Man’s remaining descendant?
And what level of macho self-delusion led him to tell Americans this week that if he’s elected President he will “penetrate” the internet to close down Islamic State.
How does that work?
Don’t be surprised if he follows up this wild pledge by offering to penetrate the hole in the ozone layer to close down this pinko global warming debate.
( Brian Reade, 19.12.2015 )

If you put the federal government in charge of the Sahara desert, in five years there would be a shortage of sand.
( Milton Friedman )

The violent tendencies of the Koran are so striking that I cannot understand how any man with good sense could miss them.
( Alexis de Tocqueville, 1838 )

Rapes In The UK, 2011-2012.
2,210 rapes of a female child under 13-years-old.
599 rapes of a male child under 13-years-old.

The Northern Poorhouse Project Gets Closer.
Look behind those red doors on asylum-seekers in Middlesbrough and you’ll see a bigger story than G45 incompetence.
A government policy to put more asylum-seekers in working class Teesside streets than in every Tory-voting constituency in the entire southeast.
The same Teesside streets devastated by the closure of steelworks due to Cameron’s lack of concern and eagerness to let his new-found Chinese friends dump cheap steel on us.
The Northern Poorhouse project gets closer to completion by the day.
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

Official records show that the UK Conservative Party spent £1.2million on advertising with Facebook leading up to the May 2015 General Election.

Families Pay For His Stupidity.
Ditching plans to build flood barriers that might have protected homes and businesses did save a few bob for Chancellor George Osborne yet we pay for his stupidity when the expense falls on families washed out of their properties.
Britain needs a smart state, not the penny-pinching small state where Osborne & Co’s skimping leaves us all with a costly nightmare.
( Daily Mirror, 11.01.2016 )

If a foreign country played a part in the deaths of tens of thousands of its own most vulnerable people, we would send in Armed Forces and bomb them..
The UK Conservative Government call this ‘Fit For Work’.

As pro-Tory bias at a petrified BBC reaches laughable proportions, is it time to re-name it the Bullingdon Broadcasting Corporation?
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

Politicians Prepared To ‘Press The Button’.
The UK Conservative Government are intent on spending around £100billion on a couple of submarines armed with US nuclear missiles.
Shouldn’t we be terrified of politicians who believe weapons of mass destruction are necessary, and worse still, prepared to ‘press the button’ and incinerate millions of innocent men, women and children?

There have been smarter, stronger and better looking men than me who are no longer alive.
All that’s left for us to do is to keep on working as hard as we can and rebuild what is lost.
( Yisrael Kristal, Auschwitz survivor )

It’s not God who kills our children.
It’s us.
Only us.
We have polluted the air and the oceans.
We feed our children with animal products full of drugs, chemicals and shit.
We drop bombs and fire missiles at schools and hospitals and homes.

The Real David Cameron.
How revealing to see the carefully constructed facade crumble, the snarl appear and the real David Cameron look down at the Labour leader like something brown and sticky found on the sole of his Savile Row brogue.
“My mother would say, put on a proper suit, do up your tie and sing the national anthem”, he spat like an Old Etonian roasting his fag for bringing him crumpets without wearing a bow tie.
Here was the bullying elitist unplugged from his PR machine, his inner Lord Snooty released.
The aristocrat who believes he was born to sit at the top of a class system and everyone below should polish their forelock and tug it in the presence of their betters.
( Brian Reade, 27.02.2016 )

Marlon Brando refused to accept an Oscar for The Godfather in 1973 as a protest against Hollywood’s treatment of Native American Indians.

A person who thinks only about building walls, wherever they may be, and not building bridges, is not Christian.
( Pope Francis attacks Donald Trump )

Cameron Is Bringing Back The Cold War.
To sweeten the Poles into accepting reduced migrant benefits, UK Prime Minister David Cameron has agreed to permanently place 1,000 British soldiers in Poland.
Delusional Poland fear Russia will invade them any time now.
So to get a ‘deal’, Mr Cameron is bringing back the Cold War with Russia and using British troops as ‘hostages’.

A UN report said British weapons were used to kill women and children in Yemen’s civil war.
There is UN evidence that Saudi Arabian bombers targeted weddings, residential areas and schools.
( Daily Mirror, 29.01.2016 )

Bankers Are Poised To Fill Their Boots Again.
How, instead of seeking justice for the British taxpayer, Osborne held more than 90 meetings with top bankers since becoming Chancellor, pecking them on the cheek as they left his revolving door with goodie bags full of tax cuts and lighter controls.
Funny, isn’t it, how our government is happy to see a disgraced banker given a Golden Goodbye while a lifelong steelworker gets a Wooden Tata?
As we head for another global crash, bamboozled by the same language that we were back in ’08, those bankers are poised to fill their boots again, speculating, hedging their bets, letting stocks fail so they can buy and then profit, while our pensions and savings get hammered, company profits shrink, jobs go, houses are repossessed, pay drops.
And, as they say in The Big Short, immigrants and the poor take the rap.
Not that this looming global crash should interfere much with the five-star shindig taking place in Davos right now as the planet’s rich elite gather to swap notes.
Because all evidence points to them hitting the jackpot as inequality soars.
Less than 1% of the wealth created since 2000 has gone to the poorest 50% of the world’s population.
Last year in Britain, FTSE 100 chief executives earned more than 180 times as much as the average worker.
Yet for most of the past 15 years, during which there has been the worst crash since the 1920s, those companies have been less valuable than they were at the turn of the century. Go figure.
An Oxfam report this week showed that if you put the world’s richest 62 people on a coach, that coach would have more wealth riding in it than the poorest 3.6 billion on earth.
In 2010 the figure was 388, meaning if the inequality carries on at the same rate, in five years you could seat the world’s richest 11 on a minibus and they would be wealthier than half the planet.
And in a decade’s time that number will have fallen to two.
They could be lifted on to a gold-plated speedboat.
Leaving four billion people drowning in their slipstream, the last noises they hear being champagne corks and laughter.
What a wonderful world.
( Brian Reade, 23.01.2016 )

UK Chancellor George Osborne went to Brussels to vote on an EU cap on bankers’ bonuses.
He was the only one who voted against it.

Westminster Pedophile Ring.
Claims of a Westminster pedophile ring emerged 22 years ago in magazine Scallywag, which shut after it was repeatedly sued for printing lies.
Scallywag published sordid tales which bear a striking resemblance to the Westminster allegations currently being investigated by the Met’s Operation Midland.
It said children were abused at ‘parties’ at a flat in Dolphin Square, Westminster, and many ‘abusers’ were Tories.
Scallywag closed down in 1998.
( Daily Mirror, 10.02.2016 )

The unsung heroes.
The nurses, the carers, the charity workers, the armed forces, the doctors, the police, the cleaners, the animal welfare workers, the fire-fighters.
Without them the country just wouldn’t work.
You all know who you are. God bless you all.

Poor Kanye West.
A multi-millionaire rapper married to Kim Kardashian.
Yet on Twitter he said his firm owes £38million and he begged Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg to loan him a billion dollars to fund his ‘ideas’.
Then he bragged, “Yes, I am personally rich and I can buy furs and houses for my family”.
( John Prescott, 21.02.2016 )

Washington And London Decide Who The Enemies Are.
Pakistan has been a major sponsor of various terrorist groups since General Zia ul-Haq seized power in a military coup in 1977 – military support brought some groups into being, after which they were nurtured with arms and training.
The 7/7 bombers and many other would-be British terrorists are partly the product of subsequent decades of official Pakistani patronage of these groups.
And today it is the Pakistan-based networks which pose the largest threat to Britain and which are at the centre of global terrorism, having become perhaps even more important than al-Qaida, despite the Western media’s focus on Bin Laden.
Both Pakistan and Saudi Arabia are partly British creations: Saudi Arabia was bloodily forged in the 1920s with British arms and diplomatic support, while Pakistan was hived off from India in 1947 with the help of British planners.
These countries, while being very different in many ways, share a fundamental lack of legitimacy other than as ‘Muslim states’.
The price paid by the world for their patronage of particularly extreme versions of Islam – and British support of them – has been very great indeed.
Given their alliance with Britain, it is no surprise that British leaders have not called for Islamabad and Riyadh to be bombed alongside Kabul and Baghdad, since the War on Terror is clearly no such war at all, but rather a conflict with enemies specially designated by Washington and London.
This has left much of the real global terrorist infrastructure intact, posing further dangers to the British and world public.
( Mark Curtis, 16.11.2015 )

You know what I wish?
I wish all the scum of the Earth had one throat and I had my hands about it.
( Alan Moore )

A Pathetic Reason For Not Taxing The Rich.
George Osborne has been bragging that cutting the top rate of income tax led to increased revenue of £8billion.
His logic being that it’s counter-productive to tax the rich too much because they find ways of avoiding it.
Whereas when you hit the poor with extra taxes like the Bedroom Tax, they are so powerless they have no option but to pay it.
What a fair and moral system that is.
Here’s an idea: instead of allowing them to cook the books, why don’t we do to the rich what we do to benefits claimants: Demonise them, fine them, threaten them, evict them and jail them.
( Brian Reade, 05.03.2016 )

UK Conservative MP Maria Miller, accused of dodgy expenses claims, says the gender of the person should no longer appear on passports.

When politicians insult Muslims, when a mosque is vandalised or a kid bullied, that doesn’t make us safer.
It’s just wrong.
( US President Barack Obama )

Cameron’s Rush To War In Libya.
The UK Commons Foreign Affairs Committee have concluded that PM David Cameron’s rush to war in 2011 helped Islamic State terrorists seize power in Libya.
Ex-Defence Secretary Liam Fox told the committee Britain knew of extremist elements in Libya.
Armed Forces Chief Lord Richards admitted Britain’s knowledge about the groups fighting Gaddafi was insufficient.

Another day, another bitter blow for British industry.
Handing a £500million contract for Northern Rail trains to a Spanish manufacturer tells you all you need to know about this two-faced Conservative Government.
( Daily Mirror, 23.01.2016 )

A Dangerous Paedophile Was Made A Knight Of The Realm.
Strangely, I haven’t heard any demands for action against Margaret Thatcher’s advisors who failed to check out stories that she was inviting Jimmy Savile, a dangerous paedophile, to New Year parties 11 years on the run, plus regular tea at Number 10, and giving him supportive TV appearances.
Remember, the BBC made Savile a popular TV host and Thatcher made him a Knight of the Realm.
( Brian Reade, 05.03.2016 )

A painting of Nick Clegg which cost taxpayers £9,000 now hangs in Parliament as recognition of his ‘contribution to political life’.
So the wanton destruction of an entire political party along with the hopes and dreams of the millions who supported it counts as ‘a contribution to political life’ does it?
( Carole Malone, 24.01.2016 )

Eton Student Spared Jail For Sharing Child Abuse Images.
A former student at the very expensive Eton College was spared jail after he was found to have more than 2,000 pornographic images of children as young as two years-old, including rape and bestiality.
Oxford Crown Court heard that Andrew Picard, 18, made indecent images of children and shared them via Skype chat rooms between January and February, 2015.
It was an undercover police officer who exposed Picard by entering the chat room.
Picard admitted one count of possessing indecent pictures of children, one count of making indecent pictures of children and eight counts of distributing indecent photos or recordings of a child.
Picard was spared jail and given a ten month sentence, suspended for 18 months and with a mental health treatment requirement.
It makes you wonder if John Smith the labourer who went to a state comprehensive school would have been treated so leniently.
( Rose Winfold, February 2016 )

Only 27 asylum seekers out of 7,586 applicants were allowed into Japan last year.
Only 11 were let in during 2014.
In 2015, EU member states gave protection status to around 185,000 asylum seekers.

Cameron Accused Him Of Not Wishing Him Happy Christmas.
Since being elected Labour leader in September, Jeremy Corbyn has been accused of committing every heinous act outside of bestial necrophilia.
Or David Cameron’s student party piece as it’s become known.
As if not bowing at the Cenotaph (when he did) wasn’t bad enough, Cameron accused him at PMQs of not wishing him Happy Christmas (when he did).
So here’s a little prediction. I reckon if this blood rain from the Sahara keeps up into next week, a right-wing newspaper will accuse Corbyn of carrying out pagan sorcery to invoke a Red Christmas and brainwash kids into rejecting Christ for communism.
( Brian Reade, 19.12.2015 )

UK aid, £228,000, was paid to left-wing activists in the Middle East said to have helped death squads torture and kill Palestinians.
The B’Tselem group was accused by Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu of sending ‘innocents’ to torture and execution.

We should not be surprised George Osborne’s family firm has paid no UK corporation tax in the last seven years.
The Chancellor has talked tough on tax avoidance but his commitment to tackling the issue is as thin as the wallpaper his family produces.
( Kevin Maguire, 15.02.2016 )

Trident Is Being Used As A Political Tactic.
Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of violence we currently face, particularly international terrorism.
Who said that?
It was three of the most respected and experienced military experts in the country.
Former head of the Armed Forces, Field Marshall Lord Bramall and former Generals Lord Ramsbotham and Sir Hugh Beach.
They added, “Our independent deterrent has become virtually irrelevant except in the context of domestic politics”.
The problem is that Trident is now being used as a political tactic by the Tories to hit Labour, in the same way they used the myth that Labour caused a global economic crash, not greedy bankers.
( John Prescott, 24.01.2016 )

Dawn Amos, 67, who struggled to breathe or walk, died of a lung disease on the day the UK Department of Work and Pensions declared her not ill enough for her benefits.
( Daily Mirror, 08.01.2016 )

The number of driver records sold to parking firms by the UK DVLA has rocketed by 1,274% in 10 years.
The RAC Foundation said 272,215 were handed over in 2006-2007, but in 2014-2015 it was 3,083,276, and a projected 3,470,510 in 2015-2016.
The DVLA has netted £40.3million since 2006-2007.

Let’s never forget that UK Chancellor George Osborne has missed his borrowing target by five years and hundreds of billions of pounds, doubling the national debt.
( Kevin Maguire, 08.01.2016 )

Engrossed In A Phallic Symbol Of Power.
Bang goes an ambulance driver’s job with every £22,000 Paveway bomb Britain drops on Syria.
And the £35,000 bill for each hour a Tornado jet screeches through the sky on another air raid would fund the pay of three classroom teaching assistants for a year.
Fire a £100,000 Brimstone missile and that’s the wages of three extra nurses you see in the smouldering wreckage.
Launch a £790,000 Storm Shadow cruise weapon and wave goodbye to a full police station of 20 coppers.
It isn’t odd that a Tory regime still imposing austerity on Britain always finds money for wars because politics is about priorities.
And joining a brutal, enduring, unpredictable civil war in Syria was a priority of David Cameron’s since MPs stopped him attacking the other side two years ago.
No sooner had Tory MPs given him his majority for military action, and Labour rebels and Liberal Democrats a political insurance policy should it go badly wrong for Britain, than Cameron and Defence Secretary Michael Fallon changed their tune and started warning this conflict with the Islamic State fanatics will be long and hard.
The meter’s running and the price will only go up, perhaps matching in Syria the £200million a year cost of bombing the identical £5,000 battered pick-up trucks of Islamists in Iraq.
RAF bombing is a gesture, too many U.S. warplanes already chasing too few targets and Britain targeting oil fields in Syria already visited by American and French jets is a PR blitz.
As ex Republican Presidential contender John McCain so sweetly put it: “We will have some token aircraft over there from the British and they’ll drop a few bombs and we’ll say thank you very much”.
Back home the tab will be picked up by low-paid workers and families facing wage packet-emptying benefit cuts or parents worried about letting toddlers out of their pushchairs when hard-up councils are starved of money to sweep parks of broken glass.
Cameron could finance his war by scrapping Trident. Over the lifetime of the futile nukes we’re likely to enjoy little if any change out of £200billion.
But Cameron’s engrossed in a phallic symbol of power so prioritised that it is a radioactive folly over the sunken ships, scrapped aircraft and sacked soldiers of a previous defence review.
I don’t pretend to know an easy answer, ending oil sales to IS and hard graft for a political settlement to heal Syria’s civil war is a long rocky road with no guarantee of peace.
However, it’s a better bet than an expensive obliteration risking blowback.
( Brian Reade, 07.12.2015 )

The fact is George Osborne inherited a growing economy from Labour, took us back into recession, doubled our national debt and brought hardship to millions.
He didn’t fix the roof when the sun was shining.
He blew up the house.
This is the man who claimed his economic charter would produce a budget surplus and keep our economy safe.
( John Prescott, 13.03.2016 )