Go Hypocrite !

GORDON Brown last night dismissed calls to surrender his £123,000 a year pension when he is forced to stop being prime minister next June.

Mr Brown was defiant in the face of City outrage despite the UK government's annual operating loss of £100bn, rising to £1.5 trillion when the write-down of its banking assets is taken into account.

The prime minister said: "I've been building up this pension since I became an MP, it's all completely legal and now you want to take it away because I've been catastrophically bad at my job and you're looking for a scapegoat. What gives?"

He added: "Yes I've been in charge of financial regulation for 12 years, yes I encouraged the housing bubble, and yes I pissed billions up the wall giving pointless jobs to Labour voters, but I fail to see what any of this has to do with me being incredibly well off."

Brown's £3m pension pot is expected to cast the spotlight on the extravagant retirement packages of other failed politicians including Alistair Darling's inexplicable £1.7m and the £1.5m awarded to John Prescott for being a national scandal for 10 years.

Meanwhile Margaret Beckett has a fund worth £1.7m, something called 'Hilary Armstrong' has £1.2m and Tessa Jowell has £1m even though no-one has the faintest idea what any of them actually did.

Critics insist Mr Brown has a moral duty to hand back his pension fund as he will inevitably receive a multi-million pound advance for two volumes of eye-gougingly tedious memoirs which will end up in the bargain bucket at WH Smith within a fortnight.

Martin Bishop, head of pension rows at the Institute for Studies, said: "It's a fascinating dynamic. The politicians blame the bankers, the bankers blame the politicians, and the ordinary taxpayer is down on all fours with a confused look on his face, being fucked at both ends."

Lifted from The Daily Mash - ta to it . Pay the site a return visit - some great stuff there to help lift the gloom of that recession

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This six month old payslip just conveniently popped up the day Gordy decided to give the banks another £300 billion of our money. (click to enlarge)

And whatever happened to that "brilliant" October 2008 bank "re-captialisation" rescue plan. You know - the one the rest of the world would be copying, in awe of our own genius Prime Minister?

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Sir Fred Goodwin Was My Chauffeur !

Spare a thought for the young Sir Fred Goodwin.

I went to school with him – Paisley Grammar in the early 1970s, and then onto Glasgow University where I developed a peculiar bond with him.

I enrolled at uni aged 16 - a year earlier than most. For the previous year Fred, a same age Paisley Grammar classmate of my brother Ian, and Paisley Grammar’s lone Trot, John "Paddy" Adams, were in Fred’s car pool from Paisley. I was a new class of ‘76 back seat recruit. It was a smart gold Rover 200 – quite a set of wheels for a student.

These were the days of the Pistols and, yes, The Eagles, Hotel California being THE album!

And in the dispute over what radio station (Radio 1 or Clyde) played in Sir Fred's Rover as we crawled along Paisley Road West, Fred was for commercial Clyde and The Eagles. It might surprise you to learn that, as a young radical, I was on Fred’s side, loving the Eagles more than he did, as opposed to the noisy “trash” of the punks, favoured by Paddy, the staple of Radio 1 - God Save The Queen aside, banned for just being too right on

Indeed at 16, with most of my own classmates still a school doing a sixth year, Sir Fred was a bit of a mentor, almost father figure to me. Whilst I was political enough - a party member since the age of 12 - I was never too keen on the ideological debate which raged between the 3rd ( Paddy) and 2nd ( bro) Internationals in the car, and then into the Men’s Union smoking room ( surrounded by a bunch of public schoolboy neo- fascists, plotting Maggie and Michael Forsyth’s soon to be launched counter revolution)

Me and Fred had ambitious plans of our own, and together we became the unofficial pinball champions of the Union basement, my mentor Fred being both proud and disappointed when I took his crown sometime mid 2nd term.

And all closely watched by The Union’s "Eddie the handyman", who in the juvenile homophobic mind of Sir Fred, was "a poof" eyeing him, me and everyone else up ready to whisk us away to his workshop if one dropped one’s guard

Of such stuff is the most successful and then most spectacularly disastrous banker in world history made.

And if he losses that £650k a year pension, who knows he might once more be my chauffeur

But I did like Fred, was proud of his success whilst it lasted. Maybe he will do a John Profumo and use a personal disaster to tun his life around, serving the poor rather than livimg off the backs of them.

I hope so. Fred has a better side. I can vouch for that.

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For Ivan Cameron and his family. From Willie Wallace Lincoln (21st December 1850 - 20th February 1862)

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It was 68 years ago today - lest we forget these bravehearts

The 1941 February Strike was a general strike organized during World War II in The Netherlands against the anti-Jewish measures and activities by the Nazis.

Its direct causes were the razzias held by the Germans in the Jewish neighbourhood of Amsterdam. The strike started on 25 February and was largely struck down the next day.

The February Strike was the first direct action undertaken against the anti-Jewish measures of the Nazis in occupied Europe, and performed by non-Jewish citizens.

The timng and context was also significant. The strike was largely Dutch Communist Party led. But this was February 1941, four months before Hitler invaded the Soviet Union, a time in which Stalinist Russia was in a formal aliance with Hitler, Stalin actively supressing anti-nazi activity . The Dutch communists, the Dutch labour movement, chose justice and solidarity over party loyalty - doubly brave if you knew anything about what happened to communist dissidents under Stalin - not just in the Soviet Union. This strike was truly remarkable, courageous, inspiring Learn more

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For the Dutch Transport workers - and millions more like them

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Middle East Peace Envoy, US Congressional Gold Medal of Honour, born again Catholic - are there no limits to this creep's brassneck?

From Today's Sunday Times

TONY BLAIR is cashing in on his experience as Britain’s longest-serving Labour prime minister by setting up a “commercial partnership” that offers clients political and economic advice.

The business venture, Tony Blair Associates, has been disclosed by the official watchdog that scrutinises paid employment undertaken by former ministers.

The advisory committee on business appointments said in a statement on its website this weekend: “Tony Blair has established Tony Blair Associates which will allow him to provide, in partnership with others, strategic advice on a commercial and pro-bono [free] basis, on political and economic trends and governmental reform.” The committee said it saw “no reason why he should not set up the firm forthwith”, and disclosed that this had been done this month.

It is believed to be the first time a former prime minister has set up a commercial venture with the apparent intention of cashing in on time spent in office. Since stepping down as prime minister in June 2007, Blair is said to have earned as much as £15m from a variety of business deals and a book venture. He has been paid a £4.5m advance for his Downing Street memoirs, a £2.5m salary as a part-time adviser to the American investment bank JP Morgan Chase and £2m for an adviser’s role with the Swiss firm Zurich Financial Services. He has also worked on the after-dinner lecture circuit. Last year a Spanish newspaper reported that he had earned up to £240,000 for making a 90-minute speech to 2,000 entrepreneurs in Barcelona. Blair also receives a taxpayer-funded pension of £63,468 a year, plus an annual £84,000 allowance to run a private office.

This chancer makes Sir Fred Goodwin appear contrite, credible.

It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of God

Matthew, chapter 19; Mark chapter 10; Luke chapter 18 - Tony must only have read John ( Prescott).

Pray all you want Tony - you know where you're going

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