Political Economy

The Conservative, Labour and Liberal-Democrats do not want to give the people of England their own Parliament. The reasons they give are varied. Some, such as Straw and Prescott are quite happy to insult the English cultural identity and care not that this is a deeply racist action, under the Race Relations Act, and also offensive, confident that their position will give them protection.

Some of them mutter on about England being 80% of the population of the UK and therefore do not need a separate parliament. This argument is either based on an ignorance of Pareto’s principle or an attempt to manipulate people by misquoting it (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2010/01/only-english-mps-voting-on-english-matters/).

None of them mention democracy. liberty, equity, dignity, rights, fairness, self-determination, birth-right, entitlement. All words one would expect a serious and committed parliamentarian to use with respect to this issue. But notice how in this election campaign they have promised “fairness for all” in order to get your vote! How dishonest can they be?

You will, therefore, probably not be surprised that the real reason why they do not want a parliament for England is quite different from the one they give, and infinitely grubbier. Yes, it concerns money, lots of your money and my money, in fact £2,000,000 of our money. Money that they do not deserve, money that they are happy to scam off you and I, just as they did with their expenses

They are trying to kid us that they have cleaned up the financial systems in Parliament, that they are squeaky clean, that it will never happen again. What is “it”? Quite simply “it” is the same greed that made them unable to tell when a rule is immoral, dishonest, or unethical. Remember that MPs caught out ‘flipping’ their houses to make untaxed capital gains off the taxpayer, or claiming repairs to their boyfriend’s house? All said “We were only following the rules” (see my blog at http://www.politicaleconomy.me.uk/2009/10/how-the-rich-and-powerful-scam-the-rules-for-their-own-benefit/ .

Well here is another big, fat, round £2,000,000 rule they are quite happy to follow even though in doing so they are taking money they have not earned, money that comes from me and you, money that they should not be getting. Not that is if they were men and women of integrity.

Many of the plum jobs as Secretary of State or Minister in the Westminster cabinet are for devolved matters. That is those that matters such as Education, Health, Justice and Transport to name a few. These matters have been devolved to national parliaments or assemblies either in part or whole. Westminster Secretaries of State basically administer only England in these matters. They should get paid the same as their equivalent in the Scottish Parliament. In the case of a secretary of state this is £44,000 less, of a minister £24,000 less if they were in an English Parliament (they would also get £7,000 less for their salary). There are around 70 of these plum jobs to be handed out after the 6th May adding up to excess pay of around £2,000,000.

Now you get “it”, the real reason why they do not want an English Parliament. Men of Honour? I do not think they know the meaning of the phrase.

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I received the following email message from Frank Roseman, the English Democrats prospective parliamentary candidate for the Cities of London and Westminster (http://www.voteenglish.org/london-candidates/). Interestingly it looks as though Gordon is a snob, always toadying up to the wealthy.

“Just a few interesting facts about Gordon Brown

1 – We used to have 6 independent regulators to regulate the different
divisions of the financial services industry, including our Banks.

(Margaret Thatcher knew what the Banks were like and in the 1988
Finance Act she bound the Banks up in regulation to prevent them from
being reckless!!!)

Then Gordon Brown became Chancellor on 6th May 1997

Gordon’s banker friends said “We want all these regulators to go. We
don’t want regulators watching everything we do”

AND GORDON SAID OK

So, Gordon announced on the 20th May 1997 (2 weeks after becoming
Chancellor) that the six regulatory bodies would be broken up and a
new Financial Services Authority would replace them. The FSA had
virtually no powers over the Banks and he also took away the powers
from the Bank of England to enforce regulation on them.

The result is the devastation we are all suffering today.

————————————–

2 – We used to have a Monopolies and Mergers Commission

Then Gordon’s banker friends said we don’t want the Monopolies and
Mergers commission telling us who we can and cant “Take Over”

AND GORDON SAID OK

So, in 1998 Gordon scrapped the Monopolies and Mergers Commission and
created a replacement called the Competition Commission, with very
much reduced powers and different ideas of what used to be regarded
as a “Monopoly”.

The result is the Massive Corporations we have today who are ruling
and shaping our lives for their own benefit and profits. Not to
mention the massive Monopolies held by some of these corporations
through the forced purchases of all their competitors

————————————-

3 – We used to have pension regulations, which for many decades had
included something called “The Pensions Cap”

The pensions cap set a limit on how much pension any scheme member
(including directors) could get from an occupational pension scheme,
irrespective of how high their earnings were. It was there to protect
the ordinary members pensions, and to prevent Directors paying
themselves obscene salaries and then draining the pension funds with
huge pensions.

Then Gordon Brown’s banker friends said that they wanted the pensions
cap removing so that they could get pensions related to their obscene
earnings.

(The whole Pensions industry gave him warnings of the effects it would
have. Even the Inland revenue put forward objections)

BUT GORDON SAID OK

Because Gordon never likes to disappoint his banker friends

So Gordon took away the Pensions Cap in 2005 and then some of his
friends were able to leave their boardroom positions with huge
pensions!!!

For example Fred Goodwin [ex CEO of RBS] was apparently entitled to a
pension of over £700,000

If Gordon had left the pensions cap in place that would have been a
mere £125,000

Well done Fred and your mates!!!

(The Superannuations Division of the Inland Revenue have kept a record
of what it should be, in readiness for when we get a new chancellor
who sees fit to re-instate it. George Osborn has pledged to do that).
The record of Pensions Cap limits are available to view on the
Revenue’s website

The result of this is that along with Gordon’s “Tax Raid” on pension
funds starting July 1997, over four thousand UK company pension
scheme’s have closed their doors to new members and many of them have
had to close down altogether, leaving millions of workers without any
pension provision.

This man Gordon Brown “professes to be a socialist and “for” the working man

The working man’s main form of long term financial security had for
many years been his company pension scheme, something to look forward
to at the end of a life of hard work, his reward, light at the end of
a long dark tunnel.

Gordon has put an end to that by destroying the most valuable asset of
the average British worker.

*****************************

IT IS ONE OF THE GREATEST TRAVESTIES OF JUSTICE THAT THIS MAN WHO
PRETENDS TO BE “FOR THE WORKING MAN” HAS IN FACT BEEN HIS WORST ENEMY
FOR THE LAST THIRTEEN YEARS AND WILL LEAVE A LEGACY THAT WE WILL STILL
BE CLEARING UP FOR MANY YEARS TO COME.

THE REAL INJUSTICE IS THAT ITS ALL BEEN DONE IN AREAS WHICH ARE
TOTALLY OUT OF SIGHT TO THE GENERAL PUBLIC AND BEYOND THE
UNDERSTANDING MANY

GORDON RELIES ENTIRELY ON PEOPLES IGNORANCE TO GET AWAY WITH HIS INDISCRETIONS

GORDON’S MOTTO OF: “DENY EVERYTHING AND ADMIT NOTHING”

SEEMS TO BE WORKING QUITE WELL FOR HIM SO FAR!!!

—————————————-

4 – LASTLY, WHAT GORDON LIKES TO CALL THE “GLOBAL BANKING CRISIS”

Have you noticed that we were the first to be in it and are the last
to be out (and whether we are out is very speculative!!!)

As he has openly admitted, The Royal Bank of Scotland was the worlds
biggest bank.

So when RBS and HBOS were about to go BUST in October 2008 and they
had to be bailed out overnight so they did not take the entire country
down with them, (that by the way was almost certainly a decision made
by the hierarchy in Whitehall for which

Gordon loves to take the credit)

As the worlds leading banks now all lend money to each other on a
collosal scale, isn’t it obvious that the worlds biggest bank going
down would have a devastating effect on all the others it dealt with.

This “worlds biggest bank” had also sold bad mortgage books to other banks.

Most of the Banks in Europe which ran into crisis were dragged into it
because of the crooked dealings of our big Banks. A fact that both
Germany and France were quick to remind Gordon Brown of at the G20
emergency meeting shortly after the crisis.

There are many other of Gordon’s indiscretions, far too many to list
here, but perhaps the few biggie’s shown above will give some insight
into how Gordon operates.

By the way have you noticed how he has suddenly become interested in
Social issues now an election is looming and seems to be able to
promise the world when, as Alistair Darling put it a few days ago,
there is not a penny left in the bank!!!

Think very carefully before casting your vote for this man who is
probably the most extreme capitalist of the past century while
pretending to be
“for the working man”.

GORDON WORSHIPS THE SUPER RICH AND POWERFUL AND CANNOT SAY NO TO THEM

Please pass this on to all you can, the whole population should know
these few facts before the election.”

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What if the Law and the Constitution enshrine something that we know is morally wrong? What then?

In the Government of the People, by the People and for the People this question is  important, it is difficult and, in its propensity to bring about civil strife, it is dangerous. Abraham Lincoln asked this question and struggled with it for many years. His simple answer, that  no individual or community had the right to do what was wrong led to his selection as the Republican candidate for President. And as they say, “All the rest is history”.

For the rest of us the issues are never so great, but the result, when we fail to adopt Lincoln’s answer, can be just as significant in our lives as well as in the lives of others.

Two examples of a moral failure in this respect have recently been before us in the news. The first is the matter of MP’s expenses and the second was a the case of a man sent to a private clinic, by the National Health Service, for an everyday knee operation who died because the clinic had no blood supplies on hand.

In both cases the defence is the same, “I/We followed the rules. I/We are blameless”. Well, not if you are Mr Lincoln, you’re not, say the rest of us!

It must surely be obvious to the parties in cases such as these that if harm results then the excuse of following the rules is not admissible. The degree of accountability  depends on the degree of the error and the level of knowledge and responsibility at which the parties operate.

In the case of the MPs there had already been concern raised within the House.  The failure to recognise that, helping yourself liberally from the public purse is morally wrong, whatever the rules may be, is worrying. It points to our premiere legislative body consisting of people who, in the main, appear to be unable to make moral decisions. And if they cannot do this then they are not fit to rule us.

The case of the clinic is perhaps worse in that a man died, perhaps because of the clinic’s failure to put difficult moral questions to itself. The answer, to the reporter’s question that surely it should be obvious that if an operation is being carried out then blood may be required as a matter of extreme urgency, of “We followed all the rules”  is clearly a failure of moral sense. We expect the professionals who treat us to do so in a safe manner having regard to all the unfavourable events likely to occur and to the importance of the outcome. Surely death as an outcome is important in any moral society?

The willingness of what appears to be many important people, organisations and their leaders to act at all time, without respect to other peoples safety or their property, in other words to act without morality, is a cancer in the side of our present society. A cancer moreover inserted by those who far too frequently have been heard to make harsh judgments on other people, often poorer and less well educated than themselves.

The answer is to change the law, if indeed the law needs changing. We all need to know that the law requires of us to carry out, when the health and safety of others or their property is in question, at the level of competence it is reasonable to expect from us, an analysis of the  importance of outcomes and of their likelihood of occurrence irrespective of any rules or contractual agreements in force. If for some reason we do not like the answers or cannot implement them  then we should be expected to take the moral decision and not go ahead with what was intended.

In the meantime, whilst we wait for the civil authorities to make their minds up about wrong doing, we should surely expect those who have failed this moral test to do the moral thing. Apologise and make recompense!

GHTime Code(s): 83b49