Labour is crap,too

Tom Harris, Labour MP, and aspiring Labour Party leader for Scotland bared the truth to The Herald.

"The only thing keeping us in contention is that all the alternatives are crap. That’s not much of a standard to go by: Vote for Labour because everyone else is crap.”

The Labour Party has no horizons beyond those of capitalism. Throughout its existence, the Labour Party has done everything but what need doing most and said everything but what most needed saying. Although from time to time they paid lip-service by using socialist sounding phrases when it met their purpose of deluding the workers, nothing they have ever said or done has advanced the workers one inch. While certain of their reforms might have helped in keeping workers contented and in staving off unrest, they have had the desired effect of giving the boss class a new lease of life. What would the capitalist class do without a Labour Party to patch up their vile system for them? The past record of the Labour Party in supporting wars, freezing wages, breaking strikes, and forming coalitions, with Tories and Liberals, should be enough to finish them with the working class for keeps; the tragedy is that it won’t.

The miserable failure of the Labour governments has led in Scotland to growing support for nationalist party, the Scottish National Party. The Socialist Party no more supports Scottish nationalism than it does British nationalism.

You can vote for candidates who support all the crap of the capitalist system. For them the only way out is through deception, at times to the extent that they begin to believe their own
lies. Or you can use your vote to show you want to overturn it and end the problems capitalism causes once and for all.

First the greasy pole, now the gravy train

Former Labour Cabinet minister and Celtic chairman Lord John Reid made expenses claims for chauffeur-driven travel of £4,000 to ferry the former home secretary to 14 matches and football stadiums across Scotland to watch his team.

Despite claims the peer needed the travel arrangements for security reasons, the journeys are understood to have been made unaccompanied by any police officers or drivers trained in protection. Chauffeurs usually picked up Lord Reid either at his home or Glasgow Airport, drove him to the ground, waited, then took him back home or to an airport. The cost of Lord Reid's travel included a £1,376 bill for two fixtures - against Hearts at Celtic Park and a clash with Aberdeen at Pittodrie. A further £723 was spent on trips to Celtic Park - including the day of the club's annual general meeting - or the team's training ground.

Green MSP Patrick Harvie said "Lord Reid is the chairman of Celtic Football Club and it surely should fall to that club to shoulder the costs of his attendance at matches and training grounds."

Labour's success??

Something to remember at the coming by-election in Glasgow East constituency as reported here and here
Male life expectancy is 63, which is 14 years below the UK average. Life expectancy is lower than for Palestinian males living in the Gaza Strip according to Channel 4.
Unemployment runs at 25 per cent and about 40 per cent of the constituents live on benefits. About 40 per cent of the children live in workless households.
The teenage pregnancy rate is 40 per cent above the national average.
The east end of Glasgow had Scotland's highest rate of alcohol-related hospital admissions. An average of 860 people per 100,000 were admitted between 2004 and 2006 in Scotland. But in the east end of Glasgow that rose to 1,505.
In 2002, a United Nations rating system taking account of life expectancy, unemployment, incomes and rates of illiteracy put the Shettleston area as the most deprived in Britain. Nearby Baillieston, also in Glasgow East, was placed seventh.

Nor will changing the MP have any real lasting effect on this poverty regardless of the promises made by the parliamentary contestants .

Jobs for the Boys

Jonathan Powell, former chief of staff to Tony Blair, is to become a senior executive at a leading bank. He will take up a full-time position as a senior managing director of Morgan Stanley's investment banking division. The son of an air vice-marshal, Mr Powell comes from a powerful family that includes his brother Charles, who was Margaret Thatcher’s foreign policy adviser. His other brother, Chris, is influential in advertising and has done some work for the Labour party.

A former journalist and diplomat, Mr Powell is expected to play a role in transactions involving some of the bank's largest clients in UK and Europe. As a managing director in Morgan Stanley's investment banking division, Mr Powell will be responsible for introducing the bank to important governmental and corporate clients he met during his time as aide to Mr Blair.

It has become increasingly commonplace for investment banks to hire former government ministers and politicians to introduce them to clients and brief them on government policy. Former Conservative prime minister John Major is a senior adviser to Credit Suisse while ex-German chancellor Gerhard Schröder works part-time for Rothschild. Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi spent time with Goldman Sachs before and after his first spell as Italian leader in the 1990s. Lord Waldegrave, a former Conservative minister, is vice-chairman of investment banking at UBS, Switzerland's biggest bank. Jeremy Heywood, Mr Blair's former principal private secretary, left his job as Morgan Stanley's co-head of UK investment banking to become Gordon Brown's head of domestic policy in June.

Brown-nosed snouts in the trough

And its jobs for the boys ( and girls ) . Ex-attorney general , Lord Goldsmith , starts a lucrative new career with a big American law firm called Debevoise & Plimpton LLP on a salary thought to be in the region of £1 million a year. As European chair of litigation, Lord Goldsmith will be part of a firm that prides itself on conflict resolution and anti-corruption investigations - it recently acted for a company in connection with a worldwide inquiry into possible corrupt payments to government officials. Lord Goldsmith , of course , possesses plenty of experience upon how to handle corruption cases as witnessed by his handling of the Saudi Arabian - BAE arms and bribery investigation . Never let the law and legal nicieties interfere with politics and business .

Other pigs with snouts in the trough as reported by the Guardian are :-

· Alan Milburn - The former health secretary is an adviser to Pepsi which brings him £25,000 a year. He also holds a £30,000-a-year role on Lloyds pharmacy's health advisory panel and draws another £35,000 as an adviser to the European board of Bridgepoint Capital Ltd, a finance company with an interest in healthcare.

· Stephen Byers - The former transport and trade secretary is a paid consultant to a Lebanese construction firm based in Athens. He is chairs the board of the Yalta European Strategy group.

· David Blunkett - The former home secretary, collected £385,000 from his memoirs, and up to £150,000 a year from his weekly Sun column. He is also an adviser to Entrust, a company which is bidding to run Britain's controversial identity cards programme.

· John Prescott - The former deputy prime minister signed a £300,000 deal to tell his story in Prezza: Pulling No Punches after stepping down this year.

· John Reid - The former home secretary who was famously labelled Labour's "attack dog" by Jeremy Paxman is expected to become chairman of Celtic Football Club.

· Alastair Campbell - Downing Street's former communications director is reported to have earned £1 million for his book, The Blair Years: Extracts from the Alastair Campbell Diaries.

Bliar or Brown-nose -Who Cares

picture courtesy of Capitalist Money Madness

Our opinion on the resignation of Tony Blair and the impending anointing of Gordon Brown ?

Different cheeks on the same arse .