January 27th, 2010
27th January, 2010
Letter to the Guardian:
Dear Sir,
I was astonished to read Lord Myners’s assertion that banks use our deposits to lend out to businesses and homebuyers. (Comment, 25 January). This is simply not the case, and has not been the case since 1694 when the British banking system was established, and
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January 20th, 2010
Its getting late here now, but I am hearing from informed sources in the US that the Democrat candidate in Ted Kennedy’s seat is already blaming President Obama. for the loss of the ultra-safe Democratic seats.
“We were hurt by White House Failure to confront Wall St.” says the candidate’s pollster.
Celinda Lake pointed
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January 19th, 2010
17th January, 2009.
This was posted on the Compass site on the 16th January.
I am shortlisted for the North West Durham Parliamentary Selection. A less likely candidate you would be hard pressed to find. I am not a local big wig and did not grow up in the constituency. I don’t have the backing of big hitters – either in the party, or in the unions. Nor am I a youthful 25-year-old, ambitious for power. No, I am far more ambitious than that.
I want the people (especially the young people) of North West Durham to have a sound and stable future. I want Britain to learn from the catastrophic debacle of the financial crisis, and ensure it never happens again. The hopes, aspirations, health, jobs, businesses and climate of Britain must not be sacrificed to pay for economic failure engineered by a small elite in the City of London.
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January 16th, 2010
15th January, 2009.
Patient readers this blog is triggered by Jeff Randall’s column in the Daily Telegraph today.
In it he inadvertently discloses the identity of the puppet-masters dictating the Tory political agenda around public spending cuts.
In a somewhat histrionic column in which he describes the public deficit as a ‘disaster’ ( he should mind his language: Haiti’s earthquake is a disaster) Randall quotes a piece of ‘research’ by the French bank, Société Générale. The paper is titled “Popular Delusions” and its authors explain some simple facts about government spending cuts to Telegraph readers:
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January 9th, 2010
8th January, 2009
This piece appeared on the Guardian’s Comment site:
“Today the people of Iceland, a country whose population, at 317,000, is somewhat smaller than Leicester’s, are required by the British political, financial and economic establishment to carry the full burden of the losses suffered by Landsbanki’s depositor programme Icesave.
We consider this to be unfair, for the following reasons.
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January 7th, 2010
5th January, 2010
Sorry about the delay in posting, but this is my latest blog for the Huffington Post.
“One is president of a country of about 300,000 people — Iceland — a country about the size of Virginia, President Olafur R. Grimsson. The second is president of a country of about 300,000,000 people, the United States. President Obama.
Both their presidencies have been scarred by the financial crisis. Both have had to balance the interests of their people against the interests of their bankers.
President Obama has allowed that balance to tilt in favor of the bankers.
President Grimsson yesterday took a stand against bankers and international creditors, including the British and Dutch governments.
Instead, he stood up to defend the interests of his people.
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January 7th, 2010
7th January 2010,
Read Ann Pettifor and Jeremy Smith’s letter on why Iceland must NOT repay the debt in the FT today:
” Sir, The president of Iceland’s refusal to approve repayment to the British and Dutch governments should be welcomed (January 5). The pause gives the Anglo-Dutch governments an opportunity to withdraw their
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January 5th, 2010
5th January, 2010.
The latest news from Iceland, as reported in the Guardian today:
” The president of Iceland has refused to sign a bill to repay more than €3.8bn (£3.4bn) to Britain and the Netherlands following the collapse of the country’s Icesave bank in 2008.
Olafur Grimsson threw the long-running issue into
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January 5th, 2010
5th January, 2010
There has been much sturm and drang generated by the Guardian and others on the threat posed to government finances by the flawed and often irrational rating agencies, and by the supposedly despotic, vengeful and greedy bond markets.
Methinks they protest too much.
We at the Green New Deal
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January 4th, 2010
4th January, 2010
I am proud of the great Jubilee 2000 petition, which I helped draft.
Within a short time, and making revolutionary use of the internet, we had circulated the petition worldwide. Millions were printed, signed and returned in battered packages to our small HQ in London.
As Paula Goldman noted in an article in the Financial Times (17 May 2008) “the Jubilee 2000 petition holds two world records, according to Guinness World Records: it was the largest petition ever signed (24,391,181 signatures) and the most international (with people from 166 countries signing). Sheer size was no doubt key to the Jubilee petition’s success: when talking to decision-makers, campaigners could rightly claim historic levels of public interest.”
Now our example is being followed by the people of Iceland.
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In the September 2003 edition of openDemocracy I wrote:
Click here to read the full story in openDemocracy
BOOKS:
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