Repugnant Bumptious Swindlers

The Royal Bank of Scotland, which was bailed out with over £20 billion of tax-payers money just 12 months ago, has set aside £2bn of your money for bonuses and salaries to its investment banking staff – a figure that could, quite incredibly, double by the end of the year.

The bailed out, failed and government-owned RBS confirmed that it will be offering huge bonuses to its 20,000 investment bankers this year.

The remuneration bill for RBS' investment bank division reached £1.8bn for just the first six months of 2009 – that's £90,000 per head ... for only 6 months "work"! And the final total for the year will rise substantially.

Such sums being set aside for RBS investment bankers are astounding, particularly as this division sparked the crisis inside the bank.

Rob MacGregor, national officer for Unite, said: "These RBS investment bankers are happy to return to business as usual and line their pockets while thousands of real bank staff pay the price for the reckless behaviour which almost destroyed the company. Thousands have lost their jobs this year as RBS seeks to reduce costs. Yet somehow the kitty for City bankers is forever growing."

How right he is. Indeed, the company would have collapsed if us tax-payers had not coughed up £18,000 each to bail them out.

Any decision on bonuses will have to involve UKFI, the sham body Moron set up to look after the government's 70% stake in RBS and 43% in Lloyds. UKFI, which declined to comment, did manage to limit one-of bonus payments last year but presided over a total of £1bn in deferred payments and new-style bonds and approved Stephen Hester's £9m annual pay deal as chief executive of RBS.

Hester has already defended the need to pay big bonuses and has spear-headed an aggressive hiring policy with massive pay packages in an "attempt to entice the highest calibre bankers to its troubled business". One banker from Merrill Lynch is among those to have been lured by multi-million pound signing-on fees and has been paid £7m of your money just to join the bank you own.

While the banking industry was on the brink of collapse a year ago, those banks which have survived have been able to report stellar profits because of the billions of pounds' worth of bonds issued by governments to pay for their own bailouts, as well as the surging stock market.

Lord Oakeshott, the Liberal Democrat treasury spokesman, said: "This government has granted a goldmine to a few investment banks. They've bailed them out and effectively pulled the plug on the competition."

The only reasonable conclusion is that these greedy investment bankers have learnt absolutely nothing from the financial meltdown and have the government fawning at their feet. The actions of these top bankers brought catastrophe to our economic system, yet they continue to be obscenely rewarded.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others

The Vile Master Criminal and ex-Labour Prime Minister Tony Blair spent this summer on the world's second largest yacht in Sardinia. He and his family joined Larry Ellison aboard his $150m superyacht.

Ellison is the world's fourth richest man and the CEO of Oracle, the world's largest software company. The yacht, named the Rising Sun has five decks, a gym, spa and private cinema.

After enjoying the luxurious surroundings the Vile Master Criminal then jetted off in an equally impressive speed boat with his minders (paid by the British taxpayer) for some time ashore.

Yesterday the boat was seen cruising off the Emerald Coast in Sardinia.

So much for Socialism.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Empire Of Lies

Britain’s biggest supermarket chain has lied yet again, publishing misleading figures to give the impression that it had met an industry target to halve the use of plastic bags. The Tesco Empire of Evil claims to be one of the greenest retailers but they missed the target and actively tried to conceal the fact.

Most plastic bags end up in landfill sites where can take up to 1,000 years to decompose. Supermarkets issue more than 4,700 tonnes of plastic bags every single month and most are used only once.

Seven supermarket chains - Empire of Evil, Asda, Sainsbury, Co-op, Marks & Spencer, Somerfield and Waitrose - signed an agreement committing them to cut the number of bags by 50 per cent over the three years to May 2009. This month they reported, via the Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), the independent waste watchdog, that they had not met the target. But collectively, they achieved a 48 per cent reduction from 870 million bags in May 2006 to 450 million in May 2009, which is not a bad effort.

However, the six excluding Tesco had more than accomplished their goal because it turns out that the Empire's reduction had been significantly less than 50 per cent despite the fact that they issued a statement on their website on the same day saying “Our customers are now using more than 50 per cent fewer carrier bags than they did before.” A blatant lie that Tesco had to admit when questioned, revealing that its figure had been adjusted to account for growth in sales and did not reflect the chain’s actual performance.

A senior source at Tesco said that "the company was concerned about negative publicity if it were to reveal the real number" so it would not be publishing the actual number of bags used and would not be revealing by how much that number had declined.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

No Pit Closures In Westminster

When appointed, the new Commons' Speaker John Bercow, aptly pronouced Berk-oh, promised to help restore public trust in Parliament in the wake of the MPs’ expenses scandal, and said he would lead by example and stop claiming the controversial second home allowance.

But within just a few weeks of being elected to his new position, he has ordered a series of alterations, redecoration and new furnishings for his grace-in-favour, rent-free home in the Palace of Westminster costing more than £20,000. The work will, of course, be paid for by the taxpayer.
The refurbishment plans for the Speaker’s House (published by The Daily Telegraph) show that £7,524.30 has been spent on just a new sofa and window seat cushions for his drawing room in the grandiose apartment which overlooks the Thames.

Michael Martin, Berk-oh's predecessor as Speaker, already spent more than a staggering £1.7m refurbishing the very same residence between 2001 and early 2008.

Berk-oh, the Conservative MP for Buckingham, vowed to be a modernising influence on Parliament and during his campaign he said “It is high time the House was run by professionals on a transparent basis, ensuring that we are accountable to the people who put us here.” After his installation he declared he would stop claiming the second home allowance, which is worth up to £24,006 to MPs this year.

Frankly, that's a pretty shallow statement when you are provided with a free, central London, Charles Barry-designed apartment that contains a state dining room and is in the shadow of Big Ben, for which you have a bottomless pit of taxpayers cash from which you immediately pillage over twenty grand for alterations and designer furniture!

Incredibly, a further £20,000 has been allocated to cover 'general maintenance'. Berk-oh has told Commons staff that he will personally pay for other items such as a children’s Wendy house that will go on the terrace, a climbing frame for the Speaker’s Green adjacent to the apartment and that he has spent far less than his predecessor. Oh, well that's OK then!

Incidentally, Berk-oh still owns a flat in a block nearby which he bought six years ago and on which he was expensing £1,050 per month in mortgage interest payments until his appointment as Speaker. He is also one of the MPs who abused the system to avoid Capital Gains Tax on the sale of two properties and claimed for an accountant to help fill in his tax return.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Tackling Obesity

In 1997, the Vile Master Criminal and Gordon is a Moron pledged they would protect green spaces and bring the then Conservative government's "policy of forcing schools to sell off playing fields to an end."

Since then, documents published in the Commons Library show that 203 school playing fields have been sold off in England and Wales under the present government, with ministers approving 49 sales in just the last four years, ironically since London became the host city for the 2012 Olympics.

Nothing like keeping a promise is there?

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Just What Will It Take?

Moron's new scheme to fast-track 200 high-flying graduates into social work to tackle a severe shortage of social workers has been dismissed as “tinkering” by senior professionals. They say the plan which is supposed to protect vulnerable children such as Baby P is an inadequate response to the child protection crisis.

The scheme, along with a recruitment drive to lure back thousands of experienced social workers who have left the profession, will be introduced without any move to increase pay. Social workers’ salaries lag behind other professions such as nursing. Ministers also made clear there was no more money for child protection services, although £58 million was being spent on the recruitment drive.

One in seven social work posts is vacant in England, a 30 per cent rise since 2005, with local authorities saying the Baby P tragedy had made the situation even worse. The plan is part of the government’s response to Lord Laming’s report into child protection after the death of Baby P.

The 17-month-old toddler was seen on 60 separate occasions by social workers and other professionals before he died of his injuries in August 2007. His mother, her boyfriend and a lodger will be sentenced for causing or allowing his death later this month. Last week the boyfriend was convicted of raping a two-year-old girl.

Lord Laming said too many social workers were ill equipped for the challenges of frontline child protection work and those most senior and experienced are removed from the field by progression into management. Although entry-level salaries for social workers are similar to those of nurses and teachers, they have to become managers if they want to earn more than £29,000. Yet a teacher can still be in the classroom and earn as much as £55,000, while a nurse can earn up to £40,000 and still care for patients.

Ed Balls-up, the Children’s Secretary, said that he would not "meddle with social workers’ salaries". Staff have just been offered a 0.4 per cent increase for next year. Any extra money for child protection services would be a matter for the next spending round in 2011, he added. Lord Laming’s recommendation that budgets for child protection should be ring-fenced, like those for schools, has thus far been ignored.

Camila Batmanghelidjh, the founder of the children’s charity Kids Company, said that the reforms did not address the real problem, that social work was often a dangerous job and caseloads were too high. “The fact is that social workers cannot cope with the sheer workload of the children and the complex cases that are emerging. Social workers are walking into estates having to negotiate aggressive dogs, weapons and very, very difficult working circumstances,” she said. “It just feels like the Government has no understanding.” Kim Bromley-Derry, president of the Association of Directors of Children’s Services, said “It is disappointing that Lord Laming’s recommendation that government provides sufficient funding for child protection in frontline agencies has not resulted in an increase in the basic funding of such services.”

Frontline social workers were also disappointed that their key request that a limit be applied to the number of caseloads they should be given has been ignored. Let's not lose sight of the fact that an infant was tortured to death, and there are many more suffering. I'm afraid the government has once again engaged itself in gesture politics that lack substance, thought and vision. Nobody believes this plan will solve anything at all, I don't even think the government believe it will. They are introducing yet more targets and all agree that, too often, government targets increase red tape and divert resources from the front line. These reforms are surely back to front. How can ministers hope to entice more social workers back into the profession unless they fix the problems that originally drove them out?

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Gordon is ...

This is not my story, in fact it is not a story, but it's and amusing item unearthed by one of my readers ... kudos Bipher!

Google recently introduced “predictive search” based upon that which most other people have previously searched. These days, when you start entering search terms in to Google, a few suggestions pop up as you type. Typing "gordon brown is a" generates the following auto-completion options ... try it for yourself. No more need be said.

Financial Prostitution

Links between the Government and the banking sector have been condemned in a new report that has uncovered the extent of the old boys network at the top of British public life.

According to the study, which identified key individuals who have moved jobs between politics, financial institutions and the bodies charged with regulating the banking industry, Britain has a greater culture of cronyism than anywhere in Europe or even the USA. The report is to be presented to the Global Forum on Public Governance in Paris this week and warns that the close relations between business and politics "lead to a conflict of interest at best and a suspension of critical faculties at worst".

The research looked at revolving door connections, where a company employs former or current politicians, civil servants or members of regulatory bodies, or where individuals move from the financial sector into politics, Government or regulatory bodies. Bastardlays was the most connected British-based company with 14 revolving door connections. Two examples from the dictator-supporting tax-dodgers are Mark Clarke and Sarah Cox. Clarke is director general of finance at the Department for Business, Enterprise and Regulatory Reform, but worked at Barclays from 2000 to 2003. Cox was an international consultant at Barclays from 2001 to 2004 and has since joined the UK Cabinet Office.

"The Government and the political classes have very close links to the banking industry" said the report's author David Miller, a Professor of Sociology at Strathclyde University, who specialises in lobbying research. "I believe this could be one of the factors behind the disaster that has befallen the financial markets. There has not been any regulation of these connections."

The organisations with more than five revolving door connections are Royal Bank of Scotland, HBOS / Lloyds Group, Barclays, Citigroup, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Dexia Group, HSBC Holdings, JP Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered Bank and UBS. Of six individuals with RBS connections, one is Quentin Davies, a Labour MP and minister at the Ministry of Defence, who was an RBS adviser until 2003. Another is Sir Philip Hampton, RBS's chairman and former chief executive of the Government-owned UK Financial Investments (UKFI).

Perhaps the best known person with HBOS connections named in the report is Sir James Crosby, who was chief executive of the bank from 2001 to 2006 before leaving to become deputy chairman of the Financial Services Authority (FSA), the body supposedly regulating the financial sector.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Lies, Damn Lies And The Labour Party

Let's rack up just some of the lies that the Labour Party have spouted in the last couple of weeks:

Income Tax. This government made an election manifesto pledge that they would not raise income tax. Well, we know that Moron's government have broken that promise for top earners but it's less publicised that they have also raised the bottom rate of income tax.

Big Sister. Earlier this week, the home secretary Jacqui Porn Queen Smith announced that she was ditching controversial plans for a single “big brother” database to centrally store all communications data in Britain. This was a plan to monitor all internet use and telephone calls across the country but Porn Queen announced “the government recognised the privacy implications of the move [and] therefore does not propose to pursue this.” In a move designed simply to grab favourable headlines, she added that £2 billion of public money would instead be spent helping private internet and telephone companies to retain information for up to 12 months in separate databases. However, she was, of course, lying through her teeth. GCHQ is pursuing its MTI (Mastering The Internet) programme, developing classified technology to intercept and monitor all e-mails, website visits and social networking sessions in Britain. The agency will also be able to track telephone calls made over the internet, as well as all phone calls to landlines and mobiles. The snooping project will rely on thousands of 'black box' probes being covertly inserted across online infrastructure and is costing more than £1 billion.

Public accountability. As if the ignominy of be ripped off by the trough-swilling Westminster gluttons wasn't bad enough, having been promised full disclosure by Moron, we now learn that the House of Commons fees office is censoring some of the most important details of MP's expenses prior to publication this summer. Among the information being blanked out are the names of hotels on trips, the destinations of taxis, names of shops and any correspondence with parliamentary officials. The extent of the cuts has surprised some MPs who favour greater disclosure. Ben Wallace, the Conservative backbencher who was the first MP to publish full details of his claims, said: “It’s just ridiculous. They sent me details of a taxi journey I had made from Euston station to parliament and they had redacted the details of the journey. They have also removed the names of some suppliers I have bought goods from. I have written to them saying there is no reason the public cannot be given this information.” I guess we should be grateful that at least there is some integrity floating around Westminster.

MP's expenses. Where to start with this topic? How about Moron's bizarre appearance on YouTube, during which he blatantly lied through his forced, fake and spine-shuddering 'smile'. He claimed that he was introducing a plan that would reduce the total exposure to the tax-payer. However, his daily rate plan would have cost us all more than the incredulous £93 million that we forked out last year. Thankfully, his back-benchers realised that their jobs were at stake and blocked the proposal. How about Jim Devine, MP for Livingston, who has claimed £17,000 in "car and mileage" costs? It transpires that his office manager was the one driving Devine around his constituency in her own vehicle at her own expense. Presumably he re-paid the £17,000 of our money to her? No, Marion Kinley "received only £60." Then there's Labour peer Baroness Uddin who named a flat in Maidstone as her main residence and claimed around £100,000 in Parliamentary expenses for it. This is despite the flat being empty and Baroness Uddin living in Wapping, just four miles from the House of Lords. Lest we forget the Labour MP who claimed the cost of building a sauna on his second home allowance, insisting that a skin condition made it necessary for him to have regular sessions at his home. Now we learn that David Miliband is renting a private jet. Ministerial code states that scheduled flights should be used wherever possible so why does he need a private jet permanently on standby. The tender states "must provide a first class service and be able to provide an aircraft sometimes within a few hours' notice" to destination such as "Europe, Sri Lanka and the USA". I guess you can't get scheduled flights to these destinations then.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!

Moron Waves His Moral Standard

This week the Royal Bank of Scotland, which took £20 billion of taxpayer's money in the bank bailout, made clear its intention to pay staff almost £1 billion in bonuses. Furthermore, the 'financial expert' who has been appointed to supposedly protect taxpayers’ money in Britain’s bailed-out banks is a former trustee of a secretive Liechtenstein bank that facilitated massive tax evasion.

Glen Moreno, who chairs the body that oversees the government’s £37 billion shareholding in the banks, trousered hundreds of thousands of pounds during a nine-year association with the private bank Liechtenstein Global Trust (LGT).

Moreno has been appointed by Puppet Darling as acting chairman of UK Financial Investments (UKFI), which manages the government’s stakes in Royal Bank of Scotland and Lloyds Banking Group. UKFI is also expected to take over the government’s interests in Northern Rock and Bradford & Bingley.

This appointment is supposed to demonstrate the government is serious about protecting taxpayers’ interests.

LGT was specifically named and shamed by Barry the Fake Obama when he was a senator and only last week, Gordon is a Moron criticised offshore tax havens and called for international action to stamp out tax evasion. “Advising the rich to exploit tax loopholes is unpatriotic”, he said.

Vince Cable, the Liberal Democrat Treasury spokesman said yesterday that Moreno’s involvement in LGT raised serious doubts about whether he was fit for the job stating “If this had been the US, he would not have survived the scrutiny process for senior figures who are given public appointments. It speaks volumes about this government’s priorities.” Graham Brady, Conservative member of the Treasury select committee, added “UKFI is responsible for managing the taxpayers’ massive holdings in British banks. It is important that its senior management should have the highest ethical standards.”

LGT became the subject of international scandal last year when a former employee blew the whistle on its dubious practices and passed the financial details of thousands of clients to the German tax authorities. HM Revenue & Customs is reported to have paid £100,000 for the information and said on Friday that it was investigating about 150 British clients of LGT.

The government's press release announcing his appointment detailed his past achievements but found no room to mention his post in LGT.

Bastards ... slimy bastards all over the world!