hell fucking mend.

Guardian Unlimited Politics | Special Reports | Down but not quite out: "The odds always shorten when no blood has been shed lately."

This scandal grew organically out of New Labour's love of wealth

Guardian Unlimited | Comment is free | This scandal grew organically out of New Labour's love of wealth: "No one who followed Blair in the 1990s can be surprised that he chased the favours of plutocrats. The stories are legion of Blair's personal admiration, even awe, for men who have made serious money. Nearly 10 years have passed since I was first told that Blair tended to go 'dewy-eyed' and starstruck when in the company of wealth. Ideologically, too, the fit was natural: Blairism holds that market mechanisms contain a solution for almost every problem. When he demands that a public service reform itself, it usually means he wants it to behave more like a private company."

So says Jonathan Freedland. Personally I thought Blair was a conservative in 1994 when he became the leader of the Labour Party. I wonder if these 'legion' stories are documented anywhere.

Oh well, not long to go now, perhaps.

The legacy, the legacy...

I love Marina Hyde, I do

For Blair to be brought down by a disastrous war is at least epic. But by his tennis partner? It hardly places one in the big league:

Read the whole thing yourself on the guardian site - this is the first bit...

"Given the prime minister's fabled obsession with his legacy, it is difficult to imagine headlines that could depress him more than the current ones drawn from newspaper briefings by 'sources close to Lord Levy'. Having had his bank holiday breakfast ruined by the many variations on 'I won't be Blair's fall guy, says Levy', one pictures Blair sinking back against the pillows and wondering how far the relentless commuting of his expectations will have to go.

Of course, his capacity for self-delusion is almost unmatched, so there is a chance that he still fancies people will remember him for one of his many - if occasionally contradictory - NHS reforms or the hundreds of hours spent not actually banning foxhunting. However, the realists in his circle must by now be aware that - at least in the immediate aftermath - the PM will to a large extent be defined by whichever final straw forces his departure.

To be brought down by an overweening rival is rather Shakespearean. To be brought down by a disastrous war at least has some kind of epic quality to it. To be brought down by one's tennis partner ... well, you have to say it hardly places one in the big league. Even if the serve-volleyer in question did discover Alvin Stardust."

and here's a killer - I haven't found a trace of this blog yet, but doubtless it exists somewhere in cyberspace...

"Upsettingly, there are those cynics who continue to question what precisely these men did fork out for, and last weekend they were joined by Dr Nick Bowes, Labour's former head of high value fundraising. In a remarkably candid weblog - since removed from the internet - Dr Bowes broached the subject that has hung largely unspoken as the row refuses to go away. "Most of them are genuinely nice people," he wrote of the donor-loaners, "although I question their personal politics. What I mean by this is that they are basically Tories, saw which way the wind was blowing and did what they needed to get the peerage they've always wished for.""

...and there's more

"Yes ... No matter how much you have to admire the disingenuity and doublethink at some level, the monogrammed hanky thick enough to mask the stench of this business has yet to be woven."

Yes Marina, you give it to them!

Time for all good people to come to the aid of the party

from Sunday Herald editorial: "It is often said that Blair is worried about his personal positive legacy. He need not bother. There is none. Instead his party should be worried about how they will clear up a mess that seems to be getting dirtier by the week."

yep.

Sex, now

Guardian Unlimited | Weekend | Weekend: Sex, now: "'It sounds like a fantasy world dreamed up by teenage boys,' Levy writes, but instead it is a version of female sexuality that young women have adopted for themselves."

Hmmm. Virtually the prezact opposite i would say.

" 'raunch culture' - fashionable American women going to lap-dancing clubs, learning to strip and wearing T-shirtswith the Playboy logo or "Porn Star" emblazoned across their chest." is exactly what I reckon the teenage boys dreamt of about 20 or 30 years who now run the businesses which make money out of exactly these things.

oh well, plus ca change.

Happy Good Friday

Guardian Unlimited | Columnists | This is a clash of civilisations - between reason and superstition: "
Comment
This is a clash of civilisations - between reason and superstition

Religious schools are indoctrinating and divisive. The people don't want them. So why are MPs backing them?

Polly Toynbee
Friday April 14, 2006
The Guardian

The DJ wasn't joking when he burbled: 'Happy Good Friday!' His audience probably didn't wince, since a recent poll showed that 43% of the population have no idea what Easter celebrates, with the young most clueless. Eggs, bunnies, lambs?

Even an old atheist like me sees no good in this ignorance of basic Christian myths. How do you make any sense of history, art or literature without knowing the stories and iconography of your own culture and all the world's main religions? Total ignorance of religion and its history could make people more susceptible to the next passing charlatan offering Kwik Save salvation from whatever it is people want to be saved from.

Article continues
But how odd that in this heathen nation of empty pews, where churches' bare, ruined choirs are converted into luxury loft living, a Labour government - yes, a Labour government - is deliberately creating a huge expansion of faith schools. There is all the difference in the world between teaching children about religion and handing them over to be taught by the religious. Just when faith turns hot and dangerous, threatening life and limb again, the government responds by encouraging more of it and more religious segregation. If ever there was a time to set out the unequivocal value of a secular state, it must be now."

That's rich...

The tax-free lifestyle of Britain's new mega-wealthy is impoverishing us all


Stewart Lansley
Saturday April 1, 2006
The Guardian

"...The City in effect operates as a giant, informal cartel, charging excessive fees for activity that, for the most part, involves the transfer (or sometimes destruction) of wealth, rather than its creation. Increasingly, the emphasis is on short-term, "fast-buck" deals that are at odds with the patient organisation-building on which enduring companies and long-term wealth creation are founded and many large and successful companies were originally built. Mergers and acquisitions are often driven by the prospect of fat bonuses and fees for directors and their City advisers rather than the long-term interests of the companies.

Financial speculation, the source of many modern fortunes, is rarely associated with creating value. As one leading figure in the hedge fund industry has admitted: "When I first went into the City, I could not believe that anyone would want to pay me so much for creating nothing."

Modern entrepreneurship and tax avoidance largely go hand in hand. There are few top tycoons who have not exploited tax loopholes to boost their personal fortunes - at the expense of the broad body of taxpayers. Philip Green has saved hundreds of millions in personal tax in the past three years because ownership of his companies - Bhs and Arcadia - is vested in the hands of his wife, Tina, who is a resident of Monaco. (With 5,000 Britons, mostly businessmen, living in Monaco, the tax haven has become known as le rocher anglais.) Sir Richard Branson, Lakshmi Mittal and Hans Rausing all use offshore tax havens, quite legally, to reduce their tax liabilities...."