With friends like these...

Tony Blair's bid for EU presidency sinks | World news | The Guardian:

"'It would be right to describe Tony's chances as fading,' one British source said. 'Nicolas Sarkozy and Angela Merkel are not terribly enthusiastic. Silvio Berlusconi remains his strongest backer.'"

Time to make them pay

Obama has got his pay tsar. So let's tax crazy profits here | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian: "'Learn to tolerate inequality,' said Lord Griffiths, vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs, Mrs Thatcher's hyper-Hayekian economic adviser and lay preacher, speaking at St Paul's cathedral. At least he confronted the question head on: is that what people want? Someone should ask them. If President Barack Obama can have a 'pay tsar', cutting cash salaries of bailed-out company executives by 90%, why can't we? Better still, a high pay commission, examining differentials, probing the dangerous madness of all this."

Not fit to run public service broadcasting

The predictable outcome, after BBC legitimised BNP by needlessly offering priceless tv platform.

BBC NEWS | Politics | BNP support in poll sparks anger: "Peter Hain says his fears have been proved right after a poll suggested support for the BNP has risen after Nick Griffin appeared on Question Time.

A YouGov poll in the Daily Telegraph suggests 22% of people questioned would 'seriously consider' voting BNP.

The Welsh secretary said: 'The BBC has handed the BNP the gift of the century on a plate and now we see the consequences. I'm very angry.'

The show was watched by a record eight million people on Thursday."

Well said Hain.

This was not socially responsible broadcasting - looks more like they were going for the ratings. The boss of the BBC should resign. Not fit to run public service broadcasting.

Mark Thompson must resign

BBC NEWS | Politics | BBC defends BNP move amid protest: "Labour MP Diane Abbott - the first black woman to be elected to Parliament - told the BBC's Breakfast programme that Question Time was the wrong platform for the BNP.

'If you are a black or Asian viewer tonight and you switch on the television and you see Nick Griffin on Question Time - it's not a programme that's going to scrutinise his views, it's not that sort of programme, it's politics as entertainment.

'The first time I went on Question Time was 22 years ago. People were really pleased - they didn't remember what I said but they saw a young black woman on Question Time and they thought 'Now black people are part of the mainstream'. That is the effect the BNP will get tonight, that's what they want from it, that's why they're so thrilled.'"

Diane Abbott hits the nail. Griffin has won already, merely by being on.

It's not a freedom of speech issue. It's a competence to manage a public broadcaster issue. Mark Thompson should have ruled Griffin's appearance out. Period. The fact he is apologising for it means he isn't fit to run a public corporation.

Mark Thompson must resign.

It's a national disgrace that we have a fascist offered primetime tv slot on state broadcaster which we all own (when bbc wouldn't broadcast appeal for gaza etc). Greg Dyke was forced to quit over a far lesser (and debatable) "point of principle". Let's take the bbc back into public ownership.

Malky
x

Polly goes postal on the banks... and quite right too

If ever there was a time for an emergency super-tax, it's now | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"Adair Turner's suggested Tobin tax would reach right into the wicked heart of the matter by taxing every transaction at the point where they skim the cream off everything, mostly people's pension funds. Goldman Sachs's profits show how a shrunken banking sector coins it as an effective cartel: the market doesn't operate as there is no competitive pricing."

For whom the Nobel tolls... Obama isn't helping

Obama isn't helping. At least the world argued with Bush | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"After nine months in office, Obama has a clear track record as a global player. Again and again, US negotiators have chosen not to strengthen international laws and protocols but to weaken them, often leading other rich countries in a race to the bottom."

...

"Obama has made some good moves on the world stage – like not siding with the Honduras coup government, or supporting a UN women's agency. But a clear pattern has emerged: in areas where other rich nations were teetering between principled action and negligence, US interventions have tilted them toward negligence. If this is the new era of multilateralism, it is no prize."

New Labour's death wail?

Labour could be out of power for a generation, MPs warn Gordon Brown | Politics | guardian.co.uk:

"The pamphlet was written by: former lord chancellor Lord Falconer; City of York MP Hugh Bayley; former contender for the role of Commons speaker Parmjit Dhanda; ex-Labour MP Calum MacDonald; former Europe minister Denis MacShane; former women's minister Meg Munn; Broxtowe MP Nick Palmer; former local government minister Nick Raynsford; as well as Wicks and Clarke. The series of essays is intended to revive a party which they believe is seen an 'intellectually exhausted'."

Berlusconi backs Blair for EU job - nuff said

BBC NEWS | Politics | Berlusconi backs Blair for EU job:

"Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has endorsed Tony Blair as his preferred candidate to be president of the European Union.

Mr Blair had 'the right credentials' and should get the job as soon as 'legally and politically possible', he wrote to Italian newspaper Il Foglio."

Polly sometimes absolutely hits the mark

Say it again, say it often: the public sector is paid less | Polly Toynbee | Comment is free | The Guardian:

"In a triumph of upside-down logic, the myth that an overpaid state sector is to blame for the crisis has taken poisonous root"

Eton mess... or Eton messiah?

Cameron is gaining ground because Labour can't admit it fell for free-market ideology | Larry Elliott | Business | The Guardian:

"...Cameron has been amazingly successful at shifting the political battle onto his own ground; he has disguised a strategically weak position with tactical elan. Labour has done the opposite; it has allowed a strong strategic position to be nullified by the darts and feints of the opposition.

"...Cameron's main argument – that the economic mess we are in is the result of the failing of big government – is the precise opposite of the truth. The reason for the crisis was not that the state was too active, but that it was too passive. For three decades, from the mid-1970s onwards, regulations on finance were relaxed, markets were unshackled, taxes were cut."

String em up. Its the only language they'll understand.

Taxpayers' Alliance admits director doesn't pay British tax | Politics | The Guardian: "The Taxpayers' Alliance, a campaign group that calls for tax and spending cuts and claims to represent the interests of taxpayers, has admitted one of its directors does not pay British tax.

The Guardian has learned that Alexander Heath, a director of the increasingly influential free market, rightwing lobby group, lives in a farmhouse in the Loire and has not paid British tax for years."

Bloody Blair

Blair faces critics from pulpit and public as Britain remembers Iraq | UK news | The Guardian: "Peter Brierley, whose son Lance Corporal Shaun Brierley died in a road accident while on service in Iraq barely a week after the invasion in March 2003, publicly snubbed the former prime minister at a reception that followed a service commemorating those who served in the conflict. As Blair proffered his hand, Brierley told him: 'I'm not shaking your hand, you've got blood on it.'

Later, Brierley, from Batley, West Yorkshire, who has campaigned for a number of years for an inquiry into the war, said: 'I believe Tony Blair is a war criminal. I can't bear to be in the same room as him ... I believe he's got the blood of my son and all of the other men and women who died out there on his hands.'"