The lifelong Labour supporter branded a "bigot" by Gordon Brown has said she will not be voting for any party.
In an interview with the Mail on Sunday, Gillian Duffy said she had accepted the Prime Minister's apology after his unguarded remark sparked a political storm during a visit to Rochdale.
But the pensioner said she had snubbed his invitation to shake hands in front of the cameras. More....
Russia has started the annual Days of Defence against Environmental Hazards from the 15th of April to the 5th of June with the announcement of sensational results of an independent work of research. Scientists have proved that Genetically Modified Organisms are harmful for mammals. The researchers discovered that animals that eat GM foodstuffs lose their ability to reproduce. Campbell hamsters that have a fast reproduction rate were fed for two years with ordinary soya beans, which are widely used in agriculture and those contain different percentages of GM organisms. Another group of hamsters, the control group, was fed with pure soya, which was found with great difficulty in Serbia because 95 percent of soya in the world is transgenic. more...
The President of the European Central Bank, Jean-Claude Trichet, told Forbes that global governance is extremely necessary if we want to prevent another financial crisis. In his prepared printed and spoken remarks to the Council on Foreign Relations, Trichet emphasized that politicians, economists, and financiers must work across the Atlantic and collaborate on methods to create an international set of standards. It is his belief that through global governance, the resiliency of the global financial system can be assured, noting that ultimately it was governments’ use of taxpayer’s money, equivalent to around 25% of GDP on both sides of the Atlantic, that prevented another catastrophic great depression from occurring. With the backdrop of a U.S. financial regulation bill being stuck in the Senate, he argued three main points in support of creating internationally agreed rules. more...
Scottish hero comedian Frankie Boyle has accused the BBC Trust of cowardly behaviour.
Boyle published an open letter describing the situation in Palestine as "in essence, apartheid" and lamenting the fact that the BBC was "now cravenly afraid of giving offence and vulnerable to any kind of well-drilled lobbying". more...
Greek protesters have clashed with riot police in Athens as anger about financial reform boils over.
Several hundred protesters waving red flags and wearing red bandannas confronted the police in the Greek capital on Saturday morning.
Two petrol bombs were hurled at the police lines, and armed police fired tear gas to dispel the crowd. Angry protesters set fire to rubbish cans and two television broadcast vans. more..
Up to this point, it seems as though most Americans have not really been too concerned about the financial meltdown that is taking place in Greece. But they should be. The truth is that the debt crisis we see playing out in Greece may soon repeat itself in some of the largest nations in the world such as Japan, the U.K. and even the United States. Once upon a time, this kind of thing only happened in third world nations, but now virtually every nation on earth has a debt problem. As the saying goes, the borrower is the servant of the lender, and so when a country like Greece gets in way, way too deep financially, it ends up having to give up a portion of its sovereignty to those controlling the purse strings. In the case of Greece, those controlling the purse strings are the IMF and the EU. But it just isn't Greece that is in trouble. Dozens of nations are in serious financial trouble and are at the mercy of those who can bail them out. The truth is that global financial institutions like the IMF, the World Bank, the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve are increasingly gaining power all over the globe as governments around the world continue to accumulate frightening amounts of debt. more..
The Scottish fishing fleet is facing a days-at-sea crisis that could leave scores of boats stuck in port and put as many as 5,000 shore jobs at risk.
Processors fear they will have to close factories and lay off workers if trawlers stop working and supplies dry up. more...
(Reuters) - Hundreds of thousands of people joined May Day rallies across Europe on Saturday, many protesting against government austerity policies in the wake of the global financial crisis. more...
Britons will have to work three days longer this year before they start earning money for themselves rather than the government.
Tax Freedom Day will fall on May 30 - 149 days into 2010 - according to the free-market think tank the Adam Smith Institute. more...
Fruits and veggies are an essential part of a healthy diet, but many conventional varieties contain pesticide residues.
And not all the pesticides used to kill bugs, grubs, or fungus on the farm washes off under the tap at home. Government tests show which fruits and vegetables, prepared typically at home, still have a pesticide residue.
You can reduce your exposure to pesticides by as much as 80% if you avoiding the most contaminated foods in the grocery store. more...
ShadowStats' John Williams has done his math and believes his numbers tell the truth. He explains why the U.S. is in a depression and why a "Hyper-Inflationary Great Depression" is now unavoidable. John also shares why he selects gold as a metal for asset conversion in this exclusive interview with The Gold Report. more...
More than 80 emergency service personnel were called out to rescue six stag party revellers who plummeted 100ft in a hotel lift accident, police have said.
Nature Magazine, the academic journal that introduced the world to X-rays, DNA double helix, wave nature of particles, pulsars, and more recently the human genome, is set to publish a paper in June that shows atmospheric carbon dioxide (CO2) is responsible for only 5-10% of observed warming on Earth.
As explained by the paper’s author Professor Jyrki Kauppinen, “The climate is warming, yes, but not because of greenhouse gases.”
For the preeminent scientific journal in the world to publish Kauppinen’s work shows conclusively that Al Gore’s much touted “scientific consensus” supporting human-caused global warming is a myth. more...
With a 9 May deadline fast approaching for the EU's 'group of wise men' to submit its report on the challenges facing Europe until 2030, EurActiv has gained an insight into the team's secretive work over the past 18 months.
After an initial period of hesitation over how to communicate, Felipe González, chair of the 'wise men group', told his team that he had chosen "privacy, not secrecy" as a working method.
In practice, little information – if any – has emerged from the 15 meetings the group has held since its launch in October 2008. In the meantime, González himself has made very few comments and rejected all interview requests.
Read More...
Former Cabinet minister Hazel Blears today confirmed that an illegal immigrant had been working as a volunteer on her election campaign.
The Labour MP for Salford said she instructed the woman to leave her campaign and reported her case to the Borders Agency as soon as she learnt of her immigration status yesterday.
Ms Blears said neither she nor any other election candidate was in a position to vet all the individuals who volunteer to help during a campaign. more...
Digby Jones has stirred up interest in welfare benefits by comments made in a Panorama programme being screened tonight at 8.30pm. (Looks worth watching.)
Digby Jones, who was trade minister in 2007-08, made his comments after being introduced to two men in Swindon for a television programme about the young unemployed.
One of the pair, who were from middle-class families, told Jones that he and his girlfriend were paid about £12,000 a year in jobseeker’s allowance and housing benefit, and there was no reason for them to look for work. This is equivalent to a gross income of £15,000-£16,000.Filmed for the BBC’s Panorama programme to be shown tomorrow, Jones said to the two, called Ben and Tim: “If I was watching this I’d throw something at the TV and say ‘Get off your backsides and work’ and we should cut all your benefits and starve you into going back to work.”
You'll have noted that we're all supposed to chow down on only organic food now I suppose? It's better for the environment, better for us and better for the food itself we are told. That there are a number of contradictions in the story seems not to bother people all that much. If we're not to use "artificial" fertlisers that means requiring rather more animals around for their dung, something which seems to militate against the idea that we should be eating less meat and anyway, what about methane emissions and the atmosphere?
That organic farming requires much more land is also true: there is no way that the UK could feed its current population by such methods and "self-sufficiency" is something the same sort of people promote as well. more...
It’s the elephant in the room as we lurch towards another election - IMF-style austerity cuts in the UK. In order to bail the banks out of their self-induced crisis, the UK government directly spent £50bn from tax revenue income in 2008, not to mention the hundreds of billions of pounds of support committed since to prop up the whole sorry system.
Not that any of these selfless acts of charity stopped bank bosses handing out giant bonuses to themselves last year of course - a whacking £6bn in total - with the wholly taxpayer-owned RBS handing out £1bn in ‘reward’ bonuses. more...
MYSTERY SURROUNDS the attempted theft of one of Scotland’s most iconic artefacts from its historic Perthshire resting place.
Tayside Police were called to Scone Palace on Thursday after an eagle-eyed member of staff noticed the replica Stone of Destiny had been removed from its plinth—and replaced with a larger stone. more...
SIR Malcolm Rifkind yesterday launched the Tories' armed forces manifesto for Scotland, telling voters Labour deserved to be removed from office for their treatment of the military. more...
Hundreds of bikers are expected to bring traffic to a standstill in a mass protest at the record price of petrol.Demonstrators claim the May 1st "May-Hem" protest on roads and motorways around Manchester will be the biggest ever held, and although police say there has been no indication of how many bikers will take part they warn there could be "significant delays" to other motorists.Past protests in the last two years have seen hundreds of bikers take over sections of motorways, travelling en mass at 25mph,More
The first flight from Baghdad to London in 20 years has ended in farce with the plane impounded at Gatwick airport after Kuwait went to the High Court demanding £780 million for planes stolen by Saddam Hussein.More
THE chairman of Royal Bank of Scotland has admitted that bankers' pay is "astonishingly high."
Sir Philip Hampton conceded that it was difficult to defend the gap between what most people earned and the salaries in the banking sector. However, he said that if banks did not remunerate their "top people", they would lose them to other companies.
In the run-up to the General Election, politicians across the board have called for caps on bankers' bonuses. more...
GORDON Brown played what may be his final card in Labour's embattled election campaign last night, as he pledged not to raise VAT if elected on 6 May.
Amid fears in the Labour camp that they are heading for a historic defeat on Thursday, the Prime Minister went further than previously to declare bluntly that he would not be increasing the tax on goods. Asked directly by Jeremy Paxman in a BBC interview last night if VAT would go up under a fourth Labour government, he replied: "It's a no." more...
ED Balls was jeered and booed by fed-up voters in his own constituency during a humiliating pre-election showdown yesterday. more...
After months of trying numerous public relations gimmicks to calm market fears of a debt collapse in Greece, (downplaying the magnitude, giving assurances of EU backing, and making token reforms, etc), nothing has worked. Instead justifiable fears are spreading to Portugal and Spain. Either the monetary union will begin to unravel or a bailout will be initiated--which is technically not legal within current EU treaty law. Speculation is high that despite the legal prohibitions the IMF and the European Central Bank (backed by some sleight-of-hand-lending by the US Federal Reserve) will engineer a bailout. The global Powers That Be (PTB) will never tolerate the disintegration of the EU monetary union, a major stepping stone in the New World Order. more...
Labour is braced for its most disastrous election showing since 1918 as the Cabinet prepares to tell Gordon Brown to quit next week.
A Daily Mail poll reveals Labour support has crashed to 24 per cent following the Prime Minister's 'bigot' gaffe and his lacklustre performance in the final TV debate.
But it provides cold comfort for David Cameron - putting his party on 33 per cent, just one ahead of the Liberal Democrats. more...
There are bright spots regarding press freedom, but there's been an overall decline for eight straight years, according to a new report. Other political and social freedoms may be waning, too.
All across Africa, new tracks are being laid, highways built,ports deepened, commercial contracts signed—all on an unprecedented scale, and led by China, whose appetite for commodities seems insatiable. Do China’s grand designs promise the transformation,at last, of a star-crossed continent? Or merely its exploitation? The author travels deep into the heart of Africa, searching for answers. more...
The Conservatives have been urged to consider the "nuclear option" of calling in the International Monetary Fund to examine the full extent of Britain's debts if they win the election.
The Tories should invite the IMF to provide blunt advice about how to cut the scale of the budget deficit, leaving the party able, if necessary, to row back on unaffordable promises to safeguard spending and cut taxes, according to senior bankers and economists. more...
Let me be wrong. All that anger at bankers and MPs is set to fizzle out in the most dispiriting stasis: the election of Cameron. more...
It's a shame there aren't more writers like this bloke in both countries: Thought police muscle up in BritainSince it made the most read list during the night while most here would have been asleep I'm now wondering if Leg-iron, his smoky drinky blog and readership, and an anonymous commenter gave it a boost, especially as two hours later it's no longer on the list. I'll never know but I hope so, because I still feel that it's an article everyone in Britain should read before they put an X on a bit of paper this coming Thursday. There might well be nobody on most people's ballot papers who wants to do something about it but that's not going to change unless many moree become aware of the creeping influence of the real life Thought Police and are prepared to shout:
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