Cameron: "Cuts will change our way of life"

[Creator Supreme]

So Strontium Dick has got me on ignore eh? Just like his mate Cleggy has with the electorate!

 

Stronts, you're a shitehawk!

[stringvest]

.

So Strontium Dick has got me on ignore eh? Just like his mate Cleggy has with the electorate!

 

Stronts, you're a shitehawk!

[Thomo123]

A ministerial and government agreement to merely call it a name eh? The art of saying something without saying something. It's gotten so bad government don't even attempt to bullshit us anymore. How can journalists not pick up on such a load of fucking snidely deceitful horseshit.

[Rico1304]

So Strontium Dick has got me on ignore eh? Just like his mate Cleggy has with the electorate!

 

Stronts, you're a shitehawk!

You're up late, babysitting?

[Strontium]

More like being babysat.

 

Got time for people who disagree, even got time for people who hurl a bit of invective so long as they present an opinion at the same time. But I ain't got no time for anyone who thinks abuse is an acceptable substitute for an argument.

[Jairzinho]

[Carvalho Diablo]

[Hooch]

Where's that la?

[Carvalho Diablo]

 

 

Where's that la?

 

Dunno mate, not the UK, so can't really blame that on Cameron, but these revolting anti-homeless spikes are starting to be deployed here in the UK. I posted one such pic several paged back and there was an outcry of revulsion.

 

Rightly so. Disgusting.

[Spy Bee]

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/2014/08/28/un-dwp-benefits-disabled-human-rights-probe_n_5727580.html?utm_hp_ref=tw

 

The United Nations has launched an investigation into whether Iain Duncan Smith's disability benefit changes have led to "grave or systemic violations" of disabled people's human rights.

The UN's Committee on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD), which is carrying out the unprecedented inquiry, has the power to launch a formal probe if it receives "reliable information" that human rights violations have occurred in a country signed up to the UN Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (UNCRPD).

This comes after a report last month by the Just Fair coalition suggested that the UK had descended from being an international leader in disability rights to being in danger of becoming a "systematic violator of these same rights".

The committee refused to confirm or deny that it was investigating the UK, as its investigations are "confidential". However, former CPRD member professor Gabor Gombos, told a conference in June that the CRPD had "started its first inquiry procedure against the United Kingdom”, as reported by the Disability News Service.

He said formal probes are launched in circumstances "where the issue has been raised and the government did not really make effective actions to fix the situation. He added: "It is a very high threshold thing; the violations should really be grave and very systemic."

This is not the first time the United Nations has waded into British political debates, as UN aide Raquel Rolnik called for the U.K earlier this year to ditch its controversial"bedroom tax" policy.

Rolnik's report was dismissed as a "misleading Marxist diatribe" by Tory ministers, with the UN later telling HuffPost UK that she had been subject to a "blizzard of misinformation" and "xenophobic" tabloid reports.

The UN's latest inquiry sparked further fury from Tory MPs, with one backbenchers labeling UN officials "idiots". Conservative MP Michael Ellis said: "This politically motivated loony left decision brings the UN organisation in to disrepute.

"At a time when there are grave international crises around the world and when in dozens of countries around the world there are no benefits available, this absurd decision is made to attack our country which rightly does more than almost any other to protect the rights of disadvantaged people from all walks of life."

A spoeksperson for the Department for Work and Pensions said: "This Government is committed to supporting disabled people and we continue to spend around £50bn a year on disabled people and their services."

[Skidfingers McGonical]

 

I reckon we could give each homeless person in that city a 6'x'4 peice of 20mm ply to carry round with them (maybe cut it in half or into segments with hinges on so it will fold out) so they could sleep on those spikes.

 

Let's help the homless fight back and get some sort of shelter. Then maybe councils, governments etc will decide to put the money they spend on these things into rehoming them instead, and giving them the support they need. Or building the neccessary social housing.

[Rico1304]

I reckon we could give each homeless person in that city a 6'x'4 peice of 20mm ply to carry round with them (maybe cut it in half or into segments with hinges on so it will fold out) so they could sleep on those spikes.

 

Let's help the homless fight back and get some sort of shelter. Then maybe councils, governments etc will decide to put the money they spend on these things into rehoming them instead, and giving them the support they need. Or building the neccessary social housing.

Yes, that'll help.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

Yes, that'll help.

 You just want the social housing to top up your kill count.

 

I am onto you rico

 

*taps nose*

[Jairzinho]

http://www.theguardian.com/books/2014/aug/29/socialism-for-the-rich

 

It's socialism for the rich and capitalism for the rest of us in Britain

Who are the real scroungers? Free-marketeers decry 'big government' yet the City and big business benefit hugely from the state – from bailouts to the billions made from privatisation. Socialism does exist in Britain – but only for the rich

 

Socialism lives in Britain, but only for the rich: the rules of capitalism are for the rest of us. The ideology of the modern establishment, of course, abhors the state. The state is framed as an obstacle to innovation, a destroyer of initiative, a block that needs to be chipped away to allow free enterprise to flourish. "I think that smaller-scale governments, more freedom for business to exist and to operate – that is the right kind of direction for me," says Simon Walker, the head of the Institute of Directors. For him, the state should be stripped to a "residual government functioning of maintaining law and order, enforcing contracts". Mainstream politicians don't generally talk in such stark terms, but when the deputy prime minister Nick Clegg demands "a liberal alternative to the discreditedpolitics of big government", the echo is evident.

 

And yet, when the financial system went into meltdown in 2008, it was not expected to stand on its own two feet, or to pull itself up by its bootstraps. Instead, it was saved by the state, becoming Britain's most lavished benefit claimant. More than £1tn of public money was poured into the banks following the financial collapse. The emergency package came with few government-imposed conditions and with little calling to account. "The urge to punish all bankers has gone far enough," declared a piece in the Financial Times just six months after the crisis began. But if there was ever such an "urge" on the part of government, it was never acted on. In 2012, 2,714 British bankers were paid more than €1m – 12 times as many as any other EU country. When the EU unveiled proposals in 2012 to limit bonuses to either one or two years' salary with the say-so of shareholders, there was fury in the City. Luckily, their friends in high office were there to rescue their bonuses: at the British taxpayers' expense, the Treasury took to the European Court to challenge the proposals. The entire British government demonstrated, not for the first time, that it was one giant lobbying operation for the City of London. Between 2011 and 2013, bank lending fell in more than 80% of Britain's 120 postcode areas, helping to stifle economic recovery. Banks may have been enjoyed state aid on an unprecedented scale, but their bad behaviour just got worse – and yet they suffered no retribution.

 

Contrast this with the fate of the unemployed, including those thrown out of work as a result of the actions of bailed-out bankers. In the austerity programme that followed the financial crisis, state support for those at the bottom of society has been eroded. The support that remains is given withstringent conditions attached. "Benefit sanctions" are temporary suspensions of benefits, often for the most spurious or arbitrary reasons. According to the government's figures, 860,000 benefit claimants were sanctioned between June 2012 and June 2013, a jump of 360,000 from a year earlier. According to the Trussell Trust, the biggest single provider of food banks, more than half of recipients were dependent on handouts owing to cuts or sanctions to their benefits.

 

Glyn, a former gas fitter from Manchester, was sanctioned three weeks before Christmas 2013, and received no money. He had missed a signing-on day because he was completing a job search at Seetec, one of the government's corporate welfare-to-work clients. Then there's Sandra, a disabled Glaswegian who lives with her daughter. She was sent a form asking to declare whether she lived with someone; assuming it meant a partner, she said no, and was called in to a "compliance interview". Because her daughter was not in full-time education, Sandra was stripped of her entitlement to her £50 per week severe-disability allowance. While the financial elite could depend on the state to swoop to their rescue, those who suffered because of their greed felt the chill winds of laissez-faire. Socialism for the rich: sink-or-swim capitalism – and food banks – for the poor.

 

Socialism for the rich manifests itself in a variety of ways. In 2004, corporations were posting record profits, and yet their workers' wages had begun to stagnate or – in the case of those in the bottom third of the income scale – had started to decline. To ensure that these underpaid workers have an adequate standard of living, they receive tax credits "topping up" their take-home pay – subsidised, of course, by the taxpayer. In 2009–10, for example, the government spent £27.3bn on such tax credits. Between 2003–4 and 2010–11, a whopping £176.64bn was spent on them. Now, millions of working people who would otherwise be languishing in abject poverty depend on these tax credits. But that does not detract from the fact that tax credits are, in effect, a subsidy to bosses for low pay. Employers hire workers without paying them a sum of money that allows them to live adequately, leaving the state to provide for their underpaid workforce.

 

The same principle applies to the £24bn spent on housing benefit. In 2002, 100,000 private renters in London were forced to claim housing benefit in order to pay the rent; by the end of the New Labour era, rising rents had increased the number to 250,000. On the one hand, this was the symptom of the failure of successive governments to provide affordable council housing. With tenants instead driven into the more expensive private rented sector, housing benefit acts as a subsidy for the higher rents of private landlords. But housing benefit is another subsidy for low wages, too. According to a study by the Building and Social Housing Foundation in 2012, more than nine in every 10 new housing-benefit claims in the first two years of the coalition government went not to the unemployed but to working households. Many of these claimants are workers whose pay is so low that they simply cannot afford the often extortionate rents being charged by private landlords. As well as individual private landlords, companies providing private housing were being subsidised by housing benefit, in some cases receiving more than a million pounds of taxpayers' money each year, such as Grainger Residential Management and Caridon Property.

 

One such private landlord is Conservative MP Richard Benyon, one of Britain's wealthiest parliamentarians whose family is worth around £110m. Despite having condemned spending on social security for "rising inexorably and unaffordably", and having applauded the government for "reforming Labour's 'something for nothing' welfare culture", Benyon benefits from £120,000 a year through housing benefit collected from his tenants. Another vigorous supporter of cuts to the welfare state was Tory MP Richard Drax, whose estate received a substantial £13,830 housing benefit in 2013. They are both wealthy benefit claimants who advocate slashing state support for the poor.

 

Much of Britain's public sector has now become a funding stream for profiteering companies. According to the National Audit Office (NAO), around half of the £187bn spent by the public sector on goods and services now goes on private contractors. One such company was Atos, first hired in 2005 by the then Labour government to carry out work-capability assessments. Its contract was renewed by the coalition in November 2010, now with far greater responsibilities as the government launched a sweeping programme of so-called "welfare reform". This five-year contract was worth £500m, or £100m of public money every year. In 2012 the NAO condemned the government contract with Atos for failing to offer value for money. Atos had not "routinely met all the service standards specified in the contract", the report declared; its record on meeting targets was "poor"; the government had failed to seek "adequate financial redress for underperformance"; and the "management of the contract lacked sufficient rigour".

 

Disabled people who needed support were having their support stripped away by Atos. In one three-month period in 2012, 42% of appeals against Atos judgments were successful; but it is a process that is expensive for the taxpayer and often traumatic for the claimant. In the harsh benefit-bashing climate of austerity Britain, disability charities reported that "scrounger" rhetoric had provoked a surge in abuse towards disabled people on the streets. But the behaviour of state-funded private contractors such as Atos must surely raise the question of who the real scroungers are. It was not until April 2014 that Atos was forced to abandon the contract because of the growing backlash, but not until they had pocketed large sums of public money.

 

This hiving off of core state functions – in this case, assessing support for some of the most vulnerable people in society – to private companies who exchange public money for a poor service is a striking feature of the modern establishment. Another such business is A4e, a welfare-to-work company dogged by controversy over poor performance. As one former A4e contractor suggested to me, A4e was running a "farming exercise", cherry-picking easy cases and leaving the rest in the "field". Its former chairman Emma Harrison paid herself £8.6m in dividends, all courtesy of the taxpayer. In February, four former A4e employees admitted committing acts of fraud and forgery after charging the state for working for clients that did not even exist.

 

In 2012, £4bn of taxpayers' money was shovelled into the accounts of the biggest private contractors: Serco, G4S, Atos and Capita. It led to a damning assessment from the NAO, which Margaret Hodge, chair of the Public Accounts Committee, summed up: this outsourcing, she concluded, had created "quasi-monopolies", the "inhibiting of whistleblowers", the trapping of taxpayers into lengthy contracts, and a "number of contracts that are not subject to proper competition". G4S had been contracted to provide security personnel for the 2012 Olympics; when it failed to provide them, the state – predictably – had to step in, mobilising 3,500 soldiers and leading even the then minister of defence, Philip Hammond, publicly to question his previously unwavering commitment to private sector provision of state functions. At the end of 2013, the Serious Fraud Office launched an investigation into Serco and G4S, after they allegedly overcharged the taxpayer tens of millions of pounds for the electronic tagging of clients, charging for clients who had left the country or were even dead. Many of these private contractors, such as Atos and G4S, pay little or no corporation tax, even as they benefit from state munificence.

 

'Privatisation of rail was a form of socialism for the rich.' Photograph: Velar Grant/Demotix/Corbis

 

Privatisation of rail was a form of socialism for the rich that became particularly notorious. According to a report by the Centre for Research on Socio-Cultural Change, state spending on the privatised railways was six times higher than it was in the dying days of British Rail. And yet under the privatised system, rolling stock was replaced less frequently, there was not enough carriage space to accommodate rising numbers of rail passengers, and ticket prices were the highest in Europe. As the report put it, technological innovation and improvement were powered or underwritten by the state. The taxpayer shouldered the risk, while profit was privatised: or "heads they win and tails we lose".

 

Big business is dependent on the state in a multitude of other ways. An expensive law-and-order system defends its property. The privatisation of Royal Mail ensured that the state kept the pension liabilities – nationalising the debt, privatising the profit. The business elite benefits from around £10bn spent on research and development by the British state each year: and innovations from the internet to the technology behind the iPhone originate from public sector research, as Mariana Mazzucato uncovered in The Entrepreneurial State. Big business relies on extensive spending on infrastructure: in 2012, the Confederation of British Industry suggested savings from cuts to benefits – raids on the pockets of the working and non-working poor – could be used to invest in the road network. And the state educates the workforce of big business at vast expense.

 

'The privatisation of Royal Mail ensured that the state kept the pension liabilities.' Photograph: Matthew Lloyd/Getty Images

 

With big business benefiting from so much state largesse, you might expect gratitude in the form of the glad payment of taxes. After all, this socialism for the rich is not cheap. A common figure bandied around by defenders of Britain's wealthy elite is that the top 1% of earners pay a third of all income tax, conveniently ignoring the fact that only a quarter of government revenue comes from income tax, with much of the rest coming from national insurance and indirect taxes paid by the population as a whole. But tax avoidance is rampant among much of the corporate and wealthy elite that benefits so much from state handouts. While the law cracks down on the misdemeanours of the poor, it allows, even facilitates, the far more destructive behaviour of the rich. Compare the billions lost through tax avoidance to the £1.2bn lost through benefit fraud, an issue that remains the news fodder of choice for the rightwing press.

 

The manner in which this happens shows who the state exists to serve. The Big Four accountancy firms – EY, Deloitte, KPMG andPricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) – have been slammed for their role in tax avoidance. But their response is instructive. "We don't ever condone tax avoidance or support tax avoidance," pledges EY's Steve Varley. "Fundamentally, parliament has to legislate what parliament wants to happen … And people like us can follow the legislation and provide advice to our clients."

 

But what Varley conveniently fails to mention is that firms such as EY help design the law in the first place, and then go off and help advise their clients on how to get around it. "We have seen what look like cases of poacher, turned gamekeeper, turned poacher again," declared the Public Accounts Committee in April 2013, "whereby individuals who advise government go back to their firms and advise their clients on how they can use those laws to reduce the amount of tax they pay." This is an astonishing finding. Senior MPs have concluded that accountants were not simply offering governments their expertise: they were advising governments on tax law, and then telling their clients how to get around the laws they had themselves helped to draw up.

 

When it comes to rhetoric, the modern establishment passionately rejects statism. The advocates of state interventionism are dismissed as dinosaurs who should hop in a time machine and return to the discredited 1970s. And yet state interventionism is rampant in modern Britain: but it exists to benefit the rich. No other phenomenon sums up more starkly how unjust modern Britain is. Social security for the poor is shredded, stripped away, made ever more conditional. But welfare for large corporations and wealthy individuals is doled out like never before. The question is not just whether such an establishment is unjust: the question is whether it is sustainable.

[Bobby Hundreds]

Good article by owen jones. They got it all sewn up.

[KopOut]

[KopOut]

http://www.icaew.com/en/events/2014/september/telglec140909-does-money-grow-on-trees

 

Apparently yes..but only for the elite. the rest of us get cuts.

[Sugar Ape]

Extra year of Tory rule anyone? Anyone?

 

PM could face calls to postpone UK election if Scots vote for independence

 

David Cameron will face calls to take the unprecedented step in modern peacetime of postponing next year's UK general election by 12 months in the event of a vote for Scottish independence to avoid the prospect of a Labour government that would depend on Scottish MPs.

 

Amid warnings of a "constitutional meltdown" after a yes vote, which would place severe personal political pressure on the prime minister, a growing number of Tory MPs are saying they will call for legislation to be introduced to postpone the general election. It would be the first time since 1940, a year into the second world war, that a general election would have been postponed.

 

One member of the government said: "You would see very quickly after the referendum calls for a delay in the election. You simply could not have an election that would produce a Labour government supported by Scottish MPs if the Tories had a majority in the rest of the UK. So you would say: OK Alex Salmond wants to negotiate the break up by March 2016. So we will have a general election on the new Britain in May 2016."

 

There is a growing sense of panic among MPs from all parties at the prospect of a yes vote after a YouGov/Times poll showed that supporters of independence are for the first time within touching distance of winning the referendum. Support for yes has reached 47% of the vote amongst decided voters, against 53% for no with just two weeks to go.

 

Well placed members of the government have already started to consult the laws on postponing elections. An act of parliament would have to be passed, but there are complicating factors. The fixed term parliament act of 2011, which stipulated that the next general election would take place on 7 May 2015, would have to be repealed. The House of Lords would also be able to block the legislation because its power to delay bills by a year effectively becomes a blocking power on the eve of an election. One former law officer said: "Parliament can change elections, it can do what it likes. But it would be difficult."

 

Ed Miliband will arrive in Scotland for his second visit in recent weeks facing greater pressure to shore up the no vote as three former Tory Scottish secretaries published a joint appeal for the Union. Sir Edward Leigh, the veteran Tory MP, highlighted nerves on all sides when he called on the three main party leaders to "drop everything else" and campaign to save the UK.

 

Speaking during prime minister's questions, Leigh accused the leaders of being complacent, adding: "If we were to lose the Union, it would be not only a disaster for Scotland, but a national humiliation of catastrophic proportions."

 

Ruth Davidson, the Tory leader in Scotland, highlighted fears of a yes vote when she told a cross-party referendum debate on STV on Tuesday night that the Tories are on course to lose the UK election. This was seen as an attempt to reassure wavering voters who are more likely to vote for independence if they believe the Tories will win the UK election, according to the former Labour first minister Lord McConnell of Glenscorrodale.

 

In an email to party supporters pleading for financial support for the No campaign the Liberal Democrat, the party president Tim Farron wrote of the poll: "If that doesn't scare you, it should. We are 15 days away from an historic vote that will decide Scotland's future. If Scotland decides to go it alone the United Kingdom will be a very different place."

 

One former Tory minister said of a yes vote: "It would be meltdown. The major constitutional crisis would be for David. Can he hang on? I suspect he could. But it would be difficult."

 

Tory MPs are suggesting the constitutional crisis would be compounded by carrying on with a general election in 2015 after a yes vote. Current polls suggest Miliband will come first in the election, possibly emerging as leader of the largest party in a hung parliament. Scotland would still elect MPs to Westminster in a 2015 election because the formal break up of the UK is not due to take place, under Salmond's plans, until March 2016. Labour's tight lead in current UK-wide polls suggests Miliband would find it impossible to form either a minority government, or one in coalition with the Lib Dems, without the support of Scottish MPs. Well over 10% (41) of the 258 seats Labour won at the last election are Scottish.

 

David Cameron would have won a slender parliamentary majority, and would have avoided a coalition, if Scotland had been excluded from the 2010 election. He would have lost just one seat in Scotland, giving the Tories 306 seats in a 591-seat House of Commons covering England, Wales and Northern Ireland. Labour would have fallen from 258 to 217 seats while the Lib Dems would have seen their number of seats fall from 57 to 46.

 

Supporters of an election delay say that the most pressing task facing the UK government after a Yes vote would be to negotiate the break up of the UK with the Scottish government. Alistair Carmichael, the Lib Dem Scotland secretary, has said that Scottish MPs could not be members of the UK negotiating team. That would exclude three members of Miliband's proposed cabinet – Douglas Alexander, Jim Murphy and Margaret Curran.

 

The Tory MPs pressing for a delay in the election may have some political cover because Angus Robertson, the SNP leader at Westminster, called last year for a delay to allow the negotiations on separation to take place. But the House of Lords constitution select committee, which published a report on the implications of the referendum raised questions about a delay. The report said: "The extension of a parliament beyond five years would be an extraordinary step constitutionally; it may risk being seen by voters as self-serving, extending the time in power of the current government."

 

There would be nerves in No 10 that the PM was running scared of the electorate. One former minister said: "It is difficult to imagine postponing the election. It would not look good."

 

Miliband is expected to refresh his attacks on the Scottish National party's claims that it is the party of social justice. The Labour leader will address party activists in Blantyre, South Lanarkshire before leading a doorstep canvassing push; Labour officials said the party was now contacting 32,000 voters a week face to face.

 

During his visit to Blantyre, in a staunch Labour area being targeted heavily by the yes campaign, Miliband will accuse the SNP of hypocrisy because it wants to cut corporation tax rates, and has refused to commit itself to a higher 50p rate of income tax or a fuel price freeze.

 

Accompanied for the first time by the full Scottish Labour leadership team, Miliband will insist that the fastest route to a higher minimum wage, a tax on bankers bonuses and abolishing the bedroom tax was elect him as prime minister in 2015.

 

Citing unguarded remarks on Monday night by Ruth Davidson, the Scottish Tory leader, that the Conservatives were unlikely to win the general election, Miliband will insist that Labour would win in 2015 – a year earlier than Scotland could become independent.

 

"Now the SNP want to tell you we can't defeat the Tories. They are wrong. Change is coming in the UK. The Tories are on their way out; they are losing their MPs; they are defecting, divided and downhearted," he will claim.

 

Meanwhile, the most senior figure in the Church of Scotland, the Right Rev John Chalmers, urged campaigners to behave after a spate of clashes and incidents in recent days. Chalmers, the moderator of the General Assembly, said he had "repelled by the name-calling and rancour we have seen in recent weeks. We need to behave as though we are paving the way for working together whatever the outcome."

[Jairzinho]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/05/green-party-conference-natalie-bennett

 

Green leader brings a streak of red to party conference

Natalie Bennett's fiery speech targets disillusioned left as party broadens appeal

 

The Green leader, Natalie Bennett, would decline to describe her party as the "Ukip of the left" but she does agree with Nigel on one thing: "The political class does not look like, sound like or have the life experiences of most people in Britain. The political class is not representing us. They are right about that," she said.

 

This was far from the only echo of Farage's anti-establishment anger, repackaged for the disillusioned left, to be heard at the Green partyconference in Birmingham on Friday.

 

A fiery opening speech from Bennett was shot through with jibes about the wealthy Westminster elite, rallying calls to frustrated voters and attacks on the three major parties for offering more of the same.

 

Climate change got a few mentions, but the big cheers were for renationalisation of the railways, a minimum wage of £10 an hour, the abolition of profit-making in the NHS, a wealth tax, no more student fees and an end to the badger cull. The applause got even louder as she condemned the "deeply damaging Thatcherite" policies that she says have created a broken economic model for Britain.

 

In the past, Bennett has been coy about positioning her party on the political spectrum but this year she is firm. The Greens are "very much to the left" of Labour and the Lib Dems. And if she had to pick the next prime minister from the current feasible options, it would definitely be "Ed Miliband, with a sigh", she said.

 

Her attempts to become the favoured party of protest for leftwingers who feel betrayed by the last Labour government or by Nick Clegg's role in this one seems to be having some modest success.

 

The Greens are polling around 6%-8%, snapping at the heels of the Liberal Democrats, whom they beat in the European elections. The party's membership is up almost a third this year and it is fielding a record number of candidates in 2015 – in three out of every four seats.

 

And although Caroline Lucas, the party's only MP, faces a struggle to retain her seat in Brighton Pavilion, Bennett said she is optimistic about the Greens' chances in Liberal Democrat areas including Bristol, Solihull and Norwich.

 

The mood of the conference seemed more upbeat than last year, when there was discord over Green-led Brighton council's decision to slash the salary of rubbish collectors.

 

However, like many a small party, it is still riven with infighting and factionalism. The Watermelons – green on the outside, red on the inside – are delighted at what they perceive as a swing to the left.

 

But they are suspicious of the Kiwis and Limes group – green on the outside, green on the inside – who were sitting across the exhibition hall with bowls of fruit, and who want to keep the focus on the environment.

 

Thomas Jackson, who describes himself as a "devoted" member, has even booked his own stand to warn his party that they are failing to convey their message on climate change. He says the Greens are "hopeless" and "feeble" about warning people of the threat of catastrophe and wants to see his party "grasp the issue by the throat" much more.

 

However, Bennett believes her strategy of broadening the party's appeal is paying off. She dismissed worries about the Greens' financial credibility by arguing that the traditional governing parties have not proved they can do any better.

 

"We have got a huge political space available to us," she says. "This general election is unlike any other because we are a parliamentary party. Before we were always vulnerable to people saying Greens don't get elected to Westminster. They can't say we're irrelevant any more."

[Moo]

Seeing as though Labour have nothing better to say they should play in this Green and red thing. Sell themselves on the fact that while the fascist UKIP are trying to win Tory voters it's The Greens who are trying to nick Labour votes. Says everything about our two main parties.

[Jairzinho]

It's a route I have been long waiting for the Green Party to take. There isn't a party of the left, so become it.

[Bobby Hundreds]

Hmmm so if I was a fruit I'd be a watermelon...... Cilla.

[Rotpeter]

It's a route I have been long waiting for the Green Party to take. There isn't a party of the left, so become it.

Qualified endorsement of Labor had to get shoe-horned in there didn't it. They need to be careful they aren't squeezed into the role of legitimizing Labor's (non-existent) socialist credentials.

[Rotpeter]

Seeing as though Labour have nothing better to say they should play in this Green and red thing. Sell themselves on the fact that while the fascist UKIP are trying to win Tory voters it's The Greens who are trying to nick Labour votes. Says everything about our two main parties.

Instead of playing more spin games, Labour should just go back to being the party of Labour. Their supporters are ripe for picking because they can increasingly see they are getting thatcherism with rounded corners.

[Skidfingers McGonical]

http://www.theguardian.com/politics/2014/sep/07/george-osborne-mps-pay-rise-unacceptable

 

George Osborne: 10% pay rise for MPs is unacceptable

Chancellor speaks out against increase in MPs' salary from £67,000 to £74,000 planned by expenses watchdog

George Osborne discussed the issue of MPs' pay on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show. Photograph: Getty Images

George Osborne has said a 10% pay rise for MPs is unacceptable, after the Commons watchdog reiterated its determination to push ahead with the increase.

 

The chancellor suggested the move would be blocked after the general election, stressing that the Independent Parliamentary Standards Authority's (Ipsa) position was not final.

 

The comments, in an interview on the BBC's Andrew Marr Show, came after new Ipsa chief executive, Marcial Boo, reiterated its commitment to the increase from £67,000 to £74,000.

 

Boo said the economy was recovering and politicians should not be paid a "miserly amount".

"All the evidence points towards MPs' salaries having fallen behind," he told the Sunday Telegraph.

 

He said some viewed the £74,000 figure as "at the low end", and failure to pay fair rates would make it harder to recruit good candidates for parliament in future.

"This is an important job, the job of an MP," Boo said. "They are there to represent us all, to form laws, to send young people to war.

"It is not an easy thing to do. We want to have good people doing the job and they need to be paid fairly. Now, that's not paid in excess but it's not being paid a miserly amount either.

 

"It's our job to reach the judgment of what the right amount is. There are lots and lots of professionals in public life and in the private sector who earn a lot more than that – so it is not an excessive amount of money at all."

 

There was an outcry when Ipsa announced the rise last year, with David Cameron, Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg arguing it was unacceptable at a time when public sector rises were capped at 1%.

 

MPs are already due a 1% increase to £67,731 next April and under Ipsa's plan it will go up again a month later to £74,000.

The watchdog has said it will conduct a further review of the pay rise after the election – as it is legally obliged to do – but Boo made clear its conclusions were unlikely to shift.

 

"We were allowing for any change in economic circumstances," he said." At that time we had only just emerged from recession, it wasn't quite clear we were going to have the growth that we have got now as a country, so we left the option open to change the position.

 

"As of now, September, it doesn't look like there is any major economic factor that would change the determination that we reached in 2013."

He added: "Parliament as a whole has created an independent body to set MPs' pay. We have gone through the process in a really rigorous way. It is not an arbitrary figure that we have come up with.

 

"Obviously, it is for parliament to decide whether they want to take back responsibility for setting their own pay. I don't believe that's right.

"I think we are in a better position as a country now when we have an independent, transparent regulator that is tasked with determining MPs' remuneration.

 

"This is the number that we've come up with and we talked both to the public and to MPs about it. "But if parliament wants to change its mind and to change our remit, then that's clearly for them."

 

Boo – whose own £120,000 salary is £10,000 more than that of his predecessor – said a change in the law would be needed to prevent Ipsa following through on its proposals.

 

Another potential block to the pay rise was removed over the summer when the Ipsa chairman, Sir Ian Kennedy, was reappointed for another 18 months, meaning he will remain in post after the general election.

 

However, Osborne promised the issue would be tackled.

 

"I don't think it is acceptable at a time when there is continuing pay restraint in the public sector that MPs would receive such a big increase," he said.

 

"But this is not the final verdict, this is not the final report. There will be a report after the election and that's when we are going to have to tackle this issue."